Castles as an assortment of buildings that become a bustling community. Stronghold Crusader 2 tries to put a lot more focus on its eponymous stronghold, but the simplification of its simulation elements means that you can build a base and forget about it here, too. You only ever turn your eyes back to your starting base to quickly make more troops, and some games don't even require that. You get set up, and then you try to make inroads towards your objective, eventually busting through enemy lines. In most strategy games, forward momentum is key. Given how castles are the main draws of the Stronghold series, it's odd how little attention they require once your economy is running. Then, voila, you have a working, living castle. By the time you're prepared to march an army towards the enemy, you'll want to construct a wall around your precious production plant. This is in addition to the structures that produce resources like wood and stone, food buildings, and other luxury services (which also require people to run). As you start becoming more popular and more people come to live in your keep, you need to build houses to accommodate them. The downside to this simplification reveals itself once you build your castle. The speedy horse archers let you perform hit-and-runs.
At the same time, the fact that you only need to keep track of one statistic ensures that the sim portions don't bloat and consume the rest of the game. Tying popularity and population growth to troop production gives the game a simulation element, and lends the flow of your economy extra texture. These concerns are controlled with a convenient panel that lets you change values and tells you the popularity bonuses or penalties you get from each adjustment. Likewise, you can adjust consumption in the other direction to conserve resources and gain more gold, but you'll be less popular as a result. You can make them happier by decreasing taxes (even going so far as outright bribing them), increasing their rations, or building them inns and places of worship so that they can drink and pray. You start out with a set population that increases as you become more popular with your subjects. Where the game gets a bit more interesting is when it asks you to attract people to your castle to live and work. But lest you think you're merely expected to churn out soldiers and crash them into the opposition, the game requires you to establish an intricate economy so you can actually afford these soldiers and build structures that will let you make different kinds of units. The goal is the simplest one in strategy game history: defeat the enemy Lord and take his castle. Stronghold Crusader 2 puts you in the shoes of either King Richard's or Saladin's forces during the Crusades, as you square off against the other in self-contained battles raging across the desert landscape.
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