Stronghold Kingdoms

Stronghold Kingdoms is a massively multi-player online real-time strategy video game with a Medieval castle building theme. It was developed by Firefly Studios and based upon their commercially successful and popular Stronghold series of games. Firefly Studios started development of Stronghold Kingdoms in 2007 as their first entry into the MMO[2] genre. The first Alpha test began in 2009 and was open to 150 players.[3] These were drawn from previous testers of Firefly Studios games, and volunteers of other prominent fansites. Afterwards, an open Beta was run for just under two years before the game's official release on 17 October 2012.

Stronghold Kingdoms
SHK-logo.png
Developer(s) Firefly Studios
Publisher(s) Firefly Studios
Producer(s) Eric Ouellette
Paul Harris
Mark Barney
Designer(s) Simon Bradbury
Eric Ouellette
Series Stronghold
Platform(s) Microsoft Windows, OS X
Release Microsoft Windows
WW: 17 October 2012
OS X
WW: 19 January 2015[1]
Genre(s) Massively multiplayer online strategy game
Mode(s) Multiplayer online
In addition to the central theme of castle. construction and design, Stronghold Kingdoms incorporates a variety of architectural, economic, military, agricultural, mercantile, industrial and political elements which challenge the player's ability to prioritize, direct work-flow and resources and administrate their holdings in the manner of a medieval land holder or noble. An individual player's success is not entirely predicated upon the ability to defeat computer-generated enemies, but also upon teamwork with fellow players.

The player begins relatively alone, one village among others in a single parish. From this beginning, strategic decisions are made and dialogue established with fellow parish members which introduces the social aspect of Stronghold Kingdoms. All players can vie for stewardship of the parish, dependent on rank. When two or more players wish to be Steward they can negotiate to decide who will take control of the parish, or take it by force, razing out the opposing players village from that parish. If Theology is researched, then monks can be deployed to infiltrate the parish and influence the vote. This is usually referred to as a monk war in the game vernacular. When the successful candidate becomes steward they gain control of the parish army along with the ability to set taxes (tithe), and build the necessary guilds to improve life for all in the parish.

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