War | Chapter 8 - The Hawks Nest: Mission 2

By Lord_Chris

Stronghold 2: Path of War, Lost King Campaign
Played with version 1.3.1. Walkthrough by HicRic and LordBritian

Chapter 8: The Hawk's Nest, Mission 2
• Main Objectives: Kill Sir Hugo Blanc, Duke de Montparnasse and Lord Beaufort
• Starting Resources: All leftover resources and weapons from Mission 1, plus an extra 500 gold added
• Starting Troops: All leftover troops from Mission 1

For Location Reference

1) Duke de Montparnasse's Castle
2) The Hawk's Castle
3) Boorswell
4) Your Castle
5) Quincetown
6) Scarcliffe
7) Shapwick (Lord Beaufort's Castle)
8) Whitle
9) Sir William's Castle
10) Sible Hedingham
11) Sir Hugo Blanc's Castle

The start of this mission can be a pain. Having Duke de Montparnasse's castle so close to your castle is awkward to say the least. Your farms will take some damage or be destroyed if he uses the rolling log trap. Note the stairwell that is o­n the forest side of your gate. Delete the stairs and place a bastion there (delete and relocate any buildings that prevent this placement). Place a tower-mounted balista o­n top and start firing at all the archers and other troops in range.

When all targets are exhausted, build one catapult at the engineer's guild and position it under the lookout tower of Duke de Montparnasse's castle. Knock a hole and send all your swordsmen and pikemen directly to the keep to kill Duke de Montparnasse.

Once this is done, the castle will disappear and become a small estate for you, called St Columb Minor. Much of the rest of this mission is simply building up your economy and army. From now o­n, you will not be attacked or invaded in this mission. You can take your time as much as you like! Don't feel pressured to rush things, as you're perfectly safe.

Look east and north until you come to an estate mining iron. It is called "Quincetown". Purchase it for 100 honour-you should still have plenty of honour. Add two apple farms, two hunter's posts, two hovels, two iron mines, and 2 ox tethers to the mining operation. Use the carter's post to ship iron back to your castle.

Go to your market and buy some cloth, you should have money to spare. This is useful because the pages from the inactive kitchen will take it to the Lady's bedchamber, and she will make dresses for a dance at the keep, earning 200 honour a time. This will give you more than enough honour for the mission. Buy cloth periodically to support this effort. Balance granary rationing and taxes throughout the mission to keep popularity high.

Now, expand weapons production. You'll need a good army if you want to beat the other two lords, and later on, the Hawk. Add another fletcher and have him build crossbows. Add a blacksmith making swords and an armourer. Place a tanner somewhere near your gatehouse. This will now mean you are producing crossbowmen, archers, spearmen, and best of all, knights! They cost 100 gold and 25 honour each, though, so keep your gold stocks high. Buy in iron until the first shipment comes from Quincetown.

While your peasants work away o­n weapons production, you are going to make this castle a very hard one to get in to. Thicken your existing walls until they are around three tiles thick in most places. Add many "bastion" towers to these walls, at the cost of 10 stone per tower. Put down plenty! When gold allows, as the mission goes o­n, add a fire ballista every tower. As you train archers and crossbowmen throughout the mission, add them to these walls and towers. Attach rolling log traps anywhere you have space, also. If you have any pitch, spread this around outside the castle, and use any extra wood you have coming in to place killing pits and man traps. Build some stables off to the right-hand side of your estate. Around four is a good number. Give the horses to your knights as they are trained.

Once you have trained five knights, send them north to your iron mining estate, Quincetown. Go north o­ne more estate, and you'll get to a small wooden fort: "Shapwick". Lord Beaufort is there and he doesn't want guests.

Use your knights to break into the fort, kill the lord and any troops inside. Then, move your knights to the right of the right-hand wooden wall-this will keep you out of firing range of main green castle's ballista tower. As you make more swords and armour, train more knights and send them up to this fort. When you have 20 knights (a formidable force!) you are ready to take o­n the green castle, belonging to Sir Hugo Blanc.

Keep your knights back until you have around 90 archers and 75 crossbowmen manning your towers-although the more, the merrier! Feel free to keep building up as long as you want. o­nce you're ready to finish this mission, place a siege camp near your knights in the wooden fort estate, and build four fire ballistae. Move north until you're a little past the fort, and in range of the south-east tower of the castle-it has a ballista on it. Use yours to destroy it. Now, place trebuchets-three should do the trick-where your ballistae were. This picture shows the approximate range you'll want to be for both actions:

Use your knights to protect the trebuchets as they destroy the tower and the walls close to it. When there is a breach, charge your knights in! They should be able to cut a path to the keep and kill the enemy lord with ease. Dismount the knights in front of the campfire and have them attack Sir Hugo Blanc directly. When he dies, the castle disappears and is replaced by an estate: "Stainforth".