An Analysis on the Good / Arthur Faction

[Asophix 46]

Hi All!

As it's well known, Stronghold Legends allows you to play one out of three different factions, each of which comes with slightly altered building and troop availability. While ideally all factions' individual strengths and weaknesses balance each other out, there has been a skew towards Ice and Evil in most multiplayer matches, in terms of player picks. Why could it happen?

As an experienced Arthur player, allow me to shed light on this phenomenon, while also providing some insights in how the faction is designed to work, and whether it works out in common scenarios, or not. Let's start with Arthur's design points:

• Full economic liberty. 
  • You can have all four granary and royal food types without restrictions, while Ice and Evil can get only 3 of either type.
  • This is most significant early on, when a map has few estates to hold and statues are not abundant yet. 
  • It helps climb the first few ranks faster, but any extra honor is always welcome (potentially 4 extra honor from the granary and 1 from the pantry).
• Wider array of unit abilities.
  • This is about being able to field up to 7 special units with abilities, bringing more potential and flexibility to the battlefield. Your Lord also boasts the strongest summons, a whopping four mounted knights, making for a really good makeshift response force.
  • This comes at the cost of not being able to mass your special troops, unlike Ice and Evil, restricting you to mainly barracks and unwieldy siege engine play. While trebuchets are good at long-range bombardment, enchanted orbs don't usually get used.
  • Evidence suggests that this point is more often a disadvantage than not. Abilities are mostly designed with large fights in mind, rather than for quick timing attacks or punishing weaknesses.

The problem of ability-centered play: your power to dominate big battles comes at the cost of sacrificing your map control and utility. And in Legends there are not many big battles.

Many times, as Arthur you are locked in on recruiting barracks troops, while carefully deciding on ranking up and bringing in the first and then the second Royal Knight. Since all of your special troops are insanely expensive (ranging from 100 to 200 honor and a bunch of gold at times), you need to be extra mindful, or you will end up with an underwhelming unit in shining armor. Abilities make or break Arthur. Without abilities, your knights are not any better than a regular knight. If your opponent baits out your Percival's blast, or Gawain's shield, more often than not you need to give up ground because the enemy just comes in with their own special troops ready to fight.

What Ice and Evil get instead of heavy abilities, are increased flexibility and utility. This comes in three forms:

• Abundance of flying units.
  • Mobility is key in any RTS game, and Legends is no exception. The ability to traverse terrain unhampered, while most of the ground units can't shoot back, is particularly valuable, forcing the enemy to divert precious time and resources to clean them up or tackle them.
  • White Witches (Ice) are nimble ranged fliers that can effectively get through unguarded castle walls, and punish concentrations of troops without archers or crossbowmen.
  • Demonic Bats (Evil) are unrivaled disruptors, easily evading anti-air fire, while also severely damaging lighter troops and knocking them off elevations.
• Structure breaker units (Ice).
  • Most sturdier Ice troops - Polar Bear, Giant, Dwarf - can attack stone walls, gatehouses and towers.
  • Sending a squad of such troops undetected can create breaches in a lightly fortified section of the enemy castle, running rampant in the enemy domain.
  • This is most notably effective with Frost Giants, who have very large health and take a lot of time to kill.
• Climbing units (Evil).
  • The Demon and the Vampiric Creeper can jump on top of walls and gatehouses.
  • While less effective in a direct attack, a surprise maneuver can result in a successful intrusion. Demons are built to spread fire in their weak, while creepers can convert groups of ranged defenders on vulnerable locations.

The first point particularly holds true on larger maps and with difficult terrain present, such as swamps or mountains. With Arthur, you get no choice but to attack on land only, and when forced to defend against swarms of Bats, there may not be enough room to spread all your troops or have Gawain's ability at the ready. Even if your Heavenly Shield is being active (it can stay like that until Gawain moves, and for a long time at that!), you effectively lock your army formation in place and provide ample time for your opponent to fight battles elsewhere.

Last, but not least, let's see some tips I recommend for playing Arthur:

• Buy all foods in the beginning of low rank games. When starting a new game, you have the best option out of all factions to rank up quickly. All 4 food types provide you 12 honor / month, opposed to the 8 of Ice and Evil. Use this advantage to get ahead in the ranks and potentially field better troops against your opponents.
• Always use the Green Dragon. Drogon is your only flying unit and your main way of erasing chunks of the enemy economy, or defense. Even though his creation is announced way too early, its combat potential is unmatched. You can command him to attack a ground target, then quickly move him to a different point as soon as the fire animation plays. Forcing the enemy to build lines of towers, harpoons and wells is well worth it.
• Percival is the playmaker of your army. When facing large enemy formations, the danger of Holy Blast always looms on the horizon. Due to an oversight, Percival's ability works on elevated targets too when targeting the ground. The outward explosions can liberate an area of troops, be it a concentration of towers or a ground army. You should always enlist Percival first due to this very reason, unless situations dictate otherwise.
• Gawain's shield works against Bats. This may solidify Gawain as an S tier unit when playing against Evil. Gawain's ability protects against not only ranged attacks coming from outside, but also absorbs divebombing Bats without triggering their explosion. While this only works in a small area, in a well-chosen location it can mean the difference between life and death. Pair with Galahad to safely refill your troops' health.

Hope you enjoyed this article and helped you understand the Good faction a little better!