Stronghold HD - Invasions - Desperate Measures [very hard]

Welcome to my Stronghold Walkthrough. I will finish every mission on very hard, as fast as possible and with perfect score. Enjoy :-)
Mission name in other languages (EN / DE / FR / ESP) for better search results and for being found by non native speakers:
Desperate measures / Der letzte Ausweg / Mesures désespérées / Medidas desesperadas

[@LordVilhelm]

I´ve been playing stronghold on and off since I was a kid. I NEVER KNEW YOU COULD MOVE THE DAMN STOCKPILES! This would have saved my ass so many times I can´t even Count. Thank you so much!!

[@razvancisma4154]

me too :)))

[@fronti254]

Buen video 👏🏻👏🏻 yo igual juego stronghol crusader . kzbin.info/www/bejne/g6LRaoeOrJ2pp9k

[@BluDrgn426]

I was always curious how to win this Invasion! Well done! Also, the level is so long the forest grew back, haha

[@iwersonsch5131]

Q: Why 10 minutes? A: Because 30 minutes of just waiting would be boring. Nobody's gonna sue you for that.

[@tldr7159]

Another slice of heaven! Well done my friend!

[@grekain1]

Always a joy watching your videos! Seems this mission isn't as hard as I thought it was :D

[@LordBalder]

It's one of those missions which appear very easy when you know what to do. On my first attempts however I failed miserably because I tried to defend the wooden wall und was simply overrun by the sheer amount of enemy troops!

[@mataisspohn9512]

@@LordBalder U r genious...

[@llittle725]

WOW.... That was awesome... I did not see anyway to attempt this one... it seemed impossible, so went to UTUBE and the first video proved that it could be beaten and easily too... GREAT JOB Lord Balder... I was impressed... thanks for sharing this with us...

[@LordBalder]

Thanks, I'm glad you liked it!

[@mahmoudal-mahadeen8696]

WOW.. i have tried youre strats that i saw in other videos to win this one on very hard but didnt work .. still im a student next to you sir.. SIMPLY WOW :)

[@hellowill]

I was so happy when I beat the knights.. but I lost all my archers and everyone left castle. NGL I thought it was a troll mission. But you beat it without losing anything.. wtf.

[@LordBalder]

I had my problems in the beginning too, but once you know what to do, it becomes quite easy.

[@Malitha-rq6fk]

this man did the imposible

hey, good video

[@johnrodo1569]

24K views and 266 like? Only 1.1% seem to remember to hit the button. It took me 5 hours on normal level!

[@nikypercea]

a tip for you in the future, when you build lone towers it is best to remove to bottom step from the stairs, so the enemy will not climb and kill your archers (after you fill the tower with everything ).

[@razvancisma4154]

like he needs tips..

[@birisuandrei2866]

@@razvancisma4154 agreed, this guy nailed a mission I couldn't even make myself an economy on.

[@eezzysolutzzion6646]

At my last battle Wolf attacks me with thousand and thousands of swordsman, pikes and knights, is there a bug or something?

[@LordBalder]

Thats normal, the second attack is huge! In my video, they all gather in the north and then attack in smaller waves, thats how you are able to survive. And since that takes forever, I edited out several years of the attack for a shorter video :-)

[@eezzysolutzzion6646]

@@LordBalder Thank you anyway, i'm dumb, 10k gold were missing, i think i killed 6-7k of Wolf troops until i saw it.

[@lolabambola]

Perfect

[@KolejnyGalAnonim]

I just beat "Island Warfare" on Easy. Maybe I could succed on Normal . But I can't believe is there possibility to pass this mission on very hard. I didn't find any playthrough of this.

[@LordBalder]

This mission has been won by UdwinLP on very hard, just search for the german title "Inselkrieg". Despite his questionable strategy, he also unintendedly triggered the AI to act very stupid so that it only attacked in small packs one at a time which can be defeated easily... There has been several requests for the mission recently so I will give it another try. I don't know if I can do it though because winning this mission is indeed very hard, let alone finishing it without losses!

[@LordBalder]

I am currently trying to find a more fair way to beat the "Island Warfare" mission, with the AI attacking normally and without massive signpost slaughtering by mangonels. Crossbows could be a help in the latter attacks but as you mentioned they were not implemented correctly and you would still have to cope with the pigs attacks with archers only...

[@LordBalder]

Yeah, Udwin tried quite a few things before his cheesy attempt and none of them worked, so I will have to do something completely different. Unfortunately there are no more videos on that mission so I have nothing to work with...

[@KolejnyGalAnonim]

I sold lower line of wall, bought as many archers as possible and started digging moat. When enemy atacted I relocated archers to tower builded on a cliff. With plenty of arrows and palisade, spearmen dug impressive moat before last attack, so infantry wasn't problem. But I can't find the way to deal with enemy crossbowmen and archers, during last attack. I gather 60 bowmen but it's not enough on higher level

[@iwersonsch5131]

2:17 O_O That works??!

[@Gnoccy]

Moving the stockpile? Since I've figured this out I've been doing it in every single game. Helps a lot if you want to optimize your bread production.

[@MrCh0o]

@@Gnoccy I think he may've been talking about flatting the terrain by using small buildings

[@ajax839]

I have lost all confidence in my ability to do anything after watching you easily destroy this level

[@LordBalder]

Nah, dont lose confidence! My first tries looked exactly like yours but I kept trying different approaches over and over until I found this one here. If you know what to do, its indeed easy, but getting there takes time and effort!

[@OnyxOfMadness]

@@LordBalder so wholesome, i love you

[@chrisschrader6564]

I don’t understand why nobody leaves when the happiness is down to 0. Also, why do you need so much bread? Food production seems over-the-top lol

[@LordBalder]

Oh but they do leave, one at time, until I raise popularity again. Bread production was set up to get a lot of gold fast by selling excess food, but since you only get the victory for surviving the second wave which takes 15 years to arrive (!!!), I did not bother to sell anything ;-)

[@perahoky]

seems like this missions is very easy with this mass of starting troops. the walls of the main castle and the troops should be removed, THEN its a challange

[@rikoTT]

irealy like your video you still now stronghold

[@demobin]

Hi, @Lord Balder. In this mission I faced an issue when part of enemies ranged units got stuck at very entry of the map. They didn't attack my castle and it feels literally impossible to kill this stack without losses. Maybe you know why such things happends?

[@LordBalder]

Hehe, if you watched my video till the end, you would have seen that I had the same issue ;-) I cant explain why it happens... Swordmen will do it when you have a moat which they cant dig but thats not the case here, maybe there were just too many troops and the AI bugged... What helps is deleting walls or moat for a direct access to your lord, then they will attack.

[@retrogamer2503]

How do these invasions have such large attacking armies? I have been designing a few mission by myself but the invasions are capped off at only 500 troops at once.

[@LordBalder]

Invasions get doubled if played on very hard, so 1000 for one invasion sounds like the maximum, after that you can only have more invasions in short succession to get more. However, keep in mind that there can be only a total of around 1500 troops on the map at the same time due to the game limitations! If you overdo it, new units will simply stop spawning at the signpost until existing ones are getting killed...

[@retrogamer2503]

@@LordBalder hmm thanks man

[@baihaqisaragih]

so it not necessary to wait until final battle?

[@LordBalder]

Unfortunately, it is. Only after you defeat the final waves will you win, even when you got the 20k gold earlier... -.- But I edited out 40min of waiting to get my video down to a reasonable time ;-)

[@anthonyergo6292]

no troops lost. wow.

[@TheSuperhoden]

jees and i cant get past the first wave. why'd you build up that food production anyways?

[@LordBalder]

Thats for the 20000 gold I need to win the mission. I tried to win before the second wave but the Wolf only accepts my protection money once all of his men are dead -.-'

[@perahoky]

why didnt you defend the 2nd wall instead of the 1th ?

[@LordBalder]

- because I don't delete stairs and my archers would have been an easy target for enemy macemen - to gather my troops at less space so that all (most) of them can shoot at the enemy waves - troops on towers are harder to hit than troops on walls (I think) - to have a buffer for enemy siege to shoot at without endangering my troops

[@achi9220]

You didn't used braziers, but if you had than it could look even easier..

[@ToasT_ED]

Braziers don't encrease damage

[@getsbi7]

Как ты быстро прошел эту миссию. У меня при 20000 золота и всех убитых врагах миссиЯ не завершается

[@LordBalder]

Мне пришлось подождать вторую волну, а затем победить ее, хотя в описании говорится что-то еще, поэтому я не спешил с золотом. Вы можете проверить таймер миссии на оставшееся время, вам нужно подождать около 30 минут, по крайней мере, это время, которое я пропустил около 8:00 ...

[@getsbi7]

@@LordBalder да я так и сделал.мне просто показалось что у вас закончилось все после первой волны

[@iwersonsch5131]

The last resort aka Verzweifelte Maßnahmen. I like the German name better.

[@LordBalder]

I see you steadily work yourself through my videos though I haven't figured out the order of your video selection yet ;-)

[@iwersonsch5131]

Not really an order...

[@micharainczuk607]

Is this a mod?

[@LordBalder]

Its just a normal invasion that came with the HD patch

[@micharainczuk607]

@@LordBalder how many normal invasions are in Stronghold HD?

[@LordBalder]

They added 16 to the original 6 ones, the videos where you asked the same question belong to the new ones.

[@micharainczuk607]

@@LordBalder which of them is the hardest invasion?

[@LordBalder]

For me, the hardest one was Island Warfare. There, you only have very little time to prepare and you need to defend against 4 very large attacks of which the later ones start while you are still defending the previous one!

[@henrry889]

previous best score 125,525....... What in the actual....

[@LordBalder]

Yes, I know, it could have been more, but at some point, I had to stop...

[@henrry889]

I still can't beat island warfare. If I copied you I could, but where's the fun in that.

[@LordBalder]

I understand that, I always wanted to have something new in my videos and not just copy another run, too. Unfortunately, you have very little options in this mission that work. All of the effective defenses are blocked and confusing the AI with walls was shown in another video / too unfair for me! I tried stacking 20 macemen, but they were too few even for the first wave. I thought of using lots of killing pits but you are missing the time to gather enough wood to kill all waves with them. The best thing I could think of was massing archers with a good economy and that's what I did in the end.

[@zachariahlloyd6043]

*How do you get food??* They start you off at *zero popularity,* so any food building you make have no labor because everyone is leaving.... How do you get them to stay, and work please?? *There is no possible way to do what you did here,* because there is no labor to run the wheat farms, and they cannot reach the stores if you build more than 2 farms.... Is this some kind of mod / cheat or something?? *There is nowhere near enough labor to run this many buildings.* Also, there is nothing else that you can trade at the *Marketplace* to get gold, besides food, which there is no way to stockpile. They just start you off with almost nothing, and it gets worse as you try to play. You can't even trade *Stone,* and there is literally no other resources on the map. The *ONLY* way to possibly get gold is to sell food, or raise taxes to mean, but *there is nobody to tax,* as they give you practically no population, and building *hovels* does not give you any more population because you have *zero* popularity right out of the gate. How did you manage to build that many farms without labor, and have them actually produce anything please?? *They even give you a time limit to get the gold,* which makes it even more poorly designed. Otherwise it seems to be an impossible mission to complete, at least the way they set it up, am I wrong?? *Please* clarify, and *Thanks in advance!!*

[@LordBalder]

Umm, have you actually watched my video? It's the same mission that you have, without any mods or cheats... You start with 30 peasants and 20 wood, so enough to build some apple farms. You have a minimum population of 4, so no matter how bad your popularity is, you will always have atleast 4 peasants to gather food. If you had gold, you could buy wood to be able to build more farms, the alternative is to retreat to your castle and destroy your palisade or the killing pits inside your castle to get some wood. To boost your population, you may disband your ballistas and your 60 macemen to get another ~100 peasants who will take about a year to leave you altogether. In that time, you can set your taxes to cruel to gather as much gold as possible (and with 100 population, its quite a lot!). After that first year of getting gold and gathering food, you can set rations to double and bribes to generous to get your popularity back to 50 and start the economic part of the mission. By then, you have enough gold to buy wood to build everything you want! To make sure your workers are not getting killed during the invasions, you have to build some towers to block the way to your farms. You can get the stone for that by destroying your towers on the battlefield, you don't need them anyway... Finally, you don't have to worry about the timer, that one is for the final attack of the wolf. After that, you can take all the time you want to finish the objectives! Finishing earlier to avoid the attack does not work either, because you have to defeat the wolf to win! That's what I did in the video. You can also have a more relaxed approach. Defeat the first invasion as good as you can, then build some apple farms and use the food and that little bit of starting gold to get your popularity up again. Buy wood from the taxes you can then make and start your economy. You have 20 years before the final attack of the wolf, so more than enough time to gather 20k gold, even with a super slow start! Good luck, I hope, this helps :-)

[@zachariahlloyd6043]

Perhaps I was mistaken, and will recheck it, but it did say *No Access to Keep* on any more than 2 farms I built for some reason as well, and I built them exactly where you did.... Even if they did have labor working them, they would just sit there saying they were waiting for storage space, and do nothing at all....

[@LordBalder]

Hmm, that sounds very strange... There is one guy on the stronghold forum who describes the same behavior but there was no solution in his thread. I also tried replicating your situation, but without success, I only get a "no labor" or "awaiting storage space" message, if I block the way, but no "no access to keep"...

[@zachariahlloyd6043]

I kind of found a workaround TBH, I had to build directly adjacent to the *stockpile,* it did not actually need to be able to reach the *Keep* it seems!!

[@LordBalder]

Good to hear, still strange though...

[@kioki666]

how did you get 125525 score?

[@LordBalder]

I used the same setup but added some bad things and extra bakeries to sell as much bread as possible. You may have noticed that I completely ignored my full granary and still got 5k extra gold just by taxes, so even in this video I could have gotten a much higher score! Unfortunately this score is not so impressive anymore once you know that the final waves of archers tend to stay at the signpost instead of attacking, giving you an unlimited amount of time to collect all the gold you want...