But Stronghold's greatest flaw is the combat. These events aren't randomized, though, and if you've tried a mission previously (and due to how little is explained, you very well may have) it's not hard to know exactly what's around the corner. The events affect the mood of your little hamlet and can throw a wrench in your food supply or eat up your resources. Sometimes it's wild bears that begin to eat your peasants, sometimes it's an outbreak of the plague or a fire, or sometimes it's just the weather. Stronghold attempts to throw you the curveballs by regularly hitting you with events. But then nothing really changes, and you begin to get very similar objectives - defend your castle from invaders, make a big stockpile of resources X, Y and Z before the time is up - over and over again. When Stronghold pushes your building-efficiency to its limits, it shines bright. Spinning all of those plates at the same time isn't a simple task, and adding building an army into the mix complicates things further. Keeping your peasants happy (and therefore your population growing) means keeping a steady and varied supply of food, plenty of housing, and if you can supply it, offering services like ale and religion. Once you understand the mechanics, however, Stronghold 3 occasionally shows moments of glorious economic balance. Discovering the relationships between wheat, mill, bakery, storehouse and granary can mean you need to completely restart a mission because you unwittingly built your base in the least efficient way possible. This makes many of the missions more puzzling and frustrating than they need to be. I still have no idea what "honor" is for, other than to fulfill some quest objectives. Some structures go completely without explanation like the church, as do some of the resources. But Stronghold 3 only tells you what the thing does about five missions later. The apothecary, a structure that allows one of your citizens to cleanse diseased parts of the land, is available to use in the first economic mission, and is virtually required to clear the stage.
None of those steps are ever explained to you, nor is the functionality of many of the structures. It assumes that you know that the wheat needs to be milled and taken back to the storehouse as flour, where it needs to be picked up by a baker to become delicious, edible bread. When the campaign begins, it assumes you know that harvested wheat goes to the storehouse and not the granary. It ends unceremoniously and the vast majority of game elements you'll need to master to progress aren't explained or even mentioned. Stronghold 3 comes with a built-in tutorial that takes you through basic controls - placing structures, messing with the camera, selecting things etc… - and that's about it.