If you do decide to give it a try again: it's one of those older games where politics is only minimally helpful, they WILL eventually attack you. Some hints that usually help me get going:

1) It helps a LOT to have resources randomized, unless you start in... the top left, as I recall. Basically, you want to have 1 of each resource ASAP, but gold is both most important and most rare in a non-random setup.

2) Always be doing something. Early game, you'll want to gather resources sensibly, late game just keep getting gold and food, unless you need wood or iron to do something. Constantly send out scouts, even if you've already scouted a place, to get that second blue bar.

3) When you attack somewhere, highlight all your units, and stack them into the upper right or upper left. The way the battles work, going 1 on 1 is likely to have a high attrition rate. If you stack, then basically all your guys hit one guy at a time, while each one guy the opponent has hits a random army member of yours. In an even battle, you should lose very few people. If the battle is a LITTLE stacked in their favor, you should win.

4) Knights are the best unit. They just are. They are so absurdly overpowered it's not funny. Once you CAN build knights, it's not worth getting footmen.

5) If you are attacked, retreat immediately, and just counterattack the territory. When you're attacked, you only get half your army to fight with - so by attacking them back, you double your army and halve theirs. This is especially important with castles - for all the game praises castles, they are absurdly hard to defend (even if ALL you have is archers, which are honestly the only useful defense unit with a castle).

6) Never attack the pope - unless everybody else is dead and you want ALL the land.

Hope that helps!

The reason i am a member of this site in the first place is because as i get older (43) it is rare that i will find a new game that interests me to the extent that i will have much tolerance for the learning curve. I was buying new games one after the other and playing them for just 10 minutes and completely loosing interest even though i know i have not given the game a fair go. I realized i have to change my ways so i decided to look to the past instead. Became a member of this site and got a few of the old games i used to play, also i do find more old games that i never played that i instantly liked on this site - such games as Fantasy wars, Eador and disciples. Found them based on other forum member recommendations. but I did also get a couple of games people recommended which i did not like... King of Dragon Pass and Battle Isle.

As for games that i found too hard to play; there are some big name games in that list; Starcraft and warcraft3!

(although in warcraft 3 i can survive and win on maps with tree barriers)

Edit: my weakness is that i do not do well with RTS games that require allot of unit micro management. RTS with good levels of unit automation, i will do very well in - such as Total anihilation, whereby i can even defeat 10 AI opponents allied against me, all due to the improved level of unit automation.

Dawn of War 1 (Dawn of War 2 relies heavily on you using troops special action for them to be effective and they tend to die quicker.), Sins of a Solar Empire and the Kohan series(Especially Kohan: Ahriman's gift. Beware though that it have serious issues such as lag on Windows 8. There is a solution which include a program that changes it to a window which I haven't tested yet.).

I give you these tips because I am like you. So called RTS Strategy Games that you have to click a lot in and micromanage I simply can't handle.

To GOG. When will we get Kohan here? Working "out of the box" on Windows 8? Pretty please with sugar on top. :P

I've been able to beat Castles 2 on easy mode a few times. There are some tricks to doing it:

1. Try to be at war with only one AI at a time. If a second declares war on you, send them bribes to improve your relations and then ask for a peace treaty. Better to lose some gold than waste your military and lose provinces because you're being overwhelmed.

2. *This is huge* there is a combat exploit that existed in the original Castles 2 that was kept in the GOG version. Funny because I found it over 20 years ago playing it when it came out and was delighted to see it's still there. You can easily defeat armies 2x larger than yours by cramming your entire army into a blob on one side of the battlefield. Select all your units and then click on an opposite corner of the map (the enemy side). Get your entire army into as close a group as possible as close as possible to one side of the enemy lines.

What happens is because the AI only ever uses line formation, your group of units will mob the one guy at the end of their line and overwhelm him. Then they will continue down the line and beat down every single guy with like 10 or 20 versus 1 odds. After you figure this out, you will never use line formation again.

3. Attacking armies use their entire army to attack. Defending armies only use half their army to defend. Knowing this can be used to your advantage. If you are attacked and defeat the attacking army - GO ON THE OFFENSIVE!!! It doesn't matter if you have two infantry left. ATTACK and keep ATTACKING because they have no troops left to defend with and you will gain a great deal of territory. When doing this, it's a great idea to keep your first military panel constantly attacking and your second military panel generating new troops.

Conversely if someone is attacking you and you can't win, run away. When being invaded by a superior force it's better to preserve your military and focus entirely on building new troops. This is a bit of a gambit because the goal here is to get a large enough military to win a defensive battle before they take your last province. The key here is winning a defensive battle - if you attack them you only defeat half their army. Which means if you just barely win your attack and lose most of your military, the other half of their military will almost certainly will wipe you out.

4. Knights are great on open fields but are mostly useless when attacking castles. In castles they will usually reach the keep and then get torn apart by archers stationed in towers. Fill out your army with at least 10 infantry and 10 archers before making knights.

When attacking a castle, move all your troops to one side. This lets your archers focus fire on defending archers on that side, and lets your infantry better protect them from attacking infantry. Separating your forces on multiple sides just exposes them to more archer fire and prevents them from ganging up on one group of defending archers. This is a bit of a painstaking process because it automatically separates your forces and you will have to move troops from one side one by one to the other.

5. The premade castles are terrible at defending but come with hidden bonuses. For instance, Warwick castle will improve your relations with the Pope when you build it. Building multiple Warwick castles is an quick way to get rid of excommunication, especially if the Pope isn't too keen on visiting you and offering you a way to bribe him.

The best defensive castles have lots of moat and tall archer towers. Instead of making a castle with concentric walls, make one with walls jutting out in a star shape (like spokes on a wheel) the moat will surround each of these spokes and create a lot more moat for the enemy troops to get bogged down in. This also gives you lots of room for archer towers with open lines of fire on the enemy.

Building a castle next to a lake is also a great idea - if the enemy starts in the lake (which will happen sometimes) they will be slowed down and be open to archer fire.



Try as I might, I haven't been able to beat Castles 2 on medium or hard. If you can beat it on easy, that's an accomplishment. I hope this helps.

No dude, you just call yourself a "gamer".

You are convinced of your weakness, unmotivated by challenge, you whine about people not spoon feeding you the info you should be researching if you are so incapable and mentally debilitated as you claim.

You also seem to value small sums more than the diversity of your collection and your involvement in it. You don't actually understand the history or method of gaming in general and then you claim "false advertising" to justify the refund, frankly, is a pansy move.

None of that says "gamer at heart". At best it says "games journalist at heart".

You do not get to say what a gamer is, because you haven't invested in it beyond words and low effort interactions.