Castles 2 seems like it has some fans so maybe one of you could help me.

I figured out that if you save wrong you get bug that nothing works (attacking etc.)

Unfortuantley I get in this state where some spy missions come back, but I don't get a write up of what happened, its like it skips the step and I get to this state often where even if I have action points (or whatever they are called) for military and I have soldiers, and I've scouted a place I cannot attack it. I don't get it. Its a bug right?

I have tried to play it 2 or 3 times. Every single time I expand out no problem, I save up some funds, I try to build a castle, and then while doing that I am suddenly attacked and they just keep coming and also I start having rebellions all over the place and even if I find a way to recover and build up some troops, suddenly I am not allowed to attack. Its weird. I can't fight back my terrotories.

I don7t get if I am suppose to build castles as I go or not, becuase I find it impossible to maintain an army and build. WIth all the demands for diplomacy money and sabotages, I just end up out of resources and the army runs away, also 9/10 times I build a castle the peopel revolt before its built. I alwasy d othe happiness thing to keep it at 9, but they stil lrevolt. Policing isn't stopping it either.

This game seems to have great potential but its like super easy and then suddenly slams you with impossibility.

For now this is like the 10th GOG game I've tried that is a complete fail. There are some great games on here, but lots of the games are just bugs.

Hmmm ... some of those do seem to be bugs. but I only encountered that when I saved wrong, so I am not sure what is going on there.

However, as for strategy: you don't want to expand too fast. Even if happiness is okay, people in uncontrolled territories will still rebel and if you play on hard difficulties they rebel even if happiness is high. Also a fast expansion increases your border size and makes the other contestants for the throne nervous. It's better to be steady and lock out territories by ringing them rather than moving to control everything. Also a small castle will only double the production of the territory it's in while a large castle will protect it and all the territories around it from revolt. Policing the realm is to catch enemy spies and reduces Happiness of your people.

I tried again today. Got a bunch of territory, was not building any castles (ended up broke and lost my army that way)...but without building a castle, eveyrthing revolts and eventually enemies come crashing in from all sides when you ahve absolutely no army...not to mention no territory.

This game is stupid. If you ahve territories you can gain lots of resources. If you stay small...then you ahve no resources to harvest. If you build your castle your army ditches you because you can't pay them.

I'm gonna go back in and try the ringing strategy and I guess I am gonna have to find a way to build castles and still have an army.....

I guess maybe what I need to to is just attack a few in the beginning, build castles and try the diplomatic route to kiss everyone's butt in hopes of not ever being attacked?

I put it on easy to try and learn how the game works, still wickedly hard. It seemed fun and all, but impossible to get anywhere, the dificulty curve is insane, absolutely insane.

Your first order of business should be: Spend all of your admin. points gathering whatever resource you can gather, spend all of your military points recruiting an Archer, and spend all of your political points scouting one of your neighboring territories.

Your scouting mission will be done at about the same time that your Archer recruitment is 50% complete, so scout another territory. When your gathering mission is complete, just click on the panel to repeat it ad infinitum.

It's always a good idea to attack a territory that produces the same resource as your starting territory, if you can; failing that, it's best to attack a territory that produces food or gold (to pay and provision your troops and bribe your opponents) or iron (to supply your army for attacks). But having two territories that produce the same resource will double the rate at which you gather that resource. Note also that you can only ever gather two types of resources at once; being able to gather all four of them isn't as useful as you might think.

During the attack, deploy your archers in two groups on either flank, and your infantry behind them; the enemy will split his army and be much easier to defeat with minimal casualties on your side.

Pretty soon, if you've been constantly gathering resources, you'll get another point in Admin, bringing the total to 5 and giving you a second Admin panel so you can do two administrative tasks at once. At this point, you should build a castle (without a moat, because moats take way too long to dig). Make sure not to use all of your admin points building that castle, however, so that you can continue to gather resources while it's being built. Three admin points will get it built quickly enough.

There is a way to get by that bug. Start a new game, attack some territory, and if the windows pop up in that game, you can load to your current game. Worked for me anyway.

Kissing everyone's butt works for me; I spend like 80% of my income on making sure that I'm not getting attacked or excommunicated anytime soon. So my focus is to get gold resources early, scout for 2 gold resources, and try to grab them unless there are too many neighbors around. It works with 1 gold mine, but that's much tougher.

Here are some other random tips:

Diplomacy:
Sending a diplomat to the pope or a neighbor may be more expensive than waiting for them to come to you. So even if it seems too much gold that they're asking for, it may be cheaper in the long run. For example if the pope asks for 3 gold, this is cheaper than sending a diplomat (1 gold) and donate 2 to 4 gold. I say this from experience, because usually 2 to 4 gold will end up improving the relation.

Attacking and defending:
A few things to bear in mind:
1) The defender troops are halved.
2) The pope relation is usually reduced. Bad relation with the pope will end up in excommunication and practically the end of the game, for your troops will be weakened, and everyone including the people will hate you. Possibly a neighbor relation is reduced too if they have an alliance with the one you're attacking, but I'm not sure about that though.
3) High happiness makes the troops fight much better.
4) If enemy troops was eliminated, they'll have a significantly smaller army going forward. Basically they are easy pickings after the first finishing blow. This is why it's reasonable to stay small in the beginning, because there is a domino effect in the game. One enemy can go down very quickly even if they control a lot of land.
5) Archers are probably the best unit (in a mix), more so than infantry, because they are both good as attacker and defender, especially in castles. I like to have 100% more archers than infantry + knights.

cant attack if happiness is too low or you dont have iron