Hi,

I'm enjoying Stronghold well enough, but I have a really hard time determining if my walls are 'watertight.' I'll think I've built some impregnable wall, when suddenly a troop of enemies/wolves/whathaveyou go walking right through some gap I couldn't see. Is there any clever, easy way to make sure your walls really are effective, or do you just have to save often and try to double check with the height leveling tool?

Easiest way is to lock your gates and then see if you can order a unit to exit the castle.

A less reliable way is to give a unit an order to leave the castle, and see if it takes any other route than your gates.

In the Stronghold games if your keep is fully walled in you should get a little lock icon above your mini map and a voice over that says "Your Keep is Enclosed". It won't specify though passed the first enclosure though.

This is how it works in Crusader, but there is no such alert in the original Stronghold.

1) Pressing the "Space" bar should turn the display into a 2D mode, where the buildings only display the area they take on the ground.

[ It is very useful for walls, towers but also civilian buildings (leaving a gap for buildings near the resources deposit area - the white-grey tiles - so they can all get and leave resources more rapidly). ]

It should allow you to exactly see where your walls have gaps. When in doubt, you should double diagonal walls (when possible) - with wood if you have some spares planks (nb: you can add wooden walls in front of your precious stone walls too, at least on the most-often-attacked parts).

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2) Also, for the borders of the map (the biggest issue), you should right-click and release the cursor on the compass. It should turn the view by 90° degree.

By combining that with the "Space" bar 2D view, should be able to properly cover these pesky borders.

Normally, if you "look" at the same borders from all 4 angles, with the 2D view, there wouldn't be any gap. Test with a fast troop (archer) to see if it's indeed closed.

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3) Ungathered stone resources plants/areas (the gravels) can be walked upon but won't allow construction on them. Make sure to add walls all around these (if it's part of your line of defense).

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4) When in doubt, add 1 column of wall on the higher place nearby. The game shouldn't let a unit "climb" several meters up, but if you can spare the 5 or so additional resources to cover these sudden vertical elevation natural obstacles, do it.