When comparing Medieval: Total War vs Stronghold Crusader HD, the Slant community recommends Stronghold Crusader HD for most people. In the question“What are the best Medieval games on Steam?” Stronghold Crusader HD is ranked 2nd while Medieval: Total War is ranked 11th. The most important reason people chose Stronghold Crusader HD is:
Easy to learn mechanics of economy, castle building and army production. Does not overwhelm players with choices.
Specs
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Pros
Pro Assortment of empires to choose from
Each empire has different historically unique troops and territories. Giving the game quite a bit of replayability.
Pro European themed
Unlike Shogun (of the Total War series), Medieval Total War is based on European feudal combat.
Pro Great for RTS beginners
Easy to learn mechanics of economy, castle building and army production.
Does not overwhelm players with choices.
Pro Deep yet intuitive interface
Many options are available in the game along with good tutorials that introduce the player to these. While not all options are necessary the inclusion of them is welcome for those that would like to take advantage of them.
Pro Unique Gameplay
A unique blend of real-time battles and castle-sim, which the Stronghold series is famous for
Cons
Con Steam version often crashes randomly
Many users of the Steam version of the game report random crashes, which will most likely never be fixed due to the games age.
Con Lacks polish in some areas
Things like buttons on the bottom of the screen that are not intuitively placed as well as notifications that can not be filtered to the more important. This can detract from the gameplay as it is immersion breaking to have to rifle through inconvenient button placement as well as notifications looking for what you need at the time.
Con Multiplayer is a hassle
A third-party connection app like Tunngle, Hamachi, GameRanger is needed to play the non-steam version of the game and therefore multiplayer games are mostly unresponsive and error-prone