Relive the Medieval Age – the days of stone castles and warfare using bows and arrows and spears.

Establish your own kingdom and make it the most powerful in the realm.

Attack other villages, or establish trade with them.

Have you always wanted to be your own king or duke? Do you want to build your fiefdom from a village to a powerful city? These are just some of the things that you can achieve when you play Stronghold Kingdoms, a real-time strategy MMO that takes place in one of the most important points of modern history: the Middle Ages.

The game’s realms are actually based on modern geographical data. When you’re asked to select a city or village to begin your adventures, you can see a world map with points that you can click in order to select and designate as your village. Each point has three colors, denoting the density of the population within each point.

It’s highly recommended to pick a point with a very dense population, as it provides many opportunities for you to interact with other players.

There are two ways in which you can interact with other players. One is to send troops out to attack their villages. At the beginning, you’re under a dome of peace so that no other players can attack you. The dome is effective for a couple of days or until you break it yourself by scouting out or attacking outright other villages.

On the other hand, you can also trade resources with other villages. Simply go to the Map, and click on the Trade button at the upper right portion of the screen.

There are two parts of your keep that you need to maintain. First one is the village, which is basically your “cash cow” in this case. The village produces all the resources that you need, namely Apples, Wood, Stone and Gold. You will need to build Stone Quarries, Woodcutter Huts and Granaries in order to produce the necessary resources.

Second, you have to build a castle and fortify its defenses so that it can withstand attacks by other players. Battles are in real time: the moment you send troops to a target city, it will take several minutes depending on the distance between that abode and yours. You can then go back to managing your village – the game will simply inform you via a message the results of your expedition.
It’s easy for you to play the game, even if it’s your first time to play a real-time strategy MMO.

Stronghold Kingdoms starts you off with a short tutorial that shows you what tasks you can do, and how you can accomplish such. There are also quests that you should definitely take part in, as they give you additional rewards, which include 48-hour VIP access.

As for visuals, the game features an isometric or “bird’s eye” view of the terrain. Mostly, you’ll be looking down at your subjects or peasants working. There’s no need to control or manage each and every one of them, as they’ll all stick to the tasks that they are assigned to.

You can play Stronghold Kingdoms for free – you simply just have to download the client and install it on your computer. VIP has its perks, but a great majority of the game’s content is accessible to free users.