In Stronghold(original) you can pump up your economy by adding a few more houses and you get an instant workforce you only need to add a few farms to feed everyone. Its ok, but you need to change your tactics. I agree that Stronghold 2 overemphasises micro-management. I have played every Stronghold title except Crusader Extreme. Just adds lots of complexity while not really boosting the gameplay.
Unless you're really into managing every little detail, with low tolerance for fuckups before your kingdom starts reeling rather hard on it's side, I wouldn't get SH2. Far too often you're all taken up on the opposite end of the map, trying to make sure your soldiers don't get slaughtered, only to zoom back to your base to find you've been out of food for too long and half the peasants have left because of some cockup in the micromachinery that is the economical and building system of SH2. On top of this you're usually waging a war on some enemy.
The main problem with SH2 is they added more micromanagement to basically everything, and after a while (when you get into the larger settlements with many buildings interacting) it gets confusing and hard to manage. Haven't tried SH:Legends but I can sum up SH2. Petrell: What about the later games in the series (SH2 and SH:Legends)? How do they compare and do they add to castle building/economic/medieval village management part of the game or do they concentrate on story/rts part instead?
