Killing Giants
by Lord Tanthos
Ever had trouble killing frost giants while playing Stronghold: Legends? Well, set your mind at ease, for you shall now have the knowledge of all the weaponry that Firefly has graciously provided for you to destroy these monstrous foes.
We shall cover all the giant-killing weaponry provided for each faction in general, and then the giant-killing arsenal of each faction separately.
How to kill giants playing as any faction.
Giants are fairly easy to bring down with armies of knights and crossbowmen as we all know, but if there are too many giants, even that generic strategy can prove difficult. So, to even the scores while fighting an Ice player that will use giants:
Try to get a sea-level estate before the game starts so that you may build moat. A good, broad moat can stop an army of giants in their big tracks. They can’t fill it in, and therefore the other player will need to build new units to do so, and if he has too many giants, he may actually be forced to disband giants to produce enough troops to remove your moat!
Also, pitch ditches eat giants for lunch. Giants can only take 15-20 straight seconds of fire (not counting archers and crossbows as well!) before burning up and dying. So, filling the whole length of your castle with a moat of pitch would be just the thing.
Pitch ditches can serve as a great way to destroy giants for more than just the fire. First, they can simply die in the flames trying to destroy your walls. Second, they might get out of the fire and wait to go back, all the while getting shot by your rangers. And third, they might retreat altogether, giving you time to build another moat of pitch and new walls.
How to kill giants playing as Arthur.
People might underestimate the full power of the enchanted orb siege unit, but I promise you, they’re quite devastating. I found that it takes only TWO hits by an orb to kill a giant! And, if the giants come in the general human “clump line” it makes it even simpler to crush them all! Try to get the giants on a nice choke point and then roll ’em over.
Merlin’s special ability knocks off about 25% of the Frost Giant’s hitpoints. Using that on a big group of giants can be a gamesaver. Plus, his lightning knocks off another 5% per shot, in a splash area!
How to kill giants playing as Ice.
The most obvious solution here is: fight giants with giants! Make your own army of giants and watch them beat each other’s brains in!
Ballistae! People may not think this, but ballistae are deadly against giants. Each bolt chops a good 5% of their health off, and that’s a line attack, so it keeps hitting as it goes. With twenty or thirty ballistae, you can cut down a whole line of giants with ease!
Killing Pits are giant killers as well. It takes only one pit to strike a giant’s health down by a full 95%, making them easy prey for further pits or even simple archers.
Ice Mirrors freeze giants in place, which is utterly devastating, especially if you combine that with pitch ditches!
The Ice Queen is brutal against these poor tall folk. Her special ability kills almost 40% of their hitpoints, in addition to a 20 second freeze time. Again, combined with fire, this one is a killer!
The Ice dragon eats giants for breakfast. You can freeze whole armies of tall folk with this nasty beastie. And again, frozen giants make easy targets!
How to beat giants playing as Evil.
Fire drakes! Fire drakes all along your walls can cause some nice damage at a cheap cost, to more than just giants as well.
Stake Hurlers can impale giants just as well as fire ballistae, and it’s a nice spread attack as well, so it’s useful as a defense against anything.
Burning Carts. Have a few giants coming for you? (Few as in a few hundred). Send fire all over their path with a few of these babies. They’ll lose a massive amount of their hitpoints running through a gauntlet of fire.
Demons. ‘Those little imps?’ you’re surely thinking right now, ‘What good are they?’ I’ll tell you what good they are. They cost 5 gold and 4 honor, right? Cheap as a rock. With that price, you can make HUNDREDS of them easily! Send those out against giants, and their fire auras will quickly eat the giants while they’re stopped trying to squish the little insects. To maximize the damage, have the imps play chase for a long time, having the giants foolishly running through their fiery path before engaging the giants in melee. Once in melee, be sure to keep hitting the “stop” button when the fire starts to die out. This will make them attack anew, which will cause the fire to start up again.
Sorceror. Meteor Shower injures giants seriously just by itself, and then by adding some big fireballs to the mix, the giants are going to be crying for their mothers!
The top four solutions?
