Stronghold
The highlights
Castle construction
Deep economy
Engaging (if over the top) voice and video acting
Potential improvements
Greater granularity on construction, allowing a wider variety of castle designs (it would be awesome to be able to be able to siege the Disney Castle)
More unit types
Flexibility on equipping equipment to units (simplified version of inventory screen of RPGs as an inventory panel to the side)
More trap types
Machicolation
Greater control in design of siege equipment (e.g. larger/smaller siege towers)
Ability to climb cliffs using ladders
Ability of attacking units to carry and use ladders
Arrow slits
Ability to direct which trees woodcutters should target (specifying order)
Killed units drop their items
Destroyed siege equipment leaves wood
Destroyed buildings leave rubble (stone) and wood
Ships
Herders (sheep, goat)
Grappling hooks
Killing engineers manning siege equipment, capture siege equipment
Ability to take apart trebuchets and move. Need horse and cart?
Ability to move catapults out of towers
Side differentiation
Autobuild units (if available weapons, available peasants, available gold) - player can set the threshold
Ability to set unit building congregation point
Ability to sleep just one building
More stats available - number of jobs figure, number of unemployed figure, number of unemployed when pop at max
Falconers
Snakes/scorpions in basket as ammunition for siege engines
Tiger pit
Swimming
Docks
Fishermen
Chicken farmer - takes wheat, gives meat
Bridges
Ditches, mounds
Full 3D
Tunnels
Flexibility on where place buildings (e.g. clear rocks to place building)
Place granaries, armouries and stockpiles whereever (not necessarily next to existing) - peasants will deliver to nearest unless full
Farms - there is a general problem of trying to fit as many farms as possible in a particular area - it would better if, rather than building farms, the player designates an area as wheat/dairy/apple, perhaps using a marker like the moat marker
Towers - ability to build them on slopes - you can in real life
Terraforming (raising lowering terrain)
Autotax (why does the player have to keep making adjustments to keep at 100, but not wasting any benefits?)
Dashboard with Granary: Empty/Dwindling/Growing/Full Stockpile: Full Armoury: Full Treasury: Empty/Emptying/Flowing in (the Empty and Full should be in red to attract the players attention)
Event log (like an RPG)
Expansion of the concept
Different eras - Classical (e.g. Greek, Roman), Napoleonic, Modern, etc
The base from the 1968 film The Green Berets as an example of a modern setting
Fantasy setting e.g. Total Annihilation: Kingdoms (magic, monsters, etc!), or Jurassic Wars (dinosaurs!)
Variation of the concept
To increase the realism, which is hampered by the extent of land owned by a castle, the player does not control agriculture. The number of agricultural workers are dictated by the size of the castle (i.e. the number of workers who can be safe in the caste). The number of non-agricultural workers is determined by the number of agricultural workers. The player chooses the allocation of non-agricultural workers, and increases the population by increasing the size of the castle.
Random invasion games
Random invasion games are harder to generate that random games for normal real time strategy games, as the play is asymmetric. Game balance is incredible important - the player doesn't want to work hard to build a castle and economy, to have it absolutely decimated. But they also want a challenge.
The extent of challenges (invasions, pestilence, strange malady, hop weevil, fire, plague, etc) needs to be determined by extent and proximity of resources (valley floor, stone, iron, trees, hill farm area (for dairy farms), etc) to the keep and the defensibility of the terrain (e.g. the width, at its narrowest point, of the passable terrain between the signpost and keep)
OR
Extent of challenges determined by the current status of the game (population, size of military, etc)
OR
A combination of the above two
With the first of the above options, a probability slider could be used for each challenge. For example, the slider would have on a scale of 0 to 100% the chance of a fire breaking out each month.