The Emir chuckled. “So? My Hashishin will stab him in the back before he raises his sword.”
“So,” the Emir murmured, “the battle is not won by courage. Or faith.”
“This, my lord, is the real stronghold. Not stone and mortar. But numbers. Speed values. Attack cooldowns. Your enemy knows how to shout ‘For the King!’ I know that a Pitch Ditch does 15 damage per second and that fire arrows have a 70% chance to ignite it.”
He unrolled a second, blood-stained sheet. “Maceman. Cost: 20 gold. Attack: 25 (crushing type, ignores 2 points of armour). Speed: 14. He’s weak against arrows. But against a slow, armoured Templar? He lands three hits for every one of the knight’s. It’s not power that wins. It’s frames .” stronghold crusader unit stats
The Emir, a fat man more interested in his hashish pipe than warfare, sighed. “Speak, little mouse.”
“Prepare my quill, little mouse. We have a crusader lord to teach… that his ‘brave knights’ are just slow, overpriced units with a fatal weakness to a 2-gold torch.”
The flickering torchlight of the Arabian library cast long shadows on Al-Rashid’s face. He wasn’t a lord, a general, or even a soldier. He was a scribe —and his latest obsession was driving his Emir to distraction. The Emir chuckled
“My lord,” Al-Rashid whispered, unrolling a massive, meticulously drawn parchment. “I have finished the calculus of blood.”
He rolled up the parchments and handed them to the Emir.
And that night, the siege began not with a horn, but with a multiplication table. Or faith
“Statistically, my lord… yes. Provided you get them into melee range without them being shot by Crossbowmen first.” He pointed to a third drawing. “And there is your true terror. Crossbowman. Range: 10. Reload time: 70 frames. But look at the damage value: 60. Enough to one-shot a Maceman or an Assassin. They are the rock to your scissors.”
He moved his finger to a sketch of a chainmail-clad knight. “The Templar. Cost: 40 gold. Armour: a staggering 5. He can take an arrow to the chest and barely grunt. But look here—” he tapped a footnote, “—his attack speed is glacial. One swing per 48 frames of combat.”
The Emir stared at the scribe. Then he smiled, a cold, hungry smile.
“Exactly!” Al-Rashid’s eyes gleamed. “But the counter is not what you think. You would send archers. But archers have a pierce value of only 20. A Templar’s armour negates it entirely. No. The true killer of a Templar is the Maceman .”
Al-Rashid pointed to a column of tiny numbers beside a drawing of a hooded figure. “The Assassin. Speed: 18. Attack power: 40. Hit points: 50. The Lord’s Swordman, by comparison, has a speed of only 12, attack power of 35, but a robust 120 hit points.”
