The original Stronghold holds a special place in my heart. It was a medieval barony built and surrounded by a maze of fortified walls, holding off waves of oncoming enemies while satisfying the serfs who lived within it and providing them with ample food and taxes. It also had a nice soundtrack, a small troop soundtrack, an impressive villain, and other unique elements.

Despite the lukewarm reception from players and critics alike, the series has lasted for decades because of the abiding desire to one day return to the simple principle of building a castle and defending it against a relentless enemy.

Stronghold: Warlords is not such a game. In fact, it is the most expansive entry in the series, largely abandoning the principle of building a feudal gauntlet against waves of enemies in favor of a more traditional RTS setup featuring larger maps and symmetrically placed enemy bases. In other words, it is more Age of Empires than Stronghold, but without the technological advances, scouting, factional differences, and struggles over resources. Also, the setting is the Far East, where the players will choose from four real historical leaders from China, Japan, Vietnam, and Mongolia.

The Warlords system, which is also in the title, is the twist here. Between your base and the enemy base are several small territories on the map held by neutral warlords. If you defeat these warlords, they become your allies and will send you resources, evacuate your troops to mini-forts, or attack your enemies.

This is a decent idea in principle, but it fails in several ways. First, the main keep, carefully reinforced with walls, ballistas, towers, hidden gunpowder traps, and fire arrow launchers, is not very effective. Most of the time in the skirmish will be spent bickering over the warlord's fort, which, aside from preset upgrades purchased with diplomacy points, has no part in its construction or design. The climactic siege eventually happens, but it is not the center of the game as it once was.

Diplomacy points can be used to bring generals to your side instead of fighting. As we went deeper into the game and each remaining team accumulated these points, we found ourselves caught in a tug-of-war between the warlord's team and the enemy's team on the diplomacy screen, an endless back-and-forth between the warlord's team and the enemy's team. Diplomacy is simple and laborious, and the last thing you want to do when you are defending on one front and besieging on another is to click on a big button on a menu to increase your numbers.

The combat itself is for the most part good. There is a wide variety of siege equipment, from pitchforks that can shoot not only rocks but also fire and sick animals into enemy fortifications to laddermen and mantlettes that protect incoming troops from the inevitable barrage of arrows. I still enjoy watching cities burn and crumble before sending in troops, and the scene where they send kamikaze suicide attackers with cattle loaded with gunpowder to run them into the well-defended siege installations was a highlight.

In addition to the usual melee, cavalry, and riflemen, there are classic Oriental soldiers such as samurai, warrior monks, horse archers, and ninja. Fire lancers, on the other hand, are capable of burning down entire regiments with their medieval flamethrowers. These arsonists scream insanity when selected, leading the least mentally stable soldiers to question whether they should wield the only weapon capable of damaging their own troops. It's a solid lineup, with more tactical variety than in past series, yet still retaining the whimsy that the series' heyday had.

Back on the home front, the people must be satisfied with food, clothing, tea, and temples, and taxes must be increased. This is because most of the resources must be procured through the generals under your command and through the marketplace, where you can buy and sell all kinds of goods in the game. This means that there is no fighting over resources on the map, which makes the game a little less strategic.

It was awkward at first, but we set up the game to automatically sell surplus resources when they reach a certain amount, and to automatically purchase any missing resources, so that they always stay at the minimum threshold.

You could choose to be a popular or feared ruler through the building of a theater on the one hand and a public torture device on the other. Each approach has its own bonuses and, when worked efficiently, can be quite a satisfying city-building element that is fun to watch. Cattle haul iron from the mines to the stockpile, farmers plow the fields, dwarfs scurry between huts and towers, suspended lanterns dimly illuminate, and a click (or in my case, usually a whine about taxes) provides an audio reminder of the situation. Managing and designing one's own territory is a strong point of the series, and "Warlords" continues that tradition.

I've spent a lot of time talking about the campaign, which will no doubt be of interest to those who remember the medieval vaudevillains (medievaudevillains) and bizarre cutscenes from the original game. However, there is not much to say about the campaign, which falls into the RTS trap of being a tutorial for the main event, Skirmish mode, and multiplayer.

There are five reasonably long campaigns set throughout East Asia, each casting you as a real historical ruler of your respective region. Each has a slightly different angle, from the one in which you roam the Mongolian plains as Genghis Khan to the one in which Thuc Phan seeks to become king of the kingdom of Au Lac in the jungles of modern-day Vietnam.

There is plenty of time, but there are no cutscenes, no big-name antagonists, and no mid-mission twists. The faction leaders and their rivals are more avatars than characters, with only rare glimpses in the corners of the screen to smirk or scowl.

Campaign missions often limit the units and buildings you can use, forcing you to make the most of limited resources. These limitations give the impression that each faction fights somewhat differently, but once you start playing the game's main skirmish mode, you will find that the factions are almost identical. Even if somehow the architecture of Asian countries thousands of miles (or thousands of years, depending on the ruler) apart were the same, it would not be satisfying in this genre, which becomes most interesting when there is some asymmetry or distinction among the combatants.

Abandoning the safety of the city walls, Stronghold ventured into territory where Age of Empires still reigns. Especially at the time of this writing, autosaves do not work, and performance seems erratic and prone to crashes. I don't think this game is ready to be what it aspires to be.

Stronghold: The siege still shines, with enemy mountains collapsing in a swarm of arrows, ladders and ninjas clinging to the walls, and soldiers leaping from towers toppled by catapult guns. The Schememish mode allows enough customization to create these grueling attrition battles, but the game feels thin for much of the time. I'm still waiting for the day when this series rolls things back and builds on its sturdy siege foundation instead of diluting them with generic RTS trappings and other systems that don't quite ring a bell.