Engineer's Guild

Engineer's Guild
General Information
Available in	Stronghold Stronghold Crusader Stronghold 2
Usage	Recruiting engineers
Cost	10 wood 100 gold

The Engineer's Guild is the recruitment building for engineers and laddermen.

Engineers are important units in both attacking and defending. They have various uses in battles, such as manning siege equipment and taking defensive positions with boiling oil.  Their most common job is to construct and operate siege devices.

Stronghold and Crusader

Engineers can construct these machines on the field in a tent. When a tent is placed, gold is deducted and the required number of engineers will take their place and make the device (the less engineers needed, the earlier it is done). Engineers may construct the following:

• Smashing weapons: catapults, trebuchets, rams (and fire ballistae).
• Tactical devices: siege towers and mantlets.

These units can also man defensive devices: ballistae and mangonels. These equipment can only be placed in square towers or round towers, and they are preplaced for gold, which may be manned instantly.

They can also utilize boiling oil to pour at the advancing forces. They need a smelter first, which stores oil. Every engineer assigned to the smelter will take his portion of oil and then they can be controlled as usual. After using up his oil, the engineer will run quickly back to take his next pot. Engineers can't fight hand to hand.

Laddermen are a cheap way to scale enemy walls. They carry their ladder everywhere, so they cannot fight. However, they are fast but weak, so they are effective in large numbers. Only archers, macemen and spearmen may climb ladders. Spearmen are the only units, which can pick ladders off the walls, leaving the ladderman without a ladder and therefore he is disbanded. When this occurs, any unit climbing the ladder will fall to death.

Stronghold 2

The Guild now has the option to build catapults and fire ballistae. Engineers are completely reworked and are a bit more useful than its predecessors: they are now instantly assigned to their devices, both in the Siege Camp and the Guild. They are recruited without cost this way.

They are automatically recruited when using an oil smelter, up to four at a time (one supplying the smelter with pitch and three other to defend). The game deducts gold with each engineer assigned to the smelter. Engineers may also be recruited on their own, but they cannot man equipment this way. Instead, they can repair damaged walls and stone structures. They will immediately go to the stockpile and take a stone block when there are any harm to these structures.

Laddermen can be hired from both the siege camp and the engineer's guild. They can retrieve another ladder from these buildings when placed their former one.

Both troops have now a hand to hand attack. Laddermen can also fight while having their ladder, although they do very little damage this way and therefore almost always useless.

Trivia

• In Stronghold and Crusader when Engineers are not active, they will pull out logs and sit on them, they read what is presumed to be blue prints.