With Stronghold: Warlords recently announced at E3, now seems as good a moment as any to look back on the game that kicked off Firefly s seemingly endless series of castle em ups back in 2001. In fact, I m genuinely astonished to learn that Warlords will be the ninth> game in the series, as despite loving the first instalment, I ve managed to play precisely none of the rest. Stronghold was a very literal tower defence game, with some light-yet-satisfying citybuilding and management elements. It also had the vague feeling of being a 14th century take on Home Alone, as you would build up your castle, then surround it with concentric layers of horrid traps in order to thwart waves of pikemen, macelads, swordboys and horseblokes.

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They just keep coming don’t they? A lot of games were announced at E3 2019, things that we didn’t know about, as well as stuff that’s previously announced, or expansions to already released games. Now, to the casual outsider, what we’re doing might seem absolutely nuts, but we thought we’d put together an alphabetical list of all the PC games that have been confirmed to appear at this year’s E3 show. With well over a hundred of them now in the books, the next year or so looks packed.

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Yet another series announced to be returning at E3 is Firefly’s Stronghold series. Stronghold: Warlords transplants the RTS game of European (and Arabic) castle building and siege-ing to the east, with Japan, Korea, China and other nations represented. Warlords is also expanding the game outwards, and adding a ‘light’ grand strategy layer, letting players boss around the titular warlords; AI controlled minor factions that can work for or against you. While not quite as sprawling as a Total War game or Sins Of A Solar Empire, it’s an interesting way to expand the design. See how the warlords work in the trailer below.

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