In the end, the extreme lifestyle was unsustainable. When the computer wasn't crashing, I found my thousands of troops unmanageable. The user interface isn't sophisticated enough to give complex directions to your troops. If you've got five different types of soldiers, you can select one at a time, but not two or three. And if there's a way to get your guys to move in formation, with infantry in the front and archers in the back, then I haven't seen it. I expect that if I had the patience to split my attention and carefully direct my troops one at a time, I would do much better. But let's be realistic, that's not going to happen.
That's why, towards the end, I went back to my faux free-build. I had a couple of ideas for experiments that would reveal some more of the game's mechanics to me. It turns out that you can sustain a population of 1000+ with nothing but apples, but I suspect that there's a limit to how many copies of a single building type you can have, because when I tried the same thing with wheat, my bakeries stopped attracting workers after around 200 population.
Overall, I'd say that Stronghold Crusader Extreme is a strong entry in the series. At first I thought it was completely unnecessary. It's just like Stronghold Crusader, but with fewer game modes. However, the removal of the unit cap, while seeming like a small change, really does profoundly change the way the game plays. I've never had to command quite so many troops before. That's likely why I was so bad at it.
I probably won't be playing Stronghold Crusader Extreme again. I liked seeing my little 2D troops and citizens scurrying to and fro, but I'd rather have more peaceful options for telling them what to do. It's probably no coincidence that I was happiest when I was cheating.
Still, I've only got one more Stronghold game to go and I'm pretty excited about it.
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