The Wolf will appear in parishes at random intervals same as all other AIs, being more likely to appear in parishes with many high ranking players. His presence is visually represented on the game map by a small red tower icon, which will display a grey & black coat of arms with a wolf’s head when placing your cursor over it.

The Wolf’s attacks will come in either of two forms, Pillage or Ransack. His Pillage attacks are easily enough defended against providing your castle is built all the way out to the white line, manned with at least 200 troops, and your vaults research is maxed. By contrast, The Wolf’s ransack attack if nigh impossible to successfully defend against without help of oil pots around the perimeter of your castle.

Whether attacking or defending, The Wolf’s troop’s hit points are upgraded to 150%, making them the strongest troops used by any NPC in the game.

The following Walkthrough is comprehensive, it features all 11 of the Wolf Castle designs in addition there are links below each to their corresponding YouTube Video so you can watch along if you are stumped. I apologize for the fact that none of the videos show me setting up the attacks but at the time of recording the idea to include setup footage had simply slipped my mind.

If you are having difficulty setting up your attacks take a peek at the in depth Wolf Castle Walkthroughs I've done over at Stronghold Kingdoms Strategy[stronghold-kingdoms-strategy.com].

An excellent castle to farm for honor; Wolf Castle 1 doesn’t put up much of a fight but at the same time can prove a worthy test for entry level players.


In this setup our attacking archers are set to surround The Wolf’s castle on all four sides, quite effectively encircling his castle and ensuring no survivors. Our catapults are positioned in the lower right corner and are, for the most part, outside the defending archers range. Several of the attacking pikemen are set up in-between the attacking archer columns with the express purpose of tripping The Wolf’s oil pots before our main pikeman force arrives from the lower-right corner.

http://youtu.be/RBM7By5b6HU

Wolf Castle #2 is slightly stronger than wolf Castle #1 but is still a great castle to destroy for honor.


The first and only wave is predominantly comprised of Archers. Spread them two or three thick just outside the white line and make sure to box in the right side corner of the castle where your Catapults are to prevent any of the Sally Forth Knights from killing your Catapults. Target your Catapults at The Wolf’s Keep and position the Pikemen behind the Catapults, in the corner; this gives the Catapults some time to do damage to the castle without inflicting splash damage on your Pikemen.

https://youtu.be/ElXhKvn2Qew

Wolf Castle 3 commonly comes in two different strengths but for the purpose of this tutorial we will only focus on the first and easiest, the design I like to call Wolf Castle #3. This is arguably the most common Wolf castle next to Wolf Castle 11, it can vary greatly and if the average playerbase is low in any given parish this is the Wolf castle that usually appears.


In this setup I placed the Catapults in the bottom-right corner to target them at the Keep. The vast majority will be outside the range of The Wolf’s garrisoned Archers and I also placed an extra 75 of my Archers around the Catapults to kill off The Wolf’s Sally Forth Knights and Swordsmen which are set to the aggressive stance.

Set up three or four preliminary Pikemen behind the white line to trip the oil pots before your main force arrives, the majority of your Archers should be grouped around the manned enemy towers, extras complete the 360 encirclement. By the time my Archers remove all opposing forces my Catapults will have had plenty of time to clear an opening to The Wolf’s Keep.

https://youtu.be/YVINjDAJN7E

Wolf Castle 4 is essentially Wolf Castle #3 with 9 additional Perimeter towers added at the white line, although these two designs share many similarities the attack setup is somewhat different. You should also expect greater unit losses (especially catapults) when removing it due to the additional garrisoned Archers around the perimeter.


In this setup I placed the Catapults in the bottom-right corner to target them near the Keep, I also placed my extra attacking Archers around the Catapults to kill off The Wolf’s Sally Forth Knights and clear out the enemy Archers in the Perimeter towers quickly.

Set up three or four preliminary Pikemen just behind the white line to trip the Oil Pots before your main force arrives; my Archers are concentrated around the Perimeter towers and my main melee force is placed in the southeast corner, this keeps them back until my Catapults and preliminary Pikemen have a chance to clear a path to the keep.

https://youtu.be/Tnu8g9LL0K8

The challenges start to ramp up in terms of Wolf Castle strength with the introduction of Wolf Castle #5. Don’t let the small size of this castle fool you; it’s perfectly capable of wiping out an army of 500 troops if you set the attack up poorly.


Here you have the basic “attack for honor” setup; Archers surrounding the castle to kill off the enemy Archers stationed in the towers. The Catapults have been targeted just beyond the Gatehouse nearest The Wolf’s Keep and are placed to gain frontal access to said Keep. Just behind the Catapults; Archers and a few Pikemen have been placed around the “invisible” Armed Peasant Tunnel to prevent those pesky Peasants from destroying our valuable Catapults.

https://youtu.be/hMx8zr9H1Fc

The Wolf Castle #6 design is the first Wolf Castle walkthrough which I make the transition from attacks focused on Honor generation to attacks more focused on quick removal of the castle at the lowest cost possible. This design looks pretty harmless on the surface but all the bare spots in the castle are filled with Killing Pits.


Here we have the classic assault setup with Pikemen out in front with the Catapults behind and Archers along the rear and sides to protect the Catapults from Tunnel Armed Peasants and Sally-forth Knights. A frontal attack on this keep is best because there is much less moat to remove which means fewer causalities to our attack force and a much faster route to the Keep. As I noted previously, this attack on The Wolf is the first so far in this walkthrough series which does not concentrate on attacking for the sake of Honor generation, opting instead for a quick removal of this Wolf castle in a single attack

In setting up the Catapults I tried something new and targeted the Wolf’s Turrets, this idea ultimately failed as you can see in the result and despite the fact that I had around twelve Catapults firing on the Turrets, the Turrets remained intact. In future attacks I recommend targeting those fringe Catapults at the center of the castle as per usual or you could even consider removing twelve of the total Catapults altogether. Regardless, don’t get greedy and try to destroy both Great Towers else you might end up not removing either which makes the attack much more costly.

https://youtu.be/v5NqTmYHRf8

Wolf castle #7, how I loathe ye. I spent more time than I like to admit trying the best combination to remove this castle at the lowest cost. The walkthrough presented below is about as cheap as it gets without the use of Swordsmen.

The real bottleneck to this attack is the very castle design, the path to the keep is very narrow and your melee units always get stuck digging up the Moat on both sides of the path instead of fighting. As a result many pikemen are killed off by Sally Forth Knights and Archers, because once a unit commits itself to an action (such as digging up the Moat) they will not relent until either they are successful or dead – go figure.

Anyways I’ve spent enough time on this design and am proud of the following attack, there is arguably a better one there which yields more Honor but the number of Catapults needed is doubled.


Classic setup; the Catapults are outside the range of The Wolf’s garrisoned Archers although his Ballistas can still kill my Catapults. Only a couple Catapults should be lost to the Armed Tunnel Peasants and Sally forth increases the time taken my Pikemen to reach the Keep. My Catapults are set to target the two Great Towers directly in front of the keep and it’s very important to remove both these towers. Do not neglect to target your Catapults!

https://youtu.be/jLeVLaF1elE

Wolf Castle #8 can easily take two or more attacks to remove if you don’t set your initial attack up properly. My objective here was to remove this castle as cheaply and quickly as possible; farming this castle for honor is costly compared to the smaller Wolf castles and beyond the scope of the following walkthrough. I used the minimum of eighty Catapults and substituted Pikemen for Swordsmen, both of which keep the cost of this attack down.


When setting up your attack the protection of the Catapults is of utmost priority as they need to survive long enough to remove the center Great Tower in front of The Wolf’s Keep. If they fail to destroy the Great Tower to the front of the keep you will lose this attack. Period, end of story. The biggest threat to your Catapults will probably be the Armed Tunnel Peasants, don’t make the common mistake of placing Archers around the Tunnel exit; instead ensure you have a good number of Archers on the Tunnel side of the attack formation to fend off the Armed Tunnel Peasants once emerged and within range.

In this attack I put the majority of my Pikemen to the rear behind the Catapults in order to protect them from the fire damage caused by the enemy Oil Pots which the fewer Pikemen on the front line will trigger. I have set several of the Catapults to fire upon the nearest enemy Ballista towers instead of the Keep; this will remove the airborne threat The Wolf’s Ballistas pose to the Catapults. The remainder of the Catapults are all targeted at the enemy Keep. Remember to double check the very last row of catapults, they must be aimed at the center Tower in front of the Keep as the Catapults in the very rearmost row last the longest and therefore do the most damage.

https://youtu.be/gxHwwjWzdAw

In some ways Wolf Castle #9 is a visual treat, at first glance it certainly looks like you can take it out with one full, well placed, army and this is true to some extent but you would need to use Captain Tactics which in turn can vastly increase the cost to remove.


First Wave: After several attempts I’ve settled on a fairly inexpensive two-wave approach, the first primarily composed of Archers and the second, a shock assault with eighty Catapults. I have yet to see an attack against the AI which benefited from more than 80 catapults. Mostly because AI castles aren’t very solid out at the white line and the Catapults in the rear will cause more damage to your troops via friendly fire than to the enemy.

So the attack setup for the first wave focuses on tripping Oil pots and Killing pits while my Archers eliminate The Wolf’s garrisoned Archers on the foremost half of his castle.


Second Wave: Coming now to the second wave I went with a pretty standard setup, the singular exception to this was exclusive targeting of the foremost enemy Ballistas, thereby preventing unnecessary causalities to my Catapult force which is truly the most costly investment in my force, recruitment-wise.

http://youtu.be/1qAuGHJf3HU

Wolf Castle 10 is arguably the rarest of Wolf Castles, it is a stripped down variant of World Castle 11 which is the most expensive Wolf castle to remove. Expect to smash a good two waves against his walls to remove this castle, I’ve done it in as little as one wave but it was more expensive when calculating the cost of the 5 Captains I needed to utilize.


Wave One: Wave one focuses on the removal of Archers on the exterior towers in preparation for the second wave, I throw in a handful of Catapults to speed up the second wave and some Pikemen to trip the Oil Pots and Killing Pits so my Archers here last longer. As you might notice I decided against using a full 500 army in this first wave, the total troop count is 439.

This is because of the law of diminishing returns, if I had added more Archers to the attack they would not have proven as effective as the initial 400 I used. It’s possible the attack could be tweaked more to maximize effectiveness but this castle itself is rare and therefor doesn’t easily lend it’s self to running such tests.


Wave Two: Wave Two concentrates on bombarding The Wolf’s Keep with Catapult fire, in the process both remaining Great Towers will be removed and many of The Wolf’s Pikemen guarding the Keep killed without much effort on the part of my Pikemen (Catapults are deadly). The unit numbers are pretty standard for my AI castle assaults which makes for easier army building because I have to check numbers less.

http://youtu.be/KgZwt3KHLXE

In the wonderfully wooly world of Wolf Castles, Wolf Castle 11 is king. Not only is it the hardest to remove but also the most common design seen on older worlds. That said, it's basically a beefed up version of Wolf Castle 10.


It took a while but with the help of a fantasitic player named Kopcheniy from UK World 1 I finally managed to create a formation which is capable of removing this castle with just one village attack. The first two rows of catapults are aimed at the middle tower in the front, the third row of catapults are aimed at the tower behind the middle front tower and the rest of the catapults are aimed directly at the keep. It's important that your catapults remove the enemy pikemen in the keep otherwise this attack will fail.

https://youtu.be/hEk3qliX85g

I did all the videos and the attacks as well unless mentioned otherwise, so I'll just thank the Stronghold Kingdoms community in general for being supportive and perpetuating a friendly gaming atmosphere, I couldn't have done it without all of you.

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