Lots of people don't seem to like having Gong, Rats and Crime. I personally love it. Stronghold 2 was my first game that I ever played and first time I was exposed to the Stronghold series. I played the game every day for about a year and a half and perfected the usage of Gong Rats and Crime. It is a bit of a chore but all it takes it building 3 - 4 of each and some strategic crime placement and it is all done. I like the feature.

Do you like it? If not explain?

Eh, it was iffy. Once and awhile, it was okay - but being forced to make a new castle almost every map, it got tiring after awhile. I also found, if you didn't have a 'perfect' setup, it could really cause issues further on in the game as you're trying to multi-task and you start getting huge negatives from lack of gong/crime/rat control.

Thats why I personally disable all of those in all the maps I make personally. But, I don't think it should be removed, but perhaps allow for it to me managed by the game, instead of manually by yourself.

I started out with the original Stronghold, so when I got to 2, I hated it.

Lets start with gong:

It just randomly pops up out of no where, and drains your population until you make a Gong Pit and wait for the lazy-**** collector to get up and scoop it. To further complicate things, by the time your farmer has scooped up the load, another one pops up, forcing you to make another Pit.

Rats are even worse. Not being used to rats, I never see them until there are at least 3, which is damn annoying.

Crime just makes everything worse. Right away your buildings will turn to crime, so you gotta get prepared to fix it. First, you spend three quarters of your starting resources on the 18 different buildings you need (making sure to place chopping blocks, as anything else won't finish until the match is already over). Second, you need to wait for the criminals to get caught and killed/punished. This can take anywhere from a couple minutes to eternity, depending on what kind of punishment you placed. Third, more criminals will appear and you start all over again.

It really doesn't help that because of crime you have to place about 10 Gong Pits and Falconers' Posts (not to mention the hovels to support them, and the apple farms to support the hovels), lest you face fecal mousy wrath because all your Gong Farmers and Falconers seem to have a strange love to turn to crime.

Other than these however, the game is good. With my ***y new computer, lag isn't a problem, its too bad it wasn't the biggest one.

Well there are easy tricks for that

I think it was a good idea with bad execution. Crime was to predictable and at times crippling. Thought after some patching it was decent.

But still not important enough, gong and rats were easy to deal with. But not really relevant at times. And it didnt always work well, like you would have gong next to the pit and the worker wouldnt get it, which puzzled me...

And crime as I said, and think. Should have been higher among your people when unemployment was high. Perhaps about 50% or a little more. Where as with relatively low unemployment it should have been maybe 25% of your people and the other 75% being rogues that are just passing through. So it wouldnt kill your economy if any little thing went wrong. Plus some crime besides robbing the granary would have been nice. Maybe robbing the peasents, or stealing from shops, or the mines, or the treasury you know? And always running back to the hovel was predictable you could pretty much put the guards at the hovel and catch them in the act. So there needs to be some adjustment but overall it could be good.

1gong and one ratpost by each stockpile will do the trick. And Place your outlook post overviewing your houses and no crime at all I spend 5 units looking over crime,gong and rats, even if populations is 300.

I'll be brief -

To thwart gong place one pit per house and place them evenly apart throughout your kingdom as it expands.

To thwart rats, I place four at central locations in the four corners of my empire.

To thwart criminals, either put two guards outside your homes or two guards outside your granary. Then, build the Jail, torturer, and then a chopping block.

Problem solved!

Oh and with the gong farmer not getting one right next to him, it is because another gong farmer probably went to get it. Random, and weird, but it happens.

the fastest way to know that gong(dung),criminals and rats are out go to the book and check if theres any - of happiness

one word!

I HATE IT!

Stronghold went to a even more realist world because gong and rats were present every day at the middle ages.
I love it in sh2.
If sh3 comes out it will be even more compex and realist thats for sure!