I'll take note of giving him more farms. He should have plenty of peasants at the campfire for some more food production anyway. Yes, I've looked at the .uni files before. All the files listed in the .uni are there so the issue must be rooted somewhere else. I've also looked into the AnimList.csv and AnimList.anl. At least as far as I can tell everything is where it's supposed to be.

Have you tried looking at the .uni files? They contain at least from my investigations lists of all the files needed to load the model correctly. You can open them in Notepad++, or use the Granny Viewer 2 software: https://www.stronghold-nation.com/article/62-adding-units-from-stronghold-legends-into-stronghold-2

Thanks for the acknowledgement, @ Sir Windows ! Hálás vagyok a magyar ellenfélért! Hunyadi feels kinda slow to build up, but he is fun to play with once he gets stabilised. It's hard to find a map where he plays on full swing. His consistent attack rate is something I like, kinda like Lancelot. He may be in need of more farms, as he tends to break even on consumption sometimes ~ selling food for gold could improve his standing. Holy Knights with the update is way more consistent, he actually attacks very fast now. His raids are also somewhat annoying, as you can never suspect him bringing out a mounted knight, or just a small band of archers. As a footnote: I noticed some minor graphics differences as well, even though I don't know how the animations work in either SH2 or SHL. In SH2 Steam Edition the swords texture is consistently missing from the armoury, but not in Legends. Simply replacing the one from SHL did not resolve the problem.

Light cavalry was made possible by @ Asophix hard work as he found the unit codes for the unit in the gamerules.dat. I noticed a minor issue though. The animation of the horses doesn't work, despite all the files being present by default in SHL. I wonder if this could be fixed somehow. Initially I thought maybe the SHL files are somewhat incomplete/broken, so I replaced them with the SH2 equivalents for the light cavalry. Unfortunately, it didn't help. Still, it's only a minor issue, as the rider's animation work fine. 🙂

Interesting thought @ Sir Windows ….. Would there be any other changes which would make your mod better? Ie other aspects of the game you’d like to customise which haven’t yet been found?

Well, yes you can indeed. This update took a bit longer since I got distracted by something else but here it is. Many thanks @ Asophix for making it possible with the newest version of the lord editor. Radu builds breweries now Holy Knights granary will now be built outside the castle in order to reduce walkways for farmers steamroll group slightly adjusted And now to the biggest change for this update: a brand new lord is added to the roster! General Hunyadi Difficulty: medium Preferred troops: light cavalry, pikemen, crossbowmen Protector of the Hungary, regent of the kingdom, General Hunyadi is both a mighty warrior and a cunning general. He is a master defender and deadly skirmisher, seeking to undermine his enemies before they can become a threat. The general doesn't think much of glorious combat in open fields, instead preferring to cripple his enemy with his deadly light cavalry raids. His castle is a formidable fortress that will cause many attackers heartaches. Still, one shouldn't underestimate his siege force once he decides the time has come to strike at his enemy's castle.

Hey, can we expect to see updates soon-ish to the existing or the newfound lords? 🙂 The lords each have been given a lot of custom content, so I take it is no small effort to get everything in place.

Hello All! A new version (v1.4) has been released. This version addresses a bunch of design changes and improvements that has been previously implemented for the SH2 Lord Editor. Simply follow the download link in the main post to download! Changelist: Buildings are grouped into their respective categories (SH2 LE). Tooltips have been added to Lords and a few more screen elements (SH2 LE). A few more lines of descriptive summaries have been added to each category's content (SH2 LE). Added Pictish Boat Warrior, Outlaw and Light Cavalry to the unit rosters. These units bring much flavour to the gameplay and it can also open some creative avenues for custom lords. Unique units - Dragons and Magicians - can no longer be set as Siege Army group types. I felt that dragons and casters have no place in a proper siege army. It is possible that e.g. a Merlin accompanying a siege formation could fit well, so upon request I may re-add the casters to the sieges. Validation rules have been revised. Complete list: Weaponcrafter workshop productions must be selected at least one type of product. Army groups consisting a unique unit must be given a maximum count of 1. The Siege Army groups' total size must not be less than the Siege Army base size. An error is thrown if Hovels cannot support the required number for running the economy. An error is issued if a blacksmith or armourer has no iron mines to supply them (thanks @ Sir Windows !). A warning is issued if Fantasy Units have no Special Recruitment Building, or vice versa. A warning is issued if there is no Pantry for supplying Royal Food, or vice versa. Overall run-time memory footprint decreased via code refactor. Attempts to save fail silently while validation errors are present (SH2 LE). About Window opacity slightly decreased for a more pleasant experience (SH2 LE).

Fantastic. Glad to see this kind of work coming along after the recent editor improvements. :D

Some feedback regarding the V2 lords: Radu Just like his original incarnation, he is considerably steady at building up. So far he is the most consistent lord. He builds no breweries for the Inn. I barely saw any harassment groups from him, apart from a few pikemen and archers. I could like a few more macemen, or more of the archers. 🙂 Holy Knights The defensive positions are manned well, however he is still conflicted between raids and armies. He forms his siege army fairly late. I recommend toning down the steamroll group to streamline his raids. The granary could be leveraged more by adding a gate, or pre-placing it in the AIC. The armory could be turned outwards for smoother weapon influx. Transylvanian Lord He is much better now, but still takes quite some time to build. The siege force is quite formidable (more threatening than vanilla Arthur!). The castle layout seems to be suffering from the fact that the walls greatly prolong travel time for workers. This is barely mitigated by having access to a second gatehouse. His pace could be enhanced by adding a gatehouse to the rest of the cardinal directions each. Men-at-arms could be used more in the raid groups. Overall it's a great improvement and can't wait to see the rest of the upcoming lords in the roster. 😉

First update to the lords is out! Thanks to @ Asophix and @ IgnasheunKnight for the initial feedback. The first update addresses issues with the holy knights and Transylvanian lord. Holy Knights Slight redesign of his castle with the goal of reducing stone cost and improving the economy. Engine tower with dragon harpoon removed in favour of more archers Number of lumber mills and quarries increased Number of weapons workshops reduced Apple farms added to food production These changes should hopefully help the knights get set up a bit faster. The reduced weapons production should get balanced out by more income from wood/stone/food which they can use to buy weapons. The engine tower+harpoon was a heavy investment which usually didn't pay out. Its removal should allow the knight to get things like a church built much earlier. Transylvanian Lord Number of lumber mills and quarries increased Number of bakeries increased Number of weapons workshops reduced Poleturner added Raiding behaviour and troop types changed Macemen removed from siege and raid rosters Men at arms added to raid and siege rosters The Transylvanian lord was by far the slowest and most sluggish new lord. Higher lumber and stone production should allow him to get his economy going and his castle completed quicker. Bread should provide him with a new income source as well. Men at arms were added to his roster in order to give him a cheap unit option for raiding and assembling a siege army quicker.

This looks amazing! I definitely need to give it a try 🙂

Maybe something to consider in future in case any mods become available

Glad to hear it! I've tried getting as much use out the voice lines from the campaign as possible. At least Radu should mostly taunt the player with his iconic lines.

Awesome! I can't wait to try it out!

Good day everyone, some time ago I made a lord pack adding Radu into the game. After some time I decided that the other enemies Vlad faces in his campaign would also make for interesting AI opponents. This new lord pack replaces three existing lords in custom skirmish with three enemy lords from Vlad's evil campaign. The screenshots show each new lord's respective castles and the siege armies of Radu and the holy knights. Transylvanian Lord Difficulty: medium Preferred troops: swordsman, man at arms, Round Table units This lord replaces Arthur. The Transylvanian likes building a large and well fortified castle. He might not be the fastest attacker, but his siege armies are strong, and he uses the round-table to its fullest extent. His castle design is based on one of the three castles used in the third mission of the evil campaign. In the campaign mission the three lords run on the Arthur, Lancelot and Alfred AI respectively. As such, I mostly based the siege roster on the scripted invasion during that mission, augmented by round-table units. Radu Difficulty: medium Preferred troops: crossbowman, pikeman Vlad's brother replaces Lancelot. He is a formidable foe and an aggressive attacker. His castle is small and quickly finished, as such his raids and sieges commence rather soon. He's mostly unchanged from his appearance in the older lord pack. Some changes include the removal of knights and macemen in order to keep him from being too similar to the other lords in this pack. The Holy Knights Difficulty: hard Preferred troops: knight, archer, trebuchet These crusaders hail from across Europe and replace Dietrich. Their castle is simple, and they despise all kinds of magic & witchcraft. One shouldn't take these knights lightly, as their industry and siege craft is unmatched. By far the strongest lord in this pack. The holy knights need some time to get going, since they use some very expensive units, but once they attack be prepared for a fight. I wish they could've also been part of the good faction, but with only two slots available they had to end up in the ice faction. General Hunyadi Difficulty: medium Preferred troops: light cavalry, pikeman, crossbowman Protector of the Hungary, regent of the kingdom, General Hunyadi replaces Siegfried. He is a master defender and deadly skirmisher, seeking to undermine his enemies before they can become a threat. The general doesn't think much of glorious combat in open fields, instead preferring to cripple his enemy with his deadly light cavalry raids. His castle is a formidable fortress that will cause many attackers heartaches. Still, one shouldn't underestimate his siege forces either. Vlad & Mordred These lords are not replaced by anyone. Vlad remaining in this pack needs no explanation. Mordred doesn't really fit in but there wasn't really anyone to replace him with. He's received minor updates though. Vlad - Vlad is now the true master of evil. His Saxon warriors are replaced by werewolves across the board. It always struck me as weird that Vlad doesn't use werewolves, which play a central part in his campaign. Mordred - Since Vlad is now the werewolves master, Mordred will be using Saxons instead. Thematically it fits better with him since he was allied with them in Arthur's campaign. His men-at-arm are upgraded to pikemen for more staying power.

I sometimes wish Alfred and Beowulf were available in custom skirmish just for the 3rd good/evil lord slot to put a custom lord in. 😅

The Stronghold 2 Map Unlocker was hosted by Stronghold Knights, a former fansite. This can also be used on Stronghold Legends with no adjustments needed. You can download this from the Downloads section here: https://www.stronghold-nation.com/forums/forum/40-shk-map-unlocker/ Note that this forum will only be used for any changes to a Stronghold Legends version (if one is ever made). If you are looking to discuss the SH2 (current) map unlocker, or for further news please visot the following forum on the Stronghold 2 Modders Community: https://www.stronghold-nation.com/forums/forum/40-shk-map-unlocker/

There’s always time to make new ones 😉 I was going to myself actually but only ever started work on an Ice Queen.

Bigger maps like in Stronghold 2 and more AI lords. At least Beowulf and Alfred should be available by default. There's no third Ice lord in the game but Hildebrand, the dwarf king or Morgan le Fay could've been made into a skirmish opponent.

A new version (v1.3) has been released. Simply follow the download link in the main post to download! Changelist: New validation error rule: unit groups with a unique unit - e.g. Merlin - as type must have a quantity of 1. Replaced auto-complete boxes with combo boxes for unit types. This change is necessary to avoid inconsistencies in the background. Removed Ranged Pool unit type selector, as the Ranged Defense group dictates its type. Streamlined validation check logic.

Werewolves are really cheap - 50g, 5h? - for what they can do, with their immense movement speed and good melee damage. The werewolf launchers also create a "doom drop" opportunity by literally dropping them inside an enemy castle and let them run rampant. Neither other faction can have such a tactical move. Crossbowmen in a back line shred them though, as well as they can be knocked back by bolts or rocks. In any case, Saxon Warriors wish to do half as much as they can. Frost giants fall short to any durable melee unit IMO, again with crossbowmen behind. Pikemen, swordsmen and knights basically shrug off any damage, even the bash. 😄 Mass stake hurlers or even enchanted orbs can burst them down, provided the giants don't outrun their projectiles. White witches are in a good place right now. They are very fragile and costly to be mildly effective in numbers, as well as ground units get a hefty ranged bonus against them (at least in multiplayer). In most cases literally a few archers or preferably crossbowmen can repel them. I also find Trebuchets to be less of an oppressive tool: they are available at rank 10, they cost 500 gold apiece, and they fire insanely slowly. In multiplayer, you never float more than a few thousand gold per cycle, which kind of restricts their creation. They are only really useful as long-ranged artillery, which is fairly inconsequential against Bats, and more annoying against Ice + Arthur maybe, however letting Arthur dig in needs time. Ice and Evil has really nice long-range options with Fire Ballistae & Stake Hurlers with Bats, direct counters to siege tower troops and defenseless stray units, respectively. In terms of Dragons, Ice has the best in terms of utility via freeze, and the Green Dragon can potentially cause enough damage to keep an army constantly running - if you quickly reposition the Green Dragon after it starts breathing fire, you can restart the attack animation, stutter-stepping and annoying the hell out of the opponent. The Black Dragon's fire animation starts with a 2-3s delay however, which makes it fairly bad. This attack animation reset potentially makes all unique units and Stake Hurlers very troublesome. --- I mained Arthur in most multiplayer games, and I definitely think the faction's weakness lies in its hinging on Round Table knight abilities, since it neither has oppressive tools, nor the mobility of the other factions: Enchanted orbs potentially deal friendly fire, need good prediction for leading their orbs, and their contact damage against siege engines is negligible. Trebuchets I already addressed, in my opinion they are very expensive and require a compromise between unit recruitment and setting them up. Both Ice and Evil can field a myriad of AoE to dismantle any protection and destroy them. Percival has a bat ability on steroids, however you cast it every other year. His ability is comparable to the Sorcerer or the Ice Queen, as the ice storm's freezing component hits instantly, and the meteor storm starts dealing damage the moment you cast it. Merlin is the primary anti-siege tool, balanced out by his long attack animation and ability cast delay. Provided he's under constant mantlet protection, he can do a lot to stall out the enemy. The other knights are way too situational or defensive to use. Gawain's shield can be cast very rarely, Lancelot's buff doesn't do much if you must constantly reposition your army, and the others are for sieges solely. Basically you must play fair and square, the Green Dragon is your only way to meaningfully shake up the battlefield unless doing Merlin micro, and even then, your tactics can only come online once the enemy faces an honor or peasant shortage. @ Lord_Chris consistently could come back from containments building up by just tossing a few bats at the problem. Bats in particular outrun almost all projectiles and only die if they approach a formation from directly ahead, not on the sides, as well as they one-hit kill trebuchets, and two-hit shields. Doing a multi-pronged assault is also hard, when your armies don't have time to form up and in multiplayer, you must consistently spawn shields, units and particularly with Arthur, choose the correct unique units or else your next few minutes will be relegated to barracks troops only, who aren't given much perks. Against Ice, it feels like it's more of a traditional setup, since as Arthur you only really need to pay attention to the fire ballistae and the Ice Queen, with the occasional White Wolf run-bys. Frost Giants and other tanky units need numbers and/or support to attack directly head on. By experience, Ice and Arthur fights basically the same way, with one side getting the upper hand after casting an AoE clear ability, and the other following up with their own shortly after, as well as large stationary groups tend to form picking away at each other. White Witches generally are a one-time tactic that quickly gets blunted after the enemy leaves a few ranged units at home. Since Ice doesn't have many tools to dismantle an army formation other than ballistae, the dragon and the Ice Queen, this matchup feels generally more balanced and it actually gives Arthur a lot more room to maneuvre. I don't have much experience in mirror matchups, most Arthur players are generally a novice in terms of control and they're rare.

I used to love the Ice faction but ended up using evil more throughout the summer this year. The problem as @ Asophix has already described, is that Evil is just too powerful especially on Stake Hurlers and bats and there is just almost nothing you can do against them especially in groups. Bats can destroy almost any defence in seconds while stake hurlers in groups, large groups especially create choke points or make it almost impossible for any army to bypass particularly behind cats. Unless bats are used - but the one game in particular I am thinking of, did not use fantasy units so in this case it was brutal. I’ll see if I can find the recording and upload it to YouTube. I don’t find Werewolves too powerful but maybe that’s because I’ve never been on the receiving end of them in large numbers. I do tend to use them a lot myself though. Frost giants are too strong against normal units but an easy counter discovered by Asophix is to use Knights who take care of them in seconds. In numbers there is basically no stopping them. I had a game recently where as soon as PT ended, he send a bunch of Frost giants over, dismantled my two walls and got into my castle. I still won, but I could easily have lost after that. Another exploit or hack I’ve seen on ice is to recruit mass white witches, send them straight to the enemy lord and basically end the game. Percival’s power is very disproportionate too in my view causing way more damage than need be. It wipes out a whole bunch of troops at a time. The sorcerer is by far the most powerful special unit (Merlin, Ice Queen, Sorcerer) just based in his special attack. It basically destroys large swathes of armies in seconds. Arthur is useless to me or at least I never learned to play this faction well. When I was younger pretty much everything wiped it out, maybe it could be different now but I just don’t like it because the game mechanics feel off to me and there are just no fantasy troops. The other hack as well, to sure if this is related to Arthur or not but sieging towers (Lookout towers specifically here) cause troops to be thrown out of the tower. It is not fair and should not be happening. Stake hurlers can also attack troops in towers which seems like cheating because you just create a bunch of stake hurlers and take them out from afar. Trebuchets are overpowered compared to catapults and quickly cause a lot of damage from estates as an example, if you are playing on a small map with estates over a mountain for instance, it’s easy to fire trees over the mountain and wipe out all the enemy buildings with little comeback. They are a nuisance and should either be disabled or made available to all factions. I also think a new game skirmish option to this effect may be useful. One common request I see (or rather a demand) from multiplayer players is of “no fly “ - meaning no aerial units. I personally don’t have an issue with this and find it tends to be the wrong type of people who request this (ie the people who were never going to win anyway and try to stop other players having fun in the process because they don’t know how to handle aerial units). One such case was the first time I saw the white witch trick used, in retribution to a dragon attack or some other attack I made. My only concern with aerial units is bat attacks in mass because they are so difficult to defend from, although there is a hack where for some reason crossbowmen in siege towers appear more immune and more easily shoot them down. In towers this is not the case. Dragons seem ineffective on estates once you place several wells. My favourite dragon is the Ice Dragon, I personally find the others are not effective at doing anything or very little at least. The evil dragon is also useless often getting killed without inflicting damage or very little. The damage is not effective enough, though granted it is cheaper than the other two, but I’m cheaper because it is worse. My concern with Bedivere is that his ability is too wide ranging, ie it has the possibility to tackle multiple layers of wall at once which I don’t think should be the case. But compared to Percival and other units from other factions this is a minor problem. I’m currently in Edinburgh this week but I will reply properly later.

An effort most welcome! 🙂 Well, there are quite a few points I can share, though I'm not experienced in all competitive match-ups. I won't go in exhaustive detail, rather I'll keep each point short. Before I start, I'd bring to attention that there are a few initiatives brewing. @ Lord_Chris in particular would like to see a random map generator and a faction redesign mod above all, with possibly others in the making. Some modder clubs were established to discuss and further these mods and their progress, so any ideas could go to their respective sections or you could join our collaborations, if you are interested! 😄 On to your points: The market - not the building, the interface - is way too strong. Since pop cap is easy to reach and is relatively constricting on big maps (about 120-128 on 4p maps), you want to squeeze efficiency out of every peasant you employ. This turns our attention to using our resources as efficiently as possible, and we'll find that weapon production is just weak. Products are so affordable and iron is so insanely valuable that you don't need weapon industries at all. I made an article about the math of trading weapons here. There is simply no incentive to build weapon crafters, when you can just make money off of a theoretically infinite number of farms and iron mines. Even without automarket, you can just rake in thousands of gold and spend it by a mere few clicks of a button. There is a flow of: recruitment - sell goods - buy equipment, and when you're done, you can just micro troops and while you wait for another round of peasants, you can play the game. It's actually viable to rush Rank 9 in a 10pt game just to get the automarket. I'd say that Skirmish maps aren't very AI friendly. Many stock Firefly maps are designed with humans in mind, and not the AI. Even with comparably small castle designs, the AI usually can't play the game properly due to buildings not fitting in. On top of that, there are a couple of weird AI quirks that just make no sense: The AI can't build ox tethers properly near iron mines, building either one, or none. The AI doesn't build attacking armies and omits some defenses in team multiplayer games. Only one type of tree will be considered by the AI for wood camp placement. The AI is horrible at controlling units, doing almost no micromanagement and rolling in siege engines well in range of defenders. One noteworthy weakness for Custom Maps is that the scenario editor is way too primitive. True that SH2's map editor is really detailed, but that gives rather high customisation possibilities to designs. I found that the SHL editor is way too inflexible, such as sending custom text messages is still infeasible (can be done, but it's very cumbersome). Also, just adding Beowulf and Alfred the Great to the skirmish roster would have given a miles more diverse experience. I also haven't seen Skirmish lords sending messages other than those existing for triggers. It is kind of obvious that singleplayer is played at a more relaxed pace, as well as custom scenarios allow for more creative missions that require problem-solving via disabled mechanics, random events and clever map design. While multiplayer is highly customisable too, eventually almost every game boils down to superior macro (economy) and micro (vigilant control of units). There are a lot of group-clearing / disabling abilities and attacks, which can quickly turn the tides, so it is way faster, action-demanding and requires good juggling between building, recruitment, trade and control. One aspect I could highlight is timing buying (royal food) so as to optimise honor generation for ranking up quickly. Perhaps a more multiplayer-specific note would be the lesser touched custom game modes. While not popular, CTF and KotH are a breath of fresh air that allow for some creative and clever games, where the emphasis is not necessarily on this juggling only. In both modes, you are driven to contest a large area that rewards a presence on the battlefield, as well as how cleverly you can reinforce your positions. Kind of relatable to the previous question: I'd re-balance the factions. While the asymmetry is great and fun, Arthur is way undertuned, and Evil is way too strong. Almost all of Arthur's toolkit bottles him in a defensive, numbers-based playstyle, hinging his success way too much on the Round Table knight abilities, while his only flying unit is the Green Dragon that gets an appearance rarely in a game. Ice and moreso Evil get to lay their hands on different countermeasures, which can simply circumvent Arthur's positions and dismantle them in different ways. I wrote an article about these imbalances, but we can state that the economic advantage for Arthur is negligible to the flexibility the other two factions get. Evil in particular has discounted units and very potent tools at the same time. The following four units are a staple and on their own game deciders: Stake Hurlers in numbers can blanket an area with a large barrage of spikes that can eventually one-hit kill sturdy stuff like Cats and Siege Towers. They also hit in a high arc, making them infinitely more useful compared to the Fire Ballista, which shoots a single-hit projectile, and cannot clear areas as well. The Stake Hurler also comes online fairly early in the ranks. Werewolves are very cheap brutes, whose only real weakness is crossbowmen. They are really affordable at 50 gold only, and they are fast, hit hard, and stand their own reasonably well in close combat. Not to mention, they are semi-amphibious by being catapulted via werewolf launchers, being able to drop in the enemy land and wreak havoc. Bad unit AI also works in their favor, constantly heading in front of their chasers by an inch. Demonic Bats are a one-hit demo squad that can instantly remove clumps of units, be them on a tower or out in the open. Knockback is devastatingly effective, since the enemy units don't fight during their knockout animation, and the impact with the unit displacement can instantly erase units falling in unpathable terrain. They also dismantle most siege engines in a few hits, making them one of the most cost-effective units in the game. The Sorcerer is a purely damage-oriented unique unit. While the Meteor Storm deals damage over time, there is simply no way of avoiding losing most of your army, since there is no Scatter command, and the ability hits right from the moment of casting. The Sorcerer can basically do Percival's job almost as well as him, for a fraction of the price. I'd see that Arthur got Pictish boat warriors and Hobilars back on the menu, two unused units that could fulfill their purposes well, giving Arthur a regular amphibious unit and a quick raider. White Wolves and Hellhounds outrun Macemen, as well as both factions have a flying unit, so these troops would be a semi-effective bandaid for the Good faction's shortcomings. I'd also nerf the Bat's divebomb effect, by the bat counting as a projectile during the dive. This would spare units covered by cats and mantlets, and it would be consistent with other displacement interactions in SHL, such as catapult rocks, hurler stakes and ballista bolts. --- This was kinda lengthy, but was worth the effort. 😄 Feel free to reflect on my remarks!

As some of you may have observed, I have occasionally done some delving into the inner workings of Stronghold Legends over the past couple of years. I know some of you, particularly @ Asophix and @ Lord_Chris are particularly experienced at SHL gameplay (especially in multiplayer). I would like some input from the more experienced members of the community about the flow of the game, things like: What's too weak/strong? What's the most common problem with skirmish maps or custom scenarios? What are noteworthy gameplay differences between singleplayer and multiplayer? If you had the opportunity to redesign SHL, what would you change, and why? In full disclosure, I am considering creating something like a standalone expansion mod which introduces new campaigns and a variety of improvements. I've had quite a lot of time to think about it (over 15 years). The discoveries made recently with modding tools like the AI editors may be a sign that it is time.