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Introducing: the Stronghold Legends Ai Editor!
Sir Windows replied to Lord_Chris's topic in The Town Crier
I tried rebuilding one of the Wolf's castles from Crusader using the editor. It worked out pretty well, even with the relatively large size of the castle. The only issues I noticed were related to AI behavior rather than castle building. Even with a priority of 2, the AI had an issue with placing the sorcerer's tower. It placed the barracks, armory, pantry, and engineer's guild just fine, but when it came to the tower, it would always block itself out of placing it by building a farm on its location first. The best solution for this was to simply not have it in the AIC and let the AI pick the spot freely. The AI has some issues placing ranged troops atop towers. It places the units at the right spot before building the tower, but then has them standing next to it after building it. It seems like it's unable to tell them to go up the tower. If the unit in question dies, though, a replacement will man the tower just fine. Other than that, I had no issues, and the editor was a lot of fun to use. Looking forward to the AI editor as well. I feel Legends has a lot of untapped potential in terms of modding. -
That much is true. In my experience, Merlin has a high risk, medium reward type of play that shines in very niche cases. His autoattack is kinda good at dismantling siege equipment concentrations, but struggles against sturdier engines and armor. His Dragon's Breath is very hard to set up, since it has a lengthy animation and it does not one-hit-kill the Ice Queen or the Sorcerer. Merlin is rather defensive due to this, as an enemy watching him move about would definitely deploy their own special units or rush Merlin down before his ability could connect. Galahad is also undoubtedly useful with his heals. Combo'd with Gawain's dome or just pulling back masses of units to heal and re-engage is perhaps the two use-cases I can think of for him. Due to his ability being a heal, serving no other purpose, he is good but not as a first or second Royal Table unit. I used Lancelot on a few occasions. When armies of equal size clash and there is little foreseeable ability play, Lancelot can straight up buff your army so much that your soldiers look absolutely ripped powerhouses. Lancelot helps you being cost-effective at a well-timed engagement, which can help you gain or keep up momentum on a given battlefront.
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An Analysis on the Good / Arthur Faction
Sir Windows replied to Asophix's topic in Stronghold Legends
I don't know how much this applies to multiplayer but throughout the skirmish trails I've also found Merlin and Galahad to be extremely good. Not really Percival level but more useful than Lancelot, Gareth or Bediviere. Especially Merlin can be a game changer when facing Siegfried since he's useful against both giants and shield maidens alike. -
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I'd be very interested in how to alter Legends' AIs. Truth be told, I only noticed Lancelot's behavior while testing a small graphics mod. It really bothered me that Alfred and Beowulf aren't available in regular skirmish. So I replaced Vlad's interface, fx, binks, text and castle files with Beowulf's. Their army comps are roughly comparable, since staples like Saxons and dragons are there. The big difference being the siege units and vampiric creepers. Under usual circumstances, I wouldn't have noticed the macemen, but I ended up paying more attention to the AI during a test match. For the most part, I wanted to make sure Vlad's AI can function with Beowulf's castle. This was when I noticed the macemen but dismissed them as event units. But then they kept showing up during further testing, including matches against Lancelot. This was when I decided to do the initial 1v1 test against Lancelot. Honestly, I also find this pretty amazing, since this means there's an AI that uses macemen in the game.
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Okay, this is really interesting because I have never seen this in my all life, yet here we stand. 😄 Your discovery is something really amazing. I'm going into a little bit of detail: Legends has similar specialized unit groups. There are less categories, but it's also much more simple than a Crusader siege AI. All variables aren't known yet, but enough of them are that they could be altered (I can share details a bit later). There are the usual groups. Notable differences from Crusader: There is only one sortie group which goes to the last destroyed building's location. Most of the time these are almost non-existent due to small sizes and being comprised of small troops. Troop pools are reactive ranged defenders, who can take the place of fallen primary ranged defenders. They are more like a reserve ranged force. There are up to 8 raid groups that the AI can deterministically send to enemy estates. Catapults/stake hurlers/bats/dragons go explicitly to player home estates, while others may go take villages. There is a dedicated 9th raid group which can be considered a death wave targeting exclusively players. This seems to be created once the AI has lots of gold. Most AI recruit 50 archers for this. Siege attacks have three unit groups that behave slightly differently from each other. There are two wave groups and a ranged group, moreover almost each siege engine type and Royal Table knight has a count. The AI doesn't seem to cheat here, e.g. it recruits as many siege engines as it can, then it ceases once it runs out of gold. The AI controls the siege and the units by itself deterministically, the definition has no control over it. Legends AI has known sell limits only. Buy limits are not yet figured out (there must be something as Arthur buys one single iron, while other AI don't). For the granary, minimum stocks are bought (up 10 each as far as I'm concerned). The pantry is bought royal food only if the AI lacks honor (and only of the type it produces). Weapons are bought up to 5 per type, based on the barracks troops used by the AI. Once the need arises for it, the equipment is always bought. Dietrich recruits 2(!) swordsmen as a sortie group, independently of any faction. He also has a bug with his trading behaviour, as he is set to sell all armour and swords. This works against the buy engine, resulting in Dietrich constantly selling his bought armor and swords. Depending on the recruitment cycle, Dietrich may or may not recruit the swordsmen in any given game (50% chance).
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I forgot to mention that I play without starting troops and weapons. My initial assumption was that they must be event related. I've followed your suggestion and did another test run. This time with events turned off, no starting weapons and no starting troops. The result was the same. After I sent a creeper up on one of his towers Lancelot recruited around five macemen. I've recorded a video of the test. It shows all the setting and nothing much happens until 4:42 when the macemen come out of the barracks. I don't know how Stronghold Legends AIs are designed exactly but in Stronghold Crusader aside from their attack & defence troops they've got some more specialized troop categories such as moat digging, moat filling, ranged sortie, patrols, siege defence, raiding and others. It would be interesting to know if Legend's AIs have a category for defence units against creepers. Now, this might be a long shot, but has anyone checked if Dietrich trains swordsmen when facing Good or Ice as an enemy? I've seen him train defensive swordsmen on a very rare occasion but until now I never bothered to check which faction he was facing.
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Hi! We are glad you like our articles! Lancelot himself doesn't recruit macemen (he's limited to archers, men-at-arms and swordsmen, as well as knight summons), and I don't think he did back then either. It's more likely that he started with some of them due to starting settings. To be fair, I don't know at all how the AI handles their starting troops. Most of the time they are used to patrol the outlying buildings, nonetheless it's possible that some of them were grabbed to form a siege force. The Legends AI has simple definitions that define three dedicated teams for sieges - and many other purposes really -, composed of a single unit type each, as well as an ever increasing minimum troop limit for a siege force. Lancelot launches siege attacks with very small armies, so it is very likely he just swiftly grabbed a few of his starting macemen and sent them to attack. To verify the above assumption, try playing with little to no starting troops and random events off (just to eliminate the possibility of getting troops though events). Lancelot should never lay his hands on macemen, just the three mainline troops mentioned.
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Greetings, I've been using Stronghold Nation as my main source for looking up information on units, AIs and every other aspect of Stronghold recently. Specifically for Stronghold 2 and Legends most recently, as the coverage here is excellent. Yesterday, I noticed something that doesn't seem to receive any mention anywhere online. It seems that Lancelot's unit roster isn't limited to swordsmen, archers and men-at-arms. Lancelot also trains around five macemen whenever his units are threatened by vampiric creepers. I noticed this first when playing with an ally Lancelot against Vlad and then checked it myself in a 1v1. I've attached screenshots from two different games showing the macemen in action. The macemen were spotted on the Steam Edition of Legends. I've not played the original release of Legends. Did Lancelot use macemen back then as well or is this a balance change made by FireFly for the steam version only? Edit: On the second screenshot there's also a pile of my own macemen fighting men-at-arms. The group of four macemen ahead of the swordsmen in blue belong to Lancelot though. https://cdn.stronghold-nation.com/community/monthly_2025_05/20250517220435_1.thumb.jpg.dc698e84e6c0092376ded391d85d04dd.jpg https://cdn.stronghold-nation.com/community/monthly_2025_05/20250517225656_1.thumb.jpg.7a27cff1621ba554f1ccba7c9598f42e.jpg https://cdn.stronghold-nation.com/community/monthly_2025_05/20250517225911_1.thumb.jpg.6419f145175a19f41bf382d41c752b42.jpg
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Sir Windows joined the community
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Help Me Edit Assets.V (Solved)
Manor Landlord replied to Lord Yesterday's topic in Stronghold Crusader 2
I have it before my HDD error, unfortunately there is no halloween update anymore, but I manage save part of it - Earlier
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Stronghold Crusader: Definitive Edition Demo Discussion
Asophix replied to Asophix's topic in The Town Crier
The Definitive Edition demo is again available for a limited time, until the 13th of April! 🙂 Version and functionalities are unchanged since the last open beta. -
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Hi All! As it's well known, Stronghold Legends allows you to play one out of three different factions, each of which comes with slightly altered building and troop availability. While ideally all factions' individual strengths and weaknesses balance each other out, there has been a skew towards Ice and Evil in most multiplayer matches, in terms of player picks. Why could it happen? As an experienced Arthur player, allow me to shed light on this phenomenon, while also providing some insights in how the faction is designed to work, and whether it works out in common scenarios, or not. Let's start with Arthur's design points: Full economic liberty. You can have all four granary and royal food types without restrictions, while Ice and Evil can get only 3 of either type. This is most significant early on, when a map has few estates to hold and statues are not abundant yet. It helps climb the first few ranks faster, but any extra honor is always welcome (potentially 4 extra honor from the granary and 1 from the pantry). Wider array of unit abilities. This is about being able to field up to 7 special units with abilities, bringing more potential and flexibility to the battlefield. Your Lord also boasts the strongest summons, a whopping four mounted knights, making for a really good makeshift response force. This comes at the cost of not being able to mass your special troops, unlike Ice and Evil, restricting you to mainly barracks and unwieldy siege engine play. While trebuchets are good at long-range bombardment, enchanted orbs don't usually get used. Evidence suggests that this point is more often a disadvantage than not. Abilities are mostly designed with large fights in mind, rather than for quick timing attacks or punishing weaknesses. The problem of ability-centered play: your power to dominate big battles comes at the cost of sacrificing your map control and utility. And in Legends there are not many big battles. Many times, as Arthur you are locked in on recruiting barracks troops, while carefully deciding on ranking up and bringing in the first and then the second Royal Knight. Since all of your special troops are insanely expensive (ranging from 100 to 200 honor and a bunch of gold at times), you need to be extra mindful, or you will end up with an underwhelming unit in shining armor. Abilities make or break Arthur. Without abilities, your knights are not any better than a regular knight. If your opponent baits out your Percival's blast, or Gawain's shield, more often than not you need to give up ground because the enemy just comes in with their own special troops ready to fight. What Ice and Evil get instead of heavy abilities, are increased flexibility and utility. This comes in three forms: Abundance of flying units. Mobility is key in any RTS game, and Legends is no exception. The ability to traverse terrain unhampered, while most of the ground units can't shoot back, is particularly valuable, forcing the enemy to divert precious time and resources to clean them up or tackle them. White Witches (Ice) are nimble ranged fliers that can effectively get through unguarded castle walls, and punish concentrations of troops without archers or crossbowmen. Demonic Bats (Evil) are unrivaled disruptors, easily evading anti-air fire, while also severely damaging lighter troops and knocking them off elevations. Structure breaker units (Ice). Most sturdier Ice troops - Polar Bear, Giant, Dwarf - can attack stone walls, gatehouses and towers. Sending a squad of such troops undetected can create breaches in a lightly fortified section of the enemy castle, running rampant in the enemy domain. This is most notably effective with Frost Giants, who have very large health and take a lot of time to kill. Climbing units (Evil). The Demon and the Vampiric Creeper can jump on top of walls and gatehouses. While less effective in a direct attack, a surprise maneuver can result in a successful intrusion. Demons are built to spread fire in their weak, while creepers can convert groups of ranged defenders on vulnerable locations. The first point particularly holds true on larger maps and with difficult terrain present, such as swamps or mountains. With Arthur, you get no choice but to attack on land only, and when forced to defend against swarms of Bats, there may not be enough room to spread all your troops or have Gawain's ability at the ready. Even if your Heavenly Shield is being active (it can stay like that until Gawain moves, and for a long time at that!), you effectively lock your army formation in place and provide ample time for your opponent to fight battles elsewhere. Last, but not least, let's see some tips I recommend for playing Arthur: Buy all foods in the beginning of low rank games. When starting a new game, you have the best option out of all factions to rank up quickly. All 4 food types provide you 12 honor / month, opposed to the 8 of Ice and Evil. Use this advantage to get ahead in the ranks and potentially field better troops against your opponents. Always use the Green Dragon. Drogon is your only flying unit and your main way of erasing chunks of the enemy economy, or defense. Even though his creation is announced way too early, its combat potential is unmatched. You can command him to attack a ground target, then quickly move him to a different point as soon as the fire animation plays. Forcing the enemy to build lines of towers, harpoons and wells is well worth it. Percival is the playmaker of your army. When facing large enemy formations, the danger of Holy Blast always looms on the horizon. Due to an oversight, Percival's ability works on elevated targets too when targeting the ground. The outward explosions can liberate an area of troops, be it a concentration of towers or a ground army. You should always enlist Percival first due to this very reason, unless situations dictate otherwise. Gawain's shield works against Bats. This may solidify Gawain as an S tier unit when playing against Evil. Gawain's ability protects against not only ranged attacks coming from outside, but also absorbs divebombing Bats without triggering their explosion. While this only works in a small area, in a well-chosen location it can mean the difference between life and death. Pair with Galahad to safely refill your troops' health. Hope you enjoyed this article and helped you understand the Good faction a little better!
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Introducing: the Stronghold Legends Ai Editor!
Asophix replied to Lord_Chris's topic in The Town Crier
Okay, so I checked the screenshots thoroughly and it seems like the majority of the problems comes from wrongly shifted buildings. I agree that editing is not the easiest, because buildings screenshots weren't done from the same angle & distance. My takeaways: Keep appears 1 tile above its real position (size is correct, you couldn't build the walls occupying its bottom row footprint) Gatehouse appears 1 tile below its real position Armoury is 1 tile narrower than in reality (also smaller by half a tile's size) The rally points should work properly. It looks like that rally points have a slight inaccuracy when the AI parses them in-game, so a point added on top of a basic or lookout tower may end up shifted, centering it on the ground instead of placing it on the tower. You could try ticking the 'elevated' property for the rally point in order to affect AI placement, when you want it to be placed on top of a structure. The keep rotation also seemed to not affect building placement. There may be certain cases when an AIC goes corrupt: please if you can reproduce such situations, don't hesitate to detail them here! I'll need some more time to test out a few scenarios and update the utility here on SHN. -
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Introducing: the Stronghold Legends Ai Editor!
Lord_Chris replied to Lord_Chris's topic in The Town Crier
Thanks Alfred -
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Introducing: the Stronghold Legends Ai Editor!
Alfred The Baker replied to Lord_Chris's topic in The Town Crier
Ive noticed the issue, i think it happened since i pasted my images from discord when i was writting the whole thing and then google just turned it into WEBP, cursed format, ill see to resolve this as yeah it is annoying to read. -
Introducing: the Stronghold Legends Ai Editor!
Lord_Chris replied to Lord_Chris's topic in The Town Crier
Hi Alfred, I think you may have uploaded them as attachments instead. Would it possible to embed as images please? You may have to change the file extension from webp, I am not sure. -
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Introducing: the Stronghold Legends Ai Editor!
Alfred The Baker replied to Lord_Chris's topic in The Town Crier
Leb here from Reddit, this is gonna be a long one. EDIT: Also apologies the images don't seem to loading properly, you will have to click on them, i am not sure what is causing this At first i have wanted to make this castle for Alfred, as why not. This is what i ended up at first, it looked a bit weird but i paid no mind to it at first. Well that is a bit annoying. What i noticed is that in game the keep is 12 x 8 tiles while in the image its 13 x 8, the top row is completely empty while bottom row should be marked This is roughly how it should be, but this problem is not that bad but alingment can be annoying at times. Bigger issue was that any form of rally points, wether its Defence or traps, just do not work and will be unable to save [however Firefly's castles don't seem to suffer from this iirc] This is bit annoying, since Legends AI for pre built castles on maps will man towers with archers automatically, but they will not do the same with AIC castles and will leave them empty. There is also a shifting problem with some of the buildings. The barracks has shifted position, if it faces Left it goes 1 tile to the left. Ive then moved it one tile to the right and it corrected this, however i experience a different bug where this layout would not actually load in the game anymore, i don't know what caused this as it is the same layout except i moved Barrakcs 1 tile to the right. Until i moved the 3 buidlings away from the keep, but this might have been a screw up on my end. I have also noted here that compared to what is in Editor, it seems Armory Kitchen and Guild have shifted a position down but that only happened when i moved the Barracks... I have no idea what causes this. Since on the ABOVE template which had the barracks shift its positions, it gone into the game fine, after i adjusted the barracks, it would not load at all, and after i moved the 3 buildings, they proceeded to shift 1 tile down, its awfully confusing. After this i have paused for a bit There is also a bug where if the Castle gate faces DOWNWARDS [which i think is North in the editor?] The gates will shift 1 tile down. The gate one the right should not be poking out, but should be going inside of the castle, this is the one that is turned DOWNWARDS in the AIC [TO AVOID CONFUSING, the gate one the right is NOT actually facing downwards, its actually facing upwards and it kept its correct position, the AI has turned its castle around to fit the AIC on that territory, so its actually a DIFFERENT gatehouse facing UPWARDS and not DOWNWARDS] Also the AI seems to refuse to use anything but 01 castle, if i named castles 01 they work fine, but they will never read 2 or 3 [from Stronghold 2 i am aware AI will always use largest castle if it can, however in this game unless i renamed the files the AI would never use said castles] If there is any confusing, this is curently fresh on my mind, it is a big info dump. image.webp image.webp image.webp image.webp image.webp image.webp image.webp image.webp image.webp -
Stronghold Crusader: Definitive Edition Demo Discussion
EaglePrince replied to Asophix's topic in The Town Crier
Wow, I didn't even know it was disabled for some time. The more reason to play it now when it is re-enabled! Sent from my Motorola Edge 50 Fusion using Tapatalk -
Stronghold Crusader: Definitive Edition Demo Discussion
Asophix replied to Asophix's topic in The Town Crier
@ EaglePrince It's your time to shine now, the Demo is re-enabled! Saving and loading is still not available though, so prepare accordingly. -
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Game Speed and Framerate Separation and Other Oddities.
Asophix replied to Alfred The Baker's topic in Stronghold 2
To my knowledge, there are no community utilities like that. Secondly, your question is too generic. SH2 / Legends has active logic bundled in its .exe game binary and assorted .dll files. Input files (like gamerules.dat) have no active logic, they are consumed by the game during its lifetime. From the ground up you have no other choice, but to reverse engineer the game binaries and see for yourself. Ghidra can be used to conduct analysis and restore some of the C++ code in pseudo-format, if you are tech savvy. Cheat Engine may be useful for active memory monitoring. -
Princeps Smayris started following Game Speed and Framerate Separation and Other Oddities.
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Game Speed and Framerate Separation and Other Oddities.
Princeps Smayris replied to Alfred The Baker's topic in Stronghold 2
Is there any community made program to see what files like gamerules.dat do? Somehow I need to monitor what exactly Stronghold2.exe and its other files are doing -
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IgnasheunKnight started following Play Tester Wanted
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Okay so I would play test this map again but it is actually pretty difficult and I somehow can't get past my own mission. For context there were no changes to the specified mission I am talking about. So the premise of the map is that you play as the evil Sorcerer Janibas before the Ice campaign. The map spans 5 missions. Yesterday I noticed mission 2 had an issue-that being you were supposed to kill the blue lord and win but that didn't work since I forgot to set the flag color to blue and instead it was set to all which was not what was intended. I fixed the issue I think. And the reason I say I think is because of why I am posting this here. For some reason I am having a difficult time actually winning the second mission after making the fix. Keep in mind the only thing I changed was the before mentioned win condition. The mission itself should be the exact same. I'm pretty busy IRL with school and stuff and was hoping someone would play test the map for me. It takes a bit to win so I would also recommend saving often.
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Asophix started following Play Legends Matches With Us!
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Greetings! Lately, @ Lord_Chris and me @ Asophix of the Stronghold Nation staff has started testing our mettle in Stronghold Legends again. Be it a friendly spar, or a true test of weapons and skill against wanderers on the Internet, we gladly invite everyone to our hearth! We frequently play both in an organized manner on Steam, via the in-game lobby system. Generally we prefer 10min peace time matches with low starting rank, low resources and no building or troop restrictions. We also record some of our matches and upload them on SHN's humble YouTube Channel! If you would like to play with us, hit us up here anytime!
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As far as I am aware, maps are fully compatible between the versions. The only issue, if there was to be an issue, in my opinion, would be backwards compatibility (i.e. from Steam to 1.2) IF new textures etc were used. You are most welcome to upload your maps to our downloads section once completed if you would like to 🙂
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In previous Stronghold entries, weapon workshops are a cornerstone of a steady industry, sparing money in the long run. As it is well-known, workshops pay for themselves by using much cheaper resources from your stockpile. Legends is the first Stronghold game toying with the idea of expensive buildings. The game tried to promote a much slower development to slow down industrial output, therefore putting a dent into workshop accessibility. How has this affected overall trends? Workshops in SHL cost uniformly 50 wood - barely 4 woodcutter trips - and a variable amount of gold. Moreover, they also produce at different paces (fast is roughly 1.5x speed, slow is 0.5x - 0.66x compared to normal speed) and every one of them delivers one unit. The workshops have the following statistics: Poleturner (costs 150 gold, wood included): Spears: requiring 1 wood (2g), one spear (10g) brings +8g profit. Would cost 15g if bought. Fast production speed. Pays for itself after 11 cycles. Pikes: requiring 1 wood (2g), one pike (18g) brings +16g profit. Would cost 20g if bought. Average production speed. Pays for itself after 6 cycles. Fletcher (costs 250 gold, wood included): Bows + crossbows: requiring 1 wood (2g), one weapon (15g) brings +13g profit. Would cost 30g if bought. Pays for itself after 17 cycles. Bows are produced at average speed, while crossbows are made slowly. Blacksmith (costs 300 gold, wood included): Swords: requiring 1 iron (50g), one sword (42g) brings -8g profit. Would cost 48g if bought. Average production speed. Does not pay for itself! If iron is not bought, then pays for itself after 151 cycles (breaking even in 150). Maces: requiring 1 iron (50g), one mace (42g) brings -8g profit. Would cost 44g if bought. Slower production speed. Does not pay for itself! If iron is not bought, then pays for itself after 151 cycles (breaking even in 150). Armorer (costs 250 gold, wood included): Requiring 1 iron (50g), one plate armor (44g) brings -6g profit. Would cost 50g if bought. Slow production speed. Does not pay for itself! If iron is not bought, then pays for itself after 43 cycles. Tanner (costs 150 gold, wood included): Requiring nothing(!), one leather armor brings +12g profit. Would cost 15g if bought. Fast production speed. Pays for itself after 11 cycles (breaking even in 10). Without factoring in distance from the stockpile and armoury each, we can clearly see that tanners and poleturners give the biggest return of investment over time, if their required material is supplied from the market. Tanners are the best choice for pure profit, since they don't require anything. The key takeaway is that refining iron into equipment yields very negligible profit. Iron sells for 40g apiece, therefore the blacksmith/armorer must operate for an excruciatingly long period in order to pay for itself. The final nail in the coffin for ironmakers is the vast selling price of iron. Selling for 40g apiece, the loss on buying up metal equipment ranges from 4g to 10g. These marginal differences eliminate the large need for our smithies. While tanners are far from the most ideal income generators, it is most wise to build them if all deposits are saturated and space is limited, as food production vastly outclasses them. TL;DR: if you are forced into workshops, build tanners and maybe poleturners creating spears, otherwise ignore workshops if you can't place iron mines! 😄
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Stronghold Crusader: Definitive Edition Demo Discussion
EaglePrince replied to Asophix's topic in The Town Crier
I noticed your reply, but I don't want to read it until I win the mission too.[emoji16] Sent from my Motorola Edge 50 Fusion using Tapatalk