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I tried the SH4 alpha and it is alright, despite the user interface being a little all over the place and the preview not offering very much for the moment. Basically the whole feeling or gist to it is that it is what Stronghold 3 ever wanted to be, if it could. There are a lot of buildings to aesthetically build your castle, plenty of different resources and what-not, but in the end it's Stronghold. The economic mission is more of a tutorial to getting a feeling for the economy and the honor aspect, while the military mission offers a good, but relaxing challenge. For those who like a simplistic introductory gameplay, will definitely get a basic good feeling from the demo.

Hello Everyone! Firefly has announced that they will be revealing a new Stronghold title at the PC Gaming Show this Sunday. Date and Time: Sunday June 7th at 8pm BST / 9pm CEST / 12pm PDT / 3pm EDT Announcement Video: Have fun and let's see what'll be shown on Sunday! Stronghold 4 Information & Features General Information Release date: 2026 Steam demo launch: 23 June 2026 Main Features 22 mission story campaign set before the events of the original Stronghold Skirmish mode featuring 8 AI opponents Skirmish trail Free-build mode Gameplay features Grid based construction system as seen in Stronghold Crusader 2 and Warlords Honour and rank system like in Stronghold 2 Lord's kitchen and royal foods (honey, grapes, wine and four different types of meat) Houses provide honour and can be upgraded for increased output Turnips added as a new basic food type for the general population, replacing meat from previous titles Cheese reworked into a multi building production chain (dairy farm to produce milk and cheesemaker to turn milk into cheese) Daily random events Weather types such as rain and snow Stronghold & Crusader style inns rather than a Stronghold 2 ale consumption slider Three different religious buildings - shrine, chapel and church New weapon types such as short bows and war hammers Moats, pitch traps and killing pits Stone and wooden versions of the barracks New and returning units Armed Peasants, men at arms, macemen, crossbowmen, pikemen, swordsmen and knights return Archer split into two unit types - shortbowman and longbowmen Shortbowmen shoot faster and can set pitch on fire Longbowmen have greater range but slower rate of fire and are unable to set pitch ablaze Sergeant unit armed with war hammers (more information to come) Battering rams, catapults, tower mounted ballistae and tunnellers return Story & Characters Set before the events of Stronghold The player takes on the role of Penryn of Wethel, a shepherd who rises to become a leader during a time of calamity Sir Longarm, Duke de Puce (the Rat) and Duke Beauregard (the Snake) confirmed to return Lord Woolsack, pig and wolf hinted at as returning

Hello All! As known, Stronghold 4 got its first preview demo with humble, but almost complete gameplay and content. Powered by Unreal Engine 5, it has been possible to peek into the bundled game contents and uncover fun details, which have been left out, or unimplemented. Without further ado, follow me as the mystery of SH4 unfolds! Read at your own risk.

Guau muchas gracias Asofix me siento muy honrado de poder aportar a la comunidad de Stronghold Nation. Es de destacar el trabajo de los administradores y moderadores que dirigen esta comunidad. Mi aporte es pequeño comparado con el esfuerzo tan grande y notorio que ustedes hacen a lo largo del tiempo para mantener este espacio vivo y ordenado. Sin su dedicación, no seria posible. Crear estos escenarios ha sido genial gracias al editor de Stronghold Legends. Es una herramienta increíblemente intuitiva con posibilidades casi infinitas para plasmar cualquier idea. Por eso, quiero animar a los demás jugadores a crear y sigan aportando mapas y demás as contenido tanto en Legends como en los demás títulos de la saga, incluido Stronghold 4. Me daría mucho gusto verlos jugar en mis mapas y, sobre todo, probar las creaciones de ustedes. ¡Muchas gracias a todos por el espacio y por jugar! --- Wow, thank you so much Asophix! I feel very honored to be able to contribute to the Stronghold Nation community. The work of the administrators and moderators who run this community is truly remarkable. My contribution is small compared to the enormous and noticeable effort you all make over time to keep this space alive and organized. Without your dedication, it wouldn't be possible. Creating these scenarios has been fantastic thanks to the Stronghold Legends editor. It's an incredibly intuitive tool with almost endless possibilities for bringing any idea to life. That's why I want to encourage other players to create and continue contributing maps and other content, both in Legends and in the other titles of the series, including Stronghold 4. I would love to see you play on my maps and, above all, try out your creations. Thank you all so much for the space and for playing! (moderator's note: added English translation, powered by Google Translate)

Well that was fun. Things I liked: Visual presentation is very good, even on medium-low the game is nice to look at. Castle life is booming and one can watch the peasants doing all kinds of jobs in great detail New music tracks and old tracks from SH1 & SH2 blend together well New production chain for cheese is a good addition Building walls works well and there are a lot of options to design your stone or wooden castle Lots of options for wooden fortifications are a nice addition Random daily events might be interesting once more are added Formations and unit collision work well enough Returning to the original medieval England setting was a good idea The demo was pretty stable for me Things I disliked: The UI feels cluttered, and it took me a while to get a hang of it The wood cost for some building is very high (200 wood for an inn). It feels very SHC2 like in this regard, the market will be pretty essential in this game. Longbowmen look a little odd While the music is good, the pauses between tracks feel too long, sometimes one forgets there is music I wish spearmen would carry their spear in their hands before throwing it like the old games, rather than on their back The rat's forces appear in blue rather than orange, hopefully this'll change in the final release All in all it looks promising, and I was pleased with the demo. Hopefully they'll fine tune and optimize the game before launch. Not a fan of the UI but that's something that's unlikely to change at this point.

Behind the scenes In the original SHK Editor there is a weird quirk, when it comes to displaying buildings. Even not long after its release, people complained about the Engineer's Guild being off by one tile, when rotated east. Even though this itself is an easily fixable problem, delving into the buildings list reveals that almost every building has a whole slew of corrections applied on top. When adapting the Editor for the Legends buildings, all buildings got vastly different dimensions, so all corrections had to be painstakingly found out and updated. Still, the in-game Map Editor in SH2 & SHL is able to effortlessly rotate buildings. Is the math behind it so complex and difficult? What could cause this mismatch in HicRic's interpretation? The answer lies in the anatomy of a building. See, building footprints starting with SH2 are slightly more complex than for example in SHC, as buildings are comprised of two components: Occupied Area: this footprint is reserved for the building itself, and can't be built on Walkable Area: this footprint outlines a general area for peasants / units to approach the building. While still can't be built on, walkable areas can overlap for multiple buildings. Since most buildings effectively carve out a rectangle or square, HicRic's interpretation was that this could apply to every building, and as such a rectangular 2D area was assigned to each of them. There are however buildings with more complex footprints, like the Keep, where the campfire's 4x4 area is attached to the occupied area of the building: Going further with the above theory, it seems that rotation around a center point always results in a consistent position, however it is almost never the case, if the building's footprint is not a perfect square and is included a walkable area. HicRic also realised this and implemented a correction system on top, which adjusts the building to its real position. This does not follow a pattern however and takes unjustified effort to implement. What HicRic failed to account for, is the fact that the focal point of the rotation is the center of the occupied area, not the center of the building's effective rectangle footprint. See how the yellow point is about two tiles away compared to the real point of rotation, visibly misplaced: In short, all buildings in SH2 & SHL have occupied areas each that assumes the shape of a rectangle or square. Using this knowledge, the brute force correction system can be dropped and building administration can become more intelligent, further improving invalid building placement checks and other related features. Thanks for reading! 🙂

Greetings to All! The Castle Editor for Stronghold Legends has been serving us well for almost two years now - at the time of writing -, as it allows for modifying castle layouts for all the Legends lords, in an intuitive and considerably user-friendly way. One example would be the Vlad Enemies pack by @ Sir Windows , which brings us Radu and a handful of other characters to fight in Skirmish mode. However, it is obvious that the Editor's design and overall serviceability does not hold up to what we would expect in current times, since this application is essentially a re-compilation of Lord Britian's SHK Editor, intended for SH2 from 2006. Even though the source code had been somewhat modernised and extended with a handful of nifty features, the underlying visual tech is still the original one. Due to its dated presentation appeal and challenging maintenance hurdles, I decided to start working on a re-implementation. The new Castle Editor aims to bring a similar editing experience that feels more like present times, powered by the same tech presented by our Lord Editors, while also preserving portability for your comfort. The key advantage is that the source code would be fundamentally similar, while the visual style can also reminisce that of SHL with colorful backgrounds and visual elements adapted from the game itself. Some more advanced features could also be added upon request, as always. As a recap, allow me to list the core features to be expected for the Castle Editor: Displaying a Lord's castle on a 100x100 grid overview, with small pictures sized exactly to the footprint of each building. Setting the order of buildings based on their priority. Placing troop markers in the layout to tell the AI where to send its defensive and patrolling units. Placing traps in various key locations. Placing 'no build' tiles in order to restrict the AI from building in places of patrol points, or the way of rolling logs. Taking note of a file history so that you can recall your favourite files from a bullet list. Automatic saving option. And more to come. At this point, the parsing and creation of a castle file is done, and the presentation is being worked on. Should you have any remarks or feature requests, feel free to comment or send a DM to my profile! Until next time, Asophix

Hi All! This time, we have two games to bring for you. @ Lord_Chris and @ Asophix played after a week again, this time on a much larger playing grounds of Swamp. On this cross-shaped map there are vast estates, with plenty of marshland in the outer edges of each peninsula and a stone circle guarded by a dragon in the middle. As in previous games, both players were placed in opposite starting positions and the game was played on minimum settings, with added weapons and food. Lord Chris played in the bottom left, while Asophix was put in the top right. Game 1 - On Short Notice The first game brought a very active early skirmish. Right from the outset, both players placed their first few buildings and rushed their Lords to the bottom right village in order to get a foothold. Asophix - in green - came through the swamps and the forest, wetting his stallion's horseshoes. Lord Chris - in blue - chose to ride along a tad longer pathway, and as he reached estate proper much earlier, he started capturing the village. The countdown had still a little while to go though, and as Asophix approached, both lords summoned their aides halfway to gain the upper hand. There was a huge difference in the summoned units' power, and with the countdown broken, the blue player started preparing for the usual cat-and-mouse game to keep distance from tempered Arthurian swords. Lord Chris has however not taken into account that mounted Knights are much faster compared to Shield Maidens, and suddenly he found himself stripped bare of mount, as part of the green group charged him down. As the Shield Maidens ran back to defend and stopped to fight with the green henchmen, Asophix broke out of the fight and used a few Knights and his Lord to assail the exposed blue Lord. The swift strike of three elite units quickly ended the fight in Asophix's favour, in a measly two minutes. Game 2 - Gnashing Teeth After the rather short game, a rematch was immediately agreed. In a rather similar manner, the early game brought sweaty palms for both sides. Asophix decided to rush out with his lord much faster, cutting the map in half rather than going for a quick capture of either estate, as it would risk him being put out of position. Knowing how powerful Knights can prove, Lord Chris assumed as much of a forward position in his estate but held back to defend. The initiative remained in the Arthurian player's hands and using the maneuverability of his loyal guards, he rode up and summoned them in the nearby treeline. The green Knights triumphantly destroyed the initial buildings of the Ice player, causing great disruption but not ending the game right away. After the skirmish, Asophix pulled his Lord back, allowing a breather for Lord Chris, who still had his power off cooldown. Identifying the defensive Stone Circle in the middle of the map, he rode there, softly pressing the green Lord away. As he captured the circle and Asophix decided to develop his economy further, Lord Chris made use of his confidence and leveraged his summons. He bypassed the green Lord, called for his trusty Shield Maidens to stall Asophix long enough to gain a head start, as he was rushing to the nether lands of his rival. He could cut down the granary and a few buildings before bailing out from his adventure. Ever Get that Feeling of Déja Vu? At around 5:30, Asophix ended up on Lord Chris's territory again. Seeing how the green Lord can unavoidably deal damage, for a moment he charged forward to the enemy estate once more. The distance there however was enormous, and he was desperate to turn back and rally back home, as Asophix employed a daring tactic using his Lord and his summoned Knights to take victory by conquering the enemy keep. The Ice player thankfully returned in time and he stopped the countdown successfully. Asophix used the time bought to extend his economy back home. As the Knights timed out, both lords momentarily exchanged sights on the Ice Keep and the green player pulled out. Lord Chris was persistently locked on the troublemaker and chased him all the way back to the green estate. In the meantime, Asophix garnered enough honor to rank up and construct a Barracks along with an Armoury. All the time within arms reach, Lord Chris barely failed to catch his adversary and met the resistance from the first light troops. Thus, he summoned his Maidens to net a few pick-offs and stall the enemy forces, as he rode home. Getting to the Mid-Game Soon came a moment of peace, relatively speaking. The blue player added a lot of iron mines and stabilized his royal food supply, while the green competitor built more on his already established industry. Asophix has sent starting troops to claim the northwest estate and Lord Chris invested a little bit of funds in getting more light troops to build camp in the middle estate, later in the southeastern village as well. Apart from a few skirmishes, the green player managed to sneak in his Lord once again and destroyed the enemy Granary. The Lord traversed out out of the pickle successfully, even though blue Archers killed his mount off. Both players continued reinforcing their first choice of footholds, with Lord Chris opting to fund an army entirely off of gold, and Asophix scraping the bottom of the barrel for a mass industry of Fletchers and Tanners, which was slow to pay off, but the healthy industry could generously fund it. The green adversary was also choosing to rank up fast, so that more siege engines and Royal Table knights could be recruited. The middle estate was eventually stabilized by the blue player, who made use of his estate ownership by erecting a Siege Camp and creating several Fire Ballistae that could pick off probing Siege Towers containing a few crossbowmen. Soon enough, both players showed their true army compositions. Lord Chris steadily introduced Pikemen into his mix, as well as relying on Archers and siege engines to gain a battleground advantage. He started amassing the medium armor by the entrance to the northwest area, however Asophix was vigilant to react to it by heavily investing in a rapid response group of Macemen. Twenty "boys" poured out of the green barracks and made contact with the blue Pikemen, while the estate garrison mainly comprised of Archers provided what ranged assistance they could. The Ice Lord reacted with a squad of Fire Ballistae and Cats, but the Macemen disengaged and turned their attention to them, dismantling them and the Siege Camp into splinters. The concave of blue Archers thinned their ranks out quite a bit though. Tipping the Scales Getting itchy to teach a lesson to his adversary, Lord Chris bought a few Knights and sent a squad of Archers to the northwest estate once again. He rebuilt the Siege Camp too and brought the same siege composition to life, now adding a few Cats to his middle garrison. The rush to the Village Hall proved really mistimed, as the Archers quickly fell to the defense's responsive fire, and the Knights weren't numerous enough to conquer the estate quickly. Asophix used the preoccupied enemy to muster an even larger force of Macemen, who ran interception and killed off a few Carters, as well as the numerous but frail sentries of blue Archers. He also used Sir Percival to dispose of the central forces with a Holy Blast. After the air was clear again, the green player removed all resistance, except those Knights in the northwestern estate. The carters continued to be a valuable target to claim rich meat deliveries. Asophix found himself in the clear and in front of empty protruding walls. His band of Macemen and Crossbowmen quickly took the lead and using the central estate, a green Siege Camp was quickly built and Laddermen soon poured out to conquer the walls, as well as Trebuchets rolled out to bombard buildings from long range. The exposed defender, Lord Chris quickly built forward Siege Camps to snipe the invaders with fiery bolts, as the green troops scaled his walls. This triggered a quick response from Asophix, sending in a band of Macemen to quickly destroy the threat. Blue Pikemen and the Lord also arrived to sweep the area and after the Camp was removed, the Macemen decided to raid the food chains and cause marginal damage along with destroying the Ice Granary. A Test of Willpower and Economy Lord Chris did not waver upon the destruction wrought on his industry. Using his vast real estate, he slowly rebuilt his food production in the back of his Keep, while slowly growing an impenetrable defense comprised of Archers, Crossbowmen and Pikemen. Asophix could not use his leather-armored troops directly in the confrontation, so he slowly tightened the containment and used his Trebuchets and units to destroy whatever building possible from long range. The Macemen went as far as to removing the blue Iron Mines. After scrambling a little bit to stabilize the forward outpost due to Lord Chris's recalled archer groups, the green player decided to bring in his few Trebuchets closer and commence with further bombardment. This maneuver proved however fatal for Asophix, as another guerilla Siege Camp appeared and Fire Ballistae destroyed the now defenseless Trebuchets. Carters worked hard to keep the blue economy alive, and after the second camp was removed, the green Macemen rushed in to desperately cause whatever damage they can. They were no match for the keep's protectors. As the Macemen reinforcements kept coming, Lord Chris decided it's time to roll out a few Frost Giants and confidently march to the green territory. The giants were so fast that they arrived there relatively unscathed, working on crucial buildings, destroying a few in the process. They did not manage to kill the production though. The next 45 minutes could be described as sweaty and stressful for both sides. Asophix maintained the containment, but the lack of trebuchets and a way to directly assail the blue Keep caused him to send droves of Macemen, eventually Swordsmen and Knights without proper protection against it. The lull between two attacks also allowed Lord Chris to muster additional hit squads of Frost Giants and force his opponent to spend badly needed funds into repelling them with Knights and Macemen elsewhere. Eventually, Lord Chris managed to reach a state of impenetrability: he successfully dug himself in, adding the Ice Queen, rebuilding his economy and popping up Fire Ballistae constantly to thin out the sieging army. Asophix tried all kinds of different unit compositions, but all efforts were blunted by freezing attacks and concentrated fire from the defenders. The drawing of the line continued. After 1 hour and 25 minutes, the conflicting forces agreed to a draw and a final charge, seeing how neither side can reach a decisive progress without committing a large mistake. A true testament of power from both participants!

Hello Everyone, I am pleased to announce that a public release of the Castle Editor is made available! https://www.stronghold-nation.com/downloads/file/698-ai-castle-editor/ This program is a recompilation and a vastly improved version of the old SHK community editor intended for SH2. With this program, you can edit and introduce castle templates for all Legends bot characters. The AI Editor includes a few quality of life changes, while preserving the style of its predecessor, such as: File History of the last 10 templates visited or used Automatic save function (can be turned off) Tile indicator for easier building placement Automatic keep placement in the center for new designs Flood-fill deletion for removing large chunks of wall, moat and pitch ditch sections Support of "Open With" feature for .AIC files on Windows In order to use the program, simply unpack the .zip package on to your file system and run the .exe in the attachment. The program relies on Java to run, but everything necessary is bundled, so you don't need to install anything else. It is highly recommended that the file structure remains intact, or you may encounter weird program behaviour! Version 0.7 marks the first release, but it is not the final one, as it will continue to see fixes and improvements for the foreseeable future. You can submit feature or bugfix requests in a comment by the file's Download section, or directly to me! Many thanks for @ Lord_Chris and @ Planewalker for testing the application and providing feedback on it! Happy Editing!

Thank you @ Lord_Chris for the acknowledgement! It feels good to be here!

Hi folks, hope you are all well - I had a surprise message last Friday from Chris Higginson, AKA GrumpyGills of Stronghold Knights, to say he was in my area (he's from Oz but has been travelling around) so we met up for a drink and some dinner on Saturday in the centre of Bristol - really great to see him and catch up! I mentioned SHN to him, so he might check it out 🙂

So any SH2 player knows that gold is one of the most important resources. It's used for troops, defences, trading and even some buildings. So what if you're low? You can't train troops, can't keep a decent working economy, can't even buy the wood you so desperately need. From playing multiplayer yesterday with a certain Lord_Chris, him and I now know how important it is to keep a steady amount of gold for backup. Especially if you have the upper hand and you are taken out from a few knights and ladder men *cough* Chris *cough* it's important to be able to train new troops to defend your territory and Lord quickly. So here is my guide for sustaining gold both in single and multi player. For the purpose of the tutorial I will start by assuming the player starts with the rank "Freeman". And if not you can skip to later on in the topic. Follow this link for advice for general SH2 tips. Use the tips from the link and the tips in this topic together for a great outcome. The tips were written by Lord_Chris: http://forums.stronghold-nation.com/post/1275/#p1275 Starting out: Of course it's important to start a small economy before anything. Place your stockpile as near to stone and trees as possible, of course if you can, place near iron also. Now place your granary, then 5 wood cutter huts next to the trees, and 3 apple orchards next to the granary. Starting in Freeman, you need to make the choice of a barracks or treasury. Place a treasury near your keep (this makes it easier to keep thieves away). Set the granary rations to "Extra" (+4 Popularity) and wait until the popularity raises by 4. Now increase the tax to "Normal" (-4 Popularity). Continue to work on your castle. Placing extra hovels and food resources (while discussing this, be sure to place apple orchards, dairy farms, and hunter's posts, as this will increase the honour gain). Once you feel you have enough food, change the rations to "Double" (+8 Popularity) and change the tax to "High" (-6 Popularity). The reason you don't want any more tax than that is for the next stage in the ranking system where gong is a problem. THIS IS A MUST NOTE- Do not buy from the market after being promoted to the next rank. This will start a bad habit and you will lose gold fast. Next stages: Try and maintain over 500 gold once you reach the rank "Knight" (3rd Rank). This will assure that you have enough gold for troops. Keep the gold above 500 and make sure that you have enough weapon production at the same time. Keep following this formula- 1+ Promotion, Maintain +300 gold. If this is done up to the higher rank (Baron, Earl, Duke). You will have a lot of gold to train troops, assuming you follow this formula, you won't need to be placing any gold consuming buildings by the time you reach the rank "Duke" (Highest rank). Trading: Trading excess goods is an easy and quick way to make gold. Here's a guide I use for goods trading. Sell- Iron, if over 20. Stone, if over 200 (this varies depending on castle size, towers, walls, gatehouses etc) Wood, if over 200. Excess food (if units of food do not go below 500, sell excess food, while making sure you have a fair amount of apples, cheese and meat to keep honour high) Buy- Stone Bows Lord's food Other resources are okay to trade but these are the best things to trade. Estates: The 10+ gold from estates won't be greatly useful. But, the amount of food produced from estates is high indeed. Send 50+ apples to your castle from each estate. You will be able to sell a large amount of apple in return for a very high amount of gold. Troop Training: Be sure you have enough gold for troops. By the time you reach the rank "Duke". If following the tips given out by Lord_Chris (linked in this topic) you should already have everything you need as in buildings, defences etc. Assuming you've followed my tutorial, you should have over 10,000 gold by the time you're at the rank "Duke". Training troops is of course a huge part of SH2. The best troops to train are in the barracks. Even the Knights, only cost 200 gold each to train. Considering the amount you should have, this is not much. Of course the mercenary post troops can be quite useful. Such as horse archers, in great amounts do a lot of damage. But be wary as they are some of the most expensive troops. Stay away from troops from the monastery. They aren't expensive but they are a waste of gold as they are not efficient for anything really, in large numbers they do decent amounts of damage, but aren't worth it for the amount of gold spent. Gold Cap: Try and keep above 5000 gold. This will reassure that you can train a lot of troops as backup. With this you can train... (assuming you have the honour and weapons) 1. 25 Knights 2. 62 Horse Archers 3. 250 Crossbowmen 4. 416 Archers 5. 1000 Armed Peasants (silly) Of course these are separate. You can not raise an army of 1753 troops with 5000 gold. I hope this tutorial was of use to you, and that you can manage your gold better from following it. Leave any other tips in the comments, and reply with feedback, thank you :) EDIT: Apologies for the broken link, unsure how to fix. Someone reply or edit themselves, thank you!

Hi guys, as this is as much an AOE4 thread as a "how are you doing" thread, let me join in here. I also saw the AOE4 release and it is much covered on youtube and other media. There was even a lengthy discussion on it on the official FireFly discord 😀 As for myself, I still prefer Stronhold style games with more focus on beautiful castle building and not purely RTS gameplay. But that said, AOE4 certainly looks like a good game and I will probably get it at some point. Probably also at a sale like you, EaglePrince. I am sorry to hear of the death of your girfriends father, EaglePrince. And also about your loss, Chris. Best wishes, for your grandmother's recovery, Eagle. This crisis is really harsh. Some of my friends an a cousin of mine got severe cases and required hospitalization. Fortunately they are all better now. I myself and my closer family have been spared so far. We keep beeing super careful. Hopefully, when this winter is over, we will have overcome this crisis. Glad to hear that your career in Academia is developing, Eagle. Teaching students and designing your own lectures must be a really interesting thing. I had the chance to teach some younger students during my own student days. I always had liked that. 🙂

It's similar for me. I used to think what a Stronghold game with different factions would look like - if those factions were made in a way more similar to Age of Empires, where one cannot use the best of each faction in a single game. Right now the game seems to be too much CPU demanding, so it is likely that I will have no choice but to wait until getting hands on a better CPU... Well, unfortunately, not everything was going smoothly with health in my family.😟 My grandmother had got covid in October, but she is fine now and getting better. She needed to be hospitalized, she was in the hospital for almost two weeks. So happy she's back on track now, being able to do basing stuff on her own now... The other thing is that my girlfriends father got diagnosed with cancer in July; we were struggling so hard to help him, the girlfriend was doing everything she could, but he passed away two weeks ago... I don't know how things are going in other countries, but it is really harsh here in Serbia, and it is extremely important to stay healthy - and avoid getting covid. Not just for covid itself, but because when somebody has any serious health issue, before admitting him into hospital, first thing they do is doing the covid test. And they are positive, they don't want to mix him with patients who are negative on covid, and thus they don't receive the proper treatment. As if they are admitted into hospital, being put together with other covid patients, and with their condition being monitored by doctors who treat covid and not their primary illness. Similar thing happened to my girlfriends father, who caught covid in the hospital. Anyway, things can be different in other countries, especially in the West, but surely covid makes things harder everywhere in the world. As for life as a Professor, I should soon become an Assistant Professor at my faculty. I should be signing the contract in the following weeks; fingers crossed! In the meantime, I've been mostly doing exercises with students and doing research, which are both very interesting to me. In the next semester, I should be able to give lectures on my own - to be "the professor".😊 But that's just some things that come after hard work and with "a little bit" of luck, but really, the most important thing is to stay healthy, especially these days with covid.

Hey guys, a lot of good stuff have come from Germany, especially when it comes to Stronghold Crusader, and now comes another one. I don't know if other have noticed it already, but I have noticed it now. Here's the link for the Unofficial Crusader Patch. https://github.com/Sh0wdown/UnofficialCrusaderPatch/releases#user-content-Changelog There you may see the list of changes, and I trust everything works great. I'm not going to use it myself because of multiplayer games, but this does offer what I was dreaming about! One is the ability to change the starting troops in the game, so you may pick to start with crossbowmen and pikemen for example instead of with archers and spearmen. Also, in the guy from apothecary CAN HEAL INJURED UNITS. Crazy, ha? :D There are many other changes that consider gameplay, and many of them can be switched on or off. You may change everything regarding economy and popularity to be like in Stronghold 1 in one click. You may set the game so that, when the AI storms the castle with every attacking unit he has when he sees an opportunity (a breached castle). It has some new castles. I'm not sure whether they are good enough, but that change can easily be undone. Or you may choose to fix Nizar, and leave the rest of them as they are, because Nizar's castle surely is very ineffective. (In some of them workers need to walk a full circle around his castle to bring their goods, that slows his economy as hell.) They also made that AI repair their damaged towers, and even slightly damaged walls. You may set the AI to attack the closest enemy, so that his troops wouldn't get crippled by another lord while on their way to attack somebody far from their castle. AI lords can attack with much larger force too! To sum it up. God, I don't know why hasn't Firefly employed this guy! He has obviously NOTICED a lot of stuff, even like Wazir not buying bread, and he FIXED IT. You may go ahead at his Github page, some stuff are in German, but mostly in both German and English, and and see what this patch offers by reading the change logs for all versions of his patch. He has been doing this since 2018. WHAT HE HAS MADE IS PURE GOLD! EDIT: Actually, it seams it's a team, not a single developer. That's what is said at the GitHub page.

I'm aware that things have seemed quite slow recently here when in reality, members just haven't been able to witness the work constantly going on behind the scenes. I've recently fixed & optimised a whole load of issues, including: Fixed Issue with Polls on the homepage not showing current results Added many more history sections on the main site Fixed pagination issue when viewing personal messages Fixed issue submitting new downloads Optimised and compressed a whole load of images to save your bandwidth and data usage Updated site carousel on the homepage Updated legal policies and terms of use Updated site privacy policy Updated site rules Updated site about page Added a new search feature for the gallery Added a new feature to search for all historical castles Added a new search feature to search through all historical articles Added new walkthroughs and saved games for the Stronghold 2 Peace Campaign Fixed error when viewing staff team page Updated Community FAQ Your admin team and in particular @Crusader1307 have done an outstanding job in continuing to run the site in light of all these issues, to them we owe a great deal of gratitude. More updates to the site will be coming in the next few months well, including some bigger and more exciting site changes. Your admin team will keep everyone up to date on this, in the meantime send me a PM of any outstanding issues and I'll get them fixed ASAP. Thanks everyone!

ENTRIES ARE NOW CLOSED Thank you to all of those who entered in our competition. I am looking forward to seeing all the maps and getting to test some new missions before anyone else. The winner will be revealed sometime towards the end of January, 2019. As for the promised reward of a copy of Stronghold Next upon its release, well of course that can only be sent upon its release. I will have more information on how the reward will be sent once the winner is revealed. The winner will first be notified via email, and then will be announced here at StrongholdNation. I thank you all once more. Merry Christmas! Hear ye! Hear ye! The town crier has news for thee! For those of you that have been following the riddles and little hints I've been leaving around the site, you may be very aware that I've been planning a new competition for some time now! In celebration of the next entry in the Stronghold franchise, we are giving away a copy of Stronghold Next to the deserved winner of our new map making competition. Keep reading for details! Competition Instructions: You must create a map in any?Stronghold entry. The map must be and contain: - War Scenario - At least 1 chapter - Accompanied by a good story?or plot - Original ONE MAP PER USER. Competition Entry: You must?be a member of StrongholdNation to participate in this competition for verification purposes. You have until the 1st of December, 2018?to send your maps to me via email. You can submit the map to my email at - mathewsteel [at] strongholdnation [dot] co [dot] uk. When sending your map via email, set the "Subject" field to "SHN Competition Entry - [sHN Username]". In the text field, please state your map name, and remember to add the map as a .zip or .rar attachment. Maps must be uploaded in a .zip or .rar format. Do not?upload your map to the site before the competition entry date has passed, or it will not be considered eligible as an original work. Once the competition has closed, you may freely upload your maps to the site under any name you wish. The .zip or .rar should contain the following: - Your Stronghold map - A minimap screenshot in (optional) - A text file that includes the story or plot of the map itself Choosing the Winner Map design and overall quality is often subjective, however, there is objectivity involved too. Despite this, maps will be marked by both myself and @Lord_Chris. Your map will be scored out of 10 for each of the following expectations: - Appearance - Is the map pretty? Maps that are symmetric with plain grass textures will not be rewarded highly, if at all. Make your maps as nice on the eyes as possible. However, this does not mean maps must be realistic. - Quality of play - Does the map play as intended? Are there any creator errors that could have been avoided? We want to be able to play the map smoothly. Invasions should be timed as intended, and maps should be tested before uploading your entry. - Storyline - You may create a fantasy or realistic story or plot to accompany your map. Remember, as your teachers always said, quality not quantity. We want to be drawn in. We want to feel like our actions in-game will truly be affecting some world you created. - Interest - Chapters should contain fun missions. Whilst this is a war scenario, you are not limited to only war gameplay. Resource management is often a large part of Stronghold, and maps that can show the best of both sides of the franchise are likely to earn more points. Entry Closing: I'll say once more - your maps must be submitted to me via the email link before the 1st of December, 2018.?I can be lenient for entries submitted on that date. If you've any questions, post a reply, and I will add a Q&A section into the original post, or simply update certain aspects of the post. Good luck to you all! May the best designer win! :D

'Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the keep, There lay a great lord, so sound in his sleep. The fire was lit, smoke filling the air, In hope that St Nicholas would soon be there. The knights and the townsfolk all snug in their beds, While visions of venison danced in their heads. Lord_Chris with the horses, and I with my cats, Had just settled the falcons, to keep out the rats. When out in the town there was such a clatter, The Lord sprang from his bed to see what was the matter. Adjacent to the inn was a burning bright stash, Where peasants had set fire to their meaningless cash. The moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow, Gave the peasants a cold and moaning to show. When, what their wondering eyes should appear, But a miniature sleigh, and eight tiny reindeer. With a little old driver, so lively and quick, They knew in a moment it must be St Nick. With reindeer and presents that brought him his fame, He whistled, and shouted, and called them by name! "Now, Nigel! now, Eagle! now, Charles! now, Mathew! On, Crusader! On, Bradley! on, David to you! To the ends of the earth! to ten-sixty-six! Gather your courage and prepare for the fix!" As boredom and sorrow cover the city, We could only feel shame and ongoing pity. So up to the hovels the reindeer flew, For the SHN Christmas was starting anew. Bells could be heard, not just from the church, But from the reindeer who landed just near the birch. The grey and black bark blended with ice, Foreshadowing the joy that would rid of the vice. The stone castle walls shone in the weather, Whilst children stayed sleeping, as light as a feather. Yet little did they know Lord_Chris had a trick, To spread Christmas spirit with the help of St Nick. His eyes-how they twinkled! his dimples how merry! His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry! As for St Nick, his belly was rounded, For he'd eaten mince pies 'fore the reindeer were grounded. The drunkards and deviants looked down at the floor, Longing for a day where life will give more. The townsfolk knew not what would happen this year, But Lord_Chris' scheme was to share gifts and cheer. The peasants looked up as they heard all the noise, As St Nick walked over with a sack full of toys. "Be grateful for life" he said with a smile, As the townsfolk stared simply, in awe for a while. St Nick gave to the rich, as well as the poor, And no peasant or king could possibly want more. For the goodness of Christmas provides hope not fright, Happy Christmas to all, and to all goodnight! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ I wanted to wish you all a very early Christmas and to remind you it doesn't have to be the 25th to get into the Christmas spirit. Spend time with your loved ones, and be sure to work hard, for when the time comes...you can eat like a fat lard :P? As some of you may have noticed, there was a subtle moral in my parody-poem, and it was to point out that not everybody is so fortunate during the entire year. If you have the chance to help even just one person, do it, and know that you may have made somebody's year. I personally started early by buying a hot chocolate and a warm bacon baguette for a homeless man just last week. It gets very cold this time of year (unless you're in the UK, where it's known as "any-day-that-isn't-summer") and something small like that could mean a lot to someone. If you do something, whether it's similar to what I did, or whether you donated, or something similar, let us know here! It's not being vain, it's sharing positivity!?:) Merry Christmas - Tom

"Nothing More To Be Said............"

Stronghold 2: Path of War, Lost King Campaign Played with version 1.3.1. Walkthrough by HicRic and LordBritian Chapter 11: Treachery, Mission 1 *Objective: Capture Estate: Upwey *Starting goods: 1500 gold, 0 honour, 100 wood, 40 stone *Starting food: 25 bread, 25 meat, 25 cheese, 25 apples The objective for this mission is to capture the island in the middle of the river o?n the map, called Upwey. It has a reasonable number of troops o?n it so you'll need to build up at least a small army before taking it. To the north, there are two estates: Wintertop, which has iron ore deposits, and another estate with a bandit camp in it in the north-west corner. To the east, there are two estates: Scarcliffe and Tinhill, before you reach Upwey. You will not be left alone to build your army as Sir William will relentlessly assault you. He will often send archers, catapults and fire ballistae to guard estates and attack your castle, sometimes backed up with swordsmen. You will need to have a castle capable of holding out against these attacks before you can take the fight to him. First, the castle must be reconfigured. Delete all of the walls on the southern side, including the tower and gathouse. Then delete all the walls west of the keep, including the gatehouse. Place a string of walls from the keep north until it hits the stream. Now, place the Lord's Kitchen, the Bedchamber and the Courthouse next to the Barracks in a line leading south. Make sure that they are all facing into the castle with their long stone walls matching to create the defense of the castle. Then extend the wall a few more tiles to the cliffs to secure the castle. This has the affect of walling in all of the farmlands to the north and all the lumber to the south. Now buy about 200 wood, 10 stone, and 5 cloth (for the Lady to make dancing dresses) from the market. Place 12 woodcutters near the southern woods. Place 5 hunter's posts, four dairy farms and four apple farms near your granary. Change rations to "double" and alter the tax rate throughout the mission to keep your people happy. Place three hovels near the woodcutters. Put a tower-mounted mangonel in your o?nly tower, and site three fletchers near the armoury. Place a guard post near the hovels and a torturer's guild as near the courthouse as possible and place a torturer's wheel and an execution block. Also site two wheat farms south west of the stockpile by the mountains. Add two gong pits & a two falconer's posts in the extra spaces of your castle. As more wood and gold comes in, add three more fletchers and another gong pit. Since wheat should be coming in soon, place the mill by the stockpile and four bakeries between the stockpile and the granary. Also, squeeze into the southern area, an ell pond and two pig farms to support feasts. At any point during the mission, if you need more cash, you should find you're producing an excess of food. Sell any food type that is over 50. Buy extra royal foods to make the feast more grandiose, increasing the honor gained. Constantly train archers as the bows are created. Place about a third of them on the Barracks and the rest in the tower. Sir William will send some catapults to attack you now and then. Command your mangonel to aim near the estate border in the path of the enemy. Your archers should take care of the rest before they can do much damage. At o?ne point fairly early o?n, there will be a minor peasant revolt, and some peasants at your campfire will take up pitchforks and start to attack you. Just use your lord and archers to easily defeat them. When resources are present in great amounts, you'll want to place a joust at the western edge of the map. Remember to keep buying cloth as well for dresses. Eventually Sir William will actually lay siege to your castle. The siege camp will be placed in either Wintertop or Scarcliffe, and his archers and swordsmen will march there. While they march, they'll be within bowshot of your castle, so you should be able to whittle them down. Use your archers and fire ballista to destroy the approaching catapults, and your pikemen to destroy the battering ram when it moves close to your gatehouse. This should be enough to hold off the assault. Whenever you have over 1000 gold (sell excess food), and 250 honor (from dances and feasts) buy five swords and five suits of armor. Recruit 5 knights and use them to defend the castle during the siege After the siege is lifted, place a couple of stables in the northern section of the castle. Also now place a gatehouse near the stream. Get your knights o?n horseback, and head north over the bridge to the north with 10 bowmen. Kill any of Sir William's men that are there and destroy the siege camp. Claim the estate for your own, and ride north and destroy the bandit camp. Your north border is now safe, and the estate can begin making iron and shipping it to your castle. Use this and the money generated from selling food to train up 20 knights. Give them all horses. Site the engineer's guild and build six or seven fire ballistae. Use the fire ballistae to shoot at troops gathered in the estate to the east (Scarcliffe), concentrating o?n the enemy fire ballistae. When you have destroyed them, charge in with your knights and kill the enemy troops. Secure the estate for your own, and then move east again into Tinhill, using fire ballistae at range and then charge with the knights. Move your all your archers to support the balistae. Hold here, using the fire ballistae and the archers to shoot at approaching siege equipment and use the knights if troops get near. Don't advance o?n the island estate of Upwey yet. Get all of your knights back o?n horseback (they'll probably have lost some horses by now). Train some more knights, until you have around thirty gathered in Tinhill. Then use the fire ballistae and knights to take the island by force. Mission complete!

Greetings Everyone! In recent days, another article collection of our AI lords has been completed: this time for Stronghold Crusader. These articles intend to help with the inner workings of the computer characters, when faced in Skirmish games, such as what troops they use, what kinds of castles they attempt to build, and in general how much they go on your nerves with their raids. If a character has had a major change in the Definitive Edition - e.g. Frederick who buys weapons there -, it is also indicated. With this collection in place, I also recommend checking out our similar article collections for other games: Stronghold Crusader 2 AI Lords (from @ Sir Windows ) Stronghold 2 AI Lords (from @ Lord_Chris ) Stronghold Legends AI Lords Until next time, m'lord!

Thanks for sharing those things. I wish I could have tried it, but I haven't had enough time. I hope they didn't name them "longbowmen", they were a thing in the 14th century...[emoji1] I preferred the old spearmen, that didn't throw the spear. But that's just my option. That being said, I don't have much against them throwing their spears. I also hope they'll improve the interface. Sent from my motorola edge 50 fusion using Tapatalk

Here's another video about Stronghold 4. I like how the gameplay feels like Stronghold 2, and has a story like Stronghold 1. Stronghold 3 also wanted to continue the Stronghold 1 story, but it went much darker.

Do glad to see these being mentioned. Also, awesome that you brought up those other issues with some of the other AI lords! Well, a lot has changed in my life lately. I got married in February this year, and we became parents in March. We have a baby boy now. This might be something to write about in the appropriate thread for off-topic, and I should definitely do that! However, I find that related to this topic: now I've come to enjoy some relaxing activities, and playing Stronghold 2 could be one of them. That, and fixing those AI castles! So glad you mentioned all these issues needing to be fixed! Also, if somebody manages to make those fixes before me, they have their permission to include my fixes for Williams castles in that larger "castle fix pack".[emoji4] Thank you do "summoning" me with that great idea! Sent from my motorola edge 50 fusion using Tapatalk

I have been long overdue in writing this thread, but I wanted to let you all know some of the exciting changes we have made over tree last few months. Firstly, a congratulations is in order to @ IgnasheunKnight for coming on board and joining us as a team member! @ IgnasheunKnight has been a long time contributor to our Stronghold Legends downloads (over 2 years!) and we are thrilled to have her on board. She will primarily be continuing her role by creating content for Stronghold Legends, and now joins our phenomenal Legends team of me, @ Asophix , @ Sir Windows , @ Daerandin , and other notable community members as well. Thank you to everyone, and thank you to @ IgnasheunKnight for being part of the journey. It’s a pleasure to have you here 🙂 Site updates There are quite a few updates to inform you about… notably: The old Contributors and Experts groups have been removed and replaced by a new VIPs group instead. VIPs include any noteworthy figures in the community, or those with long standing expertise, experience or reputation. This includes figures on other communities such as @ Doomsword from Stronghold Heaven, @ LordPaultheDubious from Stronghold Knights and @ Krarilotus from the UCP. Previous groups have been adjusted and you may find yourself no longer get in one of those groups. The Contributors and Experts titles have been removed and replaced by Awards instead. You can find out how you are sliceable to become a Contributor or Expert by visiting this page: https://www.stronghold-nation.com/forums/awards/ VIPs typically will not be changed, and you would have to be known in the Stronghold community, including on other websites or groups, to become a part of this group. There are several other awards possible you can gain through your profile, by visiting the link above to explain more. Next, Multiplayer discussion has been removed from the Gaming Events forum, and game specific forums respectively, and instead placed into a new Multiplayer gaming community. The idea behind this is that you can quickly find and identify those members who are playing multiplayer games, and schedule Tournaments with them. When you visit an individual game related forum, you should find a sub forum at the top with a link to the respective place for Multiplayer discussion on those forums. You will need to join before participating in discussion there. Before joining please make sure you read and understand the rules. Each. Game will also receive its. Own modding community/club available at. The following link: https://www.stronghold-nation.com/forums/clubs/ it has long been a goal to organise Tournaments through the site. I am pleased to say we can technically do this through our Tournaments feature. You can also design and create your own factions, and join factions created by other users: https://www.stronghold-nation.com/forums/tournaments/teams/ The existing team is a test and will be removed, but you can now though create your own teams and join others if you wish. Next, in to the site. We have received major updates in a few areas over recent months thanks to my hard work. The navigation menu has been restructured, we have a new “subscriptions” page, where you can view those files you have subscribed to, a new advanced search engine has been produced which can search most of the entire site (excluding one or two things, and the forum), and a new game subscription is being developed. This will allow you to subscribe to games and receive email notifications for any articles posted into either a certain category, or a whole game itself. There are still a few changes to discuss which I will do in another post in coming days. Again, I want to conclude by wishing @ IgnasheunKnight well in her new role, and thanking her once again for her dedication to the site. You rock! 🙂

As a next round of changes, the Bedouin mercenaries' lines have been transcribed and added to the quotes database too. Some compromises had to be made for a few lines, as the database allows up to 75 characters only, resulting in slightly reworded English translations - the Arabic lines have been fully preserved. Enjoy! 🙂

Greetings! Today my big lord pack for Stronghold Legends was approved, and I thought a thread going more into details on its contents would be a good idea. Mostly, I want to give a more in-depth rundown on the six new lords featured in this lord pack and the thought process behind them. I am looking forward to feedback, comments, questions and suggestions on the lords., Links to Download Section Richard the Lionheart "My banner will fly atop your keep before this day is out!" Spoiler King of England, avid crusader and in my opinion one of the most memorable characters from Crusader, translating Richard into Legends ended up a more complicated task than expected. While Richard himself was a pretty straightforward lord, there was the huge issue of him overlapping too much with King Arthur. For one, they're almost identical when it comes to castle design and unit roster. The initial plan was to give Richard a castle based on his largest castle from Crusader, featuring an outer wall and basic towers. Unfortunately, I ran into the issue of Legend's maps being somewhat too small. As such, Richard uses a more classic castle design. To differentiate him militarily from Arthur, he doesn't use all round table units, while his raiding forces have been augmented by macemen and men-at-arms. This way Richard should be a more aggressive opponent, exerting pressure on his enemies early and continuously. Melee units: Swordsman, Pikeman, Maceman, Men-at-Arms, Gawain, Galahad, Percival Ranged units: Archer Siege: Trebuchet, Catapult, Siege Tower, Battering Ram, Mantlet, Cat Preferred colour: Blue or Red Sir Longarm "We fight for the honour of those that have gone before!" Spoiler Good old Sir Longarm is back for more. Unlike Richard, this old knight didn't prove too difficult to translate into Legends. Replacing Lancelot, he plays a very different game. Sir Longarm takes it slow from building up his castle, economy to using some of the most expensive units in the game. As a master of knights, he utilizes the round table to its maximum while also training a hearty amount of knights from his barracks. Sir Longarm might not be the quickest attacker, but one shouldn't underestimate him nonetheless, since once his knights ride out, there is no stopping them. Melee units: Swordsman, Knight, Knights of the Round Table Ranged units: Archer, Merlin Siege: Trebuchet, Catapult Preferred colour: Teal The Rat "You impudent upstart! I shall take great delight in dispatching you myself." Spoiler The rat is well known as the weakest opponent in any Stronghold game. This is also the case here. Although he is slightly more competent than in Crusader and has regained the ability to use siege weapons like in the original Stronghold. His castle is small, poorly designed and easy to besiege. His economy is nothing much to speak of either, but both are set up relatively quickly and cheaply, giving the rat the ability attack faster than any other AI. The rats armies are mostly made up of men-at-arms and archers.Since the rat is part of the ice faction, he also uses a limited amount of magical units for raiding. The idea here is that the rat administers his lands so poorly that wolves, bears and witches run rampant and even begin to spill over into neighbouring lands. Melee units: Man-at-Arms, Pikeman, White Wolf, Polar Bear Ranged units: Archer, White Witch Siege: Catapult, Mantlet Preferred colour: Orange The Pig "Blow the horn, bang the drum! The Pig is coming to town!" Spoiler The pig was one of those characters where the design choices seemed very obvious. He likes macemen, he is very violent, crude and his castles were always pretty square shaped. Making him part of the ice faction seemed the obvious choice since the square aesthetic fits him well and giants fit his style perfectly. Taking inspiration from the first Stronghold, the pig also uses pikemen for both defence and offence. His castle is on the smaller end of things. Initially he had a very large castle, but just like Richard he often ran into space issues. The pig takes some time to get his castle and economy set up, but once he's ready, he's coming in force. Melee units: Maceman, Pikeman, Giant Ranged units: Crossbowman, Archer Siege: Catapult, Battering Ram Preferred colour: Dark Red The Snake "Can you hear it, hm? That's your death drawing near." Spoiler The snake was something of a late addition. Initially, his spot was occupied by the Jackal from SH3/SHC2. The decision to scrap the Jackal in favour of the snake mostly came down to the fact that all other characters were using the SH/SHC voices and designs. The snake presented something of a challenge. For one, he was missing numerous voice lines, both due to using a messenger in SHC and due to not appearing in SHC2. Eventually the snake ended up using whatever voice clips he had in Crusader combined with some unused lines from SH2. The next challenge with the snake came down to his military. Looking at his appearances in previous games, one notices that the snake is either a beefed up rat (Crusader) or a weaker pig (Stronghold). What set him apart in Crusader was his usage of mercenaries and slaves for quick and early aggression. In Legends this is mostly represented by his two favourite units being demons and outlaws. Melee units: Maceman, Demon, Outlaw, Vampiric Creeper Ranged units: Archer, Giant Bat, Black Dragon, Siege: Catapult, Fire Ballista, Burning Cart, Mantlet Preferred colour: Yellow The Wolf "Soon you will see what it means to wage real warfare!" Spoiler The wolf is the strongest opponent in the game and was surprisingly easy to implement. He builds a strong castle, fortified by crossbowmen, pikemen and swordsmen. It takes him some time to set up completely, but whenever possible he sends out strong forces to harass his enemies. His raiding forces range from hardy pikemen and swordsmen to hellhounds and werewolves. Once ready the wolf sends out the strongest siege force out of all the AIs consisting of swordsmen, werewolves, crossbowmen and many deadly siege weapons. He is an opponent not to be underestimated. Melee units: Swordsman, Pikeman, Knight, Werewolve, Hellhound Ranged units: Crossbowman, Sorcerer, Giant Bat Siege: Catapult, Fire Ballista, Trebuchet, Mantlet, Cat Preferred colour: Grey

Hello All! Firefly Studios recently unveiled details about their next "Winter" update for Stronghold Crusader: DE, which is scheduled to release on February 3, 2026. Much like the Autumn Update, it will feature free additions to the base game, as well as a paid downloadable content called The Sergeant and the Lioness for 5 EUR / 5 USD / 4 GBP. Take a look at the contents below. Contents - Free Update 3 new maps A new cooperative trail Custom Trail Editor Create your own skirmish trail up to 50 custom skirmish missions, with a selection of opponents and maps tailored to your liking. Trails can be exported and shared with other players too! CPU Lord and Castle Editors Akin to our editors offered for SH2 and SHL (as well as the UCP!), Firefly will also grant us the ability to customise the preferences and castle layout templates built by any AI opponent. Both utilities seem to be standalone applications, with the Castle Editor visually greatly resembling its earlier counterpart for vanilla Crusader. Contents - DLC New Sands of Time Trail: Trail of the Cobra New AI opponent: The Sergeant Metal man! An aspiring veteran of a "dozen campaigns", who earned fame in his battles prefers his armored troops to chew through enemy defenses. Builds similarly to the Marshal, erecting large castles divided into multiple elongated quarters, and lots of towers on the sides. Seen using the sturdiest troops there are: Crossbowmen, Pikemen, Arabian Swordsmen, Demolishers. New AI opponent: The Lioness A bloodthirsty but playful dame? She is the proclaimed "Queen of the Sands", being an all-rounder overall. Her castles are much like an upgrade on the Kahinah, featuring an outer wall, moat and better productivity. Seen using a mix of Arabic and Bedouin troops: Arabian Swordsmen, Arabian Bowmen, Skirmishers, Heavy Camels.

Hello All! It is my to delight to announce that the Legends AI opponents got a series of informative articles. Each AI Lord is shown details about their castle layout, economic decisions and choice of attack/raid forces in a short text, where most information has been gathered from the game files and through observation. Here is the link for the SHL AI Lords home page: https://www.stronghold-nation.com/article/431-stronghold-legends-ai-lords While it's known that the Legends AI is rather limited in terms of effectiveness, they can still net a few enjoyable moments and there may be potential for upgrading them for an even better challenge. Should they prove challenging to overcome, or simply interesting to read about, this is your place!

Hi All! The icy blades of two veteran soldiers has been tested, in the frozen wastelands. @ Lord_Chris and @ Asophix have battled it out in the map Fjords, a balanced four-player map, where each estate is interconnected with narrow bridges. It is rather tricky to create a defensive encampment, as seen in the coming paragraphs. As an added difficulty and newfound experience, the game was played on the lowest rank, with no resources and consequently a very limited initial tech. Some food stocks were added to allow some breathing room, and random events haven't bothered the participants to allow for more of a fair fight. Setting Out It's only a folly to think that the inability to build a barracks and having no starting troops warrants a peaceful early-game. Right in the first minute, both players took arms and coincidentally headed towards the top-left estate to gain some ground, with their Lord. As Lord Chris arrived with his first and started claiming the village, while also exclaiming, Asophix decided it is best to summon Shield Maidens to delay the estate's capture, as well as in an attempt to unhorse the enemy Lord, making for an easier capture of the other neutral village. The red Major was however vigilant and cleverly disengaged, while also summoning his own Maidens. After both sides' Maidens were exhausted, Asophix's Lord could not reach the second estate in time to complete the capture and in fear of retaliation, he pulled back to his home estate to avert damage at home. Lord Chris did use the opportunity to seize the other estate. Building Up The next 5 to 10 minutes passed in relative peace. As both sides built up their initial economy and worked through the first few ranks, Asophix was rather reluctant to sit on his bottom and after building a bunch of Seal Holes and four Wood Camps with a modest stone and iron production, he used whatever gold he could to buy up royal foods for providing honour and recruit 10 starting archers and men-at-arms. The green archers reclaimed the second village estate from Lord Chris, while iron and meat production was greatly extended. Lord Chris at the same time opted for a more balanced approach, covering all possible economic branches consistently. For the Pantry, all three food production buildings were established, however raw material production lagged a little bit behind. What he correctly identified however, was the importance of honor and therefore kept his honor income consistent. He also used his own Lord to cut down the small band of archers and retook both estates again. Probing Attacks Having enough of the constricting situation, Asophix decided to scan the enemy home estate for vulnerabilities and take the initiative. Not minding the status quo, he invested a whopping 110 honor to erect an Ice Tower and recruit a single White Witch. The Witch was sent directly across the map, above the enemy royal food production to at least partially disrupt it. While this prompted a brief response from ~ 10 red Archers and the threat was dealt with rather quickly, Asophix used the opportunity to build the production for Crossbowmen and candles in preparation for the Church. The next round of skirmish came a little later, as Asophix created a band of 17 White Wolves and sent them to contest the firstly occupied estate, which was under the guard of a light red Archer group. The Wolves quickly disposed of the garrison, however reinforcements were not much far behind. Lord Chris sent a band of men-at-arms recruited from the initial supply, and this group arrived fast to the scene. Even though they were quickly decimated, the Wolves' ranks were thinned out considerably enough that a relief force of ~15 Crossbowmen pushed the invading canines out of the red territory for good. A follow-up harassment force of 3 White Witches was the nail in the coffin for Asophix's direct threats. As Lord Chris had a nicely running economy that could easily fund cheap units to repel intruders, he started building engine towers overlooking the outer perimeter, with Dragon Harpoons added on each one. The red estates were in relative safety from this point on. Counterattack in the East Using his superior funds, the Red player opted for a two-pronged attack. Using White Witches to secure the bridges and a Siege Camp in his other estate, Lord Chris constructed a few Catapults to lightly pummel the walls where the green defenders were rallying. In lieu of immediate response capabilities, Asophix had to spend yet another 200 honor on white wolves to run interception and maul the devilish engines to scrap before they could do much damage. Struggling with the lack of a proper frontline, Asophix doubled down on weapon production and added Pikeman equipment production, reaching 120 population. Since this took a lot of time to take effect, the Red adversary used his time to funnel additional forces into both of his villages. As Swordsmen and Pikemen rushed forth to the icy village halls, the total map domination of Lord Chris grew impossible to challenge head-on. Yet another group of red catapults appeared and started working on the Green player's outer defenses. As Asophix was desperate to build a Lookout Tower to provide bulk and height for his crossbowmen, the White Wolves also lead a second counterattack. This defensive measure proved costly however, as Crossbowmen loyal to Lord Chris had now a safe firing position from the village hall. Out of 25-30 White Wolves only 5 retreated home safely, telling tales of their defeat, provided they could speak a human language. Using Asophix's own method, Lord Chris scanned his area for vulnerabilities and decided to send a group of 10-15 White Witches around the defenses. There was one area not properly covered with Dragon Harpoons, so the witches were able to successfully pass through unscathed and unleashed their enchanted arrows on ant-like civilians. A second wave of Witches arrived and caused temporary loss of production in the enemy ranks until the hole was sealed and a Dragon Harpoon cleared home skies. Trouble Brewing Lord Chris had his siege camp still up in the second estate, which eventually weighed in the decision of building out a semi-impenetrable foothold there. As the Red ruler continued developing his economy and constantly strengthened his garrison, Asophix smelled blood. In a daring and ultimately costly strategic decision, he called the Ice Queen forth and sent her on a long march along a remote path to the foothold estate. She passed through undetected and the cold-hearted woman unleashed her icy wrath just on the edge of her ability range. Even though she came under fire, lots of red troops froze to death in their encampment. After the skirmish, Asophix decided it's time to go full evasive mode. Using his gold coffers and his last reserves of honor, he was desperate to find an angle. Replenishing his lost White Wolves and recruiting another 25 White Witches, the icy commando was running and flying around the perimeter, but there was no infiltration point: Lord Chris has built a well-maintained defense network of Dragon Harpoons and Crossbowmen. A band of 40 green Archers was unsuccessful the same way, but they could be repurposed as defense, as the red containment grew stronger. Eventually, the Red Siege Camp spawned catapults again, this time supported by durable wooden Cats. As troops being repositioned around the Lookout Tower were moving about, the catapults netted juicy shots, thinning out the defensive garrison considerably. A quick response of Asophix's White Wolves was successful dismantling the siege engines and the siege camp, but they all died in the process. All Hell Breaking Loose In the next 10 minutes, both sides built up their forces wherever needed. Although the focal point remained in the second estate, the other side got some reinforcements too, which Asophix tried to deter by arming to the teeth with crossbowmen. He also got his core army of 65-70 Pikemen, which he immediately deployed to the frontline. As the pikemen were congregating, Lord Chris also grabbed his colorful garrison and decided to create a combined-arms type of composition with multiple fire ballistae and additional cats. Asophix also deployed a handful of fire ballistae of his own and started taking potshots at the enemy ranks. This prompted Lord Chris to pull his forces together, while a small band of Frost Giants and Polar Bears marched steadily in their might. What he did not expect was the presence of the Ice Queen, whose icy attack temporarily stalled the towering colossi, then the rest of both main forces arrived. Snow fell from the Ice Queen's hands, White Witches rained down bright arrows, and careful maneuvering resulted in a second clash, this time with support from Lord Chris's pikemen. With the battle in full rage, Asophix's full attention was caught up in it. He reveled in control and concentrated on dispatching additional reinforcements from the nearby barracks. What he overlooked however was his other defensive front. Lord Chris sent in ten mighty Frost Giants, who easily walked through the thin walls and the endless rain of crossbow bolts, finding their way in the heart of the enemy stronghold. After two minutes of pure destruction, Asophix realized the error in his ways. Overlooking the loss of his town, he committed suicide rather unceremoniously to escape suffering. Congratulations to @ Lord_Chris for his victory!

Now I'm sure others such as Lord_Vetka have made tutorials for this already, I have wanted to do this for a while, since the Stronghold 2 editor is my strongpoint. I hope these hints and tips help you out when creating your very own Stronghold 2 map. Whether it's Kingmaker, Free Build, a War Scenario or a Peace Scenario! Plus, the guide has pictures! :D Key - Green = New topic Blue = Sub topic Introduction The first thing you should know about the Stronghold 2 map editor is that not everything is as clear as it may seem. It can be very difficult to use but at the same time it can be a joy to use! The map editor allows you to create 4 different types of maps. The first is Kingmaker (which is basically Stronghold 2's version of Skirmish, as seen in Crusader). Secondly, Free Build, this type of map allows the player to build a kingdom and an army for however long he wants without any form of enemy attacks (as of 1.4.1, there is an option to start invasions to test your kingdom's strength and to make the game more interesting). Third, we have War Scenario, war scenario allows the player to create his own campaign of sort, setting invasions, available troop types and so on. Finally, we have Peace Scenario's, peace scenario's are similar to war, except instead of being focused on armies and attacking, they focus more on reconstruction and helping other Lords or villages. Starting The first thing you should do before creating any map is decide what map you want to do. Once you've done this, you want to choose the map size. This is something that they've hidden quite well in Stronghold 2. The way to do this is to click the red "Edit Button" in the bottom right. Once you see the map, click the big tree (the terrain editor). In the mountain icon, there will be 3 small squares near the grid size selection. The two on the top allow you to choose between "small" and "large". Now, the next thing to do is to configure your missions (if you chose Kingmaker, then ignore the next steps). Free Build To configure a free build map is simple. Firstly set the starting goods for your map (this is the wood, stone, iron the player starts with at the beginning of the mission). Next select "Edit" (the red button in the bottom right) to bring up the map. As there is only one player, you do not need to set any more territories. Go to the terrain editor ("Tree") choose the "Flag" icon. This will bring up a palette of different colour squares. Next to those squares you will see other icons, for now, all of those are irrelevant but one. Select the castle icon, then place the green flag anywhere on the map. Now go back to the main map editor page. You will see a white background within the large square, with a keep somewhere on the map. Next to that large square, a red shield. Click that shield, then click the keep icon on the large square. You have now set the territory for the player. That's it configuring your map. Skip to title "Editing the Map" for the next step. War Scenario/Peace Scenario NOTE - Peace and War Scenarios are in the same title because of the similarity. The only difference between them is the category. Both Peace and War Scenarios have all the same actions and triggers, the only difference is that Peace Scenarios are categorised as less battle and more economy building whereas War Scenarios are the other way around! War Scenarios are the most difficult maps you will have to create, that's not to say it is difficult. First of all, you will want to think of the storyline and the mission. Once you have chosen what type of War Scenario you would like, I suggest editing the map first. Now that you have your map. it is time to "script" the missions. You will notice upon selecting War Scenario as your map type, "Mission 1" automatically appears. Highlighting that, then selecting "Edit Mission" below the large square, will take you to the configuration menu. You will notice a "Lose" action with the condition beside it. I recommend leaving this action alone as for most missions, losing your Lord should make you fail the whole mission (unless of course that isn't important to the mission). There are loads of different missions you can create, with a load of different events. For the purpose of the tutorial, we are going to make a mission where the player must survive an enemy attack, then kill the enemy lord. First, select "Add New Event" in the top left corner. This should take you to the events page. In actions, select "Win" then in triggers scroll down until you see "Enemy Lord Dead" select Edwin. Your events page should now look like this: Click the green arrow in the bottom left to go back. Select "Add New Event" again. In actions, select invasion. This will be a very simple invasion, change only the highlighted boxes, and match my screen print (to change the values, use the mouse scroller): Now go back to the configuration page. In the bottom of the page, you will notice another box which says "months". This indicates the months before the action is executed (a month in Stronghold 2 is equal to 1 minute in real life). I've set this to 12, you may set this to whatever you think is a fair amount of time. Note that this should vary depending on the missions difficulty, the starting goods, the map itself, the troops within the invasion (numbers and power) and what type of player will want to play the map! Now go back to the edit mission page. Your mission should now be almost identical to the one on my screen. Notice how I highlighted 3 other options. Those are completely up to you to decide. The "Trader" option is what is available for purchase and for selling in the market. The "Start Goods" option is what the player will start with, this includes resources, gold and popularity! The third option, "Building Availability" is what the player is allowed to build. Note that the last option gets buggy towards the end of the list, you may need to select a building 3 choices higher than the building you want to actually edit: Now go into the map editor. Select the terrain editor "Tree" and choose the flag icon. This will bring up a palette of coloured squares. Next to those, 4 different coloured flags. Since we selected red as the "Invasion Point" in the invasion event, we will select the red flag. It's important you place the first red flag in the right place as we chose "Flag 1" in the event editor and there is no way to delete a flag! Place the red flag wherever you wish the invasion to start. If you want to make it look realistic, I suggest placing it on the border of the map, but not too close as this can cause game crashes or the invasion to not work! The enemy troops will automatically attack the Player since we set the "Attack Player" option to true by selecting "Player". For the final part, skip to title "Setting Territories". Setting Territories Setting territories is mandatory for any map type! Luckily, it's very simple to do. Every player/AI needs his own territory. There are two different set ups. One for kingmaker, the other for Free Build and War/Peace Scenarios. Since kingmaker is the easiest, we will start with that. Set-up 1 Once in the map editor, select the terrain editor "Tree" then click the flag icon to bring up the territory selector. By default the whole map is red, this counts as one huge territory. For the tutorial, we will only set 2 territories, although you may have up to 17 (territories are needed for estates as well as castles). We will make the territories equal, to help us, we will use the grid option. Select territory 2 (orange) and change the brush size to the largest one. I've highlighted the icons to select: It's useful to know that there are 64 big squares length and width along the "Large" size map and 32 on a "Small" size map (using the grid) making a perfect square for each map size. This is equal to 256 small squares length and width for the "Large" size map and 128 small squares length and width for the "Small" size map. Meaning for 2 equal size territories on a large map you will have to give both territories 32 big squares length and width, and 16 big squares length and width on a small map. Once you have done this, select the "Keep" icon next to the colour palette. Place one keep flag in each territory: Note that using the building editor "Tower" then selecting the "Hovel" icon takes you to a page where you will see 4 different keeps. Placing one keep in each territory moves the flag and sets the keep spawn. For kingmaker you have finished. Set-up 2 Continuing from Set-up 1, go back to the main map editor page. You will see 2 keep icons in the large square. Since you have selected the map type Free Build or War/Peace Scenario, you will have a selection of different shields, (Free Build only gives you one shield) free Build is explained more in-depth in the "Free Build" title! Select the Player shield (red) and place it on the Player's territory. Depending on your opponent/allies you will select their shield and place it on the correct territory. For the purpose of this tutorial, I will use the Player's shield and Olaf's shield: You will see the territories match the colour of the attire. That is the second Set-up complete. Editing the Map This section will cover map editing techniques and tricks that I've found during my time using the map editor. First, take note that there are 2 different types of editors. Building and Terrain, as I like to call them. Building is shown by a "Tower" while terrain is shown by a "Tree". I won't go too much into detail with the building editor as it's quite self explanatory. It allows the player to place buildings into the map. There are some map editor-only buildings, such as ruined bridges and monasteries, which the Player can repair during the mission. There are also different keeps and an outlaw camp which you can place into the map as well. Terrain Editor The terrain editor is the most important tool within the map editor. Every single map requires you to use at least one section of the terrain editor. Again, nearly everything in the terrain editor is self explanatory, but there are a few things which you may not understand, so I will go over those now. I will work my way from the top left highlighted icon, to the bottom right highlighted icon. 1. The first icon in this section is the river icon. Simply this allows you to place flowing rivers into your map. 2. The one right to that icon is the river-flow editor. This allows you to edit the river flowing direction to suit your liking. 3. The next icon creates a ripple effect within the river. As if someone had dropped a pebble lightly into the river. 4. Now we move on to the sea placing icon. This simply allows you to place the sea into your map. 5. Next to that we have the sea flow editor, similar to the river-flow editor, except it's for the sea :P 6. This icon allows the player to place marsh land, where the player may gather pitch. 7. Finally fog, this icon allows the player to make foggy areas. Textures Textures is an important feature to use in order to make your map look as beautiful and realistic as you can. All the textures are useful, but I'm going to go over my favourite ones. I will work from left to right, of the highlighted icons. 1. This one is a dead and damp type of grass. It's useful in very small patches to add different types of textures into simple and plain areas. 2. This texture is my favourite grass texture. It's a dark and damp grass, useful in large patches to cover a lot of plain grass. 3. The default grass texture. I highlighted this because I use it as an eraser. Any land that looks ugly or overcrowded, dab some plain grass on it and start again. Again, I will work from left to right. 1. The first highlighted stone is sort of rubble mixed with damp grass. It's useful for broken paths, or for low-rocky areas. 2. This texture is the default grass with pebbles. It's useful scattered around flat land on mountains or next to stone buildings. 3. This texture is similar to the first one, but it contains more stone than grass and has almost a marsh land look to it. Once more, left to right. 1. This one is plain dirt, with particles of green grass poking through. Useful next to iron ore, or in ditches within mountains. 2. This is the opposite to the first. It is the default grass texture, with almost dust like mud. Useful for muddy paths or next to wooden structures. This next trick I want to show you isn't so much a texture. A lot of people use this as a marker, I use it to change the time of day of my maps. This is how to create night time maps in Stronghold 2 map editor. Let me show you how well this works! - Day Time Night Time That's it for my tutorial. I hope this helps you out! Any questions just post a comment and I'll get back to you ASAP! Thank you for reading! Best regards, Tom :)

Hello Everyone! I have been developing an AI Editor for Stronghold Legends. The aim is to get as much liberty as possible over the design of an AI, making them more competent and fun to play against. I also hope that any user can have a smooth experience, while designing a dream castle! This project is a recompiled and modified variant of the original Stronghold-Knights SH2 AI Editor, adapted for Legends. Currently it knows a little bit more than its predecessor, with a few quality-of-life features added: Working directory and save file history up to ten files. Zoom in and out with the mouse wheel. As the development's initial focus was to get a robust adaptation for a foolproof planning, the utility and its design in particular can still feel a lot 2005-ish. I have plans to upgrade the app with a lot more features and supply it a more up-to-date look and feel, with responsiveness in mind. If you want to participate in testing, please message me on my profile! Any remarks are also welcome under this post. 🙂 As an inspiration, see an excerpt of Mordred's slightly edited vanilla castle:

I'm delighted to announce and inform members that after many years worth or work we now have detailed Walkthroughs, and corresponding saved games, for every single Stronghold Legends Campaign Mission and Skirmish Trail that was ever made, including the bonus content publicly released by Firefly in 2016 for the first time. You can find all of these guides under the following page on the main site: https://www.stronghold-nation.com/games/stronghold-legends/walkthroughs Or instead you can head over to our Stronghold Legends section -> Mission Walkthroughs via the main site. Hopefully you find as much enjoyment out of reading them that we did in writing them! 🙂

I havent been in a stronghold forum since I was young, brings back a lot of memories and nostalgia seeing names from back then. Hope everyone is well.

And a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you too Nigel and all of our other members and guests! Let's hope 2022 brings us a much better and more prosperous year than the previous two that we've had. Onwards and upwards to better health, better times and of course to some decent games of Stronghold! 🏆 Now... how about a trip to The Open Castle Inn? 😀

I'm a bit later even than that, sorry guys...[emoji1] Happy New Year to everyone! [emoji3][emoji322] Sent from my Mi A2 Lite using Tapatalk

This is great! Stronghold Warlords seams pretty interesting, and I'm just waiting to be able to try it out. This competition might give me the opportunity to get the copy of the game right way, but more than that I hope that many much more experienced and more talented Stronghold fans (than me) are going to join! And with you guys I see that it's going to be the second option. 😄 You have done some pretty nice stuff. What I mostly like to download are skirmish maps, and you @Krarilotus have some awesome maps for that. I really like your 'A Crusader's Christmas' - Christmas Calendar Skirmish Campaign. And both of you, @Krarilotus and @artofmath, have nice AI castles for Stronghold Crusader. That is one of the things which can be pretty hard to make. I've been doing some corrections to the original castle designs, but making something completely new out of the scratch - definitely not an easy thing to do! Now when we're talking about forum being alive... I think it's more alive than it seams to be, at least that's my theory. As you yourselves confirmed, you visit it now and then, pay attention to what's going on in Downloads Central, and move on. Then you don't see much activity, but we are here. 🙂 And my idea is to fix it by discussing new stuff in the forum. New maps, mods, scenarios... But that's just my opinion. True, for any map itself it is good to have discussions about it in its comments, but discussing it in the forum brings more attention to it, and it would be easier for everybody to join us in the discussions after noticing us here - talking at least anything. I'm happy to see you guys joining!

There seems to be (or, more precisely, to have been a few years ago...) a discussion about swordsmen vs pikemen, so I decided to present my opinion on that matter (yea, just a tiny bit late). Many players hold that the swordsman is the strongest unit and, therefore, best suited for sieges. If I recall correctly, even the in-game manual says so. But, in fact, this is quite far from the truth, and swordsmen are next to useless in laying a siege. Sure, swordsmen have powerful attack and decent armor. But they also have a lot of disadvantages which more than offset this fact: slow vulnerable to crossbow bolts very vulnerable to fire cannot dig moats cannot climb ladders (duh) slow did I already mention that they are slow? In an open field, an archer can run in circles around the swordsman, and will eventually bring him down. So what is the best melee unit for sieges? Unsurprisingly, the pikeman it is. He is significantly faster than the swordsman, has better armor, and can dig moats. This makes him much more likely to reach the enemy walls before being reduced to scrap metal. His only disadvantage is his pathetic attack, but it isn't as crippling as it probably was intended by developers. This is because the peculiar way Stronghold 1 handles unit collision. I believe everybody has noticed by now that units take no space themselves, and theoretically there can be any number of friendly units on exactly the same spot. They will spread out when given an opportunity, but they will remain in the same spot if there's no room to spread to, or if they are attacking. The first condition also enables tower stuffing, but that's off topic. This shortcomingfeature also allows you, with the slightest amount of micro-management, to have two or three pikemen standing on the same tile and attacking the same wall block. Despite the weak attack of individual pikemen, this arrangement will tear through the walls in reasonable time. Besides, any damage by incoming arrows will be spread over a larger count of units, so each of them has a greater chance to survive. The swordsman is actually a defensive unit, and his true purpose is defending wall breaches. Groups of swordsmen are best placed where such breaches are likely to occur ? right behind the gatehouse; in the outer court, next to the most exposed stretch of wall; and on top of the keep (duh). Located in this way, they won't have to rush to the enemy, so their slowness won't be an issue, and the walls will protect them from enemy fire. They will engage the attacking troops from three sides and chop them down as quickly as they arrive. Now, it might seem that pikemen are just as suitable for that task. But, in fact, this is the sort of situation where their weak attack turns into a big weakness. If the advancing file of enemies is not dispatched quickly, they all will squeeze into a single tile and start attacking all at once. In effect, this creates a "super soldier", which will kill even the toughest opponent in one blow. Consequently, pikemen can only slow down the attack, which actually may make it stronger, unless your ranged units provide ample fire support. Meanwhile, a sufficient number of swordsmen can fend off an attack on its own.

Thank you again for the kind words, Chris! I really appreciate it :) Hopefully I can continue to contribute positively to the site!?

Ad Hominem Yes, this is in fact considered a logical fallacy. Ad hominem, meaning "to the man" in Latin, is such a common fallacy, that it is even a break of the code of conduct for SHN. Simply put, ad hominem is to attack a person's character, background, appearance, instead of the argument or idea itself. This is where "to the man" is clear, as the response is directed at the "man", or person, themselves, and not the point of the discussion. Interestingly, the terms ad mulieriem?and ad feminam?were used when referencing this type of fallacy towards women. It is important to note that ad hominem is not only insulting a person. This would simply be an insult in that case. Ad hominem is a fallacy as it is an insult used as an argument or evidence towards one's motives. Straw Man Fallacy A straw-man fallacy is where one deconstructs, removes, and essentially downgrades a position or argument, in order to make it easier to attack. The analogy of the straw-man essentially suggests that by making one's argument nothing but a lifeless bundle of straw, it is easy to defeat. The term "Scarecrow fallacy" is sometimes used. These fallacies are deceitful, and are often unnoticed. Sentences such as "So you're saying..." are key to look for, as straw-man fallacies often begin in such a way. Black and White Fallacy Often referred to as a false dilemma, is a line of reasoning in which the conclusions to a position are intentionally limited. Usually, these are limited to two conclusions, hence the use of "black and white", but can be very high in number. The point of this fallacy is that the conclusions or options are oversimplified in order to weaken them. This is often seen in fighting talk, "Either we fight, or we die" being a common one. Clearly, in most cases, fight or die are not the only options. One can flee, one can fight head-on, or they can go behind enemy lines. The options are not either-or as is suggested. Because of this, this fallacy is sometimes referred to as an "either-or fallacy." Red Herring A red-herring fallacy is when a position is countered by making a statement or response that seems relevant, but in fact is not on-topic. The response is often disguised and believable as relevant, even if this is not the case. Somebody discussing theft sentences being increased to 1 year instead of 6 months is a good example of this. If somebody were to reply, "Well, I know somebody who committed murder and got away with it," this would be a red-herring. The reply is mostly relevant, as it is referring to crime and punishment, along with sentencing, however, it is not truly acknowledging or counter-arguing the original statement.? ====================================================================================================================================== Of course, there are many more logical fallacies than these listed. I simply wanted to make a short guide of the most popular ones. My reason behind this is that today, rationalism and logical reasoning seems to be on the rise. However, with this, logical fallacies too become more apparent. Plus, it may teach someone something new, and that's well-worth it in my opinion! :)

HEAR YE, HEAR YE, HEAR YE......Lords and Ladies of The Realm..... The most Recent History Quiz is now available for play. Resounding Huzzahs to All!

I NEVER (if ever), get involved with "these" Subjects, BUT......your "Religious Education" Teacher is an a***e. As the "Resident" History "Expert" here... (lol, lol), I have a hard piece of truth for her to digest. All Cultures are Racist. Conversely, so are all Religions. Maybe they don't mean to be, but that is a truth in our "developmental" and shared History. As an American "Southern White" (no, really) - I have been called a "Racist and White Supremacist" on more than one occasion, simply because I "honor" The memory of fallen Southern Soldiers of the "late" War for Southern Independence. I honor Northern Soldiers, too. Would I be a "Nazi" to show respect for fallen Wehrmacht Soldiers, while at the same time lamenting the "Noble Red Man?" Yes, The Quran is a great Book of Religious Peace and tolerance. But it is also taken our of context by Zealots. News flash, so has The Holy Bible......alot. some would call a Terrorist a "Freedom Fighter".? Your "Teacher" has obviously spent her time on the Protest Line and not The Battle Line. And I suppose, that is her Right, even in Wales. In America, we are repleat with such peopke, proudly waving "The Flag" in one hand, and a copy of The Constitution in the other (my Countries extremely over used 1st Amendment). Whether or not, you have an opinion, ?right or wrong. If you want to stand against the terror and loss of life that The Extremists cause, fine. Then don't complaint when that Tomahawk Missile come knocking at your door. In my School Debating Day, (and it was close to the time of The Lincoln-Douglas Debates, look it up....lol), I would often be tasked with defending the Bad Guy. Thus made me better understand The Good Guys. Rather than label you "anti Muslim", she missed an opportunity to show contrasting viewpoints more articulately.? And regardless, many US Teachers have lost your jobs for injecting their views into an established curriculum. If you were my Son, me and Teach and your Head Master would be having a very long talk.?

Right, Chris kindly summoned me from my university "slumber" :lol: so I'll try to keep my views to one post (rebuttals welcome) even though I'm a bit late to the party here. :P As others have said, we need to wait four years (eight probably - since every President from Reagan to Obama, except the first Bush, was in for two terms) or an impeachment. In the case of an impeachment or a more unfortunate incident, the current Vice President, Mike Pence, would become President for the remainder of Trump's term. Pence has pretty much the same views as Trump, except he has (what some have called) harsh views regarding LGBTQ+ (etc.). I'm not going to comment here, except that the Democrat and Green parties and those loyal to them have attempted to "inflate" the numbers of such people to garner their sympathies (and votes). Pretty much - they won't want to replace Trump with Pence; even though they have called Trump all sorts of names, he has (so far) purposefully left untouched Obama's anti-discrimination laws. Agreed. I'm a bit of a Realpolitik advocate, and I believe no "peaceful" people (including the many pre-Islamic Christian tribes and kingdoms- Germanic, Celtic, etc.) could have survived the Middle Ages, nor can survive in a "changing" world. However, Christianity and Islam do have very different histories. The former was adopted as a last ditch effort by a shrinking (but still very large) Empire, and was for the most part spread peacefully this way to many different ethnicities. People could keep their own cultures and religions, even if Churches had their own set language (Latin, Greek, or even Amharic). The main exceptions being Charlemagne's conquest of the Saxons, and some of the early Baltic Crusades. The numbered Crusades in the Levant really had no intention of converting people, but to "reclaim" land that once was Christian. Islam was always more homogenous. It started in Arabia, but its adherents largely remained members of Arab or "Semetic" tribes. We also know from archaeology that Greek and Egyptian languages existed side by side in Egypt, and most folks there belonged to the Coptic church(es). Some time after Abu Bakr blitzed across North Africa, clearly the language of the land changed to Arabic. Some would argue that the ethnicities changed, but definitely not as much as the Ottomization of the Balkans (poor Skanderbeg). Of course "Gaul" became Romanized then Frankicized then Frenchified, and these were because of the shifting of rulers and not so much a massacre of the locals. Bottom line - this could be left in the past, but to me it seems ISIS and many other terror groups want to do a repeat of what Abu Bakr did, and the Saudi royals and other Arab emirs don't really seem to mind that much, as long as they are left untouched. YES! Thank you for being very reasonable. Between you and some of the folks I've heard Farage talk to, I think there is much more hope for the British Left than for the American Left. (British stoicism eh? None of that "mah feewlings" safe space stuff). Unfortunately the folks running Labour and Lib Dems (and until recently the Conservatives) still seem like a sour bunch to me. There exist lots of "conservatives" still, in the US and UK, who I feel are just hesitant and slightly racist liberals. I do have hope for Trump and Theresa May (she seems to have stepped up a lot after Trump got in over here). The working class of the US have had enough of unions and illegal immigrants squeezing them out of jobs and jacking up the cost of living. Many of whom, who aren't even that "conservative" in a Bush or Thatcher type of way, are starting to wear the term "nationalist" with pride - because yes, they want their nation back. Agreed, but it feels like it's getting worse, since the elites/globalists/special interests who run The Ministry of Truth Media seem to be more and more disconnected from myself and my fellow "Trump-pets." Half of the country agrees with The Media apparently, so I guess they're riding on the hope that four more classes to graduate from the "degree mills" will sway the election their way next time. Even up until Trump won the GOP nomination, I used to read CNN and The Hill, which have now (especially the former) gone "to the dogs." I think most of the people at Fox News and The Boston Herald have an idea of what's going on. I do occasion InfoWars and Breitbart just to get another view, even if they are "fake news" according to the almighty Zucc (yeah, ok, a lot of my news is filtered through meme pages :P). My Final Thoughts I encourage everyone to read the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 (chapter 2 section 212) (LINK - you will need to search the document for "212"). Also, my sources indicate that it was Obama who first barred entry from Iraq during a six-month period, and that the seven countries that Trump barred entry into the US were placed under "special consideration" by the Obama administration (considering to do the same thing). Further: only 13% of the world's Muslims live in those seven countries. 87% of the world's Muslims may enter and exit the US - legally - as they please. Keep in mind, with the current state of the US borders, and the horrendous ID-checking procedures of the EU, those 13% can probably find another way into the US if they really wanted to.

I can tell you that you can contribute more than you think, as there are lots of map makers here. They all like having some feedback after they publish their maps, and often they need map testers. For example, if one makes a scenario, you can test it before it is submitted here to the downloads central. This way really great scenarios are made, but you also have fun. Besides that, you share your opinion about each version of the scenario with the creator, and this way you contribute a lot as the final version of the scenario depends of you as well. :) By the way, you said Saturday, but in the heading there is December 11th (and that's Friday). On which day would it be? I may be able to jump in on Friday evening maybe, but I'm going to have a lot of work this weekend. :( I stand with Lord Banshee, if you didn't have fun with Crusader 1 in multiplayer, you might find Stronghold 1 really interesting. Economy is slower in Stronghold 1, so it takes more time to build an army, and if you make a mistake and lose a lot of troops in a battle, you could be in a real trouble. :) On the other hand, I agree with what you say about Crusader 1 in multiplayer when it comes to those "pro" players. They just seek for most efficient way to win, and in my opinion that king of playing started to be only because of wanting to be the best, which is terribly wrong attitude - at least we can't argue with that when it comes to games. That's why I'm here, that's one of the reasons... While playing on GameRanger I was also visiting Stronghold Heaven and Stronghold Knights. With those guys from Stronghold Knights I had lots of interesting games - not caring who will win, or if map is perfectly balanced, etc... Later Stronghold Knights went down, but then Stronghold Nation came to be, and here we are again. :)

Hey Guys, I though I'd write an article on RAID Arrays for any of you that are interested. Let me know if you guys think I should do some more of these articles. A RAID Array is a ?Redundant Array of Independent Disks? which combines multiple Hard Disks to create data redundancy, performance improvement, or both. I?ll only be covering the main and mostly used RAID levels as they are the most popular. I?m also not covering all different types of RAID as they get very confusing and most just improve on another. A RAID 0 is where data is written across multiple drive. For example, if you had an image of your family, half of that image would be stored on one drive the rest of the image on another (Or in the case of more than 2 drives, the file will be split equally across all drives.) Because each drive is being used to store the image, the read and write speeds of a RAID 0 is a lot higher because the data is written across the drives and doesn?t have to wait until all of it stored by one drive. The downside to RAID 0 though is that if you have 2 drives in a RAID 0 and one of them fails, then half of your data is lost as the data is stored equally across the drives. If you are combining multiple drives with different sizes of storage then the RAID storage would only be as high as the smallest sized drive in the RAID array. RAID Arrays above level 0 provide protection against loss of drives and data. RAID 1 is where the data written to one drive and also written to another. So your picture of your family is written fully to both drives in your RAID Array. This is great because if one drive fails then you have a backup that is a clone of your other drive. The downside to RAID 1 is that you will not have more storage as the other drive acts as a clone which could make your RAID array expensive if you have high capacity drives. The Storage space on a RAID 1 is also only as high as the lowest sized drive. RAID 10 is Simple. It is the combination of RAID 0 and RAID 1. For example, if you had 10 drives, then 5 of this drives would be group 1 and the other 5 would be group 2. Group 1 is connected together via RAID 0 for fast file read and writes because the data is being split amongst them. The other 5 act as RAID 1s for the other drives. So they become backups of Group 1. This allows for data integrity and backups as well as faster read and write speeds. The downside to RAID 10 is that it is very expensive and you need at least a minimum of 4 drives. if each drive is ?50 and you need 4 for a small RAID 10 then that is ?200 so you can see how easily the cost rises with a RAID 10. RAID 10 is also the most efficient and safest way to back up data. (Unless you want a RAID 60 but that is just silly.) An example of a RAID 10 is the server this website is using. They used a RAID 10 to store all the data which gave them fast speeds and safety knowing that there was an active backup being constantly made. Unfortunately, 1 drive died which meant the backup of that drive should have taken over and it should have been as easy as replacing the broken drive with a new one and rebuilding the array. But as luck would have it, the backup of that drive failed at the same time too meaning a sizeable chunk of data was lost. Now any half decent company will have at least 3 backups of the data but the reason the site was down so long was because of the data loss and they had to rebuild all of the data in the RAID array. Also you are welcome to ask any questions about RAID and I?ll happily help. If you would prefer to learn more about RAID then I recommend the Wikipedia page on it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID or if you are more of a visual learner, here are some links to a YouTube video which may help you:

@Isaiah mentions one of the many possibilities of the Sav-to-Map trick. For a more graphical / detailed procedure, check out this link: http://www.stronghold-nation.com/article/159-making-savtomap-files :)

It was announced today that the English actor and singer, Sir Christopher Lee, died on June 7th at the age of 93. We all knew him for his role as Dracula and Frankenstein's monster in the Hammer horror films, and as Saruman in The Lord of the Rings?and The Hobbit films. Recently, he sang for different types of albums in the "metal" genre, including the parts of Don Quixote and Charlemagne. Sir Lee himself was a descendant of Charlemagne, but an honorable man and skilled performer in his own right. Here is the BBC story for verification:?http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-33098353

Hiya - should be no problem - send me an email and I'll convert it for you

TODAYS TECHNOLOGY Flickery Night-time Smartphone Video Footage Excuse the long title but this is an interesting topic I feel you guys might not know. So here we go. If anyone here has ever filmed in Europe with a smartphone under artificial light, or seen a video that has been filmed in those conditions, you may notice flickery footage. You may see black lines rolling down the video footage continuously. This is caused because the U.S power grid and the EU power grid run at different speeds. The EU power grid runs at 50Hz (50 cycles a second) meaning the alternating current in the wires switches direction x100 a second. 50 cycles back and forth. Meaning all the lights dim x100 a second. It's not enough for you to see with the naked eye, but the camera will pick it up. This isn't a problem as long as the camera runs at the same rate as the light. Unfortunately, some smartphones, for example the iPhone is an American phone and so runs at the same rate as the American power grid, which runs at 60Hz. So American TV runs at 30 or 60FPS (Frames Per Second). If a camera is recording at 30FPS, but the light is pulsing at 50Hz, the two are out of sync, meaning sometimes you get light and sometimes you get dark. The rolling effect occurs because of rolling shutters on cameras. All modern cameras (unless extremely advanced) record/capture a line at a time, scrolling down. Meaning the pixels in the top line of the picture would have been captured a fraction of a second before the pixels in the bottom line of the picture. This of course means through the whole image you will be seeing different times. Since we already understand that because of the desync in light and camera, we will sometimes see light and sometimes see dark, this causes the camera to do the same. Of course the easy way to fix it would be for Apple to have a 25FPS option. I myself, don't see that happening any time soon :P