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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!

Hello Everyone! There are multiple news in the SH4 department, as it is a double whammy: a new demo version has been made available for download on Steam, as well as details about the early access period arrived. About the Demo There are two demo versions coming up: one already available as of October 8, while a second one will release on October 19 with the Steam Next Fest. The current demo is featuring a Free Build mode to play around with the toys at our disposal, as well as resources can be added at will along with preset invasions to lay siege on your fortification. On top of it, the tutorial missions have been preserved for play, should you prefer a more narrative approach to economy and military alike. The second demo will come with the yet unseen Skirmish Mode, where you can battle it out against three computer opponents in 1v1 or 1v3 preset settings: Penryn, The Snake and Sir Longarm. The download link for the current demo is unchanged: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2153760/Stronghold_4/ (4.6 GB size). About the Early Access As alluded to in earlier news: an Early Access period will precede the 1.0 launch, starting on December 7, 2026 and it is going to last approximately six months. According to the game's Steam Store page, the EA will contain partially complete features and builds may vary based on community feedback on the studios' Discord. Pricing is not yet known, however the early access price may be increased by the full release. At this time, SH4 EA promises to include a prequel story campaign, Skirmish mode against 8 opponents, Freebuild and a Skirmish Trail. Please note that this public demo does not reflect the ready product and as a result, bugs and unfinished features may occur. Refer to the SH4 megathread for more information about potential features, as well as the Stronghold 4 Steam page for system requirements. Have fun with the demo!

Hello All! With Stronghold 4 having taken a spotlight for the last few weeks, Crusader DE was forced back in the shadows. Not anymore though, as news of the Summer Update has surfaced with a new teaser from Firefly Studios. This humble content update is planned to release on August 4, 2026. Following suit, the Summer Update brings two-fold content in the form of free contents and paid DLC contents respectively. The downloadable content: The Surgeon and Baibars will be available for purchase at the cost of 5 EUR / 5 USD / 4 GBP on Steam. Note: Kindly be advised that the Summer Update is scheduled to be the last one that is about to bring new content in the game, concerning the devs. Additional content will still be available via the Steam Workshop and alternative sources. Contents - Free Update 3 new maps A new cooperative trail (Dance of the Scorpions) Contents - DLC New Sands of Time Trail: Trail of the Vulture New AI opponent: Sultan Baibars Sultan of the Mamelukes, Baibars is the literal panther of the desert: he will attack and defend ferociously, while neglecting his economy somewhat. His square-shaped castle features medium-sized towers, as well as a large Round Tower with double crenellations on the walls, and all sorts of nasty traps in the perimeter. Wields a streamlined Arabic-Bedouin mix of troops, with a particular emphasis on Eunuchs and Arabian Swordsmen. Also seems to deploy Tunnelers for assaults. New AI opponent: The Surgeon A more mysterious, kind-hearted opponent who likes to build his domain with a sprawling and thriving economy, similar to the Emir or the Trader. His enclosures are densely packed with an average-sized industry, surrounded by Round Towers with Ballistae on top, as well as Killing Pits in generous supply, as well as Moat in his larger designs. Uses European ranged units to defend with Pikemen, backed by an overall preference to Skirmishers.

Hello Everyone! Stronghold Nation has been given newfound vigor and content in the form of a SH4 quick peek 🙂 Though many of us have already plowed through the modest content the demo offers, we hope that we can spread the fun for more castle fanatics like us. We also wish to bring more interactive videos on a semi-regular basis, with diverse topics like SHN content coverage, or other goodies you wish to appear. We are open to feedback at any given time, under this thread or even in DMs. The Nation serves you all! 🙂

So the official Stronghold 4 website also contains some more information. The first thing I noticed is four videos of different characters featuring the rat, Sir Longarms and two new characters. I'm guessing the boy is Penryn of Wethel, the new main character. It'd be pretty interesting if he's a possible skirmish opponent. Then there's the girl archer from the trailer. Also further down is a screenshot of the snake. I'd say it's safe to assume we know five of the eight skirmish opponents by now. Maybe even more if we assume that the wolf and pig aren't going to miss out on showing up later. Spoiler 01.webm Spoiler 02.webm Spoiler 03.webm Spoiler 04.webm Spoiler

They announced Stronghold 4 this evening. Seems exciting! I'm not sure, from the trailer, it feels like the old Stronghold with Stronghold Crusader 2 & Stronghold Warlords engine? Disappointing if that would mean no moats in the new Stronghold, although I like the idea of going back to the original theme. They especially need to get back to it because of Stronghold 3, which they messed up. Also, my guess is that we won't have a unit collision. Sent from my motorola edge 50 fusion using Tapatalk

Hi All! A small update has been added to the site, as now the main page "Quotes" section now has a chance to display the Arabic mercenary troops' voice lines. Both the original Arabic and translated English transcripts can be read, so now you may understand what "Mustahil" or those other frequently heard lines may mean! Courtesy to Ali Aziz on Youtube for providing the original transcripts in his videos, which were then ever so slightly refined with the help of Google Translate. Enjoy this small crumb of update! 🙂

Hi All! On the day of writing this post, I had a very intense match with @ Lord_Chris as Arthur against Ice. I also wrote a detailed article about a year ago to-date about how the Arthur faction is vastly the underdog compared to Ice and Evil, at least when it comes to utilising their faction-specific toolkit. This prompted me to revisit the idea and share my findings with you. Point 1 - Arthur is not a muscle faction Like in my previous post, I pointed out how Arthur's Knights of the Royal Table are geared towards controlling an area and exerting control there at an opportune moment. They are indeed excellent and there are definitely a few who you always want on the battlefield. This doesn't mean however that they are the workhorse of your military. Quite the contrary. Special units are very expensive and given how Legends feeds you only so much honor with a proper economy, you can't always rely on them, not to mention their gynormous ability cooldown time! Siege Tower concentrations with missile troops and casters are a common thing, which you can't immediately remove by your siege engines, or your Green Dragon. Even if you manage to take out a bunch of enemies, they will just print reinforcements. Moreover, the enemy caster often comes in under the forest of mantlets to safely erase your army. Not even hundreds of men-at-arms chew through that much wood. This is where a paradigm shift comes into play: you are supposed to play by trying to overwhelm your enemy with control. You are supposed to divert their attention. Let's just face the fact: Arthur's army's unit power is the WORST among all three factions at maximum size. Ice can always pump out Giants, Evil can always bring Werewolves, not to mention Bats and Stake Hurlers can just rain on your carefully constructed siege position at whim. Instead, if you create a second or even third army and try to create opportunistic attacks elsewhere, the enemy will suddenly be unable to solve all their problems right away. Getting around an entrenched position may mean running down enemy estates left vulnerable, flying in your Dragon or sending in Percival as a major threat, only to strike somewhere else by setting up a second siege camp and running down their defenseless flank. Point 2 - Men-at-arms should be your core unit Men-at-arms are cheap units that are easy to sleep on: their staying power is relatively low, they don't generally do much damage, and they are bad in sieges. What they excel at however, is mobility and skirmishing. Usually with Arthur you can't afford all those shiny troops right away, and even if you do, you will find how your other options all come with a drawback: Macemen are very expensive and they tend to get bogged down in melee once engaged. Even though they are a decent shock troop, they have problems taking over garrisoned village halls or wall defenses. Crossbowmen are very slow, even though they declare an area a pin-cushion in their immediate vicinity. They make a bad response troop, due to their abysmal movement speed. The same can be said for Pikemen and Swordsmen. Archers are another mainstay unit, however once the enemy starts fortifying its key positions, they barely put a dent into shields and crossbowmen. Moreover, their firepower is insufficient when the enemy approaches en masse. On the contrary, Men-at-arms are a great candidate as a core unit, because: They are cheap. Even if you don't build poleturners, their equipment is easy to come by on the market, consequently they are always available for recruitment. They are fast. As interceptors, Men-at-arms can traverse the battlefield quickly. It's not uncommon for an enemy to throw a bunch of troops against your outlying guards or flanking your position into your Siege Camp. These interceptions are what give you the option to intercept, or show up on another front to cause mayhem, where the enemy forgot to put sufficient troops. They throw javelins. Believe it or not, Men-at-arms' javelins actually cause respectable damage against light troops and siege engines, even Mantlets. If the enemy tries to wear you down by deploying Catapults, streams of White Wolves / Hellhounds, or other shooty things, Men-at-arms can run them down and pick them apart in a cost-efficient way. They can bait expensive stuff. Men-at-arms are such units that could be thrown into the mouth of the enemy army with impunity. An Ice Queen or Sorcerer is attacking them, or a caster is throwing an ability at them? Who cares! Replacing 30 weak units isn't as regrettable as replacing 50 Crossbowmen, or heavily armored units. Baiting out abilities and drawing firepower to an extent can make room for your own special units to attack or strike with your own ability. Surely, Men-at-arms are a one-timer, which loses efficacy as the game goes on, however their mobility and ability to counter certain ground units makes them a prime affordable troop. Their reinforcing and intercepting ability is second-to-none, and they may even stand their own ground if controlled correctly against smaller formations. Point 3 - Bedivere & Gawain can always find value In the previous post, I alluded to how Gawain has insane potential, but wrote off Bedivere. Turns out they both carry value throughout the game. Gawain is the core unit beside Merlin and Percival. His ability to conjure a shield that absorbs all types of projectile attacks can declare a zone safe for quite some time, giving your main army a good way to advance from a bogged down area. While a large army doesn't fit under it fully, this protection can make all the difference for attacking the enemy's impenetrable defenses, or allow your casters to fire off an ability or two. A lesser known fact is that Gawain's shield negates the projectile-based effects from the Ice Queen's and the Ice Dragon's freezing attack, divebombing Bats and even siege projectiles' knockback. Consequently, it can also be used to protect against these devastating abilities as a reactionary tool, if your army is caught bare out in the open, or in an entrenched position. Bedivere is kind of a one-trick-pony due to his very obvious niche ability. What however cannot be underestimated is his ability to circumvent an area and create an opening in the opposition's defenses, causing a quick ruckus. On larger maps where the enemy can be attacked from multiple positions, the Horn of Camelot assigned to an attacking infiltration group can cause the enemy to react haphazardly, or divert reinforcements from their main position to deal with the threat. Combined with Men-at-arms and Archers, a commando can cause noticeable damage or even conquer the Keep, if the enemy forgot to fortify it even slightly. Point 4 - Streamlined build order trumps economy This section is obviously geared towards games with peace time and/or with low starting tech. Probably moreso than the other factions, Arthur loves to enjoy a fast Rank 8 due to the unlocked units and Automarket. Getting to this point ASAP however comes at a cost of your ability to partake in the arms race that comes with the expiry of peace time. Here is a build order that served me well in various versions throughout the eco phase (assuming 10-15pt, rank 1): Immediately set taxes to -16, build the granary and give +8 rations. Buy 5 non-meat food if starting with no food. Build two or three chicken farms from your sold stone and starting gold. You may be able to squeeze in a dairy farm if you are extra greedy. Build a wood camp when you can't build anything else. Until you build your first hovel, you can freely sell food and buy wood for additional farms. We prefer buying wood over having it delivered from wood camps, because the workers are considerably slow and peasants come at a premium early on. Keep selling meat whenever above 5 units and try to get at least one unit of food of each type to leverage potentially +12 honor per month. Don't forget about popularity. If your rate approaches 55, dial back taxes to -8 to break even with your granary. After the first hovel we prioritise building farms, slowly shifting to cheese. Build chicken farms for 'firefighting' purposes, however dairy farms will eventually bring in cheese. Because of the increased granary consumption, we switch to a pantry without any production, set royal food consumption to double and buy royal food there. Keep selling cheese and meat whenever above a combined 10 food. Keep buying wood for your industry, building hovels whenever low on free peasants (constant influx is required due to reduced migration speed!). When your farms bring in a steady stream of food, you can eventually start adding iron mines. Add tethers only when the miners produce ingots, or ingots start piling up. Also build an eel pond fairly early to slowly ease the burden on your coffers. Always sell excess iron. Build stone quarries once you are nearing 5-6 minutes peace time left. About 3 or 4 quarries should do, constantly add tethers to prevent storage overflow. Once your stone quarries deliver, start investing into a Church and chandler's workshops. Keep a keen eye on your stocks and once your production is steady (about one chandler per hovel), then raise the mass to extravagant level to cash in on honor and raise your popularity back to 100. Once done, set taxes to -12. By this point, you should be nearing the end of peace time. Buy assorted weaponry (a little bit of everything) for your preferred troops, and be ready to face thine enemy! Closure Hope this tablet of text has entertained you and provided you valuable insights. Any time you would like to ask questions and leave comments, you can do it either here, or in a DM to happily discuss the matter further. See you on the battlefield!🙂

Hello All! Before joining SHN, I started my "public service" to Stronghold as a contributor to the Stronghold Wiki since about 2011-12. Much of my work has been published in the form of short informative articles, such as game concepts, walkthroughs and to a lesser extent, visual designs on the site. Thanks to a community, over a thousand pages are present there. In 2019-2020, Fandom has taken over ownership for Wikia and Gamepedia. User experience has since highly deteriorated on the site, with pages being riddled by ads and unfitting content, while also limiting owner rights. Since the English Fandom site has also no significant community leadership, I decided to join up with @ Lord_Chris and create the groundworks for a full Wiki Migration, favoring Stronghold Nation as a primary information source. This means that Fandom content will be brought to SHN over time, as well as future content will be supervised and curated here, leaving the Fandom site in maintenance mode. The content moved over here will be adapted to the site and included in our already existing categories and articles. While I'm not stepping down as bureaucrat on the Fandom site yet, I highly encourage not to publish and refer to any content there, as they become more dated there due to SHN effort. We are committed to bring high quality content here and we are also open to any suggestions or feedback in terms of presentation, as well as article requests! We hope that our historic articles, trivia and downloadable maps and content serve your cause well and just! Sending my regards, @ Asophix

Update! I have figured out how to make the game give you awards after a match, if you qualify or not. This will also give you the related Steam Achievement if you don't already have it. However, in order to do this I need to modify the game code in memory while the game is running. I realize that such a tool runs afoul of this sites rules, so I'm not going to promote it here. However, I am also going to get started on making tools to modify the two files related to your profile. Such tools should not go against site rules as those files are not compiled data. I will probably start working on that sometime during next week.

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.

Hello everyone, I would like to start here a new topic about playing a Stronghold 3 multiplayer game. I very much like this game, and try to contact people through Steam, and now currently here as well. Please let me know here, or on Steam. My name on Steam is Hollokiraly. Best regards.

FROM OUR STAFF TO YOU AND YOUR FAMILIES, A MERRY AND JOYFUL CHRISTMAS.........

Hey again, I just solved the problem. But maybe other people that stumble upon the same problem can use this advice. If you want to play downloaded maps, you have to copy the map files to: C:\users\%user%\Documents\Stronghold Warlords\Maps Seems like there are 2 map folders in total. 1 where the downloaded maps are saved, and another one where the maps of the base game are saved.

Well, after an intense competition which spanned over many months, we can now FINALLY reveal who has won our contest to win Stronghold Warlords for FREE! Thanks goes to everyone who participated in our contest this year. I have to say that when checking the entries, @EaglePrince and I were completely blown away by the quality of the submissions. It's clear that substantial effort has been put into every single one of the entries, and we're really grateful for the submissions members have made. It's made judging the entries incredibly difficult because they were all so good. I feel very privileged to have been able to judge these entries, and I know @EaglePrince feels the same way as well. The Prizes to be awarded are as follows: 1st place: Free copy of Stronghold Warlords upon release and the Stronghold Kingdoms Starter Pack 2nd place: Free copy of Stronghold Crusader 2 Ultimate Edition and the Stronghold kingdoms Starter Pack 3rd place: Free copy of Space Colony The categories for the competition were as follows; Category A (Easy): A Custom scenario using any Stronghold game; Category B (Medium): A historical structure from the far-east; Category C (Hard): A game modification in some way; The Judges for this contest were: @Lord_Chris (me) @EaglePrince For entry to each category, entrants receive 1 bonus point for their submission, on top of the grading of the actual submission. Each Judge grades the submission independently between 1-5 points, then these scores are averaged out and the bonus points added on: (My score + Eagle's score) / Number of Judges + Bonus points. We received a total of 4 entries before the deadline, all of which were valid. In accordance with the Competition Guidelines, we have awarded the results as follows: 1st place: @Krarilotus for the submission Mongol Invasion 1258: 8 points; (5 by me+5 by Eagle) / 2 = 5 + 3 bonus points for valid entry to Categories A, B & C = 8; 2nd place: @artofmath for the submission The Mamluk Siege of Acre, 1291: 7 points; (5 by me+5 by Eagle) / 2 = 5 + 2 bonus points for valid entry to Categories A & C = 7; 3rd place: @Andreas9541 for the submission Blue Star: 5 points; (4 by me+4 by Eagle) / 2 = 4 + 1 bonus point for valid entry to Category A = 5; 4th place: @Lord Mordred for the submission A Three Way Skirmish: 4 points; (2 by me+3 by Eagle) / 2 = 2.5 (rounded = 3) + 1 bonus point for valid entry to Category A = 4; Congratulations to all winners! Your submissions are absolutely superb and we're so pleased and excited to be able to award you the prizes you deserve. Feel free to message me at any point to claim your prizes. Commiserations to @Lord Mordred who missed out on 3rd place by 1 point. It's worth noting that in the case of @artofmath's submission, we were at first unsure which categories to award bonus points for, given that the map is for the middle-east, and not far-east. However after a conversation with our history expert @Crusader1307, and @EaglePrince, we have both decided to award a bonus point for Category C, which is for a game modification, purely on the basis that the Castle was very difficult to construct and required a lot of effort. We unfortunately couldn't award any more points, because the map wasn't really for the right geographic region. The official feedback for entries, taken into account for grading, is as follows: Mongol Invasion 1258: My feedback: Excellent landscape. Very finely tuned with incredible attention to detail. The sheer level of depth and complexity is stunning. Great use of troops, with very well constructed natural defences and obstacles. Cleverly placed Oasis and an exceptional background history. Eagle's feedback: Here I like everything! The landscape, the castle, the scenario itself… Everything looks great, and it is fun to play. The story is great too. I like how the author of the map chose Vietnam’s history, which is what Stronghold Warlords is going to be about. At first it seems strange since we don’t have Far Eastern troops, but the scenario is so fun that very soon you forget about those “missing details” (about which nobody could do anything at all, actually). I have to mention that, once the scenario has been started, the player is looking around, to see what’s going on, and the idea about destroying barracks as soon as possible didn’t cross my mind. Simply because pretty fast those lords have plenty of troops in their castles. Maybe something about this could be mentioned in the story. Something like “those lords had lived relaxed lives, and once upon hearing the news that you’re coming, they have started to gather more and fresh troops.” Although something like this has already been told in the story. Maybe it’s just me. :) The Mamluk Siege of Acre, 1291: My feedback: Exceptional landscape. Perfect for the scenario, and very well planned out. Incredible build design and very well replicated in the game. Every detail of the map is perfectly placed and coordinated. Great use of troops, and an overall fantastic scenario. Eagle's feedback: I like how the scenario was made harder for the player (no inns, no churches), but with everything being justified in the story. And the backstory itself is very interesting. Those two Wolves in one custom shared castle work together really great. It’s needless to say that a lot of effort had to be put into making this scenario with this epic castle, but it was totally worth it! Missions like this are pretty great because here a player can build his usual castle, and test it, both its economy and defences, against an extraordinary opponent such as two wolves in a joined castle with plenty of resources on their hands. Blue Star: My feedback: Very photogenic landscape with excellent placement of ambient buildings. Great use of ruins, trees and shrubbery. Nice natural terrain. Sadly as this doesn't work in game it can't be awarded full marks, but nonetheless very well constructed and designed. Eagle's feedback: This game did work for me, I didn’t notice anything strange. Maybe I missed something, or maybe some lag would appear later in the game. A Three Way Skirmish: My feedback: A nice well constructed map. Very compact which makes it difficult to build everything. Nicely detailed without going overboard. Disappointing that it's based off an existing idea in Stronghold Legends, but nevertheless very well replicated in Stronghold 2. Eagle's feedback: I like that it’s about a map from Stronghold Legends. The landscape is really nice, and the only thing which I don’t prefer is stone keeps being too close to the edge of the map. But that’s just my taste. :) I've tailored my official feedback purely to the criteria and needs of the contest, so you can be sure that my personal preferences didn't play any role in my grading. However, as promised I would like to give each of you my personal opinion as well. So I've written a small piece below for each of you with personalised feedback from me. I will also be posting these comments on the official files a bit later on today, as well. I know @EaglePrince is excited to share his own personal experiences with you guys as well. I'd like to thank everyone again for their entries, and congratulate all the winners on their well-deserved prizes! @Krarilotus I will be in touch nearer the release of Warlords with a Steam code for you once I receive it off Firefly. You can however message me now if you would like your copy of the Stronghold Kingdoms Starter Pack already. Everyone else, please feel free to message me at any convenient time to claim your prizes. Thank you to all our wonderful community members and staff who showed their interest in this competition, dedicated their own time to it, and submitted content to our community. Finally, I'd like to thank Firefly for allowing this competition to be possible. Their generosity has allowed us to hold yet another historic contest and moment in the Stronghold community.

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

Hey folks, I've just completed the stand-alone economic mission, Calanais! It's something of a grind - you cannot grow or buy food apart from hops and ale, and there are no trees. You are constantly assailed by bandits. Your only economic recourse is to sell stone, keep your peasants drunk and religious, and tax them. The aim is to gain (and maintain for a period) a large population (118 at normal difficulty). The early stages of the game in particular are tricky. The bandits will make a bee-line for structures like the market, hop farms and quarries. I found I could eventually enclose the keep, and then it was a juggling match to balance the economy and happiness - real micromanagement. The breakthrough came when I had enough stone to wall in the quarries and farms, after which the bandits just tried to batter down the walls. As the population increases, the bandit attacks intensify, so early investment in archers (and a few crossbowmen) paid off (though you do get a few outlaws from the woods returning to your cause early on) The image is how I got my castle to look (through about 5 or 6 redesigns/extensions), allowing my hop farmers and stone masons to carry on safely 🙂 I also noticed something - when you build a chapel, eventually you are harrassed to build a church, and then to build a cathedral (with a negative popularity penalty). However, deleting the chapel after you build a church removes this problem!

Hi, LordOh! What game speed do you play with? Go into options, and make sure it's 40. And try playing against weaker opponents first, like The Rat. When playing against him, you can train some archers early in the game, and put them on you walls. That should keep you safe for a while, they would repel Rat's attacks pretty easily. Sent from my Mi A2 Lite using Tapatalk

Thank you very much for hosting the contest. I am glad you enjoyed the sieges. I ahve to admit, i'ts not easy to do these kind of scenarios with just the vanilla base-game, as the balance was one of the harder things to do. I also tried to recolour the AI's but i must have missed something when placing the playerkeeps in the original map, and i couldn't really wrap my head around, it. The tutorial for it did only work for Crusader v1.1 it seemed but the colour kept changing for v1.41. Maybe if i figure it out, i could create a new tutorial about changing player colours with the hex editor in the future with the newer Stronghold Crusader versions. Anyways, i am greatfull for winning the contest, and i hope to submit more of my content to the site in the future 🙂 It could be though, that it would have to do more with modifications based on the Unofficial Crusader Patch 😄 Also congratulations to @artofmath and @Andreas9541 for winning 2nd and 3rd prize. I also enjoyed artofmaths map and i found the creation to be really well thought out. I hope you guys had not too much trouble in beating my map on normal difficulty. If you enjoyed it however, i can recommend trying hard and expert out anyways, as they are not only more difficult via a rebalance in troops, but also come with a few more limitations. For example you will not be able to buy or recruit archers anymore, and you would micro manage your horse archers even more, and use your mongolian horse armies to their fullest potential! @Lord_Chris thank you also for your additional feedback. I was considering turning the view of the map around, so you would be able to drag over your full army right from the start, but i have decided against it, simply so that the directions north, east, south and west stay true to their original, to be top, right, bottom and left. Unfortuantely it wasn't possible to get the initial camera position to your army, but i figuered, that you would also not worry too much, as this also gives you the advantage of seing that you have a keep on the map yourself, where the view always starts. You can then turn the map around yourself to select the whole army by simply pressing ctrl + <- or ctrl + ->. Hope that helps for future map playthroughs 😄 @EaglePrince as for the vietnamese troops, yeah i didn't really have a choice. This scenario however is based on a far later period of what will be eventually in the final Stronghold Warlords product. I chose it that way, because i didn't want to create a scenario, that eventually would be done better with what comes out. This way i can ensure that the content will still be fresh and enjoyable. This also means, that the vietnamese soldiers, which were also known for their well trained armoured rangers, would be well represented with those crossbowmen. They also had still a lot of light weight troops, as every person would be mobilized in a case of war to fight for their country, as represented by the snake and rat castles. The King, here represented by the Wolf, actually fled. He got beaten mostly due to his war elephants getting used agaisnt him with fire ammunition in the fight that took place right before this scenario comes into play. I first considered to do that fith too, but i just wasn't able to pull it off, as there is not really anything that can emulate war elephants in the way they should have played a role there. The king tho retreated to the Wolfs position here then retreated further. Unfortunately you can't really make the lord retreat and still win a scenario game, so i had to make him stay and die 😕 Unfortuantely i didn't really have the option to make a sneaky assault on the players forces, when it would be time to leave the capital. It would be great, if skirmish games would be combineable with other map triggers, but i didn't have the solo powers to mod those triggers into the map, as there is currently only a single switch that decides between a map having those properties or not, which is the switch that decides if it is a skirmish map or a scenario map. Otherwise i would have added something like: "collect this many resyources, then leave to this location" to be more historically accurate. but i did what i could and i am thankfull for it paying off. I hope you also did notice, that the Pig's lord was invisible, next to the tower on the river. He was the one, that ended the Scenario. In case your were wondering, i used a gatehouse and walked him through then stopped him on the tile right in front of the gate to make him invisible. My Vietnames girlfriend didn't really approve of how i butchered the story due to game limitations, but at least i got her satified with taking part with a vietnamese historical Scenario ^^ Let's hope she will play Stronghold Warlords through with me when the game releases 😄

Hey there, Ascertes. Planewalker here.?:) Let me give you a rundown of how every component of the SHL invasion works. It's entirely possible that you may never see this, considering that it is now seven months after your original post, but hopefully it will. It might help someone else out too. The basics of an invasion are quite straightforward. You pick what troops, how many, and what color. Below that you can choose which map marker the army will appear from. Let's get into the meat of it by going into the Advanced menu below that. I'll explain these features from top to bottom. Repeat time:?A simple setting to create repeating invasions. The first invasion will occur on the date set for this trigger. Every repeating invasion will occur at the interval of months you put here. You can choose how often you want it to repeat as well, to a maximum of either 10 or infinite repeats. This is useful for lengthy scenarios with a objective that is not related to the invasions. (AI Deployment) Normal Invasion / Siege Point / Target Point: Determines where the invasion moves upon entering the map. A normal invasion will seek to immediately perform its Orders (next setting), choosing its own deployment site as it sees fit. A siege point invasion will ignore all AI helpers (and its own plans) and move its units to the indicated map marker, immediately placing its siege camp there. A target point?invasion will simply move the entire army to the indicated map marker before it does anything else. Depending on its Orders, it may move very far away from the target point. (AI Orders) Free AI / Attack Player / Reinforce Player:?Determines what the invasion does once it has finished deploying. A free AI?will do whatever it thinks it must do to execute its Plan (explained later) and chooses targets based on its own calculation. Attack Player?will cause the invasion to focus its attack on the listed player color, emphasizing the main castle if one exists. Reinforce Player, by contrast, will bring in troops who change to the chosen player's color after deployment and are then placed under their control. Note that reinforcement troops are under the chosen player's control before they arrive at their deployment site, if the player is human. No Lord / Include Lord: Does what it says. Includes the correct Lord for that color's player and faction, or does not. Note that lords spawned this way do not seem to count toward the "All Enemy Lords Dead" script condition. Full Warnings / Normal Warnings / Early Warnings / No Warnings: Indicates what messages the player will receive about the coming invasion. Early Warnings are the classic "A large force of the enemy's men are marching towards us" messages. These will alert the player 3 months (1 minute at game speed 40) in advance of an incoming invasion. Normal Warnings occur when the invasion enters the map, with the "We are under attack!" or "An ally has sent us some reinforcements." messages. The Full Warnings setting (preferred for normal circumstances) will use both types. No Warnings will, of course, include none. Some notes about this. First, regardless of the settings, a minimap marker will always flash when an army enters the map -- red for enemy armies and green for ally or reinforcement armies. Second, reinforcements do not have Early Warnings, only a message on entering the map (Normal Warning). Lastly, allied troops generate no messages whatsoever, regardless of settings. Don't leave map / Leave map: If an invasion's Plan (explained next) is Movement, has a set map marker as a target point,?and the invasion is set to Leave Map, the units in the army will disappear from the map when they stop moving upon reaching the specified location. This has no effect on other kinds of invasions. (AI Plan): Determines the main purpose of this invasion once it has deployed and how it will decide to carry out its Orders. Also affects how siege equipment appears and behaves. Siege: This classic invasion enters the map with its troops and places a siege camp on the map after all troops have arrived at the deployment site. The siege equipment chosen for this invasion will then be built from the siege camp. Attacking Army: These troops spawn into the map and attack from the deployment site. They will target troops and estates. They will attack the main castle if there is a path to the lord or if there are exposed buildings and troops. Missile units tend to be aggressive about this. This invasion cannot have siege equipment. Defensive Army: These troops move to the deployment site and stay there. They will attack anyone who comes close. This invasion cannot have siege equipment. Vandalize: These troops move to the deployment site and then attack exposed buildings and estates in raids. This invasion can only bring limited types of siege equipment with it. Movement: These troops will appear, with all their siege equipment, and do absolutely nothing. However, if you set them to a Target Point, they will move to it and then sit there. As mentioned earlier, this pairs well with the Leave map?setting. AI HelpersThese are the little flags that can be accessed and placed by clicking on an estate's keep in the map editor. The AI will do what it needs to do without any of these. They're just here to let you shape how the AI performs. It is particularly useful if you have some unusual map design or terrain, or if you have the AI attack a prebuilt castle where you can guarantee the layout. (Tent) Siege camp position: These indicators recommend where the AI should place siege camps during deployment. The AI will generally choose this over its own recommendation. If multiple siege camp helpers are placed they will choose one based on how they want to attack and where they are attacking from. (Arrow) Missile unit attack position: These flags help the AI choose where to send archers and crossbowmen. The AI doesn't always take these recommendations, but they do influence their decision-making process. (Broken wall) Siege camp position: This indicator is misnamed. It should be called "Siege attack position". The AI will take this as a recommendation of where to send its mobile ranged siege equipment (catapults, ballistae, stake hurlers, etc.). Note that this flag is for where the units will move, not where they will attack. Placing one of these next to the player's wall will influence the AI to move catapults right up to the walls instead of firing at a distance. Trebuchets will tend to ignore this and fire from the siege camp or the first available location in range. Likewise, rams and siege towers will ignore this and move into position. Hope that helps!?:D

Throughout my short eighteen years of life the discussion of the United Kingdom and Britain has come up on numerous occasions. Whether it be arguing if Wales is a country or a principality, or whether it's the confusion between Northern Ireland and The Republic of Ireland. Are the Irish also British? Is Wales in England? Are the United Kingdom and Britain synonymous? Will I ever successfully boil an egg? Yes! No! Why are we shouting? These are all good questions that often leave the one asking the questions confused, and the one answering even more so.? That is why, my good friends of Stronghold Nation, I have decided to create this not-so-short topic on the matter, in which I will do my very best from my personal knowledge, as well as extra research, to correct common misconceptions, and simply explain why there is so much to know! The United Kingdom For the sake of my well-being, I'll refer to the United Kingdom as the UK throughout the rest of this post. Nonetheless, let's begin! The first fact you should learn is that the UK should technically be UKGBNI, as it's actually short for The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Notice, Great Britain AND Northern Ireland, this will help later on! The UK is in fact a sovereign state, in the same way that the USA is. "Tom, what's a sovereign state?" I hear you ask! It's actually rather simple - a sovereign state is a territory ruled by its own government, and not by any other powers. Whereas a country is seen as a piece of physical land, a sovereign state is a concept, an entity, and can be marked theoretically on a map. Now that we know this, let's move on to explaining the history of the UK. The UK has come a long way over numerous centuries to become what it is today, and so, there is much to learn! - The History of the UK - Around 925 (c. 925, for those of you who will cringe at my terminology) - The Kingdom of England is alive and well having being formed by Anglo-Saxon tribes across England at the time. 1536 - The Kingdom of England and Wales - King Henry VIII's (8th) want for power was as great as his appetite and in a result of this this bill was enacted, making England and Wales effectively the same country, under the same ruling and laws. 1707 - Kingdom of great Britain - The Kingdom of England and Wales starts to get a little lonely, they want a new friend, they look North to offer Scotland a place in their cool new gang. Scotland accepts and so forms The Kingdom of Britain. 1801 - United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland - The fellas to the West are feeling slightly left out and so they decide to join The Kingdom of Britain, renaming it once again to The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. 1922 - United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland - Woah, what happened? Well, in result of the Irish Civil War (which you can read more about here - http://www.theirishstory.com/2012/07/02/the-irish-civil-war-a-brief-overview/#.WgxrK0q6-bg), Northern Ireland was kept under rule of the UK, whereas the rest of Ireland, now known as The Republic of Ireland, decided against this. This is the UK we know now. Great Britain (or Britain) Once again, let's put straight some of these misconceptions. Great Britain, despite popular belief, is NOT a country, it is a landmass. It consists of the British Isles, England, Wales, and Scotland. The origin of the "Great" has been long-discussed, but really, it isn't overly important. However, if you wish to know, it's because it is the largest landmass within the British Isles. The name "Britain" derives from the Roman word Britannia. The British Isles Here is the simplest part - The British Isles consists of Great Britain, Ireland, The Isle of Man, The Channel Islands, The Isles of Scilly, and over 6,000 smaller islands which I do not have the time nor patience to list. Conclusions Is Wales a country? - Yes. Wales was recognised as a country in December, 2011. However, it has been a country for hundreds of years prior to that. The last prince of Wales, Llywelyn ap Gruffydd (or Llywelyn ein Llyw Olaf, "Llywelyn our Last Prince) died in battle in 1282. Despite this, Wales was technically a country with the enactment of the Act of Union by Henry VIII in 1536. What's the difference between The Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland? - I don't wish to plagiarise, so I suggest you either watch this video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCJMQgfHXNI, or read this article - https://www.aransweatersdirect.com/blogs/blog/102905857-what-is-the-difference-between-ireland-and-northern-ireland Are the Irish also British? - We're stepping into a controversial topic here, so allow me to avoid bias as much as I can. Those born in the Republic of Ireland are given an Irish passport at birth, despite this, everyone else within The British Isles are given a British passport. Irish citizens can still apply for a British passport providing they are eligible to do so. It's really quite complex to answer. Technically, when The Republic of Ireland became separate from the UK in 1922, the British Nationality Law didn't change, but the conversation of the British subject was an ongoing discussion within the Republic of Ireland for many years before, and still to this day. I really struggle to give a definitive answer. Is Wales in England? - Wales' history with England has changed over the centuries, as you can see. Today, Wales is not a part of England but is instead a part of the UK and Great Britain, along with The British Isles. It's certainly united with England, however, geographically, Wales has NEVER been IN England. Politically, it used to be, but not anymore. Are the United Kingdom and Britain synonymous? - To those who are misinformed, the UK and Britain are seen as synonymous, yes. However, the two are not the same. Britain is of course the other name for Great Britain, but not for the UK, as the UK includes Great Britain. Will I ever successfully boil an egg? - Most likely, but not for the foreseeable future.

I don't mean for this to get political, as the topic itself is irrelevant. Allow me to give the backstory. Today, I was called racist and a white supremacist today by my Religious Education teacher. I don't study the subject, however, she was in the class as we were working. The argument started when a friend of mine shouted out, jokingly, "Tom hates Islam". The teacher, who admitted herself she's read "some" of the Quran, proceeds to tell me how it's peaceful etc etc. She then manipulated my sentences. I said, "Most terrorists are Muslim", she replies, "You think all Muslims are terrorists?" She then says, "Statistics show...", when I asked for these statistics, she couldn't provide them, and so resorted to calling me a racist and a white supremacist. My issue here is not the name-calling. Words don't offend me, and she could say much worse without me giving an ounce of care. I also don't feel the need to report her for it. It would be hypocritical, and probably would end up leading to nothing. What really bothers me, is her misusing these terms. There are many words like these that are misused daily in political debate. I've devised a small list of definitions, and I ask for you all to remember them, and correct people for misusing them.? Racism -?prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against someone of a different race based on the belief that one's own race is superior. NOT - criticising a religion or belief. Bigot - a person who is intolerant towards those holding different opinions. NOT - disagreeing with someone. Fascism -?an authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. NOT - when someone disagrees with you. Jokes aside. Please, when you're debating with someone on any topic. No matter what your beliefs or stances are, do not be intolerant. Listen, and disagree respectfully. Don't resort to name-calling, even if it's applicable to the person in conversation. Finally, and I can't stress this enough, do research, and remember statistics and facts before trying to argue your point. Even if you've read something before, it's no use if you don't remember it to use in debate, and your "opponent" will think you're uninformed on the matter. Thank you, 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.?

This may be interesting to modders and map makers alike. Stronghold Nation now has an article on how to lock and unlock Crusader 2 maps :) http://www.stronghold-nation.com/article/244-lockingunlocking-stronghold-crusader-2-maps

So here's an ultra-low quality small screen grab of what appears to be the horizon out in the distance. There's actually a large object 6 m in height and 23 m in length in this picture obstructing the view. Right there. That's no dust speck (that's no moon). ???????? ??-8/Petlyakov Pe-8 Welcome to War Thunder. My roommate Gavin introduced me to the game two years ago. I've been playing pretty often ever since. I play in ultra-low quality since my computer can't handle the game's pretty damn good graphics. War Thunder is a free-to-play game made by Gaijin, a Russian-based company, primarily consisting as a flight-simulator PVP game for the PC, Mac, and PS4, taking place between the Spanish Civil War and the Korean War (starting with biplanes and early monoplanes on to jets), allowing the players to choose between five different nations: USA, Germany (the used to have Swastikas, but were removed for sociopolitical purposes), USSR, Great Britain, and Japan (along with other nations represented within the major factions). There are ground forces as well, but Japanese forces aren't released yet, so I'm not gonna cover that. And it's basically a lower-end version of World of Tanks. Naval forces are going to be added at some point in the future a well. There are three kinds of battle modes for air battles: For the PC and Mac, in Arcade and Realistic mode, you can use your mouse and keyboard to play easily. For Simulator mode, you can still use them, but it will be harder than with a joystick. Arcade Quick, generally 10-minute games. Flight models are exaggerated, allowing you to climb faster, turn better, and perform impossible stunts without tearing off your wings. However, they still retain some similarities to their real-world counterparts (slow virage time for a P-47 Thunderbolt). You can see your plane in third-person, cockpit view, gunner view (if possible), bomb-sight view (if possible) or simulator view. There is a leading indicator ahead of enemy aircraft that allows you to point to where you should shoot at. Enemies and allies have markers over their plane from a distance. Ammo can be restocked in the air after a reload timer, however, fuel must be refueled at the airfield (which usually is not necessary). Any nation can be on either team (you can find a P-51 fighting another P-51). If you die, you can respawn in another plane as long as you have any remaining that you have not lost already. If you lose a wing, or sustain significant damage, you have 15 seconds before you are automatically ejected from your plane. Replay of an older battle. The leading indicator is represented as that large circle over that I-16 near Zhengzhou. Objectives for maps involve: Ground Strike Destroy all enemy ground vehicles (armored vehicles and AAA can be destroyed by rifle-caliber rounds, tanks and pillboxes are best destroyed by bombs, American .50 cals can destroy light pillboxes). If all enemy vehicles are destroyed, your team wins. Destroy all enemy bases (requires bombs/rockets, approx. 8-10 tons of TNT required) Destroy enemy airfield (can only be done after destroying all enemy bases, has a significant amount of health, >30 tons of TNT required). If the airfield is destroyed, your team wins. Destroy all enemy air vehicles (the other team has no more players with available planes left) Domination Destroy all enemy ground vehicles (dwindles away the enemies' points) Land and capture all capture zones (shown in the picture above on the minimap, labeled A, B, and C) Destroy all enemy air vehicles Front Line Destroy all enemy vehicles (both ground and air vehicles lost cause teams to lose points) Air Domination Stay within 600 m and 4800 m altitude of the specified zone and destroy all enemy vehicles in the zone Realistic (formerly Historical) Typically longer games (30 minutes to an hour). Like arcade mode, you can see your plane in different views, and enemies have markers that can appear at a distance if your pilot can spot them. However, flight models are similar to their real-world counterparts. Wings can tear apart after pulling extremely high-G maneuvers, flaps can too at high speeds. There is no longer a leading indicator, so you must predict where your shots will land. Ammo can only be restocked at the airfield. If you sustain significant damage, you can still attempt to hobble back to the airfield for repairs without a 15-second timer, however repairs may take minutes before you are airworthy again. Teams are mostly based on historical alliances (sometimes there are mixed games) and in familiar locations. You only have one life in realistic mode.? Spitfire Mk IIb heading on a P-40E-1 Kittyhawk in a "Training" mission in Hokkaido. Note the lack of a leading indicator in front of the P-40. Also, you should almost never head-on an opponent that close (zoom away at about 1 km distance). A cinematic screenshot of a P-51D-5 Mustang setting an A6M5 Ko Reisen on fire over New Guinea. Objectives are usually the same in each map, where you must destroy all ground forces and/or bases and the airfield/carriers. But usually games end when the other team no longer has any players remaining. Simulator Mode An even more realistic version of playing (not perfect). Press I to start your engine at the airfield. You can only view in cockpit, simulator, gunner (if possible), and bombsight (if possible) views in the air. When stopped and on the ground, you can choose third-person view, but it will switch out once you start moving. Engine control should be set to manual in order to fly efficiently, such that prop pitch (for prop planes), mixture, radiator flaps, and sometimes supercharger gear should be balanced in order to maintain optimal performance. Ally markers only appear if you are within 1 km of them, and there are no enemy markers. This is where you definitely want your screen cleaned before playing. I've never played it in PVP (only test flights), so I don't have any experience in what to expect. However, I've heard that most battles are low-altitude. Cockpit of a MiG-9. An example of what flying in Simulator mode would look like. However, this was an Arcade match. You still have speed, altitude, and heading and ammo indicators on the top left of your screen. General Advantages and Disadvantages for Each Nation USA Advantages: - Sturdy planes - Powerful .50 cal Browning machine guns with more than enough ammunition - Highly-defensive heavy bombers with additional .50 cal Brownings - Huge bombloads (40 500-lb bombs as the stock amount for the B-29) - High top speeds at high altitudes - Great energy retention - Typically low battle ratings, such that they are generally placed in battle with lower-tier opponents - How to put out a fire on an American plane: Fly a B-17. Congratulations! The fire is now put out. Disadvantages: - Generally no cannon-mounted armaments - Poor maneuverability - Generally bad player-base (people in F6F Hellcats think they can out-turn a Zero at low speeds) Germany Advantages: - Sturdy planes - Great energy retention - Cannons. Lots of them. As if Germany wanted to destroy mountains or something. - Great at mid to high altitude - High top speeds (not as good as American) - Decent slow-speed maneuverability (don't do it with an Fw-190) - Fast bombers Disadvantages: - Until you get planes with 20+ mm cannons, Germany usually sucks - Average bombload, bomber defenses - Generally bad player-base (A lot of players fly German planes at low altitude, where they can't perform at their best) Great Britain Advantages: - Powerful Hispano Mk II Cannons (fully upgraded) - Maneuverable - Great at mid to low altitude - Huge bombloads - Powerful heavy fighters (Beaufighter line) Disadvantages - Terrible tier 1 planes - Mk II cannons are inaccurate until fully upgraded - Mediocre 7.62 mm Browning machine guns (Even with 8 on a Hurricane Mk I, they're only good against low-tier planes such as biplanes) - Average top speed with early planes - Wing-mounted guns require adjusting gun convergence to a certain distance - Early-tier planes cannot handle negative Gs due to float-type carburetors USSR Advantages: - Great at low altitude - Powerful nose-mounted guns for precision firing - All-around types of planes - Later bombers are well-defended in their rear (twin 20 mm ShVAK cannon turrets, and five sets of twin 23 mm NS-23 cannons on the Tu-4, which also has the same, if not greater, bombload as the B-29) - Gaijin Disadvantages: - Mediocre in later tiers due to planes being all-around - Later tier planes have low ammo count - There are no disadvantages because Gaijin. Japan Advantages: - Great slow-speed maneuverability - Powerful Type 99 mk 1 and Ho-5 20 mm, and Ho-155 30 mm cannons - Especially powerful defense turrets on bombers (three twin 20 mm type 99 mk 1 cannons on a G8N Renzan) - Heavy fighters have great climb rates Disadvantages: - Low top speeds - Terrible 7.7 mm Type 89 machine guns - Planes are made of paper - Generally poor roll rates - Early to mid-tier planes cannot handle negative Gs due to float-type carburetors - How to put out a fire in a Japanese plane: Hold J for 3 seconds to eject. Mistakes of Engagement Some of the biggest mistakes that new players tend to make when playing is that they think that dogfighting via constant turning is the only way to win. For example, although a Spitfire may have a quicker instantaneous turn rate compared to a Bf 109, the Spitfire will soon lose too much energy and the Bf 109 will have the upper hand. At that point, your only hope is for someone on your team to come by and nab the kill. In solo engagements, always maintain an altitude advantage. This way, when you dive, you've built enough speed to get away should you overshoot. This is called Boom and Zooming (BnZ), and it works best with American and German planes. However, Russian Lavochkin, and British Hawker aircraft, and late Griffon-powered Spitfire variants are suitable for this as well. The purpose of BnZ is to get up high above the enemy, and when you're directly above them, drop down and fire a short burst before pulling back up again. By the time your opponent can get their bearings, you should be far away enough such that they can't get a good shot at you (typically > 1 km). Ultra-low quality cinematic screenshots of a MiG-9 applying BnZ tactics against a Fw 190D-9. At high altitude and cold temperatures, planes will leave white contrails as they move. Normally harmless in clear skies, this is especially troublesome for bombers attempting to use cloud-cover in high-altitude missions. If it takes too long to get to your target, or if your target is heading for nearby allies, pull back up. There's nothing anyone can do if they're too low. Personally, in Arcade mode, I always stay about 2 km above my targets, and in every game I've been in, there's always that one guy who will try to climb straight up at me. At this point, I'm already going cruising speed at around 400 km/h, so I pull up to gain altitude and off to the side a bit, so they can't line up a shot, until I know that my target is out of energy, and I flip and drop straight down at them while they float and lose control of their plane. Easy kill. It's even better when they keep trying again. You can do this in basically any plane in Arcade mode. However, if your opponent catches on, cumbersome planes like the P-47, P-51, and Fw 190 series need to rely on their speed as they dive since turning around takes an abhorrent amount of time. This is one of the best way to use jets, especially early jets against prop planes. In the red box is my deaths to aircraft kills using the above method in some of my aircraft. Most deaths were due to pilot error such as underestimating distance and energy. Some to lag. I also don't play to win. I just want kills. Rolls are best used in jet engagements with the scissors maneuver, but can easily be used in prop duels too. Newer players tend to think rolling is simply just rotating with their ailerons. To roll, your ailerons and stabilizers must be used in conjunction in order to actually be effective. If using your mouse, swing your cursor around too while flipping around your ailerons and it will provide a similar result. Another problem that players have is tunnel visioning. This is where they are too focused on one target that they don't even see another bogey dropping down behind him to shoot him down. Or worse, they don't see an ally also engaging the same target and a collision occurs. Always maintain your situational awareness, even while engaging in a dogfight. If two or more bogeys are attacking you, make sure you know all of their locations at all times (if 4+, I'm assuming your allies suck and all got shot down, you're pretty much screwed). You can hold C and move your mouse to look around. Additionally, players tend to waste their energy diving down to low altitude and never recycling the energy back into altitude. This is especially useless when they dive down at the first target they see, unaware of anyone else around them. It's best to stay up as high as possible until you've seen every enemy, which can be done by checking their score (holding N) and seeing if they have gained any points, which go up when they're within 1.5 km of an opponent. Once you know you're higher than anyone else, you can finally dive down. But always remember to return that speed back into altitude to maintain an advantage. Generally, it's best to have two people to a target. Any more is a waste and a higher risk of collisions. If you are at a disadvantage, where you can't out-turn or out-run a bogey, try to get to fairly low altitude (around 1 km) and head back to your airfield while avoiding getting shot down, and hope the AAA can shoot down the enemy or that he'll turn around. The AAA in Realistic mode are far more accurate and dangerous than in Arcade. Strengths and weaknesses of individual planes are best learned through flying them. While in history, certain nations took advantage of pilot error, there is less of that in War Thunder, so just because a plane had a high kdr in real battles, it doesn't mean it was because they simply flew straight in and turned. Ultimately, the best way to know your opponent's weakness is to fly that plane yourself. I think it's a fun game overall. Most of the player-base speaks Russian, so that can be a plus if you don't speak it and don't like to deal with understanding 12-year-old banter. The environment is generally regarded as one of the most visually-appealing in any game (especially the clouds and bodies of water). Spitfire Mk IIb zooming away after shooting down an He 112 A-0 above Sicily. Graphics setting was set to Medium. Finally, here's a trailer that many of us like to call "Russian Propaganda" Click to watch. If this were a real War Thunder game, that Bf-109 would've rammed that La-7.

52 Weeks of Stronghold Welcome, Lords and Ladies, to Stronghold's biggest ever competition! Real prizes, real contests and real challenges await you! Over the next 52 weeks of 2016, we will challenge you, and you will challenge yourself, to become a better gamer. Each Monday the admin team will post a new challenge in the new forum 52 weeks of Stronghold. The challenges will be fairly open ended and encourage you to explore and create something unique for it. In order to complete the challenge, you could make something very basic to see how the game works using the tutorials and resources that we will provide to you. Whatever you feel comfortable with, but we would like you to at least attempt the challenge and explore some techniques. Prizes! StrongholdNation has teamed up with Firefly Studios, and we can now announce that at the end of 2016, a random member from the full list of winners will receive a steam code for every single Firefly game, all the Stronghold Crusader 2 DLC and a Firefly Studios T-Shirt. Each submission is rated in a scale of 1 to 3, (1 is the lowest and 3 is the highest) and the points are re-calculated on a weekly basis by the admin team. The winner of each week will be the person with the most points - or if multiple people have the same amount of points the member who clearly puts in the most effort. At the end of 2016, the five members with the most number of weeks that they have won will receive a steam code for every Firefly game and all the Stronghold Crusader 2 DLC. Additionally, a random user from all previous winners will be selected, and will win a steam code for every Firefly game and all the Stronghold Crusader 2 DLC. Users can be entered into the draw more than once, e.g. by winning more than one week. So obviously to increase your chance of winning, enter as many weeks as you can! Note: The top five winners who have won the most weeks will not be eligible for the random draw. How do I enter? To enter the contest, simply participate in a challenge for that particular week. Post in the thread and let the team member know you want to get involved, and then follow the instructions for that week. It's as simple as that! There are no restrictions on the amount of weeks you must do - you do what you feel comfortable with. You might choose to enter one single week, or maybe even all of them! The first challenge will be posted on the 4th of January 2016. Follow #52WeeksStronghold on Facebook or Google Plus for instant updates! Promotions! Unrelated to the contest, but we have some more member promotions to announce! @Crusader1307 has been one of the most active members here and it's my pleasure to announce we have now promoted him to the rank of Moderator! His wonderful skills have not gone unnoticed by us, and the amount of quality content he has produced for us every single day of this year is not even on the scale. I'd like to be the first to wish him a hearty congratulations! has really shone a light on some mapping tricks in Stronghold 2, and with the amount of tricks he has already shown us, I feel he should be made a permanent member of the experts group. Congratulations [user]tokamaps], and thank you for providing us with such good quality content! Congratulations and thank you! I'm delighted to see what other mapping tricks you still have to provide!

Hi everyone! I thought I'd post a topic on why the site has been down for the last week. I'd also like to thank everyone for their patience and apologise for the downtime. I'd also like to thank members such as and [user]tokamaps] for getting in touch with me and trying to let me know the site was down. On Saturday 19th September at approximately 10 AM UK time, the raid controller for the site failed, and so did the primary hard drive. The controller then attempted to kick into the secondary hard drive so no data was lost, and that also failed. These type of failings are not common at all, and in fact it's about as common as two car headlights burning out at the exact same time. Our server monitoring team tried their very best, working very long, and very diligently to recover any data possible. That was the main thing that caused this whole process to last as long as it did, as they were trying to salvage data from what they had available. This included backups of the site that the server makes on a daily basis. They then had to make the unfortunate decision that no more data could be salvaged as the were unable to read the data after the server crashed. In this instance, the very thing that protects against data loss, caused the data loss. The server monitoring team restored what they could, but half of the website was missing including ~3000 files, our SSL certificate for the main website and IP address - as well as any subdomains such as the forum. We therefore had to resort to a backup from the 17th of September, and everything posted between the 17th and 19th has been lost, including the update of the forum I did during this time. I will be doing some maintenance later on the site to update it again, but other than this, I can only be sorry for what happened.

As promised, I made a map to show that I'm slowly coming back to Stronghold. Now it's nothing amazing, no massive fights or amazingly designed maps, but the map is special to me for more than one reason. Some personal reasons, other reasons you can read about within the "background" text below. I hope you enjoy the map :) Minimap: Background: Llywelyn ein llyw olaf (aka Llyewlyn ap Gruffudd) was the king of Wales in 1258 until his death at Cilmeri in 1282. To this day a stone from centuries ago still stands in Cilmeri. Llywelyn was killed around the area of that stone. The stone stands as a sign to the people of Wales to forget about the negative past and to look to the positivity in the future. A poem written by Iwan Llwyd creates this message. The poem is called "11.12.82" which is the date of Llywelyn's death. The poem itself has 6 stanzas, the first 5 stanzas refer to the negativity in the death of a great king and how everybody remembers that negativity. Then the 6th stanza tells us to look to the future and remember Llywelyn as the great king he was and not remember his death. It roughly translates to: ?? then screamed the baby And the winters melted And the breeze that froze Irfon? The silence broke And the challenge of a new century horrified her cry? Being Welsh, this story is important to me and as Llywelyn was a king who commanded an army, I decided to create a map to remember the king. I named the map "Re-written History" because this prevents the negativity coming back. Nobody tries to lose in games and so they will retry until they win. That's the attitude this map should bring out. By re-writing history, you can make the future better!

Well unfortunately there is no tutorial on scripting for Crusader 2. Just the basic map editor tutorial they came out with a few months ago and it's not about scripting. I did manage to figure out how to get the invasions to work, most of the time. Open the markers panel, go to the marker tab and you will see 3 tabs, Generic, AI, Pathing, click on the Pathing tab, then double click pathing, double click chain, then place the Pathing marker in the territory you want the AI to attack. Now go back to the markers tab and place a start flag and a flag where you want the invasion to gather to attack. The start flag is where the invasion comes onto the map and they go to the next flag where the invasion will start from. I have had some success with Harass troops, here I put a second pathing marker , by double clicking the pathing again, in the mines with a Harass troops gather here flag, some times the invasions will go to the mines and do other damage than going straight to the keep. Hope that helps, if more is needed ask again. I have made a few maps with an enemy castle as well as your estate, some times the invasions will head toward your castle then stop and turn around and go to the enemy keep and just patrol back and forth without ever attacking you, not sure why they do that.