Isaiah

The sixth mission of the first edition trail has you and Lionheart teamed up against the Wolf with 10,000 gold for everyone. I completed the mission in about a half-hour (real-time) and 10 in-game years. To be honest, this mission is much easier than it appears. First of all, despite there being no oasis (so no farms), I ended up maintaining a small bread chain (one mill and 4 bakeries) using the starting wheat. Furthermore, the castle was small enough that I could just occassionally buy wheat from the market and still maintain extra rations (and average taxes). The Wolf, generally a very fearsome enemy to siege, was heavily crippled by Lionheart's catapults and the lack of oasis land for food. Alas, these factors made him very easy to siege; a single group of 3 pikemen could do much damage to his castle because his troops were spread out thin. I used this tactic to weaken him further. Eventually, I sent a group of swordsmen (about 20 or so) as well as a few pikemen to take down his gatehouse and storm his keep, and just like that, the Wolf is dead. -------- The seventh mission of the first edition trail is titled "Greek Fire", and it puts you up against two allied Caliphs. The Caliphs get 4000 gold each while you only start with 2000. Despite the fact that you hold a very good position against the Caliphs, this mission ended up being somewhat difficult, especially in the beginning. I had to restart this mission because I could tell that the way I tried it the first time just was not going to work. The first time I tried the mission, I tried to hold the ford against the two Caliphs, but this proved to be a mistake in the long run due to the Caliph's fire ballistae, which I could not destroy because he kept slaughtering all my troops on the gatehouse. Furthermore, as soon as one of the Caliphs stopped their siege, the other one would start sieging me, so I could never really recuperate. Thus, I finally decided to restart the mission and try a different approach. Instead of simply blocking the river ford, I surrounded my castle with walls. This helped in two ways: 1) the Caliphs' fire ballistae kept targeting my stone quarry, but unfortunately for them, the bolt kept getting blocked by one of my walls and 2) even if they did slaughter my troops nearest ford, which is exactly what happened, I still had troops on other walls to help control the troops that swarmed in better. Nonetheless, I still found myself in quite a tough situation because my troops were having a hard time targeting the enemy catapult, the biggest threat because if it crushed my wall, I would have to deal with the fire ballistae, and the troops kept coming without end, so I could never build up my defenses. (I believe the combined sieges of the two lasted for about 7-8 years before they finally stopped.) Then, it hit me: what if I used fire ballistae to take out their fire ballistae and catapults? The fire ballistae, which was kept behind my wall nearest the ford, worked great: it could easily take out the enemy siege equipment while also being almost invulnerable from the enemy siege equipment. Once the extended siege finally ended, I quickly hired 20 or so crossbowmen and several archers and placed them on my large gatehouse and round tower nearest the ford. After that, the Caliphs were no longer a problem. For the yellow Caliph, I used a catapult to weaken him. Then, I sent in two groups of pikemen (about 15 each) to breach the enemy's walls (and cause him to use his pitch) and then sent several swordsmen to kill him. (I did lose all the pikemen in the attack, but it did not matter that much to me.) For the blue Caliph, I once again used pikemen to breach the wall and swordsmen to kill him. I did hire several fire ballistae to take out the enemy's fire ballistae. (Those things do some serious damage to swordsmen.) Here's the castle I used:

Thanks for the advice about the Caliph; I'll keep that in mind. I finished two more today. The fourth mission was fairly short while the fifth mission was excruciatingly long. -------- The fourth mission of the first edition trail is "An Old Friend", and like the name implies, it pits you up against the Pig, one of the opponents from the original Stronghold. Here, you get 2000 gold while the Pig gets 4000 gold to start with. In some ways, this mission was easy, and in other ways, this mission was tough. It was easy in the fact that once I finished my castle, the Pig basically couldn't touch me; he did have one early attack that reached my Lord, but my Lord, spearmen, and archers killed all the macemen. On the other hand, it was hard in that all my troops kept getting slaughtered by crossbowmen... I probably should've brought some catapults to take out some towers. I eventually killed him after bankrupting him, and then amassing a large enough army that wouldn't be slaughtered by the crossbowmen. -------- The fifth mission of the First Edition Trail, "The Arabian Adventure", pits you up against 3 Snakes, but you start with 4000 gold whereas each of them start with 2000 gold. For me, this mission was excruciatingly long and took over 50 in-game years to complete (over 4 hours real-time). It is not extremely difficult to defend your Lord against the combined attacks of all three Snakes; the trouble lies in defending your stone quarries and iron mines against the unrelenting stream of enemy slaves and archers. At first, I tried sending just a few archers to protect them; however, this never worked because 1) for whatever reason, they always seemed to let a slave get by, and 2) they kept getting killed by the Snakes' archers. Indeed, I spent about 25 in-game years trying to find some way to maintain my iron mine from the Snake's slaves, and once I finally managed to do this, the mission got quite a bit easier. (I tried to defend the quarry for a while but eventually gave up on it because it wasn't worth it and securing the iron mines would be a better strategy.) The key to securing the mine was crossbowmen which may seem strange as first since the Snake uses only light troops (archers, arabian bowmen, slingers, spearmen, and slaves as well as catapults). The reason it worked was the crossbowmen could absorb a much higher number of arrows compared to the archers. There was one drawback to this though: the crossbowmen's shorter range. Thus, I sent a decent-sized army--I think it was about 25 of each--composed of archers and crossbowmen to protect the mine. Once I had the mines protected, I started training pikemen and knights. Even after gaining a stable supply of iron, I still had a difficult time getting this mission finished. The reason was the absurd number of archers the Snake keeps on his walls and keep. If I sent in archers and crossbowmen to try to kill them, he simply slaughtered them all in no time. (I had over 60 archers killed in about a minute by the archers on the blue Snake's keep.) If I sent in knights, they could kill any archers outside the walls and do some damage inside the walls (if they got in), but they couldn't kill the Lord or any of the troops defending the keep which limited their usefulness. (Also, as a side note/question: do spearmen (and possibly pikemen) have a combat bonus up against knights? I might be mistaken, but it really seemed like 8 or so spearmen could generally kill a knight or two in a group of 8 knights.) If sent in pikemen, they could get into the castle (with enough of them), but they could never reach the keep alive. Thus, they were about as effective as the knights. (I did heavily consider using siege equipment, and I did use a few siege towers as well as a few defensive trebuchets, but it did me very little good since the main problem was clearing the troops on the keep which is the one thing that siege equipment does a very poor job against.) Eventually, I found a solution, but it take me several years to find it: swordsmen. While pikemen have the highest health in the game (besides the Lord) and can survive a few more crossbow bolts than swordsmen, swordsmen can survive several times more arrows than pikemen. (Honestly, the number they can absorb is quite ridiculous!) Whereas 30 or so pikemen would be all dead by the time they reached the Snake's keep, out of 30 or so swordsmen, only about half of them would be dead or low health and the rest would murder the enemy Lord. (This is not to say the pikemen weren't useful: pikemen can take down enemy walls, towers, and gatehouses much faster than swordsmen.) Once I finally slayed the yellow Snake, the game was basically over. The orange Snake, who didn't even fully enclose his castle (is that a bug?) could not stand up against 30 swordsmen, and the same applies for the blue Snake. Despite how obnoxious the Snakes were in this level, I do like how Firefly designed them. By themselves, they are merely a nuisance (they don't have a high chance of killing your Lord), but suppose you pair them with some stronger opponents (the Wolf, Saladin, etc), and you have a quite a bit of trouble on your hands. Whereas the Caliph tends to be a nuisance only while you are setting up your castle (ie: in the first part of the game), the Snake remains a constant nuisance throughout the game. Part of this is the sheer number of archers he has, but it isn't just that; it is the way he disperses his troops. Rather than bringing out his archers only to siege you, he spreads them out in several small groups, and whenever you try to kill one group (with melee units), you end up in range of another group. (It has been forever since I played against many of the AI opponents in Crusader, so I'm not going to say this is unique to the Snake (because it probably is not). Still, it seems to me that the Snake has a pretty smart AI.)

The preview function on this forum does not appear to be working; I keep getting a server error whenever I attempt to do it.

It has been quite some time since I last posted in this thread. Anyway, I had to start over on the Crusader trail because I got a new computer, but it is fine with me. I have redone the 3 missions so far, and I'll probably tackle the next few over this week and the following week. For the first mission Arrival, I simply rushed the Sultan with a bunch of Arabian swordsmen and completed the mission in less than a year. (Sorry, I couldn't help myself.) -------- The second mission of the first edition campaign trail is called "Setting Out". It pits you against the Caliph with 2000 gold for each of you. I'm not going to go too much into how I built my castle and defended it from the Caliph. The main things to be noted are: 1) I eventually switched to simply bread production though I started with 2 dairy farms and 2 wheat farms (partially because the Caliph kept burning my farms in the beginning plus wheat farms take up less space). 2) I started iron production very early (pretty much as soon as I entered the map). I made sure to put my Iron Mine inside the castle walls after the Caliph burned my first one. 3) Since all the stone was on the Caliph's side, I ended up buying all the stone I needed to build my castle. To obtain the funds, I simply sold any excess iron (a lot) and plate armor I had. 4) For my army (both offensive and defensive), I focused solely on building archers and pikemen. (I did buy 5 crossbowmen towards the beginning of the game though and kept them on the keep.) 5) The main problem I had with the Caliph was keeping him from burning my farms. I had to send out quite a few pikemen to take out his obnoxious arabian bowmen since they kept killing my archers. The problem was solved completely once I built two round towers and built ballistae on top of them. 6) I used positive fear factor to help boost the strength of my troops. (-30% to productivity, +15% to troop strength) As far as killing the Caliph goes, it really was not that difficult, though I ended up using more troops than I originally planned on using. In total, I probably used about 100 pikemen and 55 archers, but my initial force was about 50 pikemen and 40 archers along with a siege tower and a battering ram. First, I moved my troops to the forest directly south of my castle (where all of the marsh is). Then, I moved them right until they were directly south of his castle but out of his firing range. I sent the archers out first with the siege tower close behind them. The first thing I took out with my archers was the single Fire Ballista, then I focused on trying to take out the fire throwers that were in the tower. Alas, I was a bit slow, and all of my initial archers were wiped out trying to take out the second fire thrower, but it did not matter that much. While my archers were being wiped out by the enemy bowmen, my siege tower was making it to the wall, so I started sending my pikemen in that direction. When the tower finally reached the wall, I sent my pikemen on top of the wall to capture the gatehouse. Unfortunately, as soon as I started moving my pikemen, the Caliph decides to light his obnoxious pitch ditches. Thankfully, the pikemen seem to have good resistant against fire because they only took moderate damage (versus getting almost killed). I had half my pikemen target the enemy Lord. (They did not really make it there...) The other half I sent to destroy towers. It is also about this time when I sent in the battering ram to crush the towers. (Obviously, I was targeting all the towers with the dangerous fire throwers.) Due to multiple pitch ditches, I pretty much lost all of my initial troops. Despite that fact, the Caliph was unable to take advantage of this because I sent a few more archers to his castle. This time, they attacked from the northeastern side of the Caliph's castle rather than the southern side. They got killed pretty fast, but it was enough to stall him while I sent multiple groups of pikemen to take him out. Some went to the north or east side while others went to the southern side. Even with all his fire throwers and pitch ditches, the Caliph was unable to take out my massive army of pikemen. As a result, he died, and I won. -------- The third mission in the trail is quite a bit harder than the previous mission. It puts you and Lionheart up against 2 Caliphs with 10,000 gold for everyone. Whereas the previous mission took me only 19 years, this one took me 37 years (so about double the time). (I also lost over 400 troops in this mission compared to the 150 or so troops I lost in the previous mission.) The main thing that makes this mission tough is fire and for two reasons. The first reason is that fire continuously disrupts your food and There were several times where my popularity went into the red because of no food, and I ended up either begging Lionheart for some or bought food at the market (or both). Due to all the wheat farms that kept being destroyed (as well as my woodcutters), I ended up getting low on wood quite often as well. (I kept replacing the farms only for them to be destroyed 3 or so months later.) This issue was eventually somewhat solved once I found a piece of oasis where I could put my wheat farms that was in range of my two towers, but it took forever to find such a place. The other reason fire is such a nuisance in this scenario is that it wipes out most troops in no time, and the Caliph uses a lot of it when defending his castle. Since Lionheart primarily uses swordsmen and pikemen for his attack forces, his forces got burned pretty quickly whenever I tried to attack the yellow Caliph with him. It took multiple attempts to finally kill the yellow Caliph. After the first failed attempt, the Blue Caliph decides to take advantage of the situation and sends out about 50 (probably an overestimate) arabian swordsmen to take me out. The first time he did this, I was not prepared, and I ended up reloading before he killed my Lord (which would have happened if I did not reload.) After reloading, I bought a few crossbows and leather armor--I had no crossbowmen at the time--and placed them on the northernwestern side of my castle, the side of my castle that by far saw the most action. This time, he did not manage to even breach my wall. The next time I tried to attack the Yellow Caliph's castle, I enlisted Lionheart's help (which he provided) as before, and like before, he destroyed both armies. Well, he kinda destroyed both my armies. After having my initial troops killed, I simply continued to send more and more troops over there until the Caliph basically ran out of money and defenders. (This tactic worked pretty well except for when my popularity was in the red because my wheat farms had been destroyed by the Blue Caliph.) Unlike the first time, I brought a new weapon to the scene: knights. Knights are pretty powerful in Crusader; however, they are not overpowered like they are in Stronghold 2 (and Legends). The main advantage to knights is their movement speed which I used to take out important targets such as the Caliph's fire ballistae and granary. The main downside to using knights is that they are horrible when it comes to taking down walls and towers; even when I tried to take down a lookout tower with 5 of them, it took forever. After getting rid of the yellow Caliph, all the left was the blue Caliph. Whereas the yellow Caliph was huge pain in the neck to get rid of, the blue Caliph was rather easy to take out; it was a matter of massing enough troops. To expediate things, I set my troop rally points at the location of the yellow Caliph's destroyed castle. Once I had enough troops, I sent my 60 or so archers first to draw enemy fire and to take out some enemy archers and then sent in my other troops (monks and pikemen). I also had my knights take out his fire ballistae (as well as activate all the pitch ditches), and once my troops breached the wall, my pikemen took out the blue Caliph. (I should also note I attacked the blue Caliph on two fronts: from the south but also from the east.) It is worth noting that the two Caliphs seem to complement each other well. The blue Caliph was great at disrupting my food production and industry, and the yellow Caliph proved to be an impassable iron wall. (I guess I could have tried attacking the blue Caliph first, but I figured that would be harder plus Lionheart is in a better position to help from the south.) -------- I have attached images of my castles from both missions. fe2_setting_out_castle.bmp fe3_dusty_land_castle.bmp

(Nice poem.) I hope all of you had a very merry Christmas.

In the Stronghold 2 (and Stronghold Legends) scenario editor, is there another set of keys one can use when setting things like the start date without using the mouse wheel? (I honestly see no reason why there isn't since some people play on laptops and not all computer mice have wheels, but there is no indicator there is an alternative to using the mouse wheel in the documentation.)

Stronghold is one of a few games I still play even after winning. Anyway, I'm doing fine, but I am quite busy at times. I stop by here whenever I start playing Stronghold again.

Answers in bold. Edit: Forget about the double-posting rule. Is there a way to merge posts? (I'm used to it elsewhere plus I used the quote button for this reply.)

Yeah, so I'm going back through the military campaign (Stronghold 1) and thought I'd try it on very hard. The 4th mission (Hidden Lookout) was fairly difficult. After finding myself practically defenseless the first time I got attacked, I changed my strategy up a bit and ended up focusing on weapon production first before building my perimeter wall. One thing to note on this level was the lack of enemy archers making the level much easier to defend. The 5th mission (Between a Rock and a Hard Place) was extremely difficult to do on very hard. The primary problem was the number of archers the enemy possessed. The first time I tried it, I didn't have nearly enough troops and lost practically all save like 3 to the first attack and then lost against the second swarm. So, I restarted the mission and tried again. Once more, I focused more heavily on weapon production. The first invasion was repelled a lot easier as well as the second invasion. The final invasion with the siege weapons once again proved problematic (cuz my gatehouses got catapulted and all my archers kept getting slaughtered by enemy fire. What I noticed after trying a few times was that the Rat's archers would clear the front and right gatehouse defensive troops as well as the keep troops, but would leave the archers on the left and back gatehouse alone for the most part. So, I had about 6 archers or so on the left gatehouse that cleared A LOT of troops. The Rat (due to his great stupidity) failed to destroy my economy (save maybe a woodcutter or two), so all during the siege I was recruiting more archers to keep the Lord safe on the keep (and to replenish killed troops.) It was still super close --> I used the Lord to kill several spearmen because my archers were busy killing enemy archers. In the end, I lost about 78% of my troops total and my Lord was inches away from death (red life bar). What I learned from both missions was that I could *ahem* cut out some of my food supply and focus more on weapon production early on. I'm not (fyi) doing the siege missions on Very Hard (possibly normal in fact) because I'm a terrible sieger but I think experimenting with different defensive strategies and combinations to find what works best might be an interesting endeavor. Definitely would be worth discussing in here. (Even the two missions I just mentioned that allow you only to recruit archers and use wooden defenses can have vastly different results depending on your approach.) As to my own questions and my answers to them: 1) See above; mission 4 was what made me think of the question 2) One wall thick layer with cremulation usually 3) If I have the resources and the space, I would, but alas, that's usually not the case 4) I usually played as a bad lord because the efficiency boost is nice. The troop penalty is kinda obnoxious though. I don't like good things cuz "breaks" seem to be semi-random and sometimes kills my food supply, etc. if they take breaks 5) Really depends, but for me, I generally don't keep troops there. Another question for possible discussion: In Stronghold 1 (in Stronghold 2, religion got a massive boost as well as Ale getting a small boost), do you feel religion is worth the gold or not (if the map is reasonably long enough)?

Been a long time since I have been on this site. So, some more questions to answer in case anyone still plays these archaic games: In general, after basic wood, stone, and food acquisition, what do you focus on next in an invasion/skirmish fight? (Getting weapons, enclosing the keep, etc.) How many layers of walls do you use typically use? Do you use multiple defensive layers? (Troops have to pass through multiple gatehouses) Do you find playing as a bad lord or a good lord (or maybe even neutral!) to be more beneficial? Do you ever keep archery troops atop your keep after a basic castle defense has been established?

I've been playing trumpet for like 4 to 5 years now. (I'm currently third chair out of 13 out of my high school band.)

Its the small one right after the Oasis -- Me & Rat vs. Saladin & Sultan

Well, hi, I haven't played in awhile as indicated by my absense from the site. I'm still on the one against Sal and the Rat --> I'm bad at attacking, and space is so limited on that level. Plus, haven't played recently. Hello Frank, it seems you are doing well in your campaign.

Later, but I save right after the last lord dies (idk why, I just do), so the files may be of limited use. I did #9: The Oasis recently. For the first time ever, I made a pretty large castle. I think I've might've went as far as 80 people only in a freebuild game once or twice before; this was the first time I actually built a castle with over 80 people in actual game. Generally, my population is in the 50s (20s if I decide against food) because I need to maintain my bread chain and still have 6 peasants left for recruits. The difference on this map was two-fold: 1. There was mounds of iron and stone, and 2. My opponent was Saladin who I know from past experiences is extremely tough to siege. Another first for me was training a large army. Generally, I train 30 or so pikemen with maybe some monks as backups, and some siege towers or battering rams, and definitely fire ballistae, but I knew that wouldn't work here. Therefore, I trained about 5 siege towers, 50 crossbows, 30 pikes, 20 swords, 40 or so macemen, and 40 slingers. (Actually, I think I trained way more -- my total troop count including defenders was over 400). My strategy was to have the siege towers dock to Saladin's walls, so I could use his round towers against him; the slingers were my expendables as the rest of my troops got into position. With my sheer number of troops, I overpowered him. (I did have one issue which I'm pretty sure's a bug: I had my metal units go to Saladins southern gatehouse (get on top it) and cleared all his troops, yet the gatehouse was never captured.... So I had to wait on my macemen to finish destroying the wall....) Also, I found it strange that Saladin built an Armoury and made weapons, yet never built a barracks. Aiv problem? Last of all, I was rather disappointed when I was never attacked by Saladin. @EaglePrince Yeah, we can discuss Extreme too. The two volley skills are overpowered, but still interesting. Also, have you tried editting the trail? I made it (way) easier, but you can changes lots about it.

I thought we could discuss the trails here. My progress: I finished #7: Greek Fire and #8: Sands of Times recently. In Greek Fire, I saw the Caliph actually use fire ballistas offensively and catapults, and while I had to constantly replace troops, I was able to easily defend cuz there was only 1 ford through which the enemy could travel. I should've blocked the ford a bit earlier though...... In Sands of Time, I had more difficulty than expected. Rather than fight the rats over the stone and iron, I ran a minimalist economy with a hops farm and wheat farm on the nearest oasis grass. That was it for resources -- the rest was bought. I made money off of sailing excess crossbows. As far as offense goes, I sent several slaves to burn the orange rat's castle, so he would be unable to attack me. Later, once I finally got a few archers to clear his keep, I get attacked by 300 spearmen plus 50 archers or so.... I nearly died as I still had low walls and about 70 or so archers. Luckily, I had started Pike production and was able to sell some Pikes to raise money for Metal Rmor for 5 pikemen. After that, I realized I needed tall walls and a moat, and meanwhile, I got a much needed 500 gold to spend on buying stone (for my small encampment had been obliberated). I burnt the yellow Rat's castle too and took him out by sending armoured troops using the ford near the orange rat's old castle. Finally, I cleared the blue keep with Crossbowmen then had my Lord take out the Blue rat. I then sent all my defend archers to go attack the gray rat alongside a healthy chunk of pike/swords. Once, I had an entire siege force of about 20 macemen, and 5 pikes/swords obliberated by the combined siege forces of the blue and gray rat -- Spearmen are powerful in numbers, and the rat seems to send almost all his troops out when he conducts sieges (might explain how he lost his castle so easily in Stronghold 1 ;)!)

Forgot about that article. But yes, this is one possibility for the .sav to .map trick. Might be interesting if you want a much harder skirmish trail (I wish I could siege well....)

For all of you who have played the 4th Historical Campaign, you'll notice its a skirmish battle with custom invasions in it. I have found a way to replicate such a configuration (but alas, there is one major limitation): Here's how: 1. Open Crusader 2. Start a custom Crusader game on the map you want, etc. 3. Save immediately and exit Crusader. 4. Locate save folder (In documents/Stronghold Crusader/saves) 5. Copy your saved game to the maps folder 6. Rename the save file, so the extension is now .map instead of .sav 7. Launch Crusader 8. Load the map in the map editor 9. Use [ALT]+[COMMA] to change the map to a single player map. Tada, you can now script invasions and events, AND the game acts like a normal skirmish map! Pretty neat eh! Now, there is one limitation: For some reason, if you let the map editor run while in building mode (not terrain mode), the map suddenly ends saying victory/defeat. Therefore, you cannot edit the castles, but that may not be a limitation due to the gameplay style.

Unable to send email. Please contact the forum administrator with the following error message reported by the SMTP server: "550 Sender verify failed " At your Panther forum when trying to register

Congrats Charles and Nigel ..... Neat, you made your own forum software Chris? Edit: OOPS, Wrong forum master!

Whilst what you say for the most part is true, you forgot one vital thing: Stronghold does NOT let you convert invasion maps to siege, economic, or freebuild IF there are invasions that are scripted. Therefore, EaglePrince should use the .sav to .map trick, remove all the scripted invasions (and probably win/lose events), then [ALT]+, to change the map type.

There's the .sav to .map trick Load a map, save it, rename the file to .map instead of .sav but leave it in the save folder, open SH, and load the map (sav).

Great Job Crusader, your never-ending knowledge of History astounds me (srry for being late)

Yeah, probably a resolution problem.... Did you check the readme files and all that? If you have, take a look at files like config.*, settings.*, display.*, hopefully you get the post (the * is a wildcard)

I myself prefer catapults as they're much easier to use and cost a lot less. Although trebuchets have a big range advantage, catapults are very useful when that last layer of wall needs taking down fast! I don't tend to use huge armies, simply because I never have enough resources. Playing with allies (for example @EaglePrince I tend to send supporting troops, such as engineers, archers, small groups of swordsmen, just to help wipe out remaining enemy units. Lol, I'm basically the same way on the second question except I have to siege the castle myself. I'm about to update the initial post, but you are always welcome to continue discussing old topics.

Sorry all for my rude (and removed) comments. I'm going try to get this thread going again... Which do you prefer: Catapults or Trebuchets? I'd personally say catapults since they hit most of the time and do great damage. In Crusader, what's your average siege army size? A few fire ballista and about 40-100 melee units normally; I cannot stand micromanagement sometimes and waiting for a huge army takes forever.