Lord_Chris

That is a good addition to Kingmaker, I added it to the list. :)

Thanks @Steinhardt, I'll take a look at this and see what the problem is.

Well, I've hardly touched the surface with these two posts ;) I'll focus on the economy later, probably tomorrow morning now to give you a chance to read and take it in. Good to see it's persuasive though! :D This really is the most important decision we'll ever make - and I really doubt we'll ever be given another opportunity to get out of the EU. In just five or ten years time, I really believe it will be too late. In fact, one thing which I failed to mention was the Five President's Report. This calls for complete economic, political and monetary union of all members by 2025, and it would be extremely damaging. Anyway, I'll let you read what I've put so far. Let me know what you think, or if you have any questions, comments, concerns .etc !

The European Union has several institutions, the major ones being the European Commission, the European Parliament, the European Court of Justice and the European Council of Ministers. These all supposedly represent different things, the Commission represents the EU, the Parliament the people, the Court of Justice interprets the law and the Council represents the Government of each member state. But they just don't do this; the end aim is to create a 'United States of Europe', and a lot of this process involves lobbying and lobby groups. In fact there is more lobbying in Brussels than in Washington DC. Many MEPs are given free champagne (among many other luxuries) in return for voting in a certain way for a particular law. This is what people mean when they say that the big businesses run the EU. They really do. The first thing to note is that any real power is nested away and kept hidden from ordinary people, elected representatives and anyone who could make a difference. The power is kept by the European Commission, and this (in essence, it's the Government of Europe) and has the sole right to propose and amend legislation. The Commission is completely made up of 28 unelected officials, one from each member state of the EU - only 3.6% of people come from the UK in the Commission. They supposedly represent their member state, but they have to swear an oath of allegiance to the EU, so they cannot even act in the interests of their member state, they are forbidden to do so. Each Commissioner has a specific responsibility, for example, Competition between businesses, agriculture, Anti-Fraud .etc. The Commission does have a President, one of the 28 Commissioners who are elected by the Parliament as President - but there is only usually one or two candidates. At the moment, Jean-Claude Juncker was the only candidate. The Commission is advised by the Directorate General, but this is very heavily lobbied, just like the Commission is. After the Commission decides a law, for example, to increase VAT on fuel by 10%, this is taken to the Parliament. The Parliament contains 751 elected representatives that each member state is responsible for electing every five years. It also has a President, voted from within the Parliament, but the current one, Martin Schulz, was again, the only name of the ballot paper to elect. The Parliament technically has the power to overthrow the Commission, but as I said in my last post - the Commission always gets its way. The Parliament have never successfully been able to remove the Commission - and they never attempted to get rid of the extremely corrupt one between 2004 and 2009. This Commission included Siim Kallas as the Anti-Fraud Commissioner who was given this role despite being charged with fraud, abuse of power and providing false information after ?4.4million disappeared while he was head of Estonia's national bank. The Parliament is a front, designed to make the EU appear more democratic than it really is. In reality, it's no Parliament as we know one because they have no right to propose laws. Instead, this entire power is handed to the unelected Commission. The Parliament does vote and can make amendments on laws which are proposed by the Commission, but the Commission must accept any of the amendments proposed for the changes to become effective. Once something becomes a law, the Parliament has no right to propose any changes to it. It's used to push through laws that would be rejected at our own Parliament, and other national Parliaments throughout the EU. For the European Parliament to pass a law, a 60% majority is needed. But there's a catch. Any MEPs who do not attend the voting session are automatically counted as voting for that specific law to be passed. In fact even on certain votes, the "No" button is disabled and the MEP can only vote to accept the law or abstain from voting at all. The Parliament means absolutely nothing at all. One example is the monthly move to Strasbourg. Every month, the entire European Parliament packs up, and moves to Strasbourg for four days. Everyone; translators, bureaucrats, officials, MEPs, MEP staff, cleaning staff, everyone. This is a cost of around ?100 million every single year. At the end of that week, that Parliament moves back to Brussels. The reason for doing this is because it's in the treaties. And because it's in the treaties that means it can't be changed unless all 28 member states agree. Because France like the fact it boosts their economy, they effectively veto any changes. And in 2013, the European Parliament voted by an overwhelming majority to abolish moving to Strasbourg once a month - but France vetoed it. So it's still happening. No other Parliament in the entire world does not even have the power to determine where it sits. On some occasions, hundreds of votes ranging on an exceptionally wide area of issues are all passed within an hour or two in the Parliament. This means it's exceptionally hard for the MEPs to know exactly what they're voting on and understand the issues in depth. Some documents are so secret that MEPs are fined if they reveal the contents - and other things, such as TTIP, are negotiated in secret behind closed doors that the elected representatives have not even seen yet. And even if all 73 British MEPs voted against a law, as has been done recently with the Port Services Regulation, it can still be overruled, and usually is. The people mean nothing to the EU and its elite. The next institution is the European Council. After being passed in the Parliament (which practically everything is) then this is the last place a law goes through before becoming law. This is usually done through qualified majority voting. So what this means, is that we can vote against a law and as we only have 8.5% of the say, we can be overruled. And actually this is happening more and more. Since 1993, on the 72 occasions that we have objected to a law in the Council of Ministers, we have been overruled 72 times - and this process is speeding up as well. We have a veto in a very minor number of areas, and when the Council accepts this as law, then they become EU (and consequently UK) law in one of two forms; directives or regulations. Regulations become law automatically and national parliaments do not have to pass any legislation. Directives force national parliaments such as our own at Westminster to change their laws within a specific time-period to comply with the new law, whether they want to change them or not. There has been a lot of reports on what percentage of laws are actually made by the EU, the remain camp say that it's 13.5% but this is a lie. This report only includes the percentage of laws which our own Parliament were forced to pass and does not include the percentage which automatically become UK law. When this figure is included, the average of the last ten years comes to 75%. In 2006 for instance, it was 86% of our laws which were made by the EU. The final major institution of the EU is the Court of Justice. This should interpret the EU laws and make sure they comply with EU treaties, but this just doesn't happen. It ignores things if it feels like it, for example if the EU pushes its own agenda. This is no court like we have in the UK, and it does more than bend the rules, it chooses when to impose them. One example of this is the EU bailouts. These are illegal under EU law, but because it helped the EU to prop-up the failing Eurozone, it allowed them. One thing I will finish on the "law" section is what the EU wants for the future. by 2020, the EU wants 50% of lawyers in the EU to be trained in the Roman law system of Corpus Juris. The majority of other countries in the EU do not use Habeas Corpus, so we would probably get outvoted on that too. Below is a short comparison on the two law systems.

I am strongly in favour of leaving the EU. So my answers will probably be biased. But I've tried to add as many facts and statistics as possible, from reliable sources (unlike the remain camp). There is an awful lot of information to digest, so it will probably take several posts to get it all through. I talked a bit about immigration in my other post, so I'll leave that out for now. Our country is in a mess, this is a time when we have never faced a moment like it in out history - and the elected Politicians and establishment officials are doing absolutely nothing to fix the mess. Indeed, they are making it even worse than it already is. I've heard a few people tell me, that voting doesn't change anything- voting always results in the same result. And that's because it does - because the EU is far more responsible for damage in our country than we think. This vote will result in real change for our country, and it will be the start of a new era. A new era which the people have more say in what happens, less corruption and a better, brighter, happier and more prosperous future. I'll first start a bit about the history of the EU, as it's only for history that we are where we are today. There has been outrage at the likes of Boris Johnson comparing the EU to Hitler and The Nazis. But actually, the EU was designed by The Nazis back in 1942. We are living in the exact same model of Europe that the Nazis has planned for World Domination, often referred to as "The Fourth Reich". There are a few changes, which I'll post below. But the rest is the same as what the Nazis has planned. The EU was designed to take all power away from Nation states, essentially making their own Parliaments Council Chambers, and instead centralise power around the EU. I will touch on the EU institutions later. When the EU was formed, it was a very noble idea, to prevent countries on the continent going to war ever again, and to have countries such as France and Germany become closer to one another. However, over time, the system has become massively corrupt, which I will take more about later. But not only that, it doesn't even work properly. Originally, there were six countries of the EU, Belgium, France, Germany, Luxemburg and The Netherlands and the EU was founded in 1956. It was a time where the war had left a lot of these countries devastated and it was designed to prevent them from ever going to war again. Back then, it was called the Common Market, and was designed for Free Trade between nations, at a time where Tariffs (taxes on imports and exports) was very high, at around 30-40%. The idea was that countries could trade freely between each other without any tariffs on goods or services. And at first, it worked. Europe began to thrive without any tariffs and economically, it was a good thing to be part of it, it made sense. But there were some problems, and one of these was the loss of sovereignty that countries endured by becoming a member. Laws were made by foreign powers in Brussels which became the capital of the EU, rather than by nation states. Fast forward to 1970, and the election in the UK. People in the UK did not want to vote Labour, because they were frightened that they would put us into the EU and we would lose sovereignty, become less independent and lose our national identity, and instead they voted Conservative resulting in a landslide victory for Ted Heath. They believed that the Conservatives were strong and would not put us into the EU, but they were wrong. Ted Heath signed us up to the EU without a single mandate to do so, utterly betraying the country. People never had a vote on it, people were very unhappy about it and this was the start of a new type of politics, a one where the elite would take over. But one more important thing - the country was conned by Ted Heath, who told us it was completely for trade. In 1974, we had another General Election and this time Harold Wilson won for the Labour Party, promising he would reform this organisation which made our laws, trading agreements and we paid to do so. Under the Treaty of Rome which established the EU, we are not allowed to negotiate our own free trade agreements, and an unelected EU Commissioner does this for us instead. So in essence, we can't make free trade agreements to scrap tariffs on exports and imports to any country because it is illegal to do so. The fact that we cannot make our own trade agreements results today in ?2.6 billion in lost revenue to South America alone. Harold Wilson promised to reform the EU so that we would fell happier, and he would then hold a referendum on the EU (or still Common Market) so the people could decide whether we leave or stay. But he came back with absolutely no reform whatsoever, just as Cameron has achieved today. And that is for one single reason - EU law is superior to UK law, and there is nothing we can do to change that fact. Once something is enshrined in law, there is nothing we can do. So Harold Wilson came back from the EU, waving his piece of paper saying he had 'reform'. The people voted to stay in by 66.6% to 33.3%, believing once again, that it was for trade, despite massive opposition to it. From the second we joined, we lost 200 miles of Sea for our use of fishing, which was 'shared' between all other countries in the EU. The result of this, was utter devastation on our fishing industry. In some places now, we only have 2 miles of sea where only we can fish. And EU quotas on fishing means that every year hundreds of thousands of fish are thrown back into the sea. To get back to the history, the only year the UK has ever received more funding from the EU than we paid in was 1975 - the year of that referendum. Then Margaret Thatcher came along, who after seeing what the EU was doing, the fact we were regularly overruled by other EU countries and became very Eurosceptic. She persistently had to badger the EU to get rebates back from what we paid into it, and slowly the EU took more and more powers. By this time, the Commission, Parliament and Council of Ministers (which I will explain next) all existed, and there were calls from the EU and EU officials for this to be the official Government of the EU, as such. Thatcher rejected this famously in her ' ' speech. But naturally, after Thatcher, the EU moved on again, taking more and more power away from us. In a time where the World Trade Organisation was founded and Tariffs began to slowly go down, it was becoming less sensible to remain inside the EU. In 1992, we had another General Election, and the Conservative Party won this time with John Major as PM. In 1993, his Government signed the infamous Maastricht Treaty. This took pretty much what power we had left, including our veto over a lot of areas, and handed it to the EU. This marked the end of '1,000 years of history'. This is the founding of the current European Union, and what powers it has over the UK. Its courts are supreme over ours, its Parliament is supreme, its laws are supreme - and our own democratically elected government could, from then on, be overruled by the EU whenever it chooses. Shortly after, we saw the introduction of the Euro, a disastrous currency which has crashed the economy of every country which ever joined it. By this point, economic union has been completed of these countries, and next on the agenda is political union - which is exactly what the Maastricht Treaty and the next part I'm coming to, is all about. At the moment, we have a temporary opt-out from the Euro. but we will not always have this forever. In fact it was predicted that if we had joined the Euro, the 2008 crash would have been a full depression like the 1930s, not just a recession. The Lisbon Treaty, which was signed in 2009, takes away even more powers from the UK and hands them to Brussels. For example, yet to have even been disclosed on the media, is the fact that on 31st of March 2017, the EU will take control over our armed forces and police services. Interestingly, on the Lisbon Treaty, both the French and Irish voted overwhelmingly against the Lisbon Treaty back in 2005 - and there was much more opposition to it than this. But just a few years later in 2009 the Commission pushed it through the back door in virtually the same format so that the people's voice did was overturned. And this is exactly how the EU works. It discusses things in secret with the leaders of other nations so that it can be done as quietly as possible without the public objecting. If you need another example of this, take TTIP. This is being discussed in private between the US Government and the EU officials. Until just last week, members of the European Parliament were not even allowed to see the documents. They are now allowed to go into a locked room to view TTIP, providing they hand over their mobile phone and take no electronic devices which them in the room, and swear not to tell a member of the public what is in the deal so far. And from leaked documents, we have a very good idea. It will open up all our public services to American companies for privatisation, including the NHS - and not only that, but it will be directly responsible for the loss of 1 million jobs, it will push down standards of food and allow Genetically modified foods to be brought into the UK - and not only that, but most chillingly of all - it will allow American Companies to take the British Government to Court (in private, non-public courts!) over their policies. This means that it could become irreversible privatisation. This really is a microcosm of how the EU works. And as you've seen - one of the main arguments that the remain camp brings up is that we can get reform - but we've repeatedly tried for forty years to get reform, and have failed every single time. This has rightly caused outrage across the whole of Europe, and people such as Jeremy Corbyn have said they will veto it. But there are two questions involved with this, the first - how much longer will a veto be available for? And the second point, is that even though theoretically we have a Veto, we've seen how the Commission sneaks things through the back door, low-profile under another name when things don't go their way. The Commission always wins. In my next post, I'll talk a bit about influence, and how exactly we have no influence in the EU. Changes from the Nazi model of Europe to the modern-day EU

I did ask Marta Zampollo, one of the PR officers at Firefly whether they intend to update Stronghold 2 in the coming months, and she hinted that they were thinking about it. This was when I first created this topic, a few months ago. But I sent another email off to her today and asked if there are any firm plans yet, I'll let you know when I hear a reply. I understand what you're saying, that Firefly doesn't give a massive amount of support for modding. But in my opinion, that's what communities like this one are for; for us to all help each other to become better at the game, understand more about it, and make better more detailed mods - but we're able to centralise discussions and help around here, rather than individuals all disconnected and only have a certain amount (or area) or knowledge. In other words, I see SHN as a community for "pooling" knowledge and information. :)

I've noticed in the past when a low amount of peasants are left in the Castle, the popularity level appears to randomly become better, though I didn't know that about the tax rate. I assumed it was a natural occurrence, after all, it happens in all Stronghold games I've played. By this, do you mean that when you recruit new soldiers they gather by the campfire? And does the Barracks have to be pre-placed or can you place it in-game?

Yes, I agree with @Crusader1307, your landscaping is extremely impressive. I'd love to see a map or two uploaded to our downloads section, they really do look very good. The amount of detail you put into those screenshots was fantastic. I'm not very good with placing plants and bushes, so it's good to see when they are placed well. Could I post this as an official article on the site? I think that could contain some useful advice for members and guests who may be interested in effective shrub and plant placement. On this specific issue, what settings are your graphics on? If you have lower graphics settings, this may impact it, alternatively if you zoom all the way out or all the way in, I'm not sure they'll show properly as well.

You both did remarkably well considering just how difficult this mission was! @EaglePrince - 3 points @Nigel - 3 points Congratulations to @EaglePrince, for surviving the longest and winning the challenge!

Your challenge is: Re-build York castle (1068) in the Stronghold 3 editor Information: Motte and Bailey Design. Combining varying heights. Much use of water. No Trees or Bushes. Useful resources Building Difficulty: 7 (Out of possible 10) Landscape Difficulty: 8 http://www.stronghold-nation.com/article/225-stronghold-3-editor-overview Note: Your entry must be attached to this topic by Midnight on Saturday to be counted in this challenge (25/6/16 23:59). If no entry is attached (via .zip. then your entry will not be counted! The results will be revealed on Sunday. Good luck everyone!

Well, it seems you both really enjoyed it, great to hear! @Charles of Tours made the scenario, and I'm sure he'll be thrilled to know how much you enjoyed it. :) Unfortunately, both of your games do not load on my PC, 's loads a black screen & [user]eagleprince]'s crashes my game just a second or two after loading it. Could you both post screenshots of your victory defeat screens instead for me?

Interesting points! If you're interested in sharing some suggestions for what could improve Stronghold 2, we have a thread here: http://forums.stronghold-nation.com/topic/727-official-stronghold-2-suggestions-list/

People do generalise this, I completely agree. But they wrongly put the blame on all migrants, when in fact it's EU migrants that is the problem. Last year 184,000 EU migrants came to the UK and 188,000 non-EU migrants. If I'm honest, I don't believe these figures. An independent report, by I think The Express, revealed that migration had been undercounted by 1.2 million at least in the last five years. Firstly if you take a look at those figures, you'll see that they're pretty much equal. The problem with this is that we have pretty much the same amount of our migration coming from 28 countries of only 500 million people as we do from the rest of the world. And we have no control of it. By remaining inside the EU, the racist immigration policy discriminates against anyone coming from anywhere else in the entire world makes it much more difficult to get qualified Doctors from India, like in your case when a member of your family needed care. And instead of taking in more qualified Doctors from non-EU countries such as India, we're taking in unskilled migrants from the EU. This is one of the major problems at the moment in the UK, this massive oversupply of unskilled Labour. It's pushing down wages for ordinary workers, making it much more difficult to get on the housing ladder and is destroying our natural green spaces because they have to be built on to accommodate housing. In fact just to cope with the migration levels, we need to build a house every 4 minutes. Another fact is that we cannot prevent murders, rapists, or other criminals from the EU entering our country. What we've actually seen, is that many criminals have entered the UK and committed more appalling crimes here. Just a week or so ago, there was a report which showed 50 EU criminals we couldn't deport. As the crisis in the EU and the Eurozone gets worse, then more of those citizens will come over to the UK. And this has been a continuing trend since 2008 and the financial crash. I am sympathetic, to genuine refugees. But all the migrants who have just walked in the EU are illegally entering it - and these typically are the ones shown in Greece or Calais who riot, cause trouble .etc, these fit in the 80% figure that are economic migrants I cited earlier. And these are typically not the ones who the media show. But as @EaglePrince pointed out, these migrants don't claim asylum in the first country they go to, which they are supposed to do. They specifically mention they want to go to Germany, France, the UK ... or one particular country in the west. I think this is the problem which a lot of people see. For migrants to actually be able to enter the UK, they must have first reached another country, for example France - the Calais migrant camp. If these people were genuine refugees, they would have claimed asylum in France, but they specifically want to come to the UK. Another distinctive feature of the number of migrants who enter the EU is that they are usually young and male. If they were genuine refugees, they would likely take their entire family with them and would all cross over. You only need to take a look at the situation in Greece and the EU-Turkey deal where for every economic migrant in Greece returned to Turkey, one genuine refugee will be returned to Greece from Turkey. In return, Turkey's membership of the EU is being fast-tracked, they are being given 6 billion euros, and from July this year they should have visa free access to the Schengen area of the EU (it's being voted on a few days after the referendum I think). In theory, this is only for six months, although many will claim family reunion .etc., and they will never be seen again. But at a time where in a poll 8% of Turks sympathised with Islamic State, and in another poll by The Express, 12 million Turks said they would come to the UK if they were able to, this is a terrible mistake. If only 1% of Turks sympathise with IS, then that is still 120,000 potential terrorists from those 12 million alone - and it only took three of four to carry out atrocities in Paris and Belgium.

I'm afraid this this isn't quite correct. 80% of all migrants who entered the EU last year, according to the EU's own figures, were economic migrants, and this year the figure so far of people entering the EU illegally is 30 times higher than last year. And only 17% of the genuine refugees last year actually came from Syria. Others came from countries such as South Africa, Bangladesh .etc. I think the figure for this in Germany is 816,000 economic migrants. Not only do they allow people to claim asylum from fleeing war and persecution, which in my opinion, is justified. But in March last year they changed the rules of claiming asylum - they're now so wide that virtually anyone can claim asylum from anywhere, whether they're escaping poverty, war, persecution, of just want a better way of life. And we just can't cope with this. For Angela Merkel to just invite hundreds upon thousands of people into Europe, it's utterly irresponsible and has caused a devastating impact, not least in unemployment. Until last year unemployment in Germany alone was at 2 million, it's now at 3 million and rising. But to allow virtually anyone to enter the EU, people who don't even have passports or any kind of identification, is just ridiculous. The head of Interpol has recently admitted that last year, up to 5,000 Jihadis could have managed to enter the EU because of the open-door immigration policy. We've already seen how terrorists who were involved in the Paris and Brussels attacks managed to sneak back into the EU posing as migrants without passports. That is not the majority though, it's a minority. Migration in the UK is a very serious issue. The way to combat this, is to reduce immigration to a controlled level (still taking people with particular skills we need) until the jobs are available for people, and then force them into work. To keep allowing uncontrolled migration, especially from the EU does nothing to benefit our country, not least our public services.

Well, I was commenting on a more general scale rather on this particular topic. ;) It was the general statement I was referring to, not the context: It is a fairly trusted source, I was just meaning that it's more biased than people think.

Just can't get over this point. :D :D :D I shouldn't be posting this probably as this is a serious subject, but the BBC is one of the most biased media services we have, particularly on the subject of the upcoming EU referendum. I do apologise if I've offended anyone.

Your challenge is: Play the map "Endless Invasion" - and see how long you can hold out! The user who survives the longest will win! http://www.stronghold-nation.com/downloads/file/369-endless-invasion/ Please save as close to the end as possible, and upload your saved game in your .zip file here Note: Your entry must be attached to this topic by Midnight on Saturday to be counted in this challenge (18/6/16 23:59). If no entry is attached (via .zip) then your entry will not be counted! The results will be revealed on Sunday. Good luck everyone!

Congratulations @Strife, and thank you for your entry! You have gained three points, thank you for your fantastic map!

Congratulations @Floki, on winning this challenge and getting three points! You submitted a fantastic castle, thank you!

Your challenge is: Create an ancient/ruined city in the Stronghold 1 editor Useful resources http://www.stronghold-nation.com/article/235-stronghold-1-editor-overview http://www.stronghold-nation.com/article/160-creating-aqueducts-in-the-editor http://www.stronghold-nation.com/article/165-adding-wooden-barricades http://www.stronghold-nation.com/article/196-advanced-wooden-gatehouses http://www.stronghold-nation.com/article/227-floods Note: Your entry must be attached to this topic by Midnight on Saturday to be counted in this challenge (11/6/16 23:59). If no entry is attached (via .zip) then your entry will not be counted! The results will be revealed on Sunday. Good luck everyone!

Congratulations @Fail Session, thank you for your map! You are this week's winner with 3 points!

Your challenge is: Design and play a new AI castle in Stronghold 2 for an opponent of your choice. Useful resources http://www.stronghold-nation.com/article/245-stronghold-2-ai-editor http://www.stronghold-nation.com/downloads/file/39-sh2-ai-editor/ [colour=red]Note:[/colour] For this challenge, you must attach your new AI castle, as well as some screenshots of it in the game. Note: Your entry must be attached to this topic by Midnight on Saturday to be counted in this challenge (4/6/16 23:59). If no entry is attached (via .zip) then your entry will not be counted! The results will be revealed on Sunday. Good luck everyone!

Whoops, I changed the deadline. Thank your for your entry! For everyone who hasn't entered yet, you only have a few more hours to add your entry, please make sure you get the chance to enter the contest!

This is a fantastic drawing - you have a natural talent with art, and this shouldn't be taken lightly in my opinion. Really great work!

I just remembered that I forgot to announce the winner .... congratulations @Nigel, for three points!