Sir Windows

I'll take note of giving him more farms. He should have plenty of peasants at the campfire for some more food production anyway. Yes, I've looked at the .uni files before. All the files listed in the .uni are there so the issue must be rooted somewhere else. I've also looked into the AnimList.csv and AnimList.anl. At least as far as I can tell everything is where it's supposed to be.

Light cavalry was made possible by @ Asophix hard work as he found the unit codes for the unit in the gamerules.dat. I noticed a minor issue though. The animation of the horses doesn't work, despite all the files being present by default in SHL. I wonder if this could be fixed somehow. Initially I thought maybe the SHL files are somewhat incomplete/broken, so I replaced them with the SH2 equivalents for the light cavalry. Unfortunately, it didn't help. Still, it's only a minor issue, as the rider's animation work fine. 🙂

Well, yes you can indeed. This update took a bit longer since I got distracted by something else but here it is. Many thanks @ Asophix for making it possible with the newest version of the lord editor. Radu builds breweries now Holy Knights granary will now be built outside the castle in order to reduce walkways for farmers steamroll group slightly adjusted And now to the biggest change for this update: a brand new lord is added to the roster! General Hunyadi Difficulty: medium Preferred troops: light cavalry, pikemen, crossbowmen Protector of the Hungary, regent of the kingdom, General Hunyadi is both a mighty warrior and a cunning general. He is a master defender and deadly skirmisher, seeking to undermine his enemies before they can become a threat. The general doesn't think much of glorious combat in open fields, instead preferring to cripple his enemy with his deadly light cavalry raids. His castle is a formidable fortress that will cause many attackers heartaches. Still, one shouldn't underestimate his siege force once he decides the time has come to strike at his enemy's castle.

First update to the lords is out! Thanks to @ Asophix and @ IgnasheunKnight for the initial feedback. The first update addresses issues with the holy knights and Transylvanian lord. Holy Knights Slight redesign of his castle with the goal of reducing stone cost and improving the economy. Engine tower with dragon harpoon removed in favour of more archers Number of lumber mills and quarries increased Number of weapons workshops reduced Apple farms added to food production These changes should hopefully help the knights get set up a bit faster. The reduced weapons production should get balanced out by more income from wood/stone/food which they can use to buy weapons. The engine tower+harpoon was a heavy investment which usually didn't pay out. Its removal should allow the knight to get things like a church built much earlier. Transylvanian Lord Number of lumber mills and quarries increased Number of bakeries increased Number of weapons workshops reduced Poleturner added Raiding behaviour and troop types changed Macemen removed from siege and raid rosters Men at arms added to raid and siege rosters The Transylvanian lord was by far the slowest and most sluggish new lord. Higher lumber and stone production should allow him to get his economy going and his castle completed quicker. Bread should provide him with a new income source as well. Men at arms were added to his roster in order to give him a cheap unit option for raiding and assembling a siege army quicker.

Glad to hear it! I've tried getting as much use out the voice lines from the campaign as possible. At least Radu should mostly taunt the player with his iconic lines.

Good day everyone, some time ago I made a lord pack adding Radu into the game. After some time I decided that the other enemies Vlad faces in his campaign would also make for interesting AI opponents. This new lord pack replaces three existing lords in custom skirmish with three enemy lords from Vlad's evil campaign. The screenshots show each new lord's respective castles and the siege armies of Radu and the holy knights. Transylvanian Lord Difficulty: medium Preferred troops: swordsman, man at arms, Round Table units This lord replaces Arthur. The Transylvanian likes building a large and well fortified castle. He might not be the fastest attacker, but his siege armies are strong, and he uses the round-table to its fullest extent. His castle design is based on one of the three castles used in the third mission of the evil campaign. In the campaign mission the three lords run on the Arthur, Lancelot and Alfred AI respectively. As such, I mostly based the siege roster on the scripted invasion during that mission, augmented by round-table units. Radu Difficulty: medium Preferred troops: crossbowman, pikeman Vlad's brother replaces Lancelot. He is a formidable foe and an aggressive attacker. His castle is small and quickly finished, as such his raids and sieges commence rather soon. He's mostly unchanged from his appearance in the older lord pack. Some changes include the removal of knights and macemen in order to keep him from being too similar to the other lords in this pack. The Holy Knights Difficulty: hard Preferred troops: knight, archer, trebuchet These crusaders hail from across Europe and replace Dietrich. Their castle is simple, and they despise all kinds of magic & witchcraft. One shouldn't take these knights lightly, as their industry and siege craft is unmatched. By far the strongest lord in this pack. The holy knights need some time to get going, since they use some very expensive units, but once they attack be prepared for a fight. I wish they could've also been part of the good faction, but with only two slots available they had to end up in the ice faction. General Hunyadi Difficulty: medium Preferred troops: light cavalry, pikeman, crossbowman Protector of the Hungary, regent of the kingdom, General Hunyadi replaces Siegfried. He is a master defender and deadly skirmisher, seeking to undermine his enemies before they can become a threat. The general doesn't think much of glorious combat in open fields, instead preferring to cripple his enemy with his deadly light cavalry raids. His castle is a formidable fortress that will cause many attackers heartaches. Still, one shouldn't underestimate his siege forces either. Vlad & Mordred These lords are not replaced by anyone. Vlad remaining in this pack needs no explanation. Mordred doesn't really fit in but there wasn't really anyone to replace him with. He's received minor updates though. Vlad - Vlad is now the true master of evil. His Saxon warriors are replaced by werewolves across the board. It always struck me as weird that Vlad doesn't use werewolves, which play a central part in his campaign. Mordred - Since Vlad is now the werewolves master, Mordred will be using Saxons instead. Thematically it fits better with him since he was allied with them in Arthur's campaign. His men-at-arm are upgraded to pikemen for more staying power.

I sometimes wish Alfred and Beowulf were available in custom skirmish just for the 3rd good/evil lord slot to put a custom lord in. 😅

Bigger maps like in Stronghold 2 and more AI lords. At least Beowulf and Alfred should be available by default. There's no third Ice lord in the game but Hildebrand, the dwarf king or Morgan le Fay could've been made into a skirmish opponent.

Lady Seren needs a pig farm. If you start at freeman rank it takes her ages to rank up since she relies entirely on her granary to provide honour. This means any AI lord will rush her down before she can defend herself. There's also a problem with the Bull's castle design. If the game starts at freeman rank he will accidentally block himself from building his mercenary post by placing his moat wrong. Also Edwin for some reason builds a mercenary post which he never uses. Given his character it might make sense for him to use outlaws instead of spearmen. Especially since all the other three evil lords (Hawk, Bull & Hammer) also all use outlaws.

Do you mean changing the crests to be like the ones used in map editor? For that one you need to change the files in the crests folder. For the Hawk you'd need to replace crest4.png with eagle_turquoise_on_black.png found in the turquoise folder.

My thoughts are: Crocodile - I like his design but I'm not sure about his castle. Also they said he's a lord who takes his time but his main units are skirmishers+slingers. I have to wonder if he's going to be any challenge if he turtles only to attack with such light units. Canary - She looks a lot like she's related to somebody rather cowardly and squeaky we all know. 🐀 So she's going to be lower tiers as well. I somewhat suspect she's going to be like Lady Seren from SH2. Seren's kit can pretty easily be recreated in crusader now. Hobilars get replaced by light camels and it's done. Could be an interesting opponent if done right. Trader - I have no idea what to expect here. old AI - At least the Jewel now builds enough houses. Now if they could only fix her not training any knights despite building stables. Economic campaign - Yay!

First thing I did was to buy as many crossbows and leather armours as possible then sending my new crossbowmen to the rat's keep. The rat is basically useless but his keep makes for a great defensive structure. This should help keep the rat alive and the nomads distracted. I also fortified the river with a gatehouse and crossbowmen. Really crossbowmen were the key to beating the nomads here. This is what my castle looked like once things were pretty stable. Not very impressive or pretty but it did the trick.

I wasn't aware that they rebalanced Carving a Path in DE. That's pretty interesting. I remember using a similar approach to yours with making sure to clear the towers and putting my own ranged units there instead.

Thank you very much. I’m truly honored by this promotion and love the new blue color. 😄 I hope to provide further contributions to stronghold-nation soon. Hopefully the first few updates to the Stronghold 3 section will arrive over the weekend. Eventually I hope to tackle the Stronghold and Crusader sections as well. I look forward to working with you all.

Thank you very much!

Probably since he's the oldest of the lot. There are also sound files for the scribe announcing a message from Greytail or Silverback. Unfortunately Firefly never got to implementing them properly. Another issue I ran into is the pig. Currently there's only a single set of of pig voicelines but both Swinefoot and Redham have portraits. If one sets up a message from the pig event in editor it'll play the lines and show a picture of Swinefoot but the scribe will say it's a message from Bishop Redham. 😞 Edit: Fortunately the issue has been solved. I've managed to build a separate Redham from Swinefoot. Fixing Swinefoot was easy as I only needed to change "Messagefrom3" to "Messagefrom2" in the Pig's entry within the overlord.lua. Getting Redham in was a bit more tricky. Create a new entry in the overlord.lua for the bishop using the tag [BI]. Overlord.Codes["BI"] = {"bishop", "MESSAGE_FROM3" }; Edit the sound_defs.lua and copy all the pig's entries but change PI_ to BI_. This way he's still using the pig's voice lines. Head into the assets/sounds and add the necessary entries into sh3_overlord_sounds.txt. In order for the game to play the proper subtitles unpack loc.v. Edit the xml in /interface/i18n. Find the corresponding Pig lines, copy+paste and change PI_ to BI_. It took a while to figure where everything is located but now both pigs work. 🐖🐖

We'll have to wait and see what Firefly has got in store for Stronghold 3 if anything. At least from some of their statements, it seems like Stronghold 2 will get a DE. Also, the feature to have lords talk to the player in Stronghold 3 works, and the default rat is Roger Scabcoat for any lore enthusiast. The editor event to play an overlord message is fully functional. Somehow, I didn't even think to check if it exists until now. There's the option to suppress the scribe, if it's not turned on then he says "A message from Roger Scabcoat" before the message plays. Here's a small test of the event on the second Blackstaff mission. The scribe is set to suppressed. The rat addresses the player at the start of the invasion and once its troops are all dead.

In Stronghold 3? I was wondering if it might be possible to create an event for the editor that would play an AI message. I somehow didn't think of those two. Probably because I've mainly been playing Legends and Crusader DE recently. 😅 It's tempting for sure, but as far as implementing a skirmish mode into Stronghold 3 is concerned, I think it's best to either let Firefly do it in a Stronghold 3 DE or make a Stronghold Europe 2 mod. It's should easier to implement Stronghold 3 assets into Crusader 2 than to attempt to try and build a new game mode for Stronghold 3.

Greetings, Lords and Ladies! Stronghold 3 is certainly a controversial entry in the series. From its troubled launch to bugs to broken features, the game struggled to make a name for itself. One of the standout odd decisions made by Firefly was the exclusion of a skirmish mode. This made Stronghold 3 the first game since Crusader to lack this feature. An official statement by Firefly even says: Recently, I replayed the game and got a bit frustrated by the fact that the lord has weird dark grey skin like a vampire. 🧛‍♂️ So I followed the guide found here and got into digging around the files in core.v to change the texture. I ended up finding some things that make me question Firefly's statement from fourteen years ago. In my opinion, there's a mountain of leftover content in the game, which clearly points to a skirmish mode being originally planned and likely scrapped late in development. Let us investigate this mystery.🕵️‍♂️ Remnant #1 - Lord models The first remnant doesn't even require looking into the game files. It's enough to open the map editor or host a multiplayer game. In the game there are nine mostly unused lord models depicting Lord Longarm, Thomas Blackstaff, the Iron Duke, the Sultan, the Pig (Bishop), the Pig, the Rat, the Jackal and the Wolf. These models aren't even used in campaign missions where you face off against these characters directly (Military Mission 15 and Mission 3 & 5 Blackstaff DLC). There are also models for the generic lord, Lady Catherine and the King. These being the only ones used in the campaign. The only way to use these models is on custom maps or the multiplayer. Firefly would later go on to reuse the Rat, Pig, Jackal and Wolf in Crusader 2. Remnant #2 - Sound files Now, the lord models themselves are interesting, but they might simply be multiplayer content for the game. The story becomes fascinating once we go into Stronghold3/assets/sound/en/ folder. There we find an interesting file called speech_overlord.fsb. Again, using a guide found here, we can extract the contents of the folder. What we see is something anyone familiar with sound files from Crusader, Stronghold 2, Legends and Crusader 2 will immediately recognize. The folder contains all the skirmish related sound bits for Lady Catherine, the Rat, the Pig, the Jackal and the Wolf. Even sound bits like adding a player or removing them from the lobby are present. No speech files exist for Lord Longarms, Thomas Blackstaff, the Sultan or the Iron Duke. Either they were never meant to be in the skirmish mode, or Firefly scrapped it prior to recording their lines. All of these Stronghold 3 speech files would also be reused in Crusader 2. Lady Catherines lines would be used by the Princess. This also explains the Princess' odd choice of words when capturing an estate, "I claim these lands in the name of the queen". If one considers this was originally recorded for Catherine who is the Queen of England by the end of SH3 it makes a lot more sense. Remnant #3 - Portraits Now we dive into the aforementioned core.v file. Following the guide, we unarchive its content and head into the interface/scaleform/portraits folder. This folder contains twenty portraits depicting the Pig (Bishop), the Jackal, the Pig, the Rat and the Wolf as angry/pleased/despaired/taunting. These were certainly intended to be used in-game when these characters send the player a message. For one, these four emotions are used by AIs in Crusader 1 & 2, but there are also comments by the developers themselves stating that. For that, we need to head into the /scripts/interface/ folder and open up overlord.lua. There we have the following description of what the file does from the devs: -- Handle overlord interaction: -- Given an overlord speech code (should correspond to the sound/localizationTag desired) -- 1. Play an announcement from the scribe (specific to the overlord) -- 2. Show an image of the overlord with appropriate emotion -- 3. Play the specified speech -- 4. Show subtitles -- 5. Fade out So the game was supposed to have a message system like the previous titles where the enemy/allied lords would contact you. It seems that Stronghold 3 was supposed to use something like a cross between Legends and Crusader, wherein the message is accompanied by a still image (Legends) but in multiple emotions (Crusader). Unfortunately, this feature didn't make it into the game, not even as part of the campaign. It certainly would've lifted the story if the player had interactions with his enemies like in Stronghold 1 at least. Concerning Longarm, Blackstaff, Sultan and Iron Duke; these characters have no portraits either and there is no mention of them anywhere. Though we have to consider that we don't know at which point in development this file was written up, as another comment shows that this feature wasn't complete. -- Store a lookup of overlord code to a table containing: -- { "image name prefix", "scribe announcement" } Overlord.Codes = {}; Overlord.Codes["PI"] = {"pig", "MESSAGE_FROM3" }; Overlord.Codes["RT"] = {"rat", "MESSAGE_FROM5" }; -- also, 6 and 7 for other rats... need separate images Overlord.Codes["JA"] = {"jackal", "MESSAGE_FROM4" }; Overlord.Codes["WO"] = {"wolf", "MESSAGE_FROM1" }; -- Overlord.CodesToNames["ca"] = "catherine"; -- TODO: Add if we get Catherine images Lady Catherine didn't have portraits yet either, but was supposed to, as were the two other rats from the story. Currently, it's impossible to tell which of the three brothers the portrait depicts. Remnant #4 - Multiplayer rules comment Finally, the last significant piece of evidence concerning skirmish mode is found in the /scripts/multiplayer/ folder's game_settings.lua file. The file itself is only interesting for two comments found there. -- Clear any settings that must be reset for single player games -- Ensure that single player settings don't propagate to MP if not explicitly set there These two unassuming lines are interesting since there is no mode in single player that shares any kind of setting with the multiplayer. Maybe the scrapped skirmish mode was meant to have the same options as the multiplayer. Conclusion This concludes this little investigation into Stronghold 3's missing game mode. While all of this isn't stone-cold proof, these little remnants paint a picture that there certainly was more to the game than what we got in the end. It's truly unfortunate that Firefly wasn't able to fully complete their game. Now with the Stronghold and Crusader Definitive Editions out, there's a glimmer of hope Stronghold 3 might get the update it is missing. In my opinion, Stronghold 3 deserves a second chance. For all its issues and bugs, the game still has a certain charm and has a lot of potential. In fact, I would even say it has the potential to become one of the best 3D Stronghold game out there if its issues are finally addressed and missing features implemented. Thank you for reading. 🙇‍♂️

Thank you very much. I'm honored to be featured on the home page. 😃

Greetings! Today my big lord pack for Stronghold Legends was approved, and I thought a thread going more into details on its contents would be a good idea. Mostly, I want to give a more in-depth rundown on the six new lords featured in this lord pack and the thought process behind them. I am looking forward to feedback, comments, questions and suggestions on the lords., Links to Download Section Richard the Lionheart "My banner will fly atop your keep before this day is out!" Sir Longarm "We fight for the honour of those that have gone before!" The Rat "You impudent upstart! I shall take great delight in dispatching you myself." The Pig "Blow the horn, bang the drum! The Pig is coming to town!" The Snake "Can you hear it, hm? That's your death drawing near." The Wolf "Soon you will see what it means to wage real warfare!"

Five new lords and a lord editor is pretty amazing for post-launch content.

In hindsight, it's really odd how Morgan le Fay never made it into skirmish mode. She'd make the perfect third ice lord with a focus on witches.

I can help with this one. Getting Beowulf into custom skirmish was the first thing I did with the Lord Editor when @ Asophix shared the draft version. The .zip contains all the files to change Vlad into Beowulf. Alternatively if you'd like to replace Mordred I can help with that. Beowulf EN.zip

Congratulations! 😀👍 I've already got a question. What's the process of sharing new lords going to be? Do we simply submit them to the Legends Miscellaneous section or should we make a thread on the Legends subforum as well previewing the new lord?