Charles of Tours

Is it possible that you two have different versions of the game? Perhaps the fire ballistae were fixed in patch 1.2, but I wouldn't know as I haven't played much Stronghold 2.

Here is the roster thus far: 1) Charles of Tours (me, host, SHN and SHK) 2) Lord Chris (SHN) 3) Eagle Prince (SHN and SHK) 4) Aleks (SHK) 5) Leto/Lucien (SHK) 6) Ak/Qin (trusted contact) 7) Astreath/Storm (SHK) (24th only) 8) Only one empty slot left! If you have any interest, please post NOW before it's taken!

Looks like the magical BBCode link didn't work. Anyhow, after the 23rd I'll be rid of finals (knocked off half of 'em today) and should be able to attend most events. Count me in! :D

I have version 1.3, so I suggest that people who do not have that patch get it, but I have played games with people having earlier patches which worked fine. :)

I'm glad you two will be joining in! =D Aleks and Leto (also known as Lucien) from Stronghold-Knights may be joining in as well. I like your idea for a map, Eagle, and there are two custom maps created by my cousin (formerly Joan D' Arc on Knights) which we could also consider. She has given me permission to share these: Irony King's Legacy These are two rather balanced maps that don't look unrealistic with 100% balanced rectangular placements of resources. In maps, like The Wet Lands and King's Legacy that have water at the edges, the player is forced to build a realistic, enclosed castle, without walling himself into a corner. I have gained the nickname of "the Human AI" for building castles that do not touch corners. :P

The main events will start at 13:00 (1:00 PM) EST, which equals 18:00 (6:00 PM) GMT. We will be using Game Ranger. Look at EaglePrince's thread here for my Game Ranger ID to friend me. My friends list may be full, but you should still be able to message me. For those interested who cannot attend at those times: I may be available at other times during those days, and at certain times on other days. You can send me a private message over the forums to schedule another game if you wish. In case a bunch of people jump at the opportunity, I will be accepting people in order of those who contact me (be it on here or GR or another way), with a few reserved spots. Feel free to post below to reserve spots if you so desire, and if there are any suggestions for maps. Feel free to ask questions. :)

Sounds good. :)

Both options are fine by me, but GameRanger may be a bit more stable - we don't know until we try.

It should, as I just quickly checked and saw some servers up. I think it will still work until next month, hopefully.

No problem. I will better rested today than I would have yesterday. I will be ready to sally forth at the usual time! :)

My username is based off of Charles Martel, who won the Battle of Tours (732). I live in the northeast of the United States, and sadly I've never visited Europe. :( Also, I quickly made edits to the picture. It should now meet the requirements and look better. :)

Oops, I forgot. I'll edit it. Each map is a little different, so I simply colored in all of mainland Italy. I could also extend the border further down into Iberia. Thanks for pointing that out. I think I over-looked it, because I was the one who made it.

This isn't horrible: To the left is a colored picture of Charlemagne, King of the Franks and of the Lombards, and Holy Roman Emperor. Behind him stands the medieval gates of Aachen, known as Aix-la-Chapelle in the time of Charles the Great, and where his court was held. Above the wall is the symbol of Carolus Magnus, a shortened version of his monogram. To the right is an approximation of the lands over which he governed. Inspiration comes from the two metal albums in which Sir Christopher Lee sang the part of Charlemagne, as well as the "lovely" family relationship of the post-867 Karlings in Paradox's Crusader Kings II game.

Good idea! I was thinking of slapping a flag onto the right of it, or something like that. When I post the "official" one, I will write some history related stuff, as well as a couple inspirations for my image. :)

Here is the (raw) image, so you all with have an idea of what it will look like. EDIT: Here is the same image with dimensions acceptable to the competition, but it looks a bit small.

I'm working on an image myself. I've just got to experiment with the pixels a bit so it doesn't look like someone spilled water on it when I change the dimensions.

I already have Game Ranger, so if we need to use it, there should be no difficulty. :) Also, I too realized Game Spy was working again. Yesterday I played some Star Wars: Battlefront II with some people, and that too requires Game Spy for standard multiplayer but can also be run on Game Ranger (which we did not use). It seems Game Spy has given us all an extra month (from the article about them on Wikipedia), which should hopefully give Game Ranger some time to crank out the proper coding to let the players continue to enjoy their classic games.

I should be able to play on the 8th and the 14th. Hopefully the game will be stabler than it was last time. :)

Swordsman spam I could probably counter with a decent army or amazing castle. Assassins ... maybe not. I had a wonderful game where I sent my massive army outside of my castle with an unprotected lord still in the keep. Heheh, I suppose you could guess what happened. Great games like these in the Stronghold series, with stories that can be retold, give these titles their character.

:lol: I question the credibility of that statement. Perhaps the Stronghold Kingdoms platform, which is free and downloadable via Steam, distorts that number as an outlier to the owners of the non-Steam copies sold years before the original titles were published on Steam. I don't have any statistics, but I have a feeling this will turn away some long-time fans who don't feel like downloading (or using) Steam. Still, there are some good guys working for a good community over at Firefly. I'll probably buy a copy (or two, like I did with SH3) just to support them and indirectly also support the community and websites such as this. Best of luck Firefly, make us proud once again!

Great idea, Eagle! My Game Ranger ID is Charles of Tours: 1851531. Edit: I have 49 friends on Game Ranger, and I think the maximum for a free account is 50, so I'll ask people to not spam invites to me, even though I am amazing. ;)

There is also a version 1.1 and 1.2, but I play 1.3 (the HD patch).

Categories should be: Invasion, Economic, Siege, Siege-That!, Freebuild, and Multiplayer. From the description, it looks like Strife's map is an Invasion scenario. A very good-looking map, might I add. I especially like how the second level of the castle was designed. Good work! :)

I'm ready for a great battle! Any idea of a map we'll be using, so I can download it in advance if it's not included in the base game? :)

Success! Just after my last post I decided to give the mission "Tyre, Drawing the Line" (second mission from The Kings Crusade) a try again. Below is my castle design. I built two wheat farms and a pitch rig at the outcropping to the south, and used the two closest oases for farms: the top one filled with wheat farms, and the bottom filled halfway with wheat and halfway with hops. I loaded this from a save from some time ago, so I forget my earlier steps, but the first thing to do is to delete all of the starting castle and replace it as above shown. Do not place the pitch until you hear reports of "large" or "massive" Arabian armies coming in. When under attack, it is key to keep the inner gatehouse open so that the bakers in the outer ward can still work. If the outer wall is broken, fire can spread from the buildings in that ward into the keep, including your granaries. I placed my barracks somewhere isolated up north, only using it to train troops with the starting weapons given. I did not bother collecting iron or stone, but placed some woodcutters near my farms. Whenever the enemy attacked, I deleted all buildings outside of my walls (except my barracks, which distracted some slaves) for a little bit of extra wood instead of losing it all to the enemy slaves. For the last three attacks or so, I concentrated all of my archers on the outermost square tower, putting a ballista in each. During the second-to-last attack I accidentally used all of my pitch, but relied on my luck after burning some of their swordsmen and battering ram. After that assault, I had very few troops left (as shown in the above screenshot), who perished during the final attack. My luck held, however, and I had just enough wheat and flour to secure a victory, just as I spotted enemy swordsmen nearing. This mission is probably the hardest in the Crusader campaigns. It has annoyed me for ten years, and now I can proudly say that I bested it! :D