EaglePrince

I hope the upload process went right... :)

Now I got this error message. I'm not going to touch anything, maybe this one has been uploaded, and maybe Chris can approve it. Won't reload the page, and I'm moving on with Crusader and Crusader Extreme.

Now I got some error message after trying to submit the patch for Stronghold HD. I'm trying to submit it again. If I don't make it, if somebody else wants to give it a try, he could use these preview images. They should look fine with the background there.

I can do it. Thanks for your offer. :) By the way, I checked the other PC, and it's the same situation. The Stronghold HD patch has this "2", and the Crusader patches don't have that. How's with your patches? :) EDIT: I am uploading these right now. Chris, we're going to need new options in the Stronghold, Crusader, and Crusader Extreme sections for 1.4 version. :)

I will upload all three, Stronghold HD patch, Crusader HD patch, and Crusader Extreme HD patch. One thing is bothering me... The Stronghold HD patch is called Stronghold_HD_Update_2, while the other two are Stronghold_Crusader_Extreme_HD_Update and Stronghold_Crusader_HD_Update. Why does the Stronghold HD one has the "2"... It appears that there were two HD patches, but was it the case with Crusader as well? I'll have a look at my other computer as well. Maybe it would be better to see what we all have before uploading, and to upload what is the best. For example, if we had Stronghold_HD_Update and Stronghold_HD_Update_2, my suggestion would be to upload Stronghold_HD_Update_2. What do you say? EDIT: Now I saw Mathews post. Sure, I have no issues with Mathew doing this. ;) But we should see about what I said about these different HD patches I guess?

That's great (the thing with subscription to a category in the downloads section)! An awesome feature if you ask me!

They have already released patches 1.4 for both Stronghold HD and Stronghold Crusader HD. It has been pushed to Steam users, and others can download it from here. You see, maybe it would be a smart thing to save the 1.3 patches as well. Chris, could we upload these patches to Stronghold Nation? I ask this because it is an exe file? I think this patch should stay available to people because who knows, maybe the new versions are actually less stable than the new ones... While I have to admit that having some players forcing the play with 1.3 would be troublesome to players with 1.4 who might not be able to play with them. It is already troublesome to many, as most of players on GameRanger play the game with non-HD versions, so those who buy the game from Steam cannot play with any of them. Players with HD versions are already minority in multiplayer community.

But you shouldn't hesitate to submit to both Stronghold Heaven and Stronghold Nation. You would be surprised how many people still download custom maps from these two websites. Only they are quite, they don't register, they don't comment nor rate these maps. But if you look at the downloads numbers, then you can see that these websites are being visited. So you just save your map, and upload it. Don't forget to submit your minimap as well. With that one others can quickly see how does your map look like. You can use this tool called Stronghold Map PNGer to easily make minimaps by the way. By the way, is there a way to subscribe at SHN downloads section, so that when something is approved in a section for a game I like, I would be notified by email for example? Do we have something like that? Like Strife said, you can send your maps to others via the lobby, but keep in mind that you could send them the link to these maps. Oh, and one more thing. You can look at Stronghold Nation and Stronghold Heaven as a way to backup your maps as well. ;) I used to make many maps which I lost due to hard drive failure, or something like that, and I didn't have internet at that time, so naturally, I wasn't able to submit it to Stronghold Heaven. Well, if I was aware of the danger I would have at least burned those on a CD or DVD, or wherever possible.

Hey guys, check out this video. https://youtu.be/560UuJstw6k Several days ago we were discussing about the engine they used to use for Stronghold 2. After 4:15 they even say few things about the engine. Apparently it they picked some engine, and they made a lot of changes into it. I thought you might find this video interesting cause we were mentioning the engine recently.

I can only wish that the new Crusader 2 was an improved Stronghold 2. That would be an epic game.

By the way, this is where I got this list from. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Reserve_System I keep receiving some error when I hit the Preview button, so I had to do it by editing the post several times... As I understand it, the main purpose of the central bank is to control the countries currency, which is essential for its trade relations. I think it also dictates stuff such as interest rates, or exchange rates, so banks wouldn't be able to do basically whatever they want, and screw over entire country or its people intentionally or with their bad decisions. (I'm not sure about anything mentioned after interest rates though.) Plasticly explained... A lot of that has to do with the fact that mostly companies and countries don't rely on cash, most of things are uncertain, and a lot of that works on trust. And if you want others to trust you, you need to have your reserves just in case... But when it comes to US in specific, as I got it, now it is much more based on trust and Tomahawks (at least so they say...), and the fact that USD is being used for trade with oil so it must not go down (petrodollar). This first part of this paragraph is about keeping the currency stable. And, the other part is that a country needs to be ready to clean up the mess of private banks. EDIT: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_bank SECOND EDIT: I'm just giving you some sources, but I do understand that there's a lot to read about this matter. I hope that I'm quoting enough so you don't actually need to read the rest of it. But it's not that I understand the entire story. I just think that I understand the basic idea. Also, when it comes to this topic, while I do understand how currencies work, and why is that important (because that's what my country used to struggle with since the beginning of 90's), I know far less about interests. Mostly because I have learned from my father and my grandfather that it's simply the best to avoid taking any loans from a bank. Now that is the case even more over here, because many people here work for 200-300 euro, people worry that they could lose even those jobs because of high unemployment rate.

Well, it's not something that is specific only to United States. I would say that all countries work like that. Well, except North Korea maybe, or some other country in a similar state. :D I'm not an economist, but as I understand it, countries need it to keep things stable... I haven't thought about it for a while, even though at some moment I felt like I understood it relatively well. Anyway, this is what I found at Wikipedia, and I think that this short list gives us the answers.

Welcome! Happy to see another fellow Yugoslav joining our company! ;) You may also want to try Stronghold (1) and Stronghold Crusader (1). These two are epic games! Unless you've tried to play those as well? It is not clear to me from your message. Oh, and you have another Empire Earth player over here! SHC and EE1 are the games of my childhood! And when we only look at the gameplay, most of those new games are complete garbage compared to those two. They were just improving graphics, while the gameplay has been becoming more or less worse and worse.

Wow, that is amazing! Thanks for sharing that with us. I do know that even Stronghold HD and Stronghold Crusader HD support high resolutions, higher than 1920x1080, but that's less interesting because it works differently in these games. Higher resolutions in these two means wider view, and not simply the picture being less blocky. Well, one more reason why I think should Firefly make a Stronghold 2 Definitive Edition! They could give us more detailed models, etc., while keeping the gameplay as it is, and give us few more stuff such as AI in multiplayer. Ha, I used another chance to wine about Stronghold 2 Steam Edition not bringing AI in multiplayer. :D

Maybe Tokamaps would like to join us as well. :) I'm going to send him a PM. :)

19:00 CET is 13:00 EST if I'm not mistaken? And it is also 18:00 in UK.

19:00 CET is fine by me. And by that we wouldn't go past 21:00 EST, as that would be 3:00 CET. :D (If I understood that correctly, Charles would want the game to be finished by 21 EST?)

I feel the same, I don't get it why would that be so hard for them to look into that, and make Stronghold 2 with AI lords in multiplayer, and perhaps even sell it as a DLC. Like I said before, I would pay for it, but as long as at least host has this possibility, so do others. I mean, same as DLC AI characters in Crusader 2 - when you added some AI lords which I didn't own at that moment. Or they could make it like they did with Crusader Extreme at least...

Seems fine to me. 20:00 by CET?

I don't know, could that be possible that the engine used for Stronghold 2 and Stronghold Legends got outdated, and that its support from its developers had ended, or was about to end? I mean, otherwise I think that it would have been better for Firefly to stick to the old engines instead of learning how to do stuff on another one, and as we can see - they didn't handle it so well with the new engine. And my guess is that they could have known that it wasn't going to be easy for them with the new engine. I mean, if the engine is not supported, then they might have worries whether their new game would be supported for newer Windows releases, and stuff like that. Or maybe that older engine couldn't support higher quality models, and stuff like that... Does seem so much likely to me, but who knows. As about not getting AI lords in the multiplayer... I think that Firefly simply wants to make it easier for themselves. Keep in mind that they did have to do some work on enabling Steam achievements, Steam multiplayer, etc. I don't think AI lords in multiplayer would be harder for them. After all, it is there, only its disabled. Otherwise, how would we be able to add AI lords using the AI manager... But as we know, it still doesn't work so great, AI lords don't attack with siege equipment, so Firefly went the easier way: disable AI in multiplayer, other than trying to fix the issue with AI lords not laying sieges. But if you ask me, it would be much better to have AI lords even without them laying sieges, than not having them at all.

So, guys, we have one Thread for our plans regarding Stronghold 2 field battle... But what about the rest. Some of us would like to play Stronghold Crusader as well, I hope? Or maybe some other Stronghold game? Nigel, which games would you like to play? Would you be willing to play Stronghold Crusader as well? How about others? What do you say for Stronghold Crusader? :)

Aaaannd, my signature picture is finally back. :D Damn, that Photobucket, now stopping to host images for free, I guess that wherever I put an image from Photobucket, I would need to replace those links... Boy, that sucks... :angry: As about my free time to play - I would be free to play starting from Thursday, but I may be able to play on Wednesday as well. Only I'm not sure whether I'll be able to focus on playing enough. But I'd say you could count on me on Wednesday as well!

Psst. :) Strife replied at Stronghold Heaven that there's a unit cap of 1500 total, including military, civilian, and wildlife. :) http://stronghold.heavengames.com/cgi-bin/forum/display.cgi?action=ct&f=4,3990,,10

Well, now when I think about it, yes, Stronghold 2 and Stronghold Legends are also 3D games, and they both have good performance. I suppose it could do something with the engine, what you suggest does make sense.

Well, they obviously rushed it too much, and they released it without kingmaker. And what is worse, they didn't even come back with their experience with Crusader 2 (since it uses the same engine) to implement kingmaker into Stronghold 3. So from that point of view, Stronghold 3 is simply waste of their time. Unless we count that they earned some experience with it which they later used for Crusader 2. Not to get me wrong - I do like Stronghold 3, but it's such a bummer that it doesn't have kingmaker like you said, and that it is not optimized. But the entire idea is really great - finally being able to build walls in any direction, and the way how the walls got damaged or destroyed is perhaps the best among all Stronghold games. First it would just crack, and soldiers could still walk on top of it, while if it gets hit few more time, then it would collapse as well. Also, if a catapult hits the top of the wall where are some droops, then it would knock them off. Just like in Stronghold 2, but in Stronghold 2 it knocks them off in all cases, which is not as good. Now, speaking of prices... I don't know, I've recently got a laptop, it's an HP 250 G5, and I can't say the game runs smoothly on it. It appears that Crusader 2 is going to be fine in low settings, but when it comes to Stronghold 3, I feel that it's not going to work so great... Yup, this is not a gaming laptop, but it's an about 400 bugs laptop, and Stronghold 3 is a six years old game. So they failed with Stronghold 3... Performance is far below acceptable. I can accept that 3D game doesn't have to have bad performance, but if they cannot make a 3D game with better performance, they better give up, and make what they can. :) Also, a 200 euro GPU is not a cheap GPU. There are many people living outside EU, or USA who don't have couple of thousands salaries, and who work their asses for 400 bugs - if they are lucky. Only Western Europeans may not give a damn about that. :D