EaglePrince

Or maybe he did put rally points, but too many rally points. Making more rally points doesn't make their defenses stronger, it only makes them ignore most of your rally points.

My man! :D Although I haven't been doing like that for quite a while now, but mostly because I start playing as a free man, and later I just might be too lazy add those stuff for beheading. But it's not just laziness actually, it used also the fact that that way I wouldn't get any honor. Which on the other hand could be compensated with few statues I think... :)

I agree, that font might be at last a little bit smaller. Plus, I think it would be great if this "Last edited" thing wouldn't appear if I edit my post only few minutes after posting it. :) If that is not hard for Chris to do though. Those are still minor issues. Well, they are not even issues. :)

I think we all believe you're a good guy, so no worry. :) But I just had to use the opportunity to make the joke. :D I hope you would hang with us a bit more actually, Stronghold Nation is a fine place to chill. :) Plus, you also have Crusader's threads in The Open Castle Inn which are very interesting. And if you find some articles which you could relate to your national history, you might even share that with the rest of us. That would make it even more interesting. ;)

Watch out, we got a badass over here! :D Just joking. But no, unfortunately there is no way to play Stronghold 2 1.4.1 in LAN. One of the reasons for that might be the fact that most of people would still play it on GameRanger anyway. I do agree however that it would be a lot better to have the option to play it in LAN as well. For obvious reasons... But for start I would love to be able to fight against AI lords with human allies. Even with multiplayer manager that doesn't work so great, they don't attack as hard as they would in singleplayer.

Hey, guys, check this out? Age of Empires Definitive Edition It looks really cool to me, and in the matter of fact - far batter than many of those HD editions of many games, even Stronghold Crusader. I mean, this isn't only about enabling higher resolutions, and making the game to look better on wide screens and laptops, this is, as they say, almost all new or remastered textures, and improved mechanics. At least so they say. So then I though, it would be awesome to have a Definitive Edition of Stronghold Crusader, and Stronghold 1. What do you think? There is some room for improvements. For example, they could make easier to make walls in more than just four directions. It could be done so that, when one builds a wall from point A to point B, the wall wouldn't be made out of two segments with two different directions, but it would be made with much more breaks. So that way one would be able to easily make a castle similar to Wazir's for example. They wouldn't have to make in many steps building two by two blocks, but they could make it in three steps. Maybe even troops could move in similar way, though this may not be necessary if they couldn't make it without looking ugly. We wouldn't like to see soldiers changing their direction after every two steps. Plus, what we have always wanted - bigger maps! This is what could be done more easily, but what I would love to have even more is almost the exact copy of Stronghold Crusader or Stronghold 1 (but with AI lords), but with better graphics, improved mechanics as I have described above, and in 2D, plus with unit collision. Empire Earth 1 is a 2D game with unit collision, so it shouldn't effect the performance. Of course, this is yet another thread about what we would love to see, but after seeing these news about Age of Empires I just couldn't help myself. :D

Hi. The problem is that the creator of this tool has made it, and then he vanished. :) If we haven't found this file thanks to a YouTuber we would still be thinking that this tool for the version 1.4.1 doesn't exists. Perhaps, maybe we would even think that the story about playing Stronghold 2 1.4.1 or 1.3.1 is a myth, alongside with its legendary creator about whom we don't know anything. :D I think there is somewhere his username mentioned, and I think that's all we've got. Sadly, this is all we have, and I fear that we cannot expect for anything more when it comes to fanmade tools. Our best bet would be for Firefly to release Stronghold 2 Steam Edition with multiplayer enabled. Unfortunately, even though they said it would be released somewhere around New Year, it still hasn't been released. What a pity, I hope they are going to make it.

I agree, I do still like that part of my job right now at the university. The only thing about my university (or my country) is that we actually get too much subject and too much students to teach, and we struggle to find some time to learn for our own exams, and not to mention doing science. :( I hope it would get better after I would finish my PhD studies though, but now I realize it would have been easier if I just left abroad to another university with better work conditions. Yeah, that about many Stronghold players has always bugged me, and I wish Firefly could have done something to force players to build "actual castles", and without the gameplay paying the price.

Quite interesting. I haven't seen that castle layout either. At least I don't remember.

Nice. :) Would be interesting to know if there are even more teachers among us from Stronghold Heaven/Knights/Nation. :) Yes, it is a little bit long fight, but once you get to kill Rat and Snake it gets a lot easier. I remember even managing to win that mission by making "an actual" castle, that is - without building farms behind the walls. Also, the first time I won that mission Wolf managed to collect 100,000 gold, and it was so hard to kill him. That was the first time for me to build around 100 catapults. And hell, it was effective. :D I didn't kill him in that first attacking wave, he used to repair the castle during the attack, but that did weaken him a lot, and the next attack was fatal.

So glad to see you, Lord Paul. :) Yes, The Forgotten is quite a hard mission. It was one of those it took me days until I figured out how to win that one, when I was playing those missions for the first time. So glad to see another one among us being teacher! Well, now I'm at university, but before that I used to teach mathematics in high school for almost two years, and I taught math in an elementary school for one semester. What is your subject? :)

No problem. :D Although I am glad that we have similar opinions about this matter, I would be much happier if it was different. Although I may too pedant when it comes to relying on researches, I do feel that many Arabs simply don't like Europeans, white people, and Christians in general, and that they often look at themselves as the noble ones compared to us. What many of them wish actually is not to adopt in European countries, but they in fact hope that they will eventually conquer Europe demographically. Normally that wouldn't make a problem - when it comes to some other ethnic groups, but if they became majority they might try to push their values which mean no good. I'd say that even now we have a problem, since Europeans promote tolerance, while they promote their ways, so it's not even balanced. If Europeans promoted their ways, including Christianity, instead, then there might be some balance. Right now we are more like "pagan" Greeks or Romans who didn't actually force their beliefs, and they didn't consider it a shame if somebody left that religion for Christianity. While in Christianity kids were thought they must not abandon their religion, and so Christianity became the official religion of Roman Empire. Of course, it's not just that, but that's one of the factors. It is really on of the factors why Ottomans didn't manage to turn Balkan nations into Islam. They say turning into Islam used to be more efficient in Bosnia because they used to be Bogumils (it is a sect, so to say, of Christianity, I think that our friend Crusader have written an article about them) which we're thought differently, and they didn't consider it so bad to convert to another religion. In other words, you could say they used to be more liberal. :)

I agree, Mathew, that it's very likely that your correct about the reason why they wouldn't report something like that, but I'm just pointing out that the research seems to be incomplete, and as such it may be misleading. I mean, you're definitely right to some extent, the only question would be how many of them wouldn't report it because of that. Ehm, you're speaking to mathematician, we tend to be stubborn, as we like even those obvious stuff to be proven. :D On the other hand, I see no holes in information given by Charles. It is quite interesting, and I believe that we can have a good explanation for that. One would be that less Muslims you have in your country, harder they are connected in your country, they simply care about their works, and they adopt into your society better (well, yeah, because in this case they have to). On the other hand, when there are so many of them, they may tend to stick together rather than hanging with other people, thus they don't integrate well into society. There may be another explanation as well. Those countries that have less Muslims may have actually done a better selection of people who they want to accept. As we all know, France used to be very popular for immigrants because of their welfare program, and as a result of that - French attracted to much people who were simply going there for money, to use this welfare program, but not actually to work there. Once again, as I used to say it before. I don't get those European governments. Whoever opens a history book, they will notice that settling your land with another nation can later result not in just terrorist attacks, but in bloody wars. Check out how Austrians used to settle their bordering regions with Serbs (among others). As a result of that, Serbia wanted to claim this territory in which Hungarians used to live, and after WWI Hungary lost Vojvodina to Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes (which will later be named Kingdom of Yugoslavia). Then Hungary tried to get back this territory during WWII, but as we know - they failed, Yugoslavia and its allies won the war. There were many bloodshed, but that didn't stop inevitable, plus - there were so many German families driven away from here after WWII. That's how Austria-Hungary lost its territories. They took too much people into their empire, they didn't assimilate them successfully, and it was their doom. Similar to Kosovo and Metohija which used to be Serbian land, and later Albanians took it - first by becoming majority with their high birth rate, and then finished what they started in bloodshed. Desperate measures were taken to keep it under control, and that resulted in bombing in 1999. I hope European countries won't think they are immune to this. These things happen to a country and to a nation when they are weakened, not when they are in power. Diversity is not a strength when one part of the society is against others.

Yes, Charles, that's why I wrote this. Maybe it wasn't clear enough. For obvious reason, of course. Of course that news portal from Serbia would have a lot of articles about floods in Serbia, and few mentions about floods in Germany for example. That's normal, and those who read news regularly won't miss either. But it's not only about making money. They intentionally avoid publishing news about rape victims by immigrants, or even articles such as the one Mathew just mentioned. Still, this research may be incomplete, thus leading to a wrong conclusion. In my country we rarely report, and mostly because we're used to the fact that police often doesn't care, and if we reported something - we'd expect nothing to happen. So if someone from my placed moved to the UK, it is very likely that they too wouldn't report things like this fearing that this would be in vain, and even further - put them in danger. For example, there used to be cases that ambulance wouldn't come because they were called by a mobile phone. What the hell, why does it matter that they were called by a mobile, it's about saving ones life... Another example from here. When I want to report something, they would ask me from my personal information. How do I know that I won't have any problems because of that... What the hell, I'm telling them that somebody is doing crime, and as if they don't want to deal with that, they ask me for my information - my name, address, date of birth... As if I was the one who was doing crime... So, for that research to be complete, they would at least have to ask them whether they would report their neighbor for playing loud music for example.

Quite interesting facts! I see you've done your homework. :) Yes, I tend to be open, but still... But it is not that I say you can disregard ethnicities. I just wanted to say that what defines us the most is how we were raised. And, of course, those two are not mutually independent factors. Regarding your link, yes, you are correct, most of the victims of ISIS, etc. are indeed Muslim. But... Even if Islam is indeed a religion of peace (which I believe it is, I think all major religions in the world are religions of peace, though they have been misused in many occasions throughout history), it does have some huge issues. Islam is being used to recruit people to join ISIS, etc., and it is not just that they misuse the religion, but it is done in mosques. Because of that, you accept more Muslims into your country, you become more vulnerable.

Yes, it seems to me that our opinions are very similar, when it comes to this topic. I would also note one more thing. In Serbia, like in any other country, we have Gypsies. And they are generally less educated, have lower incomes, etc., but they don't live in some certain cities, etc. There are many of them who live in my hometown, many of them went to my elementary school, I think they weren't discriminized, at least not for the fact that they were Gypsy kids, and yet - few of them move on with their education. Fewer of them attend high schools, and not to mention universities. That's why I think it's not simply about the town they live in, but about their families. They simply don't value education. And that appears to be a hardly ending cycle: their parents don't value education, they don't value education, their kids won't value education, etc... I believe it is similar with your immigrants in the UK. Serbia is a small country, and yet there are many differences between those of us who come from different regions. On my faculty I even noticed how students from certain regions are more prone to cheating, and not feeling any shame for that. We should accept that people from some other countries are simply different, but we also have to note that there are always exceptions. And that is not about what somebody is, it is about how they were raised. Take my example. My father is a Bosniak. That's a Slavic people, much similar to Croats and Serbs, but this are the key differences: Croats are Catholic, Serbs are Orthodox, and Bosniaks are Muslim. And yet, I don't feel like a Muslim. My mother is Catholic, and I grew up in an Orthodox country, and in a region where one can find many different nations which settled here thanks to Austrian Empire. So I wasn't raised as a Muslim, nor as a Catholic, but in fact neither of those two things matter to me. I was raised to be aware that there are many different religions in the world (and nobody can tell "whose religion is right"), many different nations, and that it is not right to judge an individual because of their ethnicity. I feel like a man from Vojvodina (northern Serbian province), like a citizen of Novi Sad, and a citizen of Serbia. And I am more like any Serb from Vojvodina than like some Bosniak from Bosnia. Same like many Serbs who settled in Canada or the USA whose kids barely speak Serbian. But although you shouldn't ban a race from entering, you should make those checkups more strict for them, if they showed themselves to be more problematic. That's the best way for you to protect your own people from crime committed by immigrants (to say the least). I would love to be able to go the UK without a visa, or to the USA without a visa, but I respect your countries decision that you want to make sure that I am a "fine person" before giving me a permission to enter. The sad part is that you would allow us to enter your country only if we are employed, and perhaps you may even ask what are my incomes, but that is your way to protect yourself. In fact, with all these tragic events I sometimes feel frustrated that your governments don't do more to protect their people. Americans appear to do a good job with that, but Western European countries have failed by now. I hope situation will improve. And about the culture. Yes! I think it is hypocritical how many immigrants claim to want to move to Europe because of democracy and tolerance, and because of oppression in their countries, and yet - they bring that same oppression with them in form of niqab, or hijab, etc. By this I mean oppression over women. If they are truly fleeing from something, they should leave that behind, embrace European culture, and people of Europe would accept them. It is your country, it is you who set the rules. Maybe it is unfair to some individuals if they get kicked for not adopting, but it would also be unfair towards your children to keep those who come, and who want to force their oppressive ways into the country they came to.

I understand your views, but I still have to say that when a tragedy like that happens in Pakistan or in Nigeria which involves hundreds of people being killed, it is mentioned once or maybe twice in media, while when it happens in a European country, they speak about it for weeks. But it may not be about race, but about the place, who knows. Maybe it's simply a big deal for them because something happened, e.g. in London. But this is simply about how media work, not about people, I don't think we should judge people here. So, I think similarly as you - but I just claim that the issue is present, but at media, not at people. But regarding Christian lives being reported in media - one doesn't have to report that those people walking in Berlin or Manchester are Christians, that's just obvious. Regarding accepting certain races, or nationalities into your country, I don't that what you describe would be racist. If you notice that people from some countries are more likely to do crime, or terror attacks when their come into your land, then YOU HAVE TO NOTE THAT, and not fear that you will be labeled as a racist. We live in 21st century, we know what is statistics, it has been a thing for a while now, so we can investigate what we want, and we can have an idea what is going on. If I notice some races of dogs are more aggressive towards me than others, I have to note that. Same with people. We are simply not all the same. We have different mentalities, we have different habits, and hey - we are biologically different as well. Yes, we are pretty much similar, but why claim how we are the same when we are not. And like I was saying before - I believe that Europeans should be more pushing when it comes to promoting their culture, especially in their own countries. The best way to keep your people safe is to efficiently assimilate immigrants. Diversity may be strength, but it has also shown to be undoing of many empires. Look at Austria-Hungary. Their downfall came from not succeeding to assimilate their people. But here I'm not speaking about assimilation in a bad way, but more like it is the case in the USA. You are an American if you have the American citizenship, and national pride is being promoted there. "It is cool to be an American, and no matter if you are black or white, if you love our country you are one of us". I don't live in the USA, but that's how I got that. Someone correct me if I'm wrong?

Well, one "solution" may be turning back, but I'm pretty sure that those same soldiers could crush them tomorrow if they wanted to. Of course, the best solution would have been not to interfere with other countries trying to solve their problems with terrorists (since 1999), but hey - they have oil, or those terrorists have pretty efficient lobby in the US, so... Well, I could write few more things here from my, until recently, third world country, but better not start with that... Let's just accept that's how it works now - the powerful ones fight in the yard of the poor so they wouldn't mess up their gardens.

Hi. I don't know answers to your questions, but I am surprised that you cannot produce enough candles, etc. When you build candlers workshops don't forget to build some bee hives close to them as well. And perhaps you may want to observe if those workers are just sitting around from time to time, as that would mean they could be more productive if you built them more bee hives next to their workshops. Also, I have to outline that the idea of Stronghold 2 is for you to actually depend of your villages. When I am on my peek during a Stronghold 2 game I have far less economy in my castle, and more weapon producing workshops, church, jousting ground, traveling fair, monuments, inn, etc., while I get most of raw materials, food, fancy food, and other stuff such as ale, candles, etc. from my villages. Just don't forget that you can build in your villages whatever you want to boost your little empires production. And definitely don't forget that you can build as much carter posts as you need, and order them to send to your castle what you need. And one tip. At some point of game you may want to shut down your woodcutters in your villages, i.e. to put them to "Zzz", because wood is fairly cheap, and you don't need many of your carters to spend their valuable time sending these resources to your castle. I hope this was helpful. If you may want, we could try to play an online game once in a while. That way you could see how others manage their economies. :)

Well, I can relate one my old Stronghold wish to this. Why do those conquered castles have to collapse... :( It would be awesome if we could, once we conquer a castle estate by defeating an AI lord, give this castle to one our governor. Then he would repair the castle, and build some troops to defend this estate, and to attack if I tell him to. So in fact, killing a lord wouldn't destroy the castle, but it would become a vassal castle instead. That could be easy to do in Skirmish games, but I have to admit - it could be tricky in a multiplayer game. Because how would an AI know how to run a castle built by human... In that case it may be easier for him to rebuild another castle from the ground. Another solution would be for human to deal with these castles on his own, but that may be too much work. I mean, even dealing with one castle while having fights with your enemies can be pretty tough. But a combination of these two could be achieved. Human can build castle structures, and AI would adopt them, use them, and repair them. Unfortunately this one could be misused by many players who wouldn't end up having a Maginot Line instead of few outposts as I indented... :) I am sure Firefly could exploit these ideas really well. I remembered this after you mentioning ruined keeps.

I'll jump in just in case to avoid misunderstanding. If I am not mistaken, changing this file wouldn't effect an actual scenario, but entire game. So if one made a scenario like this, they would have their names of villages on their computer, but somebody else would have these names different. Similar to changing crests. You can change the crest you want to use, but only you will see it in multiplayer, and nobody else. If you want others to see these crests/see these village names, then sending only a map isn't enough. Sending the crests files/the text file would be necessary.

You may want to check out this thread at Stronghold Heaven. It seems that this guy was looking into this matter too, and made some conclusions. So if I got it correctly, the game has its own names for estates, and it chooses randomly names for estates, and it is indeed impossible to rename an estate. This is definitely something that Firefly should bring to us. :)

Hey, welcome to Stronghold Nation! :) Yes, that would be interesting indeed. Though I never tried renaming the names of estates. Ain't there some trick to do that, or something like that? Maybe Lord Chris knows. Or it is really impossible?

I'm not sure about Lady Seren, if I remember correctly, she uses light cavalry, but not horse archers, while the Queen does use horse archers. But as I said, I'm not sure, I rarely pay attention to which AI lord uses which troops, mostly because most of them use more than few unit types. :)

I think we can say for sure that no peace of source code is going to be revealed. But what you mentioned is used by some AI lords. For example, Hammer uses knights, and he does build trebuchets as well. They don't ride horses though. And I don't know if any of AI lords uses assassins. I know that there is at least on AI character who uses horseback archers. Maybe The Queen uses them if I am not mistaken. So it's basically as in Stronghold Crusader where each of the AI lords has its own typical troops which he uses. Speaking of sap shields, I'm not sad because they don't use them. They don't use them, fine, I don't use them neither. Maybe it would be more interesting if it was other way around, but it just bugs that these shields are not realistic enough. Mostly because no Stronghold game has unit collision. Still, in Stronghold 2 it may not be that case so much, but in Stronghold Crusader portable shields are so much overpowered, that it would have been better without them in my opinion. But there is a lot of room for improvements for AI lords, on that we all agree! They have to be smarter when attacking castles, and especially when defending their own estates.