EaglePrince

And you still need to consider the fact that spearmen are way faster then swordsmen, so those spearmen will rich their opponents way more quickly than the swordsmen. :) Regarding spearmen and digging - even though they dig faster than any other unit, I still wouldn't use them in attacking my enemies who have moat around the castle, as they would die pretty fast. Yes, but because they are fast they will reach their target more quickly, and they will move through fire more quickly than swordsmen army. That's why they are better for killing Caliph for example. Speaking about crenellation - my walls are mostly three layered - like Saladin's castle. I pot two layers of standard wall and one layer of crenelated wall, as I believe that's how it was meant to be used. In real life there would be completely no point in building too tick crenelated wall, while in Stronghold the only reason for something like that would be trying to use an exploit. At least that's what I think.

They have weak attack, but they can take a lot of damage. If you haven't noticed, a pikeman needs to step on the trap twice in order to die. Speaking about patrolling horsemen - although it seems pretty useful, I should tell that a players still needs to watch over them. If you don't, the enemy could slaughter them with slowest troops there are. :D Indeed, although pitch is also pretty useful as well, especially in multiplayer; and as usual, combination of those two can be he best! I think you are wrong about this, but it indeed depends of which troops does the defended use. If he uses crossbowmen, then spearmen have better chances to show themselves more effective than those 3 swordsmen, while if the defender has archers, then they have less chances to show themselves as more effective. And to reply to the new questions. :) I do use crenellation, but I only put only one layer of crenellation wall. I don't put more layers of it, which is something that many players use to stop the assassins. In singleplayer my average population in 150, but it depends of the map - if I have less space, I have smaller population. Speaking about mu castle in multipolar game, it depends of my opponents. If I see my enemies build huge economies then I make even larger castle, and then I have more then 200-300 working people, depending of whether the map is low resource or not. My mom always has more 200 by the way. :D Regarding the question with the macemen - yes, they are definitely worth it! They are strong and fast units - pretty useful, especially against Opponents who use fire to defend themselves. What exactly do you mean under "starting rush". If it is rush just after no rush period has ended - I have nothing against it; that's what no rush period is for. :) You build your castle and your economy, and when no rush time is ended, then the battles begin. :) If you taught about playing a game without a rush period, and when the opponent attacks you right from the beginning - I think that can be a challenging thing... You just start to build your economy, and you must be on watch - to monitor how much army does your opponent has. If he has more troops in beginning, then he is getting ready to attack you, and you need to prepare yourself. :) And then... well, use your imagination, you could try to set this guy to fire, or something like that. :D Also, crossbowmen are pretty effective against assassins! The bad side of this is that most of those players will simply leave the game after they fail in their attack, but hey - you did make one kid out there pretty angry, which is nice. :lol: Speaking about portable shields - I will be short. I don't like them. :D

I do realize that in map editor I have unlimited resources, but that's the reason why I like to build a castle in skirmish more then in map editor - I want to put an effort in building a castle. :) Regarding that ale, I think that you can produce ale even with low population - maybe one hops farms and two breweries could be enough for your castle. Speaking about patrolling, I think that making horse archers to patrol could be a good use of this option, as they can fire arrows while riding their horses. About the pikemen - swordsmen do have their downsides: they are slow, and they cannot dig. On the other hand pikemen are faster and they have more health which makes them ideal for attacking an enemy which has moats around his castle, and they are also more effective against players who defend with lots of crossbowmen. Speaking about rams and towers - they do work, in those situations I decide to use them. Especially siege towers, maybe one reason for that is the fact that the enemy doesn't expect from me to use that siege equipment. This way I can easily enter enemy castle, or climb his walls and take down his archers and crossbowmen. Indeed, in the beginning I build some workshops to produce spears, and later when I get iron and armorer's workshops up, I just order them to produce pikes instead. About iron - that is because I find it harder to buy iron - that does make the economy weaker, especially if one wants to produce swordsmen. Then are pikemen a better choice. And, yes, one may thing I am referring to Crusader 1, especially because of the screenshot I gave from Crusader, but I was referring to both those games. My military tactics are almost the same in both games, only with difference that Stronghold 1 economy is harder to run - it has slower economy. Speaking about mangonels, this is my tactic - I put mangonels to front towers, while I put ballistae on back towers, similarly to some AI lords in fact. The reason for that is the fact that mangonels on back towers would indeed bring damage to my own castle, and kill my own troops, but those mangonels on front are pretty useful - especially if you are being attacked by lots of catapults - by AI lords or by human players, doesn't matter. Only it is even more effective against human players when human player groups all catapults together. Then each stone from my mangonels would very likely hit a catapult. Regarding spearmen, yes - they are waste of resources, but those are very little amount of resources. You should consider this - spears are being produced pretty fast, and training a spearmen is indeed very cheap. They are not that bad against melee troops, but they are extremely vulnerable to archers attacks - that would devastate them, so you have to put archers in front and keep the spearmen behind, to send them forwards only when they need to face some melee units. On the other hand, if you have a good economy, and if you are able to train more powerful troops, then those guys could be a waste of recruits, as you are limited by recruits as well - they won't come to your castle faster than they would normally do.

I rarely build a castle in editor, I mostly do it in game, and that's something I enjoy in Stronghold. Almost each time I have a pattern in my mind about where to build each building, although that pattern is adjustable to the space I have available. I believe that most of you who played more than one game in multiplayer have noticed that pattern, and I am showing you one example of my castle now. It always depends of the game, if it is skirmish game, it can be a smaller castle, while in some multiplayer games I build a huge version of this castle - if I notice that my opponent is building huge economy. This way I can build weapons production, bakeries and breweries inside my castle, while I leave the inns outside relying on my army to protect those from enemy attacks, slaves, and ballistae. If I see I will have a hard time defending my economy outside the castle, I also dig moats around the castle and the economy. Still, I do not attack my walls to maps edges, and I do not build the wall around farms, stone quarries, and iron mines, because I just don't like playing that way. :) On the other hand, I don't mind if my opponent does that. I mostly build square towers, while I also build turrets - especially in singleplayer game, or multiplayer game against AI lords. They are weak, but I like to have different types of towers, that makes the castle look better. :) Regarding patrolling troops, I rarely do that. Troops I use are mostly archers, crossbowmen, pikemen and swordsmen, while swordsmen are my favorite melee troops, and in multiplayer or in hard singleplayer games I train more crossbowmen, as archers are easy to be wiped out by Arabian horsemen. Oh, and about the archers - I don't ways use archers, but when I do, you will find some of your troops burning outside my castle. :) Regarding my siege tactics, one that may distinguish me from others is the fact that I quite often use battering rams and siege towers; but my siege tactics always depend of my enemies defenses. Speaking about one annoying unit, I am going to say only two words - portable shields... They are just overpowered in Crusader, and I really don't like how some people like to use them on their towers or to combine them with horse archers. Still, I won't say I find those hard to kill, as I know how to control shields and horse archers pretty well, but that's something I do only when my opponent starts bragging how he is a pro player, or how someone from my team is a noob. :cool: Spearmen I rarely use, but I do find them helpful in the first stages of singleplayer game, or a game against AI lords, to stop those early attacks, and to defend my lord, granary and other important things inside my castle - mostly while it's still not enclosed. Which is more important: iron or pitch - I'd say iron. :cool: As you may have noticed from the rest of my text - I feed my people with bread, even though those are more expensive in the beginning, they are the most effective in long terms.

I still think it's not waste of resources and space, as this way when your economy, and your popularity and population are down, you need to care about more stuff then usually in Stronghold 1/Crusader 1... But in the end, it is a matter of taste - we can simply like it, or not. :) I used to feel like that about this matter as well, but now I just look at it like this - it's like they made economy a little bit slower, or something like that. :)

That is why you can chop off the guys head. :D Instant "rehabilitation". :lol:

Interesting, I wasn't thinking about that - I mean placing one non-torturer rehabilitation method, so pure criminals wouldn't have to wait for their punishment. :) Speaking about kingmaker, we have to admit, even though one can play as a low rank not to have rats, he wouldn't have many other buildings as well...

I have made the thread. You can answer to this question there, and the new thread. Do you think that a short tutorial "how to disable gong, rats, and crime in Stronghold 2 map" would help? Also, perhaps there is some way to disable those buildings in free build game? Please, if someone knows answer to this question, reply in the new thread, as we don't want to go off topic, like Isaiah mentioned.

I am making this thread for you to tell us what is your opinion about those three stuff. Some of us don't like it, some of us do, and those of us who don't like it - they may avoid to play the whole game because of that fact. I am one of those who didn't like it much, and who wanted Stronghold 2 to be at least a little bit more simplified, but now I do like it! I believe one can easily build falconers post and gong pit to solve the issue with gong, which is a quite natural problem in a medieval city; also when one builds several of those, he doesn't have to care about it anymore, workers will just do their job and keep the castle clean. There is also another issue which you may, or you may not like, and that is: building courthouse, lords kitchen, bedchambers, church, etc... may require some more space; but again, I do like that we have this as well. Indeed, one does not have a have it all in his castle; having to make some choices can make the game somewhat more interesting I think. Also, these buildings force a player to build a larger castle which makes defending it more interesting - one needs to plan carefully how to defend himself. What is your opinion about this matter? :)

I believe I should say that I also like the new color. :)

I didn't read all of your message right now, but I will do it later. For now, I just meant to tell that you may not know that you don't have to play Stronghold 2 with gong and rats, you can play scenarios without them, and you can also create new ones without rats and gong. Sir Vet and Lord Chris might know more about those, but even if you have to deal with those, it is easily to do - you only need to build few gong pits and few falconers, and after that you don't have to worry about those two at all! Same applies to crime as well! So I think it does deserve a second chance. :D There are also few other details which I didn't come to before, but guys from here explained me how to play better, and now I can enjoy the game like I have never enjoyed it before. For example, I was having problem with my village's stockpile getting full of wood, which can be simply solved by shutting down the villages woodcutters. That was a small piece of advice from Lord Vetka. :)

Thanks for this as well! This will be much useful, it is quite handy to guys like me - who makes some economic free build maps, as one member of my family likes playing them and enjoying the landscape and her castle. :)

So last time we spoke I tried to manage spell check in IE to work, but it seems that I didn't need any add on - I only needed to choose English as default language. This way I also have autocorrect which I would have in Microsoft Office as well, it converts "i" to "I", and stuff like that. That could be not so great when I want to write in my native language, but it is great and helpful - I know this thing have never annoyed me, but even if it could, I can always turn in off while I want to write something in Serbian, or I could turn on autocorrect / spell checking in Serbian as well. I just came back here to spread some more good words about Internet Explorer. :)

Thanks Chris!

Hey, guys. this is a short guide for those ones who are having problems with Stronghold or Crusader on Windows 8. I thought this could save much time to people, so I asked Jonesy if it would be ok me to post it here. I also hope it could be sticky, so it would be easily found. If I found some other possible solutions, I would add them to the text.

Now I saw what exactly this is, that's map for the competition. Yes, you can cound me in. Also, I wsn't following much what you were talking about the rules, as I am new Crusader 2 player, so I am still unaware of what might be overpowered, and stuff like that. I will just read the rules later :) , and regading trebuchets, like the idea of being able to unpack your trebuchet only ones like in Crusader 1 or Stronghold 1 and 2...

Welcome, Isaiah, I'm glad to see you here! I also like your tutorial, it's very useful. :)

I didn't have much time to read at this moment, but the map looks really good, and I like how you made the castle! :)

I believe this is the same map; at least that's the one I have. :)

I believe that Island Warefare IS a user made map, only you didn't download it by yourself; it was a map chosen by Firefly to be sent to you by Steam. Now each time someone installs Steam version of Stronghold, he gets those user created maps as well.

Welcome to Stronghold Nation, Nomekopadam! I hope I will make it to play this map this weekend, and I will give you my battle report here. :)

Yes, I did realize that later - about the copyrights. And, yes, I was said the same thing by some others - it would, be much better with the speech. Right now I am on a second Trail mission - I have defeated those two Rats and Slave King in alliance with Sultana, and I have also defeated Sultana and the Rat in alliance with Shah at Iron Hills. Now comes the slave king, and this seems like a nice missions for me to record it, as I have only one enemy here, and it should not lag while I record it. Regarding this free recording program, I have never tried it. It could be possible that I could use it for free as well, but I shall see about that yet. Thanks for mentioning it here, and I also hope to hear some experiences with it.

I am interested. And regarding that article, I am aware of that Vetka might not have much time to do that, so for that reason it could be easier just to give a longer "deadline", so we could ask question at forums; after you answer us some question - then you already have half of your article, if you are able to copy/paste the text. :)

I'm sorry for asking a possibly dull question... Is this contest still up? If it is, I believe that there are enough of us here who would be interesting to make a scenario with this map. At the time when the map was posted I was less into Stronghold 2 and its scenarios, but now I am, and I hope some one else would also be willing to try to make a scenario? I think we should give competitors more time to make a scenario, and enough time to ask some questions (at Stronghold 2 forum) - how to do some specific thing with the map, and to implement it.

Yes, I also tought it would be harder, but it was much easier then I expectet. I guess one should be able to win it even without going around, but either way, it is important to attack silently, from the dark. This does make it possible for us to make interesting war scenarios!