EaglePrince

What Mathew suggested indeed sounds good. :) By the way, what we may forbid here are shields, or at least we could limit their number? I don't know yet how effective they are in Crusader 2, but if they are as effective as they are in Crusader 1, that wouldn't work well, and many could simply combine archers and shields, and just sit back, and enjoy the "show". :) Besides that, I'm not sure if they fixed the exploit by which shields from the ground were providing protection to troops on towers. Also, we may leave some wood and iron for traps and pitch for defending player to place it as he wants. What do you think about that?

I like how you imagined it, I'm sure it will be fun playing it. :)

Hey, but how about this one! We make a map like on Risiko, and we make everything as a turn based game. If there are some Rise of Nations game fans here, then they would remember that this is what Conquer the World campaign is based on. I will elaborate: first we make a map: with cities, and roads between them. To make it more interesting, we can make there don;t have to be roads between each too cities; we use some random function to mix players, and to give each player one city; in each turn each player can attack one city: if the attacker wins, he conquers the city; but if the city is the starting city of the player who lost it, he has one more chance to set it free (just because we don't want someone to be taken out too easily in those first battles); if someone owns more cities, he can attack any city that is next to his each player is out if he loses his first city last man standing is the winner I'm not saying that this is the best idea possible, but it's something. :) Hehe, also now you know who used to play Risiko a lot when he was a kid. :D

I agree with Mathew. For me it is also more logical for each of us to have limited number of attempts - one, or two, or three... And to take fastest time; or instead of that to have something similar to score in Stronghold 1 - percentage of troops lost is counted there as well. We can make a formula. :)

Although I don't have Crusader 2, I like your idea, and I hope other will like it as well! :) If you decide to make this happen with any of the game I own, I would join - same applies to Crusader 2 if I get it. :) I ain't sure if I would have enough powerful PC for Stronghold 3 multiplayer, but I could try. I do realize this is for Crusader 2, so I will just back off for now, but I liked the idea, so I had to say it. :)

I believe that I have seen some cathedral that seems to be in Byzantine style, but not on Stronghold Heaven. It was somewhere else on the internet. But if you lost it, and you can't remember where you saw it - there's no need to look for it. ;) I though you might remember where exactly did you see it. :)

Thanks, captain. :)

I assume what you mean by this is Stronghold Europe English patch, or something related to Stronghold Europe? I did notice that those files that were hosted by filedropper are no longer there, but there is Stronghold Europe HD on Mega, and there is Stronghold Europe English patch downloadable from Stronghold Europe website. If you could just be more precise. :) You're welcome. Also, could you tell me where did you find that version of Stronghold Europe with those additional building models, including that cathedral?

Do you mean on this one? If it is, I would still suggest you download the version from this article. I'm not sure I understand this question. I can only tell that engineers also have Arabian speech in Crusader - you can notice it while playing some of the campaigns. I've got you! Like I said, just download it from Stronghold Europe website in English, you will have all troops from Crusader then. That is a complete version of the mod. Well, I am also glad you reminded us of this mod. Only as long as I am looking more and more into details I am deciding to give this up, and to return to Stronghold Europe. Like I said, it's more complete than Russian Story. Still, I will share the models here, and, in my opinion, if you like how Russian Story looks like, then it is better to use those models from Russian Story in Stronghold Europe. Then you will get what you want - a complete working mod with buildings you like.

Can you give me where are you downloading that version of Stronghold Europe? I am interesting to see that. :) This wesbite is where you can download the version which is in German and English. Speaking about you problem with exe file... I also had issues after installing 2.1 patch, it seems like they messed up something with that exe file, but then I restored the exe file from original Stronghold Crusader, and now it works fine; I just copied Stronghold Crusader.exe from my Stronghold Crusader folder to Russian Story folder. I should also tell that the exe file I put there is from Stronghold Crusader 1.0, I'm not sure how it would work with 1.3 though, because of resolution. I also tried putting Stronghold 1 swordsmen to Russian Story, but they act weird - when they stand in one place, they don't play around with their swords - they are spinning around themselves. :what: ADDITION: Speaking about translation - when you go to your Crusader installation folder (C:\Program Files(x86)\Firefly Studios\Stronghold Crusader), you will find a file there called "cr". That's one you need. In case you don't see it, have this one in attachment. ;) I hope that helps. I also noticed that animations for swordsman in Crusader and in Stronghold 1 are actually different - the one from Stronghold 1 has more frames. I believe that is the reason why they didn't bring in those swordsmen into Crusader. SECOND ADDITION: I also made it to bring back army speech in English. I just copied the content from the original Crusader folder "speech" to the same folder within Russian Story. Besides other things this evening I also noticed some bad stuff at some building models. For example, have a look at woodcutters hut in Russian story after he brings the wood to the hut. The animation and the hut don't fit together so nicely. I will check if some other buildings have the same problem, such as quarry, or iron mine... Speaking about farms, they seem to work perfectly when it comes to this. And one more thing - about what I said about swordsmen from Stronghold 1. It should still be possible to put swordsmen from Stronghold 1 into Russian Story and Stronghold Europe, but for that to accomplish one would need to go through all frames of those animations of both swordsmen, and to compare them. That is not an easy task, of course, as there are more than 400 frames to check. Also, all this would make sense doing only if we could actually edit that animation - create a new animation that would fit correctly, and put it into the right place. cr.tex

Well, they did a great job with this mod indeed! They made some really good looking models, such as those ones for church, chapel, hovels, etc... Still, what I try to do now is far less valuable, as less knowledge is needed for that, and at this moment - that is what matters the most. :) Well, I can't promise I will do much, but we shall see. What I have in mind are only small adjustments compared to what was done before me. I was also thinking about bringing back the speech of soldiers from Russian to English. ADDITION: Also, the simplest thing we could do is to simply install Stronghold Europe, and to get those models from Russian Story to Stronghold Europe mod. Stronghold Europe is way ahead of Russian Story by some aspects, but right now I will stick to Russian Story as it is simpler to modify. Why Russian Story is 100% modifying resources, Stronghold Europe has slightly different exe file. That is why you can hold Stronghold Crusader and Stronghold Europe in same folder. SECOND ADDITION: I didn't ask you... Did you make it to download and install Russian Story? By the way, I've done one part of my task - I made it to put swordsmen from Stronghold 1 into Russian Story, but I shall try to put the same image now into the barrack's panel. Even if that doesn't work so nicely, that wouldn't an issue.

I am making this tread so other could simply find the greatest Stronghold Crusader mods known by us. Those are Stronghold Europe, and Russian Story.

Thanks, I hope it won't be hard to find. :) I will also try to find that by myself if I find some time today or tomorrow. ADDITION: I found those files. Here they are: tile_buildings2.gm1 tile_castle.gm1 anim_castle.gm1 It's clear what is what. :) To get the stone castle keep in skirmish you need your those last two files from Russian Story 2.0, and to get hovels with straw roofs, you need to use tile_buildings2.gm1 from Russian Story 2.0. The only thing about that is this way you will also get granary from version 2.0, which is the same as in Stronghold 1. There may be some other building affected by this file, but we may check that later. How would you like to have swordsmen and knights like they are in Stronghold 1? I mean, these are Russian steppes, not Holly Land. :) There are some things chat could get fixed here, and I hope we can do that. After that works is done, I would be able to upload our version of Russian Story to some free and reliable hosting service. Of course, I wouldn't want to give anyone less that I got, and for each detail I modify I would give the original files... Or something like that!

You're both welcome! I am showing you the link where you can download this mod. Speaking about translating, it might not be necessary to translate entire game. 98% of the game is being translated by simple replacing of one file. Still, this way you will not be able to see names of the AI lords that were intended by creators of Russian Story, and their descriptions, and you will also be unable to see the right translations of the text within the campaign. Speaking about names of AI lords, I am unsure whether the creators of Russian Story have adopted the speech within the game to those new names. To be more precise, I am unsure if the games says "message from Danilo", or "message from Lionheart" for example. (I'm not saying that Lionheart is being renamed to Danilo, but some, if not all, AI lords were renamed like this.) ADDITION: Speaking of models, houses from 2.0 I like more. Could you tell me what is the file, or files, in which are those models being stored? And also, how do I change the default stone keep - I like it more when the keep is bade of stone, not wooden? I may try to find it by myself, but I'm just asking in case you are able to find an answer quicker then me.

I am sorry, I don't understand you mean by captial and non-captial punishment?

So, here are some screenshots. :) I managed to run Russian Story 2.1 by changing the exe file. I removed the one that may have been changed after patching to version 2.1, and I put there my Stronghold Crusader 1.0 exe file (recommended by creators is 1.1). This is screenshot from 2.1, later I will add a screenshot from 2.0, because hovels are different. Here, you will see those things different then in Crusader: hovels, woodcutters, all farms, lookout tower - it's no longer round (it's square now), stables, church, chapel, monuments, granary, iron mine, barracks, market place, well... There may be some more stuff that were changed. ADDITION: This is another screenshot - with hovels from 2.0 version. There is one more really good thing - it is possible easily to translate entire game to English. The downside is that Russian Story has it's own campaign which would need to be translated in harder way, but everything else works pretty well as far as I can see. :) SECOND ADDITION: If someone is interested to download this mod, but he doesn't know from where, I could give him the link. As about uploading some stuff by myself, I will wait a little more if I make it to get a reply from someone of the creators. One way or another, I will post the link to download - at least two links to download from a Russian website with instructions how to do it - if it's hard for you to make it since it's in Russian.

Yes, I believe that is how it looked like when I installed 2.0 version. Later, when I installed 2.1 it started to look different than that, but then it wasn't the only thing messed up. Thanks, I will try that tomorrow. First I will try to use the original file from Crusader, or something like that. Maybe that will work.

Indeed, who knows! In fact, it would be the best if Steam had such a policy for all games. I mean, it would be nice if you could try a game before buying it... It would be possible, and of course, there would have to be some limitations, such as - to try a game you need to have another game purchased and activated at Steam. It would be a trial version that would last 24 or 48 hours for example. There might be other limitations with the number - one could choose to play a trial version of the game once in a month for example. Of course, I guess it wouldn't happen, as then people would be buying less bad games. I mean, that would be one use of Steam which we don't like much. :)

I'm glad to hear you did make it to solve the problem. :) No need to feel sorry, someone might have the same issue later, and thanks to this tread, he might know how to solve it. :) I am sure most of us wouldn't find the problem right away by themselves.

I did it! I installed Russian Story and I got those edited files! Still, some other problems remain. The whole game is in Russian (ciryllic), and none of those letters is being displayed correctly. When I installed Russian Story 2.0 it was relatively OK, although I wasn't able to read ciryllic characters, but installing 2.1 version everything became messed up. Those characters seem to look even worse - now they are only some vertical bars instead of letters, and I cannot see the cursor. I can move it and click on stuff though, it's there, only I can't see it. Does someone know how we could fix those things? With different letter, and this with the cursor. I would only like to add that, compared to Stronghold Europe mod, although Russian Story introduces more original things, such as completely new design of church, chapel, iron mine, woodcutters hut, wheat farms, etc... Russian Story might seem a little bit incomplete, they didn't take much care about some specific details. Also, I'd like to add that they really did a great job, they really put a lot of time into it. There is also one thing I noticed in Russian story - you are able to build two types of barracks just like in Stronghold 1, wooden barracks and stone barracks. (Those were barracks and mercenary post) ADDITION: If this with letters can't be corrected easily, than I would suggest just using those models inside Stronghold Europe maybe. It would fit there as well! Speaking about translating this into English, or doing something like that just by copying a file - I will try that later, but I am unsure if that will work, as number of AI's is not the 16 nor 8 here... But it is possible that this won't make any problem, and it is possible that this thing can be done. If I am right, entire text from the game is inside one file that should be possible to open using Notepad.

I tried running this larger exe files, and I had several problems. First one is that it was taking too long until my PC made it to run this exe file. I guess that's because they made it so large - it's more than 1 GB... After some time, the PC managed to run it, but there was another problem. Everything was in Russian, and ciryllic is not being displayed as it should. Instead of ciryllic I see some weird letters with dots and stuff... I tried to extract those exe files, but it didn't work. I tried it using 7zip. Do you have any ideas, how to extract these two files? Maybe that is not necessary, but with this incorrectly displayed Russian I feel like walking in the dark while I try to install this mod. 7zip and UniExtract didn't do the job.

I would certainly do that. :)

Indeed, 2014 was a good year for this community, and I wish 2015 to be even better! :) Happy new year! :)

Indeed, I have recently won those two missions from the campaign. :) Each time it was exciting! I also like how you added the moat in front of the castle.

Hmm, this is a great finding! I have seen one screenshot now, it seems like they have introduced wooden towers there, which is really nice, and stuff like that Russian Story was missing in my opinion. I noticed how each keep there in skirmish game is a wooden one, while all around are stone walls and stone towers, which doesn't make much sense. On the other hand, being able to build wooden fortification - that is a great idea. I hope I will be able to find it, and download it, so I could try it. As about Russian Story, I will not be running those two exe files until I check other possible sources, or until I contact creators of Russian Story on their official website. One thing I noticed is that on official website is says that that Russian Story is 900 MB, and not 1.2 GB like this one I downloaded. ADDITION: It appears that is a Stronghold 1 mod... source: http://strong-me.ucoz.ru/index/0-2 If I understood this correctly, the first sentence says: "ME (Medieval Empire) - new mod of legendary game Stronghold 1". Still, models from these mods might help you with your work as well, even if I am right. SECOND ADDITION: Medieval Empire can be download from this page by clicking at this link "??????? ? ??????? (10.69Mb)". Still, this is another exe file... :what: I understand that many people want to have exe file to install stuff, but still... I also posted them a question at their guest book, I hope we'll get some reply there. THIRD ADDITION: I also found this page, and I saw that they were posting stuff there recently (December 26), so I hope we will get some reply there as well.