Asophix

Sounds really good! 😄 Have you been thinking about a fixed tracklist? I'm not sure if the triggers can be manipulated well enough, but even if there are improvements over the original one, I'll be more than happy. Would you also mind documenting your findings?

@ Isaiah There is no problem with Firefly ending support by itself. The pressing concern is the limited replayability once a player runs out of new content, that's where the AI should come into play. But it currently has such bugs and/or weaknesses which make gameplay experience rather dull after a while. Single-player scenarios also can't become varied enough just by themselves, missions need to be designed specifically for maps and starting conditions, else they fall under one of these categories: play on equal footing, where you can dominantly outgrow your opponents, play with a severe numeric and/or economic disadvantage, where you develop at a snail's pace, play tower defense until you are confidently beating back attacks, then use an overwhelming force to dispatch your opponents one by one. Allied games are not much better due to how the same limitations also apply to your partner. The coop trails are designed with human players in mind and many missions include spawner outposts that quickly wear down your allied lord. The only apparent 'saving grace' for Crusader DE is thus having a community of hard-working and talented mission makers, who can come up with interesting trails and maps, or maybe Firefly allowing to play with custom lords in the coop trails, in my opinion.

There has been a semi-official update to how long the Crusader:DE will be supported by Firefly Studios. According to this Reddit post, a community manager Tasha has provided the following points on the studios' official Discord server: The main takeaway is that the game will stop receiving content and major patches after the Summer Update rolls out sometime in Summer 2026. At the time of writing this post, the studios already have started transitioning away from the DE to other projects, which haven't been provided any details at all to-date. The justification given for the decision has been the fact that creating custom content takes up less resources from the team, letting them focus on their other endeavours. --- Where does this leave the community? Basically on top of adding custom maps, SHC:DE allows sharing overrides for the game's AI opponents (profile and castles) and custom trails on the Steam Workshop, as well as modifying the media and voice lines for them, which can be shared on third-party sites without a license. Personally saying, I predict that the SHC:DE will fizzle out some time after support ends, just like the majority of the games post-SHL. Even though the sheer quantity of content can provide a lot of playtime, the game will essentially stop delivering an engaging gameplay experience without massive community effort, because the AI - one of the main selling points of the game - still plays very close to the vanilla 2002 SHC, being very predictable and ineffective compared to a human player. Not being able to play with a modified AI opponent in the Coop trails also hurts the experience. We here on Stronghold Nation naturally encourage playing Stronghold games and enriching it with content; a hill we will die on, figuratively speaking! But there is a chance that Firefly leaving the game will do a disservice to this potentially enjoyable game.

Greetings Everyone! The Spring Update (v2.7) has been released for SHC:DE, featuring the usual quarterly free and DLC content along with a small batch of bugfixes. The two new lords in the DLC are Baldwin & Bullseye. Please make sure that you update to the latest version in order to access multiplayer via Steam (auto-updater)! Refer to the following forum post for more details regarding new content: Full patch notes: Added 'keep enclosed' symbol for pre-built CPU Castles in Co-Op trails Added 'keep enclosed' symbol on Skirmish briefing screen when the CPU Castle is pre-built Added 2 new Charges for the Coat of Arms, representing CPU Lords Bullseye and Baldwin Added some of the maps from "Realm of the Crocodile" Historical Campaign as Freebuild Maps: "Ancient River, Fractured Frontier, The Lush Strip, The Rivers Edge, Oasis by the River" Adjusted Sentinel’s Stockpile Sell Thresholds: Stone sell threshold 50 -> 43, Ale sell threshold: 10 -> 2 The Sergeant CPU no longer uses Tunnelers Fixed an issue causing CPUs Moat Diggers to 'glitch' and not move sometimes, leaving the moat undug Fixed a bug where Achievement would not trigger for beating the Trail of the Cobra within the Target Time Fixed a bug causing a Radar map click issue when UI is disabled Fixed a bug with house placement (house cycling system now matches other buildings, like gardens) Note: "house cycling" is the feature where selecting the design of certain buildings changes every few seconds, allowing to place a variation.

Thank you, I think an upper limit of 90-100 characters total should suffice. There have been only about two or three transcriptions in need of condensing.

As a next round of changes, the Bedouin mercenaries' lines have been transcribed and added to the quotes database too. Some compromises had to be made for a few lines, as the database allows up to 75 characters only, resulting in slightly reworded English translations - the Arabic lines have been fully preserved. Enjoy! 🙂

Hello @ bradley0095 ! Raising a keg to your health! 🙂 Have you originally made SH2 maps, bringing up the topic? We also have released a Lord Editor for the game last autumn, which allows you to tailor the AI characters' gameplay styles, should you want to feature some as well in your custom scenarios.

Hi All! A small update has been added to the site, as now the main page "Quotes" section now has a chance to display the Arabic mercenary troops' voice lines. Both the original Arabic and translated English transcripts can be read, so now you may understand what "Mustahil" or those other frequently heard lines may mean! Courtesy to Ali Aziz on Youtube for providing the original transcripts in his videos, which were then ever so slightly refined with the help of Google Translate. Enjoy this small crumb of update! 🙂

Hello All! Firefly Studios recently published a status update video, detailing plans about continued support for SHC:DE in two waves of separate seasonal updates. Both updates will continue the tradition of featuring two new AI lords and Sands of Time trails in the form of paid DLC, as well as a cooperative trail and an assortment of new maps as free content in each. Nothing else is mentioned regarding upcoming new features or fixes, implicating that these updates serve solely as additional content to the game. Expected Contents - Spring Update (scheduled April 21, 2026 - price: 4 GBP / 5 USD / 5 EUR): AI Lord - Baldwin (paid DLC) A well-known legend of the Crusades, Baldwin IV ruled as King of Jerusalem in the twelfth century. His rule was riddled by infighting among other Crusader lords, while he also fought to strengthen his fiefdom against the ever increasing pressure of Saladin and his united Arab support. His castles and economy resemble much like those of Richard the Lionheart, with an extension per se. The castle with a square-shaped layout, a densely packed interior and square towers, with a second ring of walls being present. He also utilises pitch and stake traps in his outer defense. Baldwin's economy is very efficiently supported by bread production, a lot of weapons workshops and tightly packed religion buildings. His troops feature the sturdiest Barracks troops as backbone, mixed with Bedouin Skirmishers, Demolishers and a few other types of troops, with Tunnelers added in to sieges. AI Lord - Bullseye (paid DLC) Bullseye is the name coined for the European messenger, who informs you about invasions and various other events, predominantly in the historical campaigns. He wears a kettle hat with a mail coif and a red-colored padded vest. He is more of a humble opponent, who is said to be rather defensive in nature. His castles seal off a large swathe of the land, packed to the brim with Crossbowmen. The walls are thick and are surrounded by killing pits. Bullseye's economy seems to be mostly supported by sheer raw material extraction and weapons industry. Thematically his one and only favoured troop seems to be the Crossbowman, however in the preview a handful of Macemen can also be discerned. Sands of Time Trail - Trail of the Eagle (9 missions, paid DLC) Cooperative Trail - The Ravens' Duet Map Pack Expected Contents - Summer Update: AI Lord - The Surgeon (paid DLC) AI Lord - Baibars, the Mameluke lord (paid DLC) Sands of Time Trail - Trail of the Vulture (9 missions, paid DLC) Cooperative Trail - Dance of the Scorpions Map Pack --- More information will be known over time, as the Studios reveals them. No additional news is shared, except that from now on the Steam Workshop has more categories for SHC:DE submissions in order to make content management and searching easier. Feel free to share questions or your feedback in this thread!

Come one, come all! SHC:DE got another release (v2.6) today, bringing us the ability to customise both existing and custom lords, above all! This includes voice lines, short videos and even the small avatar displayed on the various game interfaces. In order to prevent apparent abuse, Firefly ruled that custom Lord submissions in the Steam Workshop may only be added small avatars, however it is allowed to upload fully customised Lords in third-party sites like SHN & ModDB. As a consequence, adding custom media for lords has been made slightly difficult, which has been covered in more detail in our article here. Beyond the editable AI, some bugfixes and improvements have been brought to the Spectator mode and custom trails, as well as the CPU Editor has been updated too. Here are the most noteworthy changes: Spectator Mode Selecting units now displays the health bar of those units. Game speed upper cap has been increased to 300. Invisible units (assassins & ambushers) and traps (pitch ditches & killing pits) are revealed for the spectator. AI behaviour Bots no longer retarget their attack force mid-siege, if they target either the Richest or the Weakest players. Pikemen, Swordsmen and Arabian Swordsmen properly occupy their rally points in the castle design. Patrol groups in the siege army all properly engage the lord. Unit groups that can be composed of multiple groups have been added a slider to prevent undefined behaviour - this effectively caps maximum group count at 5. Custom Lords no longer cause a crash in multiplayer games. Have fun around modifying and creating your bots. If you are interested, feel free to share your ideas or modifications here on Stronghold Nation, so that you can spread the fun! 🙂

Behind the scenes In the original SHK Editor there is a weird quirk, when it comes to displaying buildings. Even not long after its release, people complained about the Engineer's Guild being off by one tile, when rotated east. Even though this itself is an easily fixable problem, delving into the buildings list reveals that almost every building has a whole slew of corrections applied on top. When adapting the Editor for the Legends buildings, all buildings got vastly different dimensions, so all corrections had to be painstakingly found out and updated. Still, the in-game Map Editor in SH2 & SHL is able to effortlessly rotate buildings. Is the math behind it so complex and difficult? What could cause this mismatch in HicRic's interpretation? The answer lies in the anatomy of a building. See, building footprints starting with SH2 are slightly more complex than for example in SHC, as buildings are comprised of two components: Occupied Area: this footprint is reserved for the building itself, and can't be built on Walkable Area: this footprint outlines a general area for peasants / units to approach the building. While still can't be built on, walkable areas can overlap for multiple buildings. Since most buildings effectively carve out a rectangle or square, HicRic's interpretation was that this could apply to every building, and as such a rectangular 2D area was assigned to each of them. There are however buildings with more complex footprints, like the Keep, where the campfire's 4x4 area is attached to the occupied area of the building: Going further with the above theory, it seems that rotation around a center point always results in a consistent position, however it is almost never the case, if the building's footprint is not a perfect square and is included a walkable area. HicRic also realised this and implemented a correction system on top, which adjusts the building to its real position. This does not follow a pattern however and takes unjustified effort to implement. What HicRic failed to account for, is the fact that the focal point of the rotation is the center of the occupied area, not the center of the building's effective rectangle footprint. See how the yellow point is about two tiles away compared to the real point of rotation, visibly misplaced: In short, all buildings in SH2 & SHL have occupied areas each that assumes the shape of a rectangle or square. Using this knowledge, the brute force correction system can be dropped and building administration can become more intelligent, further improving invalid building placement checks and other related features. Thanks for reading! 🙂

Greetings Everyone! The Winter Update (v2.5) is out on time and it is now available for download on Steam. Please make sure that you update to the latest version in order to access multiplayer via Steam (auto-updater). Refer to the following detailing the announced features: Winter Update Custom Lords and Trails As part of the update, the developers also include two tools - "Castle and CPU Lord Editor" & "Custom Trail Maker", which are available on Steam as a standalone application each. Much like our published editors hosted here on SHN, you can customise the existing AI Lords, as well as create your own Skirmish Trails consisting up to 50 missions. These are also added Steam Workshop functionality to share and access your content with other players. Firefly Studios also implemented / borrowed some custom castles (like Evrey's Improved Castles from the UCP) for starters. In order to access the editors, make sure to tick "Tools" in the Library filter: Spectator Mode Originally another UCP feature, Firefly implemented a spectator mode that lets you watch a cage match as the player, as the AI lords battle it out between each other. New Maps and Coop Trail As usual, Firefly added three new maps to the roster: Oasis Crossing: 600x600 Skirmish map Mind Games: 500x500 Skirmish map Approaching Seas: 700x700 Freebuild map Additional Changes Extreme trail difficulty: AI Lords start the mission with their castles pre-built. Pinging option in multiplayer matches by Alt+P: this sends a blip on the minimap, which can be clicked to place the view on the exact location. The Sultan now hires Slaves for filling in enemy moat. The Jewel starts harassing with fewer knights. Various bug fixes covering missions, AI behaviour (such as the CPU incorrectly destroying his buildings when moat & drawbridges seal off its domain) and units. Have fun with the new patch and editing, my lord! 🙂

Follow-up to my comment: I checked the potentially dangling bytes and I'm not too much smarter, but: potentially there is a pattern that could help us prevent malformed castle definitions. A little lengthy, savvy summary comes: LordBritian's parser in the original SHK identified two types of marker data: rally points and defenses. Rally points can contain position (x;y coordinate, 4 b each), and elevation toggles (4 b each). Maximum of 10. Defenses only have position (x;y coordinate, 4 b each). Maximum of 20. His assumption was that the component values for the X and Y coordinates are never 0, which is fine for most of the time. The catch is that this is not always true. My parser was ran on two potential marker sections that have no positional data, but filled bytes in the elevation data: Unknown 1 has a fixed first byte set to 1. This is uniform for all vanilla castles and carries no valuable info for us, so we can safely ignore this one. Unknown 2 has as many bytes set to 1 as there are guarding troops markers. Also: Troop Pool markers have as many bytes set to 1 as there are ranged defence markers. I struggle to understand what these bytes may toggle/influence. One possibility is default stance, another is that the bytes are simply references, kinda required helpers for the assigned troops to behave properly. It may take a little time to make sense of all of this.

That's been a long-standing bug that seems to be more related to the game itself. I'll have to double-check the definition more in detail.

Greetings to All! The Castle Editor for Stronghold Legends has been serving us well for almost two years now - at the time of writing -, as it allows for modifying castle layouts for all the Legends lords, in an intuitive and considerably user-friendly way. One example would be the Vlad Enemies pack by @ Sir Windows , which brings us Radu and a handful of other characters to fight in Skirmish mode. However, it is obvious that the Editor's design and overall serviceability does not hold up to what we would expect in current times, since this application is essentially a re-compilation of Lord Britian's SHK Editor, intended for SH2 from 2006. Even though the source code had been somewhat modernised and extended with a handful of nifty features, the underlying visual tech is still the original one. Due to its dated presentation appeal and challenging maintenance hurdles, I decided to start working on a re-implementation. The new Castle Editor aims to bring a similar editing experience that feels more like present times, powered by the same tech presented by our Lord Editors, while also preserving portability for your comfort. The key advantage is that the source code would be fundamentally similar, while the visual style can also reminisce that of SHL with colorful backgrounds and visual elements adapted from the game itself. Some more advanced features could also be added upon request, as always. As a recap, allow me to list the core features to be expected for the Castle Editor: Displaying a Lord's castle on a 100x100 grid overview, with small pictures sized exactly to the footprint of each building. Setting the order of buildings based on their priority. Placing troop markers in the layout to tell the AI where to send its defensive and patrolling units. Placing traps in various key locations. Placing 'no build' tiles in order to restrict the AI from building in places of patrol points, or the way of rolling logs. Taking note of a file history so that you can recall your favourite files from a bullet list. Automatic saving option. And more to come. At this point, the parsing and creation of a castle file is done, and the presentation is being worked on. Should you have any remarks or feature requests, feel free to comment or send a DM to my profile! Until next time, Asophix