Asophix

Hi All! The SH2 Kingmaker AI all give us some good fun, however they leave a lot to be desired in terms of economy and unit choices, having been designed for small maps. Apart from the King and the Hawk not attacking properly, what would you change for a given character, or all of them, in order to make their experience better?

A new version (v1.3) has been released. Simply follow the download link in the main post to download! Changelist: New validation error rule: unit groups with a unique unit - e.g. Merlin - as type must have a quantity of 1. Replaced auto-complete boxes with combo boxes for unit types. This change is necessary to avoid inconsistencies in the background. Removed Ranged Pool unit type selector, as the Ranged Defense group dictates its type. Streamlined validation check logic.

Werewolves are really cheap - 50g, 5h? - for what they can do, with their immense movement speed and good melee damage. The werewolf launchers also create a "doom drop" opportunity by literally dropping them inside an enemy castle and let them run rampant. Neither other faction can have such a tactical move. Crossbowmen in a back line shred them though, as well as they can be knocked back by bolts or rocks. In any case, Saxon Warriors wish to do half as much as they can. Frost giants fall short to any durable melee unit IMO, again with crossbowmen behind. Pikemen, swordsmen and knights basically shrug off any damage, even the bash. 😄 Mass stake hurlers or even enchanted orbs can burst them down, provided the giants don't outrun their projectiles. White witches are in a good place right now. They are very fragile and costly to be mildly effective in numbers, as well as ground units get a hefty ranged bonus against them (at least in multiplayer). In most cases literally a few archers or preferably crossbowmen can repel them. I also find Trebuchets to be less of an oppressive tool: they are available at rank 10, they cost 500 gold apiece, and they fire insanely slowly. In multiplayer, you never float more than a few thousand gold per cycle, which kind of restricts their creation. They are only really useful as long-ranged artillery, which is fairly inconsequential against Bats, and more annoying against Ice + Arthur maybe, however letting Arthur dig in needs time. Ice and Evil has really nice long-range options with Fire Ballistae & Stake Hurlers with Bats, direct counters to siege tower troops and defenseless stray units, respectively. In terms of Dragons, Ice has the best in terms of utility via freeze, and the Green Dragon can potentially cause enough damage to keep an army constantly running - if you quickly reposition the Green Dragon after it starts breathing fire, you can restart the attack animation, stutter-stepping and annoying the hell out of the opponent. The Black Dragon's fire animation starts with a 2-3s delay however, which makes it fairly bad. This attack animation reset potentially makes all unique units and Stake Hurlers very troublesome. --- I mained Arthur in most multiplayer games, and I definitely think the faction's weakness lies in its hinging on Round Table knight abilities, since it neither has oppressive tools, nor the mobility of the other factions: Enchanted orbs potentially deal friendly fire, need good prediction for leading their orbs, and their contact damage against siege engines is negligible. Trebuchets I already addressed, in my opinion they are very expensive and require a compromise between unit recruitment and setting them up. Both Ice and Evil can field a myriad of AoE to dismantle any protection and destroy them. Percival has a bat ability on steroids, however you cast it every other year. His ability is comparable to the Sorcerer or the Ice Queen, as the ice storm's freezing component hits instantly, and the meteor storm starts dealing damage the moment you cast it. Merlin is the primary anti-siege tool, balanced out by his long attack animation and ability cast delay. Provided he's under constant mantlet protection, he can do a lot to stall out the enemy. The other knights are way too situational or defensive to use. Gawain's shield can be cast very rarely, Lancelot's buff doesn't do much if you must constantly reposition your army, and the others are for sieges solely. Basically you must play fair and square, the Green Dragon is your only way to meaningfully shake up the battlefield unless doing Merlin micro, and even then, your tactics can only come online once the enemy faces an honor or peasant shortage. @ Lord_Chris consistently could come back from containments building up by just tossing a few bats at the problem. Bats in particular outrun almost all projectiles and only die if they approach a formation from directly ahead, not on the sides, as well as they one-hit kill trebuchets, and two-hit shields. Doing a multi-pronged assault is also hard, when your armies don't have time to form up and in multiplayer, you must consistently spawn shields, units and particularly with Arthur, choose the correct unique units or else your next few minutes will be relegated to barracks troops only, who aren't given much perks. Against Ice, it feels like it's more of a traditional setup, since as Arthur you only really need to pay attention to the fire ballistae and the Ice Queen, with the occasional White Wolf run-bys. Frost Giants and other tanky units need numbers and/or support to attack directly head on. By experience, Ice and Arthur fights basically the same way, with one side getting the upper hand after casting an AoE clear ability, and the other following up with their own shortly after, as well as large stationary groups tend to form picking away at each other. White Witches generally are a one-time tactic that quickly gets blunted after the enemy leaves a few ranged units at home. Since Ice doesn't have many tools to dismantle an army formation other than ballistae, the dragon and the Ice Queen, this matchup feels generally more balanced and it actually gives Arthur a lot more room to maneuvre. I don't have much experience in mirror matchups, most Arthur players are generally a novice in terms of control and they're rare.

The Autumn Update (v2.0) is out and now you can access the announced contents alongside a bunch of bugfixes and improvements. Please make sure that you update to the latest version in order to access multiplayer via Steam (auto-updater). New Features Coat of Arms designer: available from the Settings, you can design your and display your own coat-of-arms in place of your Steam avatar. Random Lords can now be selected from the AI opponent selection menu, one-by-one. Randomised Skirmish Options: rolling random sets of AI, teams, maps, and so on. Co-op Multiplayer Room option, pitting players automatically versus all AI. Starting positions can be changed in Co-op missions. Additional Game Options can be individually toggled on and off for Skirmish matches, which are carry-overs from the UCP: Enhanced AI Sieges provide a new approach for the AI during sieges, mostly changing targeting enemy structures. AI opponents may start with their castles fully built in a match. Buffs for the Arabian Swordsmen, Laddermen & Spearmen, nerfs for Horse Archers. Increased free peasant cap (from 24 to max available at population cap), as well as faster peasant spawn. Fletchers skip returning to their workshops after dropping of their delivery. Healers may also heal friendly troops. Setting enemy unit hit points (2/3x, 1x, 1.5x, 2x). Additional Changes Emperor Frederick and the Marshal now buy weapons for their armies. The Healer may wander short or long ranges away from his position to seek out troops to heal, instead of being stationary, depending on its active stance. Moat can remove walkable vegetation when dug by troops (the plan can go under it). Shift-clicking a weapon type on a workshop panel will set all such workshops' production on the chosen weapon (existing feature).

An effort most welcome! 🙂 Well, there are quite a few points I can share, though I'm not experienced in all competitive match-ups. I won't go in exhaustive detail, rather I'll keep each point short. Before I start, I'd bring to attention that there are a few initiatives brewing. @ Lord_Chris in particular would like to see a random map generator and a faction redesign mod above all, with possibly others in the making. Some modder clubs were established to discuss and further these mods and their progress, so any ideas could go to their respective sections or you could join our collaborations, if you are interested! 😄 On to your points: The market - not the building, the interface - is way too strong. Since pop cap is easy to reach and is relatively constricting on big maps (about 120-128 on 4p maps), you want to squeeze efficiency out of every peasant you employ. This turns our attention to using our resources as efficiently as possible, and we'll find that weapon production is just weak. Products are so affordable and iron is so insanely valuable that you don't need weapon industries at all. I made an article about the math of trading weapons here. There is simply no incentive to build weapon crafters, when you can just make money off of a theoretically infinite number of farms and iron mines. Even without automarket, you can just rake in thousands of gold and spend it by a mere few clicks of a button. There is a flow of: recruitment - sell goods - buy equipment, and when you're done, you can just micro troops and while you wait for another round of peasants, you can play the game. It's actually viable to rush Rank 9 in a 10pt game just to get the automarket. I'd say that Skirmish maps aren't very AI friendly. Many stock Firefly maps are designed with humans in mind, and not the AI. Even with comparably small castle designs, the AI usually can't play the game properly due to buildings not fitting in. On top of that, there are a couple of weird AI quirks that just make no sense: The AI can't build ox tethers properly near iron mines, building either one, or none. The AI doesn't build attacking armies and omits some defenses in team multiplayer games. Only one type of tree will be considered by the AI for wood camp placement. The AI is horrible at controlling units, doing almost no micromanagement and rolling in siege engines well in range of defenders. One noteworthy weakness for Custom Maps is that the scenario editor is way too primitive. True that SH2's map editor is really detailed, but that gives rather high customisation possibilities to designs. I found that the SHL editor is way too inflexible, such as sending custom text messages is still infeasible (can be done, but it's very cumbersome). Also, just adding Beowulf and Alfred the Great to the skirmish roster would have given a miles more diverse experience. I also haven't seen Skirmish lords sending messages other than those existing for triggers. It is kind of obvious that singleplayer is played at a more relaxed pace, as well as custom scenarios allow for more creative missions that require problem-solving via disabled mechanics, random events and clever map design. While multiplayer is highly customisable too, eventually almost every game boils down to superior macro (economy) and micro (vigilant control of units). There are a lot of group-clearing / disabling abilities and attacks, which can quickly turn the tides, so it is way faster, action-demanding and requires good juggling between building, recruitment, trade and control. One aspect I could highlight is timing buying (royal food) so as to optimise honor generation for ranking up quickly. Perhaps a more multiplayer-specific note would be the lesser touched custom game modes. While not popular, CTF and KotH are a breath of fresh air that allow for some creative and clever games, where the emphasis is not necessarily on this juggling only. In both modes, you are driven to contest a large area that rewards a presence on the battlefield, as well as how cleverly you can reinforce your positions. Kind of relatable to the previous question: I'd re-balance the factions. While the asymmetry is great and fun, Arthur is way undertuned, and Evil is way too strong. Almost all of Arthur's toolkit bottles him in a defensive, numbers-based playstyle, hinging his success way too much on the Round Table knight abilities, while his only flying unit is the Green Dragon that gets an appearance rarely in a game. Ice and moreso Evil get to lay their hands on different countermeasures, which can simply circumvent Arthur's positions and dismantle them in different ways. I wrote an article about these imbalances, but we can state that the economic advantage for Arthur is negligible to the flexibility the other two factions get. Evil in particular has discounted units and very potent tools at the same time. The following four units are a staple and on their own game deciders: Stake Hurlers in numbers can blanket an area with a large barrage of spikes that can eventually one-hit kill sturdy stuff like Cats and Siege Towers. They also hit in a high arc, making them infinitely more useful compared to the Fire Ballista, which shoots a single-hit projectile, and cannot clear areas as well. The Stake Hurler also comes online fairly early in the ranks. Werewolves are very cheap brutes, whose only real weakness is crossbowmen. They are really affordable at 50 gold only, and they are fast, hit hard, and stand their own reasonably well in close combat. Not to mention, they are semi-amphibious by being catapulted via werewolf launchers, being able to drop in the enemy land and wreak havoc. Bad unit AI also works in their favor, constantly heading in front of their chasers by an inch. Demonic Bats are a one-hit demo squad that can instantly remove clumps of units, be them on a tower or out in the open. Knockback is devastatingly effective, since the enemy units don't fight during their knockout animation, and the impact with the unit displacement can instantly erase units falling in unpathable terrain. They also dismantle most siege engines in a few hits, making them one of the most cost-effective units in the game. The Sorcerer is a purely damage-oriented unique unit. While the Meteor Storm deals damage over time, there is simply no way of avoiding losing most of your army, since there is no Scatter command, and the ability hits right from the moment of casting. The Sorcerer can basically do Percival's job almost as well as him, for a fraction of the price. I'd see that Arthur got Pictish boat warriors and Hobilars back on the menu, two unused units that could fulfill their purposes well, giving Arthur a regular amphibious unit and a quick raider. White Wolves and Hellhounds outrun Macemen, as well as both factions have a flying unit, so these troops would be a semi-effective bandaid for the Good faction's shortcomings. I'd also nerf the Bat's divebomb effect, by the bat counting as a projectile during the dive. This would spare units covered by cats and mantlets, and it would be consistent with other displacement interactions in SHL, such as catapult rocks, hurler stakes and ballista bolts. --- This was kinda lengthy, but was worth the effort. 😄 Feel free to reflect on my remarks!

Hello, good Lords and Ladies! It's to my pleasure to bring light to a custom Legends mission pack: The Lost King campaign by @ IgnasheunKnight ! Originally introduced as the War Campaign in Stronghold 2, this re-imagination serves to re-tell a very similar experience with the cast of Stronghold Legends. Controlling Sir Bedivere, you must work your way through hostile Ice and Evil lands either to restore the rule of King Arthur, or to show your might as the ultimate ruler over Europe. This submission delivers all 12 missions from the original campaign, with a few missions being taken a different twist due to the Legends scenario limitations and unit rosters. Before each mission, you are given a text briefing detailing your story and even possibly hints about the missions! Expect a vastly different experience to the original war campaigns, with possibly higher difficulty, larger armies and even dragons chewing away at your fortifications! Feel free to sit back and allow @ IgnasheunKnight to entertain you over this rugged trail to the crown! Links to the download sections: Part I Part II Part III Part IV

Firefly Studios has made an announcement on Steam that the Definitive Edition is getting its planned Autumn Update on October 14, 2025 on Steam. The update will include free content, as well as an aptly named DLC available for purchase: The Canary and the Trader The price is not yet known for the downloadable content, however if you want a notification on the day of unlock, you can wishlist it on Steam. Content: Economic Trail of 5 missions (free) Trail of the Jackal - Sands of Time Trail of 9 missions (paid DLC) New AI Lord: The Crocodile Available for free in the new update An olden battle-scarred man riddled with green outfit and trophies, envying the wealth of his lords from the safety of his marshlands. Builds a settlement full of wetlands and barely any fortifications, resembling the lifestyle of his namesake. Seen wielding the cheapest units: Slingers, Slaves, Skirmishers, along with Ambushers. New AI Lord: The Trader Available in the paid DLC A cunning and greedy merchant, whose outfit reeks higher status. Builds sprawling and massive settlements, emphasising popularity and mass production chains. Hires a mixture of Arabian and Bedouin units: Arabian bowmen, Slingers, Eunuchs, Skirmishers New AI Lord: The Canary Available in the paid DLC Sibling of the Rat, she is disease-ridden, with a little more grasp to warfare but generally still displaying similar skills. Basically constructs slightly more fleshed out, basic castles inspired by the Rat's style: using thicker walls, moat, negative Fear Factor, breweries. Seen using Spearmen and Archers, may use Ambushers.

A collection of information, and discussion for the Legends (.slm) map formats. Useful reading: S2M format (Stronghold 2) - Fandom

Using reverse image search I found that many other sites link to the Arthur castle image. Above all, here is this one: about the announcement of Stronghold Legends following E3 2006. This news article is, so they are most likely from beta or press-release versions. Clicking on the gallery reveals even more images here. About the first two thirds of the screenshots seems to have different unit ability models and HUD. Notice how there are less buttons on the HUD (some without outline), and a placeholder unit avatar: shlepc022.webp On another image, the Ice Queen's ability indicator is different, as well as the lord ability bears an earlier version of the Arthur summon knights graphic, including a glitter on the ability button: shlepc016.webp This glitter was featured for Round Table unit abilities as well: shlepc026.webp I don't know where beta versions or 1.0 can be downloaded - I never had a Legends disc -, so whoever still has it comes with great chances at confirming the above. 😄

CURRENT VERSION: v1.4 Please upgrade the Lord Editor to this version. Opening Game Rules files with earlier versions may lead to unwanted behaviour. v1.4: Buildings are grouped into their respective categories (SH2 LE). Tooltips have been added to Lords and a few more screen elements (SH2 LE). A few more lines of descriptive summaries have been added to each category's content (SH2 LE). Added Pictish Boat Warrior, Outlaw and Light Cavalry to the unit rosters. These units bring much flavour to the gameplay and it can also open some creative avenues for custom lords. Unique units - Dragons and Magicians - can no longer be set as Siege Army group types. I felt that dragons and casters have no place in a proper siege army. It is possible that e.g. a Merlin accompanying a siege formation could fit well, so upon request I may re-add the casters to the sieges. Validation rules have been revised. Complete list: Weaponcrafter workshop productions must be selected at least one type of product. Army groups consisting a unique unit must be given a maximum count of 1. The Siege Army groups' total size must not be less than the Siege Army base size. An error is thrown if Hovels cannot support the required number for running the economy. An error is issued if a blacksmith or armourer has no iron mines to supply them (thanks @ Sir Windows !). A warning is issued if Fantasy Units have no Special Recruitment Building, or vice versa. A warning is issued if there is no Pantry for supplying Royal Food, or vice versa. Overall run-time memory footprint decreased via code refactor. Attempts to save fail silently while validation errors are present (SH2 LE). About Window opacity slightly decreased for a more pleasant experience (SH2 LE). v1.3: New validation error rule: unit groups with a unique unit - e.g. Merlin - as type must have a quantity of 1. Replaced auto-complete boxes with combo boxes for unit types. This change is necessary to avoid inconsistencies in the background. Removed Ranged Pool unit type selector, as the Ranged Defense group dictates its type. Streamlined validation check logic. v1.2: The Editor now checks for issues more consistently after a change. Existing rule checks have been fixed. A definition is no longer saved when there are errors in the profiles (indicated by red messages). Lord profiles are now unloaded upon returning to the Main Menu. The Royal Table knights are now addressed "Sir" everywhere, to properly address their high status. 🙂 Greatly reworded the manual to be more understandable. v1.1: Added the Enchanted Orb and the Fire Ballista to the unit roster. v1.0 - Initial Release: The Lord Editor can be used to view and edit Stronghold Legends lord definitions (named "gameRules.dat"). When a Lord's definition is loaded: Clicking a Lord's avatar will bring up his panel, where his various aspects can be sorted through and edited. This also changes the background based on the Lord's faction. Auto-Save: when toggled on, editing a lord's panel automatically saves the currently opened definition on the file system. To-Do List: inconsistencies and errors are marked in the bottom left corner. Warnings are minor errors that may cause inconsistency issues in certain cases. Errors are faults that may potentially break a lord during game, such as having way too many buildings for the population. Exiting the app / leaving the editor pane discards unsaved changes without warning.

Is wood a scarce commodity in this map? Knowing Stronghold 1, gold is insanely hard to come by and perhaps it could be worth investing resources in workshops. I'm seeing that you could also build a drawbridge; digging moat could be a viable option 🙂 Eventually it could divert some of the invasion force away, provided you could enclose your keep beforehand.

Right now I've been grinding the Sands of Time campaigns from left to right, and there were some sweaty missions. So far the recorder is the Trail of the Falcon M5 (its name is Safety on the Cliffs or similar). Basically you start on a cliff with some modest iron deposits, which has one snaking way down to a cache of stone and some oasis. The best thing is that your enemies are all on one team: 5 Nomads & 2 Kahinahs, one of whom is placed on the same land as you, while the others can reach you through a ford. And oh boy is this mission a doozy! It's Crusader mode, and the enemies rush you with hundreds of units from minute 3 or so, literally printing units on the back of their unhindered economies. Such insane pressure I never have experienced in any Crusader game: the Nomads literally bang their heads over and over again, and if you don't get a defense up in time, they will chew through your pitiful barricades. The Kahinahs aren't that bad, but they send heavier units that can be backbreaking. What worked for me: Spoiler I deleted and re-siting the stockpile near the oasis, then I walled off that area while building a little cramped between farms and quarries. The insane gold income allowed me to rely on Arabian bowmen and Slingers, backed by a few Crossbowmen and Healers to fend off the limitless shooting gallery, with the Heavy Camels camped outside that I got by playing a Bedouin lord. Eventually I accumulated a large number of Horse Archers and cheesed the Nomads' spike traps with Demolishers; the Kahinahs also met the same fate on the way. Even with enemies gradually weakened and swept from the way, the flood of Skirmishers and other trash troops took a number of my reinforcements, which was really annoying to deal with. 😄 What were really big challenges for you all throughout the campaigns?

Hey Everyone! We have started a new playlist on our YouTube channel, with the purpose of providing short, comprehensive information about various game aspects. Currently we have a handful of videos covering the Stronghold Legends special units & the Lords. Feel free to take a look around here 🙂 We're going to cover other games or content in the future. You may also request specific ones via DM, or in the comments below!

A little heads-up: Crusader Definitive Edition got an update yesterday. The most interesting ones of all: The Jewel now uses knights in her roster (6-8 is seen to raid) Bedouin troops are not barred from use in the classical campaign trails anymore Fire Ballistae behave like in the original Crusader - being able to fire in a higher arc, as well as no longer getting stuck in its firing animation when a building behind another one is targeted Lords now have distinct scream voicelines There is also a failsafe addition that makes AI lords replace moat with killing pits, if they are unable to dig them due to playing on a higher elevation, which got temporarily removed due to it causing bugs.

In the next upcoming update there will be a bunch of new content additions: The free path will get new trails, maps, missions, and a new AI lord called The Crocodile. A DLC will bring an additional two lords: the Canary and the Trader, as well as a Sands of Time trail. The Crocodile is teased to be a stranded elderly man, who wears green clothes and a bunch of trinkets. His choice of troops will be skirmishers, slingers and slaves, the cheapest of the cheapest. His castle is more like a pool of wet with a few towers and an assortment of moat. The Canary and the Trader are only shown a few reaction clips: the Canary is a young woman wearing armor and a tiara, who is sadly full of rashes and is shown clueless the Trader is a very easy-going and smiling man in traditional Turkish/Arab merchant's attire, wearing a turban On a personal note: I'm not quite sure what the bar will be for the new update. Mine is rather low, as we are getting another rusher/fodder lord, while the old AI are left untouched.

I see, thank you @ Sir Windows ! At a few attempts I found that crossbowmen don't arrive fast enough to the scene, but I'm happy to stand corrected. I didn't even build a castle in that game, since all Nomads were laser-focused on the Rat. 😄 In the whole mission I got like one stray light camel getting through the top ford, bottom was not in danger at all.

The very first mission pits you against three Nomads with advantage, perhaps the best rusher lord out there. You are given a Rat as a fodder, who is very unlikely to help you out by himself other than providing a staging ground for your troops, perhaps the only pro to save him. How did you survive the initial pressure? I was kinda lucky with a double Nomad attack bothering with destroying the Rat's infinite woodcutters, rather than attacking the naked lord. Without that, I'm clueless as to how to get enough troops to counter the skirmisher spam.

Hello All! Before joining SHN, I started my "public service" to Stronghold as a contributor to the Stronghold Wiki since about 2011-12. Much of my work has been published in the form of short informative articles, such as game concepts, walkthroughs and to a lesser extent, visual designs on the site. Thanks to a community, over a thousand pages are present there. In 2019-2020, Fandom has taken over ownership for Wikia and Gamepedia. User experience has since highly deteriorated on the site, with pages being riddled by ads and unfitting content, while also limiting owner rights. Since the English Fandom site has also no significant community leadership, I decided to join up with @ Lord_Chris and create the groundworks for a full Wiki Migration, favoring Stronghold Nation as a primary information source. This means that Fandom content will be brought to SHN over time, as well as future content will be supervised and curated here, leaving the Fandom site in maintenance mode. The content moved over here will be adapted to the site and included in our already existing categories and articles. While I'm not stepping down as bureaucrat on the Fandom site yet, I highly encourage not to publish and refer to any content there, as they become more dated there due to SHN effort. We are committed to bring high quality content here and we are also open to any suggestions or feedback in terms of presentation, as well as article requests! We hope that our historic articles, trivia and downloadable maps and content serve your cause well and just! Sending my regards, @ Asophix

That's excellent 😄 The Rat messages are basically the same as in Crusader 2, by the way (at least they exist as one of the many messages of his)! No idea why Roger Scabcoat the default "Rat" is, when Greytail is the most cunning and effective of the "ratlings". As far as I know, Scabcoat was pretty elementary and Silverback was also dealt with fairly easily in the lore. 😛

@ Sir Windows Oops 😄 I meant it for Warlords. In SH3 I'm completely out of the loop, as I don't even know how a multiplayer lobby is played with anyone today. From Crusader 2 it can be seen that a message queue system is implemented (that's why messages get processed with delays). Warlords removed this system for the AI behind the scenes, but the skeleton of the Lua script still remains in place. 😄 It's enough to take a look at the videos to verify. Honestly, I'm not even sure that SH3 in its current stage would be able to handle a proper Skirmish experience, even with Legends constraints (i.e. max 4 players). Given how badly the game runs with lots of units on the map, and the AI is basically non-existent, it's a far cry. Sadly Lua won't be able to alleviate the burden on a subpar graphics engine; we can see how C2 also falls to 30 fps after the first two minutes of a match. On a personal note: I'm not sure Firefly will ever be able to deliver a proper remaster experience for that game. Yeah, new blood definitely helps, but they always carved their own path with user feedback being secondary in terms of principal design decisions. I'd rather see a finished SH3 in the Vision Engine, given how Warlords is a really well done game, strictly technically speaking.

It is a very nice write-up you got there! Lots of remnants are found in later games' codes which are similar to the listed ones. Crusader 2 and Warlords in my opinion are simply iterations of SH3 in a more complete phase. The systems were perfected in Crusader 2, and Warlords is give/take at some places. The inability to communicate with the AI can be partially restored, for example, to the extent that the Overlord will play the respective video and message string, but the voice is not played. If you take a look at C2 and Warlords, you'll see that the characters use the same four mood expressions. Interestingly, the AI was also supposed to randomly send taunt/reaction strings in the multiplayer lobby, for which the system is there, but not consumed. These triggers could be a character joining the lobby, allying, or just randomly being sent out by a slim chance every second. This stems from the fact that the Lua script contains the evaluation and high level logic, respectively. The implementations are given safeguards that help determine whether a map estate is owned by the AI, or a player. This decision is also implemented on Lua-level, not in the game binary. The fact that we can un-archive the .v files gives immense potential to mod the game. It's on the radar for me as well, since LuaScript is exposed a lot of entry points into the Vision-game executable. The problem with this is that it's bloated and badly arranged legacy code. There are a lot of quirks that can break the game, however careful re-implementation could help with anything. On a personal note, I find it an equivalent of a lifetime project, and whoever gets the time to do it, can do a great service. Sadly it's the high bar one needs to jump to even reach 0.1% of progress.

The Definitive Edition is out now! 🙂

Dear Sirs and Ladies! As it is well known, Stronghold Crusader is getting a Definitive Edition on July 15th and has now released! Second in the line of the remade Stronghold games, Firefly Studios promises to greatly expand on the original Crusader, as detailed in this roadmap. Ever since the beginning of 2025, the public has been provided a few demos to foreshadow what we could expect in terms of presentation and features. Stronghold Nation has a now archived discussion post with details, here. Feel free to discuss and talk about the game! 🙂 --- What to know about Crusader: DE: It is a standalone remake of the original Stronghold Crusader, in the Unity engine. This includes revamped graphics, additional rotation views for troops, and the graphical presentation will be overall very different to the eye. This also means that modifications to the original game will most likely not be functional in the DE, due to the large differences between the two solutions. It ships with new gameplay content and extended features (but not limited to): General quality of life and gameplay features Automarket Additional map sizes up to 800x800 Additional Bedouin mercenary troops Bugfixes and exploit fixes Sands of Time trails - time-trial Skirmish missions with an optional global leaderboard One is expected in both the Autumn and Winter Updates each, in DLC Co-op Skirmish trails - Skirmish missions designed to play with a human or computer brother-in-arms in mind 10-mission trail expected at launch 9-mission Trail expected in the Winter Update for free Custom Skirmish trails Expected in the Winter Update for free Additional Economic and Skirmish campaigns New AI opponents Four teased in the Demo are expected at launch: Nomad, Kahinah, Jewel, Sentinel One is expected in the Autumn Update for free Two are expected in both the Autumn and Winter Updates each, in DLC AIV and Lord Editor Expected in the Winter Update for free Additional maps

Hi All! The Crusader DE Demo is unavailable again with this day and in anticipation of release of the full game, this discussion for it is effectively closed. A new long-term discussion will be opened in place of it in the Town Crier.