Nigel

Edit: I see that EaglePrince posted in between the two posts for my battle report on the Saxon Fort, so I am moving the text into the second post. That should be easier to read now. I still need this one for holding the pictures (there can be only up to 5 pictures per post).

A brilliant account of the Pillars of Fate battle, EaglePrince. And congratulations on your and Mathew's victory - and to you on beeing the first one to destroy his bandit camp :) All I can add to your story of that battle are a few victory screenshots. I did not get one for Lord Chris' castle, but here are the one from Tour Castle and Loring Castle :P After Lord Chris, my own castle was the next one to go down. You can see the attack of Mathew's army on my front gate and some of Eagle's troops already among my workshop buildings. And Charles' castle was the last to fall. You can see how heavily his keep was defended.

Hello Frankel; wellcome back :D I guess SH2 has a way for it with the estate system. One could make a map with a small castle estate that has only the essential castle buildings and that is surrounded by village estates that produce the food and weapons that the castle needs to survive. If the village centre is within bow shot of the castle, the castle can truely offer protection to the villages. And yes, with a besieging army you can still raid the villages and try to starve out the defenders. Maybe we can make such a map one day :)

Hey, I was not aware of this Unlocker. Great tool ! Thanks for this, Chris.

We had a great session yesterday. Thanks everyone. Two games were played: - a fixed forces battle with the Saxon Fort map I upload above - a regular SH game with the Pillars of Fate from Charles of Tours. Both games were really good fun. I managed to take some screenshots and will upload them here. The story of these battles shall be told :)

yup - Charles needs to put us on his Friends List :) Well, I am going to open a room with the name "Stronghold Nation Event" Password: SHN

Great ! We will make room, dont you worry :D

The author of this mod, TheBlackGrouse, is still on my Steam friends list. If you like, I can try to contact him about it.

Nice ! I look forward to playing with you guys tomorrow :)

Mathew, I just saw this and since you asked I thought I put down a few thoughts that just spontaneously come to my mind. First of alll, let me say sorry for your loss. I had been aware that there was some serious incident in your life in the past, but never actually realized that a close friend of your's had died. Perhaps you said it and I was just not sensitive enough to pick it up at the time. Then, from what you describe, I do not think you are in the wrong. I can see how it angers you, if someone expresses "strong emotions" and you know that he did not really know or care for your friend in his lifetime. Quite possibly those people are just doing what they think is expected of them to do and they do it more for themselves than anything else. And you are quite right to criticize that (in the mature and level-headed manner that we have come to know of you). Still, there is a chance that you are doing wrong on someone. Who are we to look into peoples heads or hearts? Someone may have been close to your friend without you (or anyone) noticing. He (or she) may have been hurt by what you have said. I think it is unlikely, but it is not impossible. But even if that has been the case, there is nothing you could have done to help it. Sometimes we just step on other people's toes without knowing and without beeing able to avoid it. These things just happen. In the end, I think you did the right thing (again) to step out of an argument that is going round in circles. I usually do it pretty quickly, when I realize that the thing is not going anywhere. Our lives are just to short to spend time arguing for arguing's sake. And in the end, everyone will be happy that a fruitless discussion is over and we are getting on with our lives. And the wounds that were made will heal. Not sure if these thoughts are helpful (and sorry if I sounded like preaching). Just a few things that spontaneously came to my mind when I read you post.

And I actually managed to set up the 2v2v1 scenario I had in mind, before going off into the weekend :) It is based on my map Saxon Fort, that I submitted for the 52 Weeks of Stronghold contest. But now it is a multiplayer scenario with fixed forces and the story is slightly different: After the battle of Hastings was decided in favour of the Normans, their task is now to conquer the rest of the country. There are great opportunites for the Norman lords to win land and titels for themselves. One Saxon fort remains to be taken in the East and two rivaling Norman families set their armies in motion. Only one side can capture, hold and claim this land for their reward. Their armies arrive at the same time and now they face each other with the fort between them. The fort itself is poorly manned and no match for either one of the Norman armies. But now they face a different choice. Will they attack the fort first, suffer some losses but hope that the walls of the fort will compensate for that when their rival attacks? Or will they attack their rival first, hoping that after they win they still have enough troops left to take the fort from the Saxon lord? The map has 4 Norman armies, two on each side for the 2v2 part. All of them are identical and about 100 men strong. But the map can also be played as a 3 player game with only 1 Norman army on each side. There are only about 30 Saxons defending the fort. Their role is just to tip the scales in the battle between the Normans and their only chance to survive is, if the Normans do indeed decide to attack each other first. It is a short scenario and even with 5 players it should take only about 15 - 30 minutes. If you like, we can play it as an appetizer on Tuesday and then go on to the bigger map that Charles has made. Saxon Fort FF.zip

Tokamaps, great to see you :D Hope you are enjoying your holidays. And may your surgery go smoothly when you get back. For this event, let's stick with Tuesday, since most people have already confirmed (and also I may be home late on Wednesday). But that does not mean that we can't get together for another event in the next 3 weeks. :) Same for you, Mathew. If you can join on Wednesday - great. If not, we will make sure you get into the next one.

19:00 CET (18:00 UK time) will work for me. But it is also the earliest I could do - apologies in advance if I rund a few minutes late. Ok, lets see. We have confirmed : EaglePrince Charles of Tours Lord Chris Nigel Mathew, how about you? Would you also like to join next Tuesday? If we are 4 players, we can play a 2v2 or an FFA. If we are 5 players, we can play an FFA, or ..... I had an idea today for a 2v2v1 fixed-forces scenario :) I am not sure if I will be able to set that up in a map until Tuesday, but I will try. In any case, EaglePrince is right when he says that a field battle will not take all that long. 30 minutes seems a good guess and with that we could play a field battle for starters and then play a full Stronghold game on the new map from Charles.

Thanks for this feedback, guys. Interesting to know. In that case, how do they earn their money? Do they get a share on sales of the games that use their engine? Also, good point about learning the use the engine. There probably was a lot of staff change-over at FireFly between SH2 and SH3. So perhaps the knowledge of using that engine just got lost. On the other hand, as far as I remember SHL has AI Lords in MP battles. I would think it would not be too difficult for a programmer to just look at the code for that and transfer it to SH2. But what do I know? Maybe it is.

I look forward to it. As for playing it: would next Tuesday (18th July) evening work for you guys ?

Nice Quiz - I enjoyed that one (and with 4/6 I actually did better than I thought I would) :D

I have been wondering: does anyone know how the gaming industry works with regards to engines? My assumption is, that one company makes a game engine and another company (like FireFly) goes and licences it in for developing their game, i.e. FireFly is paying money to the enginge developer to use their engine. I also assume that such a licence is limited to certain games or a certain time. Hence FF got a licence of the SH2 engine for SH2 and SHL and later they purchased a different licence (from a different developer) for SH3 and SC2. And when they saw that the SH3 engine did not work for them too well, they no longer had access to the SH2 engine to make Crusader 2 on the SH2 engine, but were stuck with the SH3 engine (and could only try to make the best of it). That would also explain why we are not seing any actual game improvements for SH2 (like AI lords in MP). They would have to re-gain access to that engine and probably pay a lot of money to the engine developer, even to be able to change a single hard-coded feature. Again, these are only my thoughts and speculations. If anyone knows more about how this industry works, I am all ears.

Whow, a lot of interest in a new event - great :) Your map looks nice, Charles. Although, I can say that I definitely belong to the "eye candy" crowd and not the "strict balance" crowd. But your map can indeed appeal to both, especially if Mathew can texture it and un-square it a bit. :P Regarding playing time, my usual restriction applies to me: I am a workday evening gamer and weekends are offline (apart from the occasional forum post). And this week my weekend starts on Thursday. That said, if you do want to do something on the Thurdsday or the weekend, please go ahead. There will me more events for me to join. Other than that, in the week commencing the 17th, Mo, Tue or Thur evening would be good for me.

Hi guys, I thought I just move this here into the Gaming Events section. Also, I realize that Charles of Tours is perhaps already working on a map. Well, I don't want to steal his thunder, but there is no reason not to have it both. :) We have had the idea of a field battle, some while ago and I thought I would bring it up agian. If we can get 4 people together, I could set up a map for a 2v2 in a fixed-forces scenario. What do you guys think? EDIT: Confrimed for tomorrow at 19:00 CET EaglePrince Charles of Tours Lord Chris Nigel Mathew Steel

In any case: good to see they are still supporting their older games. :)

In an unobserved moment Sir Loring leaned over to Duke Christopher and whispered: "Well, at least we tried. Whether our little charade has been helpful or just made things worse, only time will tell". edited for typos

At the same time in the dungeons Sir Loring felt his blood pressure rising. One hour until they will move Duke Christopher to a new, unknown location. Was there nothing he could do about it? This time conicidence came to his aid. Only a few minutes after the two guards had left, the warden, who was responsible for bringing his food, entered his cell with a dish and a heavy mug of ale in his hands. "Only half a mug of beer you wanted, right? Well, it shall be as you wish." With a slightly insulting grin the warden handed him the mug - it was barely a quarter full. But the smell of the man's breath and his unsteady walk told Sir Loirng where the other two thirds of the ale had gone. When the warden turned his back to leave the cell, Charles Loring did not hesitate to act. He brought the heavy mug down on the back of his head and the man fell like a tree. Quickly Charles grabbed his keys and made off into the darknes of the corridor. He was barely able to see further than his outstretched hand, but he whistled a well known melody and sure enough, as he passed one of the cells, his tune was answered. Great was the joy as he and Duke Christopher finally shook hands. "Mylord, we have no time to waste. They come for you in about 30 minutes to take you away to yet another place. There is no way out of this dungeon, but quickly give me your royal cloak and take my huntsman's tunic instead. It is dark night and for sure it will be many hours before they notice the exchange - and with some luck they will not noice it for days, for the simple guards will not know your face and as for my face, I doubt that even the officers who arrested me will remember it." "Head back to my cell at the end of the corridor. You cannot miss it, there is a drunken guard lying right in front of it. When he comes to, tell him how his foot slipped on the stone and his head hit the wall. He will be greatful to believe this, for the true story would make him look really bad in the eyes of his superiors." A few minutes later, Charles Loring heared the locks of his old prison cell snap back into place. With a sigh of relieve he curled up in the darkest corner of his new cell and waited for the things to come.

Congratulations Mathew ! To be honest, I don't know what the duties of a Community Liason involve, but a promotion is certainly well deserved. The new coat suits you :)

[OOC] I, too, have the feeling we are slightly out of sync. Before Chris's post Goodman and Gerault and their soldiers were fighting. Then Chris continued the story with "...It didn't take long until the men setup a camp ..." and I had the impression that the fighting was over. I guess we can assume that Goodman and Gerault are in the camp near Barnemouth now with the main part of the army and the Prince has just finished the last hours of fighing and beat back the remainders of Duke Renault's troops. Does that make sense?

Not actually a teacher by profession these days, but I have always enjoyed teaching undergradulate students at university and supervising student's projeccts. I moved away from the university since, but I have always felt that the teaching vocation has never quite left me. I guess, when you work with a team of young people, you are always in some way also a teacher. And yes, I do remember the good teachers I had :) That is a nice definition of "an actual castle". It has always stuck me as unnatural that in Stronghold you put everything behind your castle wall. In reality a castle would sit next to (or above) a village and it's fields and only in times of danger would all the peasants come inside and seek refuge within the walls.