Stronghold 2 Ideas and Suggestions

[HorusXCV 0]

Hello everyone!

I'm new to the nation and it's nice to be here

Everytime I look at SH2 I just see a wasted potential and a shadow of something that could've been great

I would like to revisit the game and hear some ideas and discuss with modders whether we can achieve something together and fix the game or not

some of things I hate about the game are:

- The game is too focused on castle building

- The game neglects skirmishes and combat

- There's almost no variety of troops for the lords they all make the same troops

- Rats, gong, crime, honor and lord's kitchen are a waste of time and resources and disrupt skirmishes without accomplishing anything in return

- low scale armies

- simple ai castles

Let's all discuss these issues and I would like to know your opinions too

let's see if we can bring this game back to life

[EaglePrince 261]

I think the conclusion is that you simply don't like this game. I mean, not all Stronghold games are supposed to be the game, even Stronghold 1 and Stronghold Crusader are very much different games.

Though I agree with you for when it comes to fighting. AI lords should have been made more carefully. They have fewer castles then in Crusader, and they put too few troops to guard it. It's not that knights are invisible, crossbowmen can cripple even knights of Stronghold 2. And in general, Stronghold 2 AI lords could have been made both smarter and with better castles. I mean, come on, William has a tower with a door towards outside of the castle.

Other than these things, I do think Stronghold 2 is good. I get that rats, crime and gong are boring to most of people, but it is actually the one Stronghold game in which they took the most care into displaying castle life. And you just need to put these things in place (falconers, gong pits, etc.), and you're fine. You do need to count that it will drop your popularity from time to time, but I just regulate it by not putting the tax rate to the maximum, but something slightly below.

By the way, there are unofficial Stronghold 2 AI castles that can replace the official one (but don't forget to backup the original ones!), and with them, the AI lords do play more efficiently. Not great, but much better!

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[SteelyProv 2]

On 26/04/2023 at 13:43, HorusXCV said:

Everytime I look at SH2 I just see a wasted potential and a shadow of something that could've been great

 

I agree this far but I have to disagree with everything else. This game is a shadow of what it could have been because the micromanagement wasn't even really finished. The Lord was supposed to visit court and the the jousting tournaments. Recently I think I read somewhere that the Bailiff was supposed to actually go round and collect the money from the estates. These are all things that I wish we could get into the game, along with anything else that is known to be broken or missing. SH2 is my favourite of the whole series for its micromanagement despite whats missing. The interiors for the keep and towers alone make this a superior game to all the others and I'm not a fan of the games where a wall can be broken down with melee soldiers.

The perfect SH game for me is basically everything from Legends with the micro stuff from SH2, but it looks like SH3

[Lord_Chris 284]

I think what we need to remember is that Stornghold 2 was released in 2005... so naturally the AI will be less advanced than what it is now, with less options and less configuration abilities. However, it should be noted that the following year or so later this problem was signficantly improved in Legends. I used to play Legends for hours on end, although the AI Opponents were much more limited, I never really encountered the same boredom I did in SH2. Legends also has much more depth in terms of overall Missions as well so perhaps this is more your style @ HorusXCV .

I understand that it is frustrating in SH2 for the Opponents to always create the exact same troops, it seems to be poorly randomised or at the least not random at all. If I remember correctly @ SteelyProv , there was also some information in the manual that wasn't correct either along similar lines, or at least never implemented. Perhaps something to do with Jousting, I think offhand?

One real joy for me in SH2 was when we used to play multiplayer games as we all had different styles and often adapted them, particularly to the map types. So Multiplayer is a very different experience to playing against the AI.

I know @ Lord Vetka really liked the SH2 map editor and that's what made the game for him.... different people have different styles, likes, dislikes.... I suppose if you feel like there are areas or portions of the game you don't like, you could always try modifications to try and make them more interesting?

And of course, you could always try creating your own Military campaign to replace the original one as well if you wanted, then upload it here so we can all check it out!

Edited November 4, 2023 by Lord_Chris