Datamining the Alpha Demo

[Asophix 152]

Hello All!

As known, Stronghold 4 got its first preview demo with humble, but almost complete gameplay and content. Powered by Unreal Engine 5, it has been possible to peek into the bundled game contents and uncover fun details, which have been left out, or unimplemented. Without further ado, follow me as the mystery of SH4 unfolds!

Read at your own risk.

Spoiler

 

A Little Technical Intro

An Unreal Engine 5 game has everything bundled as a collection of assets in a hierarchical view, much like your computer's file system. These assets can range from text to multimedia. Most importantly we look for interesting and outlying crumbs of info in two places: asset names, and texts.

Stronghold 4 separates the engine heavy load from everything else related to the game, so searching is pretty straightforward. Our focus is placed on:

• Localisation strings - every bit of text on display is collected in lists, also supporting different languages
• Mobs - an internal name for actors appearing in game, mostly the various units and civilians
• Buildings 
• Images, videos and sound files

Here's an example snippet from the localisation collection and the list of building descriptions:

 

A Summary of Core Elements

Stronghold 4 plays out very similarly to other mainline entries, combining a lot of elements from SH2 and SH3. The first iteration will most likely be playing out through 7 economic and 22 military missions. There will also be the option to play Skirmish, Coop Skirmish and Multiplayer (Skirmish), along with the well known Map Editor and a bundled "Custom Content Manager", possibly to support modifications.

In the demo, we could see the rank system, the popularity system, most of the Barracks troops, Fear Factor, the house upgrade system, and the various castle and town buildings. There will be however additional upcoming ones:

• Specialist units will be available from the Mercenary Post: Hobilar, Saboteur, Viking, Shieldmaiden, Squire.
• The Monastery will be able to train Monks with a healing ability.
• The Siege Camp will be able to produce siege engines.
• The Commons building will hold Events, such as Dances (used for the The Wool > Yarn > Clothes chain); when idle, grazing sheep will provide passive honor.
• Village estates will return along with the Carter's Post.

Existing bits also get some expansions:

• The Mews could be built to spawn Pheasants to be caught by Hunters (Kitchen).
• The Barracks' unused units are the Scout (fast mounted unit), Knight (can mount and dismount and the Captain (gives an attack increase to surrounding troops).
• Additional siege engines will be the Mantlet, Siege Tower, Trebuchet and the War Wolf. The Engineer, Sapper and Ladderman will also return.
• Oil Bastions will store a number of oil pots and pour them in 1 to 3 directions (depending on size).
• Some other buildings are a Seaweed Shed, Embroider's Guild and Silversmith's Guild.

Prominent Story Characters

This one is a sensitive topic, as there are not yet any details to each campaign mission, other than the introduction texts. These correlate mostly with the available in-game lord characters. The following characters will be featured in Skirmish too:

• Penryn of Wethel is the main protagonist of the story, accompanying Sir Longarm.
• Ysella might be the female archer from the Stronghold 4 teaser video.
• The Crow will be a tyrannical female adversary of Penryn.
• The classic antagonist alliance from SH1 will return: the Rat, the Snake, the Pig and the Wolf.

Additional potential campaign characters:

• Protagonists: Zuhayr, Farmer Holt, Baron Theomund, Edina, Earl Dunton
• Antagonists: Vauquelin, The Toad, The Fox, The De Vaine family

Some Trivia Sugar Bits

Finally, some interesting facts:

• The ranks on display actually depend on whether you play as a female, or a male lord. When achieving Rank 3, a male player becomes a Man-at-Arms, while a female player becomes a Shieldmaiden.
• The most generous banquet is the King's Feast, which requires 20 Wine and 15 units of other banquet goods, but providing 500 honor upon completion.
• Levy's lobbed torches are actually able to ignite buildings, which replenish every so often.
• Trebuchets will be able to fire carcasses, beehives and gong.

 

 

[IgnasheunKnight 12]

How fascinating. Thanks for the information.

[Sir Windows 69]

Thank you for the hard work! 👍

Right off the bat, it's pretty good news that the mercenary tent and monks are back. I find the idea of monks being a healer unit quite interesting as well.

Concerning the new mercenaries some of the names are intriguing. I'd assume the Viking is basically the good ol' berserker from SH2, same for the hobilar. No idea what the role of the shield maiden, squire and saboteur will be. Maybe the squire is a faster but weaker swordsmen (like the Arabic swordsman in SHC)? Shield maiden could be that as well, or she's a support unit? Wasn't there a female samurai unit in one the Warlords DLC? 

The custom content manager sounds interesting. It'd be a huge surprise if Firefly provides a lord/castle editor for SH4 right away.

[Asophix 152]

34 minutes ago, Sir Windows said:

Concerning the new mercenaries some of the names are intriguing.

At this moment there are no entity definitions, just the display texts for the mercenaries and many other things, like a Tower Mangonel. Plenty of questions remain to be answered. 

34 minutes ago, Sir Windows said:

Wasn't there a female samurai unit in one the Warlords DLC? 

You must be thinking of the Samurai Lancer, it actually became part of the game as well. It provided a buff to nearby mounted units. That ability is however nowhere to be seen, instead the Captain will be able to boost attack damage, SHL Lancelot-style.

[Alfred The Baker 14]

Oh i see this super late, but i am glad i have remembered to check the forums for. I am actually kinda relieved with some of the things i read, like its interesting how they will handle monks if that is how the release will show.

Btw in Config in documents you can change to a female lord, it doesn't change the model but it does change the ranks.

Ultimately i have very little positive to say about this game. Coming of Warlords which to me was a nice surprise as there were quite a few new things in the series, like collisions, improvements to the AI as well as some nice changes like Estates to Warlords i think that was done well, and yet very little of that is in Stronghold 4, even Towers don't seem to have a unit limit like they did on Warlords.

Like i don't know what Firefly is aiming for here, except that it seems every so eerily similar to Stronghold 3. New Engine, Returning to the 'roots', sort of a soft reset of everything, but Stronghold 3 introduce a lot of changes to which even stuck around for the 2 next games... and now lot of that is also being rolled back to this weird hybrid of, Stronghold 1, 2 and 3.

[Asophix 152]

10 hours ago, Alfred The Baker said:

Like i don't know what Firefly is aiming for here, except that it seems every so eerily similar to Stronghold 3. New Engine, Returning to the 'roots', sort of a soft reset of everything, but Stronghold 3 introduce a lot of changes to which even stuck around for the 2 next games... and now lot of that is also being rolled back to this weird hybrid of, Stronghold 1, 2 and 3.

I see only the exact same thing. It might be something Firefly intends as a culmination of the series, sort of "pinky promise we'll get things right this time". The overall sentiment here on SHN seems to be moderate excitement.

It really looks like Firefly wants to bring in a rich castle builder with a realistic touch that earlier games failed to achieve. Though I haven't shared all there is to the demo, almost everything points to the direction that we'll get a 'SH3 done right mixed with SH2's elements'.

Essentially, Firefly has always operated with a flawed release management lifecycle: brand new game, keep it alive for 1-1.5 years, then leave it to rot. I suppose they keep branching out with a new release every so often, which improves on its predecessor each, but - as we know - 52% is not much of an improvement over 50%. That said, I really enjoyed Warlords too until the point of no engagement, which sadly came fairly quickly.

10 hours ago, Alfred The Baker said:

Towers don't seem to have a unit limit like they did on Warlords.

There is sort of one, as the pathfinding sometimes manages to spread overflowing units along the connecting walls. But it's expected to have bugs like that, such as you can add a tower ballista on top of the existing one in the military mission; also workers can get stuck when you build a tower on top of them, even with a proper path downstairs.

Moddability seems to be limited here, as the game bundle would have to be constantly regenerated and signed, but who knows.

[Sir Windows 69]

A positive development in comparison to SH3 is that the core mechanics seem to work at least. Building walls and towers isn't an exercise in patience. 😅