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Latest News
Crusader Definitive Edition Update - Custom Lords
Posted on 18th Feb 2026
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. An article will be added and linked here with a short summary soon.
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! 🙂
Crusader: Definitive Edition - Winter Update Is Out!
Posted on 3rd Feb 2026
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! 🙂