Lord_Chris

Yes, the Google bot can find and index any content, it even indexes content which you sometimes don't want it to. But the Bing bot is worse for that. Not really a surprise.

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"They took the duke to the castle. He is a prisoner in his own dungeons now. The bandits have abandoned their camps and fortified the place ..." The knight looked down at his wound in dismay as some blood slipped between his fingers. "What happened?" Goodman asked, feeling sympathy for the man. "I overheard their leader ... Keep your wits about you. They are faster than before, in more force and ... and ... they ... are ... coming ...." replied the bodyguard, before collapsing to the ground. Seconds later, several shadows were moving behind trees, in all directions out of the clearing. The sound of a cart with horses was heard not too far away, then a scream which was quickly stifled. OoC: Edited for plot reasons ... - @Charles of Tours ;)

You can still get it from the link above in the first post. But we've built up quote a good reputation by serving good downloads and being reliable, I don't want people thinking we server Trojans from us, and we might even get blacklisted by Google through it if the Google Bot downloads it. But lets take this as it is: It only works on version 1.3.1, which has long been instable now. The mountain of bugs which have bee fixed in 1.4, and 1.4.1 means that even if it was possible to play online through 1.3.1, there would be many bugs (including the one where you couldn't mount a horse while the knight is moving) that would still be there. And there is also the case of it being reported as a virus. Since it doesn't even work in the first place on 1.4 and above, I don't want to scare new members away from here by them thinking we give them Trojans. If it worked, then I may reconsider the decision. Sorry, but I feel this is in the best interest of the site to reject this.

Since this does not seem to work with 1.4.1, and even the virus scanner in the control panel is detecting this as a virus, I'm going to remove this download. I think it's the best decision, who knows - we may even be able to make a better one ourselves at some point if we can find out what it's doing. Beat you to it ;) http://www.stronghold-nation.com/article/78-game-ranks#freeman But we do really appreciate articles still! If you're willing to make one, we're willing to add it. :)

One of my friends who knows more about hardware than me says that you won't notice a difference; the ATA bus doesn't support speeds high enough to notice a difference between the SSD and hard drive. Besides that though, what are you running? Is this an old machine?

First off, I'm not sure why you can't add a poll, I'm not sure what's up there. I'll have to take a look, but unfortunately, I don't have time right now. I have iOS, personally, with the state Microsoft is in as a company, the fact that they can spy on you with Windows 10 (and then, pushed updates to Windows 7 and 8 meaning they can do it there too!) means that I would never buy a Windows phone. To be honest, I don't think they are very good anyway, (one of my friends has one; they scratch easily, constantly freeze-crash, and I've heard him say that it even blue screened on him once in classic Windows style), But even if I wanted one, I wouldn't get it after Microsoft's massive invasion or privacy. In fact, it's been so bad, I've had to completely disable the update feature on my machine to prevent the updates from re-installing. And to prevent them from releasing some other update that will spy on me. Anyway, back to the subject. I've tried Android before, and while it's ok, there just seems to be something missing, it's not quite right. For me, iOS has a much better interface, it's cleaner, and for once, since the source is not open-source, it will mean it's more secure.

Oops. Deleted the other and didn't read the text. I can't restore it either, it's permanently been deleted I've checked. Sorry. Was it a long message?

I have also noticed this, I just thought it was my terrible connection being slow once again, but clearly there is a more underlying problem, at least for the moment.

You'll have to use a specific download link to get the installer, otherwise it will not work regardless. Or, use the installer you already downloaded.

I don't know how this was setup, or how you really activated this. but perhaps you can just log in with your school email (supposing you have one?) and try again? Normally Microsoft give you about four copies in case this exact things happens. You will of course need the installer though. Also, was it Office 365, or the standard office? ** Moved to computer support. If it becomes increasingly off-topic or less computer related, it will be moved back **

[colour=#6EA4BF]Venus - our sister planet[/colour] Venus is described as Earth's sister planet, because for a long time people thought they were similar, and are similar in size. It wasn't until 1962 that people found out the truth .... When the Romans looked up at Venus, they named the planet after their goddess of Love. But if they knew what we know now, they would probably have called it after the god of underworld. With toxic air, intense heat, volcanic eruptions and atmospheric pressure 93 times heavier than Earth's, this planet is certainly not the planet of beauty. Venus Venus has been hit by some massive asteroids and meteors in the past. Scientists believe that it's been hit by one so big, it has actually reversed the rotation of the planet. Venus is the only planet which rotates in a retrograde rotation (backwards), and it also has a very slow rotation - in fact, a Venusian day, which lasts 243 Earth days, is longer than a Venusian year, which lasts for 225 days on Earth. So not only does the sun rise in the west and set in the east, but a day lasts considerably longer than a year! Even though Venus is the second planet to the Sun, it is considerably hotter, at an average temperature of 900 degrees Fahrenheit (approx. 482 degrees Celsius). This is due to the greenhouse effect, the very process which keeps life alive on Earth (without which, the Earth would be roughly 40 degrees cooler). Some scientists have called this the "runaway" greenhouse effect, and stipulate that this could be what Earth becomes, if global warming is not taken care of, as we are already heading in that direction. Venus really could become hell on earth, literally. On Venus, 96% of the atmosphere is carbon dioxide, which traps the heat inside, keeping the planet roasting. The planet also has a lot of sulphur dioxide in the atmosphere from the constantly erupting volcanoes. Sulphur dioxide alone can cause circulatory collapse and severe breathing difficulties. But in addition, lightening is constantly going off, which is not only more powerful, but also never reaches the ground, due to the atmospheric pressure. Instead, it simply jumps from cloud to cloud. Interesting fact: On Venus, it snows metal, and rains sulphuric acid. There are no plants to convert the Carbon dioxide to oxygen, and even if plants existed, they would probably last a few seconds at the most, due to the pressure of the atmosphere, and also the heat. Similarly if a person could survive the heat, they would also probably be crushed by the pressure. Potentially anyway, a human would last maybe 1 second before being burned up. Venus is littered with hundreds of monstrous volcanoes, such as Maat Mons (see below), which is 35,000 feet high (much higher than Mount Everest). The constant eruptions only worsen the state of the atmosphere. Scientists speculate there could be any amount of volcanoes between a thousand to a million. Another major difference between Venus to other planets is that it is not covered in a lot of craters; instead, most of the surface is littered with cooled, and cooling, lava flows.

Welcome @Martarse! Thank you, we certainly will! ;)

Source: http://www.strongholdcrusader2.com/?p=1992 That really was a nice reference. Completely unexpected too!

Yes, your files, and contributions really are very good, you (and Crusader) keep this place alive! Keep up the great work! :D

I'd like to take this opportunity to point out some of the things I've changed in the downloads section. First though, all the download section maintenance has been completed, and all pages are fully functional once more. I've changed the ratings system so that you don't need to comment to rate anymore. I'm hoping this will encourage more people to rate more files, and I feel that the old system prevented people from doing so properly. Instead of having to write, now head toward the stars at the top of the page. Hover over them, and then select your rating. You will be alerted if there are any issues, otherwise the colour of the stars will be slightly brighter. Once that happens, you can no longer hover over until you refresh the page. Note that once you've rated a file, this cannot be changed, even after refreshing the page. You only have one rating per file, which has one use. Next, I've added a new category to Stronghold 2: In light of siege maps being able to be created, and my tutorial (see http://www.stronghold-nation.com/article/205-how-to-make-proper-siege-maps) I've added a siege category. I don't expect we'll get a massive mount of them but siege maps don't really fit into custom war, peace custom, kingmaker, free build, or saved games. And to alienate them into miscellaneous just doesn't seem right. I've also removed the report feature on downloads. This was pretty redundant seen as files need manually checking both after updating the archive, and after first upload. If anyone has problems with a file, or needs to report anything, you can send a PM to an administrator, or just report a comment (if one exists) and say in your message it's for the file. In light of this fact, I've moved the subscription link into the nav-bar, which is where I would have preferred it if I'd been able to originally. I'd also like to request that on uploading images inside your .zip, you compress it using TinyPNG, which also works with JPEGs. Preview images, and gallery images do not need this, because the site automatically runs them through the compression tool on upload, but images inside archives do because the site does not open them, this is done manually. The difference can be a entire Megabyte of file space saved, as seen in @Tokamaps' file The rescue of the king, the images in total take up a whopping 10 megabytes of server space, whereas the maps take up a total of 700 Kilobytes, the difference is staggering. I will be compressing these images later today and re-uploading the new archive, so the size may have changed when you read this. I'm not saying don't include images, all I'm saying is, try not to make them an excessive size. The only exception to this rule is the BMP type of image. I for one, will be removing any BMP images I find in archives because they are just too big, not very nice for users to download with bandwidth limits .etc, and take a while to load due to their size. Personally, I recommend using PNG or JPEG images wherever possible, not only for the best quality, but also the best experience for all users. And as always, any issues let me know and I'll sort them out ASAP. Finally, it's time for a promotion! Unrelated to the downloads maintenance, @Mathew Steel is one of the hardest working users here, and has been faithful since he first came in early 2014. I therefore feel that we can't not take notice of this, and I've decided to promote him to a contributor!

Thanks Crusader! I try to add pictures that immediately hook people, looks like I'm on the right track! :D

[colour=#6EA4BF]The formation of The Moon[/colour] It's been a beacon for travellers, a guide for keeping time, and in some cultures, it's even been a god. It's the only celestial body ever visited by man, and NASA is talking of a permanent outpost there. But just how did the moon form? The formation of The Moon There have been four theories on how the moon formed. All but one, have significant weaknesses. The Capture theory This states the Earth simply captured The Moon through it's own gravity. This theory would show why the moon and the earth have different iron compositions, if they formed in two different places in the solar system, however, it does not explain why the moon is moving away from us each year - or how the Earth's gravity managed to capture something that big in the first place, since the moon is roughly a quarter the size of the earth. And if the earth did capture the moon, it would be moving closer to it, not further away. The Accretion theory This theory states the earth and the moon were formed as a double system. But there are a lot of problems with this theory, such as the angular momentum of both planets. Fission Theory This theory was proposed by George Darwin, the son of Charles Darwin and in part received some attention because of his father. However, he very soon moved out of his father's shadow. George Darwin discovered through mathematical calculations that the moon is moving gradually further away from the earth each year, and managed to work it backwards, to get to the stage where the moon was moving around the earth 5-6 times a day, however, unfortunately he couldn't get any further, the maths just wouldn't let him do it. It wasn't actually proved the moon is moving further away fro the earth until Astronauts landed on the moon and set up mirrors on the surface of the moon, approximately 86 years later. You can shine a light on the moon, this will bounce back, and you can monitor the distance. The distance the moon is moving away from the earth is 3.8 centimetres per year. The fission theory states that the earth just ejected part of it's mass which then started orbiting around the earth, becoming the moon. The giant impact theory This theory is the most up-to-date and accurate theory as to how the moon formed. According to tests done, another planet about the size of the current planet Mars could have formed near the Earth at the start of the solar system. This theory stipulates that the planet came too close to Earth, and smashed into it. The debris then was thought to coalesce into the moon without a year. The planet in this theory which crashed into Earth has been called "Theia". It accounts for the small metallic core of the Moon, as well as the fact that the moon has a much lower iron content than the Earth, which was proven when Astronauts brought back moon rocks after the Apollo missions. There are a few small discrepancies still to be corrected, but by large, it works. The Earth was probably molten at this time anyway, but we believe that this is what started the Earth spinning, which is what gave us day and night.

[colour=#6EA4BF]The formation of the Earth, and life[/colour] We see Earth as a pretty important planet, but as a matter of fact our solar system is just a home for our sun with a few bits and pieces left over. The formation of earth began as all of the other planets did; forming from rocks which were left over after the sun was created 4.5 billion years ago. These were then held together through gravity, and over time began to orbit the sun. The Earth was almost entirely molten, and it was collisions with other asteroids, meteors and space objects that made the planet bigger. One very large collision was thought to make the earth start spinning on its axis, responsible for day and night. Another was thought to have made the moon (more below) and it was over time that the planet cooled, the Volcanoes stopped erupting, and eventually liquid water was formed. But just how did water end up on Earth after it was molten for so long? No one really knows. One of the most common theories is that comets, which are made up of frozen Ice, smashed into the Earth. However, there are a few weaknesses with this theory. One being, that comets are only really found in the outer solar system, so for the most part, they would be too far away to impact the Earth. Another significant weakness is that the water here in earth contains a mixture of H2O (Hydrogen water) and HDO (Heavy density water). In 1986, a space probe had a close encounter with the comet Halley (Halley's comet) and discovered that the composition was in similar quantities to that on Earth. However, most of the other comets which have so far been analysed have twice as much HDO as on Earth. But comets are so far away from the sun, that we do not know if in fact this was representative of all comets. One other theory about how water formed was due to the Steam the volcanoes were giving out. But because this is part of the water cycle, and some kind of water source must exist, there is a flaw in this theory too. The origin of life The earliest life forms were only in the oceans on the planet, and were very basic bacteria, and some of these are called "extremophiles". These have the ability to survive in the most extreme conditions, such as at the bottom of the Antarctic now, which receives 0.1% of sunlight - or possibly 3.8 billion years ago. Some believe these also exist of Jupiter's moon "Europa". But there are also questions as to how exactly this formed in the first place. We believe it was from a comet with water, but there is no firm evidence. Eventually, over a long time, animals became increasingly complex, and divided into two groups; one that used the air, and the other which chose the stay hidden and use the water, and we evolved to better use the planet.

More and more users lately have been getting this error, especially on Windows 8/8.1. Rest assured however, that I feel I have finally found some kind of proper fix for this error. It only appears to occur on disk versions of the game. There are two potential methods I am posting, the first is less drastic, and I recommend you start from here- though there is less chance of it working. The second, is the way in which I have fixed this error (at least for now) for myself. The cause of this problem is somewhat unknown; for me, the first time it appeared to be caused by a crash, however, the second time this happened to me, I turned my PC on, attempted to start the game and got this error. Note: This error only seems to occur on Stronghold 2 1.4.1. If you're using an earlier version of the game, this should not affect you, you can verify this by reinstalling the game back down to 1.3.1, and it should work. It will also work if you patch up to 1.4. Only if you install the 1.4.1 patch will the game react. Another suggested cause I've heard is that Windows 8 does not like Direct X 9 at all, which is required to play Stronghold 2. And what worsens this problem is when Direct X 11 is installed. I've also heard that once the game crashes a certain amount of times, Windows 8 will mark it incompatible. Method 1 Note: I'm using a 64 bit system, therefore I have an sysWOW64 folder in C:\Windows. If you are using a 32-bit version of Windows, I'm sorry to say I do not know how this will work. You could attempt to Google this, or move onto method 2. In your sysWOW64 folder, find the file called d3dx9_27.dll Copy and paste this somewhere else, such as on your desktop Delete the original in sysWOW64 Attempt to run the game, which will give you message it can't be ran because the DLL you moved is missing. Now, copy the moved DLL back to the original location, and run the game This may, or may not work. It probably won't. If/when it doesn't, try a few times. If it doesn't work after two or three attempts, you'll have to use method 2. Method 2 This is the method that works for me. Unfortunately, it's not as clear into what causes it to work. I'm guessing there is some kind of cache that Windows keeps of incompatible programs, when you reset this, it appears to reset the cache and allow the game to run. Each step is assumed that the previous does not work. Reinstall Stronghold 2. Check the game works on 1.3.1 (the version you installed) Patch up to 1.4, and check the game works again Patch up to 1.4.1, you will almost certainly get the same error Perform the exact same steps above again, without checking if the game works Restart your computer, and check if 1.4.1 will run Download CCleaner Check every box except the "wipe free space", and run Run the registry cleaner Uninstall Stronghold 2 Run both cleaners again Now reinstall Stronghold 2, and patch up Restart your computer Run CCleaner, and then attempt to run Stronghold 2 afterwards only That should work. If it doesn't I can only suggest you attempt to do the same steps waiting a few days between reinstalling, I waited and it eventually worked again. You can also reply to this topic and I'll see what I can do to help you.

Editing downloads should now work again. Let me know if you have any further problems.

I used to play a game called Imperial Glory (I know, yet another story :D ) and there you used to have open fields with different terrain. So for example, you'd have hills and highlands in Scotland, in England you'd have a castle (below), and in Russia for example, you'd have snow and mountains. Each player would start at the opposite end of the field, and there would be a few defensive buildings at one end (or maybe even the middle) of a field. The players would then attack each other through open fields, and either attempt to take buildings, or high points .etc, any way to wipe out their opponent. I see a "field battle" as this, where basically two players fight to the death with set troops. The only problem I can see, is that there is no use of artillery .etc, so there aren't any long ranged units, only mid to long ranged. Is this the kind of thing you have in mind? I think this would be a really good idea. I would say that the player with two armies would be the best option, we're all used to fighting on walls .etc, but without them, perhaps it might be more of a challenge - and maybe make some more interesting results too. The general goal would be to annihilate all enemy forces, or kill the lord. But I'm assuming you'd have to kill all the enemy forces to get to the lord anyway. Someone may even go as far as to re-create entire battle armies (as close as the game will allow) for real battles, Crusader might be able to help us there.

I guess you forgot about this then, @Nigel ;) Actually, I only just remembered myself.

I admit it's not exactly clear, the deluxe version of the game has 1.3.1 update in by default, along with all the new features only in the deluxe version. When you said patching up, I assumed you had an earlier version on your disk that would have likely caused problems, which is why I wanted to double check. If you did have an earlier version, then you wouldn't have had the deluxe. It's essentially another name - just like Stronghold 3 gold which has all the updates in prior.

The 1.3 Deluxe is 1.3.1. :)