Lord_Chris

Next time there is a new file, try going to the corresponding link for that file's category here: Stronghold 1 Stronghold Crusader Stronghold Legends CivCity Rome Stronghold 2 Stronghold 3 Stronghold Crusader 2 Let me know what you get.

August 29 2014: Stronghold 2 Multiplayer

Will you be joining today @EaglePrince?

@@Lord Vetka: I've fixed the issue with the version 1.4.1 from yesterday (hopefully). I did another clean install, patched up & it worked. I was about to try this, but luckily I haven't had to - yet! That just proves my game may be on its way out though. :( @@bradley0095: I've added you into the first post just in case you can join :)

You're welcome, glad it helped. Once you use that method, or a similar one that works well for you, you'll do really well - I was exactly the same when I first started on multiplayer, I expect even Bradley was and he's certainly a power player.

Then 10 AM it is Lord Vetka's time, 6 PM mine and 7 PM yours! It would possibly lose the connection and result in one of those "waiting for other players..." never ending messages. But that doesn't matter.

The single most important thing I have learned in multiplayer is to get your settlement built up as quickly and efficiently as possible. Now that sounds very brief, and you may ask yourself what that may entail - so, I'm going to explain all the tricks I'm aware of, strategies and any other means of help. You'll know having played stronghold 2 for years that the closer that a building is to the place the worker needs to go to, the quicker, greater in number and more efficiently the worker creates resource X. This is very much so in multiplayer, and much more important. For example, I'll use the armoury and industry buildings: the armoury needs to be a stones throw away from these buildings - and if possible, line all of your buildings up in straight lines and categorize them. I.E. The armourer's workshop should go the nearest, as armour takes the longest amount of time (for any weapon I believe) to be created, and you need to mass produce them. From now on - think this: Your #1 priority is weapon production. You only need a fairly stable economy to start you off with, it doesn't have to be great. Once you have three to four apple farms placed, two or three hunter's posts, maybe one or two dairy farms at the most, your food production will do until your population reaches about sixty. When starting off, you should place all saw pits apart from one apple farm. Then place your treasury, a market - sell all your food and buy five of each type, putting your rations on double & your tax rate on high. You'll find you get a promotion within seconds, and extra gold. When you next get your supply of wood (or you promote yourself, whichever comes first) reduce your taxes to normal, your rations to normal and place several hovels, more saw pits and alternate ways to collect food - this is the part I always forget - reducing the ration level. Not reducing the ration level here will cause you to become unpopular and will take a while to build your food back up. Don't waste wood on placing walls unless you are fighting dishonourable people who would attack you early in the game. You should place a stone quarry after your first promotion, a lord's kitchen and between five to ten pig farms and a gong pit (for obvious reasons) Place several more saw pits until you are never short on wood, and you should shortly get promoted. Once that happens, more mass production is needed. Place a similar amount of vegetable gardens to that of your pig farms and more farms to produce food. More saw pits, and a couple of iron mines with ox tether. Now the iron will come in providing a very big source of income. Build the maximum amount of iron mines that you can, and ox tether to make sure that more are likely to be idle than transferring goods to the stockpile - it needs to be a constant cycle - they should either be always on the move or idle waiting for iron. After the next promotion, place several sheep farms, weaver's workshops & other buildings available for the lord's kitchen. The quickest way to earn a lot of honour: cloth. The page boys give the cloth generated by the weaver to the lady in the bedchamber, and she will turn it into dresses. When four dresses are made, a dance will be held in the keep which will provide 200 honour - from such a simple task! Start mass producing your industry by placing multiple fletcher's workshops, and a jousting filed when you can afford one - this will provide a steady supply of honour, as well as a boost to your popularity, meaning you can increase the tax rate to provide yet more gold. If you want a steady supply of gold, build several chandler's workshops and bee hives and sell all the candles you make. I always do this, but never ever use a church unless the number of my candles are so high it's ridiculous and I can afford to sell them with loads left over. Crime: Place a humiliation mask and other very slow methods of rehabilitation to increase the amount of honour you get. There are two reasons for this: 1.) You get more honour 2.) You get two workers that would otherwise be used in the torturer's guild to rehabilitate/execute the prisoners. But the price of slow rehabilitation comes at the following: more prisoners will stack up in the queue to be rehabilitated, meaning more are in the dungeon, eventually meaning that your popularity will decrease. To avoid this, place six or seven methods - mostly the same. Now mass produce more industry buildings and start to slowly build your castle up with the stone in your stockpile. Note that I said stockpile, not stockpiles. Only ever place one stockpile and sell any excess goods. When you can, place a traveling fair and mass produce more weapons. Use Estates - they are extremely useful - even though the population limit is slightly higher than the usual, it's still nor brilliant. So you need to rely on estates to produce a lot of the goods for you. For each estate you purchase, make sure that you assign it one area of mass production. For example, I assign weapon production of bows to estate X and this estate only produces bows. Estate Y produces armour and armour alone - or iron - or wood - or something completely different. Estates provide honour, gold, and a resource of your choice. They are very useful things to have online indeed. Statues generate honour every month in the game, so naturally you get a lot for them. This is basically how to start off - it's up to you how you continue, but this method is what I use and you *should* be able to get an ecomony built up fairly quickly using it. Hope I at least get a rep point for all this ;)

I'll put you there just in case EaglePrince - either day will be great if you can make it, hopefully you'll be able to. The time that's best for me is 10 AM your time, which is 6 PM my time, though 5 PM makes little difference - but that's 7 PM EaglePrince's time, if I'm correct - so would you rather play one hour earlier EaglePrince, of 6 PM your time?

The release date of stronghold crusader 2 has been delayed by three weeks due to feedback from the closed beta and to add other features to the game.

We would have to move all files into another category to edit the category name, then change them all back to the Europe category. I'm currently attempting to add an easier way in, but it's not at the top of the priority list yet I'm afraid so currently, it would take too long.

That is one thing I never do. If I ever get any armed peasants, it's to go in front of enemies to make sure my troops don't get injured as much - basically sending them to get killed. Fletchers are my main source of weapons in the early days, I really mass produce them. With militia it would take a maximum army size to defeat a swordsman I would think - they really are useless, in no matter what number! Though I never leave my castle undefended, I do greatly decrease the number of troops guarding it when I attack - I'm not sure why I'm telling you this - you'll probably use it against me ;)

Yes - my mistake, I'm not good with numbers or anything maths related :) Good job you and EaglePrince are here to keep me right! The one I told you about selling apples and buying 5 of each food at the start is very helpful, Bradley's the best at multiplayer strategies, he knows more than me. Which day would you be available for?

August 25, 26 2014: Stronghold 2 Multiplayer

You're welcome :) It's only recently been added in - the reason it's called "saved games" and not "walkthroughs" like in Stronghold Heaven is because Lord Vetka and I decided it would be a good idea to allow people to upload general saves, not necessarily mission related that could help to give other people ideas as to how they build their castles and is interesting to see how other users play the games.

That's very kind of you indeed! Maybe you'd consider uploading it to our saved games downloads section as a walkthrough for SHC as well?

Horse Archers provide a good way of killing opponents with little damage to your own army - and are particularly useful for taking out Archers on Stone Walls. I always use archers, especially near the start of a game - I place loads of fletcher's workshops and let them mass produce before moving on - in fact, the other day when we were playing multiplayer, I got to the stage where I was having to sell bows as I had far too many! (over 200 at one point) I build a couple of towers and leave the archers stationed in them - even when I go out and siege I still often leave the archers there, I hardly ever take them out. I can mass produce them but mainly rely on some of the stronger units (i.e. knights) When attacking I use more crossbowmen and knights than anything else, occasionally I use a squad or two of pikemen to attack alongside the rest, but not often.

I saw this on the firefly website and thought it would be useful for anyone who needed quick advice on CivCity Rome. http://archive.fireflyworlds.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=169&Itemid=245

I never ever use wheat and bread, I don't think that's something I've ever used really in any game, just not part of my strategy. I think this map works, it certainly looks fairly good and there is enough building space to *just* get somewhere with it. Take it now Dirvene has been posted you'd like a link to it: http://www.stronghold-nation.com/downloads/file/128-dirvene/ :)

Voting has started - see first post

@EaglePrince: We've just finished, so if you want to play any time from now on just let me know.

Sounds like you've has a problem there, glad it's solved (at least partially for the moment until your new router comes) I'll see you there :)

That's fine, it will just be a 1v1 game this time then, we'll look forward to playing you next time. If you do manage to get them done in time, just let us know.

Thank you! I must say, I think I'm finally starting to get the hang of this now :) My attempts have been getting better and better, and personally, I think this is my best yet.

My entry:

You could go into GameRanger and join a random game, or attempt to host a game - if you can do that, then all is well.