Lord_Chris

That's great @Krarilotus! Entries have to be in by midnight on the 4th though, so try to get it done ASAP if you can! That sounds really good, I will look forward to seeing what you come up with I don't really want to prejudice any result right now while the entries are still open so I can't really say how many entries we've had yet, but I can definitely discuss this later once the deadline has passed. I hope this helps!

Thanks! When I started writing I wanted to answer many of the questions that I had when I started out with it, so that anyone who read it fully understood its power and what it isn't capable of. Hopefully I've done that (in as concise amount as possible).

The Art of Astrology Many people are familiar with the terminology of what Astrology is, but they don't really understand how it works, or know anything about it. Over the next series of articles, I'll be explaining some of the core concepts as a very broad overview. My view on this is that Astrology is a useful divination tool which can and does provide a glimpse into a person's soul, past (even past lives), future, present situations, personal relationships and more. However, you should not take it as divine gospel. The art of Astrology itself always usually from experience provides the correct answer. However if you truly want deeper insight into what is going on in a person's life, or what is actually going to happen, you should have someone read your energy instead (commonly referred to as a psychic reading). I'll discuss that below, but in short, yes Astrology is useful, but it's far from providing the full answer and should only be used in cautious snippets. This is because what really matters as to whether the Astrology reading you receive is accurate and correct depends on many factors, such as: Having an accurate birth date, time and place. Even just by being out by 15 minutes changes the whole chart to be almost unrecognisable in some situations. I spent my entire life thinking I was born at 9 AM only to find out a few years ago I was actually born at 9:15 AM. Every minute changes your chart and the connections within it. The experience of the reader and how they've blended the various factors together. An Astrology reading you receive is only as good as the reader who provides it to you. In large it almost entirely depends upon their intuitive understanding and knowledge of the various elements in your chart and what importance they give to each of them, along with how they all impact on one another that actually produces your reading. If a reader does not understand some elements, or misses them out, or blends them together incorrectly, it can have profound differences. Anyone for example can tell you that Mercury Conjunct The Sun in a person's Natal chart will give the person good communication skills, but if there are other negative influences in the chart impacting that and the reader does not take them into account, then the reading will not be accurate. Not everyone matches their chart. The more Spiritually disempowered an individual is, trauma they have experienced or other similar events etc, the less they relate to their own chart because the less of their own energy they actually have. I'll talk more about this in a later article. The system which was used for the reading. Unfortunately with the increase of newspapers and other media, this has also increased the amount of fake news. Many Newspapers or other columns which provide a 'Astrology reading' based on purely your Zodiac sign is based on what is commonly referred to as Sun Sign Astrology. You normally find these kind of readings in magazines where they claim to be able to say what is happening to you in the next week or day based on your Zodiac Sign. This is usually almost always false, because the reading only takes into account the Sun Sign of the individual. When in fact, a person has a Sun Sign, Moon Sign and Signs for all the other planets in the Solar System to take into account, plus additional factors. Taking into account only one of these factors is why people often try to discredit Astrology as fake or wrong, they simply don't have the knowledge to know about the different systems used, and that Sun Sign Astrology is a simplified version of Astrology used to write and sell interesting things as opposed to the truth. Astrology shows you a template of what is going on, but it does not show you the circumstances around it and only from a static Universal point of view. Individuals as we all know are changeable. Astrology readings are also not as accurate as energetic readings. When a person (psychic) tunes into your energy, they are reading you, your soul, your present circumstances, what is going on and what is coming your way at that point in time. It's kind of like a snapshot of your energy at that point they read it. So while Astrology might predict that there is a tendency for new love in February one year (for example), it's what is happening in your energy that really matters as to whether or not you'll actually get any. Astrology does not make things magically 'drop out of the sky' by itself. While it's true that the Astrological cycles of the planets can affect your energy, surroundings and circumstances in this way, along with the energies affecting you, ultimately, it's down to you as an individual to exercise your free will which could change any or all of this. The art of Astrology dates back to the 2nd Century BC, discovered by the Babylonians. Until roughly the 1800s, it was taught in conjunction with Astronomy, which shows in my view just how interlinked the two concepts are. Probably the most widely known system for Astrology is using a Natal Chart. A Natal Chart is generated from your birth data, and is essentially a snapshot of the entire Universe at the time of your birth. It shows the positions of The Sun, the Planets, Astrological Houses, Zodiac signs and more, and from this you can learn in-depth information about the life path of an individual, along with many of their traits in this lifetime. There are, in fact many more systems, one being love-based Astrology. One method I have used in the past is to look at the Synastry Chart of two individuals to see how they interact with each other and feel about one another. This is useful to see whether there is enough chemistry for a relationship of some form (sexual, romantic etc). When I've used this to do energy readings of my own in the past, the result from the Synastry Chart has been almost identical to the result of the Synastry reading, although the energy reading was clearer. You can also use a Composite Chart to study relationships, but the Composite Chart is an entirely new chart created through the Natal Charts of BOTH individuals, and is the chart of the relationship itself, not just how they interact with one another. A few other systems I have used or looked into include: Transit based Astrology: This looks at how the current lineup of the Planets etc impacts on your Natal (birth) Chart. How the Planets are impacting your Natal Chart can provide significant insight into your present situation and any difficulties you may currently be going through in your life. Transits can also be predicted in advance so that you have time to prepare for positive or negative influences on your life. Predictive Astrology: Probably the hardest of all, Predictive Astrology looks at the future of a person, place or other thing and seeks to make a prediction on what the future might hold. From my own experience (although granted as a novice) this was extremely difficult and not realistically worth pursuing. There are many more, but I hope this cursory overview of Astrology is helpful for now.

Before I begin this thread I just want to say a few things. @Crusader1307 tried to convince me to make it and once I've thought about it for a while I realise he's probably right again (as usual ). This thread won't be as well maintained as Dave's but I will be occasionally posting some things in here. If anyone has any questions about any of this (or this topic in general) feel free to post them below at any point and I'll answer them as best as I can. First of all, I need to make clear that I don't know everything. No single person knows everything. If I honestly don't know something I will tell you that rather than try to pretend I know an answer. My own journey into Spirituality is probably unique to me, as are many of the experiences I've had and things I've encountered. Many of the things which I post about in this thread will probably upset a lot of people, because it contradicts their beliefs about mainstream society, religion, the Universe, life itself and far beyond. If you're not prepared for a shock, then you aren't really well prepared for what I will be posting. The purpose of this thread is not so much as to tell stories, frighten people or cause concern, but simply to enlighten you all so that you can best use the information I provide to assist you on your path here on Earth. Like anything, some of the things I may be posting about might be hard at times to follow if you do not have much experience or knowledge about this subject. That's ok if that is the case. A lot of what most people actually do know about this subject is based off mainstream news, Hollywood or other similar means. Most of these are either attempting to glorify this subject, paint it as strange, dark and unusual or tarnish it as downright deception and lies. None of this is true, and in fact a lot of what these organisations have to say about this and the judgements they pass stems from a lack of understanding of what this is actually about, and the fact that there is something bigger. These judgements and criticisms then get passed down various generations without anyone ever realising or understanding exactly why those judgements were formed in the first place, and with no real reason behind them. Certainly the things which I have learned has shifted my entire perception of everything in existence. If you're not ready for that yet or it's not something you want to consider, or, you don't feel it will help you on your own path, it's probably best you don't follow or read this thread. I'll begin by posting some of the topics of things we all probably know and then progress into the more complicated topics.

Welcome back @Freedom! We've missed you There are a number of mods which have been developed over the years for enhancing the textures of certain units, however, there are no mods for everything. On most of these personally I've never really noticed much difference. But, like anything it really depends on your monitor and screen resolution, graphics settings etc as to how well detailed the game graphics actually are. I've recently changed my PC to a new model and I've noticed that there is a massively enhanced experience because of my newer chipsets etc. The graphics on the Steam version are also enhanced I think as well, but don't quote me on that one. I do know however there are some new textures on there. If you're interested in reading more about the changes between the disk and Steam versions, we have an article on that here. Here are a few texture packs I've found: https://stronghold2.heavengames.com/downloads/showfile.php?fileid=2271 https://stronghold2.heavengames.com/downloads/showfile.php?fileid=2188 We also have some mod packs in our downloads section as well, although these alter the textures in different ways: https://www.stronghold-nation.com/downloads/file/3-terrain-pack/ https://www.stronghold-nation.com/downloads/file/69-full-game-snow-mod/ https://www.stronghold-nation.com/downloads/file/488-stonghold-2-desert-mod/

Sorry for the slow reply, I got swamped over the weekend. I loved that overview, I thought it was so interesting. I'm stunned to hear the leadership friction didn't exist. But...then again, I'm sure they changed Hook's character massively as well. So it shouldn't come as such a surprise really. I'm sure someone once told me something about Hook's family taking legal action because of the way they portrayed his character as a drunk and thief, but I might not have remembered that correctly. Sounds like "Hollywood" remade it to glorify things again. Zulu Dawn is a great film too. I'm fortunate enough to have both on DVD which were very difficult to source. I think Peter O'Toole played his role VERY well. Most of the actors did to be honest. I never heard of Shaka Zulu, but I think it'll have a look at it. It sounds like it might be interesting.

I'm delighted to announce that we now have the most comprehensive, detailed unit overview on Stronghold Legends units ever written. You can take a look at the units in Stronghold Legends via this link: https://www.stronghold-nation.com/article/367-stronghold-legends-game-units

The main question I have is why the Zulus didn't just encircle Rorkes Drift and charge on mass with all their army. Surely attacking in waves is a bad strategy when you're far numerically superior? We obviously all know films are made into match "Hollywood" perceptions and in this case to glorify the British, but how accurate would you say the film was in portraying the Battle of Rorkes Drift?

Hi guys, The admin team have met and discussed the contest and in light of Firefly's announcement to postpone the release of Stronghold Warlords, we have agreed to extend the deadline until 4th October 2020 at Midnight (GMT). Entries will cease to be valid after this point. This doesn't change the status of the entries that have already been submitted. Thanks for your support!

This is an incredible question. You know I still quite can't explain it or understand it myself. The only "real" explanation I can think of is simply because it was a defensive position and as we all know, the British were historically phenomenal in defending positions. It was also a single army and not split. But we know how tiny the British force actually was. But other than this....... I await the truth M'Lord.

Now this is one of my favourites! In my opinion one of the biggest blunders they made was by splitting their forces, despite not knowing where the Zulus actually were. BUT... I don't think that this alone necessarily was the sole cause of the disaster. They also massively underestimated their enemy because they only fought with Spears... it was more arrogance and complacency by Chelmsford than anything else. They went into enemy territory and thought it would be an easy victory, but there were far more Zulus than British soldiers and the British didn't even have a proper place to defend themselves.

Stronghold Legends has an exclusive bonus trail (Arthur's Challenge) that was originally only released with the Gold disk version of the game. This means that without this version, you had no way of being able to collect all the awards or completely finish the game. However, Firefly have since released the 4th exclusive bonus trail as an addon application, which I have sourced and uploaded to our downloads section, available here. You only need to use this application if you are still using a disk version of the game, which is not the Gold version. The 1.3 Steam version already has this trail included within it. Along with the 4th Stronghold Legends Trail, you will also receive 23 new bonus maps, including: 2 new King of the Hill maps and 2 new Capture the Flag maps 6 new Deathmatch maps for varying numbers of players 3 custom designed user missions from varying members of Firefly Studios The exclusive 4th Stronghold Legends Trail Arthur's Challenge Once you have installed this, run the game and head over to the Skirmish Trails screen, where the 4th Trail will automatically be included.

I just think it's incredible the amount of personal influence Hitler had in his Generals' decisions.... it's just like on D-Day. I'm sure the local German Tank Commander heard very early on in the morning that the Allies had invaded but without Hitler's personal permission they were unable to move them.... it's just as well, really.

Hitler made so many mistakes really.... fortunately most of the missiles and other technology were never advanced enough to be able to do much with because the war was so close to ending, but he was obsessed with so much. Especially in the early days of the war, he was obsessed with things such as the Atlantic Wall. I may not be the best tactician but my belief is that once you start defending something instead of attacking, you're broadly speaking on a losing streak. The sheer amount of concrete used on it was madness.

Being a "good 'old Brit", how could I possibly choose anything other than my native Spitfire? Tallyho, Captain! That said, I have to admire the German technology and equipment from that era as much of it was way more advanced and powerful than ours. One of the main benefits of preparing for war for nearly a decade, I guess! The main problem as I see it was that (speaking more broadly) the Nazis spread themselves WAY too thinly, not just with aircraft but with virtually everything..... Hitler wanted everything but he wanted it al instantly. So there were so many "secret projects" ongoing it was impossible to get all of them properly completed... and a lot of them were started later in the War as well. By this time they obviously had manpower and resource shortages. Though obviously not the case here with the Messerschmitt.

Stronghold Nation is a community supported site. We value the input you guys can bring to us and the content that you provide with not just the site, but entire Stronghold community for years to come. But running a community as popular and large as ours is hard work, and a big responsibility. We have visitors arriving daily from all corners of the globe, and members from a large number of countries right across the world. Our content is some of the most viewed, unique and exclusive Stronghold content of any existing online community. 7 years on, the site is continuing to expand its operations far beyond anything ever imagined. But all this comes at a price. Your admin team continue to do an outstanding job managing the day-to-day operations of the site, adding new content, moderating downloads, fixing bugs and general improvements. But we can't do all this alone. Most community based websites generally have one person in charge who makes most the decisions, and perhaps a couple of trusted Moderators to enforce the rules. This is not how I perceive SHN should be. We have tremendous talent, knowledge and ability within our community and I think that more than anything, we should be looking to showcase this with as many team members as possible. If you're passionate about Stronghold, or if you want to make a positive lasting impact on walkthroughs, tutorials, downloads, information, forum threads or even just general help and advice- we want you and your contributions to the site to feel valued, and if you feel you have any skills that would benefit the community we invite you to make a Community Liaison application. Unlike other websites, we don't want you to feel like you need to be asked before joining the team. What is a Community Liaison? Simply put, a Community Liaison is a forum leader. They help start and lead discussions in forums that they have a specific interest in, such as Stronghold Legends or any other game they wish to moderate. They can help to bring the community together by answering questions in their forums, and pay a particular interest to advancing the aims of the community. They handle basic forum moderation in the forums they wish to lead. There are no limits or pressures imposed on you, or certain "threshold" levels you need to reach. All of this is entirely at your own discretion as to what activity level you feel comfortable with. The only thing we ask is that you're not completely inactive. You might have specific skills on generating maps, or be particularly good or passionate about tutorials. Or, you might like helping users on the forum. You could do any or all of this, whatever suits your interests. You may find that you may be more interested in becoming a full-blown Moderator on the site, which is also fine. Whatever your desires, we can discuss this with you and find the most relevant role for you. But if you're still quite new to the Community, it might be a good idea to get to know people first. Have a look around, get to know the place, maybe add a few downloads or help a few people out on the forum first. Adding quality content is a great way to gain recognition on the site. How do I apply? Send me a PM outlining what you'd like to moderate, any background you have in this and what skills you think you could bring. It doesn't have to be long, but it should be detailed enough for us to understand more about why you'd like this role and what you could bring. Past warnings/bans or other moderation action will not necessarily influence these decisions, but it may play a role depending on what these things were for and how long ago they were. We all want to continue adding quality information about Stronghold, and particularly its newest upcoming release, Warlords, in the future. A larger team will accomplish significantly more, and with your help, we can become even bigger with even more information than we already have.

I've joined Would be nice if you guys could all join us on here too, you can setup a social Club on here if you like which might attract a few more users, and it gives you a base for your community where you can create forums & threads of your own.

Just so you guys know, when viewing the forums from a mobile device now, you will be notified about Tapatalk directly, and be able to switch to the app straight away. See the below screenshot for details on this.

No problem. The system stores user accounts that are not registered fully for a certain period of time, and then automatically deletes them if they haven't logged in or completed their registration. Rather than delete it, I've suspended the account for now so that if you change your mind in the meantime, things can be changed. We can also merge accounts by the way, just in case in the future you ever decided you wanted this option as well. In future, if you have any issues logging in or questions about stuff site-related, feel free to send me a PM directly. I don't judge, no matter what the issue is!

I didn't write the software, I just use it. But it only detects the main browsers anyway, it's impossible to detect all of them as there are so many forks. If it's a fork you're using or based on Chromium, then this will be why it's detecting it as Chrome. The two accounts are made by different email addresses (unless you've since changed them). Your current one is a Yahoo address, while your incomplete one is a Gmail one. It should have been sent to your Gmail address, unless you have some kind of forwarder setup or other settings which I'm not aware of. The general rule is one account per user, so it's not a standard situation in that regard. I'm quite happy for you to use Google login if you like, or to keep your current account as it is, but I do need to know which one you'd like to keep as having more than one account is contrary to the site rules, I'm afraid.

I just wanted to let you guys know that in light of Firefly's announcement today, there are no changes to how the competition will be handled or our own deadlines. You can continue to add your entries until September 6th as planned.

Just wanted to let you guys know that today Firefly have released a statement on the release of Stronghold Warlords. This won't change the deadline for our competition at all, at least for the moment.

The PM is usually better for requests such as this as they can contain sensitive information, but since you posted publicly on this occasion, I'll reply here but try to strip out anything that is identifying. I'm sorry to hear this has happened to you, but please do rest assured that we take the security of user accounts extremely seriously. You may wish to enable two-factor authentication or additional protection on your account if you feel that it's at risk in any way. My PMs are always open if you have any concerns about your account security or other questions or concerns. I can assure you that your data is safe and that this was an attempted exploit on the login system, not a hack. A user tried to "guess" your password three times incorrectly, and because of the settings we have configured, it automatically locked your account for security reasons. I can see that your account was locked (it seems twice) on 11th July for failed login attempts from IP address 147.78.31.114. This resolves to a location in Denmark. You later successfully logged in on the 12th July by an IP address of the same first three subnets, but the last one was different. In fairness this is almost identical. Your recent post today was using a similar IP address, but different again. You seem to be using Chrome and Linux on all of these occasions. There are no login attempts from California on this account, which is the one you are currently using now. One of the above IP addresses also attempted to create a new user account on 11th July and tried to link a Google account with it, but the process was never completed, and it does not have a valid username or login credentials yet, i.e. it cannot yet login. This is the account I can see there was some login attempts from California on. I'm not sure why but there are two incidents of this happening, one was August 10th, and the other was 14 hours ago. I've taken a quick search and I'm afraid that this appears to be a proxy or VPN of some kind. In answer to your other questions, this is an isolated login attempt on your account only. The site does and has contacted Internet Service Providers in the past, but these have been isolated cases of serious or prolonged abuse. I can see what I can find for you if you would like to launch a complaint, but please make it known that you are complaining in a personal capacity and not on behalf of the site if you do launch a complaint. I've found a couple of leads I am investigating, but I'm afraid I can't disclose any more in a public setting. Feel free to PM me if you'd like to continue the conversation or get any more specific info about this.

Glad you like it Paul! About time we had an upgrade I thought

I'll admit, I think it's a neat app and I can see why you like it. To be honest, if there was the demand for it and we had the traffic (members, not views- we're getting them anyway) I would consider getting a guy I know to create an official SHN app for us which would cover the main site as well. I nearly worked with him on a project a year or so ago but unfortunately it fell through at the last moment. I will be (at some point) creating a responsive mobile design for the main site though, because I can see that a little under half our traffic comes from mobile devices. But, the priority for now is getting more articles and info out there. The other thing to consider about Apps though is that they're incredibly expensive to maintain. Apple charges $100 a year just for listing your app on the App Store. So unless there was significant demand for this (I'm talking about several hundred people as a minimum), I really don't think it would be worth it. Yeah, sadly there are some ads on there. I haven't seen any as of yet myself, but I did try to disable the setting for them and Tapatalk wouldn't let me unless I started a $10 a month subscription. Since Tapatalk is just a platform for accessing the site, and not the site itself, it's out of our control so there's no way realistically I could prevent them from doing this. But the actual site of SHN will remain ad-free, that I can promise everyone. I just don't see any benefit of putting ads on here, this is a community site for public good, there's no way I should be profiting from this. Plus, virtually everybody uses adblockers these days anyway (including myself) so for what crumbs it would make anyway, it would probably end up turning more people away. Ads are distracting and annoying, and not the kind of thing we want to achieve here.