Krarilotus

@Lord_Chris yes we found a value that works for multiplayer, but you wouldnt be able to connect to anyone that doesnt have exactly the same multiplayer and overall mod configuration that you have.

We got some first impressions. AI's are kinda easy to beat and still easy to abuse, but with some small changes, they could come a long way. The overall behaviour was already improved a lot over the previous games. We also found a way to basically mod all the balancing and remove the troop limit or even put harder restrictions. A lot of early bugs are in the game, but they might just be some that were still in there due to not having the testing capacitities and are likely to be fixed in the near future... Definitly a game that has huge potential to be good. I wouldn't play the campaign yet until those issues are resolved!

Wow there is so much modability with this game, it looks awesome! Also if you wanna tune in, the stream link is this:

The game isn't out yet, but i am very curious how the map creation and AI modifications work in it. If you have suggestions what i should try on my Release live-stream, let me know! Looking forward to keeping all the information gathered up and sorted afterwards! :D

Have you got someone to test it yet? Else can you send it to me via DM on diecord? I ll test it for you! I would even go so far as to explaining to you how the UCP works, so you could spice it up even more, for those that use the UCP with some custom aic and ucp settings :) greetings, Krarilotus

Thank you very much for hosting the contest. I am glad you enjoyed the sieges. I ahve to admit, i'ts not easy to do these kind of scenarios with just the vanilla base-game, as the balance was one of the harder things to do. I also tried to recolour the AI's but i must have missed something when placing the playerkeeps in the original map, and i couldn't really wrap my head around, it. The tutorial for it did only work for Crusader v1.1 it seemed but the colour kept changing for v1.41. Maybe if i figure it out, i could create a new tutorial about changing player colours with the hex editor in the future with the newer Stronghold Crusader versions. Anyways, i am greatfull for winning the contest, and i hope to submit more of my content to the site in the future 🙂 It could be though, that it would have to do more with modifications based on the Unofficial Crusader Patch 😄 Also congratulations to @artofmath and @Andreas9541 for winning 2nd and 3rd prize. I also enjoyed artofmaths map and i found the creation to be really well thought out. I hope you guys had not too much trouble in beating my map on normal difficulty. If you enjoyed it however, i can recommend trying hard and expert out anyways, as they are not only more difficult via a rebalance in troops, but also come with a few more limitations. For example you will not be able to buy or recruit archers anymore, and you would micro manage your horse archers even more, and use your mongolian horse armies to their fullest potential! @Lord_Chris thank you also for your additional feedback. I was considering turning the view of the map around, so you would be able to drag over your full army right from the start, but i have decided against it, simply so that the directions north, east, south and west stay true to their original, to be top, right, bottom and left. Unfortuantely it wasn't possible to get the initial camera position to your army, but i figuered, that you would also not worry too much, as this also gives you the advantage of seing that you have a keep on the map yourself, where the view always starts. You can then turn the map around yourself to select the whole army by simply pressing ctrl + <- or ctrl + ->. Hope that helps for future map playthroughs 😄 @EaglePrince as for the vietnamese troops, yeah i didn't really have a choice. This scenario however is based on a far later period of what will be eventually in the final Stronghold Warlords product. I chose it that way, because i didn't want to create a scenario, that eventually would be done better with what comes out. This way i can ensure that the content will still be fresh and enjoyable. This also means, that the vietnamese soldiers, which were also known for their well trained armoured rangers, would be well represented with those crossbowmen. They also had still a lot of light weight troops, as every person would be mobilized in a case of war to fight for their country, as represented by the snake and rat castles. The King, here represented by the Wolf, actually fled. He got beaten mostly due to his war elephants getting used agaisnt him with fire ammunition in the fight that took place right before this scenario comes into play. I first considered to do that fith too, but i just wasn't able to pull it off, as there is not really anything that can emulate war elephants in the way they should have played a role there. The king tho retreated to the Wolfs position here then retreated further. Unfortunately you can't really make the lord retreat and still win a scenario game, so i had to make him stay and die 😕 Unfortuantely i didn't really have the option to make a sneaky assault on the players forces, when it would be time to leave the capital. It would be great, if skirmish games would be combineable with other map triggers, but i didn't have the solo powers to mod those triggers into the map, as there is currently only a single switch that decides between a map having those properties or not, which is the switch that decides if it is a skirmish map or a scenario map. Otherwise i would have added something like: "collect this many resyources, then leave to this location" to be more historically accurate. but i did what i could and i am thankfull for it paying off. I hope you also did notice, that the Pig's lord was invisible, next to the tower on the river. He was the one, that ended the Scenario. In case your were wondering, i used a gatehouse and walked him through then stopped him on the tile right in front of the gate to make him invisible. My Vietnames girlfriend didn't really approve of how i butchered the story due to game limitations, but at least i got her satified with taking part with a vietnamese historical Scenario ^^ Let's hope she will play Stronghold Warlords through with me when the game releases 😄

I am still exited for more feedback to my entry 😄

Now that the contest has closed for a long time, could you reveal who/how many people entered?

Well as long as you know more about it until release of warlords, it would be probably fine ^^ But that doesnt mean, tht i would want you to wait that long ofc. But yeah, i hope you get some time to seriously play through anll the entries. If you need any more information on any of those, you could also just reach out to the contestants i guess 🙂

XD actually there is only one tile where it actes wierd. Otherwise i have mapped out the whole map with keep orientations on one of my AI template maps ^^ Unfortunately that is not correct this way. The AI may only check for certain buildsteps and the total amount of buildings placeable, also without caring for the edge of the map. The exact checks i couldn't figure out yet, that was why i was asking if you had a specific clue about those buildable checks. So i did this obviously many times already, multiple AI's of the same type. But as soon as i get to about 3 or 4 of the same AI its really hard for me to force all AI castles in the build locations they belong. And i have found, that castles with more buildsteps generally get favoured over those with less, if the AI has enough gold, and the ones with less buildsteps get favored in obscured terrain or less gold settings. But this is just empirical on low amount of tests, so take it with a grain of salt

So will you join the judgement process now? I hope you can make some time :) can't wait to get your feedback :D

I can help you with that, if you want. The map would still be playable for everyone, but you could make a difficult version with custom AI behaviour. You always seems to know how to use one AI with multiple castles well. Do you have a trick on how you force a specific castle to be build, instead of a random one, one a location on the map?

It looks good! I would want to know, if there could be any elevations in the terrain? You have layed out jerusalem, and it looks well planned out, but does the surrounding terrain fit the actual environment? I would also like to know more about the balance for the scenario you are making, what do you have in mind there? I love to see map creation processes well structured and organized :D I will check it out when its finished ;) Edit: just read about the Idea! And it sounds great :D it would mean, the player lives in this symbiotic relationship with the AI. You could even split off which resources he can produce and which the AI has to produce for him, you could even adjust the trade parameters for the AI in how often it requests resources and how generous it is with the help of the Unofficial Crusader Patch. And heck, you could even go so far, that you would give the playerkeep to another AI that manages partly the resources for him and controls part of the army! But that could get hard to balance :D

I would have thought that Eagle Prince would be a judge, as you pointed out earlier that he wasn't allowed to participate as a contestant.

Get better soon 🙂 I would rather know you have tkaen your time with it. Also are you the only judge? I thought there was at least one more person who would not be allowed to participate but to judge the contest entries?