EaglePrince

Yes, I know. I haven't played it myself, but I did get the game for my mother, she enjoyed Settlers, Heritage of Kings for quite a while. I recently bought the game on GOG as well. It doesn't work on Windows 10 Creators Update, but they say there is an unofficial fix... I think what you describe with randomly generated maps could be achieved more easily by some additional tools in the editor. One thing to be able to would be to divide the map in chosen number of areas, and then the editor would work on one peace of the map, and this way they would edit all other sections simultaneously. Also not all areas would have to be symmetrical... Well, there would be a lot of possible patterns to choose, and maybe they could give us ability to make these patterns. It would all be a matter of symmetries actually. BUT, if they made a game with huge maps, then what you say might be a necessity. And having huge maps, I think that's something we've all been wanting for years. :) I mean, being able to put 8 players on a map, and each of them to be able to build a castle without any of them being able to aim at each other from castle to castle.

Exactly, that with seasons would be awesome! In fact, that would bring may more possibilities, such as: farmers not working during winter, troops moving slower, but being able to cross frozen rivers, etc. But then again, that seams to me like too much work for Firefly. At least considering how many things they didn't make it to implement into Crusader 2 and Stronghold 3. Or it could be done much simpler. Sync farms with weather, add more textures, and viola! That wouldn't be hard at all. As about randomly generated maps, although that would be interesting, it would feel strange to me as all Stronghold games have relied heavily on customs maps. Also, when it comes to Stronghold, the ones who make this script would need to take care about much more thing than in Rise of Nations for example where both human and computer players adopt easily. For that they might also need to make AI lords being smarter when building their castles. I.e. they should either pick smarter which castle layout to use, or even be able to improvise when there is a rock, a river close to the castle. Of course, I don't have to say how much I would love to see that more adoptable AI. :) But that again seams like too much to expect.

Something like this. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=364144095 But I'm not sure if it is possible in Stronghold Legends. I fear not.

Indeed. Although I would love to see them bringing different fractions, even if those would be in expansions that bring more units skins, building layouts, and terrains. Medieval Europe was vast, we had everything, from England and Western Europe, to Byzantine Empire, and from Saracens in Spain to Eastern and Northern Europe (Vikings and Russians), and even The Golden Horde. I mean, even in Stronghold 2 we can make desert maps if we want. Of course, I know I'm asking for too much, this is just my imagination talking. :D Also, I think now is the time to finally get unit collision in Stronghold, but I'm not too much optimistic even about that. For start the game needs to be optimized, without many bugs, and exciting. Somehow all Stronghold games lacks this excitement for me like in Stronghold 1 and Crusader 1, where you can build tons of troops and lose them so easily if not being careful. Stronghold 2 became more exciting for me while hanging with you guys. :) As about Crusader 2, maybe I haven't given it enough chance, but I just can't imagine it being more exciting to me than those three mentioned earlier as it has simpler gameplay, i.e. less options for defending the castle (no moats for example), and less options for attacking (no laddermen, etc.). Crusader 2 is good, but just not as exciting for me. And yes, maybe that has something to do with my cheaper hardware. :P

Is it possible to manually set the game in Stronghold Legends? By one of you hosting the game, and the other one typing the IP address? That's how I avoid problems with GameRanger on some other games.

Hey, guys! We have some new information about the Stronghold Next. Watch this video with Firefly's chief programmer. So it seams that we are about to get another Stronghold game in Europe, like Stronghold 1, Stronghold 2, or Stronghold 3, and we would have skirmish. He says they bring into the game those things that made the original Stronghold games popular. I'm not sure what exactly he means by that though, but we shall see.

Hey, it could be about GameRanger... For example, when I try to play Age of Empires 3 with my mom, the game lags too much. But when we play over LAN, then it works smoothly. I mean, sometimes it's lag that makes it hardly playable, sometimes the game only crashes. And I used to play it on GameRanger before, there used to be no issues. I think I also had some issues with Stronghold Crusader, but I can't say anything for sure about the cause. It is only my guess that GameRanger's servers having some issues. I have been thinking what might be the cause of these problems, and it all comes to GameRanger. I was even thinking about my router. But other than in games, my internet connection is fine and stable. But in your case, since you lose connection, and drop to the main menu, it seams that it's simply about connection (the servers). Similar happens to me in Age of Empires 3, only less frequently in LAN. I have never had these issues with AoE before. Or maybe only in few occasions. I know these are different games, but I'm mentioning it because of GR. Though I may ask - if you have a config file which was used by Steam version, try playing with a fresh config file. Newer versions can mess up the config file, even to be unusable with older versions of the game. Also the map. Try with an original map made for version 1.0 by Firefly. And try with lower graphic settings. That's what I would try, and that's what I'm still trying, though I don't have much time to play, so there are few occasions to try all those ideas myself.

Yup, it's still the same email address. And yes, minor edits is what I could do, some large modifications would be too much challenging for me. Especially building a CSS template from the scratch.

Thanks for explanations, I understand everything much better right now. I think being able to see the latest seven days would be cool, but one step in a time. And you will see what is the best. Regarding the template... Long time ago I offered some help regarding CSS, and making a template better for us. Most importantly, we wanted to keep these color schemes on the newer template as well. I should be able to find some time for that too if that might be needed at some moment. Well, one one hand, now even more time has passed since I used to deal with CSS and graphics, but now I have passed all my exams, and the "only" thing I need to do right now about my PhD studies is research and then writing the theses. Besides obligations with exercises with students, and other work regarding teaching. Still a lot of work, but I'm able to organize myself differently now when the exams have been passed.

No, actually meant on older stuff starting from yesterday. For example, can somebody read the One This Day for yesterday? Now it can only be done for today's day it seams? And how to we access the One This Day page through website navigation? I haven't found any link on the main page.

But what about entries for earlier days? Are they going to stay visible, so that we can catch up, or it the old entry would be replaced with new one each day? I hope it would remain as a blog. :) So you've decided to motivate us to step out from the forum to the main website now and then. I see what you did there. :D And I think you shouldn't bother too much about duplicating, we have 365 days in a year at least, I don't mind reading some similar or same stuff again after a while, just to remind myself of some interesting facts. :)

Nice. But will those "On this day" facts remain to be posted in the forum as well though? I also noticed that it seams that the other forum template got removed. The one which used to be mobile friendly, but buggy as well.

I was curious when you left out the rest of us, and I had to check out what it is. :D Come on, you could have at least given me a chance to spit on my countries healthcare, at least out of kindness. :D Just kidding of course, good like with your coursework. :)

Although it might be impossible to us, I'm pretty confident that those guy who made the game would be able to make 600x600 maps, and that we have this limitation only because the game was developed for hardware from 17 years ago. I mean, yes, it doesn't go so straightforward, but I'd say it only means that there are others things than need to be altered to allow those bigger maps. I don't see any reason why wouldn't nowadays hardware be able to support even 800x800 maps, today even old used computers handle Stronghold 1 and Crusader 1 quite easily, and would be able to handle it. I used to play Crusader on my old Pentium II computer when I was a kid. :)

That's quite interesting what you managed. I guess only Firefly could do it, but today, I don't know... Today maybe not even they could do the task. Perhaps they have been simply left by their valuable developers who worked on Stronghold 1 and Crusader 1, and those younger ones are not into that old engine as much. Those games were made more than 15 years ago...

I think you shouldn't post two messages 2 minutes one after the other. ;) Just use the Edit option. Also, I don't see why you try to copy text from an advanced text editor in here. Keep in mind this is an forum, and as usual, it uses bbcode. So of course pictures are not going to be displayed. They need to be uploaded somewhere, and then inserted using bbcode. But we shall not go too much into off topic, for any question about that open a new thread. But the idea of making text offline, and then posting it is nice, but I assume that a text editor like that needs to support bbcode. Type what you want offline, and export bbcode of what you got. But like I said, that's a story for another thread. Well, you may not like to play against humans, but in that case you might like playing with a human ally against computer opponents by giving them great advantage in map position and beginning resources. Sure, you would like to have a better editor, what's good of it if nobody uses it to make maps. :p But sure, you look at it from one angle, but those who like to make good looking maps probably look at it as on painting for example. They like to make a good map, and they are able to relax while doing it, and they don't get frustrated about how much time they spend. Plus, with time people learn to make beautiful details on a map in shorter time. That's just my case, that's how I look at Stronghold 2 map making for example, or Stronghold/Crusader, though I don't have as much time for that as I would love to have. I haven't managed to win all of the missions with zero loses, but we obviously have different goals. I like to play the way it was meant to be played, and you like to use tricks and whatever means necessary to achieve that. But don't get me wrong, I don't think I would be able to accomplish that. Hmm, hacking... That's how we got some nice mods, including Stronghold Europe. I would like if somebody could enable 600x600 maps, or 800x800, but I guess it's not going to happen. However, I am pleased with what we have, Stronghold Europe and Stronghold Russian Story mods are amazing for example. Including GMB mod.

Just don't shoot them, GOGHacker, they are good guys. :D Shoot them a personal message. :D

Heck, I am going to download it, and burn to a disk, and everything. These things have to be saved for generations to come. :D 'member how hardly we managed to find the Stronghold 2 AI Manager, for playing with AI lords in multiplayer? Yes, I 'member. :D Thank you for your work, all that sounds awesome!

Hi, welcome to Stronghold Nations. Those are some interesting examples. Regarding that trick with worker not needing to go to stockpile, in Crusader it is possible to achieve a similar thing with stone. By blocking stone quarries' or oxen one can transport stone directly to the stockpile. Also the more workers bug... It is a frequently exploited bug in Crusader online games. I don't know how exactly one does it, but they do it for fletcher's workshops to make more crossbows, etc. I think they do it in similar way, but not with pause, but when the game loses the connection for a moment, and it starts reconnecting. But I don't like playing like that. In multiplayer it is definitely unfair, and what we want is players to fight over resources by employing some interesting tactic's, instead of showing who knows more useful exploits. That is why we even made some rules for multiplayer in almost all Stronghold games. And me personally. I just prefer to enjoy the game by building fine castles, and play the game the way it was supposed to be played. I don't even like to play with portable shields. Not against computer, and not against men. Awesome to have one more guy here! :)

This is quite detailed review. I am going to read it entirely some time later. By the way we also have this thread. https://forums.stronghold-nation.com/topic/805-stronghold-2-steam-edition/ Maybe these two should be merged? Or you wanted this one to be here as a review. Both ways would work, your review is a fitting start of an official Stronghold 2 SE thread. Few things based on what I have read by now. I have noticed some bugs as well. Have you been thinking about reporting them? I've done it once or few times, and they did reply to me, and later the bugs were fixed. Though the game still has some bugs, I remember my mom playing free build games in Stronghold 2 SE, when at some moment she couldn't build anything at some tiles. As if something was there, but invisible. I hope they've fixed that by now. And about the stone bars, I have to say I actually like them. :D I think it looks much better then some black bars, plus it brings this "Stronghold feel", as this is what Firefly has dealt with high resolutions in Crusader as well. :) Maybe it's just me, as Stronghold Crusader is my favorite Stronghold game, and the one in which I don't get my a** handed so easily like in Stronghold 2. :D

Wow, I see something great has happened in my absence. Congratulations to both of you, guys! You have indeed deserved it! This is really great to hear. :cool: I would also like to note: while the work of Crusader is obvious to all of us, others might not as easily notice Mathew's work for this community, BUT... Now and then when I need to remember something regarding Stronghold 2 for example, I have a quick look, and guess what. It is very likely that some of his articles would help me out. Let's make Stronghold great again! :D

It is great to see that you've kept working on the mod. By trying to change some minor things in the game I've concluded how an outstanding amount of work is required for a complete mod such as this one.

But still, this is a game from 2004, so 1GB RAM shouldn't actually be a problem... Unless playing in 1920x1080 resolutions changes things drastically. Maybe it does. When it comes to RAM, I feel like if 1GB of RAM is not enough for this game today, it is not because of the game, but because of the OS, antivirus, and many more programs and services ran on the particular PC. As for GPU's, mine has 512MB on my older PC, but I bought it as used, and I think it was a decent gaming GPU at the time it was released. But to be fair, I don't know what would make it better than some budget GPU of 512 from few years ago. I don't know much about these specs.

I'll just jump in to say that we were discussing this same topic over here at Stronghold Heaven as well. Long story short, it is Stronghold 2 Steam Edition, meaning that it has wide screen resolutions as well. From experience with my older PC (which is somewhat more powerful than his PC) I suspect that changing resolution to 1024x768, and keeping medium or high graphic settings would work pretty fine on his machine.

I was just going to ask for few screenshots. :) But I cannot see the picture of your castle. Those two missions are interesting, and I especially like those economically challenging missions where you have little to no resources around your keep. Pity that Wolf builds one of his stupid castles. I mean, it looks cool, but it is inefficient, and with few troops on each tower. If he Wolf was putting way more troops on those towers, then that would be one hell of a castle.