Nigel

Yes, it was a very noble attempt by Sir Blobka to try to take the castle with 3 trebs only. But in the end he did need the full 6 trebuchets that are allowed for this castle. Well, there are no prices for it, but it could be a nice little challange on the side: If anyone manages to take this castle with less than 6 trebs he will certainly have King Richard's gratitude. :)

This sounds really good, BlackGrouse. I would encourage you to upload it to Steam Workshop - if that is possible.

Well, since you put this up as a controversial topic, I might as well throw in my 2 cents into the controversy ;) First let me say that I agree with most of what you guys have said here. Game quality (in the sense of bug-freeness) seems to have gone down over the years and the customers are becoming more and more paying beta testers. What I would like to disagree on is the notion of "developers become lazy". I cannot imagine that they are any more lazy than they used to be and in fact I believe that most development staff are hardworking people that do overtime for a product they believe in - like most of us would. I rather think that it is the increased economic pressure that is forcing companies to work with evern shorter development times and smaller budgets. Let's look at our beloved Crusader 2 for example. The game concept is awesome, the game has features which give a huge lot of possibilities to create a great SP or MP experience. Yet, when it was released, it still had lots of bugs and performance and balance issues - and the FF team are still working to iron them out. I am pretty sure that FireFly released the game when they did, because they had reached the end of their budget and they just had to get it out to be able to continue. They are a tiny company but extremely dedicated to their Stronghold series. But I imagine they are fighting against the odds of the economic conditions, like most small companies have to do. It will be the same for many other small companies who are forced to release the product before they are really happy with it. And yes, certainly there will be a few companies who don't care and just want to make a bit of quick money. But I believe that most of them believe in their products but understimate the effort it takes to get them into perfect even just acceptable shape. At that point they are forced with the decision to either release as is (and hopefully fix it later) or cancel the project. I am not saying that "release as is" is always the best answer. Maybe cancelling would have been the honest choice on many occasions. But I am just saying that I don't think it is just that developers "have become laszy". So much for my controversial contribution :P Feel free to agree or disagree in a lighthearted manner.

Sir Blobka proved again his skill and power at attacking a castle. Still, it was a hard and long siege that lasted for 135 days. Sir Blobka had made it a point to be precise about the money. He saved exactly 8000 gold pieces from this battle. Together with the reward from King Richard, this earns him a stunning amount and the call is now on the other lords now to catch up or at least do as good as they can. :) But who knows - we may sitll be in for surprises. I will hopefully be able to get one more battle in next week before I will go offline for a little vacation until the end of May. All going well, the lords may be celebrating their final victories in June, while I better think of something to say to King Richard. But that is still a few battles away. Until then, more challanges are awaiting. :cool:

Hehe, you should have seen what Blobka did to Upway castle in the last round. I never knew there were so many stones in that castle until he "re-decorated" it. :P In any case, Sir Blobka is still the leading lord of this contest and as such, he will have the honour of the first attack. We are playing tomorrow evening. You will hear how it goes. :)

Upway Castle Level 3 The brave lords have defeated Sir Nigel again, but the stubborn knight is still refusing to yield to the king. Lord Vetka has improved the defences of Upway Castle further and Sir Nigel is making preparations for a last defiant stand. Your scouts have been able to get around the castle to the East side and show you the view. As you can see, more fortifications have been added to the outer and inner perimeter and the castle now holds room for about soldiers. Your men have also spoken to a travelling student, who had visited the castle recently. The young lad tells you, that the men of the castle had shown a particular interest in his book on ballistics. King Richard is giving you 20'000 gold pieces. What you don't need to recruit your army is your's for the keeping. The baggage train contains 220 bows, 220 spears, 80 crossbows, 200 armour, 80 swords and 40 pikes. There is also a fair amount of food and a few building materials. There are also a few problems. The long wars in this area have drained the country of skilled engineers. While there are enough apprentices to move the mantlets, catapults and other simple siege engines, senior engineers who are able to operate the complicated trebuchets, are hard to find. You can only build 6 trebuches max. Think carefully where you place them. In addtion to this, King Richard is currently preparing for another campaign and needs all the weapons he can get. He is therefor asking you not to sell off the weapons and resources you don't need, but to return those to his quarter master. But that said, you are free to take as many weapons as you need from the ones that are there. So don your armour once again and get ready for the final siege of Upway Castle. Good Luck.

The tournament is over and Fire Ranger has won the title - congratulations. I hope, Blobka and Denroth, you had good games, too and enjoyed your battles. :) If FireFly are posting a link to some youtube videos from the tournament, I will add it here.

Yes this was a nice battle indeed. And, Lords Banshee, this is a good map. I like it that you have limited building space and are forced to make do with a relatively small castle. A great way how you solved this for SH1 which does not have the estates system of the later games. EaglePrince, it is always good so see a lord who stands true to his word - be they promises or threats :) I had some nice little skirmishes with Lord Banshee, too, and managed to destroy one of his catapults and some of his farms. Most of all, I am glad to see how well this game can still be played - my first time on Game Ranger. GG

I just thought we should have a post here about the Crusader II US Tournament which is starting this weekend. From our site members, Sir Blobka is taking part as well as Denroth (=BleackBeard). I also see Fire Ranger on the lists, who also took part in the European Tournament and was only beaten by Micha! in the finals. I could not sign up for it myself since I am busy with other activities this weekend. But I want to whish Good Luck to everyone. :cool:

Indeed, Lord Fail succeeded. After a long and gruesome siege, he himself entered my castle and confronted me on my keep. My head still hurts from the bash of his mace. The day was truely his. This is his screenshot to memorize his victory on his Steam page. :cool: And a great vicory it was. Lord Fail recruited an army worth 15'353 gold pieces, leaving 2'647 for himself. With the reward from King Richard he earned a total of 3'647 gold pieces from this battle, which makes him the second most successful lord of this contest. Sir Blobka may yet get some serious competition :)

ah, very good. I actually got online right now and trying to find the game - or one of you gys at Game Ranger ....

I will try to join you on this, but 18:00 London time is still early for me. So if I dont show up, just go ahead and don't wait. Mainly, I am interested to see if I can even get into a game via GR. I have never done it so far.

Great story, EaglePrince. That sounds like a lot of fun indeed. I got to get my system set up before I can join one of these. ? Are you playing the original Stronghold or Stronghold-HD? Or are the two perhaps compatible? I have installed Stronghold-HD on my PC right now (got it real cheap off Steam) but will have to look for my old SH disk if it has to be that one.

Yes, this is really interesting. I am particularly intreagued by the thought of a turn based multiplayer mode. From the text I am not quit sure that it offers that or if the mulitplayer covers only the battles. You know anything more about that? In any case it seems to be an interesting title to watch.

Wellcome Lord Banshee, good to have more people who like MP games in this castle. And, EaglePrince, nice to see that you are organizig SH1 events. I would love to take part some day, but I norally cannot do weekends (only online for a few minutes right now). But good luck to you guys and have fun. I look forward to the battle story after your fight :)

Charles speaks to his friends in a low tone: "Indeed, I wonder if our learned fellow with the straw hat could indeed be a friend - or just Mr. Innoccent Bystander. Perhaps you, Brother Goodman, or you, Julian, can approach him and try to engage in some careful conversation. I shall keep quiet and maintain my ruse of not understanding English. The beauty of our disguse as foreigners is, that we can ask a lot of questions without looking suspicious. Who know, we might learn more about who those other "merchants" are, that have set up their stalls outside."

When we went into the battle today, Lord Chris still remembered his two assaults on the first castle. This time he was taking no chances. He used every gold and resource that was available to him - keeping a single gold piece as token of good luck in his pocket. And it payed off. After a siege with some extremely good shots from his siege enginges and a well orchestrated assault of his main army I found myself surrounded on my keep, while my men were still scambling all over the place in a futile attempt to come to my help. The day was his. Fail Session will be the last lord to attack this castle next Wednesday. Good luck to him.

Hehe, to tell the full story: Lord Paul has been a regular of the old Stronghold Knights fan site and there, apart from beeing a mighty Lord, he also has held the title of Court Jester, which was a very prestigeous and highly esteemed position in that place. Meanwhile, EaglePrince fought his battle today and it was a very exciting fight. Trying to save quite some money at the start, he eventually had to spend almost everything and was left with 33 gold pieces in the end. Still, he won the day and will recieve the 1000 gold pieces reward on top of it. Great game EaglePrince :cool: Lord Chris will have his game tomorrow. I look forward to seeing how that will go.

An I thought I was an oldtimer having played my first games on a Comodore 64. :) Great find, Matthew - and also Crusader for that stuff on the light bulb: 114 years - and still running I suppose :O

Congratulations :D Good to see you on the team.

Lord Paul the Dubious did his battle today and after a long and hard siege, he too emerged victorious. It also appears, that King Richard has made the right decision by revoking the taxation rules. Without taxes, but with an adequate amount of money and weapons, the lords should be fitted out just right for this battle. Lord Paul ended up spending 17'260 gold pieces, leaving 740 for himself. But with the 1000 gold revard he is now 1740 gold pieces richer. Aside from that, he could not resist the chance to take a few shots at an old enemy of his - the Court Jester of Upway Castle. :D That man, however, walked off the battlefield with his health bar still yellow - which is more than I can say of myself. xD Eagle Prince is the next lord, who will assault the castle on Tuesday. Good luck to him.

I thought I would add a few out-of-character comments on the learnings from the battle with Blobka today. It was really amazing and unexpected to see how much money he could make out of taxation: 7k additional gold for a map that was considered a good challange at a gold level of 18k. We both felt that was really too much. Also, considering that players were making a few hundred gold pieces on level 1, if you are able to make around 10k gold on level 2, it renders the earnings from level 1 totally insignificant. That, too, is not in the spirit of the game. One of the reasons for allowing tax collection was that it is somewhat difficult to control a no-tax rule. Yes, I can see the tax level in the greatest lord screen, but in the heat of battle I might forget to look and the player might forget to turn them off and so, without anyone meaning any bad, some uncontrolled taxes are flowing. It just seemed easier to allow free taxation. On top of that, Lord Vetka's thinking is that allowing players more freedom is better anyway (and I am certainly not opposed to that). But with what I have learned today, I think that a no-tax rule is the better way to go - at least for this particular contest. I know that making rule changes in a running contest is never a good thing. But this is the first time we are trying this out and we probably can expect the rules to be far from perfect. So please be patient with me. I hope this is not distracting us from the fun we are having with the contest.

Sir Blobka is a truely masterful commander of sieges. He did his battle today and even the fortified castle was not ablle to withstand his thorough and methodical siege tactics. Sir Blobka needed 13'120 gold pieces to recruit his army. Out of the 18'000 he got from King Richard, this leaves 3880 of unused gold and with the 1000 gold reward he is now 4880 gold pieces richer - an amazing, but well deserved amount. There were some other interesting aspects to be learned. On top of the money he saved, Sir Blobka collected a huge amount of taxes from the peasants. Even without delaying or slowing his attack, the taxes he was able to collect summed up to some 7'000 gold pieces. When King Richard learned of this, he started to have second thoughts about his generous offer to allow the lords free reign on taxation. Maybe that was not such a good idea after all. Noble Sir Blobka immediately volunteered to return the tax money to the people. But King Richard is now, slightly embarrassedly, asking his lords to refrain from tax collection in this country. It is bad for a king to go back on his word, but even worse to stick to a bad decison. The lords will hopefully understand this. LordPaultheDubious will ride against this castle tomorrow. It will be very interesting to see how he will fare. Although Sir Blobka's tactic proved superior today, this castle is by no means an easy one and I am exited to see how his battle will go. :cool:

Charles Loring is hiding his bow and a few arrows under the huge oriental robe he is wearing. His face is almost completey concealed by a big turban. "For all intents and purposes, I shall pretend not to speak English. If I manage to make them believe it, I may get a chance to overhear a conversation, which I otherwise would not. I should be able to put on an Eastern accent when I speak to anyone and my Latin is bad enough as it is anyway. An yes, for the more complex conversations we should rely on our learned friend Mr. Palaiologos here, whose communication is all Greek to me. So as for me, I am ready to go."

I am only speculating about it, but it could be that when you have an AI and a Script on the map, then the AI overrides the Script. Thus, the AI wants to use their troops to defend their own castle, the Script suddenly add more troops to the map and the AI decides to say "thanks, I use them to defend my castle". Did anyone try to set a map up so that the AI is player 2 and the Script is player 3? Is that even possible to do?