Nigel

Sounds like an exciting battle. And a nice write up, too. :D I should join you guys one of these days. Hopefully someday when I will be less busy. But interested to see how tonights battle is going. :cool:

Glad that you like it. It took me a while to find the right position for the camera, but eventually it turned out pretty well :) Now, since Sir Blobka is currently the leading lord in this contest, the honour - and the duty - of riding the first assault falls on him. Next Wednesday is the day chosen for the battle. The other lords will be sent invitations in the coming days.

This post contains the screenshots for Upway Castle Level 2.

Upway Castle Level 2 King Richard is furious. Although his brave knights have managed to storm Upway Castle and Sir Nigel has recieved a good beating, that rebellious knight is still not willing to apologize. Instead Lord Vetka has come to his help and improved the defences further and his hideout is now even better fortified than before. The king is asking you to assault the castle again. According to his sources, Sir Nigel now has between 200 and 300 men under his command. There is also the rumor, that a group of foreign scolars of alchemy have come to the castle, bringing with them a smelly and oily substance which they are carefully keeping away from the fire. Your scouts have managed to climb the mountain to the East of the siege camp and show you the view of the South side of the castle here. To fit out your army, King Richard is sending you 18'000 gold pieces as well as a baggage train of 220 bows, 220 spears, 80 crossbows, 160 armour, 40 swords and 40 pikes. Furthermore, to honour your deeds in the first assault, the king now grants you the right to collect taxes from the local peasants for the duration of the siege. This may further enhance your finances. However, please keep in mind that you shall not exploit this new privilege. If you are holding your men back and are deliberately prolonging the siege only to extort more taxes, the king will make you pay this money back after the battle. There is another small problem which may pose an extra challange. Unfortunatley King Richard is no longer able to afford giving you unlimited food supplies. The food in your siege camp is still plenty and should last long enough to raise your army. But if you are recruiting a bit slowly, you may find that you have to spend money on purchasing food. On the other hand, if you plan well ahead and recruit your army quickly, you may now be able to sell food for some extra money. So it is also possible to turn the situation to your advantage. With that, my lords, once more unto the breach and best of luck.

Charles Loring finally manages to untangle himself out of a large piece of garnment, which had kept him away from the conversation. "Apologies, good Sir - it must have seemed rude of me to ignore you for such a while. I am Charles Loring, son of Sir Roger Loring, may he rest in peace, and a knight of the King's realm. I was born of Twynham Castle, but as you may be able to tell from the blazon on my shield, I did not inherit my fathers title and deeds. In fact, my brother Nigel rightly succeeded my father as keeper of the family castle. He too is a knight in King Richards service and is accompanying him on the cruasade to the holy land. I hope for his health, although, knowing that his character does not go well under an authoriterial leadership, I am not sure if he and the King will get on well with each other. I would not be surprised if he has gotten himself into trouble and is now sitting in a besieged castle somewhere in the desert. Knowing our temperaments, our father had made it a condition, that not both of us should go on a crusade at the same time. So I am traveling through England in search for fame and adventure in this fair land of ours. But it appears that Duke Christopher know you. So perhaps, while we don our disguises and get to move towards Riverbourne Castle, you may tell us your story and how you came into his aquaintance."

Hi guys, I have been locked out of the forum for a few days due to some very annoying technical problem. :mad: Lord Chris has tried to resolve it but only now that I installled Google Chrome, I am able to log in again. @Mathew Steel, thanks for your nice comments on the "in character" thread and apologies for not replying sooner. I will post there later today and Sir Charles will properly introduce himself to you. :)

This sounds very interesting. :cool: I like especially what you say about a "light" and a "save" mod, that can be installed and reverted by just swapping a single file. Perhaps you can explain that in a bit more detail (unless it is all explained in the download package). The reason why that is so important to me is, I am currently running a little multiplayer competition, which requires me to be able to host MP games of the vanilla version. So beeing able to return to a funcioning vanilla game easily is really a key thing for me.

As Sir Charles watches the scene he turns to Brother Goodman: "I know my friends chiede me for beeing a trustful and unsuspicious character, but if this man's motives were bad, why would he come out to us in the open? It would have been easy for him to remain in hiding and continue to watch us secretly, should he want to do us harm. But let us see what the Duke and our other companions think"

This post is moved from the topic "A Call to Arms: Character Creation" by @Lord_Chris HI Metthew - good to see you here again. It is for Charles of Tours to decide, but as far as I am concerned I would not be against letting you enter this adventure through the side door as we are only just getting started. But yes, this is just my thought and it is for Charles to decide. In any case, glad you are back here :D

EaglePrince assaulted the castle for his second try today. I can say that his engineers have certainly done their homework. They moved their siege engines with mathematical precision and when EeaglePrince came in to storm the keep, I had not much left to oppose him with. The dust of shattered stone still grinds in my teeth xD With that, the first round of the contest is now completed and Bobka takes the lead from taking Upway castle at the first try. The full score is here: Lord Chris................500 gold....[2/3]* EaglePrince..............522 gold....[2/3]* Blobka...................1000 gold....[1/3]* LordPaultheDubious...644 gold....[2/3]* Fail Session..............530 gold....[2/3]* One more thing I can say: it was very interesting to see that every lord designed his own strategy. I did not have to fight the same battle twice :) Now the Easter break will be good for me to take some time to recover. But Lord Vetka has already designed the next level, with a stronger and better fortified Upway castle to test your skill. I will upload a picture and some more information after next week and will be interested to see if someone manages to take that one at the first attempt. :D

Sir Charles Loring looks at the map. "Well, as far as I can make out there is only one bridge across the river, guarded by a tower - but no gates. From there the path leads around the castle and passes a wooden palisade before arriving at the gate of the castle proper. The river, I recon, could be crossed swimming by an unarmoured man, to arrive behind the wooden palisade. But this still leaves him outside of the castle courtyard. Also, there is no way the knights of the Duke could cross the river swimming. Their only route seems to be across the bridge and around the castle path. Either way, I think our plan is sound and and the first thing is to enter the inn, which is right behind the bridge. From that we should learn more and can develop the next steps in more detail. I will, in any case, bring my bow and some pitch soaked arrows."

Well, I think it depents on what you are interested in and what you personally want from the game. If you are mainly doing multiplayer against other players, then the new DLC adds nothing new for you, just like Lord Chris said. The gamplay updates come as a free patch, anyway. You don't need to buy the DLC for that. If you like to play multiplayer with some AI lords as opponents or allies added into the mix, well, then it is 2 more lords to choose from. If you like single player skirmish then the DLC gives you a new trail with 7 missions to play through. You may also want to consider the price. It is a rather cheap DLC and you may get a discount on top of that. I only want to speak for myself here, but I got it for less money than I spent on a cinema ticket this weekend. The cinema ticket gave me a very enjoyable evening. The new trial will take me a few evenings to go through. :)

Indeed it is so xD In fact, both Lord Chris and Fail Session managed to get into the castle and wrestled the castle keys from my hands. Very exciting battles both of them and both using quite different strategies. Also, Lord Chris maxed out his bugdet to the most and spent every single penny. With the reward from King Richard he now has 500 gold. Fail Session kept 30 gold pieces for himself and so with 530 gold in his treasury he tops Lord Chris by a tad. 30 gold pieces, what is that? The price for 5 kegs of ale :) GG to both players. I look forward to Eagle Prince's second assault next week (March 31).

Yes, EaglePrince has worded it well :) We did notice your absence, but understand that one needs to take a break from a game now and than. I have done this myself in the past and I am sure there will be a time when I will do it again - even with Stronghold. But a good game and a good fan-site has me always coming back. So take your time and if you want to pop in now and then to say hellow or play an occasional quick game - even better. :)

I see the thread has been re-opened for playing. As it happens, I will be afk for a couple of days now - back online not before Wednesday. Please do not wait for me while discussing the caslte and the way forward. I will be happy with whatever plan you have arrived at, when I come back (well, if your plan involves that Sir Charles enters the castle through the gong pits, I may not be quite so happy with it......). Looking forward to continue this adventure :cool:

The Princess & The Pig DLC came out yesterday along with a huge number of fixes and gameplay improvements. Here are the patch notes posted by FireFly on the official fourm.

Ok, the noble lords have started their second wave of assaults. LordPaultheDubiious leads again and this time his chosen strategy pays off. He manages to take the castle saving 144 gold pieces for himself. Together with the 500 gold pieces reward from King Richard, he now has 644 gold in his treasury. It was again a very exciting battle, but the one moment that really made me smile was at the very beginning, when I was looking down on his siege camp from my walls and suddenly heard his scribe shout in an anxious voice: "No m'lord, I advise you to remain within this nice, cool keep. We can handle it!" :lol:

EaglePrince played his battle today and he, too, almost took the castle at first try. His men were having at me on my keep and only some of my crossbowmen who had managed to get themselves into a good position, rescued me from having to hand the castle over. This leaves Bolbka in the lead for now, as beeing the only one to take this castle at the first try. A respectful salute to him - he truely deserves it :) Tomorrow, LordPaultheDubious will make his second assault. I wonder what strategy he has devised.

Good thought. I have no objections to show my map for you guys, just to look at it - and if someone still want to do something with it, that's fine by me, too. As I cannot attach files at this forum myself, Lord_Chris please feel free to upload it.

Yes, my idea is to show again a picture of the upgraded castle when we get to it - along with some information in text form. Meanwhile, you are quite right. I have lots to do now, to tidy up the keep. I whish the Lords would ask their men to take of their steel boots before stepping on my carpet. I know it is a bit much to ask, but it would be a very nice gesture ;) There is time, in any case. The next battle will be EaglePrince on the 18th next week, followed by LordPaultheDubious on the 19th and Lord Chris on the 26th. Quite a schedule of visitors :)

Achillleslaststand, I like those ideas. Just wondering what you have in mind: Are you hoping that FireFly will incorporate this in a new game (Stronghold 4), or is this just a thread to talk and dream about our perfect game?

A tutorial for scripting in Crusader 2 would be great. I dont think many peoply really know how it works (myself included). That would really be a benefit to the mapmakers community.

What a night :O Fail Session, that was a very close one, too. At one point I felt that everything that can be hurled, shot or thrown in this game was flying at me - dead cows included. And your troops also made it onto the keep. But yes, I survived this one, too, and I shall have that door repaired in time for your next visit :cool:

Ok, Lord Chris has done his assault : and the castle is still standing. But only just. This was the closest attack I have ever seen. Towers were crushed, gates were broken, houses were burned and his troops got their feet onto the carpet of my keep. My healthbar was disappearing quickly and I wonder how I managed to survive that one. But in the end his attack was just not enough and he will have to go fora second assault. This was amazingly close. I wonder how Fail Session is going to fare later tonight.

Very nice. Congratultions Aleks ! :D I look forward to seeing the winning map. Will it be available to download for all of us? Regarding the aftermath ;) - I can only speak for myself, but I know that landscaping is my weak point. So your judgements seem to be right on the spot there.