Nigel

.... and this is my castle when trouble decided to accept my invitation :) But yes, this was a very fun battle. Well played by my opponent, too. He launched his attack just at the right moment under a lot of pressure from my archers and trebs. The best games happen, if both players are of similar skill, and this was one of them.

Yes, it was a great battle. But unfortunately I did not win it. This is my castle. No prizes are given for spotting which side of it I left pooly defended, inviting trouble.

I thought I would share some screenshots of my battle in this tournament with you guys. This first one shows my group of archers harrassing my opponent' wookcutters. ... and for some reason I seem to be unable to post more than one screenshot in a post. So watch this space for further updates.

This looks like a good adventure. :lol: I would join, but I don't do weekend gaming (except for some execptions). But I will keep my fingers crossed for you, gentlemen. Did you mean SHC2? Or did you intend to do it in SH2? Either way, it looks like a good map to recreate.

I played my match on Friday - against a good and fair oponent. We met up for a little chat before match and shook hands and wished good luck as we went in. To cut a long story short - I was defeated. But it was a very good game, with lots of action happening. I took the initative and went on the attack early, putting a group of archers next to the forest where his woodcutters worked. More and more intense grew the battle around that forest, both of us fighting hard. But finally he found a weak spot in my defence and managed to press through. Eventually there was nothing left for me to do but to hand him my sword. Still, it was a great game and we chatted for half an hour afterwards. GG and best of luck to my opponent Silow for his future matches. I will continue to watch this tournament with great interest. Micha, is still in it - so best of luck to him, too.

Yep, this has certainly given us more than just another new map: a lot of new experience with this map editor and quite a few new ideas for the future. As fate will have it, my real life is getting pretty busy next week. The only days I will be able to do a test game would be Thursday and perhaps Wednesday late evening. That said, Lord Vetka, if one of these days works for you I would certainly try do put a test game in. Or if you and Chris, or someone else want to have a go at it on one of the other days, by all means do. I will put the latest version of the map in an email to you.

I just thought I'd open a thread here for the given occasion. Nice Christmas decoration you have put up here, Lord Chris. :) We have started with the decorations of our home, too, today. Bring out a mug of hot spiced wine for everyone.

Heheh, it was not too difficult actually. I should say that the villages are perhaps not balanced between them, I only balanced for the city as a whole. Having said that, the villages are pretty symmetrical, with the same number of buildings in each, so I dont think they whill have much difference between them. With that, all I had to do was to "measure" the Crusader city, then keep that constang and adjust the Arabic city to give the same outcome. I ended up having to add additional carter posts to the Arabic city for delivering apples. One thing I learned: Once there are enough production buildings, it is actually the number and position of the carter posts, that determines how much you get out of a city. That may be an important piece of information to keep in mind for future designs of capturable estates for other maps, too.

Wellcome !! Glad to see Stronghold Kingdoms getting some more support :cool:

The map is coming along nicely. The cities are now fully fit out with buildings and I did some balancing work this week. The way I did it was, that I conquered 1 city and build a market, set it to autosell all goods that were delivered by the city and watched the money collected over 20 game-days (with nothing else on). The cities are delivering goods worth about 3200 gold in those first 20 days. The Arabic city is only slightly more productive than the Cursader city with 3268 versus 3195 gold pieces. That is a difference of 2.2% - I guess we can call this balanced. I think we are ready now to move into 4-player testing. So if anyone is interested, please let us know. It would be great if we could find some time next week for a test game.

I have finally been able to locate the place where the minidump files are stored: There is a file structure in this path: C:\Users\...\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\WER\ReportArchive\AppCrash_Crusader2.exe It seems that after each crash a new Report.wer file is generated. I have not been able to open it yet (well, I did not really try it), but I suggest that players should open a ticket with the FireFly technical service and post these Report.wer files as attachments to the ticket thread to give FireFly some help to find the cause of the crashes.

Yes, it worked. Thanks, Chris.

For some reason I am getting a Database Error when I try attaching a picture (JPG) in a post at the SHC2 forum (Skirmish Trial thread). I try posting the picture here to see what happens. Edit: getting the same error here, too. The full error message is this: Chris, if you tell me where the server error log is, I can go there and post or send it to you.

That's cool. If this is not only a marketing speech, then indeed the game is well alive and kicking - in spite of the bugs that still exist. Gives me the hope that FF will fix what needs to be fixed and we are in for longlasting Stronghold fun.

Against all the odds - MP games, mapmaking, real life, sandstorms - I have reached the end of the Breath of the Infidel chapter. After a hard battle, two Rat brothers and the Caliph eventually fell under my attack in the last mission. Here is a screenshot of one of my attacks on the Caliph. He was aready badly wounded but had still survived the charge. Onle last brave knight tried to take him on alone. But the Caliph, still backed by his archers, also defeated him and eventually I had to send in a group of freshly recruited macemen to subdue him. This mission, Pit of Despair, was actually the first one that saw me defeated against the AI at the first try. Quite funny to see the Rat enjoy his victory - jumpiing up and down and jubilating. Well, I suppose as missions get harder from now on, I might see that more often :P

Well, I could think of a few, but let's not go there.... :P I will look into how uploading works and upload them later.

:) Thanks for the nice compliments. To be honest, those pictures are slightly tampered. I made them with the map editor using the "Free Camera" option and then I changed the sky from the map editor to blue using a simple paint program. So those images are not something a player will be able to see in-game (unless he finds a way to free the camera movement). But if this is still acceptable for the gallery, I will be happy to upload them.

Hey Micha, looks like we both are on for the tournament :D :touch ironclad fist: May your horse be swift and your lance be strong.

Lord Vetka and I tried the map last Friday. It is coming along nicely. We are also learning a fair bit about the map editor in the process. Hopefully we will soon be able to try it out with 4 players. Some early impressions made with the map editor:

Just to let you guys know, I have opened a ticket at the FireFly Technical Support and givem them what information I have gathered about my crashes (using the methods Chris provided on page 1). They have allocated the ticket to the category of the highest priority. I will continue to help them where I can and really hope that they will get to the bottom of it.

I have not tried it knowingly or not paied attention to this, but here are some immediate thoughts from me: - Could it be due to the fact that the buildings are on neutral territory and that toops will not attack friendly or neutral buildings? - Does this change when you set your troops to aggressive stance? As said, just some spontaneous thoughts.

Achilles, I second your observations and share your worries - but hope for the best. As for your questions, this is what Sergiu has on his page for the tournament:

Whow, this sounds great. :D I shall sign up for this - even if I get my lance splintered and my armour bruised and dented. But just the fun of taking part should be good.

Not exactly Crusaser, but by best memories from the whole Stronghold series are from Stronghold 1. I remember one multiplayer game, where I had met someone with pretty much my own skill level - i.e. not terribly good, but not a noob either. We were simply very evenly matched and one of the games we played lasted over 8 hours, spread over 2 days on a rainy weekend. But my nicest experience was from the Sword and Pistol Tavern (which unfortunately does not exist anymore). At one point we got a couple of people together and started a role playing game based on Stronghold. We were lords fighting for domination in a turn-based fashion on a map (similar to Lords of the Realm) and used the game to meet online and carry out our battles. It was really good fun :)

I can only add my YES to this. Keep it going, Lord Chris, and don't be shy to ask us for help and support if you need it.