My Stronghold Crusader Let's play Video

[EaglePrince 230]

Hey, guys, this is my first video I created ever, and now I'm sharing it with you guys. :) It is Stronghold Crusader 2 Let's Play Video, I recorded the game in which I won the third mission of the Trail.

 

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Description:

This is how I won the third mission of the Stronghold Crusader 2 trail. During this game I didn't feel the need to speak much, but only to show others how the game works. Just like in any other Stronghold game, if one plays as an European lord, he needs to produce weapons to be able to train army, to produce food to keep his people satisfied, so he could have workers and recruits for his army as well! If you want some more gold you can produce stuff to sell it, or you can also produce ale and candles to gain some more popularity, after what you can put higher taxes. During this mission I decided to produce more food and to produce candles, and to gain popularity by food and religion - after that - people pay me taxes and still stay satisfied.

 

In my opinion good sides of Crusader 2 are mostly related to simplicity - one does not need to care about full stockpile, full granary, and stuff like that... You can also build a market place so you would be able to set auto-buy and auto-sell options, and to ensure this way that you may not run out of some important resources, such as wheat for flour, wood for fletchers, or iron for blacksmiths! Still, market is not required for buying nor selling goods - I didn't build it either.

 

There are also some more interesting events that you may notice in this video, such as storms... If thunder strikes one of your building, it can be set to fire, so if you don't have any wells or waterpots you could have a bad time. Besides this effect that bad weather also effects your popularity, so you may need to lower your taxes during that storm.

 

Castle you will see on this video is the cheapest possible - with two towers only to protect iron mines and oasis, and with curtain walls and curtain gatehouses - just to stop enemy from entering. If enemies were stronger, I would also care more about stronger walls.

 

A lot of that works just like in Stronghold 3, such as barracks or siege camps. You can build a siege wherever you want except in the enemy territory. When you build a catapult, you don't need to bring there any engineers - they will just leave the siege camp as long as you have enough gold and recruits.

 

I believe that these things are great for players who like that fighting aspect of Stronghold. The economy is not simplified, but it is made simpler as player doesn't have to take care about all little details to keep high popularity. Also, when you want to build ten catapults, all you need to do is click ten times to build them - not to pick 20 engineers and order them 10 times to build each catapult.

 

Speaking about my favorite Stronghold unit, you may notice which one is it - swordsman! They are great here, just like they are in any other Stronghold game, and I was using them along with archers. There are also some other interesting things regarding troops in Crusader 2, such as macemen, or knights. In Crusader 2 knights don't fight with swords - they fight with maces, which looks really great. Also, those macemen when they charge towards the enemy. I will show those details in some other video as well.

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I do realize that I was doing some "mistakes" there, as I could have been more effective, but this is the way I wanted to make my first video: I was training swordsmen and archers which are my favorite combination, although I have to use crossbowmen frequently, as those archers are not effective enough against heavy armored soldiers. Also, the only means of earning gold I used here were religion and food... And yeah, I could have set more misses in the church to gain even higher popularity effect from there; I did build more candlers for that reason, but I just forgot to use those candles. :)

 

Next video could be from some harder, more challenging, mission. :)

 

Also, no speech here, but you may hear my voice next time as well. :D I hope this is not a big downside of the video? :)

[Mathew Steel 151]

I watched a bit of the video (I skipped a bit as I don't have much time right now) it's good :) you used a pretty good tactic in order to attack.

 

Just a little advice, you might want to edit the video to crop out the start. So the video starts with you just about to place a stockpile or not far from there. But other than that, nice video :)

[EaglePrince 230]

Thanks, Mathew! :)

 

In my first attack on the Rat I messed up some stuff, and I lost my archers foolishly - I messed up with the commands, and I send archers to front - in front of the swordsmen, so I retreated that time. In the next attack I did it right! Also, I chose a different but similar tactic with Shah - I attacked with rams, swordsmen and archers. The two of rams brought down the gate fairy quickly, and I entered the castle. I faced little resistance there. :) Shah was bringing me more damage than the Rat - when I wasn't on watch, while Rats attacks were too weak to do any harm; still, Rat was stronger when he was defending himself. That was my impression at least. :)

 

Also, same thing crossed my mind as well - do I put that thing from the beginning, or from when the game starts. In the end I did it this way. Do you know is there a way to do it on Youtube somehow? To crop that part of the video, or to mark that part of the video somehow? I just need to know if it is possible, if it is, I will figure it out I guess. :)

[Mathew Steel 151]

I'm not sure. There might be but I usually crop my videos before uploading so I've never looked. I'll keep an eye out next time :)

[EaglePrince 230]

Thanks! I will also have a look at it, and if I find something, I will let you know. :)

[Lord Vetka 63]

Good video, how many megs is the video, I did a 10 minute video on SH2 the other day using "Bandicam trial" and it was over 500 megs. Your game is good but there are ways of increasing your efficiency, I like to have the granary close to the stockroom and closer to the farm land, the less your peasants have to walk the faster the production.

 

We could use a good video editing tool, anyone have a suggestion for a good one?

 

A simple way I found to get taxes is to set them to max when you don't need the villagers, when you place a new building or make some troops just turn the taxes down until you are done then back up again.

[EaglePrince 230]

This one is 586MB, or at least that is how much it is after I converted it to mp4 format. For that I used Wondershare Video converter. The original avi file was nearly 1GB.

 

Yes, I do realize that about efficiency here, but I'm still learning stuff here. I do realize that is more efficient to put it closer to farms, but still I just like to build a castle around my stone keep, and for that reason my stockpile is always close to the stone keep, and the granary is somewhere near as well.

 

I believe that with Wondershare Video converter (which is free) one can also crop some parts of the video (at least to crop the beginning part and ending part of the video), and also to merge several videos into one.

 

Wouldn't villagers leave the castle that way? Or they would leave the castle, but if you have enough peasants around the campfire, you still can give them smaller taxes before you start missing workers? I was always looking at popularity to be positive while I don't have entire housing capacity filled for example, and after I do have that, I leave popularity to be around -3, which would grow up to positive numbers as soon as I build another house, or I train some soldiers.

[Lord Vetka 63]

This game is not like the older games, people don't seam to leave, you just can't get more people when the pop is red, at 70-80 pop you can almost continually click for troops with out having to wait for more.

 

The granary and stockroom are not really in danger outside of the castle, some troops might get to it, I have played some default maps where the granary is in danger though, mostly skirmish maps. I like to have my houses right by the keep for more peasants, and put the granary by the farms and close to the stockroom, if you have to a simple sub wall can protect some buildings.

 

I will have a look at the Wondershare converter, I have been looking for a video editor for a little while.

[EaglePrince 230]

Well, that doesn't sound so great to me, but I hope that they were expecting that players who have low popularity will lose population anyway - due to fire or being killed by enemy troops... But one can easily see that they wanted to make this game as easy as possible to play - at least that is my impression.

 

I do realize that, but... you know me well... :D I am a stubborn man at some moments, you just need to let me to my headbanging on my own, and then I will learn. :D Just kidding, this with houses is indeed a good reason not to build granary, stockpile, the economy, and houses the way I did. :)

 

It works pretty well to me (Wondershare), only after installation it will install Wondershare player as well, which I uninstall immediately after installing the converter. But it's free! :)

[Lord_Chris 251]

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Good video, how many megs is the video, I did a 10 minute video on SH2 the other day using "Bandicam trial" and it was over 500 megs.

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I did a fifteen minute video using Action! and it was over 2 Gigabytes.

 

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I am a stubborn man at some moments

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Hmm. You don't say? :lol:

 

Edited January 17, 2015 by Lord_Chris

[Mathew Steel 151]

Changing your video type to a .mwv significantly lowers file size. Recording a 20+ minute videos leaves me with the FRAPS file of over 20GB. After rendering it while changing it to a .wmv using Sony Vegas Pro 11 the file size lowers to less than a GB! It's crazy.

[EaglePrince 230]

Well, one thing I did forget about when I was giving the answer to Vetka's question. I was playing in the lowest resolution which would fit my monitor, so that is another reason why does my 40 minutes long video takes 1.03 GB (now I checked it) while in AVI format, and 586 MB after converting to mp4 format.

 

Still, if you are used to play in higher resolutions, then you can go to Video\Settings (under Format), and under Size you can choose Half Size, or any size you want.

 

You may also go to Presets within Video and under Format, and choose an option that could fit your needs, such as YouTube (480p).

 

This is about Bandicam by the way.

[Lord Vetka 63]

I have to say the tip I gave about taxes is not complete, we were testing our Siege That map and had extra houses and no need for workers, so when I had enough troops I would put taxes to the max, and when I had more gold and wanted more troops I would lower the taxes, make the troops and raise the taxes back up to max.

 

That can be used in normal conditions, add an extra house and turn the taxes up to max, let the villagers walk away until you start to lose workers and lower the taxes until you have max peasants and do it again.

 

One thing I did with the resolution is change it so the huds are small enough to see more of the game screen, to remove the huds, space and c, but you can't grab anything, but you do get an open screen.

 

Bandicam seams to be a good video capture tool, it does cost 30 dollars for the full registered version.

 

But a good video editing tool is what I would like to find.

[EaglePrince 230]

That does make some more sense to me now. :)

 

Regarding Bandicam, if one uses free version of Bandicam, he can resume the record after those ten minutes are over, and then to merge those several recordings together. I know there would be a gap of few seconds though...

Edited January 18, 2015 by EaglePrince

[Nigel 71]

This was a very nice video, EaglePrince.

Very entertaining to watch. You seem to have a good eye for camera angles.

 

As you said you did not have voice comments, I watched it with the sound off and listening to Vangelis "Conquest of Paradise" in the background. That gave a great atmosphere. :lol:

 

Don't worry about the fact that your first attack on the Rat was beaten back. It just makes the video more dramatic.

 

 

I look forward to seeing more.

The only thing I can think of in terms of advice: you may want to figure out how to crop the videos. In the later missions the battles may get very long and have tedious sections. I think 30 - 40 minutes is about the longest for a You-Tube film. Longer that that and people won't watch it any more. But I think you should be able to do that nicely. :D

[EaglePrince 230]

Thanks, Nigel. :)

 

Wow, now you reminded me of that great movie, I remember how I was watching it is a kid. I am unsure when I watched it, but that was the time when I started watching my first movies, and I was amazed by this one, I think I was about 7-9 years old. :) We got the tape from some videoteka (that how we called in in Serbian, a place where one is able to get few movies, and return it after some time; just like library, but this was for movies. There are few of those left nowadays, how are they called in English?). I know this is off topic, but I am replaying the music now, I will have to watch the movie again as well. :D

 

Yes, about that attack, you are right about that. If everything went smoothly it wouldn't be that good... :) Also those few swordsmen of Shah that made it to reach my stone quarries top destroy them, we could say the same thing about that I guess as well.

 

Hmm, and now when you mentioned cropping the video, yes, I do know how to do that. I could just cut out those parts after I build up my economy, and when I prepare my new troops for another assault; that would make the video even more interesting. I could also put 1492: Conquest of Paradise Theme ? Vangelis in the background, I'm not sure how to do it using this converter I use, but I am pretty sure I could do that as well. :)

 

By the way, this is another great music from another great movie. :D

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3cXcS49D64

Edited January 20, 2015 by EaglePrince

[Nigel 71]

Yes, the Carmina Burana is great. An old piece of music actually, that was used here.

 

You should be careful, though, EaglePrince, about using music other than that from the game to underline your videos. Leagally speaking, you might have to pay some money to the author of the music and some countries are strictly enforcing their copyright laws.

 

 

That said, I am really looking forward to another video from you. If you can commentate it, it will be even better.

 

I am also looking for some good game recording program.

They have mentioned ShadowPlay at the FF twitter site. It seems to be a free program for people with a Radeon Geforce graphics card (which is the one I happen to have). Does anyone have any experience with that program?

[EaglePrince 230]

Yes, I did realize that later - about the copyrights.

 

And, yes, I was said the same thing by some others - it would, be much better with the speech. Right now I am on a second Trail mission - I have defeated those two Rats and Slave King in alliance with Sultana, and I have also defeated Sultana and the Rat in alliance with Shah at Iron Hills. Now comes the slave king, and this seems like a nice missions for me to record it, as I have only one enemy here, and it should not lag while I record it.

 

Regarding this free recording program, I have never tried it. It could be possible that I could use it for free as well, but I shall see about that yet. Thanks for mentioning it here, and I also hope to hear some experiences with it.