/v/ - Video Games

>Stronghold thread

>on MY /v/

CAN'T PLACE THAT THERE MILORD

The Pig levelsets>The Snake>The Wolf>The Rat

Also crusader broke the balance of the game.

Also all of my castles usually encompassed a resource node, a stone quarry or an iron mine. I never felt safe having my workers get out of the castle walls, only my units.

>>16662492

>all my levels enclosed a resource node

I only do that if the map is so small not enclosing them would be a hassle. I like to build small forts out of towers, and gates for as outposts for my resource nodes. Makes it look more plausible I think.

>I still don't understand how the religion thing works.

Okay so whenever you make a chapel, church, or cathedral, a peasant is turned into a priest. That priest goes around your castle blessing civilians and doing their weddings. Religion is less effective the higher your population gets as it requires more priests to keep their blessings going. Religion in Stronghold 2 is just making a candle industry.

>What style of forts do anons prefer?

The kind that my enemies can't get through. I mostly like Stronghold 2's castle wall defense additions, even if anything that isn't a burning log trap seems useless.

>>16662478

>Pig level sets greater than everyone elses

I can't vouch for anything past the one assault and defend mission because it's nearly impossible to do without using exploits, and due to it being a long time since I played the campaign, but I disagree with your assessment.

Why does this board so rarely have cool threads like this discussing actually cool games instead of drama and bitching about modern cancer?

>>16662939

Because Granary stocks are dwindling, sire

>>16662939

Because absolute tards think that /v/ is all about shitting on everything and anything, so they overcompensate in that regard to try and fit in

Also, how absolutely fucking atrocious is Stronghold Legends? I remember playing it a shitload when I was younger, and it just felt weird and cheap somehow.

>>16662822

Okay so it's been a while since I last played it, but the first major change was the Fief and rank system.

Fiefs are neutral villages until you buy them with renown, they will supply you with whatever it is they produce via trading cart. You can build production buildings but not defenses at them. Renown is mostly generated through hosting feasts or balls but it's also obtained through just having more than 1 food type. Go for feasts. Some units cost renown.

Technology is locked behind your rank/title and can be improved by spending renown, keep in mind though that more tech upgrades means more unhappiness needs to take care of.

More unhappiness needs. There are more of them now, and I know them pretty well. The first one is Gong.

>The fuck's a gong?

Another word for shit. That's right it's the middle ages and the Europeans haven't figured out outhouse and toilet technology yet so they shit where they like. Build a gong farmer and they will wheel around collecting shit. Uncollected shit will cause disease clouds.

Next are rats. Rats are a danger to your granary and to deal with them you need a Falconer. Simple enough.

I think the last one is crime. A peasant will always go bad no matter how well you treat them. These criminals will steal from your granary and other places. You need a couple of buildings to deal with them. First you need a guard post, ALWAYS PUT THESE AT THE PEASANT GATHERING POINT. Everytime a peasant or criminal is spawned they go there to begin their life and criminals are always caught on sight. Next is a Jailhouse to store them, and a punishment building of your choice. The difference between them is shorter criminal punishment times, more effective punishments require a torturer's guild. You get renown based on the punishment.

Fear factor doesn't exist anymore.

Now for the moment you waited for, defenses.

Walls can no longer be destroyed by simple infantry unless it is wood. Towers have stairways that lead from the ground, the wall, and the tower so watch where you place it. There's a new pit trap, the man trap which is a 2x2 killing pit triggered by "heavy weight."

Now for the new wall-mounted defenses. As I stated before there are burning rolling logs that you put on the wall, you release them by selecting them manually. A rock basket that will probably never be used outside the main campaign. You put units near it on the wall and they will toss rocks at nearby enemies. A wall mounted rockfall basket. Works like the rolling logs, click to drop.

There aren't that many new defenses but overall I believe the game is an improvement over the original.

>>16662939

Because most of the people are playing games rather than posting I imagine.

>>16662971

Seems nice. Where there any major downgrades compared to the previous games in terms of other mechanics?

>>16662980

Major downgrades?

The engineer's guild isn't for what you think it is for anymore. Engineers are no longer needed for building siege weapons as there is a dedicated building for making them. They are now there to automatically repair your walls, oil pots, and I forget if they are still needed or not for tower ballista and mangonel.

As I stated before, the removal of fear factor bonuses.

The new unhappiness threats are an utter asspain when starting in free build mode since you start at max tech in free build, meaning you need to rush for the supplies to make the structures to deal with these new things.

You cannot choose your starting hall in free build either.

The stockpile, armory, and granary are no longer expandable grids and they have an extremely high capacity.

That's everything comparing them to the previous games that I can think of. Another gripe I have with Stronghold 2 was the addition of one of the new mercs, Pictish Boatmen. The only unit capable of crossing water is completely useless as it has no chance of surviving any ranged attacks, the default maps also don't have any holes that these boatmen could use to harass the enemy. They could have done so much more in the naval department and it's upsetting. Why even add this unit?

>>16662822

Oh yeah, one of the biggest improvements is how useless the hunter's post was without deer. Now when there are no deer in range of the hunter they just sit at their hut all day shooting down birds while their dogs ferry the dead bird to the stockpile for 2 meat. It's just great.

Just beat the rat, and I am moving on to the snake. One thing I don't like about this game is that in order to teach you something instead of designing a challenge that can be beaten with mastery of a certain mechanic they just limit what you can do for no raisin. This is especially true with the market place.

Is there a way to set the gates to not auto close when enemies get close? I just lost 12 archers even though I salvaged the mission.

>>16662939

Because most of /v/ is underage or just-past-teenage consoleniggers and ex-consoleniggers who are now steamniggers.

Fun fact: Stronghold 1 doesn't have 2-player skirmish like the aoe games do. The game doesn't support 2 sides having stockpiles, armories, a functional economy and military. You can only attack a fortress or defend it. Simply put, it's a castle building sim.

Now, the game managed to cheat itself and at least simulate a 2 party skirmish in at least two maps. The first is where you go and kill the snake. In that level you are faced with the snake and his castle, but wait! You also hold a small castle. How? I don't know. It's the only map like it (aside from a small invasion map which I didn't understand), no other mission does this. The snake doesn't attack you, which makes sense seeing as you're the besieger here, but the point is, the game managed to pull off something the successor made its bread and butter. I loved that little bit of effort put into the game.

>>16662971

Honestly, I hated 2, specifically because of the new changes you posted. Dung cleaners and criminals aside, how the fuck am I supposed to manage this shit? Most of the maps in 2 are too small for the scope of the game. There is never enough room to build everything you need, let alone customize your castle and you know. There's also an annoying bug where when you catch a criminal, their workshop goes out of production. And hey, that would be fine if not for the fact that it never goes back up. No matter, the retard can get released and go back to society, you can toggle the "sleep" button on the building, nothing, no matter what you do that shit will never go back in production.

>>16666874

>Because most of /v/ is underage or just-past-teenage consoleniggers and ex-consoleniggers who are now steamniggers.

I'd rather be a consolenigger than a PCuck obsessed with decades old games and pixelshit indies.

>>16662444

I like making more "open" strongholds if the map allows it with gates and walls that are full of archers and crossbowmen that cutoff the major chokepoints.

>>16662478

>crusader broke the balance

that was crusader extreme, the original is far better

>>16666910

LIONS ARE ATTACKING MY LORD

>>16666968

>Most of the maps are too small

Agreed, map design shit the bed especially in Freebuild where you start with full tech and must rush these things to prevent unhappiness rape. We can always download custom maps but that's entirely hit or miss.

>Crime bug

Never had that happen to me. Works on my machine.

I am terrible at the military portion of this. It took me five tries to defeat the pigs fortress so I could escape through the marsh.

>>16671779

The pig missions can be difficult, one in particular is insanely frustrating if you don't understand the enemy AI.

>>16671880

You mean give them a path into your keep lined with traps, boiling oil, and ranged units?

>>16672447

I don't understand the idea of having base assaults with limited soldiers when it's a game about running your own strongholds. It's like playing handegg and playing checkers at half-time.

As I start playing this old-school classic of a game to remember the good old times, this thread pops up.

This game hasn't lost it's magic. Bought Crusader and 1 on Steam instead of trying to locate the disc I burned them onto like 8 years ago.

>>16662444

>Played Crusader first

>Really liked the game but the meta was always retarded

>Never bothered with the original

>The HD version comes

>They release the original first

>give it a try

>Holy shit, the game looks beautiful

>green fields instead of barren shitty deserts

>gameplay is actually about siege and defend instead of just cutting production lines

>no shitty mercs that undermines actual army

I noticed Stronghold Crusader HD fixed a lot of those problems in crusader, but the original is still better, it's how stronghold was inteded to be played.

>>16668028

I thought you couldn't build so far from your stronghold and so close to the pole.

>>16673954

On some maps it's not quite as picky about building so close to the road signs. Probably because you don't get attacked in free build.

The Pig is now chicken feed. I don't think I am ever going to play the campaign again simply because of that mission. That was incredibly frustrating trying to get the soldiers to behave, at one point I slowed the game down to the slowest setting so I could micro manage them effectively.

>>16674358

Serves the fuck right for what he did to your uncle

>>16674358

I usually just slow down the game when I need to, even if it's for casuals. On hard you need A LOT of micromanagement, sending a bunch of archers to a tower spreads them way too much even if there's still room for more archers in the tower,

>>16662444

Are there any games /v/ actually likes that were made after the year 2005?

>>16674420

The real thing that pissed me off was when I would send them to dig up the moat they would try to dig up the entire moat instead of just the local area.

>>16674437

The ones that were made to be good games, and not cash grabs with DLC, and virtue signaling up the ass.

>>16674437

Vanquish, EDF, Nioh, Nier?

>>16674440

>The real thing that pissed me off was when I would send them to dig up the moat they would try to dig up the entire moat instead of just the local area.

Oh yeah, dunno if you finished that siege mission where you have to dig a moat near a bunch of fucking crossbows and your army is really limet. I had to cheese that mission to one side. Fuck.

>>16674456

Carving a Path is the mission.

>>16674456

That was two missions before defeating the pig I think. The one where you have to defeat all the enemies then escape into the swamp.

>>16674443

>that weak jap shit

>not eastern euro/slavnigger/turkroach shit like STALKER, 7,62 High Calibre, ArmA, Silent Hunter, Mount&Blade, Kingdom Come(somewhat debated), Mafia, factorio

Moving on to stronghold crusader now. I've never bothered with completing the entire campaign trail so I'll do some of that first. Might change my name to spurdoe spardae the III, my race to mudslime, and spam nothing but slaves, horsearchers, and crossbowman.

fun fact 2: before the hd patch for both stronghold 1 and crusader came out, it was possible to copy a map (for example a story map (mission15.map)) over to the save folder and rename it from *.map to *.sav . From there the map will be available in the in-game map editor save list. now you are able to manipulate the map to your liking and also see special stuff that is not available in regular build mode. for example in stronghold 1, i think it was map 12 or 13, you have to take over a castle from the snake or the rat by killing all the enemy troops. after that the game switches it's behavior from troops only mode to full castle building mode with a newly spawned king. go make a copy of this map, save it under a different name and recreate your own custom map out of it. saving it will not normally save it over the previously created copy *.sav but instead overwrite the real *.map counterpart if you didn't changed the map name in the in-game editor. i'm unsure if it is still possible with the hd version, because i tried it to long ago and can't remember it completely

>>16666910

>but everything past that is a complete and utter trainwreck

what happened?

>>16677126

Stronghold was turned into a mobile game for one.

What is a better strategy 1vs1 computer player that doesn't involve bum rushing them with archers whose weapons you bought at the market place?

>>16678136

just turtle, the AI is retarded as fuck

Some of these maps are incredibly annoying. Especially the ones that saddle you with an AI partner who is basically dead weight.

From what I've played so far the AI seems to play like this

>the Rat

Basically retarded. Only used spearmen+archers, no siege, and his base is shoddy and sometimes full of holes

>the Snake

One of the only AIs that might fuck you up if you have not prepared proper defenses because of his liberal use of firestarters/slaves. Makes a pretty cool if not very functional base that is sometimes shaped like an 'S', and uses siege weapons plus ladders.

>the Pig

Uses better units, and makes a pretty cool base. But like the others is trivial to beat once you have even just ten crossbowman for defense.

>The Wolf

Builds an absolutely enormous base which when completed is great, but is vulnerable to slave rushes starting fires for a long time unless the game gives him 10k+ gold to build it quickly. Fields siege weapons, and powerful armored units. Typically he is the only one useful against an enemy because of his absurd fortress.

>Richard the lionheart

Would be powerful since he uses good siege weapons and powerful units, but packs his base too close together so fires can leap over his walls starting a fire that can last for 20-30 minutes. Not very aggressive, and pretty useless.

>Sultan what'shisname

Not as useless as the rat since his base is better, and he fields armored mercenaries. Still very weak, and easily beaten by small armies of archers.

>The Scorpion/Jackal

Despite not using the most powerful units is probably the most powerful arab lord. has a decent base with loads of archers, and uses siege with many mercenary types.

>Saladin

Would be the most powerful arab lord if not for his base being a tinder box. Despite using large towers with siege weapons, and moats all you need is a 100-150 slaves(500-750 gold) and set some of his buildings outside his walls on fire. His whole base will be on fire for the rest of the game.

Okay I am at my wits end. I have four missions where I can't do anything because I am constantly getting attacked from all sides, and only have 2000 gold while everyone else gets 8k plus. How the fuck am I supposed to do this when I can't construct anything due to enemies being too close, or assaulting me from all sides with catapults?

>>16691646

turtle up, spend all your gold on a mix of archers and crossbowmen and dig a trench arround your keep bonus if you ar able to get a gatehouse up with a drawbrige otherwise just cheeze and delete part of your moat when you send pesants out to get shot in exchange for wood. weather the rush and then build your economy. sometimes you can build a dinky little fort with some economy inside the walls but abusing the fact they cant just knock down your keep while you are in it is the name of the game 9/10

>>16696975

I actually already moved on but thank you. I found some advice on stronghold haven, and then instead of building my towers ahead of my keep for protection I built them right nest to my keep instead. It went from frustratingly hard to piss easy.