I do absolutely agree to robinhood90s last 2 posts. His ideas are great, but then it should also be important, how the troops formation is. ( close together or wide apart).I also agree, that it is time for a new graphic engine and a collision detection.
Sorry for my bad english, i am from Germany.

Robinhood90 wrote:

QUOTE:
LyCkEtyOwNz wrote:No bad ides but when i see that 80% of all stronghold legends player cant handle that few easy basics on stronghold legends i donīt think they can handle all this stuff. For me as pro gamer its ok but for low player no way way to complex for them.

My suggestions were changes in battle calculations. It would probably change the strategy some, and how it plays out, but that doesn't make it more complex to control.
A big main difference, is like shooting arrows vs an enemy. Here their health doesn't slowly reduce, and then all of a sudden all die at same time. Instead they have a chance to get killed, so usually you will kill more in the beginning and harder to kill the last ones, as now enemies aren't that clustered.
Well the buildings harder to tear down, part makes it a bit harder to rush in with a few melee soldiers and destroy everything, but I wouldn't say it's hardcore if you need sieges (or fire) to really tear down buildings. It is after all more realistic.

I remember when I weren't very old, and played stronghold crusader, I always built up a giant army of swordsmen, and my attacks were nearly all swordsmen. I fought against a caliph, and had almost 1k swordsmen ready to attack. The caliph din't have many troops, but all my 1k swordsmen died before reaching the keep (almost all by fire).
Figured I needed to rework my strategy, so found out if I used plenty of catapults, lvling his town, then moving in with some cheap troops, to make em burn their fire. Wait for it to go away, while battering them with catapult fire, and then rush in with macemen, headed directly to the lord. Macemen can be extremely efficient taking out a lord.
I guess my point is, I was punished for not handling tactics, and for that I got crushed even though I had a far more supreme army.
Now should it be that way, or should they have fixed this so that won't happen? I think it should be that way.

I don't like the speed of units though. All units should have a base speed. Normal walk speed for heavily armored troops, to light jogging for ligh-armored troops.
All troops have a stamina bar, and they can be put in run mode which makes their speed much faster, but that consumes stamina. The lightly armored ones run faster than the heavily armored ones, but all run faster than any base speed. Stamina regenerates slowly over time.
In the heat of battle swordsmen can actually run towards an opponent instead of using several minutes. What it does though, is that they take much longer time to place out on the battlefield, while the faster ones have great mobility, to for example harass their opponents.
Swordsmen will of course not be almost immune against arrows anymore.[/quote]

Welli hope firefly makes something good with sh3 i played all Stronghold games on a top lvl but all i can say is that i sadly saw in the last years allways ppl that not even got the basics of the game.

And when firefly dont make a good gamebasic i dont think sh3 will be good again like sh2 and shl

LyCkEtyOwNz wrote:Welli hope firefly makes something good with sh3 i played all Stronghold games on a top lvl but all i can say is that i sadly saw in the last years allways ppl that not even got the basics of the game.

And when firefly dont make a good gamebasic i dont think sh3 will be good again like sh2 and shl[/quote]

Well, what can be difficult, especially in stronghold 2 is setting up a solid economy. The warfare itself, is a completely different manner.
I don't really understand what your point is. You speak of gamebasics, and that most couldn't understand this in the old ones (as a bad thing), then speaking if firefly dont make good gamebasics like in sh2 and sh1, it won't be good.

Anyways, like I said these are changes in warfare part of the game to make it more realistic.
Personally I found sh2 quite hard on early stage of a skirmish. I haven't played it very much, but had problems setting up fast a economy and getting in troops. Example, had start on knight, me with 750gold enemy with 250. Settingu up all the necesarry resource thingies consumes almost all of the resources, and when I barely start begin getting troops they already have lots of outlaws running about.
They can quikly take me then, but if I manage it through this, and set up solid walls, they've got no chance at all.

Sh2 was of course the best sh currently when there would be no bugs.

But so far the basic on sh2 was great...

Dear Firefly Studios,
I have been playing Stronghold 2 for a while and there are some improvements I think are necessary to the game. Since I don't think you are going to release a new patch, maybe you could use some suggestions if you are planning to release Stronghold 3 in the future.
The main defect (it becomes much evident when playing online) is that ATTCKING IS WAY TOO EASY. Who attacks first has a 99,9% chance to win, no matter who the best player is.
The following is a list of the main causes (IMHO) of the issue:
1) Castle walls and towers are too fragile. Catapults and trebuchets can destroy a huge castle in a matter of minutes, if not seconds. Walls crumble like they were made of short pastry or they were hit by a cannon.
A much stronger (and higher) version of walls could be added to the menu.
With current walls, ladders and siege towers aren't useful, since it's much easier to disintegrate a wall than trying to climb it.
2) Walls are too low, when compared to real castles.
3) Trebuchets are way too powerful and with a too long range. A few trebuchets,protected by cats and a few knights, can destroy the best castle in a very little time.
The strength of real trebuchets consisted in the capability to throw things INSIDE the castles and threaten the inhabitants; most walls were way too hard to break, so it was invented a way to bypass them.
4) Cats are way too tough to break and allow players to bring dozens of catapults and ballistas just under the enemy walls. The defender has no effective way to break them and defeat is a matter of seconds.
Besides, many cats (and catapults and ballistas) can occupy the same place in the field and behave like a single, everlasting unit. Maybe treating war machines like structures with collision boxes and the like could solve the issue.
Besides, catapults, ballistas, archers, etc firing when under a cat should damage the cat itself; projectiles passing through a wooden structure is not very realistic.
In middle ages (and earlier times) cats and vineae were build to protect troopers (allowing to approach castles in order to cover moats, dig under walls or attack gates), but had no use to protect catapults.
5) Siege engines are made of wood, so they sould be prone to be set of fire when hit by flaming arrows, just like all the other wooden structures of the game and just like it happened in real sieges.
6) Maybe towers could cost much more stone but should be higher, much more resistant to attacks and offer much more protection to soldiers.
Arrow slits are not very useful since a single stone landing in the middle stairs of a tower makes archers fly away, even if they are supposed to be protected by the tower's wall.
7) Siege engines no more requiring stone to work did not seem a big improvement to me; in fact, it seems to me drawback in terms of realism and playability. Siege engines were already too cheap in terms of gold; they cost no honor, neither stone. This way, players are allowed to build HUNDREDS of catapults, often occupying the same spot in the battlefield,acting as single, unstoppable steamroller.
8) Mantlets not placeable on towers is another big drawback IMHO (it could be solved very easily).
9) Kinghts are a great unit, but they cannot charge (a speed boost when given the order to attack an enemy within a given range). Besides, they fight with a sword even when they are mounted on horses. Spears and lances were instead the main weapons of knights.
A regiment of knights armed with lances, charging at full speed against a target was the 'atom bomb' of late middle ages on the battlefield (in pitched battles).
10) Tunnels could be used to take troopers inside an enemy castle instead to break structures. They should not be prone to be targeted by enemies, since they are holes, not structures (instead, they could be prone to be covered by enemy engineers, for example). Obviously engineers digging should be targetable as usual.
11) Gates. Gates occupy a lot of space but they are as tough as short pastry. Siege rams can pulverize a giant gate in a few seconds. Rams were built to break the door, it's highly unrealistic they can destroy the whole structure (made of stone).
They should simply able to break the door (i.e., it remains open until it is repaired, allowing enemies to enter the castle as if they had conquered the gate). But not the whole building.
12) Structures like barracks, lady's apartment, gates, engineers'guild etc cannot be repaired. You have delete them and build a new one if they get damaged. I think tehy should be able to be repaired just like towers.

In general, I think the game should be much more SLOW and sieges much LONGER and hard fought, both on the defender's and the attacker's side. In stronghold 2 (online) 99% sieges last less than 2 minutes, with the defender totally helpless against cats and catapults, no matter how well his castle is built.
Besides, the main goal of sieges was usually to conquer (acquire) a castle, not to raze it to the ground. A pile of rocks was not useful to anyone.

Thank you for reading my long and boring letter.
Kind regards,
Lady Ivana

I think that the castle are too small and catapults can always destroy them in a few minutes with cats, and this is important for a game like stronghold. So I think that stronghold castels are too simple. The structures should be able to repair like towers by engineers . Now let's talk about troops: Every troop should can walk and charge and have some stamina , but heavy troops should have low stamina so charge very slow. Then knights should take a spear on the horse and should charge with very much power. That's all folk

Playful

This is in response to Lady Ivana,
I read through most f what you put and i agree on the historical level. However, in a game setting theres only so much you can do with the system. Now i agree rams are very powerful against gates, yet you must take into account they are extremly slow and can easily be taken out by crossbow, and a small group of pikemen, Also the best counter to the gate is the moat.

As for the other items such as building height, could be a possibility to the game. However, not a major concern to the actual game. What i would like to see however is more a Lego like construction for the stone castles. Start with a row and build up. This could be a great way to customize castles to the player. Could also allow gates to be built on walls to allow multi level walls.




Now for my own views, I think the next game should really break down the already split up economic buildings and realy give the towns and citys a custom feel. I would like to see many more buildings and structural changes to the game play.
My personal thoughts are Chicken Pens, (eggs for bread production)Arrow Production, to add with bow production for a cool ammunitions addition. Clothing buildings for trades, Salts and Spice buildigns. There could be dozens. Which some might find daunting to the game but others would feel a freedom to really build your own city.
Take the wheat fields. Only used for bread, But you could make a change where the wheat is also use to feed the cows.for dairy.

Id also like to see more military formations and tactical actions but not much.
Day, Night cycles, to help with balances in economics. make food in the day but at night it only goes down. Riding us of the massive food issues.
and above all.
BIGGER MAPS. I would rather buy a huge graphics card then play nother round where the enemys towers can hit you at your keep. In reference to stronghold 1- and crusdaer, id like a size of about 600x600 or up too 1000x1000, make us trave to our enemy, alows our lands to really spread out. Sims 3 was a huge game map wise so im sure there are many pc's capable of such a graphics pull.

fine tune the graphics capabilities to newer stuff, and perhaps a new threat to the villages, Natural disaters, Flooding, plague, freezing fields. somthing to really complicate things.

Hello, all . . .

I may be coming a bit late to this party, but I'll throw in a few thoughts anyway. Though I don't know what can be easily achieved from a programmer's perspective, here are some of my wishes:

In general, while the the game and editor are mostly excellent, I'd like to see them improved even more:

>multiple versions of the same building for variety
>variable wall height & strength
>keeps that can be destroyed
>moats that are dug, as in SH1 & SHC
>choose your lord's color, appearance, etc.
>perhaps there could be a "campaign mode" for your own character
>an easy way to create your own mods within the game itself
>ruins available to be placed or easily created
>overhaul of ship mechanics (ability to attack and be attacked by ships / more waypoints for ships / cargo capabilities / another ship style or two)
>adjust some of the unit strengths & capabilities (knights, in particular, seem too strong, especially when they can be so easily re-horsed)
>more flora, fauna and terrain (especially higher mtns) options
>bridges that can be built over any chasm depth (without having to do editorial gymnastics)
>for that matter, take many of the other user-created "tricks" and make them easy to put into the game
>the ability to place markers on buildings, walls, towers, etc. so that they don't have to remain undefended after the original troops are gone
>larger map sizes could be good (perhaps there's a way to stitch several together as is possible with images in Photoshop?)

Obviously, there are as many opinions as players, but I would make one caution: whatever is done, don't over-complicate the gameplay, as seems to be the rule for new versions of old games. I, for one, don't particularly want to micromanage a complex economy. If anyone was ever a fan of Master of Orion, you'll know what I mean.

Odyss

i am very happy about sh 3 ,i really want bigger maps 1000&1000 or bigger and just a little smaller buildings because in Sh 2 its verry annoying because you cant build a huge city(because of the 3d option) and of course new units like:
1 Knights with spears(on horse)
2 'Ranger' (archer) they can be invisible in the forest(near the trees) only if they dont attack or an enemy is not very close to them(great ambush)
3 heroes like Robin Hood or Lancelot etc.(dont need to have special powers only look great and be stronger than other units)
4 i would really like to add some boats dosnt matter how they look just to have them(not like in Sh 2 when i have one in the campaing)
I really want in Sh 3 that on the map editor you can move and attack with your units like in sh1,sh crusader..)dont konw why you cant do that in Sh 2
And some new buildings: like a hospital to heal injured units or an arena where not just mounted knights are gulfing but the knights macemans etc are fighting to the dead.i would really like that the queen and the king to have a child and after 2 hours 3 hours much or less playing the child to become adult and be the powerful unit in the game(off course it will cost many resourses like weapons food and many other)
im wainting respods(srry for bad english)

almost forgot
a morning day night winter snowing raying autumm spring i men to rain to snow etc