First off, is it legal to hack the game files to change gameplay statistics?

Second, if so, then how do I edit stats for units in SH3? Is there someone here who knows how this program uses data and where it stores it?

Lastly I could easily do this in SH Legends because the gamerules file does not store it's data in Hex Values, so will someone point me in the right direction or place to begin changing the data because so far it has been guessing games. I understand what the Hex numbers are and how they relate to ASCII, I just don't know how they are used by the program.

One of the few good things about Stronghold 3 is that it is very easy to mod. All the game scripting and programming can be found in the .v files in stronghold3/assets and opened with a text editor. You'll need this to be able to open the .v files themselves: http://www.mediafire.com/?e6nfc36cgdvc3wj

As for the legality, as long as you don't go online with any modded files you should be fine (although you'll probably just get OoS errors if the two gamerules.xml files are different)

Although Stronghold 3 is not VAC enabled I recommend not to mod.

Thanks if you know how to mod stronghold 2 I would appreciate that as well, I do not intend to change anything but unit stats which I am familiar with and I can keep the balance and game performance.

I have managed to make all the changes I intended successfully except for one. I somewhat new to scripting, but I have always got by with simple changes. Last thing I am doing is giving men at arms a sword for melee. I have him with the sword instead of the dagger after using his spear, and I have him using an alternate slash animation. I would like to add a few more animations for him to use, but how do I add more animations for him to use?

Ensrick how is progress with the mods? Your posts are helpful and rich with ideas. I too have some ideas of my own. I would like to balance the trading. Everything is expensive when you buy goods but when you sell goods, you sell them dirt cheap. Also fix some issues with some particular workers like quarries and veg growers where they just stop working out of nowhere. A work around to this is just putting the industry to sleep then reactivate it again.

I could take a look at the quarry and veggie scripts, I did change the price of all the goods. I simply halved the price things were bought for and I made them sell for the same amount. I tried it and it worked well thus far. I do not know if I can fix bugs as I am only familiar with scripting from modding other games. When I complete the changes, is there a way I could upload the mod?

You can just upload to mediafire and create a thread with the link when its done. Although be aware that Firefly is on the works with a patch. At the time of release won't it interfere and mess up the mod's script changes?

Off topic but there was a thread around here of a modder creating a skirmish mode for SH3. Never logged on since. Is this possible? I haven't seen much modding activity with the Stronghold series.

I do not think I will upload the mod until after the next patch at the very least. I was just about to upload the mod when I decided to check one more time to see if I could edit the units speed and everything went to pot. I will have to reinstall the game and try again. Lucifer, why did you recommend I not mod the game and now you're all uppity about mods as soon as I start?

I recommended not to mod the game because there are alot of issues within the game and mods tend to cause more issues. Mod issues combined with the game's native issues can be a problem. It is just nice to see someone who is actually trying to make a difference with the game working on some fixes meanwhile Firefly releases the patch...and I wasn't trying to sound uppity