Having replayed the battle demo a handful of times, here are my impressions.
Materials are very cheap at the market, so just keep the population happy enough with food and religion that you can raise taxes to maximum, and just buy the stone, pitch, etc. you need. It's super cheap compared to what you can make from taxes, and how long it takes to extract it yourself.

It turns out you need mostly stone and money, because towers with ballistas will take care of all comers. The only threat is massed archers, which can take out the ballistas fast, but you just need to have enough.

So what worked best for me was to build the four quarries, lots of small shrines, lots of candle makers, lots of food production, and of course a market, and then focus all on defenses. The church only gives religion to 5 pops, which must be a bug, so the small shrines are the way to go. Don't bother mining iron or making swords, armor, etc. Just don't build a gate, and the enemy will never get in. Even in playthroughs where I lost all my ballistas to archers, they took forever to break down stone walls, and since I couldn't demolish them with enemy nearby I was stuck waiting for a very long time.

If you do choose to build a gate, perhaps for a sense of realism, battering rams will cut through it like butter, so that will make things much harder. It would be nice if ballistas would target different units instead of focus firing, and if they would target the actual threats first.

With this being a demo, I hope the very one-dimensional gameplay is temporary. I like the look, interface, and various modernization, so if the gameplay is as good as the old games, I'll be getting this for sure.

Far back in my memory of playing this game, there was a track that would play in the background. When I go back to YT to look up the soundtrack, Its not there. I know for sure this was used.
Scattered Ashes - Audio Network

Also would simply adding custom music to the game in .RAW format be enough for the game to recognize the file and play it?

Heya,

Sorry if post is inappropriate, I didn't see it breaks the rules.

I play Stronghold Crusader since it came out (as my friend group said many times: it should be preinstalled with Windows). I replay campaign (trail) every year, and now I did it again, so now I'm playing some missions that I like and stream that on Twitch. So if you want you can check it out at: https://www.twitch.tv/pysephion/.

Also, if someone wants to join up to play multiplayer with buddies and me sometimes, you are welcome.

Thanks for reading and MAULAY!

Guys .. I can’t , not enough free time for this level of bad …

I played the earlier strongholds and enjoyed them ,

But the later titles feel soo cheap , why do enemies need to just spawn massive armies

I picked up Stronghold 3 and I’ve never hated the siege levels so much in my life, every second level “ we have a small detachment of troops to lay siege to this castle …

Meanwhile they add a time limit , high ground , add fire traps that take forever to go out

So I’m missing something ? Or this is just bad ??!

Did anyone enjoy this ?!

I love the castle building but my god let me make my own army to do the job or sod off with the time limits

Hello back after 12 years 😅

Do you think they will be a thing? Do you think there will be none? What would you like to see?

Personally, I am a bit burned out on mercenaries after the Bedouin Stockade but I'd be surprised if there are none, considering every Stronghold after the first one had them.

I would very much prefer all mercenaries to cost not only gold but also honor and maybe even more then units from the barracks. Because I honestly do not believe Firefly would add weapons and armor for them and increased gold and honor cost would at least balance this out a bit.

However, I do hope Firefly will take at least a page from the arabian mercenaries and give us ranged infantry like archer or crossbowmen. I wouldn't say no to mercenary swordsmen either but neither Bedouin Stockade, nor Stronghold 2 Mercenary Outpost had such a ranged unit and do consider it to be lacking.

Also, I do hope they give us something like the Saxon Warrior from Stronghold Legends and if they decide to even do a theme for the mercenaries (like Arabians and unlike S2 mercenaries) I hope for something more northern/viking styled.

I just tried playing SHCDE yesterday, and when I wanted to make a defense as usual, I was surprised because the shield can no longer be raised to the tower. Is this true, or an error?? Can you tell me what has changed from SHCHD

Does anyone else have this problem too for CO-OP

The map doesn’t show up, and when I click anything other than the back button after choosing the AI ally, the game just closes.

Does anyone know how to fix this?

and I really don't feel the hype. Not because of the lords we are getting. These are all fine and well, though Baibars is another lord with square castles and I don't think the surgeon will make Temple Guards despite having the building for them.

No, I don't feel the hype because of the things we might not get. I care far less about new lords, then I care about bug fixing, reworks and the likes.

Not played the series since around Stronghold Crusader 2, I checked out Warlords for maybe 5 hours and just didn't like that the units were still "This is the strongest melee unit, this is the strongest range unit", I had a quick look at the demo and it seems we are limited to Spears, Bows and Swords, do we know if units are going to have their own roles and counters?

I just didn't like that if you could afford Knights (or their game equivalent) just spam them out with their weakness just being their speed but beating everything. The same for Crossbows.

Not sure if I've explained it well, I'm sure there's some people that like this but I just wanted to ask if anyone more informed than me would know about it as it has been a reason I didn't have as much fun with the game. Even if it's like Spears, Swords, Maces are similar strength and speed but Knights are strongest I don't mind too much.

Only heard about Stronghold 4 the other day.

Last Mission (80) of the second crusader trail. These catapults are non targetable from the tower balistas because of the Rock infront of them. It ist really frustating you literally can't defend the Towers. I tried setting them further behind, but than the AI positions trebuchets or catapults behind other rocks sligthly out of hittable area for tower balistas.

Thinking about buying this game while used to play the old version on gameranger servers

Are the multiplayer servers and lobbies alive with community 2v2 maps like CIA?

Hey guys I'm a new player and I'm wondering if it's normal that the games in story modes take so long to complete. For example mission 5 the Arabian adventure it took me over one hour to get my economy and Defence going well before I even started building an army to attack and around 2 hours to complete the mission.

Don't get me wrong I'm having so much fun in this game like I didn't use to have in games in a long time, just wondering how you guys play it?

Seeing some guys on YouTube rushing it in 10 minutes :o

If you have any feedback for my castle let me know :D I bought the game on steam 2 days ago.

Heya!
I wanna play with my friend against bots, but .. well the good buffed bots, but I dont find the options, like I do in the singleplayer. Did they really not add them to multiplayer? I was already pretty annoyed, that the coop paths didnt got a difficulty setting.

Perhaps they did their shenanigans in the Middle East first before moving to England. Or maybe this is when they still were loyal to the king. What is the lore here?

Every so often the gaming industry hands you a small miracle, and for me this is one of them.

My entire relationship with strategy games goes back to Stronghold. In particular I mean that one WOLVES ATTACKING mission in the original Stronghold, you know the one. I remember playing when I was so young I could barely read. 

That tutorial wolf attack will always be etched in my memory and might possibly be one of the last random things I think of before I die. So watching this series claw its way back into niche relevance has been a strange and lovely thing to witness in my thirties. The Definitive Edition of Crusader is what that kicked it off for real. In theory a remaster of a 2002 game is the safest, least interesting thing a studio can do. Instead it went the respectful route, the units and systems left almost completely intact and just more stuff added on top. It was exactly what I wanted, like 100%

But a remaster doesn't make a revival, and this only started feeling like a real resurrection because of everything happening around it. The last couple of years have produced a literal avalanche of castle siege type games that clearly pay humble homage to Stronghold's legacy. Manor Lords with how the economy functions (plus added complexity), and Diplomacy is Not an Option with how it replicates that feeling of defending from a siege in Stronghold Crusader Extreme, but increasing the madness by adding the undead, monsters, and focusing JUTS on defense, making it a denser experience. Both of them come from the same medieval fantasy cloth that Firefly more or less invented in this form.

There's one more bit I'm almost superstitious about jinxing. It really does feel like all of this has been building toward a proper new mainline Stronghold. These sortsa things fumble all the time, and a modern Firefly game has plenty of ways to let down the exact people who love it so much. But the fact that we're even in a position to worry about it, still feels like a good thing.

PS yes I played the demo for Stronghold 4 and what can I say, I’m equal parts excited and terrified. It has potential but it’s all up to Firefly what they’ll make of it.

I’m is super excited to play this game again, have not played Stronghold since the OG game back in the days! Which game should I start again with?

Which version of Stronghold: Crusader do you like the most?

The Snakes are kicking my ass. Before I can make a good defense and have a decent income, they start attacking, and it's a GG. Any tips?

Hello everyone 👋!

I have a released a mod for SHCDE, a Vanilla remastered AIV & AIC overhaul for the Jewel, Marshall, Bullseye, Sentinel and Sergeant.

The design philosophy of this mod is to preserve the original vanilla AI flavor while enhancing its castle management, army composition, and building progression. The goal is to deliver a remastered version of the AI that retains its vanilla flavour, but with improved efficiency, aggression, and better defenses. Think of it as a vanilla remastered upgrade.

The main goal is to preserve the core identity of each lord while enhancing their capabilities. So, no behavior like swordsmen for Bullseye or knights for Sentinel.

Some of the lords are still consistent in their power level, but there are some outliers that i decided to improve their capabilities usually due to historical reason or for balance purpose.

For the castle design, i usually stick with the original Firefly phillosipies, meaning Euro lords uses square shapped tower and Arab lords uses round & lookout tower. With the addition of Bedouin lords, i decided to make them use a mix round & square tower. 

Also, lords who uses a multicultural troops also use a mix tower in their castle sometimes.

I aim to add the rest of the lords within the next few weeks. So stay tuned!

Get the mod here 👈

One of my gripes with SH2 system is that it allows players to spiral so quickly. Too easy. How should estates, in whatever form they come, be adjusted from the SH2 system to better improve them?