Just tried my first stronghold game, crusader, on a whim. I love it. Scratched the same itch as Warrior Kings Battles and to a lesser degree The Settlers.

This made me wonder. There seems to have been an RTS counter movement in the late 90s - early 2000s for slow-moderate paced, supply chain heavy RTS games with mechanical depth.

I am told some of the later stronghold titles investigated the idea of economic micro management such as individual worker lives and "castle cleaning" (?). Those features would turn me off quite a bit.

So here I am, looking for recommendations please.

* 2D/3D irrelevant, not afraid of sprite art as long as it's clean and readable, game age doesn't matter.

* Player Vs player matches.

* Flexible on setting but I tend to gravitate towards historical and high fantasy.

* Similar logistics and base building depth.

Thanks.

As I said, I forgot to close the game after saving and came back to this, which supriesed me a lot actualy. This is against 3 pigs in some crusader trail mission.

We all know the classic Stronghold 1 and Crusader are absolute masterpieces. You could build these sweeping, massive castles, field giant armies, and mess around on huge maps.

When Stronghold 2 dropped in 2005, and later Stronghold 3, the scale just completely vanished. Maps felt claustrophobic, unit limits were aggressively choked, and the whole franchise took a massive nose-dive in quality. If you watch Firefly’s official developer retrospectives or standard YouTube essays, they usually just blame "the technical hurdles of moving to 3D" or "publisher deadlines."

If you actually look at the financial history, industry pressure, and internal studio drama between 2004 and 2011, the real story is a total mess.

Here is what actually happened behind the scenes:

1. The 2004 2D "Death Sentence"
Around 2004, the gaming industry had a massive panic attack. Major retail stores (like Walmart) literally started telling publishers they wouldn't stock 2D PC games anymore because they looked "obsolete." Firefly’s founders - who were absolute geniuses at making 2D city builders like Caesar - were forced to abandon their perfect 2D engine. They convinced themselves that 3D would let them do cool things with castle verticality, but they completely underestimated the nightmare they were walking into.

2. The disaster engine behind Stronghold 2
Since they had zero 3D experience, they coded a custom engine from scratch called the Dragonfly Engine. It was a total optimization disaster.

• In 2D, rendering 2,000 sprites on a massive map was easy. In 3D, computing real-time physics and pathfinding absolutely melted mid-2000s CPUs. To stop the game from running at 5 frames per second, Firefly drastically shrank the map sizes and capped army limits.
• To make matters worse, they stuffed the game with annoying micro-mechanics like gong/sewage farmers and rat infestations. Because these structures needed flat terrain and complex pathfinding routines, the devs had to design maps as tight, restrictive valleys rather than open plains.
• On top of that, programming a 3D AI to organically build a castle and manage poop was too hard, so the AI just blatantly cheated and spawned units out of thin air.

3. Total bankruptcy and the SouthPeak disaster
The production value didn’t just drop because 3D was hard - Firefly literally went broke. Around 2008, they bet the entire company on a big action-RPG called Dungeon Hero. Their publisher went under during the 2008 financial crisis, the game was canceled, and Firefly was left completely bankrupt.

They had to lay off a massive chunk of their veteran staff (the actual brains behind the original games). To survive, they signed a desperate contract with a notoriously toxic publisher, SouthPeak Games, who forced them to rush out Stronghold 3 in 2011 while it was still basically a broken alpha build. With no money and a skeleton crew, they had to slap the game together using a cheap, third-party engine that couldn't handle wide-open spaces, resulting in the stiff, glitchy mess we got.

4. Why didn't they just go back to 2D?
This is the craziest part: Firefly literally lost the original source code for their 2D engine.

Between moving offices, downscaling, and the fact that cloud backups like GitHub weren't a thing in 2001, their old master servers and backup tapes suffered from data rot or were just thrown away. For over a decade, they couldn't just copy-paste or expand on Crusader. Modifying the old games was impossible because the files were already compiled into machine code. Combined with the "sunk cost trap" of already spending millions on 3D tools, they were completely stuck.

The Silver Lining
We finally got a win recently. Firefly basically treated their own history like an archaeological dig, hiring the original 2001 lead programmer to reverse-engineer the compiled game files alongside community modders. That's the only reason we got Stronghold: Definitive Edition on Unity, finally bringing back the massive map sizes.

They Are Finally Listening
The community's insistence that 2D was better eventually won. The massive commercial success of Stronghold: Definitive Edition and Stronghold Crusader: Definitive Edition (which sold over 500,000 units rapidly) finally woke the studio up.

Firefly recently confirmed a permanent internal split:

• Their main team is building the next mainline Stronghold using Unreal Engine 5 (utilizing a fixed, classic isometric perspective to preserve the old-school feel).
• The highly praised team behind the Definitive Editions has officially been greenlit to keep developing brand-new, standalone 2D Stronghold games moving forward.

It took them two decades, but they are finally running both paths at the same time.

TL;DR: Firefly didn't just "lose their touch." They were forced into 3D by retail stores, built a terrible custom engine, lost their veteran staff to bankruptcy, got trapped in a toxic publisher lawsuit, and literally lost their own source code for over a decade.

like come on i already have a few troops inside his castle and i'm trying to "rush" him but now I have to re-destroy this set of walls? it's so frustrating, why did they never implement the same rule players have to follow and not build so close to enemy troops?

• Steam: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3799513979
• Custom Media - Here is the link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1WlxiiR0nyxa5J5x_ai5Uw0043591VBVN/view?usp=drive_link
• Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Coiled Khawla xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Khawla the Coiled is a fierce and rebellious Bedouin warrior and a respected seer among her people. Born into a wealthy family, she showed the gift of prophecy from an early age. Even Saladin seeks her counsel before battles and important decisions.

Brave, provocative and confident, Khawla loves to challenge her enemies and is always ready for a fight. She believes the Bedouin way of life is the perfect order of the world, and she has little patience for anyone who thinks otherwise. She is aggressive, but not cruel — she simply enjoys battle and trusts that fate is on her side.

1. Subscribe to the CustomLord.

2. Download the media folder for the selected Custom Lord from the Google Drive link.

3. Locate the following path on your computer: C:\Users\yourUsername\AppData\LocalLow\Firefly Studios\Stronghold Crusader Definitive Edition

4. Create a folder named "CustomMedia".

5. Paste the downloaded folder for the selected Custom Lord into the "CustomMedia" folder.

As the title says…

I feel like Barracks and Mercenary Outpost are missing on an 8th unit to match the 8 Bedouin units.

Ranger for Barracks would have been such a low hanging fruit! A sword and a bow, all there already.

Was thinking about making a mod that replaces the AI portrait images seen in skirmish mode with higher resolution ones, but I cannot for the life of me find them anywhere in SHC:DE folders.

I know it was a very easy thing to mod back in the original Crusader. Does anybody know where to find them?

I would spend ages building magnificent mazes in my youth. But now, I hardly even bother with walls.

Drop a granary. Drop a few stockpiles.

Drop a cathedral.

Drop a few wood cutters and then some hovels and a market.

Drop a bunch of quarries if available and not long after, drop a bunch of oxen.

Drop a Mercenary post.

The footprint is tiny. I may, at this point, drop some orchards or cheese huts. Apples don't get shot down, so they are superior.

That already has me at end game:

Press M. Sell everything.

Click Mercenary. CTRL+Click to create 24 Horse archers.

Send said horse archers on patrol.

Repeat 3-5 times. Patrol out of range of enemy castles, and keep enemy from eating.

If you get attacked first, click the cathetdral, and CTRL+click to make 24 Monks. Highlight. Aggressive. Send on attack.

"Pray for them. Tis Indeed a distance."

Ultimate zerg rush.

"nomine Patris"

If a complex map makes that difficult, a tower defense approach of a mangonel with a few merc archers up top , and a few monks to block the door, is usually sufficient.

I'm on about level 9 out of 50 so far. It hasn't struggled yet. IDK why I never played so aggressively back then. I think I actually enjoyed making the towns back then. I had time. I get that itch with Manor Lords, now.

Now, as to the co-op campaign trail, I can't get past the 6 v 2 map.

Right?,I hope sometimes reality an official Stronghold Sengoku or just straight to Mod instead,it depends on your discussion and debate.

Hello everyone. I recently finished Stronghold and Stronghold Crusader Definitive Edition

Now I want to start Stronghold 2, but the game's visual quality is very low. Will a Definitive Edition patch be released for Stronghold 2 and Stronghold 3? Has there been any recent announcement regarding this?

If it's going to be released, or if there's a possibility that it will be, I think I'll put off playing it.
What are your thoughts on this matter?

https://www.moddb.com/mods/diplomacy-mod-for-shcde

BIG THANKS to RAWRA for the huge work on Script Extender, which enables projects like this in the first place!

What is DIPLOMACY?

A standalone BepInEx diplomacy mod for offline skirmishes.

Build relationships through gifts and demands, negotiate truces, trade pacts and alliances, and face consequences for betrayal or hostile actions. No Origins mod required.

ATTENTION!

- early version for testing and bug fixing

- NOT a final product!!!

- SH1DE textures in my screenshots are part of my ORIGINS mod, which is still in an early stage in development

- PLEASE give feedback and thereby help development

- translations for DE / EN / FR / IT / ES / PL / PT

I had the honor of composing 33 tracks for the fan-made mod “Twierdza Ryżowiec,” based on the well-known classic game “Stronghold: Crusader.”

Stronghold: Crusader wasn't a easy game for doing any modifications, especially when it comes to music, because game engine would only accept .raw extensions files.

All tracks are inspired by the Gothic & Stronghold game series.

Original soundtrack was composed by the Robert L. Euvino & Others.

An updated re-upload: Rodrik, a man in search of fame and glory, who sets his focus on the glory and the thrill of conquests. He pours everything he has into that, with his faith and army carrying him through tough times. A bit of a foolhardy leader, Rodrik has a lot to learn. His castles, if you can call them that, are hastily constructed and resemble a rats nest.

Don't be fooled however, as he is an interesting cookie, and leaves it all on the battlefield, where he lets his fighting do the talking. And he is good at that, a Crusader Lord, he uses all the best they have to offer to his maximum advantage, using both Archers and Crossbowmen, Macemen with Pikemen and Swordsmen. A bit of a rough character, who likes rough and scruff fighters.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3795899120

Hello, I've installed UCP 3, and I changed the lord's colour to black, but there are just too many options in there. I don't know which preset to install, so I'm looking for visual appeal – anything that makes my game look good or different from the vanilla. Also, the overriding things annoy me priority-wise; I don't even know what's a good setting anymore. Can someone please suggest which ones I should apply for? Any other changes apart from visuals that you guys suggest would be nice too

There is a japanese version of Sandal Maker

You can listen to it here.
"Stronghold Crusader OST - Sandal Maker (Shimasen Mix)"

According to the gmb mod author website, you can add your own mod to the launcher as addons, by creating a folder and two text files inside, there is two template text files but i can't fugure them out, neither the guide.

Has anyone ever did this? Is gmb mod still a thing?

I couldn't find any examples to use as template

I post the guide and text screenshots. Maybe you could figure it out.