Stronghold Legends Bugfix/Balance Recommendations

[titanbass1]

Dear Stronghold Legends Community,

Stronghold has been one of my childhood games, a series as a whole that has had such a spark of creativity that I loved so much. I remember opening Stronghold 2 on Christmas, installing it, and getting greeted by the page saying "Merry Christmas, my lord!"

Legends is one of those games that resonated with me the most, which is generally one of the most uncommon answers for "favorite" Stronghold. I do admit I love Crusader just a bit more, but the fantasy element of this game is what made me play this over and over again.

That being said, while I love this game greatly, when I finally purchased this game on Steam and began the replay of the remastered edition, I was a little disappointed. Balance issues where still remaining, the graphics were slightly tweaked, and the new amount of instability on a game that should run smoothly on any PC today made me a little shocked to see. As such, I write this discussion to bring about some changes I would love to see in the game and was wondering what anyone else thought as well...

Bugfixes

1. The AI on accasion will have difficulty deciding to fight between two enemy kingdoms, causing units to move back and forth in one spot.
   
2. Units converted by a vampiric creeper will sometimes run back to the enemy barracks.
   
3. Engineers sometimes have trouble building castles back together again.
   
4. When archers are ordered to attack a unit that requires them to move towards the target, they will run in place before executing their attacks.
   
5. The game does not have a task bar or task manager icon.
   
6. All spell icons have this annoying, faint green square around them. If that could be removed, that would get rid of the eyesore.
   
7. Some buildings have been seen to be missing roofs, especially those from the Arthur faction.
   
8. The music will sometimes have long pauses in between tracks or, on some occasions, will not play at all.
   
9. Rotating buildings in top-down view causes the zoom to be altered as well.
   
10. When having all Knights of the Round Table summoned, not all spells appear, requiring you to use some spells before choosing one you may want to use first.

Stability

1. The game crashes requently, often after winning a game or for no reason at all.
   
2. Load times can be very long with a white screen appearing during the game boot that makes it seem it crashed.
   
3. Alt + tabbing out of the game or pressing the Window's key will also cause the game to crash
   
4. The game suffers from very bad fps drops in places that should not have such drops. I have an Intel i5 6600k and a GTX 960, which should be more than enough to handle this game, and many times I dip under 30, sometimes 15. The engine needs to be recalibrated to allow the game to be run at a stable framerate.

Balancing

1. Most players hate the Giant Demonic Bats for their rediculously overpowered explosive attack. While I personally find them quite a great addition, they are relatively inexpensive for the devastation they cause, even if suicidal. Making them significantly more expensive and possibly reducing the damage they do would make them more balanced (but if soldiers fall out of towers from their explosion, I kinda feel they should die, cause, ya know, gravity...).
   
2. Buildings have a less amount of health compared to other Strongholds. Increasing the health a little might make it fairer so that they don't get one shot by knights.
   
3. The Round Table, the Ice Pit, and the Sorcerer's Tower should be considered a castle structure as all require stone to build, meaning it can only be damaged by seige units. This also will prevent attacking units from decimating the structure quickly.
   
4. Wizards of all three factions seem to be like a second lord, and since they are already so squishy, they should have a health regeneration system like the lord.
   
5. Swordsman and unmounted knights are incredibly slow compared to Stronghold 2 and should have a speed boost.
   
6. Crossbowman fire unrealistically quickly. Their attack speed should like that of Stronghold 1 and Crusader, but they should also have a slight damage boost to justify the decrease in speed.
   
7. Werewolf catapults can target walls, but cannot actually land werewolves on them (even though they can fire overtop walls). Allow werewolves to land on walls, but give them a landing animation (so they don't instantly charge around) and decrease the attack speed of the catapults slightly.
   
8. Dragons are considered the super unit of the game, but the health they have does not justify it. Four archer towers can easily stop a dragon attack. Increase their hp significantly and up the cost to produce them.
   
9. Fire has a problem spreading when using dragons, imps, and especially fire ballista. Allow fire to spread to other buildings. I mean, if a dragon is breathing fire on a hovel for five seconds, I kinda expect the building to catch on fire.
   
10. Allow lords to build up estates like in Stronghold 2. Maybe add small castle structures?
    
11. Vampiric creepers can convert men-at-arms, but not bandits, which are essentially the same unit. Allow them to convert them, or at least give them enough bandit resistance so they can kill bandits.
    
12. Fire drake damage should be increased as well as the range.
    
13. Ice mirrors freezing ability is insanely powerful. Give them a heavy slow ability with a chance to freeze instead. Let the Ice Queen do the main freezing.

Suggestions

Obviously these are not pressing, but would make the game much better and bring in possibly a better audience.

1. Create multiplayer leaderboards and competitions to encourage multiplayer and start a new competative wave of players
   
2. Allow multiplayer gameplay speed to be changed
   
3. Make wizards army killers-their sole purpose to deal as much damage to many units as possible. Currently, the Ice Queen does that well with the freeze and high damage, but Merlin does weaker damage. Make his damage higher with and AoE or make it chain lightning. The sorcerer has a weak fireball that needs to be stronger and increase the fire damage of his attacks.
   
4. Recreate the fighting and visuals inside castle gatehouses, towers, and keeps.
   
5. Increase the camera height when using the top-down view.
   
6. Give Men-at-Arms an option to hold speers for melee combat or throw them. If they fight with spears, give a slight damage boost. I just don't always want 20 spears being thrown at the same target who could get killed by three.
   
7. More castle structure for creativity and a drawbridge so we can put moats under the gatehouse.
   
8. Allow more than four players to play in a match.
   
9. Maybe ox tethers can have workers again, like in all the other games (I don't know how they escort themselves lol)?

Again, I wanted to make this as a community guide, one that others saw as well. If you have any suggestions, things I may have overlooked, or ideas that really don't need balanced or fixed, I would love to know and possibly add them! I know this game was originally made years ago, but I really would just love to see this not as popular Stronghold rise to power. They are still patching Stronghold and Stronghold Crusader after all...

Thanks!
titanbass1

[The Skirmish Lord]

@titanbass1
Thanks for your comments.


Wizards are very powerful and their low health requires you to be careful with them. Giving them regen abilitiy means you don't have to worry about ANY damage in battle as long as he doesn't get killed. Walk him over to a quiet corner and in a few minutes, he's ready to go. That's a huge advantage especially when you consider the damage wizards can do.

If the fires spread like they do in other Stronghold games, the Demons would be overpowering. Slaves, fire throwers, fire balistas, or burning carts can't jump over walls and start everything on fire - Demons CAN so having the fire spread slowly is a must.

I was talking about game balance in general terms when I mentioned the Frost Giants and winning with just specialty units. In a balanced game, players choose which military units to build and how to attack based on their own preferences and the properties those units have.
Fast swordsmen? Why build macemen?
Fires spread quickly? Spam Demons and burn your enemy out in five minutes !

Overall, I don't see any units that severely overpower the others as the game stands now and I think some of your suggestions would disturb that. The bats, however SHOULD be more expensive.

If they're going to do anything with this game, they shoud fix the multiplayer lobby bug

[titanbass1]

@The Skirmish Lord
Whenever the lord regens, it takes a while. I would expect the same for wizards. I would hope the regen would be more than just a few minutes. I think the Ice Queen's damage supports your claim, but I don't know about Merlin or the Sorcerer.

And yeah fire should spread slowly (that is why I said it shouldn't be like Stronghold Crusader, especially with the imps and the wall climbing your brought up), but right now it kinda doesn't spread at all lol (I do admit imps are better at fire igniting/spreading so I will probably review/remove them). That is why I feel fire ballista are so weak and borderline not needed as other units can destroy buildings much quicker. No unit in any game should be useless.

Yes, I do know that each unit should be unique and that balanced gameplay means balanced yet personable army builds, so that swordsman can't be fast to outclass macemen. I hope that when you refer to fast swordsman and spamming demons that you know that the reason I am asking for the changes is not because I have a lack of understanding about balance, but because I feel their function isn't working (like ballista/imps not setting things on fire at all) or they are holding back your army movement just a little too much (not a lot, just a little).

The idea of these changes, the ones we are talking about at least, is to make a slight adjustment. I wasn't asking for a sprinting swordman (that is why we have knights) or an inferno to start when imps arrive. I am fully aware that you shouldn't win the game with just one type of set units and I really am not asking for that.

[titanbass1]

Edit: Removed esate bug as it just naturally takes a while for estates to resume production.

[simolkaw]

Game crashed and give me this - phongShader_TechniqueMacros_11.fx(1,10): error X1507: failed to open source file:'PhongShader_11.fx'

[titanbass1]

引用自 simolkaw：

Game crashed and give me this - phongShader_TechniqueMacros_11.fx(1,10): error X1507: failed to open source file:'PhongShader_11.fx'

Huh, I'm glad that you at least got an error message. Most times my game just crashes without any message. I would recommend sending a support ticket to Firefly with that message attached. But yeah, "Fix the Crashes" is indeed already a demand I put on here for a good reason ha ha.

[Demon of Razgriz]

Are you sure about the alt-tab thing? I was able to alt-tab out with no crashing. Now, I don't know what might be causing that, but I was playing the second campaign mission earlier and alt-tabbed out a couple times with no issues.

[titanbass1]

引用自 -SG1-Shadowscall：

Are you sure about the alt-tab thing? I was able to alt-tab out with no crashing. Now, I don't know what might be causing that, but I was playing the second campaign mission earlier and alt-tabbed out a couple times with no issues.

Yeah I have experienced this issue multiple times. What operating system are you on, just in curiosity? I have heard that Windows 10 (which is what I have) doesn't make this game very stable (or really the game hasn't been updated to be stable).
But just because I said it happens, doesn't mean it happens all the time. I have had times where it didn't crash; however, the crash has occured this way.

[Demon of Razgriz]

引用自 titanbass1：

引用自 -SG1-Shadowscall：

Are you sure about the alt-tab thing? I was able to alt-tab out with no crashing. Now, I don't know what might be causing that, but I was playing the second campaign mission earlier and alt-tabbed out a couple times with no issues.

Yeah I have experienced this issue multiple times. What operating system are you on, just in curiosity? I have heard that Windows 10 (which is what I have) doesn't make this game very stable (or really the game hasn't been updated to be stable).
But just because I said it happens, doesn't mean it happens all the time. I have had times where it didn't crash; however, the crash has occured this way.

I am using Windows 10.

[titanbass1]

@-SG1-Shadowscall Huh, me too. Well, dunno. Guess you are a lucky one ha ha. I'm just reporting what I and others have experienced.

[Demon of Razgriz]

引用自 titanbass1：

@-SG1-Shadowscall Huh, me too. Well, dunno. Guess you are a lucky one ha ha. I'm just reporting what I and others have experienced.

Well, I guess I am lucky in that regard, but it does get annoying when I am launching the game. I see a white screen for like 2-3 mins before the game decides to load. The first time that happened, I thought it crashed or something, but I let it run for a few minutes to be sure and it finally decided to load. I thought that might only be the first time, but no, it happens anytime I launch the game.

[titanbass1]

@-SG1-Shadowscall I get a white screen, but not for that long...I'll add it.