How to make estates work ?

[Richie]

What do i have to do to get a fully working estate (or is it called village?)

[The Holy Ghost - Its Fight Night]

Estates have to be asigned to an NPC player. To capture the estate you need to add a condition for its capture in the scenario editor part of the map editor.

I havn't done this yet so thats all I know atm. I will try and find out for you when I create a test AI map in a bit

[Sir Gareth the Ganjagrinder]

I just started a match on a new map I have made, and have only placed the keeps and the village halls yet. While my AI enemy already started to build up his economy, the estates did nothing - which makes me think you have to build up their economy in the editor.

Will test that!

[The Holy Ghost - Its Fight Night]

I think estates exist purely to be captured (could be wrong though)
However. you could make them an AI oponent instead and add a condition that if you kill their lord. Then everything they have, becomes yours

[Micha!]

The neutral villages need to be build in the map editor. Also it's important to mark their area and place the neutral castle tower.

[Puepuevortex]

You need to build a town hall instead of a castle keep :)

[Sir Gareth the Ganjagrinder]

Right, I think it's quite handy to place a soldier spawn building too - don't know what they are called in english. There are three types (infantry, ranged, cavalry) and they defend the county against invaders. After capturing the county, they are marked in your colour and still defend the county. Makes the whole thing more fun!
You need to place everything, that you want the county to have, in the editor since they won't build up themselves. I used this in a selfmade map with 4 counties: 2 have swamps and produce tar (?), the other two produce beer. So occupying the first one is a defensive advantage, whereas capturing the county that produces beer is rather an offensive advantage (beer = people like you more = spawn faster OR pay more tax, both is good for building an army).

[Puepuevortex]

Right, but a village hall plus ressource building plus carter post is enough. You don't need a village guardhouse :)

[kpetka]

This is pretty old, you have to tell the carter what to haul, you do this in the objects tab in the top right corner, click the carter, then move the mouse to the top right to reveal the objects, the carter should be named, now you can tell it what to deliver, you do this for each carter.

A Tale of Two Cities is a skirmish map with two cities two villages each, plus 4 player castle estates for online play, the map can be found in the downloads at strongholdnation.co.uk, check it out to see what you can do with a village.

You don't have to place a village guard house, you can place walls and towers and gates, when you take the village use them with your own troups, they can not be fixed or rebuilt though.