Help! My Lord is a Prisoner!

How to set up a custom scenario map which starts with your own Lord as a prisoner who needs to be rescued. Stronghold Crusader HD 1.41

Not Sure How It Happened

This guide is for a custom scenario game and for map makers, not the player. (It is based on Stronghold Crusader HD Version 1.41)

The story line is that your own Lord has been captured and made a prisoner who needs rescuing at the start of a game.

This guide explains two ways to set this scenario up: as an enemy prison or as a captured castle.

A reverse scenario of the peasants being prisoners and the Lord free is explained in the last section.

An Enemy Prison

In this story line, the village with your Lord’s Keep has been captured and the Keep itself walled off as a prison.

Follow these steps to prepare your map for this scenario.


Place the Keep and build its stockpile. Leave the tax at zero for now.

Place an enemy soldier near the Keep to send your Lord to the roof of the Keep. You'll know why next.





Encircle the Keep in enemy wall. The enemy guards will not tear down their own wall. Place the wall as close to the Keep as it allows (there is a no build zone around the Keep).

Rough the wall in. You'll come back and make it look more like a prison later on.

Erase the enemy soldier after moving him away from the Keep - otherwise you might accidentally erase the Keep as well. (Just build it back if you do.)

Now build the village and farms. Place the granary and the village with its chapel, mill, wells, houses, workshops, tavern and roadways (be creative). Place apple orchards.



Damage the village to mimic the aftermath of an attack. Use enemy pikemen to destroy the buildings. Make sure ALL the houses are destroyed. In the picture below, all the building were destroyed except the well and one granary. You may want to leave a few more buildings.

Be careful in replacing the destroyed buildings with ruins since ruins cannot be later rebuilt. They may get in the way as the game progresses. A few ruins works well.



Set the apple orchards on fire using pitch lines and enemy archers. Place the pitch lines on the edge away from the hut. Be careful not to destroy the hut or the orchard disappears.



Put all remaining farms, huts and workshops outside the prison to sleep (no jobs for peasants).

Now you are ready to finish the prison. Add towers and such. Redo parts of the wall if you want to. This is very important: do not place steps on the inside of wall.



There is really no purpose for a gate in a prison wall except for looks. No one can use it since it stays shut (the nearness of your Lord keeps the gate closed). If your prison gate is a distance away from your Lord, then block the gate with a stone wall so enemy guards will not enter the prison.

Put enemy guards on Stand Ground or Defensive Stance (not aggressive). I like to use macemen as guards; they look the part. NEVER use archers or crossbow men as guards because they will shoot arrows at your Lord and peasants non-stop.

Set enemy patrols on the prison wall and patrols around the prison.


You may want a garrison of enemy soldiers in the old village, or set up large patrols which criss-cross the map, or use swordsmen rather than macemen as guards. Make the prison as strong as your game story wants it.

As the game starts, peasants will gather at fire ring. Have a little food in the granary, but not too much. Set it at half rations. You want the food gone as the rescue ends. Also, have some wood in the stockpile. Of course, the treasury would be empty; stolen by the enemy.

After your rescue party breaks through the prison wall, your Lord will remain on the roof of the Keep until the last enemy guard is dead. The enemy guards should not attack your Lord since they are on Defensive Stance – unless you have some on Aggressive.

Watch out! A small enemy force is heading your way. Now, the work begins.


Q: Why make damaged apple orchards?
A: The apples will be badly needed by the time the rescue is over. Even damaged, the orchards will feed the Keep until new orchards begin.

Q: i want to redo a part of my destroyed village but the ruins don't erase and won't disappear when painted with grass. How do I erase the ruins?
A: Ruins are erased when a larger building is place on top of them and then deleted. The grass returns. I use an enemy cathedral as the larger building. When it is deleted it does not leave block on my stockpile.

Q: How did you create the ruins of the wheat farmers' huts?
A: After the farm was destroyed by the pikemen, I placed a hunter's hut where the farmer's hut once was and had the pikemen destroy that too.

Q: Why make sure that all the houses are destroyed?
A: This reduces the number of peasants appearing around the fire ring and reduces the demand for food at the restart of the Keep.

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A Captured Castle

In this story line, your Lord's castle has been attacked and captured while you were away (where?). None survived except your Lord, who now boldly waits to be rescued.

Follow these steps to prepare your map for this scenario.

Place the Keep and build its stockpile. Leave the tax at zero for now. Build the encircling castle (including gates) with your own block. Place a wall behind all gates (block them).

This is important: do not build any steps on the inside of wall. And do not touch the Keep with a wall. In other words, do not build a way for enemy guards to reach the Keep.

Either inside the castle or outside or both, build the barracks, armory and weapons workshops and build the village with its farms. In the picture below, the weapons center and village are outside the castle. It doesn't have to be. Be creative!



Notice that in this castle, the Keep is ringed by two separate walls. A single wall enclosing the Keep works just as well. It depends on your game story.



Damage the castle and village to look like the aftermath of an attack.

Use enemy pikemen to damage the village, farms and weapons center. In the picture below, everything but a granary, well and two apple farms were destroyed. More could have been left. A couple of ruins were used to replace destroyed buildings.



Apple orchards were damaged by fire using pitch lines and enemy archers with a brazier.




Use an enemy catapult with two engineers to damage the walls and enemy pikemen on defensive stance to take down or weaken towers and gates.




Make sure the Keep is still enclosed after adding damage. Look for the circle symbol above the mini-map.



Place enemy guards. Depending on how damaged your castle wall is, you may need to build a temporary flight of steps against the outside wall to easily place enemy guards on the castle walls and towers.

• Put enemy guards on Stand Ground or Defensive Stance (not aggressive).
  
• I like to use macemen and swordsmen as guards on a castle.
  
• NEVER use archers or crossbow men as guards because they will shoot arrows at your Lord and peasants non-stop.

Set enemy patrols on the castle walls and patrols around the castle. You may want to set long range patrols which your rescue force has to deal with.

You may want a garrison of enemy soldiers in the old village. Make the enemy forces as strong as your game story wants it.



As the game starts peasants will gather around the fire ring. Have some food to hold them until they are rescued. Also have some wood in the stockpile. And bring some gold.

Include some crossbow men in your rescue party. A tower with enemy guards may not be accessible due to damaged walls. The crossbow men take care of that problem. Your Lord will only come down from the Keep’s roof when all the enemy are gone.

Then the work begins!

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Help! My Peasants are Prisoners!

In this story line, your Lord and his Keep are safe and secure but all the peasant workers have been captured and are held in a distant prison by enemy soldiers. They have to be set free before the food in the granary runs out.

There are four main steps to setting up this scenario:

1. Knowing how many peasant beds there are at the start of the game
   
2. Putting everything to sleep
   
3. Building a prison
   
4. Turning engineers into peasants

Follow these steps to prepare your map for this scenario.

Place the Keep and build out its stockpile and place the granary. No taxes, half rations. Some food in the granary.

Build a village around the Keep. Make the village as small or as large as your game story desires. Your Lord needs fields for food. You might also include a chapel, hunter and wood chopper huts, mill, bakeries, etc.

In the picture below, a Stone Keep was built with one granary. There are five farms (5 peasants), two wood choppers (2), two hunter huts (2), a flour mill (3) and four bakeries (4). Plus a fletcher shop (1), leather tanner (1), a mace blacksmith (1) and a chapel (1).



So, the first step is to count the number of peasants needed to work all the jobs in the village. And then, find them a place to live.

In our example, we need 5 + 2 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 = 20 peasants to run all the jobs.

The number of beds for peasants per Keep are:

• Little Manor - 8 beds for peasants
  
• Stone Keep - 10 beds for peasants (this is the one in our example)
  
• Stronghold - 12 beds for peasants.

Each hovel or house holds 8 peasants.

So, in our example of 20 peasants, 10 live in the Stone Keep and 10 need a bed. To provide enough beds we build two hovels.

We now have living space for 26 peasants but jobs for only 20. That's OK. We could add six more jobs to the village, like more farms, but that's not necessary. It is actually better to have a surplus of peasants as prisoners for you will probably add jobs to the village as soon as the prisoners are released.




With our Keep and village ready, we have completed the first main step. The second step is easy: put everything with a twirling red "no worker" circle asleep.


Put the farms, workshops, chapel, mill, huts and well to sleep. No exceptions. Double check that you included the wood chopper's huts and any mines or quarries which you might have built. EVERY job place must be asleep. Check that you don't see any twirling red circles on the map.

(Why put every job to sleep? An imprisoned peasant will die if they have a job to do. A new peasant will appear at the fire ring to do the job. You can't create a prisoner scenario if the peasants won't stay as prisoners.)


The third step is to build the prison.

Place it far enough from the Keep so that enemy guards on aggressive stance do not attack the Keep or any of your farms and buildings.

Build it entirely with enemy stone. The enemy guards will not attack their own stone.



The prison yard needs to be large enough to hold all your peasants and then some. Build guard towers and place steps on the outside but NO GATES. And no gaps, the prison must be escape proof.

You might want to create a box canyon for the prison and heavily fortify the front, making it hard on yourself to free the prisoners. (Or an island prison, or a lion guarded prison; be creative.)

From the enemy bad things, add a cesspit and maybe gallows or burning stake or dungeon. Prisons are not happy places. Be merciful and add some water for the prisoners. They are being fed: the game code feeds your peasants from your granary even though they are prisoners.


I find it easier to make the prisoners first and then add enemy guards. This way a guard is not accidentally turned into a peasant.

In the prison yard, place as many of your engineers as you have peasant beds. Let me say that again: number of prisoners = number of peasant beds in the village, not peasant jobs. Why engineers? These docile builders will not immediately attack the enemy prison walls.

In our example, we place 26 of our engineers inside the prison walls. Notice that I did not say 20 engineers, which is the number of peasant jobs in the village, but 26 which is the number of peasant beds in the village.






Select all the engineers and disband them. Boom! We now have 26 peasants being held prisoner. (Notice how they all kneel in allegiance to your Lord, even though they are in a far off prison.)

Now, add the enemy guards. DON'T use archers or crossbow men as guards for the obvious reason that they will kill all the prisoners. Make the strength of the enemy guard force as strong as your story line wants it.

You may want to set up guard patrols on the prison walls and around the prison.




With the prison ready, create your rescue team. If there are no enemy archers, be fair and don't add archers to your rescue team. Almost as soon as you break through the prison wall, the peasants will stream out towards the Keep so make sure all the guards are dead before releasing the prisoners.


The very last thing is to awaken all the job places in your village. Bring all the farms, workshops, huts and such back awake. Do this ONLY AFTER the prisoners are released. (Why? If the job place is awaken while the peasant is a prisoner, the peasant dies in prison. A new peasant appears at the fire ring and goes to the job place.)

Yeah! The prisoners are free and the village is once again alive. Oh, but look at how the rabbits have taken over!

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Q: Why create a village, why not just build a Keep and imprison its peasants?
A: This is possible, but not too "realistic". A Keep has fields and such around it, that's the reason for a village.

Q: What happens if the granary runs out of food while the peasants are still prisoners?
A: The peasants begin to starve. When popularity goes below 50, then the peasants begin to die in prison.

Q: What happens if I build a new farm (or any other building which needs a peasant to run) while all the peasants are prisoners?
A: A peasant will die in the prison. A new peasant will appear at the fire ring and go to the farm.

Q: Is it possible to have some of the peasants remain free to work farms and such?
A: Yes. Go through all the steps right up to placing the engineers in the prison. Subtract the number of peasants you want to be free and put the remaining number as engineers in prison to be disbanded into peasants. For example, if you want five farms to remain open, then subtract five from the number of peasant beds and place this many engineers in prison. Disband them to be prisoners. Five peasants will appear at the fire ring when the game starts. The rest will be in prison.

[albriradios]

TIOLI - Thanks for the compliment. I don't have the map files; I created all the images from "sets" built on the same temporary map - which I deleted after writing the guide.

[TIOLI]

This looks cool. Do you have the map files & could you upload them to Stronghold's official forum?