Stronghold 3 News

Stronghold 3
Version - 1.10.27781
Patch notes


Economic Systems Rebalanced

Peasants now move 66.66% faster.

Immigration rates have been increased.

In multiplayer the rate has been increased even higher.

All farms now produce 25% more food. Bread production been increased by 40%.

Vegetable gardeners produce and carry 50% more vegetables per delivery.

Range units (Archers, Crossbowmen, etc) now gain an attacking bonus based on terrain height

Troop Movement Changes

Macemen, Armed Peasants and Monks always run.

Men at Arms now always walk, instead of running into attack.

Pikemen walk a little faster.

Ranged troops can move and attack troops behind walls when within their line of sight.

Rally points for the Siege Camp have been added

New Market added with Autobuy/Autosell feature

Markets are no longer required to buy or sell goods. Goods can be traded via the Stockpile, Granary, Keep and Armoury.

The new Market is an advanced trading building which costs 200 wood and features a slider with controls for automatically trading goods, with individual settings per good type.

Multiplayer - Coronation Mode

In Coronation Mode players start off at the lowly rank of “Village Idiot” with limited access to buildings and military units. By generating honour players can move up the ranks, gaining new technology and weaponry along the way. The first King to achieve the rank of “Emperor” will win the game.

Coronation Mode features upgradable Keeps which have their own defences and provide additional housing for workers and troops.

New Coronation Mode map - Marshlands

Performance improvements

Simulation step has been tweaked so that scripts are now called 4 times less often.

Skinning of actors has been optimised - These include animations now do not blend from a distance, PoseDrivers are not recreated everytime there is a LOD change and the game now prioritises existing PoseDrivers, rather than always expanding the PoseDriver pool.

Pathfinding has been optimised - Buildings are now treated a one large obstacle rather than a number of small obstacles.

Sound has been optimised - combat vocalizations are no longer decompressed into memory, resulting in a memory savings of up to 100 Megabytes after a long game session.

Additional user interface options

Vsync matches your monitor’s refresh rate to the in-game frame rate to prevent screen tearing. Enabling Vsync will reduce performance so we have added an option to turn Vsync Off/On in the Options menu.

Full Screen/Windowed mode added to the Options menu.

Camera Changes

Previously when zooming out the camera would tilt until eventually the game would be viewed top down. This camera tilt has been removed. The game can still be viewed top down by pressing the Space Bar.

Health bars are now drawn for currently selected Lord units on their icons in the GUI.

Troop/Building Limits

Troop and building maximums have been added to Single Player, in order to prevent performance issues when the numbers get too high.

These limits can be overridden by changing the relevant settings in the Documents/Stronghold 3/Profiles/options.xml file.

Minimap

Flag icons have been added to the minimap for Capture the Flag mode.

Messages and map location notifications have been added when estates and flags are being captured.

Notifications have been added to show the map location of new reinforcements.

Miscellaneous

Game speed changes using the -/+ keys are now displayed onscreen.

Game speed can also now also be controlled using i/o keys (to help some laptop users that couldn’t use -/+ keys).

The in-game message log history has been increased to 50. The message scroll buttons can be held down to scroll through them.

Unwanted saved games can now be deleted in the “Load Game” screen.

The mouse cursor is locked to the game when in Full Screen or Windowed mode. Pressing ALT + TAB will unlock the cursor in Windowed mode.


Bug Fixes

The CTRL groups (CTRL+1/2/3) are now saved in a save game and available when the save game is loaded.

Fixed the Keep’s Enable/Disable all industries buttons from breaking when an ox post was present.

Fixed the green directional cursor appearing when right-click dragging, even when only enemies or buildings were selected.

Fixed the first mouse click on a newly loaded map not being able to create a selection marquee.

Fixed units becoming deselected when dragging the mouse to operate GUI controls and releasing it over the game view.

Placing a storage building will no longer open the storage building’s GUI panel, which was making it difficult to continue placing buildings.

The chat key (Enter) is now disabled in single player mode.

Troop health bars are now draw correctly when max health is above 100% due to Good Lord buildings

Fixed some issues with troop speech when Lord units were part of the selection

Added minor GUI feedback sounds to some controls

Tooltips for troops and building costs have been reformatted to be more readable. Tooltips have been added for placing rally points and increasing buy/sell amounts.

Fixed the stop command not functioning for Trebuchets, Battering Rams and Burning Carts.

Fixed honour gains not being tracked correctly for in-game statistics

Changed maximum building limit in Multiplayer and Singleplayer to only track the player’s primary estate

Reformatted the siege camp panel to look better in Single Player.

Fixed the cutscene replay button appearing too soon for the final campaign mission cutscenes.

Icon added for the Haybale / Harpoon launcher.

Fixed issues with troops not being able to properly navigate the square bastion in certain circumstances.

Fixed the shortcut key “L” not selecting non-standard lords in multiplayer.

Visual damage from troops attacking walls better reflects number of hit points left.

Some French Keyboard and German Keyboard fixes.

Map Editor - Deleting the Engineer’s guild and saving was causing a crash.

Added some more audio easter eggs... the scribe may say a bit more here and there, and certain units have a bit more to say.


Other things to be aware of in Stronghold 3

Line of Sight Changes

Troops on towers/gatehouses/platforms are now less restricted by Line Of Sight. This change was made primarily in order to avoid frustrating situations where troops standing at one side of a tower couldn't fire directly down at enemies on the ground on the other side of the tower.

The side effect of this change is that sometimes you will see troops shoot through structures when it may look like they shouldn't be able to. Whilst this is obviously not ideal we decided the gameplay benefits of this change outweighed the visual inaccuracies caused as a result of this change.

Graphic Settings Recommendations

If you are using a graphics card with 256mb video memory, we recommend playing on Low settings. If you are using a graphic card with 512mb video memory, we recommend playing on Medium settings. Using High settings or at least High Texture High detail may lead to crashes with 256mb/512mb onboard memory on the video card.

4 Player Multiplayer Recommendations

4 Player multiplayer can be demanding for lower spec computers, particularly lower spec CPUs. For the best 4 player multiplayer experience we recommend playing on a high spec computer such as an Intel i5 or i7 based computer with at least 4GB RAM.

Map Editor

Loading 2 maps into the Map Editor consecutively will cause problems when saving the next map. Please open one map, edit it and save. Then exit the editor and re-load to edit the next map.

Keyboard shortcuts

A list of all the keyboard shortcuts are available in English, German and French on the Firefly Website at the following address - http://bit.ly/sh3keys

We are delighted to announce Stronghold 3 Gold Edition! Set for release on May 25th for PC and Mac, the Gold Edition bundles the latest version of Stronghold 3 with a new “Blackstaff” single player campaign. It will also unlock new historical sieges, previously only available through special editions of the game.

Stronghold 3 Gold features all the extra content and tweaks added to Stronghold 3 since release. This includes 3 core campaigns (including the new Blackstaff Campaign), 4 multiplayer modes (including the new Coronation mode), a free build sandbox mode and 12 historical sieges.

Anyone that purchased Stronghold 3 before the launch of the Gold Edition on May 25th will have their copy of the game automatically upgraded to Stronghold 3 Gold through Steam.

Siege Towers and Laddermen make their multiplayer debut today and can be built directly from the siege camps.
Other additions to online play include an automatic resync feature, score rebalancing and increased starting goods.
Multiplayer maps have been tweaked, making it easier for players to design and build their castles.

An ‘Attack Move’ command has been added to help protect troops from ambush, as well as a button that deactivates all working buildings, which is handy when you need to quickly raise an army.

Follow the link for a full list of patch notes and tips on how to use the new units:

Stronghold 3
Version - 1.9.26498
Patch Notes


Multiplayer
- Multiplayer games will automatically resync if an error occurs.
- Laddermen and Siege Towers can now be built from siege camps (multiplayer games only). See notes at the bottom of the page.
- You can no longer walk on your enemies’ estates in multiplayer during peace-time.
- Multiplayer maps have been edited and tweaked, making it easier for the player to build.
- Multiplayer starting goods for High, Med and Low have been increased.
- The default building limit in multiplayer has been changed to 100.
- Scoring in multiplayer games has been rebalanced. On the score screen: goods are reported by category, and building reports have been simplified.
- Steam avatars now appear in the multiplayer lobby.
- Multiplayer lobby now auto-refreshes every 10 seconds.
- Auto-save has been disabled in multiplayer games.


General
- The keep panel now has buttons to turn all work buildings on or off at once. This is very useful in an emergency when you need to raise an army quickly.
- You can now buy/sell in greater quantities by holding down SHIFT in the market.
- Burning carts can now not attack or destroy stone buildings.
- Attack Move has been added. When sending your troops to a destination you can use Attack Move to command them to retaliate if attacked en route. See notes below.
- The skybox is fixed in free-look mode (Press Alt + F to unlock the camera).
- Added “Texture Quality” setting to graphics options. Anisotropic filtering will be used when this is set to Medium or High.
- Knight movement speed now returns to normal after the horse is killed.
- User Maps: Map descriptions and Objectives are now shown when selecting a map.
- F1 key opens the Freebuild Panel in Freebuild mode.
- Fixed industry on/off buttons to be much more responsive.
- Food popularity report panel: The number of days supply of food is now shown in place of daily production.
- Ale and Church reports now indicate if an inn or church has not been built.
- Ale and Church rates sliders start set to 1x now, enabling their popularity bonuses by default once the relevant buildings and supplies are available.
- UI tab buttons to select storage building panels are now disabled if the relevant building has not been built. Hotkeys to select storage buildings (G,H,J,K) will display a hint if the building is not available.
- Fixed the UI incorrectly displaying a fractional sale of goods when clicking “sell” for goods values smaller than 1.
- The amount of gold traded when buying and selling goods is now shown above the buy/sell buttons.
- Subtle sound effects now play when issuing orders to Lord units to indicate if the command will be carried out or not.


Notes on using Laddermen and Siege Towers
(Only available in multiplayer modes)

Laddermen:
- Laddermen are created at the siege camp.
- Laddermen have 1 ladder which they can place against stone walls by targeting the walls and right-clicking.
- Ladders are placed on the wall depending on where you have the camera focused, the same way stairs are placed.
- All troops can move up and down ladders to gain access to walls.
- Laddermen will return to the siege camp for another ladder after placing theirs against a wall.
- Laddermen can also slide ladders down the far side of walls from on top of them using the same method as placing them against the walls.
- All troops can push ladders off walls.
- Ladders are automatically destroyed after 2-3 days

Siege Towers:
- Siege towers are created at the siege camp.
- Siege towers can be docked against stone walls by targeting the wall and right-clicking.
- Units can be placed on siege towers and will fire missiles as the siege towers moves to its location.
- Once the siege tower is docked against a wall, units can climb up and down it to gain access to the walls.


Notes on using Attack Move
- Normally when sending troops to a destination they will ignore enemies they encounter and always attempt to reach their destination despite sustaining damage.
- If you hold CTRL when selecting a destination your troops will retaliate if they encounter troops along the way.
- After killing the enemies your troops will then continue to their destination as originally commanded.


If you experience odd problems after updating please verify your Steam cache files.
Problems such as: Odd characters in the menu, buildings cannot be placed in-game, language or speech missing or anything you had in the game before but don’t after updating the game.

To verify your Steam cache files:
- Open Steam > Library
- Right click on Stronghold 3 and select Properties
- Select the Local Files tab and then click Verify Integrity of Game Cache

This weekend only, Save 50% on Stronghold 3!

Set 10 years after the original, this long-awaited third installment in the award winning castle-building series follows the Wolf who it seems, has cheated death and during his painful recovery he’s become even more bitter and twisted. Now he seeks revenge.

Offer ends Monday at 10AM Pacific Time.