Gameplay: not a technical issue, but because this is using an economic system similar to that of Stronghold Kingdoms you find yourself growing incredibly slowly. In the grounds of the military campaign that can be a serious problem. Peasants not arriving but once every 15 seconds can really screw you when it comes to defending yourself. In the campaign you are frequently attacked with little time to repair let alone rebuild your army if things go awry.

Peasants: God forbid a single peasant is killed while operating a building. When you have to wait 5 minutes to get all your buildings restaffed you are unable to build an army. God forbid some wolves or bears come in from behind you and attack from nowhere because of a scripted event then follow up by mauling your king without any alert that they are doing so unlike previous titles where they would alert you by crying out "The lord is under attack!" or "The enemy is inside the castle." signifying that your keep had hostiles in it and the lord was in danger. The slow generation of peasants has more than punished me in Mission 9 of the campaign and nearly killed me in countless others before it. Building hovels doesn't exactly benefit you much in Stronghold 3 except for adding 8 more peasants (more or less depending on location) to the 15+ second wait time for another peasant. If farmers are killed you are doomed, which leads me to the next section.

Food consumption: There is a definite problem when you have to build tons of farms and food buildings to feed a small amount of people. If any fall the previous section will doom you, because farmers will very slowly get back to work and the process of economic collapse is swift and harsh. You run out of food quickly because new farmers come so darn slow because of the previous section and that is a -30 to your popularity which is generally more than enough to level your economy with everyone suddenly leaving, and it seems for me it tends to be my farmers that leave first, that is just wrong, if your farmers leave how the hell do you raise things back up.

Troops: Let me set a scenario up. You have 30 archers in a stone tower. 5 archers walk right up to the base of the tower frequently attacked only after they have begun firing on your archers. now 15 of your archers stand around doing nothing while the other 15 get massacred because they are blinder than bats when it comes to targeting something. I had 30 archers with ample height advantage in the middle of the day and they were slaughtered, and were Men at Arms bred in Sparta. My archers don't even fire on them until they have done tossed their spears from 500 yards away (exaggeration but you get my point, their range is greater than archers, I know that ain't right under any circumstance unless you are maybe Superman or something). Your men march so slowly too. I used to always use Macemen but they march like snails, it feels like using leather armored swordsmen, and with the Sparta bred Men at Arms they don't exactly live very long. In mission 9 I had 20 archers, 15 men at arms, and 6 macemen grouped up in aggressive stance and a band of 15 pike men walk right next to them (just out of melee range) My men just stand there, they aren't frozen just colorblind or flat out blind I guess). This needs fixing or else the higher units will be useless because of the Spartans at Arms. Don't even use height advantage because either a few archers on the ground or some Spartans at Arms will massacre them where they stand.

Construction: Stairs, my god, it is a struggle to get them to be able to place and when you do half the time the troops don't even realize there are stairs to the wall now and won't go into towers or atop gatehouses. 32 stone for 2 squares of wall is a bit excessive. I just sell stone for gold since it is such a pain in the butt to get people onto them right now. Your men are dumb as cavemen and wolves sure seem to be the more intelligent species as they can climb ladders (WTF) and slaughter your men without a second thought. I had to use the lord to get anything done against the wolves in mission 2 of military campaign.

Overall: The economics of Stronghold 3 NEED to revert with all deliberate speed to that of its predecessors as MMO economics don't work in an RTS. A 2 day process to get a peasant in Kingdoms is fine and dandy because you aren't under siege with every other minute. I need to raise an army in an RTS with some decency of speed, not watch as wall after wall of enemies easily slaughter my starting force and then march (painfully slowly) to my keep to finish my lord. Troops need a speed boost (come on men at arms you aren't wearing 500 pounds of armor, pick up the pace, especially macemen) The slow pace of the soldiers is ridiculous. macemen used to be great for hit and runs on enemy estates. Now the best melee unit is Spartans at Arms. I need to be able to raise an army and actually having peasants coming to my castle with some decency of speed. Peasant arrival was perfect in all the others. I could build troops and staff buildings at the same time and then have some left over. Now I can train 1-3 soldiers every 2 minutes while my buildings staff up and god forbid a single one falls add another minute as you wait for that building to restaff. Construction of stairs needs quick rectification and the amount of materials needed to construct something need to be decreased. When I have to use the great majority of my wood for a hovel there is a problem. the popularity system NEEDS to go back to the original formula as the random events get really excessive on the negatives when such things happen and generally drop you significantly and often into the negatives, wolves and bears will even if killed be the death of you right now as the -15 causes things to slow down greatly and after killing a few peasants your economy shuts down with all deliberate speed. Troops need an intelligence boost as well as a speed boost. When it takes 5 minutes from them to get from the barracks to the walls there is a problem. Height advantage needs fixing, when the people on the ground easily finish the people in a tower it just isn't right. food consumption needs to be decreased 1 ton of food per person is just outrageous. Without using all your resources on farms you'll run out of food, then everyone leaves and then it would be easier to just fall on your own sword and call it a day.

Short and sweet: Revert back to the original economics formula, decrease food consumption rates, decrease the intelligence of wolves and bears and increase the speed and intelligence of soldiers. Decrease the range of men at arms to be less than that of an archers. Fix archers, seriously they are blinder than bats right now and pikemen can walk right next to them unchallenged. Return the mechanics to that of its predecessors. MMO mechanics in an RTS don't work.

Update:

The Lord: I have never seen a lord so enthusiastic about dying. After attempting many historical sieges, which I'm sure were taken with a greater amount of troops than Firefly seems to think they were historically, the lord seems to always rush out to greet his assailants and get killed despite constant orders for him to stay put with his soldiers (not like he was going to survive anyway with the lack of balance). The lord needs not to be rushing off into battle like he does currently. He needs to stay put unless told otherwise by the player.

Historical Sieges: Alright, I'm sure castles out there were taken with only a handful of troops and a battering ram but I doubt every castle was dealt with the same way. Now when I attack and have only a battering ram and a couple mantlets, but deal with trebuchets when defending there is a serious problem of balance. If the AI is receiving trebuchets than when the player is attacking then they deserve to have equal means of offensive. In one mission they expect you to charge a wall loaded with rolling logs with no siege equipement say for some mantlets and those things are so weak they don't make any difference. They expected me to chisel the walls down with swordsmen while being crushed by logs and shot by archers. No breach was ever successfully made. Then they expect you to defend against dozens of men while trebuchets open a sizable hole in your wall because you can only tag one with rolling logs leaving you open to getting maimed. Balance in the historical sieges is ridiculous. This WILL need to be better balanced in a future patch as currently you have to have lady luck on your side when attacking and don't even think about prayer to god when defending, nobody is going to save you from the slaughters they put you in.

[This message has been edited by lord_arion (edited 10-30-2011 @ 11:50 PM).]

After this second patch. I cannot exit out of the editor neither through the windows corner X nor the file menu.

edit; Seems you must use the Steam tools menu to avoid this rather than the shortcut.

[This message has been edited by Doomsword (edited 11-04-2011 @ 06:46 PM).]

Here's what I consider a bug: Two buildings such as the amory and bunkhouse seperated by a gap of several tiles. It is impossible to connect the two buildings by creating a large section of wall between them. (Even though both buildings are crenellated). I literally have to erase one building, create the wall then re-add the missing building over the top of the wall. Likewise if I create a wall and leave a gap, that is too wide to accommodate the gate, I cannot "finish" the wall or enclose my keep. Again I have to erase the gate, complete the wall then add the gate. Gatehouse flanked by two towers? Impossible to build walls between them or enclose the keep...

Can anyone explain this issue?
Everytime when I want to reload any saved game stronghold 3.exe crashes, telling me that there was noticed a problem ...

..what does this mean?

Stratego

Warning check your identity protection frequently, right now it must be off for Stronghold 3 to work. My identity protection reactivated itself likely because AVG auto corrected.

I am really frustrated with one thing, when I tell my troops do stand ground or defend for that matter they ALWAYS go back to agressive! Even if I still have them selected.

If this is fixed, defending your castle will be much more effective.

I think Stronghold 3 in a good game but still has many bugs to iron out.

Have you tried after the game was updated to version 1.3.24532?

Yes I just played that patch, and the troops stillgo to agressive when I tell them otherwise.

I'm not sure if this is a bug, but I cannot seem to send my troops to the top of a stone gatehouse, even if it's open. (I should point out that I had no such trouble with the wooden gatehouse in the previous mission.) If this is a new "feature", then it's one that needs to be reverted post-haste. All the previous SH games allowed you to send troops up into gatehouses without walls; why should this one be any different?

In broader terms, I agree with a lot of what Lord_Arion has already said. Peasants arrive at your keep far, FAR too slowly, which makes it nearly impossible to rebuild your army before the next wave of attackers come. They also consume food a LOT faster, which pretty much forces me to leave food on Normal Rations unless I have at least 3 or 4 of each type of farm running, which again, consumes a large part of my population.

And finally... Fix the damn stairs and wooden platforms! No matter where I try to place them, it keeps telling me this is not a valid location. Wall and stair building seems to have gone downhill ever since SH1, which was elegant in its simplicity.

on extra large maps, the peasants will not go to their jobs if the buildings are too far away.
im playing a map with stone resources on the outer edges of the map, with the keep in the centre. workers will not go to the quarrys even when there are over 10 idle peasants,, bring the buildings nearer and they go to work as usual.

my question is; is this meant to be that way?... fine. if not... it needs fixing.

One thing I have noticed though it is less so a bug but more just a game play mechanics problem. Moving troops to and from the castle is a long and slow process. Forget about signaling retreats as the troops will return to slow poke walking and get killed and it would be better to let them die in battle than lose them all without dealing damage to the enemy forces as well. Troop speed needs fixing. Men at Arms are as slow as pikemen. Macemen are as as slow as swordsmen. Macemen were always the go to unit when it came to guerilla warfare tactics whether rushing in and killing a lord or harassing farms and quarries.I have still yet to complete mission 11 of the military campaign due to the slow poke soldiers and all that cursed fire EVERYWHERE, and I do mean EVERYWHERE. Your soldiers take their good ole time getting anywhere so you either burn to death or run out of time.

The new 1.4 patch ruined the maps I made, so I put the game away until it gets fixed,but now with the new 1.5 patch the game will not start, windows says SH3 has stopped working then shuts it down. I tried the map editor and it will not start either, I get an error report- (system.nullreferenceexception )

Sir_Vet

Sir_Vet, I've looked through the fan messages and no one reported that particular issue. Have you tried reinstalling the game?

Warning, you will want to turn off the identity protection if you have AVG as with it on it for an unknown reason that needs rectification it will detect the game as a threat and you will need to check it frequently or when the game patches it will auto correct and once again remove stronghold 3 if it auto corrects and reactivates and you don't deactivate it again.

@Sir_Vet

If telling your antivirus program to stay away from SH3 does not work, have you tried verifying the game files (While your antivirus is disabled)? How to: Start Steam. Select the Library. Find Stronghold 3, right click it and select Properties. Select the Local Files tab. Here click the "Verify integrity of game cache" button. If Steam updates the game, one or more files were missing or damaged. After this you might like to "Defragment cache files".

After this, try, while your antivirus is disabled, starting the game.

[This message has been edited by PCDania (edited 11-28-2011 @ 03:11 AM).]

I went into Steam this morning and found the thread about testing game integrity, 1 file was repaired, now the game fires up and the troubles on the war scenario in V1.4 I made seem to have gone away. Gee maybe I will even have a map to post.

Thanks for your help.

Sir_Vet

I found a new problem, someone asked to test my map, but the zip file at 20.4 megs is not being accepted by his email, errors with to large of a file. I use gmail and it allows up to 25 megs.

What happens when maps get large and full of detail and scripting? will they be over 25 megs? What about uploading to the site, isn't it capped at 8 megs?

Sir_Vet

The Stronghold 3 Downloads section supports files up to 50 Megabytes.

@Sir_Vet

Have you tried SkyDrive? It's a filestorage and file sharing part of Windows Live. It requires a Live account for using (like a hotmail account).

50 megs should be enough, I want to upload a file with 2 maps and it will be under 50 megs, that should be fine.

Skydrive looks similar to gmail, but made by microsoft.

The person wanting to test my maps will have to get a different email. Or maybe FF could make the files a little smaller, then maybe the game will play within the specs they made.

Sir_Vet

Maybe FF can slim the maps a bit but I believe it depends much on the game engine they are using.

By the way, I'm that "person" who is trying to test Sir_Vet's map but My E-mail won't allow for more than 20 megs.

One more thing that doesn't ruin gameplay, its just annoying. Both the quarry workers and the archer animations are bad. For the quarry guys, the animations of the stone and the guy are off, so you end up seeing the dudes head inside the stone. And for the archers, their hands aren't anywhere near the bow and the bow itself doesn't even bend when it shoots. (you got to have that at least)

[This message has been edited by wolfman4god (edited 12-09-2011 @ 07:37 PM).]

By the way, I'm that "person" who is trying to test Sir_Vet's map but My E-mail won't allow for more than 20 megs.

Sir Vet can upload the map to a files hosting website and link the file only to his playtesters, like yourself.

Copy&Paste the next part if you agree.

What I really would love to see...

This is a bugs-reporting only thread which FF reads periodically. Opinions go to the right topics.

[This message has been edited by Lord_of_Hell (edited 12-09-2011 @ 06:54 PM).]

Now every time I try to open it, it crashes. It gets to the sand timer, then the gauntlet, then it crashes. Hope it gets fixed.

Have you tried to "Verify integrity of game cache" for the game in Steam?