Hi! I don't know if you have only trouble with your castle layouts, or you have this issue in general, and you are trying to find a way to fix it. So here comes a long reply.

I don't remember for sure when it comes to Stronghold Crusader castles, but what you could notice is that they almost never send as much troops on their towers as you would want. This is something which doesn't even have much to do with the editor either. For example, if I started a normal game with large human advantage (8,000 gold to myself), those castles won't have as much troops as they would if I started the game giving them the large advantage. Especially if you give them large advantage in a Crusader game.

Another thing - when you attack them, and you wipe out almost all of their troops, they just wouldn't bring their defenses to the previous state, they would remain weaker.

Similar thing can be noticed in their attacking armies. They send biggest armies if you start a Crusader game and give them huge advantage, or if you give them huge advantage in a deathmatch game. If they start with less troops and less gold, their attacks somehow won't be as strong through entire game. And similar if you give them huge advantage, but at one moment you nearly destroy them and decide to move back and see how they will do. They just won't rebuild as we would hope.

Something similar has been bothering me in Stronghold games in general, though I cannot say "in all other Stronghold games", I'm not sure. When they build their castles, I would expect that by each of their attack they make at least a little bit stronger defenses. So, if you decide only to defend from Pig, I would hope that he would have hell lot of crossbowmen in his castle guarding their lord. Of course, there is limit to number of troops that they could have, so I would also expect that, for example, only 30% of their maximum number of troops could be kept to defend the castle.

Still, I don't complain that much about it when it comes to Crusader because besieging enemy castles in the most fun exactly in this Stronghold game (besides Stronghold 1, but that one doesn't have skirmish mode)! But in Stronghold 2 AI lords make so much troops during the game, their besieges can be so intense, and yet they leave so little troops inside their castles. If they kept more crossbowmen in their castles, besieging would be a lot harder even with knights!


BUT THIS IS ONE THING THAT COULD HELP YOU MAYBE:
In case you're having this issue only with your own castle layouts, then maybe the issue could be that you gave them too much places for their archers. If I remember correctly, it is something like this: if Lionheart has 10 spots for archers, and if he usually sends 50 archers on those places, if you make a new castle layout for Lionheart with 30 castle layouts, he still wouldn't send 150 archers on those positions. Just have a look at Wolf for example - he basically has the same number of archers, Arabian bowmen, and crossbowmen in his smallest castle with only two square towers, and in some of his largest castles. Which is what surely makes many of us sad, as those large castles of Wolf have so much potential, but he would always send several archers on each of his towers. Instead of having at least twice as much defensive troops in those larger castles, he has the same number of troop as in his smallest castle, so those huge castles make him much weaker actually.


If I didn't understand you correctly about anything, just tell. And welcome to Stronghold Heaven!

0) It has always been the concept of Firefly to let us players find out things, details by ourselves. The handbooks offer quite vague statements such as "one mill for several wheat farms" or "swordsmen have more attack strength than pikemen". -> Lots of testing needed.

1) As for the AI village editor, it's important to see what it does NOT do: It does not make available all possible options for every AI, i.e. troop types, ->army size, building types, his distinctive trading behaviour and (I think) the number of farms and mines which he places. For example, the Sultan will never place hops farms / breweries / inns by himself. If you do so in the AIv editor he won't process the hops or most probably won't trade the kegs away.
In other words, the individual characters of the different AIs keep on being encoded almost completely.
In other words, the editor does not give us a one-type, catch-it-all super AI.

2) Still some things are open for addition. The Rat can build big towers, place tower engines and train engineers.
Or the "Good things" work for every AI. ...

3) When "the AI doesn't replace his troops in the towers" there are at least two possible reasons.

a) That AI does not train this troops type, like Richard has no crossbowmen. If you gave him some of these shooters in the editor he cannot replace them. (Even if you gave him the weapon factories).

b) And there is a limit working for troops upon the walls. There is one for tower engines, too (7, I think.). In the editor, circles should indicate this. This relates to the overall army size that the AI trains and has to part into contingents for both defence and attack.

4) Away out here is to combine AI villages into one bigger custom castle. You may study the installation in 4Brothers-Attack.
Just let viewing this mega castle full of tricks not disencourage you. Dedicated mapmaker qtlilkeg was already highly experienced when the AIv came out.

0) And that is what I found really interesting about Stronghold Crusader, and Stronghold in general. Each player can depending of his observations and preferences develop his own stile of playing, just like different AI lords have different ways of running their economies and different ways of fight - including different choices of military units.

Also, that is another reason I have came to dislike the way of playing by overly competitive Crusader players at GameRanger. They ended playing almost always the same way, and that ruins all the fun for me. We don't always have the be as effective as possible.

EaglePrince, I like your thoughts very much.

Each player can depending of his observations and preferences develop his own stile of playing...

Diversity. It impressed me how mapmakers created different "worlds", stories and gaming strategies. I found it deeply satisfying to find out what other humans beings had invented.

I have come to dislike the way of playing by overly competitive Crusader players at GameRanger. They ended playing almost always the same way, and that ruins all the fun for me.

Conformity. Still on Gamespy, I joined a clan and learned this extreme style of spamming out hundreds of peasants and troops while building a rudimentary castle. Be quick with the mouse and almost win the war. Interestingly, these online friends all weren't mapmakers and would not spend time to try some maps from this site. - Power playing forces us into a more of the same policy. I suffered that principle last year with SH Kingdoms. On the AI worlds, new AIs come by invasions. They settle or capture players' villages. A small group of pro players had by the time perfected their attacks on very hard AI castles and succeeded in entirely removing the Wolf from the game world. In reply, the Firefly admins sent in invasions for weeks which lasted up to 12 hours! Repeatedly, I scratched together last gold reserves and peasants to remove the invaders and keep county rule. But what a waste of time on and on.

We don't always have the be as effective as possible.

Imperfection. Since the industrial revolution(s), the concept of efficiency rules our thinking. It has already reached the way we treat ourselves by the pressure to optimize our bodies. With digital machines making out the relentless standard we individuals turn into imperfect deviations. But ... that just is what we are naturally. I love watching leaf trees. Their overall silhouette looks harmonic yet the single branches making up that shape have grown differently. Only such an analogue whole can be felt and viewed as "alive" and thus appropriate. The mixture of creation/evolution and natural deviation.

https://www.photocase.de/stock-fotos/20363-stock-photo-blau-winter-kalt-baum-eiche.jpg

The same holds true for, say, architecture,

http://img.fotocommunity.com/bunte-fachwerkhaeuser-am-marktplatz-in-butzbach-hessen-1-a801d53d-8716-4c96-92c4-fa7b279b43f2.jpg?width=1000

SH maps, literature and our personal efforts.

Greetings, mate.

Very well said. I like how you explained all that.

Also, I didn't know about those events from Stronghold Kingdom, I see Firefly is doing their best to make that game more interesting involving some nice ideas!

Thank you both for the quick and helpful responses! I understand troop placement much better now. The only reason you would ever need to put out all 10 circle groups of archers is to spread them out across the castle. Lets say you have a standard four tower castle and you place all ten circles of archers amongst the four towers, you wont gain a single extra unit than you would by placing only one group in each tower. If anything they would actually be more evenly distributed! Also, there are a couple of glitches I'd like to talk about that I've discovered as well..

You're welcome.

About about troops being more evenly distributed this way... I don't know, it seems reasonable, but who knows, maybe that could bring even less even distribution. But you may try, and see what happens.

As about other glitches, if you want to talk about them, this is the right place. Only in another thread maybe if those glitches don't have anything to do with AI troops, but you may do what you find more fitting.