Stronghold: Warlords’ Update 1.1 is now live, its patch notes announcing the addition of a new Extreme difficulty mode, Riverbend map, option to toggle motion blur on or off, and much more.
Update 1.1 also introduces 2 new large keeps to Stronghold: Warlords, alongside an entire suite of AI improvements. This also marks the first stop on the game’s spring/summer roadmap, which promises plenty more in the coming months.
Here are all the changes and additions introduced to Stronghold: Warlords in Update 1.1, as detailed by the developer in the official patch notes:
Updates
- Added Extreme! difficulty to both Skirmish and Campaign modes. (Note: Extreme! difficulty in skirmish will give the AI an unfair gold advantage.)
- Total troop limit in skirmish/multiplayer is increased. Example: troop limit in a 2 player game is increased from 200 to 300.
- Added 2 new large keeps, Mongol Yurt and Tribal.
- Selecting alternative skins for player’s Lord model will also change their keep type.
- Updated Japanese voice lines for barracks troops.
- Added diplomacy points to overall resource settings in Skirmish lobbies.
- Motion blur can now be disabled/enabled via a setting stored in options.xml. (default is for it to be enabled.)
- The minimap can now be configured to rotate/face North and scale to fit inside its box by default via new settings in options.xml.
- Added a new 2 player skirmish map: Riverbend. Expect a tense push and pull battle as both players vie for control of the warlords guarding the path to their opponent's castle.
General Fixes
- Fix for saves crashing on Load due to incorrect refcounts. (Note: Old corrupt saves will still crash on load, but new saves will now Load correctly.)
- Fixed “Defending Our Lands” from the Genghis Khan campaign so that it correctly shows the build menu.
- Fix for pathfinding obstacles sometimes not clearing after walls are destroyed. This addresses mortars sometimes not being able to path through destroyed walls in ‘The Battle of Yehuling’.
- Changed ruins on ‘Heart of an Empire’ and ‘Fortunes’ in the Economic Campaign to fix blocked mission progress. Please note existing saves from these missions will use old ruins types.
- Fix for triangular wall pieces sometimes lingering around after adjacent square pieces have been destroyed.
- Triangular wall pieces are now broken down more consistently to match the damage level of adjacent square walls (this has no effect on balance but gives a clearer impression of how damaged a section of wall is).
- Lord portraits now appear correctly for MP/Skirmish human player non-AI skins in various UI places.
- Increased fade distance of buildings on fire.
- Updated popularity report formatting to accommodate longer localization texts.
- Overhauled the ninja pathfinding system to handle many map and building layouts that could not previously be navigated.
- Fixed an issue that could cause groups of Mongolian Horsemen to jostle back and forth after moving to a position.
- Fixes for a number of cases where troops could get stuck (especially in gates) and not be able to move again.
- Ballistas can no longer attempt to attack defensive stone buildings.
- Fixed an issue where troops could get stuck repeatedly failing to attack warlord workers in melee.
- Fixed an issue where actors would hover briefly before landing during their knockback animation.
- Fixed an issue where actors could get stuck just on the edge of unpathable terrain after being knocked back.
- Troops in rabble formation are more reliable at moving to target enemy units on rooftops.
Balance Changes
- Halved warrior monk area attack damage to 500, doubled cooldown time to 60 seconds.
- Adjusted the way splash damage is applied to walls from siege projectiles, to make overall damage more consistent across diagonal and non-diagonal walls.
Warlords
- Repair and Upgrade Castle edicts can no longer be used when the enemy is very close to the castle. If triggered before the enemy approaches, they will still finish if the enemy comes into range during the edict.
- Warlord shipments now only display messages on their first and last shipment, in which they report Current/Total goods sent.
- Added an icon to the diplomacy map for ongoing instant attacks.
AI Improvements
General
- AI Lords now use their own respective keeps in Skirmish games.
- Added several new overlord taunts.
Town
- Many improvements to AI town building, including smarter positioning of different building types, fixes for several cases where the building layout could result in stuck workers, and increased maximum distance that buildings can be placed from the keep.
- Improved granary placement to be more central inside the castle, making it better protected from attacks.
- Fixed several issues with turrets and engine platforms not attaching to walls correctly.
- The AI is better at calculating how many of each type of work building it needs to build its economy and train an army.
- Fixed a bug that could get the AI stuck trying to build an embassy when it already had the max amount allowed.
Strategy
- The AI now takes the number of players on their team into account when choosing whether to target an enemy player or warlord, allowing them to prioritise enemy players earlier in free-for-all games.
- The AI is now more likely to target the warlord closest to them over other warlords.
- The AI no longer attempts to influence warlords on Easy difficulty.
- There’s now a minimum time before the AI will attack any target, which varies by difficulty.
- Harder AIs now better at picking Warlord Edicts and issue them more often.
- When at very high gold levels, the AI will now aim for triple its normal popularity to get peasants spawning faster.
Castle
- Defensive troops, turrets and engine platforms are now positioned more intelligently based on the direction to the closest enemy player.
- Fixed an issue that could cause castles not to build when spawn points are rotated.
- Fix for defensive troops on Genghis’ castle walls sometimes getting stuck.
- Tweaked the tower positions in Hideyoshi’s castle.
- Defensive troops now spend less time running back and forth between different positions on the walls.
- On Easy difficulty the AI now only builds a single layer of castle walls.
Armies
- The AI is now more willing to buy weapons to train troops when needed, to preserve the desired unit composition of their army.
- Improved the balance of Barracks and Academy troops the AI will train, whether or not they have weapons available.
- Fewer troops are now kept in reserve, allowing the AI to attack faster and with larger numbers when up to their troop limit.
- Improved the distribution of different troop types in the types of armies sent out.
- After capturing a warlord, armies will now sometimes guard the warlord for a period of time before moving to attack a new target.
- Armies that encounter an enemy keep on route to their target will now switch targets rather than continuing to their original target.
- Armies are better at navigating through allied estates to reach their target.
- Fixes for several cases where armies could get stuck while moving to their target or reforming.
- The AI will now more reliably start attacking with siege armies based on the number of attacks already made and their own economic development.
- Armies are better at tracking enemy lords who have moved away from their keeps.
- Fixed an issue that could stop attacks being launched once the AI reached their troop limit.
- Fixed several issues with the placement of forward siege camps in Warlord estates.
- Improved the AI’s ability to coincide Warlord attack edicts with their own attacks.
- Expensive troops such as Generals and Samurai are no longer held back to guard siege weapons.
- Fire oxen and rocket launchers no longer target warlord town buildings.
- Armies made up of horse archers and other cavalry now have a strong preference to tail other armies when they can, given they tend to be ineffective against enemy warlords by themselves.
- If individual troops in an AI army are unable to join the rest of the army for too long, they’ll now suicide in order to avoid the whole army getting stuck.
- Improved AI handling of rocket launchers, to avoid firing in areas that may set the ground under their own troops on fire.
- Genghis now sieges with more mortars and fewer rocket launchers.
Map Editor
- Added support for WASD/arrow key camera movement (with ctrl for faster movement) and Q/E keys to rotate the camera.
- The camera can now pitch closer to zero/ninety degrees, for easier editing.
- Increased the render distance.
- Spawn points now move up/down if the landscape tool is used underneath them.
Notes
- We have set the achievement ‘Thucing Phantastic’ to hidden for now as it is not tracking correctly. This will be addressed in a future update.
- While we have fixed the issue that was corrupting saves, old save games that were previously crashing on load will still crash. Saves made in newly started missions are fixed.
Stronghold: Warlords is available now on PC. To see what we thought of the latest entry in the series, give our review a read.
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