Firefly Studios has released the first update to their castle sim RTS Stronghold: Warlords in addition to a roadmap of updates planned for the spring and early summer. Today’s v1.1 update adds Extreme! difficulty modes and includes several AI changes.
Extreme! difficulty applies to both skirmish and campaign modes. In skirmish the AI receives an unfair gold advantage. The AI system has seen many improvements from AI Lords now using their own respective keeps in skirmish games to AI town building with smarter positioning of building types. Also the AI took some time to brush up on economy building skills and is better at calculating how many of each type of work building is needed to train an army and outfit it with weapons.
Troop limits in skirmish and multiplayer has been increased. For example the troop limit in a two player game has increased from 200 to 300. A new two player skirmish map, Riverbend, has been added that creates a tense push and pull battle where both players fight for control of warlords guarding the path to their opponent’s castle. Two new large keeps, Mongol Yurt and Tribal have been added. Players who select alternative skins for their Lord model will also see their keep type change.
Motion blur can now be disable or enabled in a setting stored in the options.xml file with the default being enabled. Also in the options.xml file players can configure their minimap to rotate or face North and scale to fit inside its box. Japanese voice likes for barracks troops has been updated and diplomacy points were added to overall resource settings in skirmish lobbies. For a more complete list of updates including the many AI changes visit the Stronghold: Warlords v1.1 Updates Notes link here.
This first phase in our overall roadmap of updates for Warlords covers the spring and early summer period. We have additional smaller patches planned of course and then more to come in the second half of the year, however everything covered in our announcement will be added to the game free for all players.
Nick Tannahill, Marketing Director, Firefly Studios
Updates on the Stronghold: Warlords roadmap are going to be broken into two tracks during the spring and summer period with minor and major updates. Minor updates such as today’s update are aimed at improved core gameplay and adding smaller features such as a future update that will add controllable AI invasions in free build mode.
For major updates there are two scheduled. The first will include a new AI character in the form of Sun Tzu as requested in post-release feedback. Sun Tzu will be available in skirmish mode, multiplayer and all future updates. In the second update or Skirmish Trail #1 that is planned for early summer this update will be the first skirmish update with the addition of 10 single player missions, a new unit the Samurai Lancers and two warlords with unique abilities. Major updates aim to improved the offered content in the core game through both single player and multiplayer modes.
Stronghold: Warlords is available on Windows PC through Humble Bundle and Steam for $39.99 USD. A Stronghold: Warlords Special Edition that includes the soundtrack composed by Robert L. Euvino, digital art book, and feature length making of the game documentary is available for $49.99 USD. For more information about the game visit strongholdwarlords.com.
Firefly Studios (@fireflyworlds Twitter) is an independent PC game developer that specializes in real-time strategy and MMO titles. Formed in 1999 by Simon Bradbury and Eric Ouellette, who brought experience from Caesar and Lords of the Realm, went on to create many high profile and commercially successful strategy titles. The company’s portfolio includes the seven million sold Stronghold series and Stronghold Kingdoms with over eight million registered players. Currently Firefly Studios employs around 30 full and part-time staff.
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