Evrey's Modded Stronghold Crusader AIVs

The V in AIV stands for Village, by the way.

What is it and how to install it?

This is a mod for the game Stronghold Crusader HD that replaces all of the original AI lord castles with new and improved ones from me, Evrey, with some special thanks going to Heroesflorian for his valuable help to make the castles even better. To use this mod you have to download or clone this repository and copy all files from the ./skirmish/ or the ./history/ directory to the aiv directory of your Stronghold Crusader installation, after deleting all the 128 original files. For the Steam version of Stronghold Crusader HD, this directory is located at <Steam Directory>/steamapps/common/Stronghold Crusader Extreme/aiv/. If you want to have Firefly's original AI castles back, you can copy the files from ./firefly_vanilla/ to the game's aiv directory.

Additionally, if you just want to fix the bugs of Firefly's castles, then copy all files from ./firefly_fixed/. Those are Firefly's original castles with a few fixes applied, like the addition of missing defenders where useful, the addition of required gatehouses, or adding important economical buildings Firefly forgot.

The History Pack

This is a pack of 16 new castles, all based on real historical ones. These are not skirmish campaign optimised and often need quite a lot of space in one direction. Big surprise, real historical castles often tend to grow away from the keep, and real castles are quite often rather long and thin if built on a rock or mountain.

The castle miniatures are not entirely to scale. Sometimes castle sections get squished, sometimes cut away. The required buildings for a bot's economy are just too huge to fit into real historical castle designs, and the keep cannot be re-positioned. You can judge the compromises I made yourself, as every castle preview picture is accompanied with a floor plan, satellite image, or otherwise reconstruction of the reference castle. If possible, a moat is added to all castles in two cases: If the reference castle has a moat there as well, or if there was a cliff blocking access.

The new AI Lords

The Rat

This castle is based in Château de Culan. It is tiny, it looks cool, it was quite often besieged and destroyed, and it lies in the Plantagenêt half of medieval France. Wait, France? Well, the Rat's name is de Puce, and the Plantagenêts were a dynasty in hold of the English throne.

The Snake

Dear earl Beauregard got himself a french castle as well: Château de Najac. It is decently sized, quite fitting for the rich Snake, was never conquered, and at one point in history was used to imprison some Knights Templar. Now, as far as I remember, the Knights Templar went down due to back-stabbing from the french King, who apparently owed them a lot of money. The Knights Templar were quite present in Europe as well, escorting travellers, and acting as an early bank, sending their profits to the Outremer.

Backstabbing and money... well, if that doesn't sound like Beauregard.

The Pig

Big surprise here, Duc Truffe got a french castle. This time it's based on Château Falaise. The red line in the image shows where I had to cut the outer bailey in half. There is an outer gate at the original tip, I just moved it to the red line. Well, okay, even if I had the space to build the full outer bailey, the Pig's economy would provide pretty much nothing to fill all that space.

Now, there is just one reason why I picked this specific french castle, besides also being located in the then Plantagenêt half of France. See that big round tower attached with a piece of wall to the donjon? To me that feels pretty much like vanilla Crusader Pig architecture.

The Wolf

Duc Volpe, well that's not a french name, isn't it? Indeed it is italian and means fox. Wolf, Duc Fox. Weird. Well then, the Wolf may be italian. Quite fitting, as I find his italian voice acting in Crusader 2 to be the best.

His castle is based on what seems to be a common style in northern Italy, two castles in specific: Rocca di Soncino and Castello di Torrechiara. Soncino is the one with the round tower in one corner and was built right at the corner of the walls of the city of Soncino, with the round tower facing outwards. Those castles have multiple concentric-ish layers of defence, a nice ballance between symmetry and asymmetry, and sit in the then german-ish part of today's Italy.

Soncino is in Lombardy, one of the regions of northern Italy where emperor Frederick I. had a good bunch of military fun and failure. Quite fitting, as in my opinion, given the fixes done by the Unofficial Crusader Patch Frederick is the second strongest bot in the game, not far behind the Wolf.

Sultan Saladin

Now, this is a fun one. There are some castles and citadels named after him, most notably the Citadel of Saladin, which he ordered to be constructed near Cairo. Obvious pick then, right? Well, not really... While Egypt was an enormous source of money and goods for Saladin, Sultan of Egypt, and while the citadel was constructed to defend Cairo against the crusaders, Saladin had absolutely no love for Egypt. Apparently, to him Egypt was but a necessity. Instead, Saladin greatly favoured Damascus and Syria in general. So, the castle Saladin builds is the medieval citadel of Damascus.

Oh, the church? Unlike Crusader 2, Crusader 1 has no mosque skins for muslim lords. Just imagine those churches to be mosques. It would be weird for a muslim city to not have a mosque, especially if its Sultan calls himself "salvation of the religion".

The Caliph

As far as I understand it, a caliph is a pope-ish person for the muslims. A notable dynasty was the Fatimid Caliphate, that once conquered Egypt and established Cairo as their capital. So, obviously, the Caliph should get something from Cairo. How about this Citadel of Saladin, then? Just as a little bit of irony. The Caliph builds the citadel using the high medieval layout. Unlike the historical citadel, but quite fitting for a pope-ish guy, a lot of religions buildings fill the castle ward. Now the Caliph can burn those "infidel" crusaders while defending Egypt.

The Sultan

The Sultan is a bit tricky and indeed might reveal a bit of historical research done by Firefly Studios. A notable Sultan during the first few crusades was Kilij Arslan ("Lionsword") II. of the Sultanate of Rum. The very one who tried and failed to stop emperor Frederick I. Barbarossa from crossing through today's Turkey.

I found it to be ridiculously difficult to find anything on medieval city walls or castles in Turkey, especially on Konya. Konya happened to be the capital of the Sultanate of Rum, but I couldn't find anything on the medieval layout of the city of Konya. Instead what I found was Alaeddin Hill park within the city. Looks familiar, eh'? Round-ish, full of gardens... There was an old fortification on this hill, and there is a big mosque. Not much to work with, but I guess it is better than really finding a map of medieval Konya. I mean... what would I be supposed to put inside the walls? The Sultan builds nothing! Oh dear... I guess Firefly faced the exact same issues back then.

King Richard the Lionheart

Now, I had some fun with this guy. =) Richard, King of England, Duke of Normandy, Duke of Aquitaine, Duke of Gascony, Lord of Cyprus, Count of Poitiers, Count of Anjou, Count of Maine, Count of Nantes,... wait. Those are a lot of french names, eh'? Indeed, this guy ruled over 50% of medieval France. He was more powerful than the French king in his own land! And he was King of England. And he felt worse for England than Saladin felt for Egypt. Apparently, people in his time joked about that Richard would sell England to fund the crusade.

Well, give him a french castle in Aquitaine or something then, eh'? Well, I could've... but instead I gave him Trifels. A german castle in which Richard was imprisoned after the third crusade. Why was Richard imprisoned? Well, look up the aftermath of the Siege of Acre.

Kaiser Friedrich I. Barbarossa

Ah yes, Frederick, that steamrolling badarse who might've conquered Jerusalem if he didn't drown. Put simply, he got the castle of Nürnberg. During the middle ages, there was no such thing as a capital in the German empire. For the most part, every duke did their own thing. The emperors moved from duchy to duchy, asserting their dominance, and occasionally guiding the dukes into a direction they felt benefited the empire as a whole. There was one castle, though, which apparently was the favourite residence of most medieval german emperors, and there is no medieval german emperor who did not at least once reside in this castle: Nürnberg.

King Philippe II. Augustue

The real Philipp II. was quite the badarse, managed to kick Plantagenêt butts and conquer most of Richard's 50% of France. He and Richard mostly left for the third Crusade together, because Richard knew he would do all that behind his back. Well, then Acre happened... Anyways, before Philipp II. left for the crusade, he ordered the construction of a new wall around the wealthy city Paris, a wall that would be named after him. At its weakest point, near the river Seine, a new castle was built: The Louvre. All so that in turn, behind Philipp's back, Richard wouldn't grab more french territory.

Well, Philipp's castle in this pack is the Louvre.

The Wazir

The Wazir, unsurprisingly, is a vizier, which is a highly-ranked political advisor or minister, but also sometimes a representative of a caliph. Hmm, we do have a similar-looking guy in this game, who - just like Wazir - likes to burn things. The Caliph? In this interpretation, the Wazir is the representative of the Caliph, and so he should get something from medieval Cairo as well. How about the city itself?

I tried my best modelling the rough shape of the city walls and positioning the gates of Cairo. Yeah, I know, those are quite some gates. Cairo has a ton of mosques in there, so naturally the Wazir builds a lot of religious buildings as well, roughtly at mosque locations. The big square tower is an unhistorical addition. As gates throughout the Stronghold series are pathetically weak, there needed to be something protecting this "weak spot" where the septillion city gates gather.

For reference, the Citadel of Saladin is located a bit south of the city, or left on the reference picture.

The Emir

I tried finding a few names of notable Emirs during the third Crusade, but couldn't find anything, so I looked into what an emir was, back at that time. Apparently, an emir was a military commander or general, who sometimes acted as a gouvernor. Okay, well, so what's the Emir governing, then? I gave him Acre. This is a game about the third Crusade, after all, and Acre was quite the big epic showdown... and long tedious siege. The strategically most important city of Acre, held by muslim forces, the camps of the Crusaders besieging Acre, eventually including the forces of Richard and Philipp, and the camp of Saladin and his forces laying siege to the Crusader's camps. Yeah, a siege during a siege. The fuck.

And so, in my interpretation, the Emir is the governour of Acre, a general of Saladin.

The Nizar

The Nizar is a Hollywood Ninja throwing Hollywood Ninja en masse at you. Said Ninja are called assassins in the Stronghold series. Well, the order of the assassins did exist, and they did assassinate a lot, and as every player of the first Assassin's Creed game knows, their home was Masyaf castle. Now, the real Masyaf looks nothing like the poor thing in the Assassin's Creed game, though.

The Sheriff

... of Nottingham obviously gets Nottingham castle. Again, it looks like Firefly did their research here. The third castle ward did exist during the high middle ages, first enclosed in wooden walls, later in stone walls, and so I added it. Also gives me more usable space despite me having to squish the castle walls.

To match Robin Hood lore, the Sheriff builds a prison and a few gallows.

The Marshal

Marshal is... interesting. He's brave, knightly, dispatches tons of knights, and guides you throughout the story of Stronghold 1. In Stronghold 1, you two start out in the very south-west of England, so I picked a castle from around there. A notable find was Tintagel castle. Did I mention that the Marshal is quite knightly? Tintagel has quite a big role in the legend of King Arthur.

The two back gates are there for gameplay reasons. The real Tintagel sits on a peninsula.

The Abbot

Okay, this one is a bit silly. The Abbot got Cærlaverock castle, a scottish castle. So far so good. Now, if one tries to trace back who built this castle, you'll stumble upon the name Undwin and a bunch of others. Undwin? Well, there is this german Let's Player with a big focus on the Stronghold series, who also loves to make cringeworthily bad abbot-based puns. Welp, guess the Abbot gets this castle, then.

As a bonus, there's a tower protecting the Abbot's cathedral from the side. See it as a minuature of the Abbot's Tower in Scotland, a 16th century tower house.

The Skirmish Pack

This is a pack of 128 new castles for the 16 vanilla lords. All castles are optimised and tested for all 100 skirmish campaign missions. Yes, that's all 50 original, 30 HD release, and 20 Extreme skirmish missions.