Great vid as always. Not gonna lie, I thought fear factor improved health AND damage, not just damage. One thing worth mentioning about positive fear factor is if you wall in every positive fear factor building with no way in, your workers will stay at the stockpile/armory/granary thus negating the negatives about positive fear factor somewhat
@@MrKholishUmar they do not wander because the buildings are inaccessible. if they do you probably made a mistake by connecting these walls to your accessible walls, which makes any buildings encased still accessible. You can also just build these on my favorite spots for houses; any inaccessible hill or island. If you do it right, they do not go anywhere, instead they just rest on the spot the same time they would rest after reaching the gardens.. but the time is still saved because they dont walk around.
@@Siggerou1993 Do the followings: 1. Make a rectangular space surrounded by walls or a little island surrounded by (one square) moats, and make sure no one can access the space or island. 2. Put as many good things the space or island, preferably the small garden. 3. Decide whether you want 5-25% Troop Moral Bonus, or 90-50% Production Percentage. The more good things you put, the higher the Troop Moral, the lower Production Percentage. 4. Enjoy. You will see your working citizen still slacking, but they will slack on their workplace instead of wasting their time going to the good things' location since those good things are isolated in a space or an island by either walls or moats.
It is interesting that in the stats screen, when you flip from good/evil you get a half green and half red circle for the fear factor column describing what kind of lord you were. Someone thought about this for the stats screen. :)
Politics be like But seriously this weirdly happens often even in recent history, Stalin for example banned mentions of the Tsarist past of Russia and was known for being well you know, but then WW2 happened and he was like "oh yeah Remeber Comrades that time we beat Napoleon and his Grand Army and the Tsarist Period, we are kind of like that against Germany now." Even the Crusaders to a degree (as in they went from mass murdering People indescriminately to being somewhat tolerant in diplomacy to their Islamic and Orthadox Christian neighbors mostly because they realised how few of them there are compared to the locals that and it makes some sense economically and structurally to rely on the locals.) but they were still repressive but fairly normal repression at the time.
@@forickgrimaldus8301The Crusaders did the same as anyone else did at the time if the populace refused to surrender before a siege broke into their city.
@@LordVader1094 Yeah, typical rule of medieval sieges was : You surrender - you get sparred. You put little resistance and surrenter (to not be killed for betrayal by your liege, or just to see if reinforcements are comming) - you probably get spared anyway. You resist for too long - then even if you surrender everyone gets killed and the city is sacked. Turns out troops that were forced to sit under your walls and die from illness for few months are not merciful. But ofc this is just "rule of thumb" and there were exceptions. Sometimes you could surrender immidietely and get sacked anyway... Bad luck.
if you build the positive factor buildings and then block them away in a square wall for instance so the workers cannot access them, you get the bonus of positive factor without losing the production bonus as the workers cannot wonder to waste time at the positive factor buildings aka flower gardens and so on, if I am not mistaken, at least that's what I used to do
@@PewPew1234567 exactly thats why I either build these on inaccessible islands, hills, or encase them in a square wall.. also the wall should not touch any of your other walls or towers that are accessible because peasant will walk on the walls as the gardens or any other buildings encased in walls are still accessible in this game if theres access to the top of the wall. build it at least a tile away.
Double army sounds more powerful at first but there's a 50% damage difference. Because of that, the bigger army dies quicker and their number-given damage bonus decrease much quicker.
Good video. However, it should be mentioned that fear factor has diminishing returns. Due to the fact that you can only recruit troops as fast as you gain population, there comes a point where your economy is so strong that negative fear factor simply gives you gold you have no use for. And at some point even positive fear factor will be good enough to keep a powerful economy to just be able to recruit troops constantly.
@@poryg5350 are you talking about the 24 peasants limit at a time? Because you can increase it by building a lot of water pot and then delete it, you can get 100+ peasants sitting near the bonfire at a time that you can use to get an instant 100+ army.
@@zikriflanery7030 No. I'm talking about the fact that you obtain peasants at speed that depends on your popularity and nothing else. Yes, you can artificially increase the amount of peasants recruitable at once by building water pots. However, this does not increase the speed at which you gain peasants. Meaning if you were to compete against the AI that doesn't build pots, you'd have 240 soldiers just as slowly as them.
@@zikriflanery7030 Yes, but those people will not just appear magically. If you are constantly recruiting, there is the same limit. Water pot just allows to save more than 24 peasants maximum. It does not increase workers appearing.
My master informs you that he never uses +/- until he's about to attack. Then slaps down a load of positive shrines for battle then deletes straight after. He might try using negs until battle time now. Thanks for the vid.
@@0707565 I think you're missing the joke. This is how certain enemy lords respond when you have them as allies rather than as foes. I believe this applies to the Rat, Snake, Pig, and Wolf. Instead of giving them their own voice lines for what they say when they're your ally, they have this grim looking helmet guy say stuff like "My master thinks we are losing this war" or "My master informs you that the goods you dispatched have arrived" or "My master agrees" or "My master informs you he will not help you."
Bro can u tell me why should i remove negative fear factor before attacking..I thought if more negative ff ur troops does more damage..why u said build positive ff before attacking please explain
i always went for positive fear factor beacuse i feel like it is better to have a good army than faster production, and even on the max positive fear factor level the economy can still be managed
I always went for a middle ground. When it comes to fear factor. Build some negatives but still Build more positives. That way I still get a bonus for the troops; the people are still happy, and I still got a good production efficiency.
@@Starfleet8555 I don't think that works how you want it to. The few negative fear-factor buildings will just be cancelled out in effect. Looks cool though :)
You should actually try it in a match though. Although it would be so beneficial to have a lot negative fear factor in early game, their cost would eat through your starting money wich could have been used for more beneficial buildings at the start. So the optimal time to spend your gold on them is in middle/end game when you have spent your gold on your economy, but at that point your focus is on army and battle and the economy would be well running even when you use positive fear factor, plus at that point you have a lot of workers and extra taxes would be much appreciated. I think in a match positive fear factor easily surpasses negative fear factor in efficiency.
Im not sure if the eco run well when you use good fear factor, sometimes your granary will be empty due to high population even you have many bakery they are too lazy due to good fear factor side effect
I play this game 15 years ago.. I use bad things to gain money, and when the time to attack is come, i change to good things. Sometimes, i can win with no single unit lost, while killing 10.000+ enemy unit. This game is so epic. I want to play this again.
WORK WORK WORK or you will be burned, drowned, hanged, locked in a cell, thrown in a cesspit, put in the stocks, on the stretching rack, in a cage, head cut off and head displayed on a spike!!!!................... Okay guys time to attack. Nevermind all that torture stuff. Here's some maypoles for the kids and some dancing bears. Also have a lot of flowers and shrine gravestone thingies. HOORAH TEAM! :D
The troop bonus part was presented a little confusing IMO, here is what it means: Fear factor (Evil) Troop Combat Bonus Extra Production Popularity Loss 1 -5% 110% -1 2 -10% 120% -2 3 -15% 130% -3 4 -20% 140% -4 5 -25% 150% -5 Fear factor (Good) Troop Combat Bonus Reduced Production Popularity Gain 1 +5% 90% +1 2 +10% 80% +2 3 +15% 70% +3 4 +20% 60% +4 5 +25% 50% +5 Nonetheless, I forgot that it was a thing so thanks for that.
Interesting results. They're probably affected by how you changed the positioning on buildings though. Positive fear factor should half production in theory, but in practice it may decrease it even further as the workers spend time going to the good things. IMHO it would have been better if they just produced less stuff or waited around at their workplace. Negative fear factor has your workers produce more stuff. Not sure how +50% production works on stuff like weapons, as I doubt you can have one and a half sword in your armoury, but in practice there's no variability caused by where you place the bad things.
With weapons (And ale) normally you would get 1.5 after each work cycle (It gives 1 then 2 then 1 and keeps looping) But when you have max fear factor they always deposit 2 resources after each cycle. I haven't seen how every building works yet but another thing I know is that the mills are actually unaffected by the fear factor
@@Jefflenious Hmm, this is actually worth experimenting with. I'd set up 2 kingdoms in the editor, one with max negative FF and one without, or maybe 3 to add positive too, and see what each building returns.
if you surround you positive fear factor with walls, your workers will do their break at their building instead of the positive fear building, which saves the walking distance and time.
Thing is, troop limit is a thing. I usually stay neutral till i hit it/get close, than go positive. Exception is when i play in a pocket and can focus on pure economics to supply my allies. Breakpoints are a thing, with negative fear factor you can't one shot slaves with crossbows, with positive you can even one shot horses. Also side note, positioning doesn't matter, as the time they spoent to walk to the gardens etc. is accounted for.
just awesome quality content. try a video about efficiency of AI lords and how the better ones(Wolf, Saladin, Emir) manage to do better than bad AIs. keep up the good work. wish you well. take care
Here's my take: since the -ve fear factor buildings are much expensive, you're better off spending that gold somewhere else and getting that economy running off extra rations + average taxes. When the economy gets going, you introduce +ve fear factor and get 10-15pc bonus for your troops without much hurdle to the economy. The most beneficial I've seen -ve fear factor's yield is during the historical and trail campaigns, where a speedy economy followed by early rush is the key to surviving.
Vanilla positive fear factor ftw, you get both bonus produciton of negative fear and attack power! Can also surround positive fear structures to make them inaccessible, this will make peasants waste much less time walking when on breaks.
Yeah, it's actually exactly what you have to do for the Stronghold 1 map Calanis - since it takes too long to get ale and religion up and you have no food in the mission, you need to use positive fear factor to keep popularity somewhat stable. Walling off the good things cuts down on the time lost, and you still get the attack bonus which you absolutely need with that ballbuster of an economic mission since it will throw bandits at you ASAP.
@@Luke_Danger Do the peasants come close to the walls and turn around? Or do they not even walk towards the enclosed walls? If they not even losing their time going there it is a huge advantage.
@@drowsyufo It's been a little while since I played with a high Pleasant FF, but as I recall they will just stop at the Stockpile/Granary, take their break, then get back to work rather than walking all the way to a random Good Thing and then taking the break. Of course you need the time, resources, and space to set it all up, so it's not likely to be too useful in multiplayer, and you have to expand it with your population, but it's workable if you stick to the small Good Things.
Stack troop bonus explains the odd result. You got nearly all of the positive troops smacking at 1-5 troops at a time, this due to extremely short melee range. This vastly boosts the positive sides survivablity in this narrow experiment. This effect was escalated in a tunnel fight in particular because one side is that 25% more damage, leading to snowballing of the positive troops collecting in attack range.
I think its very important to change factors if needed - that could be done in stronghold crusader. I always build positive things before my main attack. And in campaigns, if you have lots of troops from begining and low time to prepare for attack, build only positive things, you will gain much more benefits than some extra troops. In some missions with longer time prep, like Who is afraid of big bad wolf, you can start with bad things, than change it to good things.
been enjoying your videos a lot lately! thanks for the content. btw i think the smaller arabian swordsmen army winning was kind of expected? i think the early 1.5x damage boost helped them stack on top of each other much much faster and it just snowballed off that. a little bit more on their side and i think they would've pushed the other ones back by a fair margin. as always thanks for the vids. love you
1:26 if going for positive ff: Always enclose all of these buildings(build small gardens to save space) inside a wall(make sure the wall is NOT touching any of your towers and your actual defense walls) so they cannot be accessed because the only thing that matters is them being on the map, not being accessible. So you can also build these on the top of inaccessible hills or islands you can do the same for your houses too. result: Your peasants wont wander around the castle, when taking a break, they will just rest at their workplace instead, making them work faster. I always do both -5 and +5 fear factors.. when defending and running the economy I do the -5 then before attacking i switch over to +5 for the troop boost and with these inaccessible they still arent working that much worse than normal while attacking, so enough gold to actively send backups if needed which is better than retreating a failed siege and letting the enemy recover,
I was so surprised that a person with such calculations don would say that negative fear factor is bad in the buildings tier list bit you came back and fixed it now!! 1. I have played crusader mostly against bots. The actual players make insane amounts of buildings and I am never sure how to finish the game while attacking them (I have to improve my attack I guess) 2. When against bots, mostly negative fear factor pays dividends! You can out resource and outarmy them pretty quickly using negative fear factor. On top of that, sine my fear factor is -5, I am getting ~50% more bread and ale. My Inns are also working ~50% more efficiently. What this means is that I can easily have +8 food , +8 ale, +2 religion (one single cathedral that makes monks does the job),, -5 fearfactor and -12taxes. "THE GOLD IS FLOWING INTO THE TREASURY SIRE" 3. Since I am getting so much more stone I can just keep selling it. On top of that, I can now start selling weapons since I have excess of gold, I can instantly buy them and make the army (or if you wanna be fancy just make weapons, at ~50% more efficiency you will be able to sell them for gold which you are getting already from taxes) All this basically means I can make 30 catapults, 100 horse archers, 40-50 crossbows and start breaking down my opponent bot stone by stone, resource by resource. If I so choose, I can stall them out of their resources till they are left with limited troops Do you know a better attack strat? Resource strat ? Some resource building calculations ?
Always build positive fear factors inside an inaccessible area. This wont stop workers from resting but they will rest at their working place or stockpile instead of at FFs
Some maps have a number of islands on them. Small and isolated from other crusader lords, islands that can't fit that much on them but that enemy lords can't really attack. They're supposed to only be there for scenery, but if you're looking for a place to put certain nonessential buildings... You can place Hovels, Good or Bad Things, Barracks, Engineer's Guild, Tunneler's Guild, Mercenary Post, Marketplace... Or you can even put down a Church or Cathedral in theory if you only need just one of them to produce the Religion bonus but don't care about priests having access to their site of labor, same goes for Apothecary which has the same static boost of disease resistance without taking up population space if you put it to sleep... There are all sorts of things you can put on these islands if you're trying to maximize space early on around your castle. Of course you can only do this on maps that have islands, but still. The AI is too stupid to do the same thing so you have a space advantage over them if you do this. If there's already been a video on this tip I haven't seen one but here's my contribution. Yes you can put military buildings on those islands. You can still use them to summon your army, just since the building has no access to the Keep, instead of your units moving towards the military buildings, they will stay huddled around the campfire.
I think it also really depends how much resources are available, and how fast you can get an strong economy, after you have that you can easily use positive fear factor for the troop benefits.
Always played either with positive fear factor because that's what I would do if I was a medieval lord lol or no fear factor because bro wtf they're all over I don't have time for fancy stuff. Very informational video, thank you for your effort
I always max out Positive Fear Factor for both the popularity boost allowing extra taxation and stronger troops, and even with the economic disadvantage, you can still manage a good economy. Monks, Assassins, and Crossbowmen with maximum positive Fear Factor are downright dangerous
For posotive fear factor, i like to put those buildings where no one can get too. Build a small wall, dig a moat, or maybe on top of a cliff. This helps to minimize how much time your pesents will waste.
If you ever heard only one quote "Morning, Your Lordship" from all people of your castle, congratulation, you are a nice lord, that happen when you just do nothing about your food ratio, taxes rate, & fear factor xd
It was a good video but two substantial component factor was forgotten I it: Ale coverage Religion You see,You could have put the consumption of food in half with positive fear factor and that wouldn't change a thing.Also,running up a brewery is really cheap so consider this too. And last,but not least,in a heated battle,you do not have the time and resource for doing these so I warrant that positive fear factor can really change everything.
Bad fear factor is really hard to setup, even in no rush games (The starting gold is probably too low and by the time you want to start using them no rush is probably over) Good fear factor though is good though, the damage bonus if often times better than getting a few more units out
I think the case for remaining neutral was missed for maximizing economy with market usage. It really depends on how much land you have to work with. Spamming all the fear junk takes up significant space that could be used to plot quite a few production buildings and then you need even more space to put churches or wheat/mill/bread mass production to counter-balance the negative popularity. For a small space I think remaining neutral and maxing out production facilities is best. Also, given the negative combat bonus on fear, that is something to really consider if you can't easily pump out super armies due to mission difficulty and unit cap. I'm not so sure about something like maxing out fear and production buildings and then supplementing the negative popularity with a bribe or market purchases of food/ale. Limited space tests like this would have been great to see. Example: 20 production buildings @ 150% is the same as 30 production buildings @ 100%, assuming good pickup/dropoff distance is preserved between all buildings. How much space does all the churches and fear stuff take, 10 production buildings worth? I would say so... all that stuff costs gold too. However, making all the extra production buildings is a significant cost too. At this level those costs are probably roughly even. Going larger: Let's say you get 40 buildings @ 150% then you need 60 buildings @ 100% to be roughly equal production. Suffice to say, it seems if you have any mid-large size castle, it is going to be ideal to go full fear. As the video said, you could just delete all the fear stuff as you start hitting your attack phase anyways or even buff up with positive fear factor at that point. Most missions are just about surviving and getting gold built up to start attacking and then it's a totally different phase after that. I would like to see some tests where you take a specific walled off area of small, medium, large size and try to make the best production you can in X amount of game frames with a typical amount of wood, farmland, iron and stone resources available. It would be a TASBOT speedrun of sorts. /rant
Some maps have a number of islands on them. Small and isolated from other crusader lords, islands that can't fit that much on them but that enemy lords can't really attack. They're supposed to only be there for scenery, but if you're looking for a place to put certain nonessential buildings... You can place Hovels, Good or Bad Things, Barracks, Engineer's Guild, Tunneler's Guild, Mercenary Post, Marketplace... Or you can even put down a Church or Cathedral in theory if you only need just one of them to produce the Religion bonus but don't care about priests having access to their site of labor, same goes for Apothecary which has the same static boost of disease resistance without taking up population space if you put it to sleep... There are all sorts of things you can put on these islands if you're trying to maximize space early on around your castle. Of course you can only do this on maps that have islands, but still. The AI is too stupid to do the same thing so you have a space advantage over them if you do this.
Yeah, lol, the fear factor status in % actually tells you how efficient your workers are ! Max positive fear factor is 50 % efficiency, and max negative fear factor is 150 % efficiency !
I just simply didn't use any negative or positive fear factor building. -Since AI attacks in waves, everytime they come you'd have to destroy the gallows and then place it back to boost your economy again after the wave. -Also don't forget placing 10-15 neg. fear factor buildings cost money (even more money with higher population)...
@@Teglamen Alright then:Suit urself lol.I just use a bunch of crossbowmen on my towers and that's it lol:Like that's literally all the defense I need,regardless of fear factor(ps:I defend on my keep:I put down that big circle tower connected to my keep and then just surround it with lookout towers in order to protect my guys from enemy fire lol.Sure they're vulnerable to catapult fire but hey:They get the job done.My guys almost NEVER got hit this way lol)
You can also spam good fear factor before fighting using negative to build the army and good for using it. Edit a year later; it should be noted that having positive feat factor and church bonuses means You don't have to feed Your people and can just sell all food produced, any ale bonus can just let You tax people at this point or You can divert the farm space for more bread production instead to just sell more bread.
Does negative fear factor affect the ranged troops firing abilities and damage ?! Could make us a simulation of 2 crossbowmen with 5 + buffs and other with 5 - ... And see does it change anything ... Or does it just change their melee attack ?!
Jeff, could you make a video on "Lord's strength", the dots (green for weakness/ blue for strength)? Also I've been wondering if there's a mod to manipulate it.
You can put your positive fear factor buildings in stone walls that is not accessible to your population. Your people will still waste a little bit of time to rest, but they don't waste time walking to the positive fear factor buildings, all in all I think production is lessened by no more than 10%, in return you get +5 popularity for more taxes and +25% attack bonus for your troops. So that's OP.
Greetings Jefflenious I always see your videos I do not speak English any channel in Spanish shows about this video game (I use a translator) a greeting from Bolivia 🇧🇴🇧🇴.
Hey I started playing stronghold again after your videos. I think I struggle with is proper building placement for maximum efficiency. Especially regarding quarries and ox tethers. Do you have any tips? I sometimes end up with quarries that have their little stockpile blocked
Place woodcutters or more expensive stone walls in undesirable stone output areas to force them to generate in other spots. Other than that you just have to watch the output pile and see if you need more ox depending on the distance and how nice your placements can be it will require more or less. Generally 3 I would say or 2 if it is very close to stockpile.
Could you make some more testing how much stronger are in reality troops with max. positive factor? cause it really doesnt seems like only 20% when the half size army won
Its probably tricky to say, but it could easily feel like more than +25% because of stacked troop bonus. Stacked troops means more attacking at once. So as one side is dying more it is outputting less DPS as the other side stacks more and more units. So essentially it is like two effects building onto each other and it would differ greatly depending on the situation. The effect is probably vastly overstated here as you have piles of units coming at each other head-on in two conga lines and you aren't going to see that much in a real game. In real games this is one of the main reasons macemen are so valuable is they move quickly and stack up very fast. I would say using macemen is the best bet to abuse the troop bonus to a maximum in a real game.
For positive ff, its a good idea to wall the buildings, cause them not working hard enough is annoying, but the real issue is that they go to those buildings and do nothing.
Thank you for this insightful guide! Especially now, when I have just started uploading my own Stronghold gameplays it turns out to be very useful! Cheers!
you forgot that you can dig Moat or build wall around and your workers will no longer waste time plus if you put positive building near religion it should help your priests with blessings.
make video about damage bonus comparison for every unit for every stage bonus, or just leave a complete table if someone been scienced of this -5 -4 -3 -2 -1 0 +1 +2 +3 +4 +5 fear factor damage for missile & melee table
I always thought that since the mercenary troops were only loyal to themselves (and aren't real soldiers for their lord) that they wouldn't be affected by the fear factor since all they care about is getting paid. Thanks for denying my childhood falsehoods
We played stronghold against each other with my brother, back then, we did not knew about fear factor troops bonus. And then, I did not have much troops, he had army. I wanted to give up, but we fight and I won :-D Just like in video. My young brother was furious :-)
I changed the lord color to black, then try to make a castle with a complete fearness & foodless, cuz i can drink people by ale & bless them by religion. I mean i still produce food but only selling them as well, also i rate little taxes too. I didnt expect if all of this still give the castle +1 population looks like "people love u my lord" haha pretty good right xd, meanwhile some worker "i have extra 5X today" "u r cruelest lord ever" "we are all starving Lordship" xd
Negative Fear Factor is good in production but affects your army so in my experience it is good when you need to improve your economy. Positive Fear Factor is- aside from making your people happy buffs your army well, which is good in combat. Ideal in late game once you had enough supplies.
I think I can clear that Up. The Game was balanced for Stronghold 1. Crusader automatically has 150% productivity. So positive fear Factor Sets It Back down to 100 while negative fest Factor increases It to 200% that ist also why so many buildings have the 1,5 production value while It was just 1 in the Base Game. Also for Most Produce It can kinda Offset the Balance of buildings one needs Less farms and more bakeries to Produce effitient with negative fest Factor and the other way around with positive
Good point. And the funny thing is that the 150% default productivity is for the Skirmish etc modes - the campaign modes instead use SH1 production rates but with Crusader popularity modifiers. Always found that weird.
I played MP with my brother I had -5 f.f and he has +5, I was the one sending him gold and resources and the one using troops to defend, he was the one attacking and making the troops
The way you show troop bonus is a total misschief. Do it without walls , and also try ranged units with the resources amount above. Gonna be really different results.
I noticed whenever i place maypoles, dancing bears , dungeons and gallows, it dosen't work, nor do i see children/bears/people in them. Any tips or comments on this case?
But one negative cost 50 gold and one positive cost 30 gold. And then there is retaxation. For 5 positive FF you can get -4 tax lets say and fo 5 negative you have to get your people -5 antitax. Sou how uch gold had you gathered. When the retaxation was calculated?
Yes you would get more gold with fear factor, I had the numbers in my notes but unfortunately deleted them lol But I'm sure you would make so much more gold with fear factor than -4 tax, and it's not just about the gold it's also the increased weapon production which is a lot better than buying weapons or doing it on no fear factor or +5
Love the content you do! You wouldve gain lot more subs if you use your real voice you know, channel would get it own style. It looks like you know english pretty well, so why dont you voice it your self, content is what matters, nobody cares about acsent.
It's one of my favorites lol, it's from one of the pig's missions in Stronghold 1, don't remember exactly which one it was but when you fail the mission he says it
Its funny to see how many of you game the system by destroying bad things and make good things just before a fight. I played this game for years and it never occured to me that I should do that because it just feels wrong lol. If I am playing as a tyrant, I'm not gonna randomly pretend to be good at the last second.
One side have fear factor -25% damage dealt and second side with positive fear factor have +25%, so difference is 50%. I never think fear factor has effect gold from tax.
So someone with nothing to Loose is less efective then someone that will loose everything if they don’t win. Hmm. Almost like they actually want to do their job yea?
