There is not sense of community anymore

[RedHawk7]

Let me start by saying this: I have been a long time player of SHK.

My first world was W4, I was in North Ireland and I reached prince rank in 50 days. I know, it's slow, but I didn't spend on cards or tokens... but still, fast because I got help from my faction at the time and multiple allies I made along the way. I ended up being the king of Ireland at some point, to only got dethroned a week later. All of that in good fun! The player who dethroned me did it with votes, instead of razing. We, for months played this kind of tug-of-war with each other using votes only and we eventually became very good friends (enough as to co-run a faction in GC2).

Even though we could have attacked each other we didn't. We never knew if we attacked the other, the whole faction will attack us. And that was amazing! The sense of community we had in those days was leagues of what SHK has now. We knew there weren't alt accounts in either of our factions and that we had spy's in the houses. So, the moment we tried to make a very aggressive move, we were gonna suffer for it and with good cause.


Right now... all of that is moot.

House restriction is AWFUL! as well as Faction restriction. This means that only 2000 players can be active in game, shrinking daily because of the Glory race... the rest are just cannon fodder. That also means, the use of alt accounts for those people who are in a house faction, who know that now that this game became an elitist game WHERE YOU NEED TO PAY UP TO WIN are more likely to bend the rules to their favor to gain a very tiny edge against the people who card close to 50 cards per day.

And I don't blame them, because now it's not a game where you start small but you eventually become big and powerful (like they advertise... and it was!), but instead you start small and if you didn't started in the first day of server (or the first week with luck) and you didn't card hard you are done. You won't get into a faction house and therefore you are cannon fodder: Forget about holding a parrish, forget about voting, forget about monkying, forget about having aspirations of leadership, forget about playing really... You are left begging and pleading for someone to take you in or trying to make alliances with other factions just not to attack you (with only the promise of words, nothing else) AND EVEN IF YOU GET INTO THE FIRST DAY OF THE NEW WORLD: You will be at a tremendous disadvantage due to all the carders in game, who in the first week they'll hold the country, be the head of a house (not earned, just because they were fast enough to rank), control who does what, how and when and just dictate how you have to play the game.

And that, excluding dumb players who get to make decision in game that backfire constantly because they spend money just to gain their ranks.

And then, if they get bored being the top dog in the server, they'll sell the account to someone in here who doesn't even speak the same language they did, and so, you have a very VERY BIG TELL on what happened. One day, this guy is speaking plain english and the next is speaking only in russian... WHAT?!

That's not to say all the factions who are created to house Alt accounts, some of them who are in houses with dummy accounts (I can provide various examples of this, only in EU5 alone). Another way to hold control esasily over the rest of players.

And finally, the lack of community. I tried to run a faction in GC3... I got taken out by an alderman who had 500 troops, maxed pikes, maxed archers, maxed knights, maxed ransack, and had only been in the same place as me just for a week. His villa was tier 4 (at most) and he never traded... But 4 people always send him carts at all hours. It was clearly an alt account (and no, it wasn't friends of the guy who decided to introduce him to the wonderful world of SHK and help him out). He took me out, a duke, with several attacks coming from his tiny village. My faction was disheartened, some of them just played ocassionally and they tried to give me support in the form of attacking his villages, but it was for naught because we couldn't raze him and no one had a spare slot or wanted to do plus it was day 100 and we were under constant fire by the same "allies" they promised not to attack us.

This game right now sucks. There is no redeeming qualities. EU4 was done by the day 400. and EU5 will probably end the same way with this new ruleset.

Its a slap to the face to all players of SHK, it's bad for new players (*, there is a guy in the forums complaining how he couldn't even complete the registration because the site is broken), it's bad for the community because we are slowly dying out and it will probably be bad for Firefly when people just get bored of playing and only a very handfull of people would be willing to pay for cards.

Myself, I don't even waste my money buying packs or tokens. It's useless, knowing this world will end in a year at most, all of the world has already been decided and what expectancy do I have to continue playing this knowing I'm just cannon fodder?

I remember a time when even players with low rank were excluded of capturing because they could pose a threat LATER. It was an honour code between us SHK players. RIght now, one of my faction members in EU5 got captured by a Squire who got help by a viscount in H1, herself being a commoner and very active.

There is no communication, sense of community, honour code, player respect anymore.

SHK is dying. And all of that because Firefly is pushing half brained updates and not playtesting anymore. If they go back to the previous form of playing and incentives for players to keep playing THEY WILL PROBABLY GET MORE MONEY! But no. They just want a quick cashgrab.


I'm not the only one who made similar rants... And probably will not be the last.

[meatball2k]

The problem with this game is people are desperate to win amd because there is.thst many worlds amd mot that many new players the same alliances pf.heavy carders form on every new world killing them off pretty swiftly. New age sucks old age sucks. There is very little to keep people motivated these days.

Game also is a time killer. I would not reccomend it to anyone who cant spend all day at there computer or if your super desperate to win then.share accounts with others.

Full of cheaters and that glitch where people where paying 100 dollars fpr.80k card points kimd of.killed.the game for.me

[DekeYoungAtlanta]

Starting with USA-2 I learned this lesson.

Players do not make a community of the players they meet on a server launch.
Players form a community with players they already know on existing servers and then as a group decide to join a server launch en masse.

There are several TeamSpeak / Discord servers operating all over the globe that act as group headquarters for SHK players regardless of what server they are playing on at this time.

Prior to server launches there are huge recruitment efforts made to show up on the first hour of the first day with at least 25-50 and more often 100-200 players in a group effort. Starting locations are already decided. County, province and king seats are already decided. Groups have a preference for House colors before the server even launches and the race is first to Page, first to form a faction, first to claim a House.

I meet random players during server launches that have no concept of the off map organization involved and try to join/negotiate/intimidate me based on village proximity on launch day. I do my best to listen to them, but a single player (or even a single band of 3-5 players) has zero chance of being a politically dominant force on any map.

Such is the nature of the game. There are many complaints about the ERA rules, but I consider the 20 house 5 faction 20 player = 2,000 limit the be the most crippling.

If you are not in a faction in a house by day 3, you are probably never going to be in a house. By day 14 the number of factions without a house are 3x to 6x as many as those lucky enough to be in a house. The truth is that if you are not organizing weeks before the server launches, you are probably not going to be relevant to the map.

- Deke

[Priest Guardian]

good thread so far. I agree with 85% of whats said so far. There are so many more things that need to be done to improve things

All I can say is I hope If/When Stronghold Kingdoms 2 comes out all this will be addressed with such flare that it just Rocks!

[larsbagge]

Bring back the age rules

[Hezikiah II]

im going to post about this myself... dont leave the game, no one should leave until we gain the power to fix this problem, and build the community we want... i have a theory on this simulation game that i would like to share as well, and i would like to see if anyone replies to that, separate, but related, thread... first my proposal to players though... take it into serious consideration guys, what i have to say... work with me and the others i am building a community with in EU4 right now and we can make a pretty good community in the future... i came from World 2 day 2, i actually wrote about the day i joined in one of my journals i just found, and i had a terrible experience... seems to me the warmongers where all over and mega alliances already were beginning to form that early though they had no chance of working at the time- now they are so easy to form its discusting