At around hour six I made the decision to abandon war and exclusively play the free build mode. I should have known this moment was coming, considering my experience with the other games, but there's a part of me that just has to entertain the idea of playing these games "correctly."
Things in free build appeared to be going well for a couple of hours. My settlement was expanding. I was producing tons of surplus food and enough liquor and religion to keep my people happy at a high tax rate. Then, suddenly and without warning, I hit a cap on the number of hovels I could build. Since hovels determine your maximum civilian population, that also served as a cap on the number of agricultural and industrial buildings I could support. 128 peasants was my absolute maximum.
I searched online to find a solution (or at least an explanation) for this problem, and while nobody could tell me why it exists, I did learn that the cap does not apply on custom maps. So I spent a couple of hours playing around with the map editor, trying to create something I think will be enjoyable.
The next phase of my time with Stronghold Legends will be free build in "the Dark Forest," a map filled with far too many trees. My theory here is that the barrier they pose to expansion and settlement will be almost like a compelling infrastructure challenge.
I guess that's just who I am. Given a game where I can take control of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table, and face off against giants, dragons, and evil sorcerers, I'd rather fight against some trees. I choose not to think of this as cowardice, but as a down to earth practicality and concern with material prosperity.
Yep, no fear at all . . .
Interesting. Given that it's 128 specifically, that sounds like it was perhaps hard coded for performance reasons -- 128 is a Base 2 number that's referenced a lot in computing. Maybe they just ignored limits on custom maps, because they figured nobody would expect custom maps to run smoothly.
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