Submitted by Brave Sir Robin, Maps provided by different authors

The Cede Event And How To Get It

We first encounter the 'cede' event in the original Stronghold campaign, mission 12 - 'The Ransom'. The o­ne where you take the Snake's castle by force and use it for yourself to raise gold for something or other. The cede event is what allows the Snake's buildings and peasants to turn to your side, or colour.

It is a highly useful event to use in a scenario and can make maps very interesting by allowing the player to attack and then defend the same castle. The big drawback is that you cannot access the event if you begin with a normal map in the editor. The o­nly known way to access the event is to copy the original map file that contains it, rename it and save it back to your map files. Then clear the original landscape and buildings and delete the script events (apart from the cede), and basically start again.

However, you don't need to do that. Earl Listibald has done all the hard work for you by supplying the Cede Scenario Utility maps with all the terrain and most of the script already removed. Yay for Listy!

There are numerous templates in our download section that contain o­ne or more cede events:

• Stronghold 1 Cede Templates
• Stronghold Crusader Cede Templates

Download them as you would any other map and save them to the respective .map folder, then go into the editor and hey presto! Your very own blank map with the all important 'cede' event already contained in the script.

How The Cede Works And What To Do With It

Ok, let's say you've opened the blank cede utility map in the editor, first suggestion is to immediately save it again under another name, keep the original safely tucked away and work with the new version. If anything goes hideously wrong with your map you can copy the original again and start afresh, without having to download it over and over. Most designers map folders are full of copied, half fininshed, and totally unplayable maps - at least mine is anyway! It's always a good idea to make many saves of maps in progress, you just need to remember which save is which!

Where were we... ? The map, terrain wise, is a blank canvas, ready for you to detail as you please. The script however already contains some entries; this is the basic outline of how 'The Ransom' worked, minus invasions and messages etc., let's study these quickly ...

Date	Event	Condition
Jan 1180	Time Off
Jan 1180	Time o­n	No Enemy & Invasions Left
Jan 1180	Cede Castle	No Enemy & Invasions Left
Jan 1180	Lose	No People Left
Feb 1180	Win & Message	Gold Acquired - 10000
Feb 1180	Lose	Lord Killed - Any

First thing we see is 'Time Off', this does exactly as it says, it stops the game clock running; somewhat curiously though, peasants still work, trees still grow and animals frolick in pastures without the slightest need for linear time as we know it.

The second event 'Time o­n', as you probably guessed, turns the game clock back o­n. It's set to the condition (No Enemy & Invasions Left), as is the third, and critical, event 'Cede Castle'. With the same condition these two events will occur simultaneously, in the case of our example, 'The Ransom', when all the Snake troops are killed. At this point, everything that was the Snakes, turns, or cedes to your colour and time decides to behave itself o­nce more.

The fourth event and condition, 'Lose' (No People Left) is necessary for before cede occurs, quite simply it allows you to lose if all your troops are killed attacking the Snake. In most cases, a cede scenario map will not contain your Lord at the beginning, so you need a way to lose other than the commonly used 'Lord Killed'.

The fifth and sixth events, 'Win & Message' (Gold Acquired - 10000) and 'Lose' (Lord Killed - Any), are the same as you would use in any other invasion map and are for after the cede event occurs. Note that your Lord will appear o­n the map upon a successful cede and take up residence in the newly acquired Keep.

This is the classic cede scenario, the player starts with an attacking force o­nly and has to capture the enemy castle by eliminating all troops and killing the enemy Lord, thereafter taking control of the castle and completing the mission objectives.

Time Off/Time o­n and The Cede Event

An important point to make is that the events 'Time Off' and 'Time o­n' are not critical to a cede map and can be painlessly removed from the script. Their function is to disable the game clock, which serves o­nly to stop the script working, the game itself continues as normal. Well, not quite as normal that is, the 'TimeOff/TimeOn' period also prevents a couple of other things. You cannot affect popularity; Good and Bad Things, ale consumption and religion have no meaning in this non-time. Nor can you collect taxes, or bribe your peasants, although why any self respecting Lord would want to pay his peasants is beyond me. Also, your peasants will not consume food stocks, Twilight Zone anyone?

To see this non-time period in action, download the splendid and fully playable example "ONCE UPON A TIME" by Earl Listibald. o­ne of the earliest experimental cede maps I know of.

Removing the 'Time Off/Time o­n' events allows the script to run from the start of the map totally as normal, the advantage of this lets you program events that can occur before the cede event. Let's use the script extract below as an example...

Date	Event	Condition
Jan 1180	Cede Castle	No Enemy & Invasions Left
Jan 1180	Lose	No People Left
Jul 1181	Invasion	Rat - 300 Troops

The scenario starts in Jan 1180 with your forces ready to attack and capture an enemy castle, cedeing to your colour o­nce you've killed all enemy troops, however you've o­nly got eighteen months to do it. In July 1181 an invasion of 300 Rat troops will enter the map and attack. If you haven't met the cede condition by then, i.e. killed your original foes and got yourself safely tucked up in their castle, your in for a pretty rough time and unlikely to win the game. Exciting stuff eh?

A very good example of this is "YE OLDE TRADE ROUTE" by Dunwifit, an all round good scenario, I recommend it.

This shows us that we don't necessarily need the 'TimeOff/TimeOn' events, in fact you can add more fun/mayhem/murder to your map without them. Of course, this isn't the o­nly thing you can do by removing 'TimeOff/TimeOn', try experimenting, see what you can come up with.

Another important point to make is that although the 'Cede Castle' event isn't (or rather, wasn't) easy to get hold of, it's just an event, like any other. Its function is to convert any enemy colour structure, peasant or troop to your colour when it is implemented. You can set it to any condition and any date during the scenario you wish.

Let's change the last script extract slightly for another example...

Date	Event	Condition
Jan 1180	Cede Castle	Enemy Lord Killed
Jan 1180	Lose	No People Left
Jul 1185	Invasion	Rat - 300 Troops

There are two small but very important changes. Firstly the Cede Castle event has been changed to Enemy Lord Killed, this means your attacking force has o­nly to kill the enemy Lord to achieve cede. Any of his troops that you didn't kill in the attack will become yours upon his death, a wise decision o­n their part methinks. Secondly the Invasion date has been put back to Jul 1185, this is to help prevent a possible failure of the map. Let me explain further ...

In our previous example the player was allowed eighteen months to achieve cede by No Enemy & Invasions Left, i.e. all enemy troops killed. Because in this example we use Lord Killed to achieve cede, if the player were to kill the Lord when an invasion is o­n the map, this invasion would also turn to your colour at the point of cede. This would greatly unbalance your map and it would not therefore play as you intended.

A fine example of a script like this is "LE FELON" by Jalis, a great cede map with the unusual feature of having your starting troops, in a small wooden encampment, themselves under attack at the very beginning. As you can see, even sticking closely to the original cede map idea, a designer can introduce small, but critical changes to 'spice' the map up.

Futhermore the Cede Castle event can be triggered by more than o­ne condition, just like any other event. Take a look at this piece of script...

Date	Event	Condition
Jan 1180	Cede Castle	(Enemy Lord Killed) OR (Gold Acquired-2500)
Feb 1180	Lose	No People Left
Feb 1180	Bandits	Enemy Lord Killed
Feb 1180	Plague	Enemy Lord Killed

In this scenario we see the cede event is set to occur either when the enemy Lord is killed OR when 2500 gold is collected by the player. The cede event is not triggered by both conditions. In the Condition Screen in the editor, change 'All Of These' to 'Any Of These' to set multiple conditions to any event. The second event/condition 'Lose' (No People Left) is still in place for reasons we discussed before. This piece of script is taken from the cede scenario "DOUBLETONGUES DILEMMA", the first map I know of to use more than o­ne way to achieve cede. The third and fourth event/conditions are peculiar to this scenario, but are worth a quick mention to highlight how you can further enhance your script.

In the story for this scenario it was explained that you could either pay for the use of the castle, i.e. collect 2500 gold, or take it by force by killing the enemy Lord. It was a choice the player could make, however, the preferred option was to do it by collecting the gold requirement. The introduction of the Bandits and Plague would o­nly happen if you ceded the castle by killing the enemy Lord, according to the story this was a bit naughty and deserved some punishment. If you choose the payment method to cede the castle the Bandits and Plague would obviously not appear, and the enemy Lord will do a vanishing act and be replaced by a new improved version in your colour. Whichever way you ceded the map it will carry o­n as normal thereafter.

The Cede Event And Peasants

One thing you may notice after a cede has occurred is that some of your peasants will be wearing blue clothing. This is nothing to worry about, just another quirk of the cede, any enemy peasants that were still alive at the time of cede change to your colour. In respect to their new master perhaps? This at least brightens up the Castle a little, any new peasants to the campfire will be wearing their usual drab attire.

So this is a basic introduction to the cede event, a 'getting to know you' session. Hopefully we've demonstrated a few ways to use the event, and shown it to be just as versatile as any other. As ever the o­nly limits are the imagination, and some designers are still pushing the boundaries of the cede event, it's worth noting that a lot of the things we've covered here have o­nly been created or discovered in the past four or five months or so. Also, everything here is open to challenge, I'm not the Stronghold authority o­n cede events, but I've certainly played around with it a bit.

There are plenty of good quality cede scenarios available in our database to download, play and learn from. If anyone can come up with new uses for the cede event I'd love to see them...

Happy gaming people... Brave Sir Robin (BSR)

Submitted by Brave Sir Robin, Maps provided by Earl Lisitbald, Brave Sir Robin and Jalis