Greetings,
this is my first custom map I made for Stronghold, and it will probably be my only one. It's the Küssaburg (called Kuessaburg in the files) located in southern Germany at the border to Switzerland and a castle ruin which I often used to visit in younger years. I actually tried to create it as historically accurate as possible, 90% of the buildings inside the castle walls (blacksmiths, the gardens inside the outer walls, stables, bakeries, the chapel, the dungeon entrance) are according to a map exhibited in the castle and descriptions found on Wikipedia. The same goes for many locations on the map, for example the iron mine shaft located in the south east can still be found today and the quarry is an actual gravel pit in use. The bailey with the wooden palisade was used in the 14th & 15th centuries, no trace of it can be found nowadays, but there is an actual inn with some farm buildings close to its location which I used for reference. Sadly I could not find a lot of historical data to the three villages of Bechtersbohl, Küssnach and Geißlingen, so I made them to medieval versions of their present state. Some locations like the ghost village and the tower ruin are mostly for optics, but everything has been created with much care and love for detail. The various invasions are loosely based on sieges which took place during the Swiss war and peasant uprisings during the 16th century.
The wooden and stone bridges outside the castle are functional, but sadly horsemen can't cross them and neither can they use the paved roads, sorry for that.
The difficulty of the scenario is tricky, especially in the beginning, but hardened veterans shouldn't have too many problems, although RNG can be a little fickle. It's not possible to create new fletcher's workshops since I wanted to avoid the usual spam of crossbowmen, so you have to rely mostly on melee units. If you want a real challenge, try to not build any portals or holes into the outer wall. I tried this in my last playthrough on hardest difficulty and it was a pure struggle for survival!
I hope you enjoy playing the map as much as I did creating it & any tips and feedback are welcome!