Note that AI Lords also play as a faction, although you cannot change the faction of an AI Lord. You can right click on your own shield to lock all the factions for the players. You can cycle through the available factions by left clicking on the shield next to your own name, which is always Arthur by default. Each faction has different abilities, units, buildings and traits. The available factions are: Arthur (Green Shield), Ice (Blue Shield), Evil (Red Shield).

Unlike previous games in the series, Stronghold Legends provides you with the ability to play as a faction. To remove an AI Character, or a human player if you're in multiplayer mode, click on the 'boot' button next to the respective player- this is left of the green arrow/red cross. This can also be used in Multiplayer mode as well, meaning that another difference between Stronghold Legends and Stronghold 2 is that you can also play with AI Characters online in Stronghold Legends. You can add multiple versions of the same AI Lord in your game.

You can add AI Lords into your game by clicking the 'Add Computer Opponent' button, and select your opponent from the available AI Lords. When you enter multiplayer the other players will soon automatically enter the game lobby with you, and will immediately appear as opponents as soon as this happens. When you first enter the Custom Skirmish settings in single player, only your own name will be present and will need to manually add AI lords to play the game. In multiplayer games you can set this by left clicking on the larger tick next to the 'Play Game' button. The green tick/red cross is for multiplayer games only, and symbolises that the player is ready to start the game.

The player is marked by their name in white text. Unlike in Stronghold 2 there is no distinction between human and AI players. This section shows all of the current players, both human and AI, who will play on the map. We have divided the screen up into several different sections. This Custom Skirmish screen is used for both single player and multiplayer games, although to get here in multiplayer you must get here via a different route which we will discuss later on. To get there, select Single Player and then Custom Skirmish. To begin with, the Custom Skirmish settings can be accessed via the main menu of the game. This article will briefly introduce you to the Custom Skirmish scenario type in Stronghold Legends, and what you need to do in order to play both by yourself and online with your friends.

Stronghold 3 skirmish