Most of you will have played RTS games where barricades could be created on the battlefield and such like then wondered why Stronghold doesn't offer such a feature... Well, it does now and you can create them both in the map editor and also while playing the game...Submitted by Aubergine
These barriers are great because they offer your troops some protection from ranged attacks and can be destroyed by the enemy just like a real barricade... There are two types of wooden barricade that you can make but, before you start, you'll need to know how to make wooden stilts, specifically the method involving towers to remove the steps... Wooden Walkway Barricade The great thing about this barricade is that it's more difficult to destroy and your troops can walk across it (until it gets destroyed). It's also the quickest and easiest to make... Place a load of wooden stilts in a row (or a curved line, whatever formation you want) create them one after another in the direction shown in the picture below: 
When removing the steps, you can speed things up by placing two small stone towers at once - this involves less mouse movement and clicks than if you place and delete just one stone tower at a time. 
Once you have the desired length of barrier / walkway, simply remove the wooden walls (if desired) to get the following: 
Using this type of barrier, you can create strategic locations on your map that will only be available during the early stages of the game (unless well defended). To do this, ensure that the strategic location can only be accessed by walking across that barrier and don't allow the player the ability to build wooden or stone walls, towers and steps in that area (ie. out of range of castle building area). once the enemy has broken or destroyed even one segment of that walkway, then the player has lost that strategic location forever! Spikey Wooden Barricade The process to create this version of the barricade is almost identical to that shown above. Before entering the map editor make sure you set the game speed to it's fastest while playing a normal invasion (otherwise this will take ages to do)... The main difference here is that as each "wooden stilt" is created, get an enemy spearmen to destroy it to create "ruined wooden stilts". This is where the fast game speed really helps! The great thing about the spearmen is that once they "ruin" the stilt, they stop attacking it straight away so you don't need to sit waiting to stop them at the last minute. Remember to ruin each stilt as it is placed, before placing the next stilt to be ruined. If you place all your stilts and then try to ruin them, the map editor tends to get confused and all kinds of weird things happen. You should end up with something that looks like the following if you leave the wooden wall in place: 
And if you remove the wooden wall (which I personally prefer), you'll get something like this: 
Note that this type of barrier is not as strong as the first type but is much more realistic visually. Finishing Touches While barriers are good, you can make them better if they block a strategic route - a route that the enemy is sure to want in order to attack your stronghold. In usual Aubergine style, I eye-candied the scene to death by putting some mid-height terrain either side of the barrier, putting dirt all around the path area and then stones for the path itself. Add the usual sprinkling of trees, rocks and shrubs and voila: 
In Stronghold Crusader, there is no real way to create wooden barricades although you can use "ruin walls" to get things like desert outposts: 
Happy gaming people!
|
