In this tutorial we will explore the sometimes under-used "killing pit" traps that are available in all versions of the game. We'll find out how and where to place them, how to hide them, how to use them for eye candy and, of course, how to destroy them!

Submitted by Earl_Listibald, Jalis, Brave_Sir_Robin, Talos_911, Hagfad, Vonner, Dragonheart_Killer, KoenFrancois, Bill_the_Brave, Lord_Michael, LordRayquaza and Aubergine

What are Killing Pits

Killing pits, more commonly referred to as "traps" by people here, are hidden pits containing sharp wooden spikes. When units cross over them, they fall in to the trap and damage is inflicted which usually kills them.

Some units will die instantly such as spearmen, archers, slaves and all civilians. Stronger units such as pikemen and swordsmen can withstand more than o­ne trap but sometimes get "stuck" o­n traps.

Traps are the fastest possible way to kill the Lord - In Stronghold 1 the Lord will die after crossing 4 traps and in Stronghold Crusader he will die after crossing 9 traps - nothing else can kill him so quickly!

When a trap is triggered, it's spikes will be shown and these can sometimes still kill any units that somehow manage to walk o­n to the exposed trap. Eventually the used trap will disappear allowing units to walk over that patch of land without getting hurt. Occasionally, a stronger unit will get stuck o­n a trap and if the trap dissapears while that unit is trapped the unit will disappear even if it had some health left.

How to place traps

Traps can be found o­n the gatehouses panel of the castle building options. Simply select the button and then paint traps o­n the landscape, o­ne tile at a time.

Each trap costs 6 and occupies a 1x1 tile of land

Where can traps be placed?

Traps can be built o­n most types of land terrain within your castle building limits. Note that traps can usually be built up to 3 or 4 tiles away from the maximum limit of your castle walls before getting the "too far from castle" message. In the map editor, you can place traps outside the usual castle limits.

Traps cannot be built o­n Max Height terrain (in Stronghold 1) but can be built o­n Hades terrain as shown below:

Best places for traps

When deciding where to place traps, just think about where troops will go when attacking your castle (and also enemy castles if you are making your own map)...

The most common places to put traps are:

• Either side of the gatehouse
• Along the outside edge of castle walls
• Around stairs to delay enemy troops getting up to castle walls and towers
• Around important buildings such as the granary, armoury and Keep
• In the gaps between buildings along the route to the Keep
• Around economic buildings - this is useful if you do not want to have troops defending the buildings (as they are not 100% important) but want to give them some protection from melee troops and bandits
• Around "good things" - enemy macemen have a habit of attacking these so why not leave them a little supprise?

A good example of some of these places for traps can be seen when we look at the Pig's "Killing Pit Castle" as shown below (click for larger image):

If there is an open battlefield in front of a castle, it's often a good idea to place some traps randomly to thin out the attacking troops.

Making sure people do not see traps

In the map editor, traps for all players are visible at all times so you probably wouldn't think twice about this problem. However, when the game is played, the player should not see those enemy traps - which is important otherwise they will avoid them, rendering the traps useless. The same is true in multiplayer games - if you place traps you don't want your human opponents to see them!

It's therefore a really big problem if something gives away the location of the enemy traps...

Terrain Type Illumination

When traps are placed, they "lock" the terrain o­n to which they are placed in a similar way to the "1000 stones printing press".

Take a look at this example where we placed some enemy traps (in a 2x6 grid) and then painted over the area with dirt terrain:

Everything looks fine in the map editor. Now let's see what happens when we enter the game:

Although not amazingly obvious, you can still clearly see the patch of green grass where the traps are. The dirt didn't get placed where the traps were and thus their position is shown when playing the map.

Even if there is no dirt when placing traps, keep in mind that any buildings placed near the traps will alter the terrain around the traps. Here's an example - can you see the traps in this picture:

No? What about after a building is placed?

Ah, now you see them!  The trick to solving this problem is to always paint dirt terrain (or some other terrain - try experimenting) before you place the traps - that way the terrain is already set before the traps lock it in place. As you can see from the picture below, it's now far harder (if not impossible) to work out where the traps are:

Illuminating Shadows

Normally, shadows make things harder to see. But when it comes to traps, a shadow acts like a spotlight showing you exactly where they are!

Take a look at this example - we placed some traps (in a 2x6 grid) and then placed a large stone gatehouse next to them, causing its shadow to fall o­n the traps:

Not worried yet? Look what happens to these enemy traps when the game is played:

Even in Crusader where shadows are not as obvious, you can still clearly see the locaiton of the traps:

Ouch! o­nly a big flashing neon sign could make them more obvious!

It's not just buildings that cause this "illuminating shadow" problem - take a look at this example where terrain casts a shadow o­n the traps:

Again, in the map editor you probably wouldn't think twice about this, but look what happens to these enemy traps when the map is played:

And although shadows are less obvious in Crusader, they still give away the location of the traps:

Nightmare! Any player troops walking in to those obvious traps deserve to die!

In theory, placing the traps o­n top of shadows would lock in the shadows (just like we were doing with dirt terrain earlier in the tutorial) - but alas, it does not work as shown below:

So, how do we get around this problem? Well, the easiest way is to try and make the ground under the traps look the same (or similar) colour to the shadows. If we place dirt terrain in the immediate area, then place our traps and then place our buildings or terrain the problem is nowhere near as bad:

You can still see where the traps are in the picture above, but it is nowhere near as bad as the earlier pictures.

Alternatively, if you are feeling patient, you can use Perma Shadows to lock shadows o­n to the land and then place traps o­n the shadows before finally placing the buildings or terrain.

Just be careful not to paint over the source of the perma-shadows otherwise they will disappear!

Terrain Height Illumination

Another thing that exposes traps is terrain height, especially in Stronghold 1. There are two reasons for this...

The first is that traps not o­nly lock terrain type, they also lock the terrain height! For example, let's say we place traps o­n min-height terrain then raise the surrounding terrain:

In the map editor you probably don't notice too much because the brown traps distract your attention. But let's take a look at that while playing the game:

The trained eye will easily pick out this tell tale sign. It becomes even more obvious when the land is flattened using the Space Bar:

Ok, we've seen how traps lock terrain height and the problem that causes - so the solution is to simply raise the terrain first, yes? Well, unfortunately, No!

Here's some traps placed o­n a hill:

But look at what happens to them in the game:

Once again, flattening the terrain makes it even easier to see the problem:

The terrain under the traps has changed colour! When you place a trap it makes the terrain ever so slightly lower than the surrounding land and if you have several traps next to each other then the human eye and mind can pick out the slight difference in colour all too easily!

The easiest way to get round this problem is by covering the land with dirt or some other land terrain type that doesn't change colour as much with height differences before placing the traps. For best results, paint a random scattering of dirt, stones and other things over the mountain - even if some traps are not placed o­n dirt, it will be difficult to tell what has caused the differences in terrain colour and therefore far more difficult for someone to work out exactly where the traps are.

Mine Sweeping

An age old problem is that the player can select a building from the building options panel (any type of building will do) and then try to place it in the area where they suspect traps to be located. By moving the "unplaced" building over the ground, the player can see if any givaway orange squares appear, highlighting traps:

The o­nly guaranteed way to get round this problem is to disable all buildings from the "Building Availability" screen. If the player cannot place any new buildings then they cannot use this trick! Unfortunately, there are very few maps where you would want to disable all buildings so to combat this problem, and others discussed above, there are a few more tricks we need to learn...

Random Placement and Terrain

On the picture above, you can see how the traps are randomly placed. This scattering of traps makes it far more difficult for players to spot the subtle differences in terrain type and colour.

If you then randomly place different types of land terrain such as rocks, dirt, boulders, etc., it will make it even harder for the player to work out where traps are.

The best thing about this random terrain is that if the player tries to use the "mine sweeping" trick they will not be 100% sure if the orange squares that appear are caused by rocks and other features. This is especially true when placing traps o­n uneven terrain - the player will be used to seeing those little orange squares indicating that the difference in terrain height is not suitable for the building.

Note that the jagged rocks will sometimes disappear if buildings are placed next to them.

Visual Obstructions

In places where you can't fully hide the location of traps, you should consider placing some visual obstructions to block the players' view of the terrain.

We've already shown above how placing rocks, boulders and other terrain can help to hide the traps. Another way to do this makes use of shrubs and trees:

Not o­nly do these plants completely hide the traps, but they also restrict troop movement making them more likely to step o­n the traps!

The great thing about shrubs is that they are always visible - even in flattened mode (note: The picture o­n the right was taken before the shrubs were added). The worst thing about them is that if any buildings are placed o­n to them they will dissapear. But is there a way to stop this?

Well, it just so happens that there is a nice little trick to stop buildings from being placed o­n shrubs - place the shrubs o­n killing pits (as shown in our "Unusual Plant Locations" tutorial):

Neat, eh? That will certainly stop the player from building direclty o­n the shrub and even if they find other tactics to remove the shrub they will be in for a nasty supprise because a trap will now be waiting in its place.

Another nice trick that you can get from this is that when woodcutters cut down a tree that was placed o­n a killing pit, it will make the trap accessible to other units - luckily the woodcutter is not likely to stand o­n the trap unless they walk across it while moving to their next tree.

Destroying Traps

Well, we've discussed at length how to place and use traps, but nothing yet about getting rid of traps.

To get rid of your own traps (or those of an ally in Crusader), just use the delete tool that you would normally use to delete buildings and so o­n.

As for enemy traps, well, that's a bit more tricky. We searched our forums and found a topic that discusses some innovative ways of removing them...

The o­nly real way to get rid of them is to trigger them! The best troops for this are obviously the cheapest units - slaves, laddermen, tunnelers, spearmen and archers. The problem here is that lots of these troops will be killed by enemy archers, pitch ditches and so o­n. If there aren't many defending troops you could even use monks as they are extremely cheap!

It seems a waste to send all these troops to their deaths - is there another way? Yes their is - movable siege engines! The best engine seems to be the battering ram - it can set of lots of traps and at the same time it is more resistant to enemy ranged attacks (such as enemy archers defending the castle walls).

Recycling Killing Pits

At the start of this tutorial we mentioned that triggered traps (showing the wooden spikes) remain o­n the map for a while before dissapearing. Well, if all the nearby enemies are killed you can delete those traps (assuming you own them) to reclaim 3 planks of wood!

Trap Floors

If you've ever build up a nice gathering of troops and/or siege equipment, o­nly to have enemy melee units rush out and destroy them, why not give them a little supprise the next time they try? Simply place a load of traps (if you are able to do so in that location) as a platform for your troops and siege equipment:

Troops and movable siege equipment can simply be moved o­n to the traps. If you want to surround a trebuchet with traps as shown above, you will have to build the trebuchet and then surround it with the traps.

Eye Candy

Traps can be used to create wooden floors and even add nice wooden roofs to buildings in both Stronghold 1 and Stronghold Crusader. Simply raise or lower the terrain to the desired height (if required) and then cover it with traps:

Well, that's all for now. We hope this tutorial will give you a few extra ideas for using traps in your maps.

Snare your opponents!