In this tutorial we discuss a rare glitch with wooden stilts that can be used to create some truly amazing eye-candy in Stronghold 1.  Whether it's creating the perfect lighthouse or just some impressive places for your troops to stand, this eye-candy trick is a must for any serious map maker...

Submitted by Lord_Gray, UnikUnok, Brave_Sir_Robin, WitchHazel, SimRPGplayer and Aubergine

Effectively, he had discovered a way to create "magic" stilts that can stand o­n top of pretty much anything...

How do we create them?

Well, creating these special wooden stilts is relatively simple.  First, place a wooden gatehouse o­n your map in the map editor:

Next, select the eraser tool with the smallest brush size:

Then erase the gate from the middle of the wooden gatehouse (the little light patch in the middle of the gate indicates where the eraser should be placed):

The result of this is a wooden gatehouse with the gate and walls removed, leaving two stilts.

If you o­nly want o­ne stilt, just select the eraser tool with a slightly bigger brush size:

Then erase the gate and o­ne of the towers as shown below:

Basic Use...

The first thing to realise is that these stilts do not actually exist!  Ok, you can see them, but as far as the game is concerned they are not actually there!

Let's start with a simple example of their use - because they are not actually there, you can place trees inside them or even change the height of the terrain below them:

The pictures above show the normal view and flattened view of the stilts.  The stilt o­n the left has a tree placed inside it and the stilt o­n the right has had the land raised beneath it.

Changing height and foundations...

Now, this ability to raise the land and have the stilt go with it is most useful as we can have our stilts o­n different heights.  In addition to this, we can also change their foundations:

How was this done?  Simple - the terrain beneath each of the stilts was raised and then stone walls placed under the left stilt and wooden walls placed under the right stilt.

You can create neat looking custom towers using this trick, here's an example of a stilt o­n a wooden wall surrounded by lowered wooden walls:

And if you merge the stone wall stilts with adjacent high walls (placed o­n max height terrain) you can get something like this:

How do we put troops in stilts?

In order to get the archers in to the stilts in the picture above, stone stairs were built (but they were removed before taking that screen grab).  Here's another example of putting troops in stilts, this time with the stairs still attached:

Now, as well as the cute little lookout tower with the archer inside it, you'll notice the stilt placed directly over the campfire which leads us nicely o­n to our next topic...

Mixing stilts with buildings

There are almost endless uses for stilts when you mix them with buildings as shown in the picture below:

Starting at the top-left, you can see a stilt o­n the barracks training ground.  The stilt was created first and then the barracks placed o­n the map so that part of the training ground was over the stilt.  The stilt appears o­n top of the training ground because it is taller.

The same is true in the top-middle where the conscription point of the guild and the meeting point of the oil smelter have stilts o­n top of them.

At the middle-right, you can see a stilt o­n a wooden wall (as discussed earlier) and also a stilt o­n some ruins.  Now, this takes some more explaining...  The ruins were originally an armoury and because they were higher than the stilt there was no indication of the stilt being there until the armoury was destroyed.

At the bottom of the picture you will see a most unusual design.  Here, an apple tree appeared in the middle of the stilts due to placement of the apple farm.  In order to get the waterfall stilt, the terrain beneath it was raised and then water was placed o­n the terrain in a similar fashion to our trick terrain walls.

A perfect lighthouse...

Many people have tried to make attractive looking lighthouses, but we think you'll agree that this is probably the best design to date:

The land beneath the stilt was raised to max height and then stone walls placed o­n it.  o­n top of o­ne of the stone walls, a brazier was placed and the end effect is that the brazier appears to be inside the stilt.  If you want to know how to get that shadow effect in the ocean, read our tutorial o­n Perma-Shadows.

Removing stilts

These stilts are actually quite hard to remove from the map, but luckily we've found a method which always works:

• Place a wooden gatehouse over the stilt so that the stilt o­n the gatehouse covers the "magic" stilt.
• Delete (not erase!) the newly placed wooden gatehouse and the "magic" stilt should be gone.

Glitches

When you start experimenting with these stilts you will quickly realise that there are some pretty obvious glitches with them.  Whenever the map is rotated, and in many cases when things are placed o­n or near the stilts, they have a habbit of dissapearing!  To get them back, simply flatten the map view (by pressing "Spacebar") and then set normal map view again (by pressing "Spacebar" a second time).

These stilts are o­nly a visual glitch - they don't offer troops or buildings any extra protection and they can't be used to connect things together (eg. you can't make bridges with them).  However, they sure do look nice!

Well, we hope you can find some uses for this most unusual editor glitch and we look forward to seeing your eye candy.

Related Tutorials

We've already put some links to tutorials in the text above, but here are some more that you may like to take a look at:

• Stone Machicolations
• Advanced Wooden Gate Design
• Wooden Barricades
• Wooden Stairs
• Wooden Bridges and Platforms
• Ruined Wooden Stilts
• 1,000 Stones Printing Press

Have fun!  The o­nly limit is your imagination!