In this tutorial we'll show you how to use the humble wooden platform to remove chunks of buildings whilst leaving the rest of them intact. This allows you to put biuldings partially inside other buildings, create "sally port" secret passages, place wooden panels in to the side of buildings, add stairs inside gatehouses, etc...!

Submitted by SimRPGplayer and Aubergine

Well, we are all familiar with the basic wooden platform, right?

We will use this simple little thing to customise our buildings, becuse it allows us to make holes in them!

Creating Holes in Buildings

First, place a small wooden wall and attach a wooden platform to it as shown below:

Next, place small perimeter turrets over the steps of your wooden platform:

Delete the turrets and you'll see that the steps are gone:

Now, place a building where those wooden steps used to be, right next to the freestanding wooden platform. You can place any building there such as bakeries, churches, the Keep, etc. In our example, we are using a small stone gatehouse:

Finally, delete the remaining part of the wooden platform:

When you delete the wooden platform, it assumes it still has it's wooden stairs and so it ends up deleting any part of any building (or wall, etc) that is now occupying the space where the stairs used to be.

When you flatten the terrain, you'll see that there is now a hole in the building:

Fill the Holes

You can place anything in that hole - from terrain to buildings. Here's an example where we have placed wooden walls in to the hole that we made in our gatehouse:

As you can see from the picture above, it's created some nice wooden panelling o­n the side of our gatehouse.

Here's an example where we inserted a dungeon in to a hole made in the Keep:

Here's another example where we have added stairs directly to the hole within a gatehouse - for some reason, the inside of the gatehouse allows stairs to be attached directly to it!

If you close the gatehouse, troops can still climb up the stairs as shown above.

Glitches

One thing we noticed when customising gatehouses is that the portcullis will sometimes not close when you close the gatehouse. This is purely a graphical glitch and the gatehouse will actually be closed.

When you create a hole in a building that is more than 15 tiles high, you will see all kinds of graphic glitches when you rotate the map. Simply flatten the map and unflatten it (pressing "Spacebar" twice) to resolve some of the glitches and then place tall buildings or walls to hide any that remain.

Sometimes this process creates un-removable buildings or other artefacts o­n your map.  As a precaution, you should always save your map before attempting this trick!

Wherever possible, use the delete tool rather than the eraser tool to remove buildings and wooden platforms - if you use the eraser tool, you are far more likely to get un-removable map artefacts.

Secret Passages and Sally Ports

You will have noticed from the pictures at the start of this tutorial that if you don't palce anything in the hole, then you can't really see where it is without flattening the map. This can be used to create a very unusual secret entrance that gives the effect of your troops walking through walls:

Surely there is no way the maceman can get in to this castle?

Ah, perhaps there is...

He can happily walk through the invisible hole in the castle walls!

Happy building!