Some time ago, we introduced you to the "Magic Eraser" trick which allowed invisible paths to be created through buildings and walls. This tutorial covers some more advanced methods using wooden gates and towers to create some amazing custom buildings and effects. Among these effects are dual-role buildings, extremely tall towers, towers with arrow slits, and buildings atop walls!

Submitted by SimRPGplayer

To create dual-role buildings, o­ne must completely erase o­ne of the buildings to be used. Using wooden gates and towers, o­ne can erase up to a 6x4 area, meaning all buildings 4x4 or less can be "magically erased" with this trick allowing multiple buildings to be merged together.

Creating a 6x4 Tile Eraser

We start by placing a 6x4 block of wall, either wooden or stone:

Next, place 4 wooden gatehouses as shown below (each covering quarter of the stone wall):

Same view, flattened, so you can see where the gatehouses go:

Next, get rid of the left-over wall by placing a tower and then deleting the tower:

Next, place some wooden walls 1 tile away from the gatehouse doors as shown below:

Now, place some wooden platforms (towers) against those walls as shown below:

You now need to remove the stairs from the platforms placed above - to do this, place perimeter turrets over the walls - you'll need to place o­ne, delete it and then place another (and delete that too) to remove all the wooden stairs:

Note: You may like to take a look at our Wooden Bridges and Platforms tutorial to see step by step pictures of this process.

Using the Eraser

After all that hard work, we can now use the eraser!

Place your building in the middle of the eraser and then delete the towers and gatehouses to erase the building! In the example below, we're erasing an armoury:

As you can see, each time you eraser o­ne of the towers or platforms, part of the building gets erased - you can experiment with this to make all kinds of weird effects.

Now, armed with the knowledge of how to erase buildings, o­ne must apply it....

Dual Role and Mixed Buildings

Using this method, o­ne can create dual-role (or mixed) buildings. This technique is hinged o­n the fact that most erased buildings are still completely functional and even though you can't click o­n them!

To do this, simply erase o­ne building, then place another building over it. Here is an example of a tower merged with a fletcher's workshop - as well as troops being able to stand o­n top of the tower, the fletchers workshop is still fully functional below:

And here's another example where we've merged a round tower with a smaller perimiter turret:

Alternatively, before placing the second building, set up another magic eraser allowing you to erase the second building as well, etc. Experimentally, we've never tried to place more than three buildings o­n top of each other though we see no reason why placing and erasing more wouldn't be possible. Theoretically, you could place any number of buildings o­n top of each other!

Efficiency Amplifier

Creating multi-role buildings can greatly increase effeciency!

For example, 3 erased bakeries and a granary (4 buildings in a 4x4 space). The 3 bakers would go get flour from the stockpile, take it back to their compound building (it will still look like a bakery, but will say granary if you click o­n it), bake it, then walk outside with the bread where they would almost instantly deliver it to the granary that's in the same place as the bakery and then go to get more flour. This trick can give the appearance of multiple workers to a building.

Buildings o­n Walls

Another use of this trick is creating super tall towers, such as this o­ne (we're sure LoTR fans will find uses for this)...

To accomplish this, o­ne must completely erase a tower o­n max height (or erase it o­n normal height then raise the land to max height) and then place walls underneath it. The tower will appear to be o­n top of the Himalayan-sized walls.

In fact, o­ne can place most buildings o­n top of walls. Here is an example of a granary - because the walls are still active, we've placed a spearman inside the granary:

And here is an example of a windmill atop wooden walls - the sails dissapeared during the erasing process making it look like a very odd tower. o­nce again, the walls below the mill are accessible to troops:

In the examples above, the granary and mill were still fully functional because they can be accessed using the stairs that were placed next to them.  You may also like to take a look at our tutorial o­n Customised Armouries as it contains some additional information o­n making custom buildings accessible.

Eye Candy

For some pure eye-candy without function, check out these:

Well, the gallows still counts as a bad thing and as such is actually funcitonal, but imagine getting an ox to that tether - you'd need quite a long rope! If you'd like to see some similar eye candy, check out our tutorial o­n Magic Stilts!

Well, that's all for now.  You can keep up with the latest developments and ideas in the related forums topic, and we'll be bringing you some more of these tutorials soon hopefully...

Happy Erasing!