 Hiding units in secret passages and caves is all well and good, but they can be easily discovered with one push of the spacebar. In this tutorial, we'll show you how to create completely invisible units (including siege equipment), able to devastate your foes (or you, if a mapmaker uses them), taking secret warfare to a whole new level! We'll also show you how to make assassin-like units for Stronghold 1, such as the wall climbing spearman shown to the right...
Submitted by Lord_Thomas, SimRPGplayer, GeneralMatthew, ShadowLord and Aubergine
There are two methods for creating invible units, so we'll start with the original one... Advanced Wooden Gate method If you do not already know how to make a wooden gate, please read our tutorial on Advanced Wooden Gate Design. For those of you who have been playing Stronghold 1 for a long time, you may also use Yoshi's "Magic Box" - both methods result in something that looks like this: 
Sometimes the advacned gate will think it's door is closed (as shown above on the information panel), so click the "Open Gate" button just in case. You'll now have the gate on your map like this: 
Next, we need to choose what sort of unit to make invisible and send it in to the gate. In our example, we'll use a swordsman: 
This poor chap doesn't have a clue what we're about to do to him! He's going to become the invisible man! As soon as he is inside the gate, close the door to trap him! Because we've removed the wooden platforms and their stairs, there's no way he can get out - he's our captive and we can do whatever we want with him! 
When the trick was first discovered, the gatehouse would be destroyed using a catapult: 
And look! The swordsman is gone, or so it seems... He's still there, he's just invisible! With further testing, we found that you could simply delete the gate using the normal delete tool - this was a whole lot quicker than using a catapult and had the added advantage of removing the rubble pile from under gate. Throughout the rest of this tutorial, you'll quickly spot the pictures made using a catapult to destroy the gate because they have rubble where the gate used to be! Now, as you can imagine, we're always keen to find easier ways to do things, so... Simplified Method We used an advanced wooden gate for one single reason - it stopped the unit from escaping via the gatehouse stairs. However, there's a much simpler way to stop them escaping - just wall off the stairs as shown here: 
This is obviously a lot quicker and easier than using an advanced gate and it's become our reccommended method for creating invisible units. once the unit is inside, just delete the gate and the stone walls to make it invisible! The great thing about both methods is that they can be done both in the map editor and also while playing the game - that's right, you can make invisible units in-game!! Keep Them Still! Our invisible units are only invisible as long as you don't move them - the second they move from their location, they reappear and their cover is blown! That being said, you could set invisible units on defensive agressive stance and when their enemies appear they'll suddenly come out of hiding and attack! It would be a bit like assassins but for Stronghold 1! Speaking of assassins... Climbers In Stronghold Crusader, we all loved the assassins with their ability to climb walls and all wished we could get them in Stronghold 1... Well, now we can get something similar: 
Can you guess how we did this? With a ladderman! Here's how to do it... Place a gatehouse, and place walls around the stairs as shown earlier. Next, place a ladderman (same color faction as the gatehouse) and instruct him to walk through it: 
Quickly close the door when he is inside the gate, then use the delete tool to remove the gate and stone walls: 
As you can see the ladderman is now invisible, making it somewhat hard to work out where he is! Change to a different player colour and then select the wall tool and move the cursor around until you see this: 
Yes, that's right, you can't place a wall on a ladderman so now we know where he is! Armed with this knowledge, place a wall right in front of him as shown here (the ladderman is indicated by the red dot): 
Note: Laddermen can only target walls from a different faction (player colour). So, if you placed a blue ladderman then the walls must be placed with a different colour faction (anything other than blue) such as red or black, etc. Next, reselect the player colour that corresponds to the ladderman (so you can select him) and then tell him to target the wall: 
To make sure that the ladder is against the wall (as you can't see it), place a spearman (or other unit that can climb ladders including archers and macemen) and see if they can get to the top of the wall: 
Now, any unit that can climb that invisible ladder will appear to climb the wall: 
Of course, it's not just walls they can climb! once they start climbing, you can delete the wall to make them climb in to thin air: 
Normally, when you delete the walls while a unit is climbing they will suddenly end up under ground (like they are climbing out of a hole, especially if you placed some pitch there): 
However, with an invisible ladderman, this doesn't seem to happen as often. Now, there are two ways we can use this climbing in mid air trick... Cliff Climbers If you place cliffs where the wall used to be, the units can now climb those cliffs: 
The best thing about this is that the game seems to treat the cliffs as if they were walls, because the ladder is against them! Although the green "up arrows" don't appear (you just get a regular "green cone") when you click the top of the cliffs, the unit will still make his way there and then climb the invisible ladder: 
Sooner or later, he will get to the top of the cliff: 
And he will be able to walk around up there as shown below: 
If you are having trouble getting this to work, you might need to use lower cliffs (about the height of the wall you had) or just increase the area at the top of the cliffs. Sometimes the laddermen will climb to the top and then suddenly appear part way down the cliff (having a little rest), just instruct them back to the top by repeatedly clicking and they'll start climbing again: 
As you can see, the Lord was so impressed with them that he came to visit them. You can also get the troops back down again by clicking on the land (as shown by the "green cone"). So, this now allows us to create rock climbing contests: 
As you can see, there's all kinds of cool things you can do with invisible laddermen! Multiple Invisible Units While playing around with this trick, we found that you can generally only get one invisible unit per gatehouse, which is a bit annoying. However, with invisible laddermen we can get more: 
If a unit is climbing an invisible ladder, and you delete the walls so they are now climbing in to thin air (as shown earlier), then when they get to the top of the ladder they will climb back down again. When they get to the bottom, they become invisible! You can then replace the wall and instruct another unit to climb up it, then delete the wall while he's climbing and thus add another invisible unit! Using this trick, you can get quite a few invisible units in one place! Mansweeping Many of you will have no doubt used the "minesweeping" trick to detect enemy killing pits - click on a building in the castle options palette (such as the market), then try and place it on the map - but instead of placing it, move it across the area where you think there may be traps and they will be highlighted with little orange squares! Well, the same happens for invisible units as shown below: 
As you can see, the orange square has given away the secret locaiton of an invisible unit (or it could be a killing pit?) - there's no way to know what's there and if it is an invisible unit you don't know how many there are or what type they are. Could it be a ladderman or swordsman? Or a ladderman with 20 macemen? 
The only way you can get some idea is by the location of the red square - as shown above. Because this is near a cliff with a spearman stood on top, you can be fairly sure that it's a ladderman. However, before you send your troops up that invisible ladder, be aware that there could be enemy macemen waiting for you there! Map makers can destroy the gate using a catapult so that the pile of rubble acts as a clue to the person playing the map that there is something strange in the area... Siege Towers Now, it's not just swordsmen and laddermen that can become invisible - you can make siege towers invisible too! Take a look at this picture: 
A siege tower was trapped in the gate, then made invisible by destroying the gate. Unfortunately, it's shadow gives it's location away, but you can place pitch and shrubs, etc., to make that less obvious! By placing an enemy wall next to the invisible siege tower, you can then target the siege tower to the wall (in much the same way as we did for our laddermen) and then all manner of troops can climb up there, including engineers and swordsmen! Shields Who do you think will win in this little battle? 
The archer doesn't stand a chance against the crossbowman, right? Wrong! There's an invisible shield in front of the archer: 
Amazing! He's winning the fight! You can place invisible shields all over the map, or in front of a castle, etc., and troops will be able to hide behind them to get a defence bonus! Of course, once the shield is destroyed they'll be valnerable again. As you can see, the rubble pile of an advanced gate destroyed with a catapult can be used to indicate the safety zones provided by the invisible shields. Catapults Yes, catapults can be made invisible too! 
This poor tower can't see where the rocks are coming from - they are appearing out of nowhere and heading straight for it! 
Another cool trick is that you can place water under catapults (only when you delete the gate - you won't be able to do this if there is rubble from destroying it with a catapult): 
This is great for naval battles - if you make ships with invisible catapults at the side then it will look like cannons firing at targets on the shore or even at other ships! In our next tutorial on this subject, we'll be showing you how to make active volcanos! Ghosts Now, let's go back to where it all started - sending our swordsman in to the gate and making him invisible. Well, we've not forgotten him, he's our trusty ghost! 
As you can see in the picture above, an enemy unit has made the mistake of getting to close to him and now he's being attacked by thin air (our invisible swordsman that is)! He's fighting back as best he can, even though he can't see his opponent! Eventually one of them will die, but it will be a very strange site to behold while they are still fighting! You can use this trick to place ghosts in forests - warn the player not to go in there and if they ignore your warning they'll find themselves being attacked by an invisible force! You could even put invisible archers in various places and the player will find arrows coming from all directions, seemingly out of nowhere! As we stated earlier, you could have invisible agressive or defensive units in the forest and if the player enters then enemies would suddenly appear out of nowhere to attack them! Cool, eh? Well, we hope that's given you a few new things to play with on your maps! As you can see, the only limit to this trick is your imagination! Happy Ghost Hunting!
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