Building and organizing your city defenses

8 Replies to “Building and organizing your city defenses”

1. A « cutout » display could be a good alternative indeed. Something similar to the Stronghold option as mentioned Granhyt.

   In the previous message, I suggested a tool to displace trees and plants (uprooting and replanting somewhere else) instead of destroying it. And for animals too, being able to displace the herd wherever we want on the map (kind of transhumance). But it’s just a simple idea, not really necessary and definitely not a priority.

   I didn’t mention it in the first comments but the map looks great now with all these animations. These trees swaying in the wind, the waves on the surface of water and the flying birds, it gives a really nice atmosphere.

   Thank you for your answers and good luck for the battle AI coding Ronchon!

2. I wasn’t asking you to divulge anything, don’t worry. ^^

   About the terrain stuff, maybe you could adopt Stronghold solution, pressing space you make the terrain flat. However I don’t know how easy to implement with your graphics would it be. It can’t be as simple as removing the side of cliffs. ^^

3. Well i can’t really discuss things related to Total war. ^^
   But yes i know a few things of how the pathfinding and all works there.

   You can remove trees and plants with the tool to destroy stuff, but you can’t remove more ‘important’ resources like animals and all for now, as a safety.
   Same, ores are not destroyed if you change the terrain height.

   The visual bugs, i’m well aware off. 🙂 Sometimes i fix one but it can be quite time consuming.

   However yes, terrain heights hiding stuff is a serious issue.
   I still don’t know exactly how i’m going to solve this…
   Unfortunaltely, the rotating the map is unlikely to be possible due to how my terrain works.
   I’m more thinking of a “cutout” display when you can display only a specific range of heights ( so you can remove a hill hiding what’s behind ), but even that causes a lot of problems to solve.

4. The real luxury would be the ability to move resources like trees, wild plants and animals with a simple “drag and drop”. It could be included in the terrain tools options (and could consume some tools in the process) just like lowering and raising the ground level. But it’s clearly not a top priority.

   Digging down in blocks of ores should not remove them; it could be frustrating to lose all our sources of ore due to an incorrect manipulation.

   It would also be very useful to be able to rotate the map upside down, especially in regions with hills and mountains, where some areas can be hidden behind the relief and difficult to visualize.

   Concerning the small visual bugs, it’s almost imperceptible and not really annoying, but sometimes, when placed next to a platform, some buildings seem to rest on some void.

   I’m probably wrong, but I think it may be related to the fact that platforms extend automatically to all lower blocks when they are built. And when a block of platform is placed, some adjacent blocks seem to partially disappear in order to display the block (of platform) just below the platform that has just been built instead.

5. Don’t take this luxury, keep the resources failsafe, that’s way better like this. Trust me. 🙂

   I remember the article about pathfinding, but I suppose it’s gotten worse with the possibility to avoid walls, and ladders. Are you still in contact with some of your colleagues at Creative Assembly ? Okay, Total War pathfinding isn’t gold, but they still did some heavy work on the subject. They may advice you.

   Would you say this particular fortress is heavy and long to create ? If one were to invest all possible resources created by this town, would they be able to build such a castle in a short time or would it be a long achievement ?
   I’m not asking for newly created towns (the answer is evident), but this one city seemed stable enough to invest itself in heavy project.

   Thank you for the answers. 😀

6. For now , resources are “failsafe”. they cannot be destroyed. Even if you build on it, just by removing the building the resource will be there again.
   Havnt had the luxury to reach this level of polish and i’ve been mainly working on all the battle things since January.

   Yes, units can pass walls and cliffs, but hopefully you’ll see this soon enough! Though visually its pretty cheap for now. I’m mostly focused in making it work so that the battle “AI” doesnt mess up. Considering i need to make a system that can understand ANY type of fortification layout, including people trying to cheat it, its not easy.

   As for the city defenses, i think its pretty well defended no matter the angle ! If they’re trying to invade, they’ll have to go up the hill through the southern gate anyways to reach the castle. And with its garrison, if they arrived at north they’d be shot at by the castle archers all along.
   And if they climb directly on the cliff, the castle itself is on top of another height level that is also only accessible from the south too.
   I’d probably attack from the west. But again, to choose your flank of attack you need to arrive from the matching region, so if that region is also defended, you won’t be able to!
   This should be a pretty tough city to invade. And even to raid, as i placed all the warehouses on the hill within range of the castle.

7. Cool music.

   I second the question about the usage of ores if they are covered. I assumed than trees (and animals) disappeared if you built on top of them, but it is the case ? It could be annoying for animals, you use them for feeding your town, a miss-clic, you build on top of them, erase the animals from the city and you won’t be able to reverse it.

   Oink : Which visual bugs ? I didn’t noticed, but I was too busy looking the text and the pretty images. 😛

   How do units pass walls ? With catapults and balistas, or with ladders only ? Or even by climbing the walls ? Like in the cursed Shogun II Total War which surprised me with this feature, here I was, thinking me safe since nobody in front of me had ladders and .. nope, here they climb anyway.

   I don’t suppose we’ll be able to take over towns using only cavalry units, but what would happen if all of their infantry friends died ? The rest of the army (cavalry, in my question) would stand awkwardly and turn in circles waiting for death or orders ?

8. Building your dungeon right on top of the gold mine, what a greedy lord. ^^
   More seriously, can the gold ore still be extracted if the deposits blocks are covered with platforms?
   Anyway, this is a great video. Despite a few minor visual bugs, the game looks awesome. I’m looking forward to know more about sieges and battles. Is it just an impression or Krabolniet is well defended in case of invasion from the South-East part of the map, but weaker if the invaders come from the North-West?