I was waiting for someone to build an AIV for abbot, with strong defense and economy.. But finally I decided to make it my own, and I am quite satisfied with the results... I can say this AIV strong enough..
I made ��a cathedral and a barrack a little early so he became more aggressive in the beginning..
Castle-shaped cross, make more efficient defense..
And several other defenses such as dog cage and pitch made ��abbot can withstand aggressive attacks like slaves in the beginning..
A cool idea to make a cross-shaped castle for the Abbot, and he will definitely profit from several aspects of this design (enclosed keep, moat (almost) all around, high-low walls against assassins, 4 gates, ...).
Though, there are too few fletchers. The Abbot does NOT buy any bows and without sufficient bow production, he can't be a tough enemy. His economy is great compared to many of the other AI characters, and the costs for recruiting archers and monks are very low compared to almost any other soldiers, making "gold" not a matter for the Abbot in most cases. Boosting his military strength by providing enough bows is more important for him.
I noticed one other thing that affects his defenses: The gatehouses are accessible from the outer low wall, making the "high-low" wall combination practically a lot less effective as assassins can just enter the low wall directly next to the gates, then get onto the gate and open it and/or access the other walls from there. I'd suggest to place some tiles of crenelated walls there instead of the low wall tiles.
And the archer spots on the gatehouses should (at least IMHO) be moved onto the big square towers as these have a better height advantage and provide more protection against arrows than the small gates.
Housing and water looks sufficient from the pictures, though I didn't test that now...
[Edited on 10/05/13 @ 01:59 PM]
Kizutakiari File Author
Posted on 10/06/13 @ 10:37 AM
Thanks, now Cross Abbot v.2 is available, please check this out ;)