Heroesflorian |
Posted on 07/01/10 @ 11:31 AM
Again, the castle looks quite fine.
Especially the amount of towers and siege engines makes besieging this castle quite difficult in combination with moat and pitch, while the overall design is quite familiar.
But Saladin doesn't need 5 stockpiles. 3-4 are really enough and the additional space can be used for another hovel to make sure he always has enough peasants.
You have placed 8 breweries - I think 6 of them are enough here. Use the additional space to include 2 more water pots as Saladin's castle is likely to burn down completely otherwise! Moreover, split the castle into two halves. Most of this is already done by the stockpile, which can't catch fire and will thus stop it from spreading. But through the two mills next to the keep can still reach the other side - try to change the arrangement of them, for example move the left mill to where now is the bunch of killing pits next to the right gatehouse and some pitch: The distance mill-stockpile is pretty much the same now, the gate still passable and you can place a well where the mill was before (a well won't burn and helps to handle fires!). Instead, you could also use some statues, shrines or gardens that also don't burn.
Always try to keep economic production chains as smart and compact as possible, so avoid placing armoury and blacksmith that far away from each other and the stockpile. Instead, place them all close together and close to the stockpile and move some houses further away instead as houses do NOT need to be accessible and can be placed really anywhere. Moreover, 1 house costs 6 planks of wood, which can be bought at a price of 4x6=24 gold.1 blacksmith costs 20 wood (4x20=80 gold) and additional 200 gold, which makes together 280 gold. So, if the enemy destroys a hovel, it can be replaced far cheaper than some blacksmiths or armourers.
Saladin is known as "the character with strong Arabian forces and the profitable bread production" by many players. But actually, there are many other characters with bigger bread production potentials (like Nizar, Wazir and Abbot), who have more wheat farms and (in their normal castles) 3 mills. What I want to say is that I'm not sure if Saladin has enough wheat farms to serve 3 mills, especially as Saladin has good things who decrease the efficiency of farmers more than the efficiency of mill workers (as mill workers usually have longer ways to the good things). I suggest to watch all the trading of Saladin for 2-3 minutes. If he buys wheat, he has not enough wheat farms / too many mills (as you can't increase the number of his wheat farms). Then delete 1 mill and watch him again.
If he buys flour now, he has too many bakeries. Then just delete some (but not too many) bakeries (depending on how often and how much flour he buys).
Now you may end up with some free space... Fine, you could now add some fletchers to produce crossbows for profit.
Note: Now one could think "I also should build so many breweries that Saladin no longer sells any hops", but selling beer instead of hops is not really an advantage, especially as the brewers need around 2 months for producing 1 barrel of beer. (Bread is much more profitable as the bakers make around 8 bread out of 1 flour).
But what really causes me some headaches is that ther is pitch inside this castle!! Basically the idea of burning every hostile unit inside the castle seems fine. But all of Saladin's workers and all his units on the campfire will also burn, causing him severe problems with defending himself (less units left), population (and recruiting new troops) and economy (no workers to work, loss of resources carried by burnt workers).
Moreover, Saladin's buildings might also catch fire (they do that quite often if you burn the pitch, actually!). And that's a REAL PROBLEM! As Saladin will just continue to replace his buildings, the fire might last until he has no more gold left, if the "fire fighters" can't get it out before (what is really hard if all the buildings are connected/close together) - not to forget the loss of stored weapons, food, important buildings such as marketplace, granary, etc. as well as popularity and the ability to recruit troops. Or for short: This is deadly for Saladin.
Place at least 1-2 fire throwers and oil-engineers at the keep entrance as (same as with Sultan) they are very effective here and can easily take out large amounts of hostile soldiers (for example, once 1 engineer with boiling oil on Wolfs keep killed 65 pikemen of mine, who were completely healthy before...).
Moreover, fire throwers and oil-engineers won't set the whole castle on fire, but just some tiles of free ground, being harmless to his buildings.
Furthermore, you could also add some dog cages and adjust the pitch ditch: Try not to place 200 single dots of pitch. They do not hold up a larger group of enemies and to deal with a small group of enemies, Saladin really won't need pitch. And each area of pitch needs 1 arrow to light it. If there are lots of tiny areas, Saladin's archers need much time for lighting them and can't shoot at the hostile soldiers meanwhile, so try to make fewer but large areas that really can hold up and kill a bunch of enemies. Some killing pits in between make sure that even without many archers, no enemy has safe access to Saladin's towers/moat.
Pitch + killing pits can work wonders against human players as it can be a bit confusing and intimidating as you never know where you may go and where not.
Cheers,
Heroesflorian |