Heroesflorian |
Posted on 06/29/12 @ 05:46 PM
please show us some pictures :)
you can upload pictures at many hosting services, most of them being free.
a picture helps to get an impression of your castle and will make much more people look at your work than without a picture.
Edit: Just dl-ed, and took a quick look at the AIV-editor screenshots provided in the zip.
I like the castle looks, especially 1,4,5.
Here a few tips:
General:
- Testing your castles ingame and carefully watching their setup with different starting conditions enables you to spot a lot of mistakes and weaknesses, so every aiv castle should be tested, same as with maps.
- Next, for ballistae, fire ballistae, trebuchets and mangonels, only spots 1-3 are actually used, so the 4th and 5th spot will never be "filled" ingame, sadly. Think of this when planning the siege engine placement (this applies to every aiv castle for SHC).
- The number and/or length of following points for each castle does not directly correspond to its overall quality or strength.
Wolf 1:
- A lot of hovels close to the keep&stockpile, while workshops are far away. Switch that to greatly improve his efficiency, especially when under siege (gate will be closed and workshops can't access stockpile with their current placement!).
- Add wells/water pots, or Wolf will burn, rebuild while still burning, burn down again, ... losing all or most of his money.
- If moat can't be built correctly, part of the castle is not enclosed, making him vulnerable to attacks.
- With quickly digging up 1 small line (1x3 tiles) of moat, getting a siege tower there and just rushing onto the keep, he can relatively easily be defeated. Maybe 2 or 3 rows of moat here, and dividing keep and wall by some crenellations or adding a row of low wall in front of the high wall might be a good idea.
- Use pitch ditch.
- Include an oil smelter and engineers with boiling oil (eg at keep entrance or the spots on the left/right with only 1 row of moat.
Wolf 2:
- A lot of empty, unused space inside the castle.
Wolf 3:
- Not much too say about that: Basically a slightly improved version of a standard Wolf castle, as you mentioned, so I won't lose many words about it (as the design of that castle is principially not your work, and the addition of some moat and crenellation is no "mistake" or weakness and thus nothing that I can point out to give you tips about).
Wolf 4:
- I really like the idea behind this, but... you moved the keep spot. This will result in the same movement of the keep on the map, i.e. the keep on the map will be moved into the same direction by the same distance as you did in the aiv editor (up ~ "to-middle-of-map"). Moreover, "turning around" the layout, so that the inner-(keep-)area is "below" (-> closer to mp edge) the main-economical-part of the castle, would be better for defending.
- If moat can't be completed, and as long as he isn't completed anyways, the biggest part of the castle is practically upen for enemies, making him very vulnerable. Try filling the "gap" with crenellated wall or similar.
- Add wells/water pots.
- Pitch around the castle would do well here (especially when enemies start digging the moat, they will easily burn, and it works well against horse-archer-raiding).
- Add boiling oil at e.g. keep entrance.
Wolf 5:
- Not enough hovels (Wolf uses up to 6 quarries, with a lot of ox tethers, 3 iron mines, and a decent number of farms, woodcutters, iron mines, ... and definitely needs more hovels than you placed here.
I can't determine the exact number, because some of the yellow 4x4 buildings could be water pots, but even if all of them are hovels, 8 are not enough (8x8 + 10 (keep) population = 74 population, which is not enough for a Wolf.)
- If he can't complete his moat (terrain height, stone/iron on the ground, ...), his castle is practically open on two spots (right/left) and thus can relatively easily get conquered without breaking its thick walls. Moreover, the moat takes much longer to get completed than e.g. building a wall takes him.
Thus, I'd suggest to complete the wall here in order to make his castle enclosed even without the moat.
- Moreover, I'd suggest you to add some wall in front of or behind the towers, as rebuilding a crushed tower may take a while, opening a huge hole in this defences. Walls are rebuilt much faster and cheaper, and as walls are just cheaper than towers, walls in front of towers can save the ai a huge lot of stones when under catapult/trebuchet attack.
Wolf 6:
- You placed a lot of expensive and important buildings (inns, barracks, mercenary post, engineers guild (wolf usually has a lot of engineers standing there, unprotected), breweries) outside of the castle while there are a lot of hovels inside the castle. -> Try to change that! Hovels are cheap and losing one doesn't immediately affect economy.
- You used the "high-low-wall" tactics (for fending of assassins and siege towers, I assume?). But it won't work this way, as from the low wall you can access all the towers and gates, and from these get onto the high wall and into the castle.
- You used no pitch here - Wolf usually makes good use of pitch, using it (in comparison to other aivs) very clever and efficiently most times, so it would certainly strengthen him.
So I hope I was able to give you some useful hints.
Cheers,
Heroesflorian
PS: The "number-of-hovels-and-population" issue may also be relevant for other of your castles, not only castle 5. I suggest testing all of them ingame and looking where he has enough peasants and where not.
PPS: As I did only take a look at the aiv-editor-screenshots, I may have missed or misinterpreted something; moreover I can't say anything about building order and not too much about unit placement for now. If you wish a closer look here, please tell me (or, better, write me a short email (see in my profile), as I don't check all the map pages that often). [Edited on 06/29/12 @ 06:53 PM]
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