Title : Walled Cities Author : Leslie Styles lms@soton.ac.uk Players : 4 Filename : WALLCITY.PUD, WALLCTY2.PUD Building : From scratch, 1.5 hours (At least 30 mins of this was changing my mind) Description: Each of the four players (2 Human, 2 Orc) start in one corner of the map, with one Peasant/Peon and a Town Hall/Great Hall. Their start area is sufficient in size to build a large city, and surrounded by a three-layer wall. There are two entrances, each protected by three Cannon and two Guard towers. In the corner of each city is a Gold Mine, each containing 100,000 gold. The walls of the city also enclose a deep forest. The cities are connected by a series of interlinked islands, each of which contains a Gold Mine with 50,000 gold, and a few trees. Each player has one direct path onto the islands, and one blocked by rocks. Each player's direct path is opposite another player's blocked path, so while you cannot initially attack directly, by removing the rocks you enable a path. Remember of course that you also give your opponent a path to you! Each player starts with 10,000 Gold, 5,000 Lumber and 10,000 Oil, allowing them to build the first few units straight away. I prefer this to starting with a set group of buildings as it allows the player more freedom to choose their own strategy whilst still getting the game going quickly. This level is designed for four-player combat, although two or three would still be nearly as much fun. Playing against three computer players is pretty tough, although they are pretty stupid. WALLCTY2.PUD is exactly the same level, only each player starts out with one Human Peasant and one Orc Peon. This allows you to build and utilise all units in the game. There is a seperate section at the end of the Tactics that lists a few points about playing with both races. Tactics: The cities themselves are relatively easy to defend. The walls take some time to batter through, and the trees form a further defensive line behind them. However, as time goes on you continually shrink the tree barrier. A close watch on the peasants is needed to prevent weak spots appearing too quickly. The two entrances are reasonably defended from an early attack, as troops would be damaged marching through or slowed dealing with the towers. For those that prefer an attacking strategy, there is sufficient Gold to sustain an advancing army, although Lumber is limited. Attacks on a heavily defended city would be costly, although if you can contain your opponent attrition would eventually take it's toll. This level calls for a mixed attack or defence force. The thick walls mean that Archers/Ballistas or Axe Throwers/Catapults are vital in attack or defense. These in turn require a force of close attack troops for defense, which means they'll be needed for attack. The walls are most vulnerable to Dwarf/Goblin Sappers, but carefully placed traps can make this a costly strategy. Long range magic spells can wreak havoc on both attack and defence forces, and are particularly useful if the tree barrier is still too thick for projectile weapons. This is also true of air attack units. Playing with both races: In WALLCTY2.PUD you start out with one Peasant and one Peon. The first Peon (if you're Human) or Peasant (if you're Orc) will be a different colour, but any you build will be in your colour. They will also have the voices for your race, not their own. The key to playing successfully with both races is knowing what you need to build just for one side, and what you need to build for both. The most obvious point is that if you want to build Grunts you need an Orc barracks, and for Footmen you need a Human barracks, and so on for all the people. Slightly less obvious are some of the others. Town Hall/Great Hall. You need to build one of each if you wish to produce Peasants and Peons. However, you only need to upgrade one of them to produce advanced buildings and units. Farms. You can build farms for either race, or a mixture. The output of all farms is taken as a whole, not per-race. Barracks. You need to build one of each if you wish to produce both Human and Orc troops. Lumber Mill/Blacksmith. You can build one of these for either race. Building one Lumber Mill (Human or Troll) will give you access to Elven Archers and Troll Axe Throwers. Any upgrades performed on any Lumber Mill or Blacksmith will affect both Human and Orc troops, eg if you produce a Human Lumber Mill and do Ranger training, you will also get Bezerkers. The three Ranger upgrades map directly onto the three Bezerker upgrades. Ballista upgrades also affect catapults etc. The same is true if you build a Troll Lumber Mill. Stables/Ogre Mounds. Again you only need to build one of these to get access to both Knights and Ogres. Dwarven Inventor/Goblin Alchemists. As these buildings produce people, you would need to build both to get access to both races, but as there is really no difference between them it may just be a waste of money Church/Alter of Storms. This one is slightly more tricky. If you build either of these, the first upgrade affects both, ie if you build a Church then you can upgrade to Paladins and Ogre-Mages in one go. However, all magic spells are treated independantly. Therefore if you only build a Church you can get Healing and Exorcism, but you won't get Bloodlust and Runes. You really need to build both of these. Mage Tower/Temple of the Damned. You need both of these too for the same reason: The magic upgrades are treated independantly. Also these buildings produce people. It can therefore be very expensive to get access to all magic spells, especially in the early parts of the game. Gryphon Aviary/Dragon Roost. Again these two buildings produce people. If you want both, you need both buildings. As this is a land-based level I'll ignore water-based units. Earlier versions: The first version of this level had fewer bridges between islands, but this meant that every player had to go through the middle island to advance. This led to fairly boring games with each player having a large army on the nearest island and just sending them all onto the middle to attack. I therefore linked all the islands together to provide alternative paths and to allow players to circle opponents and attack from behind or in a pincer movement. Copyright and Permissions: These levels are copyright L.M.Styles, 1996. You may use this as a base to build other levels, no matter whether it's a minor tweak or a major change, but it'd be kinda nice to get a mention 8-) Contacting the Author: Please feel free to send any comments, suggestions, money etc to:- lms@soton.ac.uk If you know how to alter the properties for Rangers and Bezerkers in the editor I'd be particularly keen to hear about it.