Er, I heard about this. Well I'll start.

I have finished perfecting my fire trick, but I might add extra later.
I have edited Fate, according to what LF said in an email.

I will post screenshots later.

I tried out to put cliff waterfalls on buildings yesterday.

Conclusion: It doesn't work. Too bad, it would've looked cool. ;D

@ Upnotep: Does that mean now compies with flame arrows are firing the house?

I have a few tricks, and I'll let you know of them soon.

Actually, that might work, but it would be hard to get the archers with 50+ piercing armor to that big ballista tower.

Er.. I'm sorry, but I did not understand your last post.

Since when do compies have 50+ piercing armor?

Since Archers are weaker, they need additional protection against a Ballista Tower.

Why should they need protection from a ballista tower? =(

Because the Ballista Tower is supposed to shoot at them and I want the Archers to do a proper amount of damage to the house. The Archers won't shoot back because the Ballista Tower is out of their range and they are locked in with cliffs and trees.

PS. I have done a review.
Guess which campaign?

You could join the unofficial review team. ^^

You'd be the fifth recruit. ; D

BTW, this is getting offtopic. D=

I have come up with a way to escape the jail in the second scenario.

Sorry, I haven't really explained the topic very well, but basically it's like an ongoing article where we can share ideas. Well, now I'm too tired to post some stuff, but I think I'll post about the different types of trees or something to start.

The topic should become a useful resource by after a while. Feel free to post anything though, I think you guys have an idea what the topic is about. It's like a discussion where we can go more in depth about things in articles, suggest improvements, hints, and tutorials. You can also post new tricks, including really minor ones that aren't worthy of articles.

I have something to say about dried up rivers. Wouldn't they look better if they had elevation going down or cliffs just something to make it have some depth.

Probably. You should try that out.

BTW, what do you guys think which trees fit into desert? (not counting palm trees)

In my opinion, the spoiled pine tree and the one after it, the beech, the two orange ones and the ash, aswell as the spoiled tree generated by the forest terrain brush.

I like brown oaks with ash and beech.

I use ash and beech, also anything that is orange/brown or yellow. I think terrain cracks, desert patches, cactus clumps, grass terrain, and non green/blue (but including green palms) look good in a desert.

This is a little bunch of screens on deserts. I've been designing deserts as my main terrain in River God (Egypt), so I've had a lot of experience with them by now.

This is a small bunch of trees that contrasts to the desert around it. Deserts and grass are very boring, so you need to use the plethora of eye candies to break them up well. A break into a small grass land and forest is a good example.

Ash trees aren't too bad for deserts

Cactus clumps are great, especially on top of small grass terrain areas.

Grass under terrain cracks are great too.

You can also make use of cliffs, bones, dead trees and elevation. It's important not to overdo the desert, but you can make it look a lot better just with a good balance of eye candy and plainer desert areas. Palm tree clumps, with two or three palms, plus some desert patches and a few other items work great when placed on a small hill.

[This message has been edited by Richard Ames (edited 03-05-2005 @ 07:15 PM).]

I just thought of something else this time about collapsed bridges. The picture in Andrea's article shows the bridge half sticking out over the water but in real life it would all collapse woundn't it.

It must depend on what type of bridge it is.

Those shots look very nice, Richard.

One thing I like to use aswell are dirt paths. That especially works good in towns, were you can line desert terrain with it to give it more randomness at the sidelines.

I did that at some farms in the first scenario by the way.

That's a good tip LF - Use dirt paths on the border of grass and desert terrain. It's an interesting alternative to using desert patches.

We should do a little feature on the broken bridge next. Firstly, what scenarios has it been used in? I've seen a few average ones, but the best two were by Ingo and more recently Andrea. I remember Ingo's was in Taigun 2, in the last scenario (which I recently finished). Andrea's was in one of the scenarios in the new campaign. He used so many old tricks in that one I forget where they all fitted in. There was the bones bridge, the irrigation, collapsed bridge... Let's post some screens of some good bridges, and then we'll talk about other bridge and crossings types as well.

I like using the shallow-desert patch river crossing which will be in the second scenario.

Andrea's bridge was in "Yell of the rebels" as far as I remember.

And it looked the nicest bridge I had ever seen.
Don't forget Andrea's fire tricks.

Before and after shots of Andrea's bridge in "Yell of the Rebels".

This is one of the best fallen bridges you'll see. However, I think they're quite easy to make. Burning buildings is quite predictable and easy to use, the only problem is if the catapults get destroyed to early or late. See how the units are sqashed in like that? If there is any chance of them moving away you are in trouble. That's why BLP's are so good.

As for the unit, well, catapults are pretty standard. They have the same fire rate and damage as a heavy cat, but heavy cats take longer to destroy and have the effect of ruining any trees placed nearby. Other units are Heavy Cat (especially if you want trees to be destroyed), stone thrower (for more precision) and the catapult trireme and juggernaut (catapult trireme for camp fire effect). The boats are slower but leave no traces.

A good way of making the destroyed catapult harder to spot is to use the colour green or aqua, and place them in pine forests or forests.

Because walls take longer to destroy than normal buildings, the use of hero units like those used in the pic is recommended.

The part I find most difficult is making sure the effect doesn't cause some unexpected diplomacy issue between the players involved.

(I posted the images twice the first attempt, oh dear!)

[This message has been edited by Richard Ames (edited 03-08-2005 @ 09:54 PM).]

Those pictures Rich posted shows what I'm tring to say. See how the bridge sticks out over the cliff from the right and seem to float in mid air without support underneath it.