The skirmish-invasion type of map offers great new possibilities for complex and challenging game concepts. From this arose a new interest in the AIs. In the details of their castle design, as well as in their fighting strength or in their behaviour of giving goods to a human ally. Not to forget that you have to know your enemy well to defeat him even under difficult conditions as some new maps offer.
Qtlilkeg has dedicated himself to these issues and collected the vast stock of the tables submitted here. I had the pleasure of doing some minor improvements and added the tables for the Warchest AIs.
The information in this file is for game designers who would like to include AIs in their games.
Crusader provides 8 different castle designs for every AI. With these overviews, it is easy now to choose between the different plans, shapes and strenghts of the AI castles.
Where does the Rat add stairs outside of his castle? When does the Emir have two front towers with mangonels? Maybe you want Richard to use a castle that has an external low wall (very rarely seen in Crusader games). Or the Pig's mightiest castle that has 5 square towers. Did you know that the Caliph has a castle with 19, err 20 towers in it?
The seemingly simple statement of castle size can help creators of skirmish maps keeping in mind to leave much space for certain AIs to build their installations and not get blocked in a corner. They may want Saladin's smallest castle because there is not enough space for anything else.
There are many small, but interesting details of the Crusader game still open for observation. So these tables will undergo future refinements. We submit them now so that you fellows can add from your experience and ideas. Comments and suggestions are very welcome.
Have you ever noticed that the Sultan does not place any apple farms? He does not live on diet but constantly buys +10 apples at the market. (He just uses lots of wood cutter huts and two quarries.)
Or have you ever seen the Marshal killing an enemy Lord? He will probably never be able to. His armies of knights are good at raiding and smashing but wether his up to six swordsmen will ever be enough to finish the job? (In the picture below my pikes had even lended him the hands and weakened the Lord.)
It's a nice work, but it seems to me that there are some little mistakes. Because one of the Caliph Castles has 20 towers:
http://img141.imageshack.us/my.php?image=sccaliphqo6.jpg
Nevertheless it's a really helpful work, the only thing which will made it perfect is a screenshot of every AI-castle.
peter2008 File Author
Posted on 02/10/09 @ 06:00 AM
Thank you!
I'm currently re-checking all the tables of the older AIs.
Also, I'm taking screens of all the 128 castles and some interesting details such as outlines of moats.
Posted on 02/09/09 @ 04:27 AM 