City Design Notes

A City Is Like A Woman

Dom|Castia: (Quoting) Alucard_the_Kook:

Making a city is ... a lot like making love to a beautiful woman.
First you need to check her out, get the lay of the land.
Next, you need to tease her a little. Make trails over her body, allowing you to move freely.
Then you fiddle with the zones.
Finally...
You give the bitch all your money.

Extensive Guides:

Walls, per Rephaim

Note: Wall Archers were removed from the Game with Patch 22.

In regards to walls... there are two ways to do them so that they will be effective... unfortunately both are expensive.

Number One Way to Build Walls:

• Do not use regular walls, or towerwalls, just gatehouses.

  Pros and Cons

  • Pros: Archers, easier to defend, etc.
  • Cons: Kinda looks goofy, and expensive.

Number Two - Try Harder:

• Use regular walls and form the standard square city, with a smaller wall boxed around the tree maybe. Then, "outside the wall" place U shaped towered sections so that the bottom of the U faces outward.

  Pros and Cons:

  • Pros: Archers, easier to defend, harder for attackers to punch through
  • Cons: U battlements not accessable to PCs, expensive, potentially cumbersome-looking and outside city grid, may cause problems with LoS from inner wall area.

Just a few ideas... for the most part, however, walls are speed bumps.

Another idea is to have two walls. An outer wall, and an inner wall. Outer wall with a north gate house, while the inner walls have an east and west gate house.

The Double Wall

• Pros: Two walls for attackers to have to breach. If the outer wall is breached, archers on both outer and inner walls can shoot at the attackers sandwiched between them. Hinders (does not prevent) the tactic of attackers gaining the walls, and killing defenders forced into the bottlenecks of wall ramps. Defenders can simply take to the inner wall, and attack the attackers at range, and 'relative' safety from melee attacks. Provides room for nonessential buildings (i.e. player houses) between the walls, and freeing up room in the core of the city for primary buildings (i.e. vendors, forges, barracks).
• Cons: Diminishes the size of buildable area within the city grid. Slightly awkward getting into and out of city for virakt members.

Also, for those of you who were at Vengeance Throne, that was a very well designed city... not perfect... but pretty good.

--Rephaim,

TheCursed.Org

Note: Though the Cursed's website holds some rather bleak News, and their Forums are offline, their resources on their dialect of the Irekei Language and the history both of the Kerakim and the political array of Mourning are intact as of July 23rd, 2003.

Vengeance Throne, per Halethrain

Basic city design works as follows:

• -The city is on an island which terraforms to this tree
• -The outer wall layer ringer is not inversed like many to take advantage of placing bulwarks within its ring. The Island range is so small that the outer bulwark ring will be able to reach any bulwarks placed outside.
• -A temple of Cleansing flame is placed with summoners logged out on third floor. If an enemy gets into city before the spires are turned on. Summoners log in to here, turn on no flight and no trans, then summon in their forces. After all forces are in, the no summon spire is turned on.
• -Elven house deeds will be placed over all available areas outside the city leaving one spot for a banestone (not leaving a spot is an exploit). When enemies attempt to remove these structures protection slots will be changed, and the building repaired.

 Halethrain

(For the full discussion, please see http://ubbforums.ubi.com/showthreaded.php?(truncated) - still available July 23rd, 2003.)

John Ballentine (Damebix) on Sieging in Shadowbane

As posted by Waylandor, some of this information relates to city design from the perspectives of those who would either lay or defend against a siege.

From 'Step One: Placing A Banestone':

Here are a few things to keep in mind before placing the bane:

1. Determine whether the city has walls that reach the limit of the city grid. If it does, observe the outermost section of walls and stand a good ways away from it. Make sure to place the bane well out of trebuchet range (if the trebuchets were placed just inside those walls). This is VERY important so that the defenders cannot hide inside their city and fire trebuchets at the bane while you try to take down a wall. (I will explain this in greater detail later).
2. There is an additional layer to the city grid on the south and east sides of the city. I do not know why its there, but it is. This allows for another layer of walls. Keep this in mind!
* * *
4. Place the bane near a corner of the city. Corner sections usually have fewer HP than straight wall sections.
5. Because of the extra layer to the city grid on the south and east sides, there might be an extra layer of walls on that side. This would obviously require you to destroy more wall sections in order to reach the tree. To avoid this problem, you should place the bane on the northwest side of the city. Of course, use common sense based on the city design. Your goal is to make sure you’re going through the fewest wall sections possible. Furthermore, make sure the bane is placed by the fewest barracks, because guard stacks are hazardous to keeping the trebuchets set on target.

Plisko's Economic Guide at Shadowbane Catacombs

(May contribute important details of city design for economic success in SB.)

UBI.Com Forums | Ask the Advocates - New Player Resources >> City Building and Structures

Ketu, from Treachery

Initially, have enough gold to place and start ranking these essential assets and NPCs:

• TOL & Runemaster
• Church & Bursar
• Inn & Steward or Builder
• Forge & Helmsmith
• Magic Shop & Sage
• Barracks & Guard Captain
• Outer Wall Deed & gold to place all walls at one time

Additionally you will need all your guys there to help guard it all for 12 hours because your assets will be vulnerable to melee attacks. Or, tell no one and place it all off the beaten path and have only your most trusted people there to guard.

If you want, roll an alt on treachery and give me a tell. I'll summon you to our city and show you how I built it.

Ketu
Redemption
Treachery