Advanced Invisible Units

By Asophix

Volcanoes

Ever want to make a volcano that actually spits out fire as well as setting fire to things? Here are the few quick steps to accomplish this amazing feat.

For the look of an eruption: First you need to make your volcano mountain. We leave this step entirely up to you. Then, hide one or more archers at the peak, and lower a piece of wall all the way to the ground right beside the former gate. Place a brazier on the wall.
Select the archers to "attack here" in several different places, and the area will appear to be spewing out fire!

For lava rock: Hide a catapult, play the map, and stock it up on stone. Do the .SAV to .MAP trick, and just before completion get the catapult to attack with the "attack here" button. It will now spew out rock!

Make sure (if you have both archers and catapults) to put the catapults in front, or they might hit your archers.

A volcano can also be used as a secret weapon or natural disaster! Just place pitch ditches from the volcano to a city and it will set the city alight, though this trick could only be done at the beginning of the map. To do this, as the final act of before saving the map, have one of the hidden archers target the pitch.

Also, consider placing invisible engineers with boiling oil on aggressive, so any passer-by will be set ablaze in the raging inferno of the volcano! This creates an interesting twist to volcano maps - is the player willing to risk the treacherous volcano, or would it be wiser to attack through a more indirect route? The mapmaker decides!

Levitating Units

First, have an invisible ladderman attached to Max height. Sometimes, when you send a unit up, they will come halfway down.

Once after coming down, he will be standing on the top of the ladder, and then just lower the max to min height.

You can clearly see the maceman levitating with his mace in front of the max height.

Secret entrances

You can also use an invisible siege tower in a "unimportant" part of a city.It can lead to whole new, previously unaccessible areas, or allow an easier route to a vital area.

For example, these macemen will have a troubled time reaching the lord through all those pikes, plus there's an engineering with a pot of goodies for them.

Perhaps knocking down this wall will reveal something hidden...

Eureka! An invisible siege tower leads the way to victory! The defending troops are literally out of the picture!

The macemen celebrate an easy victory.

Now, this is a fairly obvious example, but clever mapmakers can find ways to integrate such a feature seamlessly into the map, giving observant or curious players rewards for their explorations. Even placing an obtuse hint in the map description may help the player know they should be on the lookout of such a nice twist.

Have fun discovering the unknown, or the hidden as it may be!

(original authors from Stronghold Knights: Lord_Thomas, SimRPGplayer, Aubergine, GeneralMatthew)