The Karalion Empire is one of the major powers in our fantasy campaign world. Since politics will become more and more important I thought it time to map the Imperial Citadel including the throne room.
The Citadel was/is the nucleus of the Imperial Capital around it and was built almost 3,000 years ago. After its foundation as an outpost of a predeceeding half-elven civilisation a fortified settlement grew around it. Over the course of time, the inner part of the settlement became the Imperial Castle encompassing palaces/living areas, gardens, thermae, places for religious worship, kitchens, the Imperial Diet, the Imperial Mint and garrisons for the palace guard within high walls.
The Citadel itself "merely" houses the throne room, several council chambers, rooms for audiences, the chancellery and administration of the imperial household, living quarters, the armory of the emperor, minor court yards (most propably four) and maybe additional rooms / functions.

I have started making the walls with the CA46 "Castle Walls" annual:

The different shades of purple and red signify the different construction phases starting with the keep and a eight-towered bastion. Later two of those towers and parts of the bastion were dismantled to make room for an expansion of the fortres including a first palace. Further construction phases affected only the interior buildings, not the walls of the citadel.

Glad to see this great use of CA46 and eager to see how it will evolve :)
To fill any shape use the CHANGEFS command (or right-click the Change Properties button and select Change Fill Style) and select the shape(s). The fill style dialog will appear.
You might not have the right fill styles handy so you can browse the bitmaps or better yet import your map in a new one created with the template (wizard) you want.
Just create a new map based on the template and select Insert File from the Draw menu then select your FCW file.

Thank you very much for the encouragement, Joachim.

Thanks for the tip, JimP. I already downloaded these textures quite a while ago.


I still have to decide many details, but I made some little progress. This is, what the original bastion looked like:

It is based upon the Late Bronze Age fortifications of Nuraghic Sardinia, especially upon Santu Antine (http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuraghe_Santu_Antine), Su Nuraxi (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Su_Nuraxi_di_Barumini) and Arrubiu (http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuraghe_Arrubiu). I not yet happy wtih the layout of the interior rooms and stairwells of the bastion, but for the moment it suffices to illustrate the history of the Citadel.

The keep (or nuraghe) houses the primary council chamber, where the "Kronrat" (first house of the Imperial Diet, something between the Privy Council of England and the Roman Senate) convenes:

This part still needs floor and furniture as well as a decision upon the style of the stairwells to the upper and lower levels.


The small council chamber is the meeting place of the cabinet. It is also used for private audiences and the like:



The antechamber to the great throne room is an atrium style room with some kind of roof lantern or glas dome:

The blue construction lines indicate important lines of sight (the horizontal one lead to the throne), the pink ellipse shows, which part of the room is open to the sky. The columns support a gallery/matroneum.

Spent some time fideling around with the Throne Room and managed to "build" the pillars supporting the roof. Additionally, I tried to make the white parts of the black marble floor less prominent (not yet sure, wether I will keep this change):

As before, pink construction lines indicate a gallery. The chair is just a place holder for the position of the throne.

Next steps are the construction of the raised dais for the throne, the small columns around the hearth and some mosaics on the floor.

The rose patterned mosaic does not seem to work out in combination with a raised dais, so I "banished" the Imperial Emblem to the high wall behind the throne and tried a more classic approach:

For the steps I used a black outer glow since a Wall Shadow, directional wouldn´t work on a dais.

Yep, a zoomed out view would be nice.

Not to sure of the black marbled floor. It seems to dominate the picture.

For the rest, WOW.

I actually really like the black fill, but perhaps you could try to soften it up with a very slight blur...or darken it a touch with the RBG matrix (i.e. try to make those bright whites grey.)

Additionally I added gras filled polygons where the inner courtyards / gardens will be. In the northwest one the original Imperial Rose Tree grows:

The Citadel measures roughly 290*150 Meters, the throne room has a length of 80 Meters.

Having a heavy RL-workload right now, I make only slow progress. I am still working on the Imperial Banquet Hall and the adjoining waiting / reception area. This are my first drafts of the inner courtyard / garden / peristylium to the south of the IBH:

Think this is going to look great.

And youre right about the hedges, they don't look right.
You could either loose the edge around them or plant them with flowers, then they would be flower boxes.

The garden sculptures are from the CSUAC-Set. The hedge was simply a wall with a dark grass fill on its own sheet plus some effects. But I am testing some other solutions right now.

Any new updates?