What's the situ with custom fief defense building?

[Bjord]

A while ago, in S3, chadz introduced an open beta for fief owners to design their own defenses, placing walls, gates, battlements etc. What happened and will we ever see this again?

Personally, I think it's a brilliant idea but one that needs very smart counter measures against abusive design.

[Corwin]

That would indeed be the awesomest idea. Preparing for the upcoming attack, and permanently strengthening your defenses, would definitely improve playability of Strat.

It would also be awesome if the defenders would have the ability as in Single player campaign, to build improvements in their fiefs, with long time and resources needed to build one, but in the end worth the effort and cost, i.e. water moth, additional archer towers, stone wall for villages etc.

[Rhekimos]

Making sure that the maps would be good would either take immense administrative resources to check each change to each map, or very strict controls that would make gaining advantages nearly impossible and the changes only cosmetic.
And someone would probably still find ways to create maps that provide an immense advantage to the fief owner. And what would happen then? Will someone get banned for abuse? Or just the map changed? A big army might be lost in just such an abusive map. Will they be refunded their troops and equipment?

It's a nice idea in theory but in practice, a ton of work for something with little use or a nightmare for admins to manage.

[PhantomZero]

No, that was an open beta for Stronghold, a new game mode.

[Jarlek]

No, that was an open beta for Stronghold, a new game mode.

And chadz made the building mechanics of the Stronghold gamemode a part of Strategus, so that fief owners could build stuff in their fief. This was, and still is, in the testing area.