(From Left to Right) Dwarf Hold [Altar of Kings], Dwarf Hold [Gryphon Aviary], Fortified Mine Entrance, Mine Entrance

Dwarf Holds are the only true settlements for the dwarves, right now theres 4 appearance types, the altar of kings, gryphon aviary, barracks and high elven barracks. Holds are strong, sturdy and have a high starting income cap, basically a castle-city, as well as the same growth speed as humans - whats special about these holds is that you can increase the income mana cap similar to the system in Krackles' Diplomacy, there will be some risks here, with chances of failure and even reducing your income as you expand your hold.

The two to the right are mine entrances which also give some income (200g max which is equal to an elven village), the fortified version is basically what it says on the label, its just an armored version.
Why the need for armor? Well this leads us to the unique system to the dwarves which is the tunnel connection system, essentially waygates. You can use the holds and these mine entrances to connect to each other for some income allowing you to move about on the map better than anyone else.

I mentioned last post that i'd make a dwarf town that works similarly to the existing human/elf towns, addons and all. Anyways I can't find a decent model to make a town with so i've put that on hold, I guess you can use a human town as some sort of 'trade partner' owned by you to make the addons instead.

Like the other old race, the Elves, Dwarves also have a greater reliance on prestige, but this time prestige is mostly needed for expansion and building new holds rather than basic maintenance and unit training like the elves.
A crumbling Dwarf Empire with little prestige would still be able to fight and survive but they need to gain more prestige from other players or by battle to actually create new holds.

(From Left to Right) Elven Town /w Obelisk (generates Prestige), Elven Spire (Castle), Elven Village, Human Keep from last post, Elven City, Occupied Human Town /w Pallisades + Elven Spire, Elven Hall (Keep)

If you noticed there I mentioned Prestige, I'm currently renovating the income system so its gold and prestige (instead of resources)
Prestige will be used to create more high tier units like knights. In the later periods (KaN 1869?) Prestige will mean less and is used in huge bulks rather than for every other unit.

Prestige also plays a crucial role for the elves, most of their units and structures require prestige and also generate prestige. This means an elf nation without much prestige will eventually crumble and fall.
Income-wise elven settlements have a higher income cap (especially the city!) than their human counterparts, but it grows very slowly.
Dwarf-wise they probably start with a lower income cap and regen the same-ish time as humans but you can spend gold to increase their mana/income cap.

Heres the probably near-finished state of the Human Buildables, I made it even more complex than the previous version by separating the walls from the buildings. Take a look at what I came up with after some time with the Mdlvis editor (especially the starfort, note the lower and angled walls!)

(From left to right) Starfort Walls + Fort/Barracks, Village, City /w Stone Walls + Watchtowers, Town /w Workshop & Wooden Walls (Perfect for colonies), Castle, Keep

The settlement walls will be buildable on its own allowing you to make things like the renaissance+ starfort on the far left so you can decide whether your settlement even needs walls in the first place.
They provide defense against melee units (since you can go inside them, no gates possible yet sadly) and also the old defenses buff that the settlements used to have.
Stone walls also have a passive ranged defense and the watchtower version has a greater sight radius.
Starfort walls have riflemen defense instead along with a controllable cannon.
Castles and Keeps also have a ranged defense as expected.

Will probably add a player-version of the terrainer unit allowing you to build roads.
Also, check out that swamp area before the cliff-bridge, theres another swamp area further up north as well.
Finished all the terrain also in preparation for this buildables update, too.

Sorry for the late update guys, i've been working on a custom-elf version of this (so it allows the center addons), right now I have a custom elf village and town, a city will be more tricky but I might keep that a high-income but no-addon (aka build spot) unit.
After that will probably work on a dwarf version which will be more tricky, right now I plan on representing them via single unit buildings like the gryphon aviary and barracks to represent 'entrances' to the underground dwarf holds (with a hopeful 'teleporter' system!). Probably will give them a dwarf trade town or something that will allow addons.

Been toying around with buildable settlements recently, while I know that it'll be less 'custom' and pretty overall, it'll allow for a less-doodad-extensive aka less-laggy map.
After all, with the preset doodad settlements that means that when we delve into fantasy elements, you'll have eg preset elven places making fantasy players more limited overall instead of a fully free approach.

I'll probably finish up the rest of the terrain and make a buildable settlements only ver of the map, it'll be quicker to finish that than add the rest of the custom doodad settlements KaN will have

I ended up editing Wandering Soul's Village-Town-City model, adding more houses, along with a custom pathing map that allows you to build stuff in the center of the town (allowing the use of the current build spot system)

This will allow players to keep the customizable aspect of the settlements and even add new ones for would-be elven conquerors (a la elven noble towers to rule over human settlements and train units too!)

To make it more strategy-like (and provide less building spam lag too) the buildable settlements (and the build spot addons) will be able to train units just like your every other strategy map, war camps will probably be renewed into larger and expensive encampments to encourage less spam

Given the above, the towns/villages/cities will only train your basic units, knights and the like will be trained by your castles. Special units could be trained by the encampments or the settlement addons (eg the above factory making cannons)

So here's a overlook I forgot to put up, by the time you've seen this, a new ver (probably buggy) would have gone up with all the new remade terrain changes.

As you can see, much of the wooded center of the north is now a huge plains area, perfect for the steppe hordes.
There is little resources in this area, which is why most of the settlements are only in wooded areas and dot around the bay.

and the most important part... the bay - the big trade circle is the new mechanic 'flow of trade' which basically represents trade domination of one area.
Hopefully this bay region will be a good source of central'd roleplay and conflict.
There's two trade cities here:
The western city has a bigger port but is furthest away from the 'flow of trade cp', however, it is close to alot of villages with manpower, though those villages (which are barbarian) could be a problem if another player controls it.
The central city is closest to the 'flow of trade cp' but there are little settlement cps nearby, the owner of the central cp has the plains just south of him, which will mean he'll need to go beyond that and have spread out settlements. On the positive note, he can see all approaching enemies coming with ease.

There is a third contender, which is the castle to the right. Its the only castle in the north and it has a village with the same size port as the central city, there is a large forest to its right with a few settlements. Its proximity to the northern isle I showed you last time provides a problem but also a reward.

So i've mentioned this city before, and I finally managed to make an interior for it.
Ideally this city will be a good launching point to explore the seas, at least in the medieval-era

Heres one of the new cities in that spanish-esque region that Cliffton City used to be in, this one is inspired by medieval Madrid

This is about where the new city is if it were in the old map

One of the major changes and also one of my best remakes of any city, here it is, that huge island greek city, the Constantinople of the Seas

Heres a comparison between island sizes, the remade city can fit in one district of the old one

Now for some actual closeups, the city itself. For some balancing issues it now acts as just one city instead of 3.
To make up for this there's a lot more islands surrounding the city.

Exterior town-port, also helps with being able to make cities from the get-go (since they require towns)

The interior is pretty byzantine'd up

Merridell City was in a prime place for naval superiority and expansion, and imo it really takes the prestige and danger of naval exploration in the game for a place in such a good location. With the advent of the more spanish-inspired region south of Merridell City, I decided that Merridell City should be moved inland to make cross-continent sea travel more precarious (at least in the medieval ver of the map)

I changed Merridell City's old location from a beach coastal area to a cliff one (with a city in its place) to limit such a naval-superior location being exploited too much, theres a city inbetween cliffs a bit north of this one which i'll make into a dominant seafaring city in the more technologically advanced ver of the map.

This is the southern city in the 'greek' area of the map, completely remade and takes about 3/4 of the original exterior space, the interior is now 1/3 of the original size (use the game's dark fog-of-war bloom when you zoom out too far/the minimap for size reference along with the northeast island on the city exterior map)

This should be the final interior-included cp (like castles and cities) in this southwest mainland region, I might move that sea castle in the middle of the sea a bit closer to the mainland and make more land as a whole to make the sea surrounding the huge island city a inland sea (like the rl Mediterranean)