Heroes of Might and Magic: Grand Consul

Chapter 317 The Foundation of the Silver Top
After a week of intensive construction, not only was the road to the snow-capped mountain opened up, but a mountaintop was also successfully leveled, and a council chamber in the tower was built in the most central location.

A closer look allows for a more comprehensive observation of the tower's architecture.

On a gentle slope adjacent to a majestic snow-capped mountain, a magnificent columned building rises from the ground. The base has two layers, each progressively higher, with harmonious proportions, which not only stably support the entire building structure but also add a sense of solemnity. There are 24 columns on the outer perimeter, with thick shafts and no bases. The capitals are simple, consisting of a square crown and a disc, symbolizing the wisdom and creativity of the tower.

The building's overall length-to-width ratio is 9:4, achieving a near-perfect balance and harmony visually.

The most crucial element is the control of the cursed earth spirit. There are 12 earth tablets surrounding the entire building, which can effectively convert cursed coins and efficiently control the city's buildings.

With the boundary markers in place and the National Assembly having the power to alter the terrain, this area became entirely Kuraki's territory.

[Council Hall (Tower): Collect tax payments and refine spell power to earn 500 gold coins daily.]

Resources required: 5000 gold coins, 20 logs, 20 stones, and boundary stones.

Allows the construction of fortresses, level 1 magic guilds, markets, clock towers, haunted houses (blueprints lacking), and hero taverns (blueprints lacking) in towns.

Forrest's advanced civil engineering skills were simply ingenious. Even though it was just a council chamber, it already demonstrated his vision and ideas for the future.

In terms of location, the council hall is situated on an independent cliff, accessible via an aerial walkway and a snow stream to the other side of the mountain. It has its own independent administrative area planning and is located in the most central part of the mountain area, where its defenses are also the strongest.

Unlike human castles, towers are built against mountains, and many are even aerial structures, with colossal towers soaring into the clouds. They are all constructed using alchemy and magic, seamlessly integrated with the mountainside, thus preventing any unusual swaying or potential collapse.

If the snow-capped mountain is destroyed, the buildings will naturally be destroyed. But in that situation, the destruction of the city is practically imminent, so there's no need to consider the issue of special buildings.

From a certain perspective, each building in the tower is an independent defensive fortress that can effectively resist enemy attacks and provide high-altitude vision, allowing ranged units to exert their maximum strength.

If you are a hero familiar with tower units, you will find that this is the only faction with three ranged units in the mortal stage, which is better than even castles, let alone strongholds and fortresses.

A large part of the reason is that they can rely on the tower's architecture to organize long-range firing.

Even when fighting inside towers, ranged units are highly effective forces.

Therefore, when Forrest came to inquire about the general direction of the city's construction, Cedrus gave his advice.

"My view is to strengthen defenses, focus on magic and alchemy, and serve as sentinels and a hub of wisdom on the northern border of Kuraki territory."

Cedros saw it clearly: Kuraki's main cities were all castle-based forces, and its most powerful army was the human legion. Even with the new towers being built at maximum capacity, the sheer number of troops produced would still be far less than that of Kuraki and the other cities.

Although he is a hero who is half-god and half-human, and his main skill is mastery of mages, Cedros has no selfish motives. His goal in building Silvertop City is very clear: to use it as a support and outpost city. Its importance is far less than that of cities in the plains.

Silvercaps doesn't need a large controlled area; the key is defense. As long as it can be embedded like a nail in the North, allowing it to clearly observe the movements of either the Arcane Empire or Isildur, and also to tie down enemy forces, that's enough.

However, the difficulty of this plan lies in how to prevent the city from being breached. Therefore, the construction cannot be the same as Kuraki's and needs to be developed into a strong fortress.

Su Mu nodded: "Strengthen the city's defenses and build Silvertop City into a magic city without any loopholes. The towers, of course, cannot be as perfectly defensive as a real fortress."

But it has its own unique characteristics, namely the fusion of magic and alchemy. It can move in that direction, and in the future, it will become a magical fortress, leaving enemies with nowhere to attack.

Many breached cities were actually destroyed by magic. Among them, the renowned level 3 earth-based spell, Earthquake, was a highly effective siege magic. If the towers could maximize their magical defenses, it would be very difficult for the enemy to leap over the mountains.

Forrest roughly understood the lord's idea. He was prepared for this and used his civil engineering skills to construct a virtual fortress to demonstrate its layout.

[Fortress (Level 1): Fortresses can provide walls and defensive buildings for a territory.]

Resources required: 5000 gold coins, 20 logs, 20 stones.

Special Effect 1: Increases the base production rate of troops within the city.

Special Effect 2 (Advanced Civil Engineering): The defense of the soldiers guarding the city is increased by 2, and an inner defensive wall is added, with the inner wall's defensive capacity being half that of the city wall.

Additional resources required: 30000 gold, 50 logs, 50 gems.

Since the lord had determined the general direction, Forrest simply didn't go into the basic production plan and went straight to explaining the construction of defensive cities.

"This type of defensive tower can effectively block the attack of enemy ground troops. Even if you cross the outer wall, there is still an inner wall to block you. Soldiers can be placed between the two walls, and even alchemical mines can be laid."

We can deploy more ranged archers on the towers to create layers of cover against enemy ground forces. Even flying units, if their speed isn't too high, will need to pause briefly before flying into the city when facing the higher inner walls after crossing the first outer wall.

Su Mu had seen this kind of multi-walled defensive arrangement before at Sunset Fortress, where it had blocked the vast majority of the Isidore army, forcing Leven to lose a huge number of treants before he could barely find a breakthrough.

If it weren't for the thousands of Cyclopes and the incredible flood of Noah's Ark, they wouldn't have been able to get inside Sunset Fortress at all.

This is still the human legion. If Silvertop City is really built, and the Tier 7 Titan Giant stands on the city wall, who can break in?

Moreover, the towers could take advantage of the terrain, with the city walls rising in layers, making it extremely difficult for the enemy to break through. It was indeed an effective defensive arrangement.

Clearly, Forrest's plans went far beyond that, and he became more and more excited as he spoke.

"In the subsequent construction of the Tower Base Camp (Level 2 Main City), the number of towers can be increased and the inner city can be raised again, and even have magic circle defense. Not to mention the Tower Castle (Level 3), the inner city can be further increased, magic towers can be expanded, and even super strong regional magic defense arrays can be built in various places. I dare say that by then, no one can get close to Silvertop City without tens of thousands of Level 5 troops."

Forrest had actually conceived of a defensive city when he was building the warehouse, but the main need at the time was to mass produce troops, so the plan was shelved.

Forrest was naturally very happy to be able to realize his ideas in Silvertop City.

Without hesitation, Forrest urged the workers to continue construction while he prepared the remaining buildings that could be built.

Speaking of towers, one must mention their incredibly powerful magical research tower, which the Magic Guild had been planning for a long time.

[Level 1 Magic Guild: Entering a magic guild allows you to learn Level 1 magic (you need to purchase a magic book). You start with 3 Level 1 magic spells and can expand by building an auxiliary tower to recruit magic apprentices and continue to study special magic.]

Resources required: 2000 gold coins, 5 logs, 5 stones.

Special Effect (Advanced Civil Engineering): Allows you to spend a certain amount of gold to create magic scrolls within the guild.

Additional resources: 2000 gold coins, 5 logs, 5 gems, and 1 of each rare resource.

This is entirely characteristic of the Tower. Forrest clearly received help from Cedrus, finding some ancient architectural blueprints of the Tower and incorporating alchemical enhancements.

While it may seem somewhat similar to the alchemical wisdom of Cedros, his abilities allow him to create permanent high-level spells, and even scrolls that can be cast naturally. With the scroll abilities provided by the Magic Guild, he can skip many steps and focus on researching spell enhancement, which will lead to significant improvements.

Clearly, this was also something Cederos had requested. He knew his strengths, and as the soon-to-be lord of Silvertop City, maximizing his strengths would be a useful contribution.

[Market: Allows you to exchange resources (the more markets you own, the cheaper the prices; if resources are too scarce, you may not be able to exchange them). It also allows you to gift resources to other factions through the market.]

Resource consumption: 500 gold coins, 5 logs.

Special Effect (Advanced Civil Engineering): Reduces transaction costs by 60% with other markets and has a chance to produce Alchemy Dust.

Additional costs: 5000 gold, 10 logs, 10 gems, and 5 of each rare resource.

The price in this market has skyrocketed, more than 10 times the original price, but seeing its special effects, Su Mu felt that spending more money was worth it.

How could we possibly obtain Tier 2 resources from the market? How did we get them?

"According to Sidelos, there is a special way of trading in the tower, which is called mirror trading. The two parties do not know who the other is, but they are connected to the market at certain times to exchange goods, and thus they can exchange for some special items."

The transportation channels are also unique, seemingly based on some trade rules of the ancient cloud tower, using magical teleportation.

This situation is quite rare, perhaps only occurring once every few years, and the more market there is, the greater the probability. My civil engineering skills increase this probability.

This was absolutely fantastic news, and Su Mu was very pleased with it. This demonstrated the advantage of having multiple factions, as many unique buildings could only be constructed using towers.

[Clock Tower: Build a fairy magic nest to attract them and allow you to train little fairies here.]

Basic output: 16/week;
Special Effect 1 (Advanced Civil Engineering): Guaranteed to grant +100% production on Mondays.

Special Effect 2 (Advanced Civil Engineering): Allows the construction of special clock nests within the city walls. Fairies (and upgraded units) can traverse between different clock nests while defending the city. The number of nests that can be traversed is affected by the knowledge of the defending hero, and the clock tower rewind (cooldown) time is affected by the spell power of the defending hero.

Special Effect 2 may seem to have no effect for now, but if a great fairy is guarding the city, it will be a completely different story.

The Great Fairy is one of the few level 1 ranged units, with low ammunition, low health, and low defense, making it an easy target for enemy focus fire. But what if it could relocate within the city at any time?

Just before being attacked, they moved from the outer city to the inner city and continued firing at long range. They perfectly avoided the enemy's surprise attack and even managed to inflict full damage.

It's practically the ultimate in defense.

Fairy (Tower Tier 1, Tier 1 Unit): Attack 3, Defense 3, Damage 1-2, Health 4, Speed ​​4, Small Size.

Element: None.

Assessment: These magical creatures prefer to dwell in burrows, but sometimes they venture to the surface to obtain some strange magical substance, willingly submitting to enslavement. They attack with chains and balls, and are relatively weak.

Towers are not only training grounds, but also magical structures that attract new races. Many tower cities initially have very few inhabitants. They build a clock tower first, and everything starts naturally. These lowest-level magical creatures make a significant contribution to the towers.

There's not much to say; with everything focused on the future, the clock tower will choose special effect 2.

Forrest said with some regret, "Such strong defensive facilities may be useful for a while in the future, but it will be rather lonely if we lose a powerful enemy."

Sederos laughed and said, "That's not necessarily true. The Void Temple is located at the strongest Divine Punishment Fortress. Silvertop City is located at the northern gate of Kuraki."

Hopefully, one day we can do that too!

(End of this chapter)