17 : First Citadel House

It’s time to get my first citadel house on the tabletop.

I have a walkway, now I’m designing a house to fill my building plot. It all has to fit on one 200mm-square tile. I’m eager to use the level step on the walkway and have an entrance to a house there. I’d also like another doorway on the other side of the building. However, this will mean paring down the building plot as I’ll need walkways on either side of the tile. Although space is tight, I’m trying to have all the walkways of the Citadel around 50mm wide to make them as functional as possible for gaming. As I’m giving myself the job of designing a building with an even more reduced footprint, it might be surprising that my plan is also to design not one single but two attached houses!

To make the citadel houses look grander than the houses of the Lower City, I’m experimenting with adding a bit of colour. Not too much or too strongly coloured as Bronze Age pigments would have been natural – earth colours are a good bet – and likely to fade quite readily in the Anatolian sun.

The building has more generous height than my Lower City designs and the doors are somewhat finer in style. All in all, the Citadel should be a more desirable place to live! One further addition will be joining up the walkways with paving slabs to complete the urban look of the townscape.

I’ve put the East Gate in position, here. My plan is to have both these models up against the table edge. It’s good to see how the different heights work together. And also the closing in of the urban space!

I’ve decided to increase the height of the mound by sticking another tile on top. My main concern is whether I can design a ramp that can rise from the level of the South Gate up to the top of the mound in the available space. And especially, design a ramp that isn’t so steep that my Trojan warriors instantly fall over!

Putting a house of the Lower City on the outside of the wall gives a sense of scale and a chance to see the different styles of houses together, and how the setup from the Lower City up to the Citadel Mound will shape up.