Pont d’Aigues Vives

An immersive Bretonnian settlement map with a land battle mode and a siege battle mode.

This mod contains two variants of the same custom battle map.
The first battle is a siege battle. You fight for control of the two victory points: the castle and the bridge. All siege features are functional: walls, gates, rams, siege towers, fort towers.
The second battle is a land battle. Each side deploys on one side of the river. The castle and walled town are not playable.

Pont d’Aigues-Vives was at first a small convent located at the edge of Massif Orcal, at the first point where the mountain torrent becomes wide enough to be forded reliably.
Legend held that one could hear the lady speak in the babbling of the torrent.
With time, the convent grew into a sizeable abbey that attracted flocks of devout pilgrims eager to taste the holy waters, and less devout merchants eager to taste their wine.
Recognizing the strategic value of the area, the local lord built a bridge across the river and a castle towering above it.
The lord even had the road paved, which greatly increased the amount of traffic flowing through town.
For all its success, Pont d’Aigues-Vives is not a peaceful town. To the locals, the nearby mountains are not a majestic background to their lives, but an looming reminder of the ever present threat of greenskin raids.
More than once, they have had to repel the forces of unchivalrous neighbouring lords looking to get their hands on the lucrative bridge toll.
The settlement is surrounded by a thick, dark forest, which provides endless quarry for young questing knights and endless nightmares for the peasantry.

Pont d’Aigues-Vives translates from old French to Bridge of Lively Waters.
It’s tactically impossible to pronounce if you’re not French enough (~ pon deg veev). This is a common naming strategy used by Bretonnians to weed out spies.

My focus for this map was immersion and aesthetics.
I’ve tried to find the balance between Warhammer-esque over-the-top aesthetic elements, and realistic elements that keep things looking practical and grounded.
I’ve included a lot of detail referenced from real life and history. Don’t hesitate to zoom in and whip out the old debug camera.

My approach does have a few drawbacks:
– the map was not built with performance in mind. Some PCs may struggle.
– I’ve tried to find a balance for street width between vanilla boulevards and realistic tiny alleys, but this can make pathing awkward at times.
– units will clip and phase through stuff. Flyers will fly through the wall hoardings and dragon wings will clip. Units will phase through all the gatehouse decorations. Ground units will phase through low walls around fields. This is a deliberate choice on my part to choose good-looking detail and a little clipping jankiness over unnatural large empty areas.
– the forests are thicker than vanilla, especially around the edges. Shooting through is far less probable. The AI does not understand this.

Projectiles can go through the front face of the hoardings, but not the roof. This will protect units on the walls from arcing projectiles. However this will also prevent all but the front rank of bow units from shooting from the walls. The AI does not understand this.
The gatehouses are vanilla bretonnian gatehouses with props for decoration. Units and projectiles will phase through. The AI understands this.
The walls are kitbashed but functional. Most can be docked with ladders and siege towers, and can be destroyed like normal. The game’s UI will tell you if you can’t. The AI understands this.
The fort towers are custom. They cannot be destroyed. There are two types:
– arrow towers with small range, small damage, high rate of fire and many firing points. The gatehouses come with one such tower.
– trebuchets (3 on the castle walls and 1 on the outer wall, not animated) with high range, high damage but low rate of fire.

I designed the map around giving the player options.
There are two victory points, multiple angles of attack and lots of potential for vanguard shenanigans.
This does give the attacker an advantage, especially with how useless walls are in the current state of the game.
This is particularly true for the AI which is very far out of its depth.

I recommend that you approach the siege battle as a cinematic or roleplay experience.
If you come at this expecting jank-free, perfectly balanced gameplay, you will be disappointed.

No.
The maps in this mod are only for custom battle (single or multiplayer). They do not appear in campaign.
The main reason is that you can only have one mod that adds battle maps to the campaign, and I have no interest in trying to rival GCCM or even maintaining an edited version.

Maybe. If they want to. And when they find the time.

Subscribe, activate in the launcher, launch the game, go to custom battles, select:
– Land battle > Pont d’Aigues Vives for the land battle
– Siege battle > Pont d’Aigues Vives for the siege battle
Both battles have the CA logo in the selection menu instead of the workshop wrench.

Please rate, favourite or even follow to stay up-to-date. It helps keep the modders happy and motivated.

Drop by the GCCM discord[discord.gg] to find a bunch of weird but friendly critters called map-makers who are always happy to help out, provided you feed them the juicy, juicy screenshots.

Should be compatible with anything.

Special thanks to Zoidberg for the showcase video.