Overview
The Impasse tool is used to restrict specified units from passing through a defined area. This can be used to prevent units from entering certain areas intended to be off-limits by the designer.
Cliffs and water features also naturally block unit movement, so these impasse tools are also commonly used to identify ramps, cliffs, and similar terrain features that are too steep for units to traverse.
Opening the Impasse Tool
To, access the impasse tools, press Select Impasse Map in the main toolbar.
This will place the impasse overlay over your map and activate the impasse tools in the Painter panel.
Alternatively, you can access this overlay and the painter tool by opening Terrain in the Scenario Tree and selecting Impasse Map.
Once these tools have been selected, the Impasse Overlay will appear in your Render View as a series of red and white checkered areas indicating what can and cannot be traversed by units.
The Painter tool contains brushes and settings that allow you to add, remove, or modify these areas manually.
The Impasse Overlay
The Impasse Overlay shows areas that can and cannot be passed by units, appearing as a series of white and red checkered boxes over the terrain.
White areas indicate areas that are passable where units can move through unrestricted.
Red areas indicate impassable areas that units cannot move through.
This overlay gives a sense of how units will travel across the map, with the pathing AI sticking to white areas and avoiding red ones.
Overlay Settings
You can change the information displayed in the overlay with the Pass Type and Settings options given near the top of the painter tool.
Checking any of these boxes displays the selected type of data on the overlay.
- Overlay Paint shows only impasse areas that have been manually painted onto the map.
- Overlay Terrain shows only terrain elements that block impasse such as cliffs and water.
- Overlay Impass Map Objects shows all impasse terrain elements plus all impasse objects such as resource nodes, trees, and sacred sites.
- Slider the slider increases or decreases the visibility of the impasse area markers.
Painting Impasse Areas
Once you select the Impasse tools, the Painter will switch to show the impasse brush.
The controls and functions here allow you to paint impasse areas onto your map with a series of Pass Types, Settings, and Brushes.
To paint impasse onto the map, select the impasse types you want to paint under Pass Types, select the Shape and Size of your brush, and begin painting.
Unlock Before Painting
Before you can paint impasse areas your map must be unlocked to allow these changes.
To check this, while the Impasse Overlay is active, select Properties in the bottom of the Painter tool.
In the Properties window, make sure that the Locked box is NOT checked.
If this box is checked, painting impasse areas will be disabled.
Save Before and After Painting
As painting impasse can integrally affect how units behave on your map, it is a good idea to have a backup that matches the pre-generated terrain.
It is recommended that you save before drawing impasse areas.
Pass Types
The boxes you have checked under Pass Types controls what type of impasse area the brush will paint onto the map.
If a box is Checked, impasse for it's associated pass type will be blocked for its units.
Multiple pass types can be painted at the same time, with each appearing in the impasse overlay when that unit type's box is checked.
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Infantry - the area is impassible to normal units, including villagers, infantry, monks, cavalry, and other standard ground units.
- Vehicle - the area is impassable to siege weapons.
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Waterdefault - the area is impassable to ships.
- Can't Build - the area cannot have buildings placed on it.
Brush Functions
As with other brush tools, the Impasse painter uses two brushes, one keyed to the Left Mouse Button and the other keyed to the Right Mouse Button which can be set up independently to perform different tasks, with one usually set to paint, and the other to erase.
The main controls allow you to either paint with the Brush, or remove areas with the Eraser.
The Brush has two main controls:
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Shape - Controls the shape of the brush, which can be a Circle or a Square
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Size - Controls the diameter of the brush, measured in cells
Painted custom impasse areas will appear Green on the overlay map.
This allows you to paint over the standard Red overlay if you wish.
Regenerate All
Occasionally when painting or erasing impasse areas, the areas may either not erase properly, turn green areas to red, or experience other unintended behavior.
In addition, when using the Generation tools to re-generate your map, the new impasse areas will appear to match the previous map's layout, rather than the newly generated one.
This is due to the graphics not updating to match the new impasse map, causing the impasse areas that you see do not match the impasse areas as they actually are.
Whenever you want to check if the graphical representation of the impasse map that you are seeing matches reality, go to the Scenario Tree and press Regenerate All.
This will properly recalculate all current terrain and painted impasse areas to match the render that you see.