Citadel

**Citadel** is a map in Ravenfield. First Released in EA13, it was proptotyped by one of the developer's colleagues, and has been publicly updated multiple times.

## Map & Characteristics

The Raven Citadel sits nested in a mountainous region dotted with pines and germanic houses. This map offers a more staged approach to battles, pitting the Eagle invasion force against a defensive line of raven soldiers intent on holding every one of their 6 capture points around their Citadel. They will fight to retake what is theirs, but will not attack the Eagle's staging points.

The Citadel is the Eagle's main target, but standing in their way is a forking path stacked with opposition. The East and West paths lead into the Citadel directly, whilst the central river and part of the East path meander to the Citadel's rear side. The Raven's defensive is split evenly between 3 flags, but the Eagles will often direct most of their offensive towards the two forward ones, offering a solid chance for a successful frontal assault. Once the first line of defense has been neutralized, the battle will often turn into a close-quarters melee, making this map a highly accommodating arena for a wide array of weapons, tactics and playstyles.

## Points of Interest

### Bridge R

One of the two staging points for the Eagle team, it will never be attacked by the Raven team without player intervention. This side of the bridge directly attacks Overlook, and faces a wide open plain with little in the ways of cover on the way forward.

### Bridge L

One of the two staging points for the Eagle team, it will never be attacked by the Raven team without player intervention. This side has exclusive access to a watercraft, which is the sole means of attacking Village Before either Village Gate, Citadel N or Bunker are taken.

### Overlook

A small bunker-type defensive zone which guards the left path to the Citadel.

### Bunker

A Full Bunker system that Guards the dual arteries that lead to Village and Citadel North. The sole means of entry to this system is form the sides and rear, meaning that any attackers who withstand the onslaught of machine gun fire are almost guaranteed to score a devastating flanking manoeuvre upon entry.

### Hangar

An extensive network of access ramps and staircases lead to this underground sanctum nestled in the heart of the citadel. Housing several unserviceable Buzzards, a modest barracks, and some sparse office spaces, this area can be entered by the citadel tower's main staircase, the ramp facing Bunker, the ramp in the courtyard and the elevator nearby. Due to its secluded and central placement, it is typically very difficult to attack this flag en-masse from different angles, but is also paradoxically very easy to slip inside unnoticed from one of it's entrances

### Courtyard

The Citadel's Main entrance sits just past a small natural rock bridge, granting access to the open free-for-all that is the Citadel's courtyard. Despite this flag's extreme defensive importance, it lacks any particularly accommodating defensive fighting positions, and has rather poor visibility on the the blue team's singular approach route. It also offer virtually no protection against an enemy approaching from behind. All too often, the only factor stopping this flag from immediately falling is the sheer brute-force of it's respawn locations, which regularly deposit bots very close to the capture zone.

### Village

The rearmost flag on the map, it grants attackers a third front from which to attack the Citadel. It's defensive TOW has an almost singular purpose in destroying approaching RHIBs, but even so, the flag will find itself in peril fairly frequently from such watercraft.

### Village Gate

The Citadel's rear entrance, and the closest flag to the main building. The War Room is just around the corner, and while the battle has no reason to extend all the way in there, the elevated Walkway is often used by bots defending the gate against invaders.

## Other Points of Interest

### War Room

An office-like setup, presumably used to co-ordinate Raven Operations, but largely the scene of crumpled up papers and crudely-drawn images of the Citadel itself.

### Main building bottom floor

Inaccessible during normal play, the bottom floor has a secret tree concealed inside. Looking through the tree leaves during Beta 24 will reveal something peculiar, an otherwise-invisible, pure white attack helicopter model. This helicopter had yet to be implemented at the time of this easter egg, but more importantly, the purple tree has had no prior plot or contextual relevance. The significance of this tree is currently not publicly known.

After that, around beta 25, the tree and chopper were both removed, and replaced with a crude "Hi" message on the wall, seemingly cobbled together out of shape primitives.

After *that,* the "Hi" message was in turn removed and replaced with a Tractor.

And after even *that,* the Tractor was itself replaced with a green crate with a pumpkin stuffed inside. This was the case even with the level's LOD optimization rendering most props invisible to the spectator camera.

It would be reasonable to surmise that the developer enjoys meme-ing his audience.

## Gallery

The Village behind the FortressThe Raven War Room, generally unfrequented during normal gamepleay.The Tower and main building as seen from the outside.The first look at the citadel itself, which has since seen multiple changesThe citadel minimap
## Trivia

* When it was a WIP, then there was a problem with pathfinding links, most notably the one at cliff, between the dock of marlins and the flag.

* In EA13 - EA16 versions of Ravenfield, Bridge was the spawn of Eagle and the rest were the spawns of Raven. Subsequent update into EA17 caused the teams to switch spawns.
* The Bridge was initially a single flag that could attack all three lanes at once, but issues arose whenever a vehicle attempted to attack a flag on the opposite shore, resulting in them sometimes driving all the way through the wrong enemy point on their circuitous route to the correct one.
* Although the War Room is accessable to the player, it seems to be inaccessable to all bots on the map.