Each AI character in Stronghold Crusader comes with a preinstalled set of 8 different castles. These provided castles apply to both Stronghold Crusader and Stronghold Crusader Extreme. The castle in a format known as aiv files, and these are stored in the aiv subfolder of your installation. They are named <aicharacter>X.aiv where aicharacter is the name of the character, and X is a number from 1 to 8 (ie snake1.aiv). When a match starts, the AI decides randomly (and also based on map size and terrain) which castle to build.

By using the AIV Editor Tool it is possible to create your own customized castles for your favorite AI characters. A few considerations to keep in mind:

• Try and keep the number of build steps low to make it harder for players to rush the AI
• Place more vital and more expensive buildings early in case the AI uses up the necessary resources and is therefore handicapped. An example of this is the cathedral - the AI should build this early when it has lots of gold otherwise it may begin recruiting troops, never reach the required gold, and never finish building its castle.
• Having multiple entrances to a castle can increase efficiency of resource production
  • Workers have to travel less to reach stockpile
  • Resource production can continue while under siege if it has an entrance on the opposite side
• Be sure to include the necessary buildings for the AI's production chains (ie. breweries and inns for ale production)