Re: IB: Map of the City of Montrei

On Thu, 18 Sep 2003 14:29:15 -0400, Isidora Zamora <isidora@...>
wrote:

>>Actually, there's better reason than that.  The more sides, the harder to
>>storm
>>the fortress; 6 is about the most you can easily lay out, though 8 is a
>>possibility.
>>Sharp corners are a liability in fort construction.
>
>Perhaps I should consider having my fortress designed with an octagonal
>outer wall, then.  The buildings inside would be constructed with the
usual
>number of corners, though.  How does the sheer size of the enclosure
relate
>to how difficult it is to storm?  (The outer wall encloses a fairly large
>area.)  There's the obvious fact that it takes a much larger number of
>people to defend a larger enclosure, and it's easier to storm if it's
>underdefended.  The other obvious fact is that it's more difficult to
>surround a larger fortress, but, OTOH, a fortress can be penetrated
without
>needing to surround it.  What have I left out of the equation?
Wall height and thickness, hoardings, defensive trebuchets / mangonels /
catapults, stone channels for the hot oil to drip down, special one-way
doors for the rabid dogs....

Anyway, if a fortress is really large, it has to be defended by more
people, which is the main problem. Your average medieval castle had a
couple dozen men up to a hundred, but the higher numbers included people
to go out of the castle and beat up the enemy in a counterattack (or die
heroically doing the same).

Generally, the attacking army will set up its cannons or catapults or
whatnot and bombard several spots on the fortress walls. Making a larger
fortress gives them more targets. The assets that size give are these:
- You can store more weapons and personnel in a large fortress, which
means you don't have to be completely defensive, and your defense has more
people to sustain it; also, you can put more food inside the larger
fortress.
- You can have thicker walls. I mean, if your fortress will fit on the
back of a Yugo, your walls will have to be thin.
- You can block access to a choke point.

You should build your fortress down to bedrock if possible. If it's on
loam, aside from the sinking problem, enemy miners can dig under the walls
and quickly breach sections of wall.

>Isidora
~wright