Forum:Request help/Placement of cities and fortification systems
Hello!
I am the owner of UL11b (currently named Dartannia until I change that), a very small territory in the south of the firth of Hetzer. Following the advice in the wiki’s tutorials, I decided on the topography of the territory before adding settlements where they seemed to make sense. Then, I found myself in a "difficult" situation: I have created a large estuary cutting through my territory, and the inland end of this estuary just seems like there should be a port there. (around the triangular-ish residential blob at the intersection between roads, the one nearest to the border). I mean, seeing how it is located, easily accessible from both the firth of Hetzer and one of my neighbour’s main roads, I just cannot convince myself that people who settled there during the Antiquity would not have put a port there, and that said port would not have been thriving during the Middle Ages. But my problem is: assuming I go ahead with that and get what would probably have been my capital city less than half a mile from my much larger neighbour, how do I not get invaded all the time during the Middle Ages?
Yes, I may be taking verisimilitude a bit too far, but that’s where all the fun is, isn’t it?
Well, anyway, my main question is a bit broader than this: As I will probably have to fortify (rather, to have fortified in my country’s Middle Ages), are there any resources anywhere about where to locate fortifications so that they actually protect the city they’re supposed to? I’m actually more interested in general resources, because, come on, I will soon be deciding not to make such a fuss about this specific difficulty and just change the geography/just pretend there shouldn’t actually be a port there, but I will have to create other formerly-fortified places, and I don’t know how one does that.
(Oh, and sorry for the long post!)
- If you want to have fun with it (which, after all, is kinda the point, as you mentioned), maybe instead of looking for a guide, game it out yourself: put yourself in the role of a medieval attacker and try to imagine how you'd attack your own city. Once you have a grasp on that, put yourself in the shoes of your city's elders: you have the enemy's plans, how do you defend your city? For extra realism, game it out another round or two from there (with those fortifications in place, now how would you attack? And likewise, what weak points did the second attack plan expose?) While I'm more of a modern mapper, I still find it a useful exercise to "game things out", especially when imagining where roads, railroads, motorways, etc. would be needed to connect parts of your territory and to connect with your neighbors. --TheMayor (talk) 20:41, 12 July 2022 (UTC)