[Region 1][Map 25][Location 4] - Port Magalie

[Midgardsormr]

Very nice so far! You may want some additional towers or turrets along the long walls. Are those cliffs overlooking the beach and bridges across the water?

[industrygothica]

Very nice so far! You may want some additional towers or turrets along the long walls. Are those cliffs overlooking the beach and bridges across the water?

They are indeed cliffs overlooking the beach. They are not necessarily bridges, though. I had considered making the walls cross the water somehow, though I don't know how feasible that would be. I just want the city to be able to control the flow of traffic through the river at that particular point. Any suggestions?


-IG

[Midgardsormr]

Catapults.

I looked around for a bit to see if there were any historical examples of river-spanning fortifications of that sort, but I didn't find anything useful. Mostly references to a certain hard disk manufacturer or a hotel in Washington, D.C.

I suspect that sinking footings for a sturdy wall into the river bed would be a tricky engineering task, not to mention you'd have to have a gate mechanism to let legitimate traffic through. I think the most effective way to deny access to the river mouth would be artillery. Perhaps someone with more expertise in this area knows something more.

There is one possibility from Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time novels--a particular city's harbors are defended by chains that normally lie on the river bottom. If the city is threatened, they are winched up to just above the water-line. That seems a pretty flimsy defense to me, though. Any enemy who knows it's there would simply attack it with a heavy ramming ship and likely rip the chain right out of its mechanism.

[Gandwarf]

There is one possibility from Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time novels--a particular city's harbors are defended by chains that normally lie on the river bottom. If the city is threatened, they are winched up to just above the water-line. That seems a pretty flimsy defense to me, though. Any enemy who knows it's there would simply attack it with a heavy ramming ship and likely rip the chain right out of its mechanism.

Chains have been used a lot here in Europe, mainly to block traffic on the rivers (mostly to collect toll). This is a nice read:

http://www.ricksteves.com/tvr/pledge...chap_rhine.htm

It gives some information on Rhine castles, mostly built by robber barons
They had the castle on one of the banks and a tower on the other bank. A chain was between them and could be raised.
Also see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robber_baron

It seems the robber barons were put out of business when their castles were destroyed one after the other