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[Urist McPenguinhead]

Hey everyone,
I am currently designing the defenses for my next fortress. I'm going for a medieval castle sort of style with multiple towers around the walls. What do you guys think, is it better to have the towers taller or shorter? I read on the wiki that height actually decreases a marksdwarf's range. Maybe I should only have walls with fortifications? But then again, if enemies are really close to the towers, range won't really matter, and towers look pretty awesome in Stonesense C:
Also, if you have any other military/defense tips, please share, I'm a little nooblet.

Normally I would test it myself, but I have no access to DF since my computer decided it would be funny to fry itself :c

[FuzzyZergling]

Be aware that the higher the tower, the greater the "safe zone" for enemies that hug the wall of the tower, because your marksdwarves can't see directly straight down through the floor.

[assasin]

Be aware that the higher the tower, the greater the "safe zone" for enemies that hug the wall of the tower, because your marksdwarves can't see directly straight down through the floor.

what about star shaped walls?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_fort

[toomanysecrets]

I would put your archers 1 z-level off the ground. You have a range of 20 squares, each z-level off the ground is going to reduce that and a tall tower would put your range to almost nothing. Keep in mind eventually you will get "elite" goblin archers sieging you and they can fire through your fortifications with no penalty.

[Garath]

you can ofcourse always make some practical places for marksdwarfs to shoot (arrow slits) and make the towers higher than what you would use for practical purposes, same with the walls. It'd look awesome and be practical at the same time.

As for castles, despite what some movies and games suggest (mostly older ones, true), a gate wasn't a set of doors or something and then you'd be in the courtyard. For a real fortress, the gate would be flanked by stronger, thicker fortifications and after breaching the first gate, you'd get into the well named gateway, a road that went to, imagine that, a gate or porticulous. Meanwhile from above you could drop burning oil, shoot arrows, drop more rocks, etc. Iirc, assassins creed actually had this in that if you climbed past the gate guards you'd still have to jump and whatever a bit AND get past the guards at the end of the gate.

It wasn't just for defence, but overall security too. You find a suspicious person or group, try to stop them, they make a dash and get lost in the building(s). This way, the outer guards shout a warning (or whatever, blow a whistle) and whoever was trying to sneak in is now caught between the inner guards and the outer ones.

This path sounds like a great place to put some traps and such

you could even have a courtyard: a lighter fortified area in front where the lord would keep visitors untill they were invited inside, or turned away, where traders traded, etc

[nickbii]

In terms of DF strategy a 10 Z-Level tower is stupid. Huge blind spot, cuts your range in half, takes forever, but gives no military advantage.

The militarily advantageous designs are directly at ground level, but protected by a moat (otherwise the gobboes can walk right up to your fort and shoot your guys through the fortifications), or exactly one z-level above the ground. Make sure your dorfs have to stand right by the fortifications. If you give the little twits the option of leaving a square between them and the arrow slit they will.

BTW, this is Dwarf Fortress. You must build the 10-level tower. Just don't order anyone to defend the top level.

Nick

[Werdna]

Also keep in mind that a tower more than z+1 requires a lot of annoying up-level/down-level keypresses to manage or monitor your marksdwarves.  It gets annoying quick.  The idea of creating practical z+1 archer platforms, particularly around a killzone like the gateway is a good one, while making the towers for more cosmetic purposes.  Towers unfortunately also tend to suffer from the 'why won't my archers fire' problem.

[guitarxe]

Unfortunately, as has already been mentioned, higher ground has no practical advantage for marksdwarves in this game.
Yes, you can build aesthetically pleasing towers if you want, but your dwarves are better off firing at z+0. Simply place fortifications where you would have put your tower to prevent melee baddies from cutting your marksdwarves to pieces. You can build a tower on top of that fortification for looks if you want, but keep your dwarves on z+0.

Or, you can build a moat. This works very well at the early stages because it's very quick to do, but you will need walls later on before enemy archers arrive.

[Urist McPenguinhead]

Thanks for all your replies and suggestions, they have really helped c:

I'm going to build the towers, but only have arrow slits on the first one or two levels. Maybe the rest could be used for a barracks or a jail or something. Like Garath said, I was going to have a large wall all around the outside, then a smaller tower keep thing directly on the entrance to my fort. I just want it to look cool xD

[Garath]

there was a game quite some years ago where you'd build a castle and an economy around it. 3 types of walls (low med, high), I think 10 different towers ranging from tall, slim scouting platforms where only 1 archer could stand to massive square or round towers, suitable for dozens of archers and heavy siege artillery, boiling oil carriers and braziers (for flaming arrows). While the game itself was pretty obvious, the fort designing stuff was a lot of fun. It was however one of the games that I implied where when the gate was captured/destroyed you could just walk through, no matter the size of the whole fort

[FuzzyZergling]

there was a game quite some years ago where you'd build a castle and an economy around it. 3 types of walls (low med, high), I think 10 different towers ranging from tall, slim scouting platforms where only 1 archer could stand to massive square or round towers, suitable for dozens of archers and heavy siege artillery, boiling oil carriers and braziers (for flaming arrows). While the game itself was pretty obvious, the fort designing stuff was a lot of fun. It was however one of the games that I implied where when the gate was captured/destroyed you could just walk through, no matter the size of the whole fort

Stronghold?

[Garath]

there was a game quite some years ago where you'd build a castle and an economy around it. 3 types of walls (low med, high), I think 10 different towers ranging from tall, slim scouting platforms where only 1 archer could stand to massive square or round towers, suitable for dozens of archers and heavy siege artillery, boiling oil carriers and braziers (for flaming arrows). While the game itself was pretty obvious, the fort designing stuff was a lot of fun. It was however one of the games that I implied where when the gate was captured/destroyed you could just walk through, no matter the size of the whole fort

Stronghold?

yes! forgot the name, got the original, an expansion and who knows what else somewhere. Lots of fun, but like in DF, ranged units were a bit OP (though only in defence)

It was my introduction to designing fortresses though (above ground ones in any case)

[Conan]

Ah Stronghold, I could never beat the campaign... Archers weren't that op when up against large squads of lightly armored to armored units though.

[Garath]

lots of ranged units, siege engines and a few oil carriers did very fine for me. The rick usually was (for me) to get a good enough attack force (I'm a defensive player usually), the fact that the ai always made the same structures depending on AI and not on terrain helped

[Panando]

If you're feeling lazy you can even channel holes. A de-ramped hole will function almost identically to a 1-z tall tower, as in marksdwarves can shoot from inside it (I believe up to 19 range), and enemies can't get inside it. The one difference is, that enemies can dodge into it quite easily, so the marksdwarves might have a more exciting time.