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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Crass" data-source="post: 1088653" data-attributes="member: 13211">IRL, "Location, location, location!" would be paramount. Then, consider siegeworks and engineering. I'd consider engineers of far greater importance than cavalry, or how many men you can put on your bastion's walls. They allow you to utilise the terrain, and deny it to your enemy.Three examples: (i) Constantinople was surrounded on three sides, and attacked by land and sea. It took an army of 150,000 Turks 54 days to storm Constantinople - which only had 8,000 defenders! This force included artillery (a D&D analogy would have to be to include a sorceror on the opposing side).(ii) In ancient times, the Romans performed similar feats with siegeworks - on both sides of the equation. Their most celebrated siege would have to be Alesia, where the Romans erected an inward-facing siegeworks, firstly to keep Vercingetorix's tribesmen bottled up, and then an outward-facing ring of defences with a perimeter of eleven Roman miles (c. 16 kilometres long) that kept a relieving army out. The Romans had about 50,000 men in total, and defeated two armies totalling c. 350,000 men.(iii) The Great Wall of China. Over 2,400 km long, stretching through the mountains and deserts of northern China. It was a project that linked a series of existing border forts and walls. Of course, I don't think a Paladin 11 and a cleric 9 are quite in the same league as Chin Shih Huang Ti, the megalomaniacal "First Emperor" <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /> Still, I'd say the Great Wall would be a prime example of a border fort. Relatively small, but surrounded by similar small forces capable of mutual support in time of need.Unfortunately I cannot name any good books on these subjects... but general research should point you in the right direction.</blockquote>

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