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Hard Sarge posted the following image from the beta-patch work for CoG:EE in another topic. I was thrilled to see new "supply sources" (the circled city, Brussels, for example) and am also thrilled to see the introduction of something which I believe Hard Sarge called a "Super Fortress". This new type of fortress is evident in the image below on the left side around the city of Brest with the small dots which surround it. It is also evident in Luxemburg.

I would definitely also consider making Flanders and Batavia super-fortress regions. And if Brest is a super-fortress, then northern "Netherlands" (Friesland?) should be too. I was studying this just last night. These three regions had a tremendous amount of fortifications which were modern and built in the "Age of Artillery". In fact, their numbers would have put the fortresses in Brittany (around Brest) to shame. Just 100 years before Napoleon, campaigns through these regions were slug fests and featured simply the reduction of one fortress after another after another.

As far as I can tell, in terms of the number of modern "age of artillery" fortifications, the order of density would have been:

1. Flanders and Picardy
2. Southern Netherlands (Batavia)
3. Northern Netherlands (Friesland?)
4. Champagne and Lorraine
5. Perhaps Luxemburg
6. All other provences follow here at number 6 or below.

At the moment, on the screenshot from Hard Sarge, Picardy and Flanders do not have the "Super Fortress" rating. And the purpose of this thread is to show that if any regions deserve this status, they are Flanders, Picardy, Champagne, Lorraine, and Batavia. Then possibly Friesland. And Luxemburg.

Picardy and France's eastern regions (including much of CoG:EE's Lorraine) were part of France's concentrated effort to fortify her frontiers for 50-100 years. And many of these forts were built under the supervision of the master of fortification himself, Vauban, who was talking about national level defenses before provence level defenses were rarely even talked about.

Their importance was critical during the War of the Spanish Succession, and most of the wars seem to have revolved around reducing these fortresses. One after another after another. During the Napoleonic wars, they took a bit of a backseat role, but existed never the less. Yet one source I quote below indicates an effect they had on 1793-1794 allied campaigns.

P.S. By the way, will be be able to build these "Super Fortresses"? Or are they assumed to be building projects taking fifty or more years to get a region to this status and are thus out of our grasp?

Here is an image from a 1984 game map coverig the Campaigns of Marlborough which appeared in Wargamer #61. I can't say that using a wargame map as a "secondary" source for data is a good idea. But when I was very interested in the campaigns of Marlborough myself, I used this map to follow the action as I was reading and corroborated it with extremely high detailed maps (2km/cm) of the lowlands and found them to be a match where mentioned in all but the largest cities (the big cities have all but erased the outlines of these once mighty fortresses, usually, you can see traces of them--or even the whole thing--around small and medium sized cities). Many of these were surely drawn from a list of cities which Vauban prepared for one of his papers on the status of fortifications of France. Indeed, you will see in an image I have posted below that the match is almost exact.

According to "The War for All the Oceans" by Adkins which I am currently reading, in 1803-1804 Napoleon would often boast how easy it would be to invade England. One reason was because of the massive difference in the levels of fortifications in each country. Englands fortress was its navy. France's was its massive fortification system. To treat Picardy the same as Kent--IF one has the tools to do otherwise--might be a misstep.

All of the reading I have done on fortifications has pointed to these regions of the lowlands and the surrounding areas as having the highest density of "age of artillery" foritifications.

And another view of an electronic version of the same game...

This is an aerial photo of the city of Bourtange, Netherlands (in the northeast, near Groeningen). Certainly a fully realized "star fort". You can see here the critical design aspect is the fact that every face can be covered by enfilade fire from one side or another. The outer faces of the star arms are not parallel to the other walls, but point in to the base of the adjacent arm, where artillery could be placed to fire at any troops unlucky enough to be tasked to take the wall by storm.

This example at Bourtange is a small fort, so it probably wouldn't even make the map for the game above.

Apparently, this fortress, at Bourtange, has been restored to its 1742 state! It would be worth a visit!

Here is another one at Neuf-Breisach (in modern day Alsace, just a stone's throw from the border with Germany). I have been at this one. To see this kind of fortification in its almost original state is at the same time awesome and terrifying. The fields of fire are deadly traps and extremely well planned out. This was the predominant form of fortification for hundreds of years and it is a form of architecture which arose after the French conquest of Italy in the early 1500s with artillery. Vauban, of course, represented the epitome of this era in fortress design.

Anyway. These things are scattered all over Picardy, Flanders, Batavia, Frielsand, Luxembourg, and Lorraine in the age of Napoleon. And are, of course, in other places too. Just not with the same density.

Here is one more image of the Marlborough map. Unfortunately the rules are covering Alsace and the Black Forest region of Germany, but you get a better feel for over all density of fortified cities at the time. Many of these were surely drawn from a list of cities which Vauban prepared for one of his papers on the status of fortifications of France.

I am bummed that I do not own this game.

One reason these fortresses in Picardy, Flanders, and Batavia did not come into play in the "Napoleonic" wars, was because there were no major campaigns there--other than the Waterloo campaign, which lasted at the most one month. So, of course, we don't hear much about these fortresses in the lowlands from accounts of the day. Napoleon was lucky enough to gain the Netherlands as a minor ally and then annexed it in a series of political maneuvers which I have never found a good source on (anyone out there know a good source on that?)

However, the presence of these fortifications was felt in every war previous to the "Napoleonic Wars" whose area of operations lie within that region. This is one reason why the Netherlands did not fall after repeated assault by Spain and France in the 1500s, 1600s, and 1700s. It is also the reason that there was never a serious advance towards Paris during the war of the Spanish Succession. These frontier regions were solid, virtually water tight, and sported the highest density of first rate fortifications in the world. Indeed, it was Vauban's boast that "every single spot in the barrier zone between Switzerland and the North Sea be within earshot of the cannon of a French garrison." For this, he designed the double defensive lines of that frontier (seen below). Off the eastern end of the lines shown below, the defenses moved into Germany, culminating in one of Vauban's masterworks: Landau.

Napoleonic warfare changed things. But my favorite work on why things changed, titled, "The Art of War in the Western World" is not at my disposal at the moment. It is locked in a box 6000 miles away. However, even if the Napoleonic style of warfare reduced the importance of such forts and siege operations, it did not nullify them and their effect would have certainly been felt in Picardy, Flanders, and Batavia had a campaign been waged for any serious amount of time to take the regions by force. After the failure of Waterloo, the chapters covering the subjugation of the allied region of Flanders by Napoleon were, unfortunately (or fortunately), never written. For the purposes of this thread, the campaign might have been fascinating.

When free of this mess of fortifications in the lowlands, even campaigns in the 1500s, 1600s, and 1700s could sport maneuver and capture of territory along Napoleonic lines. For instance, Marlborough's 1704 march up the Rhine and subjugation of Bavaria after years of bogged down warfare in Flanders, or Charles XII of Sweden's campaign's through Poland and into Russia. It is my argument that the heavy system of fortification in Picardy-Flanders-and Batavia are what bogged down these wars and that Napoleonic war would have also bogged down in them (but not to the same extent--as artillery was improving its abilities every few decades).

Fortified cities would stop or slow many Napoleonic armies--or make life extremely complicated. Take Acre in 1799 for example. This was a Napoleonic humiliation. Yet, this was just one fortress! And it wasn't even a modern one--it certainly hadn't been designed with artillery in mind from what I have seen. Yes, at Acre, Napoleon's siege artillery was lost prior to the battle, but he received replacements and he still could not reduce the defenses and take the town. Imagine trying to take an entire region like Picardy, Flanders, or Batavia. According to Osprey's "Fortresses of the Peninsular War", "In the course of the Peninsular War, Wellington’s army fought several hard battles and smaller actions, but it was the bloody sieges that troubled him more than anything else. Indeed, the performance of his army during the sieges was probably the most disappointing aspect of what was otherwise an extremely successful campaign."

After England's declaration of war on France in 1803, Napoleon joked how quickly he could conquer Britain after an invasion because of its lack of fortifications. I can't find the exact quote now, but this does show that even Napoleon had a respect for fortifications. He might have also gained part of this respect at the Siege of Toulon in which he participated in 1793.

In Osprey's "The Vauban Fortifications of France", the statement is made: "...the density and solidity of the [northeastern] double barrier was severely tested both in 1708-1712 following the battle of Oudenarde and the fall of Lille, and again in 1793-94, when the chaotic state of the revolutionary armies seemed to leave the road to Paris open once more. In neither case were the enemies of France able to make significant progress through the frontier barrier, but became bogged down in it instead." Osprey claims that 60% of Vauban's work was dedicated to the North and Northeastern perimeter of France. Interestingly, the book also claims that Paris would be only properly fortified in 1840, although Vauban had called for this as well. The Napoleonic wars introduced conflicts with "deep" invasions which overshadowed the border wars fought before and heralded a change in thinking about what was necessary.

A full list of 160 fortresses in France and their updates can be had in this Osprey title (even where the original miniature models used for planning are currently located--mostly in the L'Hotel des Invalides in Paris and in Lille). As the book also includes a full chapter on why the strategic defense in depth was important, I think I will be purchasing this very soon.

Another factor which may have lead to a change in the style of warfare from the War of the Spanish Successon to the time of Napoleon was the fact that the armies had increased in size dramatically, allowing, perhaps, for a Coup de Grace on the battlefield and following by controlling massive portions of the country. During the wars of the Spanish Succession, field armies comprised of ca. 50,000 men for even the largest battles. By the Napoleonic era, this had more than doubled. Indeed, the nature of warfare had changed enough to delivering defeats so large, that psychological resistance crumbled (I have seen this arguement elsewhere), whereas in earlier times it may have well been that the small armies advancing on a single city failed to inspire such fear and failed to deliver such military capacity to subdue the defeated enemy. For instance, at Ulm (a well fortified city) in 1805, after Napoleon inflicted demoralizing losses on Mack outside of the walls (5-10 km to the north and east), the garrison was surrendered. A fact which still wonders me. In some cases, you just couldn't fit 100,000 men inside a fortress for a defense which would take advantage of them all. So, your forces (most of them) were deployed outside of the walls, with all of the benefits and disadvantages which followed.

At Dresden, Napoleon fielded 135,000 troops in the defense of that walled city (the allies had roughly 230,000 present). Many of the French units were placed around the city and weren't even kept inside of it. The numbers which were so often present precluded it and encouraged maneuver around the city. Options like this weren't even available 100 years before. Certainly, the appearance of armies of Napoleonic scale changed many aspects of war, if this was one of its impacts can be debated. Yet control of these fortresses--strategically located on lines which enemy supply would have to be transported in on--would remain important, even for Napoleon and his contemporaries.

However, I tend to lean to the notion that with such large armies at their disposal, "Napoleonic Era" generals could for the first time afford to bypass such fortresses and leave behind sufficient forces to cover them and prevent the garrisons from raiding their supply lines. You need a lot of troops to completely cut off a garrison in a small city. (Which reminds me, I really hope that the troops in a garrisoned city can destroy unguarded enemy depots which are present in their provence in CoG:EE--I think they can, and it is a critical aspect in representing the importance of fortresses. I also hope that the more troops there are in the garrison, the more likely the destruction of the depot is)

However, again, I do not consider myself to be an expert on warfare. So I am always interested in hearing other people's opinions.

Below is the French system of fortifications installed by Vauban as shown in the Osprey's title, "The Vauban Fortifications of France". Again, this is just the French side of things and does not show similar work done in Flanders or Holland by its enemies. Note the close match with the "Campaigns of Marlborough" map above (you will find these cities match with all of the strong French fortresses). This leads me to believe the authors also did their homework on the non-French fortresses as well (indeed from my other reading, they have). I wonder if it would be worth getting a peak of the "Campaigns of Marlborough" map in whole, without the rules covering it?

P.S. I was just informed that in Forge of Freedom, there are 2-3 fortresses in some regions, which all must be taken to take the "provence".  Is this true?

Barb

come on guy

you can only see 4 Provinces in that screen shot, and two of them are "super"

(plus you make it HARD to get the  Big Guys, to let me talk about stuff we not suppost to be talking about)

 

If the presence of "Super Fortresses" can be modded afterwards, then I am not even interested in the outcome of the update as I don't want to force this on anyone or any designer.

Can one mod the presence of these?

FoF, yes, you can build more then one Fort in a province, each Fort then needs to be captured/destroyed before the City can be attacked/seiged

(some of my most enjoyable battles during testing was storming the Forts)

I try to stay away from the Modding side of things, I like to let others sit up my battles for me, so am really not sure, I think you can, but don't hold me to it

Cool. Thanks Hard Sarge.

Eric's on vacation so I can't say for certain, but I'd be quite surprised if this weren't moddable. Perhaps Mr. Z can tell us for sure.

Regarding FOF forts, there are three types, with the largest representing a stronghold like Fort Donelson, the smallest something like Fort Magruder (= 600-yards around earthen bastion at Williamsburg that could hold a regiment or so), and medium one perhaps similar to the defenses at Centreville in the winter of 1861-1862. In retrospect, we believe we should have made coastal forts a distinct category, and would like to rectify this if/when we do a FOF2. (Hmm. Maybe some of that super-fortress code could be used for Vicksburg.)

Those aerial photos are something else. I had no idea cities like that existed. Thanks, barbarossa2!

Hey Gil R..  They are pretty amazing.  There are remnants of walls like this in many cities of Europe.  But rarely is the whole thing intact like these examples. In larger cities, you will almost always find that they have been cleared and in their place you will find wide boulevards or "ring streets". Like Vienna and Munich.

But it was forts like these which allowed the Dutch to maintain their independence in the face of overwhelming odds when attacked by the Spanish or France. 

It was also forts like this that kept France from overrunning Flanders.  And kept the British and their allies from overrunning northeastern France in the War of Spanish Succession and Seven Years War.  IF there is a CoG:EE "Superfortress", and if I understand what they are correctly, they should be put in Picardy, Flanders, and Batavia (and perhaps Friesland) first, then placed elsewhere as needed. ;D 

Wow -- great pics of those fortifications. Next time I'm in the area, I'll make sure I visit.

BTW, I assume you've all been to Waterloo, talk about a great day or two of walking a battlefield.

Anyway, back on topic, I think B2 has illuminated a great sense of where the real dense fortifications were located....the question now is, how do these superforts impact playability and game balance, especially vis-a-vi the AI.

Since we can only speculate at this point, I'm going to trust our mighty beta-testers -- do us right boys!

Oh, and I would think that Mantua would be a super-fort area.....

ORIGINAL: Gil R.

Eric's on vacation so I can't say for certain, but I'd be quite surprised if this weren't moddable. Perhaps Mr. Z can tell us for sure.

Regarding FOF forts, there are three types, with the largest representing a stronghold like Fort Donelson, the smallest something like Fort Magruder (= 600-yards around earthen bastion at Williamsburg that could hold a regiment or so), and medium one perhaps similar to the defenses at Centreville in the winter of 1861-1862. In retrospect, we believe we should have made coastal forts a distinct category, and would like to rectify this if/when we do a FOF2. (Hmm. Maybe some of that super-fortress code could be used for Vicksburg.)

Those aerial photos are something else. I had no idea cities like that existed. Thanks, barbarossa2!

Siege values are definitely moddable, you can create the most powerful fortress you want. The on-map graphics are a different issue, I'd think you could swap out city graphics of the same size but I'm guessing here.

Russian Guard: "Siege Value"?  What is a siege value?  Is that "walls" or "guns"?  Or is it something else?

AdamC6: Oh yes, I do agree that many Italian cities were like this, but I am hesitant to say anything about the density of this kind of fortification in Italy at the time. Most large, continental cities had these types of fortifications, and this is adequately represented in CoG:EE. I feel what is missing from CoG:EE at the moment is the ability to represent what happens when there are lots of these fortresses in one single region--as in Flanders or Picardy. I got excited to hear that in FoF, there can be multiple such cities in one region, because I do feel that it would be nice to add up to 3 or so additional fortresses to major regions like Picardy, and let a player "reduce" them as needed to secure his supply lines.

Just a brainstorming idea: If a player wants a secure region in which his supply depots will be safe, he would have to reduce ALL of the fortresses in the area to keep his supply depots from falling victim to some garrison's raids. He would be able to choose which fortress to reduce and you could place your garrisons individually as well.

Perhaps, to control the region for most purposes, you only would need to take the "Capitol" of the region though.

Question: In CoG:EE currently, if I move through a region and leave a depot there, and I have not conquered the city in the region, and that city is garrisonned by an enemy unit, can it come out and destroy my depot? This would be ideal, as it shows one of the greatest reasons fortresses have value. ANYONE can march past a fortress. But to maintain your supply lines through an area which is covered with enemy fortresses--which are sitting at the junctions of major road networks and are filled with hostile garrisons capable of conducting raids--is what is difficult. Advancing past fortresses in such situations WHILE drawing supply from your rear is the hard part. Which is why they tended to hold the advance of enemy forces, unless they could be reduced.

ORIGINAL: barbarossa2

Russian Guard: "Siege Value"?  What is a siege value?  Is that "walls" or "guns"?  Or is it something else?

I was using the term loosely to describe all of the factors involved - Guns, Walls, etc. There's a column for "Siege Damage Multiplier", the most important, probably; it represents the percent of damage that the defenders in a siege take in each attack. For example, Gibraltar is 0.02 if memory serves, making her hard to take indeed. This is a moddable number, in addition to Wall and Guns.

Wow!  Interesting!  That is very useful to know .

Cool pics.

A good introduction into the topic gives (though not directely to the situation of the napoleonic wars):

Christopher Duffy, Siege Warefare 1. The Fortress in the Early Modern World 1494-1660, London Henley 1979
Christopher Duffy, Siege Warefare 2. The Fortress in the Age of Vauban and Frederick the Great 1660-1789, London Boston Melbourne Henley 1985

It is interesting that the more the 18th century advanced fortifications were of a reduced value on most theaters of war with the exception of the New World and costal fortifications. The reasons are various. The availability of a sufficent park of siege artillery and later the lack of finances to build and sustain larger networks of fortifications are probably the most obvious related to the french situation during the late ancien regime and the early republic. Strategic considerations may have helped not to relied too much on devensive measure like networks of fortifications as the age of Vauban did.