Talisman Games - Midgard - Game Redesign Plan

City Defenses

Walls

I believe that the old Midgard definitions of particular levels of walls is too limited in variety. Additional types of walls will be inserted into the traditional tables and the level definitions will be rearranged. what follows is a preliminary concept. However, there will still be eight wall segments around each city.

Since cities may have walled protections of any size, their cost is now going to vary by the size of the population protected. Cost tables will be available for protecting a city with 10,000 citizens, but actual costs will vary proportionally based on the square root of the protected population size.

Walls have been traditionally very expensive to build, requiring a great deal of up-front investment. To make this easier on the city leader, walls may be constructed or improved one segment at a time. The protection a wall provides for a city is based on the lowest-level wall segment around it, so it behooves the city leader to keep all the wall segments' levels as equal as possible.

Upgrading walls from one whole level to another will require significant structural changes, such as a change in materials used. Thus, in order to upgrade a wall it will be necessary to tear down the old wall in order to replace it. It does not seem fair to me to include this upgrade cost as part of the cost to build a new wall where one did not exist before. Therefore, it seems reasonable to price that extra step separately. So, to remove a previously existing wall in order to upgrade it, perhaps a cost in mancycle resources (only) of 50% of its mancycle construction cost would be appropriate.

Since only a smaller portion of the wall will be constructed or upgraded at one time, that might also be used to solve a conceptual problem with upgrading. In the past, upgrades were handled at 0.1 levels at a time and a wall was not considered fully upgraded until it reached the next whole number level. But there is a difficulty in visualizing the state of the wall during these incremental steps, especially when entirely changing the construction materials (at lower levels). Therefore, might it not be more reasonable to assume that instead a single wall segment is simply torn down in one step and replaced in another with a newer, more protective wall segment? Comments on this subject are requested.

Level	Type	Description
1.0	Sod	About 8' tall and 1' thick, a sod wall is constructed by piling rectangles of fresh sod (usually 1' by 2' and about 4"-6" thick) in the overlapping fashion of stacking bricks. As the sod dries it becomes hard as well and it is resistant to both fire and simple attacks. However, it is vulnerable to years of rain damage and requires significant maintenance work to repair. It is less expensive to build than wood-based structures, and materials are available from grasslands when wood is not plentiful. This construction is also useful as fieldworks for a semi-permanent camp site. Settlements may use this as their primary protective wall, but if that is not desired when starting to build their first wall, this type of wall may be skipped and construction may begin with a Palisade instead.
2.0	Palisade	A 10' upright wooden wall made of small or mid-sized tree trunks aligned vertically, with no free space between them. The trunks are sharpened at the top and are driven into the ground sufficiently to provide good, defensive stability and are reinforced laterally. A palisade is an effective deterrent against a small, lightly-armed force but is vulnerable to fire. Some maintenance will be required to prevent rot and other damage. This construction may be used as fieldworks for a semi-permanent camp site as well.
3.0	Log	A 15' tall heavy wooden wall made of large tree trunks laid horizontally and interlocked with adjacent logs. Splicing of logs within the length of the wall requires iron reinforcing and such long walls require additional cross-reinforcement on their interior side. A recessed foundation layer of brick, dried clay or similar will help to protect the bottom logs from ground rot. Significant maintenance is required over the long term to repair dry rot and similar damage. It is vulnerable to fire only on a large scale, but can be scaled without much difficulty.
4.0	Brick	Fired bricks are mortared together to form a wall about 15' tall and 2' thick. Normal maintenance is minimal.
5.0	Stone, simple	Large stones are quarried to rough shape and mortared together into a substanial wall about 20' high and 3' thick.
6.0	Stone, with battlement	A dressed-stone wall about 25' high and 5' thick with a narrow (3' wide) battlement walkway (wall-walk) along the top behind a crenellated parapet. Walkways are reached by narrow open stairs along the face of the wall.
7.0	Stone, with bastions	30' high by 8' thick with bastions and a 5' wide wall-walk behind a crenellated parapet. Some parts of the wall have narrow turrets rising from them providing elevated observation posts.
8.0	Stone, with interior walkway	50' high by 12' thick with a protective parapet on both sides of the battlement. The battlement wall-walk atop the wall is wide enough to fight two abreast. Below that is an enclosed (interior to the wall) narrow walkway (firing gallery) providing access to assorted embrasures (with arrowslits), machicolations, and brattice works.
9.0	Stone, with interior stairs	75' tall by 20' thick, it contains a wide interior walkway with narrow internal stairs for access. The top of the battlement is covered for light protection from falling missiles and is wide enough for four men to fight abreast. Corner and mid-wall bartizans may be included at the tops of walls, in addition to the defensive measures described above.
10.0	Great Wall	A massive stone wall, 100' tall by 50' thick, with all the above additions. Internal spaces include wide stairways with traps that could be armed against invaders that manage to overtop the wall. Access to stairways are also blocked with heavy doors that could be barred against invaders. Some stairs may be replaced by extended ramps to provide easy access to horses and (anti-)seige equipment. Narrow duty-barracks are incorporated at intervals within the walls to allow for alert-duty defenders to remain comfortably near their stations for rapid deployment when attacked, or a place for guards to rotate out for short rest breaks during non-alert shifts.