The protagonist wants to build a fortification to keep away the parasitic ant army that attacks the country every day, so as to protect the normal economic production of "Dongyang City".
The first step in building fortifications is to select a site. The fortifications should neither be too close to "Dongyang City" to protect more activity areas, nor too far away to receive timely support.
The most suitable distance, the protagonist estimates, is about a hundred meters away from "Dongyang City".
This location is close to the edge of most ant foraging areas, and only a few ants dare to continue searching for food.
Moreover, it is also very close to "Dongyang City". Once a large group of enemy troops appears, they can quickly receive support.
The protagonist is roughly within this range, riding Xiaoqing to find a suitable place.
This range is actually not very large. Xiaoqing quickly scanned the area about a hundred meters to the south, but there was no location that satisfied the protagonist.
The parasitic ants came from almost due south, so the defenses had to be built roughly due south. The area directly to the south is full of flat wilderness, grass and bushes, and there is no dangerous terrain for building fortifications.
The basic point of fortification defense is to expose the attacker to the highest possible danger and expose the enemy to the greatest possible extent; conversely, the risk to the defender should be minimized.
A well-designed fortification must be able to provide long-term and effective defense with a small number of troops. To have a solid defense, it can allow the defenders to hold on unyieldingly with the advantage of sufficient supplies until the attackers are driven back by the reinforcements who come to relieve the siege, or the attackers can be severely weakened by exhaustion of ammunition and disease. Forced to evacuate.
Generally, fortifications will use terrain to increase their defense capabilities, allowing defenders to defend the fortress for a long time with a small number of troops.
For example, the Great Wall built in the Qin Dynasty is a tall, strong and continuous long wall built on dangerous terrain such as mountains. The Great Wall is not just a simple isolated city wall, but a defense system with the city wall as the main body and a large number of cities, barriers, pavilions and signs.
Of course, the protagonist does not have enough labor to build a Great Wall that protects the entire national border, nor does he have enough troops to guard the Great Wall.
What he wanted to build was just a solid fortress, such as a fortress with a solid structure similar to a Japanese castle, which could station troops and be suitable for defense.
With the aggressive habits of parasitic ants, as long as such a fortress appears on their route, they will definitely find ways to eliminate the defenders of the fortress before continuing to move forward. In this way, the vast area behind the fortress was protected.
Even if the parasitic ant army suddenly wakes up and bypasses the fortress and continues to advance, it will face a double attack from "Dongyang City" and the fortress and be in a desperate situation.
At first, the protagonist prefers the design of Japanese castles, or more specifically, Japanese mountain castles, because such castles built at strategic locations have stronger defensive capabilities and require less materials to build.
The defenders of Japanese mountain castles (i.e. samurai) usually live in or at the foot of the mountains, but in wartime they climb to the top of the mountains to fight. A mountain castle can be built on the entire mountain, or it can be built only on the top of the mountain, and the open space can be obtained by flattening the top of the mountain to build buildings.
For the protagonist, there are two biggest benefits of building a mountain city. First, the most labor-intensive soil work is not a problem for ants, and the steep terrain of the mountain city can also largely offset the threat of thread parasitic bacteria. According to Experience from previous wars shows that the climbing ability of silk thread parasites is very weak.
However, the protagonist searched several times and failed to find a suitable hill, so the plan to build a mountain city had to be abandoned.
Considering the terrain, what can be built now is Pingcheng. Pingcheng became popular with the flattening of castle walls in the middle and late Warring States Period in Japan. Pingcheng has streets extending in all directions, often with convenient transportation and developed economy.
However, the defensive capabilities of this flat-type city fortress are not outstanding. It is necessary to build a large number of satellite branches nearby to assist defense and form a defense system to reflect its advantages.
However, the protagonist does not need to develop this fortress into an economically developed market, and the defense he needs most is Pingcheng's shortcoming.
If you want to build a strong defensive fortress on flat ground, there are also European-style castles for reference.
This kind of castle is a product of the intensive wars in the European Middle Ages. At that time, European nobles continued to fight for land, food, livestock, and population. The intensive wars led the nobles to build more and larger castles. Castle to defend your territory.
Early European castles were simple wooden castles, and later developed into stone castles. Most European castles also use reasonable terrain when building.
However, some European-style castles will also be built on undefeable plains, such as Smederevo Castle in Serbia. These castles relied on a defense system consisting of main buildings, walls, towers, trenches or moats, and their defenses were very strong.
Before the advent of cannon, only a small force was often needed to defend a castle, but the attackers needed a much larger army than the defenders and spent a lot of time to conquer the castle.
In 1216, the French army spent half a month to capture a castle with only 13 people garrisoned; the British Caernarfon Castle had only 28 people at least during the two sieges in 1403-1404. During the Crusades, the Castle of Knights in Syria withstood 12 sieges with only a small number of soldiers from the Knights Hospitaller garrisoned. It was not until 1271 that it was conquered by the Egyptian army to persuade them to surrender.
However, although European-style castles have strong defenses, their construction is labor-intensive and material-intensive. It not only requires a large amount of stone materials, but also requires skilled workers to spend a year or even decades.
Although the protagonist knows the general structure of a European-style castle, he has neither skilled workers nor enough stones. Most importantly, he cannot spend several years building such a castle.
In the end, the protagonist decided to build a brand new fortress by combining the strengths of fortifications in human history with the characteristics of ants.
The location for building the fortress was chosen on a piece of clay land one hundred meters south of "Dongyang City". The vegetation here was sparse, which was not conducive to hiding the enemy.
Moreover, clay soil has a stable structure and is suitable as a foundation for fortifications and for digging holes underground.
The entire fortification is a perfect circular structure with a diameter of half a meter. The outermost side is a circle of deep trenches. The inner side of the trench is an earth embankment made of piles of earth. There is a flat trail on the top of the earth embankment for the defenders to move. and attack the enemy from a high position.
Inside the earth embankment is an open space used for the assembly and movement of troops. A nest was dug downwards in the center of the open space, which was used for garrison and residence as well as storage of food supplies.
