Fortifications and Buildings

Troops can take shelter in buildings. The walls and doors of a stone farmhouse can offer protection against a clamoring horde of attackers. Greater still is the security provided by high walls, fortified ramparts, and reinforced gates.

These protections, like so much armor, can increase the security of a defender but they cannot guarantee that security. Battering rams, siege towers, catapults, trebuchets, and other tools of the military engineer can smash at the walls and gates of a fortress until the battle, once again, becomes a test of arms.

This test of arms is fought amid the mazelike corridors, narrow ramparts, and long wall-top platforms of a fortress, not the wide open meadows of the typical battlefield. Heroes and gallant warriors battle in doorways or breached walls, standing fast against a swarm of attackers.

In all these respects, combat in buildings offers different tactical problems than does combat in the field. The following rules address changes in movement, morale, and combat for such units, as well as machines to aid in the attacking or defense of a fortress.