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But a convergence of factors led to later fortresses being intended to simply delay an enemy advance: siege weaponry advanced to the point where no prepared fortification could resist it for months or years, while armies evolved from relatively small professional forces to mass mobilization of the population. The bastion fort and early systems of polygonal forts were designed to withstand prolonged siege. The role of fortifications evolved over the period as well. The polygonal fort was introduced in response, and went through several major evolutions, from early forts featuring casemates and several tiers of artillery to later ones like the Belgian fortifications at Liege. Its longer range, higher precision, and more destructive shrapnel and especially high explosive shells made the bastion fort somewhat obsolete bastions and outworks were simply too easy for explosive shells to destroy from long range. In 1836 modern artillery is being introduced to the battlefield. The bastion fort was intended to resist long sieges - during the Dutch War of Independence, sieges of well-fortified cities routinely lasted months or years. The bastion fort was developed in response to the advent of cannons its brick-and-soil walls could resist breach by direct cannon fire for a time, while its elaborate defensive emplacements were designed to give defenders overlapping fields of fire over the entire area around it, forcing an attacker to laboriously construct its own field fortifications to bring its cannon into range and try to breach the walls. The game begins during the twilight of the early modern bastion fort. Acoup.blog wrote an excellent series on fortifications through history parts 4 and 5 are particularly relevant to this time period, so I'll try to summarize them. Not only were static defenses important, this era saw rapid innovation in static defenses in response to rapid improvements in siege weaponry (primarily artillery) and changes in military systems.