Is Minas Tirith the ultimate known fortress(fortified city) design?
I think in our history, Byzantium is the closest. Maybe even better because it has sea access.
Yea it's in the realm of fantasy but realistically these civilisations had millennia to prepare for a war they knew was coming because wizards wouldn't get off their back so it's not far out of question.
Also, LOTR general thread.
Barad Dur also.
Look at this, fans... it looks like the design from the second age survived until the third age and was incorporated into the 3rd age tower.
See the towers beneath the rocks and below the main tower? Rather rounded and normal looking structures with crennelations instead of iron crowns. Those would have been built back when Sauron was pretending to be a friend of elves and man. Who knows what the rest of the fortress and the main tower would have looked like in the second age.. the story is the tower was destroyed, but obviously according to the people that designed the tower in the movies, the rest survived as ruins.
Kinda neat.
>>29502370
>Is Minas Tirith the ultimate known fortress(fortified city) design?
couldn't an army just go up the mountain behind it and dump bombs and rocks and arrows and orcs and shit on the city?
>>29502370
>Order pioneer and archer battalions to a mountain beyond the city
>Unleash missile fire and landslide to the city
Moat Cailin desu
>>29502430
Yes, in theory. But there's more to consider.
Have you seen the movies? Look at this picture. No farms, no houses, no sign of life besides bare stone. That's why I like the picture I posted in my OP. It shows it like a real place where people actually live and do things.
One can only assume they did things on the mountain above the city, including fortifying. There's a parody of LOTR called "The Last Ringbearer" and even in the parody they describe the mountain behind the city like a tooth with a giant cavity containing the quarry used to supply stone to build and repair the fortress.
>>29502430
Seems like the mountain would be pretty hard to climb and form any sort of offensive
>>29502549
Minas Tirith looks like that in the movies because of the threat Mordor posed. I'm assuming people just let the farms die as they left them for the city. The trees were probably chopped down a long time ago, either to deny a besieging force wood, or because they used it themselves in the city.
>>29502370
If Gondor was the Byzantine Empire, does that make their predecessors the proper Roman Empire?
>>29502587
Regardless of the threat posed by invasion, fruit trees are absolutely inferior sources of wood for everything and farms of every other sort pose no advantages to an enemy that outweigh the capitalistic minds willing to spend a short time farming.
>>29502616
I never said it was a comparison in any way except in the loosest. Only because they had several outer walls.
But if you want to think of kebab like orcs and the eastern Roman empire like gondor while ignoring everything else in our own history, I suppose it's similar.
You think Augustine had a sword that glowed blue when kebabs were near?
>>29502679
>You think Augustine had a sword that glowed blue when kebabs were near?
>implying he didn't
as a battle for middle earth 2 expert whos logged a fuck ton of playing time, helms deep is way easier to defend.
>>29502679
I guess the soldiers at Minas Tirith had helmets that were superficially similar to some Byzantine designs, and there were a couple of very minor Roman references in the armor of the men in that prologue in the first movie.
>>29502370
It's so easily sectioned off, like they can retreat one room and bar the next gate, and when that gets destroyed, run off and bar the next one and so on.
However, I'm imagining an airborne assault landing up top, barring the gates there and taking control of the city's leaders and governance up there. More supplies can be dropped in, more troops and kit, and the city can be taken from the inside.
>>29502804
"In online discussions, many Tolkien fans have entertained the idea that Gondor is comparable to the Byzantine Empire,[29][30][31] and Tolkien himself referred to Minas Tirith as a "Byzantine City".[32] Some of the parallels noted between Gondor and the Byzantine Empire are:[33][34]
Gondor is the south-eastern portion of Elendil's original kingdom. The Byzantine Empire was the Eastern remnant of the Roman Empire. The Western Roman Empire eventually withered and dissolved, like Arnor, while the Byzantine Empire endured, although in declined state. Their geographical role is also comparable as the Byzantine Empire encircled the Mediterranean while Gondor occupied the region around the Bay of Belfalas; both were threatened by eastern and southern adversaries. The Byzantine Empire absorbed several "barbaric" peoples like the Wends and Slavs, much like Gondor did with the Northmen and other Middle Men.
As a final note, the last Byzantine Emperor, Constantine XI, remained in legend and folklore as the "Marble King" whose messianic ressurection and return would signal the restoration of the Empire. This parallels the fate of Earnur and Gondor's interregnum period until the "Return of the King" who restored the Kingdom. However unlike the Byzantine Empire, Gondor did not fall."
I guess you could say it's most like the Byzantine empire out of real world options, but it's pretty original.
>>29502833
>However, I'm imagining an airborne assault landing up top, barring the gates there and taking control of the city's leaders and governance up there. More supplies can be dropped in, more troops and kit, and the city can be taken from the inside.
That is why no one builds castles anymore.
>>29502616
You could view Arnor and Gondor as somewhat analogous to the WRE and the ERE, sure. Arnor even suffered a loosely similar fate.
