Editing Castle (section)

== Types of Castles ==
*'''Motte and Baily''': A fairly basic type of castle in the Dark Ages. A hall of either stone or wood (the Baily) is built on top of a hill, a basic wooden wall is put around it, at the base of the hill was built some stabled and similar which were also walled off. In some cases the wall (the Motte) circled both, in other cases there were two rings of walls around both the hall as well as the support structures, with a walled off corridor between them. Some of these would be upgraded to have stone walls as time went on.
*'''Concentric Castle''': A castle with two or more walls, with the walls getting increasingly taller as you go in. This allows for archers on the higher inner walls to fire down on enemies if they captured the outer walls. Despite the name they did not have to be circular.
*'''Japanese Castle''': While these served the same purpose as European castles as fortified dwellings and seats of power, castles in Japan were constructed quite differently. For starters, they were always made of wood on top of a solid stone foundation, to better weather the many earthquakes Japan faces. They were made ''mostly'' fireproof by use of a special whitewash and lacquer. In addition, castles were always part of a large complex designed to force invaders into fighting through many corridors before reaching the castle proper as the ''primary'' defense. Since the part of the Sengoku era most people care about had ready access to and widespread use of cannons a European style fort would be a pretty stupid idea since nobody had yet thought of the...
*'''Bastion Fort''': The widespread application of gunpowder in warfare was generally unfriendly to medieval-era castles. Tall walls, which used to be a massive advantage, would now be death traps as cannons could easily knock them down, with taller walls merely adding more rubble to potentially collapse on you. So a bunch of renaissance Italians came up with bastion forts. Also known as ''star forts'' or ''polygonal fortresses,'' these are low to the ground with sloped walls backed by a generous amount of dirt and instead of towers have pointy "arrows" called bastions at the corners to prevent enemies from having a place to take cover from and allow the bastions to support each other. Relatively easy to fortify, many went for a simple sloped hill to absorb cannon fire, but you could also build redoubts in between the bastions to add another layer of defense.  Bastion forts lasted in one form or another until the 19th century when indirect fire with fused shells made even them irrelevant, although fort-like shore batteries persisted in a few locations through the world wars.
*'''Doom Fort''': Modern air delivered weapons rendered most static fortifications obsolete in the Cold War, although there remains value in facilities that are difficult to neutralize to serve as command and logistics centers.  These facilities are typically built underground to shelter against all but the heaviest bombs.  Tunneled out mountains, decommissioned mines, purpose built bunkers, and even subways have been used to this effect at one point or another. Particularly if you have a submarine hanger or an airfield built into a mountain you want to harden against air strikes.
*'''Romantic''': A few castles, or at the very least castle-like buildings, were built in the 19th century long after the advent of cannonry to invoke an idealized vision of the past with the comfort of it's denizens in mind rather than withstanding sieges. What you got were buildings with tall turrets with elaborate pointy bits, flying butresses and other such flourishes. These were the IRL inspiration of the Disney castle.  FYI, in [[Japan]] these have a slightly [[Slaanesh|different meaning]].
[[Category: History]]