Star Forts Useless?

[Forward Observer]

It is innaccurate in its sequence of events (and events that never happened).

However, in the sense that it shows the Mexicans suffering significant casualties, it is more or less accurate. In fact it is quite interesting that the Mexicans suffered as badly as they did (around half the attacking force killed or wounded), considering they attacked at night and in fact achieved nearly complete tacical surprise.

Of course, on the other side of it, US Army attacks against Mexican forts/fortified cities, conducted about a decade later, generally carried their objectives with much more favorible casualty ratios while attacking in daylight.

In terms of forts in game, it does not really matter how you deploy them (in terms of facing, etc.) Just put the soldiers at a section of wall, and they will man it the best the can.

The Alamo was a pretty poor excuse for a fort, and was almost impossible to properly defend--given the layout and the sparse number of defenders. I have the DVD's of both the John Wayne version from 1960 and the more recent 2004 release with Billy Bob Thornton in the Crockett role.


If you can, rent the later version for comparison. It is by far the most accurate depiction of the battle (massacre would be more descriptive) from all the accounts I have read. The later movie accurately depicts Santa Anna's final and only real attack beginning in the dark well before day break along with Travis being killed at the very start to showing Bowie pretty much in a coma during the attack. It also the depicts the controversiol Mexican record of Crockett possibly surviving and being executed after the battle. Of the 1800 or so Mexicans troops actually involved in the final attack, most historians estimate that 400 to 600 were killed, or roughly a 3rd of the force.

Unfortunately, the 2004 movie was not nearly as entertaining as the John Wayne version, and it bombed at the box office. Originally, Russell Crowe was supposed to play Travis, and at least one other big name was on board to play Bowie plus Ron Howard was to have been director. However due to budget cuts and other conflicts, Billy Bob was the only one of the original choices that made the final movie plus Howard became one of the producers. Thornton as Crockett and Dennis Quaid as Houston were the closest to big name stars they could get and they just couldn't carry the movie. It also did not help that the movie released opposite Mel Gibson's "Temptation of Christ"

On the other hand---with veteran stars like John Wayne, Richard Widmark, Lawrence Harvey, and Richard Boone, the first Alamo had plenty of star power plus many popular character actors for the era like Chill Wills and Ken Curtiss,

While the Duke's version is typical 60's cowboy action B.S., filled with so many inaccuracies that most Texas historians threw fits at the time, it is by far the more entertaining of the two movies. ---And even knowing it's total Hollywood BS, I would always rather watch it if I had to choose between the two.

Back on subject:

The star forts in the game, or more correctly as Superteal mentioned, fortifications built in the Vauban system style, are missing one important component and it is the same component that was missing in Medieval 2. All of these forts had moats and/or ditch systems---sometimes wet, sometimes dry, and sometimes a combination of the two; especially if there was more than one concentric ditch, which was the case most of the time.

Also, the whole purpose of the geometric designs of these forts was so that there would hardly be an exposed wall that could be assaulted without subjecting the assaulting forces to fire from the flank or rear from one of the other walls of the fort. Attack by infantry without first establishing a breach through either artillery bombardment or mining would be suicidal. Army mobility and artillery technology advances are what eventually made such forts obsolete sometimes even in the same eras that they were built.

The French military didn't figure this out until after the Germans had simply danced around their magnificently obsolete Maginot Line

The game designers evidently just could not implement the feature of moats or the accurate use of intersecting fields of fire from the walls of such forts into the game. I can understand time and money constraints on game design, but to leave these features out makes such forts hardly anything more than window dressing, and almost not-functional compared to how they were in real life.

IMHO, If they could simply improve the defending armies' proper use of the walls in future patches it might go a long way to correcting this. An attacking army would simply have to use artillery or mining before attempting an assault or it would be a slaughter.