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Warmatrix

War Matrix - Reinforced walls

Middle Bronze Age 2200 BCE - 1600 BCE, Weapons and technology

Buhen defenses
Buhen defenses
Walls have protected towns and forts from their beginning. But halfway through the 3rd millennium BCE they became stronger, probably in response to advances in siegecraft, like more sophisticated sapping, fire arrows shot by composite bows, the battering ram and the siege tower.
Walls became higher, thicker and got slightly sloping angles to frustrate attackers. Other implements to hinder the approach to the main walls were ramparts, smaller walls in front of the main ones, and moats, ditches that could be either dry other filled with water. All of these especially frustrated the use of siege towers, rams and to a lesser degree ladders and ramps. It seems that tunneling was not used very much, though that changed in the Iron Age.
The innovations were not new, though they were not applied on large scale before the Middle Bronze Age, a time of crumbling states all throughout Egypt, the Middle East and India, when open battles more and more gave way to sieges.