Hey Pandas, Share Aerial Photos Of Cities (Closed)

Now this one is rather easy to explain: the bastion fort or, for obvious reasons, star fort was the prevalent method of building fortifications in the early modern period in western Europe. Having angled walls eliminates blind spots directly below the walls because there's always another wall that can see (and shoot) there. Think of a rectangle, the classic form of a castle: if your enemy comes from, say, the north, only the north wall defenders can shoot them. As soon as they close in, you can still throw rocks and hot oil and the likes, but your chances of defending go down by a lot. Now with a star fort, no matter if they attack the tip or the "bottom" of one of the V-shapes, there's always two walls when they're far away and still at least one that can see them when they're close. That's why both forts as well as town fortifications were built like this. (1/2)