Fortification

Fortifications are military constructions or buildings designed for the defense of territories in warfare, and also used to solidify rule in a region during peace time. Humans have constructed defensive works for many thousands of years, in a variety of increasingly complex designs. The term is derived from the Latin fortis ("strong") and facere ("to make").

From very early history to modern times, walls have been a necessity for cities to survive in an ever changing world of invasion and conquest. Some settlements in the Indus Valley Civilization were the first small cities to be fortified. In ancient Greece, large stone walls had been built in Mycenaean Greece, such as the ancient site of Mycenae (famous for the huge stone blocks of its 'cyclopean' walls). A Greek Phrourion was a fortified collection of buildings used as a military garrison, and is the equivalent of the Roman castellum or English fortress. These construction mainly served the purpose of a watch tower, to guard certain roads, passes, and lands that might threaten the kingdom. Though smaller than a real fortress, they acted as a border guard rather than a real strongpoint to watch and maintain the border.

Safe seat

A safe seat is a seat (constituency) in a legislative body (e.g. Congress, Parliament, City Council) which is regarded as fully secure, for either a certain political party, or the incumbent representative personally or a combination of both. In such seats, there is very little chance of a seat changing hands because of the political leanings of the electorate in the constituency concerned and/or the popularity of the incumbent member. The opposite (i.e. more competitive) type of seat is a marginal seat.

In countries with parliamentary government, parties often try to ensure that their most talented or influential politicians are selected to contest these seats — in part to ensure that these politicians can stay in parliament, regardless of the specific election result, and that they can concentrate on ministerial roles without needing to spend too much effort on managing electorate-specific issues.

Unsurprisingly, candidate selection for a party's safe seats is usually keenly contested, although many parties restrict or forbid challenges to the nomination of sitting members. Other parties will often be compelled to nominate much less well-known individuals (such as backroom workers or youth activists in the party), who will sometimes do little more than serve as paper candidates who do little or no campaigning, or will use the contest to gain experience so that they become more likely to be selected for a more winnable seat.

Stronghold (1993 video game)

Stronghold is a Dungeons & Dragons city-building real-time strategy computer game published by SSI and developed by Stormfront Studios in 1993.

Development

The game designers include Don Daglow, Mark Buchignani, and David Bunnett.

Gameplay

Players balanced resources to build a town with unique neighborhoods, each with its own unique architecture. Residents and craftspeople of each neighborhood could be summoned to defend any part of the city that came under attack. Players could choose from a variety of neighborhood leaders including Mages, Clerics, Thieves, Fighters, Elves (a combination of fighters and mages), Dwarves (stout fighters who are also great miners), and Halflings (excellent thieves and farmers). Players could use, for example, a spawned Elf to build a building on a plot or the player could focus the elf on training to build up character levels, amass an army and march them overland and defeat a neighboring monster. Or a player could focus entirely on city development and win the game in that way instead. Maps are constructed from triangular wireframe colored tiles. The color of each tile designate the terrain type; water, plains, mountains and hills. A random map generator allows for good replay value.

Soldier (Destiny's Child song)

"Soldier" is a song by American recording group Destiny's Child featuring American rappers T.I. and Lil Wayne. Columbia Records released "Soldier" as the second single from Destiny's Child's fourth studio album Destiny Fulfilled (2004) on December 7, 2004. The artists co-wrote the song with Sean Garrett and Rich Harrison; the latter co-produced it with Destiny's Child members Beyoncé and Kelly Rowland. A Southern hip hop mid-tempo song, it lyrically describes each members' favorite type of male love interest.

"Soldier" received mostly positive reviews from music critics who praised its composition and the trio's vocal performances, but criticized the lyrical content. The song received a nomination in the category for Best Rap/Sung Collaboration at the 48th Annual Grammy Awards and won a Best R&B/Soul Single by a Group, Band or Duo award at the 2005 Soul Train Music Awards. A commercial success, "Soldier" peaked within the top five in six European countries and in Australasia further being certified gold in the countries in the latter region. In the US, it peaked at number three on the Billboard Hot 100 and topped the Hot Dance Club Songs further receiving a Platinum certification by the RIAA.

Team Fortress 2

Team Fortress 2 is a team-based first-person shooter multiplayer video game developed and published by Valve Corporation. It is the sequel to the 1996 mod Team Fortress for Quake and its 1999 remake. It was released as part of the video game compilation The Orange Box on October 10, 2007 for Windows and the Xbox 360. A PlayStation 3 version followed on December 11, 2007. On April 8, 2008, it was released as a standalone title for Windows. The game was updated to support OS X on June 10, 2010, and Linux on February 14, 2013. It is distributed online through Valve's download retailer Steam; retail distribution was handled by Electronic Arts.

In Team Fortress 2, players join one of two teams comprising nine character classes, battling in a variety of game modes including capture the flag and king of the hill. The development is led by John Cook and Robin Walker, creators of the original Team Fortress. Announced in 1998, the game once had more realistic, militaristic visuals and gameplay, but this changed over the protracted nine-year development. After Valve released no information for six years, Team Fortress 2 regularly featured in Wired News' annual vaporware list among other ignominies. The finished Team Fortress 2 has cartoon-like visuals influenced by the art of J. C. Leyendecker, Dean Cornwell and Norman Rockwell and is powered by Valve's Source engine.

Soldier (1998 Indian film)

Soldier is a 1998 Bollywood action thriller film directed by Abbas-Mustan starring Raakhee, Bobby Deol and Preity Zinta. The film was released in 1998 and was declared as a 'Super Hit' by Box Office India, becoming the 4th highest grossing film of the year. Although Soldier was Preity Zinta's first film, Mani Ratnam's Dil Se.. ended up being released before Soldier and was thus Zinta's film debut. It was remade in Tamil as Villu by Prabhu Deva starring Vijay and Nayantara in lead roles in 2009.

Plot

Captain Vijay Malhotra (Pankaj Dheer) attempts to defend himself when corrupt army officials, Pratap Singh (Suresh Oberoi), Virender Sinha (Dalip Tahil), and Jaswant Dalal (Salim Ghouse), intercept a truck-load of arms and ammunition, with the help of Virender's brother, Baldev (Sharat Saxena) which they are about to sell illicitly to gangsters. Vijay Malhotra stops the trio of smugglers, but subsequently is shot to death by a mysterious man by the name of DK, who is the ringleader of the smugglers.