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.