Polygonal Fort

Perhaps you mean star forts?

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No, no, polygonal forts are the generation of fortifications after star forts. It is hard to say, I think they started to appear in the late 18th century, but it would be in the 19th century that they became standard. They are a lot less flashy, because they dispensed with bastions and emplaced their guns in casemates. This means that instead of a geometrically very complex figure with a low silhouette and which is very photogenic from above, you have a huge block of thick masonry (later concrete) with a myriad windows (the casemates).

The theory here is that while a bastion offered great defensive abilities to the fort, it was itself very vulnerable to the Vauban system. The polygonal fort opted instead for massing firpower with several floors of casemates facing the enemy and a ditch protected by caponiers. The caponiers are buildings lower than the ditch that protrude from the fort, providing perfect vision of any enemies trying to cross it.

The system abandoned the traditional system of a continuous wall for the new concept of a network of mutually supporting fortresses. In essence, polygonal forts usually were built as part of a defensive system where they replaced bastions, packing a lot more firepower and presenting an obstacle formidable enough to make the need for a curtain wall redundant.
 
Fort Ticonderoga is another beautiful star fort:

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This is a typical polygonal fort, now in disrepair. A polygonal closed building with plenty of casemates, and a deep ditch overlooked by caponiers.

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^ Where is it? near London or at Malta?
^ Here it is said that Polygonal Forts existed since Napoleonic days. all before rifled artillery of any kind were invented (implying that poly forts were made to response the threats of shell firing howitzer proliferations). Wikipedia entry said it 'comes BOTH with proliferations of shell guns (Howitzers to be specific) AND Rifled artillery. When exactly did the first Polygonal Forts were designed or built.
Also i'm not sure if casemates were 18th Century inventions, AFAIK a casemate might be as old as the first siege cannons first evolved from Big Bombards.
And sadly no games ever presented polygonal fort as any historical significant things while IRL British Empire was very much serious about it. as the proliferations of howitzers (and also at the time of Palmerston, rifled artillery) rendered oldschool starforts obsolete. so permanent fortifications needed to evolve oncemore... this for isn't even presented in Civ6. this might be because there were originally Urbaization Civic, and later Steel technology that gave free city defenses to all player cities and thos no forts are buildable from that point on.
 
^ Where is it? near London or at Malta?


 
The Brialmont forts are considered polygonal iirc.


Back in the 19th century, Brialmont’s strategy was widely admired. His military ideas eventually reached Bucharest, where King Carol I was looking for a way to defend his young country, formerly part of the Ottoman Empire. The Belgian engineer was invited to Romania several times to explain his principles to the war office. The king decided that his capital city, like Antwerp, had to be defended no matter what the cost. Brialmont was commissioned to design a ring of 18 massive forts around the capital, linked by a road and railway.
Brialmont never lived to see his plan put to the test. He would have been shocked to see how quickly the forts fell after the German army invaded in the summer of 1914. Within a few weeks, all the forts around Liège had surrendered.


Edit, This explains the concept quite well :)


Built in the year 1793, Fort Tigne is a relatively small-scale fort built as the last major fortification work by the Order in Malta. The design of the fort was inspired by the writings of Montalembert and French lunettes. The most important design features were the absence of bastions and the artillery galleries built in the counterscarp.

The design of fort Tigne is the earliest example of the polygonal system that revolutionized and influenced the form of military architecture throughout most of the following century.
 
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^ Where is it? near London or at Malta?
^ Here it is said that Polygonal Forts existed since Napoleonic days. all before rifled artillery of any kind were invented (implying that poly forts were made to response the threats of shell firing howitzer proliferations). Wikipedia entry said it 'comes BOTH with proliferations of shell guns (Howitzers to be specific) AND Rifled artillery. When exactly did the first Polygonal Forts were designed or built.
Also i'm not sure if casemates were 18th Century inventions, AFAIK a casemate might be as old as the first siege cannons first evolved from Big Bombards.
And sadly no games ever presented polygonal fort as any historical significant things while IRL British Empire was very much serious about it. as the proliferations of howitzers (and also at the time of Palmerston, rifled artillery) rendered oldschool starforts obsolete. so permanent fortifications needed to evolve oncemore... this for isn't even presented in Civ6. this might be because there were originally Urbaization Civic, and later Steel technology that gave free city defenses to all player cities and thos no forts are buildable from that point on.
So, from what I know, they did originate in the late 18th century, so yeah, around Napoleonic times. As said before, they were rather an attempt at stripping away the weaknesses of a bastioned fort to the formal Vauban siege, and from that point of view they make a lot of sense. Howitzers and shells had been around for centuries, although in much more crude forms than they would eventually reach during the 19th century.

The real change in artillery technology as it pertained to forts would be the explosive shell (the advantage one might acquire over a fortification by having rifled guns is easily countered by equipping the fort with rifled guns as well). This new shell made basically any fortification obsolete. That led to the next step in fortification evolution, which was to switch to concrete as prime building material.
 
This covers what they are, why they are, and how they worked pretty well.


The channel has a *lot* of material on the earlier start forts too, some on the general theories of attack and defence, and many going over specific 16th and 17th Century sieges.
But it says nothing about 'Palmerston era' forts.
 
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