You call that a long post?!?!

I gave this a bit of thought earlier on another topic. It would be handy to build outposts of different types. Fortresses for soldiers, messenger posts for shipping and mail, that sort of thing. One challenge with military fortresses is that you can't force people to attack them in most situations. You can build a wall to block off a valley and put a fort up over the only gate for example. But there will be plenty of situations where your fort will have a lot of empty space around it.

What you can do however is station an army inside it. The army can leave the fortress and defend a much bigger area. They can retreat to the fort if things go bad and if the enemy attacks the fort your troops have a big defensive advantage. With an army on the prowl the enemy wouldn't be able to waltz past. If they did your army would attack them from behind and or cut off thier line of retreat.

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Other than a massive line of sight, what else is a tower good for? I have never seen a massive stand alone tower in medival history, the only parallel I can find are the German flak towers. Those have a specific term that means "aboveground bunker" but I forgot what it was. How would they function defensively? If the tower falls you would lose everything...

I definitely hope that the 'rethought 4X economics' plus the tile-based city format will facilitate multiple types of population center. I'd like a map that included villages that will stay villages, and other villages with potential to grow into cities because of reasonable things like having multiple trade routes run nearby. And we need minining towns, mill towns, etc., that all 'connect' to a relatively close city but are not part of its tileset.

Fortresses should definitely fit with a larger 'non-city population center' system. Think of the camp followers who settled along Hadrian's Wall back when the Roman Empire actually kept it defended. And, yes, I definitely would like to be able to build something like Hadrian's Wall. Hilltop forts that can send out sorties to hassle larger forces moving through their territory would also be good fun, at least if they can be fairly automated.

Re standalone towers, it's a fantasy game and they seem like a neat idea to me just for looks, but also to serve as things like a mage's reseach facility, a prayer retreat, or a 'safe house' for an imprisoned (or hiding) notable, e.g. Rapunzel. If nothing else, we should perhaps have a quest or three that take place in an isolated tower whose line of sight is large and empty of 'civilization.'

In reference of GW Swicord comment yes thats right I was also thinking that mines and other off cities structures would be necessary for the game, like economy boosting mines or quest based towers would also be a neat adition.

I like the idea of having fortresses and watch towers and Tamren makes a good point you can’t force an invading army to attack a fortress but historically you only build fortress to protect something of high value or great importance. That being said similar to Galciv 2 and military starbases depending on what upgrades were put into them their strategic value changed. I hated that upgrade that slowed my ships down in enemy space or reduced my fleet’s firepower. I would think similar effects could be included in fortresses for Elemental where the attacking player or AI wouldn’t have to risk assaulting a fortress but some negative effect or annoyance would be present until the enemy nation was destroyed or the fortress captured / destroyed. 

To anyone to see this post a similar one is here: https://forums.elementalgame.com/337109

By the way I like the idea of terrain bonuses think it will be added it will be nice to have a battle like the one in Hellmshole in LOTR 2