Before the EUIV period, early European cannon weren't very effective, very large, or very numerous. It's not until you have the heavier bronze "bombards" of the 15th century that you start seeing walls come down from cannonade. By fall of Constantinople 1453, and on into the English Civil War, and even into the Napoleonic era, old-style tall stone castles were a liability due to how they would collapse under effective cannon fire. This is why the star fort became such a massive hit in Italy during the early 1500s.
Earthen glacis star forts, surrounded by moats, would remain the main defensive structures of the Rennaisance-to-Reformation-to-Enlightenment era. They would defend Amsterdam, Sienna, Lille, or Osijek in Europe as much as they would defend Quebec or West Point in the Americas. What would change about them, pretty much, was the complexity and sheer scale to which they would be built. The addition of ravelins, hornworks, tenaille, and all manner of organic topological incorporation into such fortification designs was what differentiated an earlier fort from more advanced versions. The problem they created, though, was that they would entirely dominate a city's landscape, and dictate the degree and extent to which a town could expand.
Earthen star-forts would remain paramount throughout the EU IV era until the invention of the timed-fuse explosive shells of the 19th century, and the replacement of earthen star forts by brick-and-mortar multi-tier casement fortifications of the 1820s-1830s, just after the EUIV period. Such fort designs then lasted until the advent of high explosives in the 1860s. These "Vicky 2" / American Civil War casement forts would be replaced by concrete in the 1880s.
However, rather than create such fortifications around entire cities, the industrial era urban growth meant that it was now utterly impractical to wall a city in, as you would with a star fort and bastion system. Instead, you'd put a fortification at a key approach to a city, such as at the harbor, or on a hill. Thus, not long after the end of the EUIV period, many cities got rid of their magnificent star forts as useless impediments to civil development.
To me, the main takeaway is that there should be a sort of "arc" of siege storytelling in EUIV. at first, castles should be mighty until you get your hands on your first cannon. Then cannon should be mighty, until you get your Level 1's (presumably old stone castles) updated to the early
trace Italienne (level 2+). Then those should be awesome until you get your first mortars, and so on. There should be a sense of see-saws back and forth.
Yet as I said in a prior post, fortifications should be reduced in value by the late game even as their defenses got more elaborate. This trend should occur starting in the mid-1700s. Approximately the time of Frederick the Great. First of all, fixed fortifications were damned expensive. Second of all, larger field armies could do things at a range that a fort sitting around your own backyard could not do. There was a trend towards temporary fortifications. Field fortifications. Mobile warfare and defense in depth.
"Frederick the Great, the best-known eighteenth-century military mind and practitioner, continued this anti-fortification mode of thinking. Although he continued the heritage of besieging some enemy cities while protecting his own, the Prussian king sent his armies on fast-moving campaigns, bypassing fortified frontiers where appropriate. Frederick's victories represented a synthesis of fortification and mobility, as opposed to a simple focus on the former (Duffy 1985: 145-147), and their fame influenced other leaders to deemphasize fortress mania." — Bryan Alexander, "Gothic in Cyberspace," The Gothic World, Glennis Byron, Dale Townshend eds., pg. 146
By the time of the Napeoleonic wars, a lot of these fortresses should simply be deprecated by the advent of wars of maneuver. Fortifications, at some point, should lose their capacity to create a "zone of control." Napoleon would leave a besieging force to make sure his lines of logistics were kept open, but otherwise kept moving. There were key sieges of note, such as the
siege of Almeida (1810), but in general, "Napoleon impressed his generals not to attack, but to bypass fortified positions in order to spare their men." — Napoleon On War, Bruno Colson, ed. p. 276.
I can understand the intent of the ZOC system, and to allow some provinces to fall quickly while others remain hard nuts to crack. However, by the end-game, even though there might be the equivalent of a "fortification per province" there should still be wars of maneuver. Napoleon did not stop his campaign into Austria as soon as he crossed the border and ran into his first fort. Otherwise, he'd have never reached Austerlitz in three months.
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