What exactly the task of the watchtower will be in the game is still unclear. The game will not only consist of a city map, it will also take place in the province or on the world map. The current idea is that by building a border wall (with watchtowers/observation towers) you increase security in the province and thus in the whole empire. This is where the building would then come into play.
research
The website taunus-wetterau-limes.de was very helpful in my research. There you can find a cross-section of a watchtower at the Taunus-Wetterau Limes. What I also didn’t know until now: Limes is a term for a fortification line in general. I always thought that there was only one limes, the well-known one that runs through Germany. But there were several limes. One even in the desert (Limes Arabicus) to ward off the Parthians.
o prevent the tower from simply standing in the landscape, I placed palisades all around it. In various pictures on the net, for example on planet-wissen.de [click here], you can see that the palisades are held together at the back (inside) by transverse beams. I have adopted this in the game.
To see a replica, I went to Neuss near Düsseldorf (Germany). There you can see such a tower from the outside.
IS IT WORTH VISITING NEUSS?
No. The tower is beautifully reconstructed and looks very realistic. But you can neither look inside the tower nor does it have an information board. It’s a shame, really, because the tower has been reconstructed very realistically. When I visited it in summer 2020, the bushes around the tower had grown a lot, so you couldn’t see the tower completely.
Overview
Location | Google Maps Link |
Worth visiting | no |
What you see | A reconstructed watchtower (only from the outside) |
Dwell time | 2 minutes |
Parking lots | None at the tower directly, I parked in the nearby neighbourhood |