The techniques of European warfare were transformed during the 15th and 16th centuries by the use of gunpowder and by substantial progress in the effectiveness and destructive power of artillery. The series of conflicts in the 1640s, known collectively as the English Civil War, was the first in the British Isles that reflected this new reality.

In the second half of the third millennium BC the Indo-European tribe known as the Hittites migrated and settled in Central Anatolia, at that time a land of small city-states whose rulers lived in fortresses.

These fortifications enabled the Hittites to transform themselves into a Bronze Age super-power, defeating the Egyptians at Kadesh in c.1274 BC.

Konstantin Nossov examines the fortifications constructed by the Hittites in their efforts to sustain and then halt the decline of their once flourishing empire.