everyone knows forts are useless as coded in the game. I have an idea but I'm not sure it can be accomplished through xml modification. This simple (or not so simple) change would make forts useful and would also help defend against pillaging which is grossly overpowered anyway.

I was going to make a fort built in a bonus resource space act the exact same as building the actual improvement for that resource. Example: a fort built on top of a horse resource would act like a pasture and on gems would give a bonus like a mine. The fort would also give your Civ access to that resource. I know I can change the output of the fort to match the other improvements. i.e. give more food for wheat and more money for gold...I've done that already.

However I'm not sure how to limit the fort giving access to the resources until the corresponding technology is found. Example: building forts on spices until Calendar research is done will not give you the bonus resource.

Anyone know if this will be possible through xml?

I think there should be other penalties for building your forts. Otherwise, why ever build a resourse building. There should be some kind of reason why you would or wouldn't build a fort on a particular resourse.

If you made spice (for example) not reveal before calendar is researched then you won't have access to it even if you build a fort on top of it......I guess.

Give forts cultural borders, one square in each direction. Great way of controling valuable resources.

To avoid abuse, maybe make it necessary for fort cultural borders to be contiguous to your regular cultural borders. If the fort is surrounded by other civ's cultures, then it's cultural borders are also overwhelmed.

Pooh, I was just thinking that today. Before the louisiana purchase France had a lot of land in America that wasn't near cities, but they did have a lot of forts though, if I remember correctly. One condition should be that you must a have a unit in the fort for you to claim it as your territory. The reasoning is; if you claim land, its yours. Obviously your enemies might have somethin' to say about it, but they'll have to kick you out of your forts to take the land from you.
What immediately comes to mind is that forts would make cities obsolete for when you just want territory, but not so. Forts, not having any culture, wouldn't hold surrounding tiles if it is surrounded by cities. Also, they still can't build anything like a city can.
It wouldn't be wise to try to hog up tons of territory with forts becuase you have to garrison them with units. Too many forts = too many units = too much gold loss per turn. Its also spreads out your millitary too much. A game with all these factors accurately represents why Bonaparte felt compelled to sell so much land for so cheap to the US.

Half East,

I like that idea: The necessity of garrisoning a fort to lay claim to the land surrounding it. Makes good sense. It would also give others the chance to capture it, much like cities are taken.
Do you propose not to have the surrounding nine tiles claimed by the fort, or did I misunderstand that? It seems to me that the fort would still be rather useless without some sort of land claim around it.
To prevent fort spamming, a limit introduced based on number of cities, or maybe a per turn gold cost could be associated with forts. Also worth noting is that forts wouldn't be able to work land... great way to hold down some territory until you have time to get a settler there though.

Are there any modders who could do something like this?

Did anyone ever do this mod? Or will I have to do it myself?

I think the idea on the cultural radius is that if you build a fort next to another civ's cultural boundary then the culture radius of your fort will not extend into their territory, just like when building cities near another civ's territory.

Also, if you restrict it so that you can only build a fort contiguous to your cultural boundary, then you may be able to build a string of them but you would have to build them one at a time.

The only place I would really find a fort useful would be on a special resource square. I can compile a dll without a problem, but I need to learn how to incorporate xml into the build.

Have the forts made with an automatic defend built in, ie a guard tower that shoots arrows etc and advancing for each era??

you know just an idea (not that I have any idea how to make it work) you could make forts cost money and charge supply (maybe?). think about it, cause it makes sense.

Also maybe military units could be build in there? still i like the cultural borders idea. and also the whole "getting captured like cities" to me thats brilliant.

Automatically shoots arrows? This isn't Warcraft!

Upon further mental review I think the cultural radius thing is much too complicated.

Keep it simple - a fortification has the additional effect of another terrain improvement. Which improvement depends on the terrain and it will have to be hard coded - and coded for each potential resource and terrain type.

Automatically shoots arrows? This isn't Warcraft!

Upon further mental review I think the cultural radius thing is much too complicated.

Keep it simple - a fortification has the additional effect of another terrain improvement. Which improvement depends on the terrain and it will have to be hard coded - and coded for each potential resource and terrain type.


Thats right, a fort, i didnt say fortification, a difference there. A fort is a military post, whereas a fortification can be both a military and non-military.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort

and thats the last i will say, later.

well ive dedicated this some thought and i think (to my point of view) what things would improve the fort thing:
-building military units there
-units gain offensive and defensive bonuses
-archery and seige units gain a 1 block range bonus
-expands cultural borders by 1 square
-captured like cities
-charges quite a bit of supply
-costs gold to build
-units stationed charge more supply
-can build military buildings there
-grow like cities, but instead of with food, with production in a 1 tile radius

Yes? no? maybe? im just contributing

Whatever you do, you need to teach the A.I. how to use it. Another reason to keep it simple.

And you would need to make the build time of a fortification different depending on whether there is already a terrain improvement or not.

There was a BIG discussion in the FfH2 forum already on this subject, i think its about 6 pages long by now, take a look there.

sorry i didnt know that about the ai. you need SDK to change the AI right?

Heres the thread for FfH2 if anyone is interested.
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=181357

Interesting, but they want to make forts much too complicated.

I have thought of the cure - bring back zones of control from Civ II! The only problem I ever had with zones of control was that not enough of the specialty units could ignore them, a problem easily changed by editing the unit flags in the config file. Civ II also had good AI for manipulating zones of control against you, so you couldn't send an offensive unit behind enemy lines to spy out all their territory. I think in Civ IV that Open Borders would have to mitigate zones of control.

In case you've forgotten - zones of control meant that you couldn't ever move from one tile adjacent to a combat unit to another tile adjacent to a combat unit. You could only attack or withdraw.