Fortresses
They exist.
Their graphics are nice.
They would be neat to have around.
They're useless in most situations (a bloomed forest offers more protection).
AI's don't (and don't know how to) use them (and they're usually acting intelligent in not using them).

I'd first like to say I miss forts. I rather enjoyed them in previous civs, but the ones in Civ 4 are dismally useless, so I'd like to find some way of having them made useful for FfH2.

I noticed its possible to keep track of how long a unit has been fortified (in the Kill Hunt thread). I know AI's are incapable of making forts intelligently (though in most cases making forts is unintelligent), so I thought instead of trying to get them to make forts intelligently, to just reward the AI's (and players) activities with forts.

So, a unit has been fortified in a spot (outside a city, maybe force it to be inside its own borders) for 30 turns, it long ago met its max in fortify bonus (after 5 turns i think), so why not reward it with a fort on its tile? after 30 years I'd think it sensical that the unit has dug in enough to warrant a fort type structure. That way, AI's would end up with forts in appropriate places. So, the basic idea is, Forts are placed when a unit has been fortified in a tile for X turns.

Problems
What if there's already an improvement? (AI's love guarding resource improvements)
What if there's a forest there already? (why would you want a fort there, it would remove the forest and its better defensive bonus)

Solutions
Allow two improvements on a tile (doubt this possible)
Turn forts into Features instead of improvements.

The second solution wouldn't solve the forest problem unless some other things were done, like increase the forts to +50% defense bonus, give +1 :) per fort within city yield radius (to make up for the lost +1 :health:), and make them give +2 :hammers: to make up for lost production.


Other Ideas

Possible Fort Benefits
-Forts using city defence (and city raider) promotions
-Higher defense bonus, +50% def bonus or even as high as +100%, but require Stone resource to build
-Buildable in neutral lands, maybe even enemy lands (I think they're only buildable in your own borders)
-Buildable on Forests/Jungles without clearing
-Buildable by military units (long build time, possibly consume the unit)
-Slow XP gain to stationed units
-Some production or trade bonus

Forts having "Zone of Control" effect
-Perhaps enemies lose their terrain bonus when moving in areas ajacent to forts, and units retain their defensive bonuses when attacking from forts. Or forts can produce culture ala Rise of Nations.
-Attrition damage to enemy units adjacent to the fort
-Possibility of spawning basic unit (maybe trigger if cottages or other improvements nearby are pillaged)
-Free Withdrawl Promotion while in Fort attacking adjacent squares (maybe only for Ranged units)
-Adjacency autoattacks (was in Civ 3, but not sure if its in this Civ; a unit from fort attacks any enemy unit that moves from one adjacent square to another adjacent square, with respect to Fort)
-Free attacks from fort that don't involve retaliation (like how siege units works in civ 3)

Forts as specializable
-Castle: +75% defense
-Inn: +x% heal, +1 commerce if worked, and/or +1 trade route in nearest city
-Sentry Tower: Same as existing improvement
-Trade post: +1 culture/turn (centered on the fort) Would have to be availible a bit late or take a long time to build to prevent city blocking early.
-Dungeon: umm, don't know, just sounded cool, maybe sac slaves here for some effect...
-Fortified versions of every improvement (AI's would build them, and it would help them protect their improvements)
-Acts like an Outpost as well (I have yet to see anything in Civ4 like the Outposts in Civ3, but maybe I'm blind; collects resource out of borders)

Forts as gaining power
-Forts gaining more benefits with new techs (like increased line of sight, and other listed benefits)
-Forts gaining more benefits the more troops stationed there
-Forts gaining more benefits by being worked (like a cottage)

Forts as Units
-Would have 0 movement (like Entangling Vines)
-Could grant bonus promotions to units in same tile
-Could gain experience thus increasing the bonuses
-Could be capturable

Forts as resource gathering improvement
-Make Sentry Towers (which Used to be resources and was quite nice heh) connectable using forts (AI's would build them)
-Grant Free Sentry Promotion for scouts for connected Sentry towers
-Grant +2 XP to scouts for connected Sentry towers
-yield in connected Sentry towers: +1 :hammers: +1 :commerce:

Settlements as Forts
-use the settlement mechanic for all civs, so they can create towns that are only for defensive purposes

Quotes on the subject of forts:

Forts need some work I think. In Vanilla Civ they're pretty useless, with Bloom spell they're somewhat useful though it may be a bug (if it is a bug then they're even worse than Vanilla Civ). Why? Fort adds +25% def bonus, and best scenario without Bloom is placing it on a hill (placing it on woods or a jungle destroys them, reducing def by 50%) which is still only +50% and only as good as a forest alone, and worse than a forest on a hill.

With bloom you're better off just putting a forest instead of a fort (+50% instead of +25%) [assuming that the ability to Bloom on a fort is a bug]

Are there special bonuses I'm missing?

If not, Forts need something, some ideas:
+50% def bonus or even +75%, but require Stone resource to build
Buildable in neutral lands, maybe even enemy lands (I think they're only buildable in your own borders)
Buildable by military units (long build time, possibly consume the unit)
Slow XP gain to stationed units
Adjacency autoattacks (was in Civ 3, but not sure if its in this Civ; a unit from fort attacks any enemy unit that moves from one adjacent square to another adjacent square, with respect to Fort)
Free Withdrawl Promotion while in Fort attacking adjacent squares (maybe only for Ranged units)
Ability to build in forests/jungles without removing the forests/jungles
Acts like an Outpost as well (I have yet to see anything in Civ4 like the Outposts in Civ3, but maybe I'm blind; collects resource out of borders)
Unit promotion City Defense is applied while defending in Fort (could already be, not sure)
Some production or trade bonus
Possibility of spawning basic unit (maybe trigger if cottages or other improvements nearby are pillaged)

Anything to make forts better, they just seem so useless currently, and they should be fun.

Maybe do different grades of Forts using the Cottage system of growth (possibly requiring certain resources for better Forts), like:

Woodfort
requires iron or copper or clay (something to bond wood)
+25% def bonus
some of the lesser bonuses listed above

Stonefort
requires stone
+50% def bonus
some of the better bonuses listed above or in better amounts

Castle
requires stone and copper(or iron or mithril)
+75% def bonus
some of the best bonuses listed above or in even better amounts

That would make them not only useful, but also fun investments to be protected and worked on/towards.
I've checked ingame on some of the things I wasn't sure about, and fortresses don't have any of the neat things it had in previous Civs, only +25% def bonus, nothing else, no benefits of any kind are stated in the Civilopedia (in Civ 3 I think they also ended an enemies turn in they entered it, basically making it a high movement penalty square to enemies as well).

The AI is quite smart about its usage of the current Forts (they intelligently don't bother making them :D), I can see how some of the ideas would definately require some AI changes (worrying about adjacency moves and the like). Still it'd be nice to build useful forts.
I'd like to mention forts again because I miss them being useful. I've been thinking about the arguement of "the AI doesn't know how to use them" and I realized that happens regardless: Instead of forts I just use bloom on hills as my "forts." The AI doesn't know how to do this either, but its possible.

Forts are in the game, but they are so uselesss... I just wish they had +100% def or something (like City def promotions adding to fort def % as well) to make them worthwile (atm you put an archer on a hill/forest with the second forest defense promotion and you get +25% from hill +50% from forest +100% (woodsman 2) which is nearly 4 times better than a hillfort (+25% from fort +25% from hill with no promotions that are gonna help except hills ones.. but the hill forests get that possibility too).

If it's just me who thinks so it'd be nice to figure out a way to just improve them myself, I miss good forts!
Maybe forts could be upgradeable a couple different ways, only one way per fort. They'd all retain the original +25% defense, and I think making city garrison (and raider) work with them is a good idea, the same bonus or perhaps half as much. Also, I don't know hos it is now, but forts should not be able to be built w/in 3 (or so) spaces of each other.
Fort upgrades:
Castle: +75% defense
inn: +x% heal, +1 commerce if worked, and/or +1 trade route in nearest city
Sentry Tower: Same as existing improvement
Trade post: +1 culture/turn (centered on the fort.) Would have to be availible a bit late or take a long time to build to prevent city blocking early.
Dungeon: umm, don't know, just sounded cool, maybe sac slaves here for some effect...
Also, while im on the subject of Siege Engineers as a unit type, (yeah this part of the post should be in the unit design post) why not also give them a promotion to build forts outside of city borders. Possibly even lookout towers too?
What if Khazad defensive city improvements and forts raised the land around them a step (by raised I mean elevation; i.e. flat to hill, hill to mountain) and the land lowered when the improvement was destroyed, or the city defense went below a certain threshhold. You could create new mountains that could not be improved, but would allow for some rock solid defense.
i really like the idea of using Forts are a resource gathering building... but maybe for Sentry towers?!

wow thats a good idea! :D since sentry towers are considered resources, why not make forts be the building they need? then AIs would atleast build forts on sentry towers, itd prolly look neat, and protecting it would be useful!!

maybe have it give some promo, like free Sentry promotion for scouts.

a few more like your Dark Eye thing would be fun too, and we'd see forts being used more often! great idea

I think that the Forts should use city defence (and city raider) promotions like they do in Warlords.

The main problem with forts is that they can simply be bypassed. They really need to somehow exert an "area of control" effect. Perhaps enemies lose their terrain bonus when moving in areas ajacent to forts, and units retain their defensive bonsues when attacking from forts. Or forts can produce culture ala Rise of Nations.

@ Maian

I agree without an area of control forts are not realistic, if you can just walk right pass them its pointless. You would suspect that the defenders of a fort would harass any enemy that came close enough. Maybe not enough to destroy the units but enough to keep them from advancing so freely.

Unless of course the unit had a promotion that negated the forts effects. I wonder though how useful a fort would be as just a defensive structure though. I mean if i have a stack of 20 mages and send an army of undead following a fireball barrage its not going to last long :)

Good forts would still be fun though hehe

That reminds me of this post:
I was thinking recently that it might be cool to make it possible for the kuriotates to build different types of settlements. Traditionally you can think about how there were exploatory/financial settlements, military settlements (advanced forts), or religious settlements. It might be interesting to give the kurioates abilities to construct different settlement flavors...

Financial settlements are much of what you have now, made explicitly to grab resources and increase money at little cost to the mother nation, but not able to build anything.

A military settlement might be able to build a single unit but would have a larger financial drag. For instance imagine builing a calvary settlement that popped the highest level horse unit every 15-20 turns.

Religious settlments would actually produce culture ( or perhaps pop disciples), but resources in their borders might actually be useless, or become untradable....

Just an idea
in the civilizations thread.

Basically, make a unit that is like a settler but makes fort cities instead, that serve only the purpose of military defense and area control, not for becoming a metropolis. But the problem with using cities to do it is that its a bit much, cities have many more complications then would be needed for a fort type city.. I can't figure out wheter itd be a good idea or not. My main issue with it is that cities don't use the cool lookin fort graphic lol.

@ Maian

I agree without an area of control forts are not realistic, if you can just walk right pass them its pointless. You would suspect that the defenders of a fort would harass any enemy that came close enough. Maybe not enough to destroy the units but enough to keep them from advancing so freely.

Unless of course the unit had a promotion that negated the forts effects. I wonder though how useful a fort would be as just a defensive structure though. I mean if i have a stack of 20 mages and send an army of undead following a fireball barrage its not going to last long :)

Good forts would still be fun though hehe
What about any enemy unit adjacent to a fort getting a wither type promotion (as per the spell). That is to say, any enemy unit adjacent to a fort suffers attrition damage each turn that only goes away when they leave the area (much like sentry towers giving and taking away the Sentry promotion when you leave them).

Those are neat ideas sureshot :)

I like the thought of specializsed pseudo cities, not exactly cities but outposts. Would certainly make playing the one city challenge in custom civs more interesting.

Another thought into adding some flavor to forts might be to allow wizards to create them via spell. Maybe they only last as long as the wizard is alive and fortified in them. But this could allow for some more interesting options.

The main problem with forts is that they can simply be bypassed. They really need to somehow exert an "area of control" effect. Perhaps enemies lose their terrain bonus when moving in areas ajacent to forts, and units retain their defensive bonsues when attacking from forts. Or forts can produce culture ala Rise of Nations.
To me, this is a tactical issue, not an issue with forts. I protect my borders by positioning troops at very defensible spots. Enemy units can and frequently will bypass these spots, but I can easily make sorties out to attack them when the time is right for me. In essence, ignoring the def. spot (or fort) does somewhat increase the vulnerability of your invading force.

Having said that, I think forts should definitely get a boost. I really liked that mod for Vanilla that gave forts bonuses, and these bonuses increased when certain techs were gained. For instance, increased line of sight. I also agree with such things as combat bonuses that apply to any combat that is conducted against an enemy unit that is adjacent to the fort (such is a retreat bonus). I also think forts should be buildable in neutral lands.

I would like forts to not suck and, frankly, I don't care if the AI doesn't use them (well, I do care, but I don't think this should keep the fun from us).

- Niilo

Those are neat ideas sureshot :)

I like the thought of specializsed pseudo cities, not exactly cities but outposts. Would certainly make playing the one city challenge in custom civs more interesting.

Another thought into adding some flavor to forts might be to allow wizards to create them via spell. Maybe they only last as long as the wizard is alive and fortified in them. But this could allow for some more interesting options.

for the wizard thing, maybe make "Wall of Stone" spell do that? a temp fort.. would make sense.

The problem with not building forts is that Civ4 lacks zones of control...

Why build a fort and give a 200% defence bonus when it can simply be avoided... ZOC need to be solved first.


On the other hand i've been thinking about a similar concept which came to me in my current game. It's the guardian vines... The AI seems to know how to use them to guard strategic positions, but even when these positions are either lost or on ally territory or far away from combat area, it keeps them. Maybe teach the AI that after, lets say, 25 turns of inactivity the vines should be disabled so that they may be cast again on more needed positions.

Also the vines can be avoided easily so maybe give them a feature to randomly cast entanglement on adjected enemy troops to force them into combat...

I like your idea of giving units inside the fort free withdrawal promotions. This would fit the concept of being able to harass nearby enemies, but being able to retreat to the base if necessary. This combined with city defense promotion working in forts (as in Warlords it seems...) could make them useful already, only the AI needs to learn how to use them.

ya, free withdrawls allows an active Zone of Control in a sense, since you can attack anyone who enters your Zone of Control with impunity.

and it doesn't sound so difficult to implement (note: I have no idea :) ). If the thing with city defense promotions didn't work (maybe this needs SDK/ hardcoded changes), you could still improve the defense bonus of the fort.

Then you had some sort of zone of control which gives the enemy a reason to attack the fort, and then some improved defense.

Talking about the AI, I wonder if there is a way to teach them to recognize choke points. It can already define routes, after all, so a tile would be a chokepoint if it would greatly decrease the amount of possible routes or increase the time needed to a target destination *if it was blocked*...

one way to consider an area a choke point is if it has impassible terrain or water on two tiles that are opposite adjacent and nondiagonal (i.e. the tiles directly north and south or east and west).

about protecting improvements and city raider/defense promotions, maybe city raider/defense promotions should work on forts and cottages/hamlets/villages/towns, it would make them much easier to defend (though make the elven cottages not receive the bonus, since they already focus on forests anyways and have poor city defense anyways).

I too miss forts for many of the same reasons already expressed, and i believe that many of the ideas (outside of production bonuses) are very good ones. My main issue is with ZOC. I MISS ZOC. In civ 2 it was a viable and very important feature of the game, used to create FRONTS during warfare with an enemy. It became a viable strategy to use DEFENSIVE units offensively, to form an area in which the enemy could not bypass your units and attack you. Therefore on attack defensive units were very important for their ZOC and abilties to hold off armies. Forts in civ2 were great (and horrible) in that if there was a mountain square, with a fort....it was nigh impossible to kill a defensive unit in that square. We now have collateral damage and promotions with CIV 4. So why not SOME units with ZOC again? Or, like this thread suggests, forts should GRANT ZOC. Maybe the "Commando" promotion eliminates the ZOC issue for units trying to bypass defenses. But I MUST say that sea warfare was designed throughout the ages specifically to bypass defenses. That is the first role of sea superiority. With this tacit (remember smac? Doctroine:Flexability) one can isolate enemy strongholds and travel without fear. Well, theres no need to travel without fear if fear is never firstly implemented.

I say BRING BACK ZOC, and give it to forts. Keep forts an improvement so it IS a sacrifice of something else. The ai can treat it as a "non-workable" improvement. They dont plant cottages or mines if the space isnt worked, or going to be. Frankly many of my hills in games are naked until windmills. They could have forts. But I agree, maybe connect the building of forts with the locations that computers commonly like to place units. In this, perhaps its better if it is a Feature. And I beleive that forts should be +100% defense. It should be a pain to capture a fort. Razing a fort would be an important strategy if you didnt plan on holding the area.
-Qes

well ive started messing around with forts as features because i cant stand the poopness of forts lol

Giving units inside a fort a 75% or higher withdraw rate would be nice. It would be an effective ZOC, in a way. Hm, it might not be necessary to add any terrain defense bonus at all to forts. It might be possible instead to give them, perhaps, a +100% strength bonus, so that they're stronger in both defense and attack on adjacent tiles. I'm not sure if this would work with the combat mechanics we're using (does a unit keep a promotion they get from a location when attacking a square adjacent to that location?), but I think it would solve some problems.

well ive started messing around with forts as features because i cant stand the poopness of forts lol

You mean the poopocity? -ness often means a quality that affects outside conditions, -ocity is more of an inner quality.

Feel free to ask for any more BS whenever you need it.
-Qes

strength instead of defense modifier, thats a good idea

You mean the poopocity? -ness often means a quality that affects outside conditions, -ocity is more of an inner quality.

Feel free to ask for any more BS whenever you need it.
-Qes
but i consider forts outside my usage currently, if after i made changes and forced myself to use it even though it was still poop, then i think poopocity would be more correct? and i don't need to make any sense when talking about poopness

You mean the poopocity? -ness often means a quality that affects outside conditions, -ocity is more of an inner quality.

Then when, in your opinion, would "poopishness" be proper to use? That is, the state of being poopish.

Then when, in your opinion, would "poopishness" be proper to use? That is, the state of being poopish.

I sit corrected. Chand~ here is quite right. @Sureshot, One should always take care in their words...especially if poopishness is involved.
-Qes

Speaking of border defense, I wonder how hard it would be to take Warlords' Great Wall graphics and put it into FfH. Would be cool if we could construct walls, though I'm not sure how exactly it should work (and there would also need to be AI code to automate wallbuilding).

You mean the poopocity? -ness often means a quality that affects outside conditions, -ocity is more of an inner quality.

Feel free to ask for any more BS whenever you need it.
-Qes

Oh god not again XD

Speaking of border defense, I wonder how hard it would be to take Warlords' Great Wall graphics and put it into FfH. Would be cool if we could construct walls, though I'm not sure how exactly it should work (and there would also need to be AI code to automate wallbuilding).

I also wondered this. Is it something that is transferable at all? Or is restricted specifically to Warlords builds? Truly the expansion must have some modular thigns that are transferable, but what?
-Qes

id heard Kael say he either couldn't use it or didn't want to, i forget... its in one of the threads

id heard Kael say he either couldn't use it or didn't want to, i forget... its in one of the threads

He said he didn't want the Great Wall wonder, which isn't what I'm talking about. I'm talking about walls that can be built arbitrarily on any plot by workers. It's meant to defend against other players thru some mechanic that hasn't been thought out yet. From what I hear (I haven't played Warlords yet), the Great Wall wonder purpose is to ward away barbarians, which isn't the primary purpose here.

On a historical sidenote, I don't think walls outside the city were very common. From wikipedia, a couple notable exceptions include the Great Wall of China, Hadrian's Wall, and the Berlin Wall.

Here's one way it could be introduced to the game. Make wall-building a spell exclusive to workers. This spell would target adjacent plots (radius 1): N, S, E, W. The wall is built on the border between the chosen plot and the worker's plot. Hmm, thinking about it a bit more, you could also simulate bridge building this way...

He said he didn't want the Great Wall wonder, which isn't what I'm talking about. I'm talking about walls that can be built arbitrarily on any plot by workers. It's meant to defend against other players thru some mechanic that hasn't been thought out yet. From what I hear (I haven't played Warlords yet), the Great Wall wonder purpose is to ward away barbarians, which isn't the primary purpose here.

On a historical sidenote, I don't think walls outside the city were very common. From wikipedia, a couple notable exceptions include the Great Wall of China, Hadrian's Wall, and the Berlin Wall.

Here's one way it could be introduced to the game. Make wall-building a spell exclusive to workers. This spell would target adjacent plots (radius 1): N, S, E, W. The wall is built on the border between the chosen plot and the worker's plot. Hmm, thinking about it a bit more, you could also simulate bridge building this way...

Yeah the warlords great wall keep barbarians from being able to enter your lands, it would be easy to backrev but I dont really like the concept.

I love the idea of buildable defences. The sentry towers that are all thats left of my origional design to have walls, gates and sentry towers. I dreamed of a bannor empire surrounded by massive fortications. Its not that hard to add the ability to make all that stuff, but I ran into massive problems getting the ai to use it well.

It would have consituted a major stragetic function that the AI was complelty ignorant of. It wouldnt have built the defences appropriatly, even worse it wouldnt have planned attacks around its opponents fortifications. So it was dropped. But I loved the idea of the sentry towers to much so I added them as random un-buildable map occurances.

what do you think of fortifications awarded to units in long standing fortified units? i find the AI fortifies its units in places for significantly long times and anything that rewards the AI for its behaviour works exceptional well in my experience.

Hey Kael, if as you say it would be easy to back-rev the great wall graphics, I'm sure that we can come up with a suitable gameplay effect for it.

Easy idea:
+3:gp: Great Commander
+25% Defense in all citys
Double construction speed with stone
Buildable with construction

Better idea:
Would it be possible to code a defensive bonus when someone attacks from outside the wall? Similar to the river bonus?

I think the AI should be able to handle it fairly well because it will not have to figure out where it should be built, its always all the way around your culture.

I'm thinking it could be a national wonder unique to one civilization, say, the Bannor?

If all that works, could you make it re-buildable so that when your border expands you can tear down the old one and build a new one at your new borders?
I messed around in Warlords' worldbuilder and when I built a new great wall in a city the old great wall graphics sunk into the ground, and new ones formed at the border.

The graphics of it don't even look good, I'd stick to not having it :P

I like the idea of a high withdrawal % chance (maxed out at e.g. 80%) for units in fortresses in order to give a zone of control.


BTW Bannor are too bland and need pumping up.

I fully agree with the idea of improving forts. They really need something. As you say, they are not used because using them makes no sense. In that case, they should have been removed or improved. Now I like the idea of forts. They have a place in strategy games and history.

Now, the best things I heard in the above would be all seem relatively easy considering what has already been modded in. First, increase the defense rating. Secondly, have a bonus provided while there 'Fort Withdrawl' for something like 75% chance to withdraw if the combat goes sour.

As to the autobuild when fortified, sounds good and it would reward the AI for doing what it does. But maybe only on certain types of units - defender types.

Now how about another (somewhat similar) improvement. The lair. Buildable only by the barbarian friendly, beast or evil civs, something that would occasionally spawn random beast type units. Pillagable to remove for a good bit of gold. Maybe instead (or in addition), have some made by the mapbuilder. Outside a culture boarder they spawn barbs. Inside a good civ's boarder they are pillaged, inside a neutral or evil civ they spawn for the civ who controls them.

i was messing around and learned a few things, and finally got forts as a feature, from the screenshot you can see the forts on some grassland.
the mouse-over is on the sheep fortress, and you can see the terrain listed as "Fort/Grassland" and the defensive bonus (i put it at 100% atm)
above the sheep you can see a fort/grassland with a pasture improvement on it as well.

im gonna mess with the fort size to get it to fit in better with improvements (atm they clash)

I fully agree with the idea of improving forts. They really need something. As you say, they are not used because using them makes no sense. In that case, they should have been removed or improved. Now I like the idea of forts. They have a place in strategy games and history.

Now, the best things I heard in the above would be all seem relatively easy considering what has already been modded in. First, increase the defense rating. Secondly, have a bonus provided while there 'Fort Withdrawl' for something like 75% chance to withdraw if the combat goes sour.

As to the autobuild when fortified, sounds good and it would reward the AI for doing what it does. But maybe only on certain types of units - defender types.

Now how about another (somewhat similar) improvement. The lair. Buildable only by the barbarian friendly, beast or evil civs, something that would occasionally spawn random beast type units. Pillagable to remove for a good bit of gold. Maybe instead (or in addition), have some made by the mapbuilder. Outside a culture boarder they spawn barbs. Inside a good civ's boarder they are pillaged, inside a neutral or evil civ they spawn for the civ who controls them.

good points, and the lair thing gives me idea of how to mix the two in a special case

the only time i ever see barbarians remain in one place (aside from in cities) is when they are on goody huts. after so many turns the goody hut with a barbarian on it could turn into a lair, giving them extra defense and making it a better good hut (providing greater bonuses).

How about taking a page from Sid Meier's Colonization and applying it to both forts and cities (via a new improvement, the Coastal Battery) - i.e. allowing fortified tiles to fire upon passing units.

they did something like that in civ3 or civ2 as well, im not sure how to do it myself, and its a shame they didnt do such for civ4

How about taking a page from Sid Meier's Colonization and applying it to both forts and cities (via a new improvement, the Coastal Battery) - i.e. allowing fortified tiles to fire upon passing units.

Just to throw out a comment or eight.

I really like the concept of a 'Fort' granting a moderate Withdrawal chance., maybe 15%. That would allow even the greenest Mounted units a decent chance to sally forth and survive. But I wouldn't want it so large that just any unit could casually risk an attack.

The only 'bad' thing to creating a sort of pseduo-fort condition based upon the number of turns of immobility is that defensive bonus goes back to 0% if the unit attacks. Attack=movement, at least often times. At any rate, there'd be no swapping of garrisons when a better unit type became available. For whatever reason, when the unit moved, there goes the 'fort'.

Since the AI is not good at placing forst, could this be mitigated somewhat by creating a 2nd type of tile improvement later on in the tech tree? Mine -> Fortified mine. Windmill -> Fortified Windmill. Etc. Make the 'fortified' version slightly better economically, as small a boost as possible, just so the AI would want to replace existing improvements with the upgraded version.

Different 'Fortified' improvements could even have different fortification bonuses, if that'd be desired. It might be 'easier' to fortify a mine than a windmill or plantation, perhaps. Or since mines are (almost aleways) built on hills, and lumbermills in forests, the defensive advantage could be tailored to match the expected terrain. A fine-tuning if you will. e.g A fortified mine gives +75% defense while a fortified lumbermill gives only +50%. But when added to terratin effects, each tile defends at +100%. Or a fortified hill could end up at +110% and a fortified Forest at +90%. Or vice-versa ... whatever Kael & Ko. decide works best.

Perhaps no version of Fortified Cottage and/or Farms would be avaialble? Traditionally, dwellings outside city walls are generally where residents fled from in crisis, to behind the safety of city walls. And it might help from a play-balance/tradeoff-making perspective, to prevent filling a realm with Forts from border to border. This twist would make for a good debate, I bet.

Speaking of border to border, might it be possible to code Forts so invaders would not benefit from the forts inside the enemy's cutural borders? Would it be desireable to do this?

The 'Fortified; improvment might perhaps add another level to pillage? That is, the first enemy pillage in the tile turns a Fortified Mine into a Mine, then next pillage destroys the Mine. That might add quite a twist to Khazad defensive abilities, given thier unpillageable Mines in 0.15.

Is that eight yet? :p

Oh yeah ... Malkim towers (city building) have the ability to shoot fireballs at enemies. They represent a significant investment in hammers. I dunno if you'd want to give away this special ability to just any fortified tile out there. If the garrison is incapable of risking sally missions, a fort SHOULD just protect the tile it is in. There were scores, hundreds of small castles built for every large fortified city. No one of them controlled a vast swath of land. For that, a network of castles were built.

ya, thats a possibility for the Forts as improvements (double the amount of improvements to add tho).

so far ive gotten Forts as Features to work, which allows improvements to exist there and the Fort (though it cant exist with a forest). so far im really enjoying it.

I really like the concept of a 'Fort' granting a moderate Withdrawal chance., maybe 15%. That would allow even the greenest Mounted units a decent chance to sally forth and survive. But I wouldn't want it so large that just any unit could casually risk an attack.

I don't see what's wrong with the units in forts being able to attack adjacent tiles whenever they feel like it. It would make forts pretty powerful, but I'm sure something could be done with the AI to make sure they used it, too.

Also, if withdraw chances can be worked in this way, combat advantages should be able to as well. If units are significantly stronger and have a very high withdraw rate when attacking anything next to a fort, then the fort would be able to serve its purpose much more effectively. It's all subject to playtesting, of course.

Also, it's not like you can attack freely, after all your unit will still be badly hurt after retreating, has to heal for some turns and is vulnerable to counter attacks if there is no strong defense force in the fort...

I don't see what's wrong with the units in forts being able to attack adjacent tiles whenever they feel like it. It would make forts pretty powerful, but I'm sure something could be done with the AI to make sure they used it, too.

Also, if withdraw chances can be worked in this way, combat advantages should be able to as well. If units are significantly stronger and have a very high withdraw rate when attacking anything next to a fort, then the fort would be able to serve its purpose much more effectively. It's all subject to playtesting, of course.

Sure, it's all in how strong you want your forts. I'm hedging towards the conservative in this issue, because if we make forts too nifty, they rival the fortified city itself.

This of course, leads to eager calls to Kael for adding +Withdrawal chances to Walls and Castles, of course. :)

I agree it's all subject to playtest. I'm just flinging out the opinion set that exists today. :)

ya, thats a possibility for the Forts as improvements (double the amount of improvements to add tho).

so far ive gotten Forts as Features to work, which allows improvements to exist there and the Fort (though it cant exist with a forest). so far im really enjoying it.

:yup: And not-doubling the number of improvements is another reason to NOT offer certain improvements in a Fortified version.

On a related-but-not issue, shouldn't the Malakim be allowed to build some sort of improvement on Oases? Just throwing it out there.

Well, they already get an extra :commerce: from them because Varn's financial, but maybe some sort of bonus couldn't hurt. Will they be able to move across them without losing extra movement points in the next version?

im guessing yes, since oasis' are like forests (theyre both features costing 2 movement), and like walking around forest hills with double-hill movement, the feature has no effect if you have the terrains double mover promotion

Maybe archery units fortified on a fortress would cayse for extra defence in adjacent tiles? how about forts built on sentry forts would give an additional bonus for units fortified on the tile?

Sure, it's all in how strong you want your forts. I'm hedging towards the conservative in this issue, because if we make forts too nifty, they rival the fortified city itself.

This of course, leads to eager calls to Kael for adding +Withdrawal chances to Walls and Castles, of course. :)

I agree it's all subject to playtest. I'm just flinging out the opinion set that exists today. :)

Personally i think forts SHOULD rival if not exceed a fortified city in defensive capabilites. After all its a tile dedicated to defence, and nothing else, not production, not research, not population, or society, its a fort. It OUGHT to be harder to take than a city.
-Qes

I think gameplay- and flavourwise forts need to be implemented in such a way that they are not spammed all over the map (especially if they are strong). The difficulty would be again to make the AI use them if they simply cannot place them on top of everything for whatever reason

I think gameplay- and flavourwise forts need to be implemented in such a way that they are not spammed all over the map (especially if they are strong). The difficulty would be again to make the AI use them if they simply cannot place them on top of everything for whatever reason

Considering that one cannot produce on a tile in which there is a fort, I dont see "Spaming" being very likely. Perhaps they also require upkeep? Every fort could be a drain on the economy? Each fort in ones territory reduces income in that civ by 2, 3, or 5 gold each? Something like this would also help. I dont suspect "spaming" will normally occur, it could also take "forever" to build, thus neglecting other important things.
-Qes

I think gameplay- and flavourwise forts need to be implemented in such a way that they are not spammed all over the map (especially if they are strong). The difficulty would be again to make the AI use them if they simply cannot place them on top of everything for whatever reason

Maybe forts should have some maintenance costs involved and the more upgraded the fort the more it costs. And if a fort is in a city zone perhaps some sort of negative monetary and food effect but a positive happy effect.

Come to think of it maybe forts should cost some food even outside a citys radius as well, i mean all those people in that garrison are gonna need to eat and im sure they have support staff etc.

I think the forts ought to have mini towers once a unit has built them and is fortified by a unit, just like in Warlords when the attacking units sometimes have a tower with them thats shoots arrows. I always put forts scatterd thoughout my maps, i like them for better defensive value.

a mechanic like pirates coves would prevent spamming (consume worker and must be three tiles apart), upkeep seems a bit crazy considering atm no one would ever consider building a fort lol

Would it be possible to make a fort dynamically change based on how many units are in it? Something like:

0-3 units: +25% defense
4-5 units: +40% defense, +10% withdraw rate
6-8 units: +60% defense, +30% withdraw rate, +5% attack
9-10 units: +75% defense, +50% withdraw rate, +20% attack
11-15 units: +85% defense, +60% withdraw rate, +35% attack
16+ units: +100% defense, +70% withdraw rate, +50% attack

The attack and withdraw rates would give something approximating an area of control. It could be built by a worker, and then it would just change based on how many units are in it. Alternately, a worker might have to build a new fort over the old one to get the benefits of more defenders, but the benefits would automatically go down when defenders left/were killed.

This would keep people from spamming forts (because who wants to put 10 units every three tiles to make it effective?), and it would make them powerful. The exact % values are subject to change, if you think better, worse, or differently balanced ones would be better.

Overloading on units wouldn't give too much defence, maybe it could grow by working on it (like towns).

A combination of any of these penalties sounds good to me :)

I think I'd probably rather plop down a cottage and work it than have to spend a valuable citizen powering up a fort.

Maybe the city could get defence aswell after a while.

A fort should be a realatively simple thing. Maybe there should be better and better forts available through technology (requireing re-construction), but im not sure we want variable forts. They're merely hardpoints. Though limiting where they could be placed, within radii from each other sounds like a good idea. Get your fort in first and fast. :).
-Qes

Maybe archery units fortified on a fortress would cayse for extra defence in adjacent tiles? how about forts built on sentry forts would give an additional bonus for units fortified on the tile?

Won't the city defence promotion, that can only be given in high levels to archers, suffice?

However one thing I think that no one else noticed is that forts should provide an immuntiy from marksmen, I'd hate to ride out with high level units, retreat safely, then get sniped. It defeats the point and its unrealistic.

Personally i think forts SHOULD rival if not exceed a fortified city in defensive capabilites. After all its a tile dedicated to defence, and nothing else, not production, not research, not population, or society, its a fort. It OUGHT to be harder to take than a city.
-Qes

It's not devoted to pure defense, if forts are implimented via the "Fortified Mine" workaround.

Personally, I don't see how a small fort cound be considered to be as strong as a fortified city surrounded by miles of multi-layered walls etc, but that's sort of besides the point. It'd have to come to how the system played out using the Civ engine. I don't know enough about the AI nuts and bolts to really predict what would work best. I'm just hedging to the conservative side on this topic is all.

It's not devoted to pure defense, if forts are implimented via the "Fortified Mine" workaround.

Personally, I don't see how a small fort cound be considered to be as strong as a fortified city surrounded by miles of multi-layered walls etc, but that's sort of besides the point. It'd have to come to how the system played out using the Civ engine. I don't know enough about the AI nuts and bolts to really predict what would work best. I'm just hedging to the conservative side on this topic is all.

Forts come in various shapes, and sizes, and capability, I dont argue that. A frontier fort should be lackluster in comparsion to a grand castle of impenetrability. But fortifications are used for two reasons, both of which are offensive in nature. They're designed to impose will on an area, by allowing quick access of armies and supply lines, and they are meant to strike fear into potential enemies who know of them.

Cities have issues, and many of which are seldomly "defensive" in nature. Granted, sometimes Defense and Civility merge and you get the fortress township. But often the two are NOT connected, Bysantium was special because it reflected both in symetry. Most forts were not towns were not forts. Cities produce, and should have defenses, but fortifications are designed to the SOLE END OF BEING FOR WAR.

IF there is "crappy forts" in the early part of the game, and "grand castles" near the end, it'll work out. Perhaps construction of these requires certain raw materials to do so. THus providing a Tiered level of defense (one would have to destroy an old fort to make a bigger/better one.)

This is all quite moot however, if forts are not granted ZOC, or something that can "hold" large swaths of land.

I still see getting the "AI" to understand it as the biggest obsticle. If THIS part can be mitigated, the rest will fall into place.
-Qes

EDIT: Is it possible to simply program the AI to place forts on unused Hills tiles? Max maybe one per city? No max outside city radii? Also, is it possible (since AI's seem to be aware of boarders and how to enter them for invasion) to program AI's to build forts at the "best" location (location with the highest potential defense) in land near enemy boarders? - This is all unknown to me.

Also, it's not like you can attack freely, after all your unit will still be badly hurt after retreating, has to heal for some turns and is vulnerable to counter attacks if there is no strong defense force in the fort...

This is quite the valid point. I'm just feeling conservative when it comes to giving foot units a mounted capability. I feel less conservative when it comes to helping a unit type do what it already does best.

Also, lest we get carried away with our fort fondness, remember there are certain disadvantages to being in a garrison that we are not modeling. e.g. Inability to forage/starvation, dwingling/befouled drinking water, disease, castle falling into the swamp, etc.

At the end, I don't care too much exactly what the forts "do". If they served to add some variety to the combat game, they'd be a wonderful addition. :thumbsup:

Hey wait a minute, maybe there's a solution here.

Most foritifications were built near natural springs and rivers. Perhaps we could invent a resource "spring" and require either IT or a source of freshwater to allow fort construction. IN THIS, it would also be easy to get the AI to understand it, becuase its the NATURAL improvement you place on a spring. So any "well placed" springs that appear in the natural map generation, will become hotspots for forts.
-Qes

Also in the interest in Invasions... I was fighting an all out slugging war with the Malakim a couple of hours ago, and they proceeded to send a small horde of tigers at me (where I use the term horde to describe about 100 odd units). It was really frustrating to see them infiltrating the borders and using my roads while I had no way to impede them. (I ended up deploying a ranger force of 15 or so in a staggered defense). A ZoC fort/fortress that forced your enemy to make a substancial effort to bypass (represented by a 1/tile/turn move) or siege would be awesome as far as invading goes. It would also be cool when fortifying what you envision to be a permanant border.

Forts come in various shapes, and sizes, and capability, I dont argue that. A frontier fort should be lackluster in comparsion to a grand castle of impenetrability. But fortifications are used for two reasons, both of which are offensive in nature. They're designed to impose will on an area, by allowing quick access of armies and supply lines, and they are meant to strike fear into potential enemies who know of them.

Cities have issues, and many of which are seldomly "defensive" in nature. Granted, sometimes Defense and Civility merge and you get the fortress township. But often the two are NOT connected, Bysantium was special because it reflected both in symetry. Most forts were not towns were not forts. Cities produce, and should have defenses, but fortifications are designed to the SOLE END OF BEING FOR WAR.

IF there is "crappy forts" in the early part of the game, and "grand castles" near the end, it'll work out. Perhaps construction of these requires certain raw materials to do so. THus providing a Tiered level of defense (one would have to destroy an old fort to make a bigger/better one.)

This is all quite moot however, if forts are not granted ZOC, or something that can "hold" large swaths of land.

I still see getting the "AI" to understand it as the biggest obsticle. If THIS part can be mitigated, the rest will fall into place.
-Qes

EDIT: Is it possible to simply program the AI to place forts on unused Hills tiles? Max maybe one per city? No max outside city radii? Also, is it possible (since AI's seem to be aware of boarders and how to enter them for invasion) to program AI's to build forts at the "best" location (location with the highest potential defense) in land near enemy boarders? - This is all unknown to me.

One problem of fantasy games is that the insirpations draw from so many different eras and are mixed into one. So are we using Troy or Massada or Syracuse or Byzantium or Madgeburg or Verdun as our example of a fortified city? Anyway I don't know exactly what era I think of or which I should be thinking of instead.

But in for instance the experience of the early Crusaders, a castle would be built at the end of every day's march. That was the only way they could protect their supply lines, as you suggested. But in Civ, a new castle every day's march represents hundreds of 'forts' in each and every 'civilized' tile. The tiny ZOC around any one of these forts is microscopic in the game scale. In Civ, the "ZOC" is supplied by the cities.

In my way of thinking, and this is only my way of thinking, this effect is already simulated by the Cultural Boundries and by the inabiity of invaders to use the road net, for instance. I agree this is a rather high abstraction. But I think the game mechanics already simulate the presence of little castles populated by little Lords scattered all around. (I have also thought that units should get a combat bonus simply for fighting within their own cultural borders, for the same reasoning.)

So to me, a ZOC effect is not an absolute requirement. A FfH 'Fort' can be thought of as a region where the local castles are particualrly strong. It makes sense, under this concept, that the 'Fort' would affect the tile it is in only. (All those little interlocking microscopic ZOCs in the tile make it very hard for an invader to get past even the most pedestrian garrison.)

But I do like the +Withdrawal mechanic idea. That would allow a defender to base his defense out of the local strongpoint. A ZOC in everything but name could be effected. Ot to put it anohter way, a ZOC is really an abstraction of the Stronghold+Sally Forth tactic. We might not need the abstraction. :)

Again, just one gamer's way of looking at things.

a mechanic like pirates coves would prevent spamming (consume worker and must be three tiles apart), upkeep seems a bit crazy considering atm no one would ever consider building a fort lol


yeah, with the spamming I had some possible implementations like yours (fort as feature) in mind where you could both have a fort and an improvement on a tile so that at least the AI had no reason not to build them everywhere. But your suggestion would be a good solution for that, especially the three tiles one. That might keep the AI from overusing them.

and if a fort replaces an improvement, make the AI build them only outside the city radius. together with the three tile rule that might already be enough for a basic AI strategy, even if the AI still wouldn't select the really nice spots.

edit: oh and of course make the AI protect it as with resources (it does that, doesn't it?)

i think the ai can understand bottlenecks, but maybe not quite well enough to understand placement of a fort with it's "zoc"

in civ three i had this continent to myself with an island chain 1 tile wide connected by land and sea but the city on it only had a 1 tile harbor, while also protecting a valuble rescource next to it

the ai declared war on me and sent a small fleet that blocaded the port and set down troops that blocked off the island chain and pillaged the rescource
the ai also kept this up for some time as i was unable to both rebuild the the rescource and make a route back to my capitol...
: (

One problem of fantasy games is that the insirpations draw from so many different eras and are mixed into one. So are we using Troy or Massada or Syracuse or Byzantium or Madgeburg or Verdun as our example of a fortified city? Anyway I don't know exactly what era I think of or which I should be thinking of instead.

But in for instance the experience of the early Crusaders, a castle would be built at the end of every day's march. That was the only way they could protect their supply lines, as you suggested. But in Civ, a new castle every day's march represents hundreds of 'forts' in each and every 'civilized' tile. The tiny ZOC around any one of these forts is microscopic in the game scale. In Civ, the "ZOC" is supplied by the cities.

In my way of thinking, and this is only my way of thinking, this effect is already simulated by the Cultural Boundries and by the inabiity of invaders to use the road net, for instance. I agree this is a rather high abstraction. But I think the game mechanics already simulate the presence of little castles populated by little Lords scattered all around. (I have also thought that units should get a combat bonus simply for fighting within their own cultural borders, for the same reasoning.)

So to me, a ZOC effect is not an absolute requirement. A FfH 'Fort' can be thought of as a region where the local castles are particualrly strong. It makes sense, under this concept, that the 'Fort' would affect the tile it is in only. (All those little interlocking microscopic ZOCs in the tile make it very hard for an invader to get past even the most pedestrian garrison.)

But I do like the +Withdrawal mechanic idea. That would allow a defender to base his defense out of the local strongpoint. A ZOC in everything but name could be effected. Ot to put it anohter way, a ZOC is really an abstraction of the Stronghold+Sally Forth tactic. We might not need the abstraction. :)

Again, just one gamer's way of looking at things.

This is a VERY good point. And i had'nt thought about it quite in those terms.

I think the issue that many of us are dealing with is that we'd like it to be a LITTLE less abstract. The withdrawl idea seems a bit week to me, because its really just advocating the use of cavalry. An actual ZOC (cannot move between two adjacent squares) strikes me as more of a obsticle to movement than the thread of potential withdrawing troops.

While your right about the forts in every square, I agree that they should represent "particularly STRONG" forts and permenant defenses. I think the "fortification" option is supposed to represent those temporary forts.

There is a mechanic already in game that we might use. We might simply allow the "fortifiaction" option that a unit takes in a tile to be at a higher limit, like 100% defence. Perhaps this would still be limited to 25% in cities (hustle and bustle preventing truest defensive capabilities). But a unit that camps out for 20 turns would get 100% defensive bonus.

OR tie it into technolgoy. As better resources and building materials come along, units are able to increase the max number of % bonus they can receive from fortifications?

An actual built fort could provide some small bonus, and some small promotion to units within it. BUt units that had the time to actually sit there and fortify, would get the best bonuses. I still think CIV2 ZOC would at least force enemy units to go AROUND the long way, or attack the square directly.
-Qes

I strongly believe that units should be able to walk round forts. But it should be a big risk to them. A withdrawal bonus creates that risk just fine in my opinion.

If you have a zone of cotrol that prevents movement then a dragon could some how be unable to walk past a weakling in a fort. so either you do some fancy math to work out how effective the fort is or you give it a real risk and let players decide. And trying to swarm past with weak units and pillage before they can mop up should be a valid stratagy.

I don't think you need anything to limit Fort Spamming. Why limit it? If someone wants to spend his workers time spamming forts, so be it. But how many of these forts will be manned is already limitted by the number of unit a civ can maintain. Personally I'd rather not have a fort un-manned deep inside my territory where my opponent can come in and sit sniping my own people with a bonus to defence and (hopefully) a high withdraw rate.

But to keep with some of the principles of this mod, provide options, not limits. If someone wants to spam, let them.

Another thing is that I agree that you should be able to build a fort outside your cultural boundaries, or even in enemy teritory.

For enemy teritory:
If you have soldiers there who will dig in and want to dedicate some workers to the war effort, I think that you should be rewarded for that.

For Neutral Ground:
The plot with the fort (and probably only this tile) should get the builder's culture. This represents the control the units exert. In game mechanics, it also lets you control choke points with some movement restrictions if you do not have an open borders agreement. It also would speed healing in that tile. That tile should be resistant to cultural capture as well (maybe only if there are units in the fort, but now that gets a bit more complicated to code).

Forts should have the potential to be grandeous strongholds all the better for me to blow them up with magic :)

. . . . . couldnt resist :)

There is an old mod component call RealFort (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=140957) that I will be trying to merge with version .15 tomorrow. I've used it before and I like it's simplicity and effectiveness. Unfortunately, the AI is not addressed in the mod, which is something I'd like to do if possible.

Jeckel has taken the RealFort mod to make his own (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=169009), one that actually implements ZOC (for those that can't let go of it :P ).

As for the topic of maintenance, I don't think forts need any added. Forts require stationed troops to be effective and to prevent them from falling into enemy hands. Those troops will bump up the overall maintenance of the empire, so I feel this balances it well.

- Niilo

I think RealFort is great, but it could use protection from marksmen hitting the weakest and a greater withdrawal chance.

i think we have a lot of good ideas for what can make forts useful, we need more ways to get the AI to build them though.

i think i can get the AI to "build them" without just hurting themselves by making forts features (so the AI doesn't accidently replace resource improvements with fort improvements) and placing them whenever a unit has been fortified for over X amount of turns. its an imperfect solution tho, as the graphics can clash with some improvements unless i make them gigantic (im hoping to figure out how to mess around with the graphics more but that may take me a while lol). plus the code for it atm would need to run every turn and check every unit, which wouldn't be a new thing, but its inefficient and not something i think would be a good addition for a single purpose.

And if you make them a feature you ruin them.

how so? i can see drawbacks to them, but nothing that i would claim ruins them

I think RealFort is great, but it could use protection from marksmen hitting the weakest and a greater withdrawal chance.
The withdrawal I agree with, but isn't the Marksmen ability specifically geared towards attacking the weakest unit? If they cannot use it on a fort, why can they use it on a size 20 city with walls and castle?

- Niilo

I guess it all comes down to a city being some big hectic place that is only being improvisationally used for defense, while a fort is made for the express purpose of protection and defense. That, and there is some gameplay function to being able to protect weak units.

How about a new "promotion" that is only given to units fully entrenched in a "fort".... that it causes 0-25% of the units strength in damage to 1 adjacent enemy unit per turn that the enemy is in an adjacent tile (I think the AI could handle that). That combined with the added strength on DEFENCE only...

Of course, if the unit un-fortifies (ie attacks in the players turn), then they lose the promotion until they are fully fortified again...

The idea is that if you have 1 weak unit in a fort, then they will do weak but constant damage to attacking forces... of course, if you have 10 units fortified, then they will hit upto 10 enemy units and possibly wipe them out....

.... the reason for this idea is that I dislike the "withdrawal" option - it only kicks in if you are losing... and if you are losing, then you may be then too weak to hold off an attack the next turn. This way it models the "harrasement" of the enemy (rather than an attack)... and means you need to make a conscious choice.... do you take out the fort (and halt your advance), do you move straight through (and just soak up the damage), or do you find another way around.

I agree with the idea of forts "naturally" occuring over time. Having workers create them is pointless and negates the point of having them.... I see them more on the Roman lines.... the small camps created by the legions, over constant use become stronger, more permanant... until after a suitable period, the legion could leave, yet the "fort" would then remain....

An idea:
Rather than worry about the "fort" itself... what about the defensive bonus on a tile.... is it held per tile, or worked out generically by type?

If it is held per tile, then simply "fortifying" a unit on it for a long period of time may force up the natural defence of the tile...
ie every 10 turns a unit is fortified on a tile, it adds +5% PERM to the defence of the tile....

and later in times of need you could return to your forts :)

ya, i like the existence of forts, and your idea is good (reminds me of the civ3 siege units, who attacked the way bombers do in vanilla civ 4 but could target nits and improvements not just cities)


adding permanent fortification bonuses could be neat, though its usually good if theres some visual representation (thats where forts come in ;) ) though a grading for the amount of defense that increases with the length of time units are fortified there would be interesting.

It helps the AI as well as it always "defends" resources..... sometimes with weak units.... this way, the tile will build up a great defensive bonus - would then make attack a held "resource" more of a challange...

aside: does the AI actually take into account the bonus of the tile when it moves?

it always tries to end its turn on the highest defensible position on the way to its target

then this would also allow the befault AI behaviour to benefit.

Also, it provides a use for defunct units. You can throw your old units out into the world and make them fortify important places just to increase the defensive bonuses.... then in times of strife, you move your Longbows into the pre-created "fort"....

I agree it needs some "image" though... but not essential this way....

... also then crys out for some means of destroying that bonus (back to the bombard)... catapults/cannons etc as per vanilla.... terrain effects by spell casters into adjacent squares (rather than just the tile they are on).....

A lot of simple stuff that the AI already does and handles well (because it is vanilla)...

Let there be no upper limit.... image the carnage as you are forced to assault that near "impregnable" fortress.... Thermopyle all over again!

Of course dont allow the bonus to occur in "city" tiles, or you would never be able to capture them! (thats what walls/castle is for!).

An idea:
Rather than worry about the "fort" itself... what about the defensive bonus on a tile.... is it held per tile, or worked out generically by type?

If it is held per tile, then simply "fortifying" a unit on it for a long period of time may force up the natural defence of the tile...
ie every 10 turns a unit is fortified on a tile, it adds +5% PERM to the defence of the tile....

Cities would be impossible to break, especially the AI's...

i think he mentioned not doing this for cities, in the same way forts cant be built on cities

How about restrictiing it to forts? Every single tile surrounding a city in an empire would have around +200% defense, and only 1 unit would be defending the actual city.

maybe, though thats a lot of unit maintenance. restricting it to forts is a good idea
im still not certain on what would be the best system for forts, but much of what would be chosen relies on also getting the AI capable of using it

I dont think you would need to worry about the AI "spamming" them all over the place. If you stick to a 5% increase per turn totally fortified (ie only kicks in on turn 4), then the unit needs to be fortified nearly 25 turns for each square to get a bonus of 100%!

Given that most of my games are over 300-500 turns in, that wouldnt give me long to build up good defensive positions everywhere.... I would have to be careful and chose wisely...

You would either need a HUGE army to "fortify" all your terrain, or plenty of free time....

But even if every tile surrounding a city was "fortified", that would still be simply adding more "realism".... after all... to take the city, you only need to clear one defensive tile... not them all....

Battles, especially against cities, normally involved some (either large or small) scale battles immediatley before the walls, before the siege itself started... this would emulate this nicely.

Actually, thinking about this in practice, it would totally change the way battles are fought - it would make the combat far more like Civ 3 in that you could position weak units all along your borders in defensive posts and even if they dont stop the attack, they would at least give you more warning than having that enemy force suddenly turn up outside your gates without warning!

Battles in Civ 4 are too fluid (with the exception of cities). It is all movement and speed. A blitz wins out every time as there is no capability for developing bottlenecks.

I dont think this would cause the game to go into a "stalement" or purely defensive mode, as the time factor and strength of units (over time) would still make even large bonuses pointless...... you may improve the defensive ability of a tile with your Str 4 unit by 100%, but it can then still be easily wasted by a Druid or Chariot....

Would definatley need a fantasy equiv of the "bomber" or bombard ability though....

one way to consider an area a choke point is if it has impassible terrain or water on two tiles that are opposite adjacent and nondiagonal (i.e. the tiles directly north and south or east and west).

about protecting improvements and city raider/defense promotions, maybe city raider/defense promotions should work on forts and cottages/hamlets/villages/towns, it would make them much easier to defend (though make the elven cottages not receive the bonus, since they already focus on forests anyways and have poor city defense anyways).

I think the choke point concept is different than the zone of control. At least in the sense that many old forts out on the plains were intended to have a very broad zone of control. Sorties to the outside and scurry back to the safety of the fort. So movement within the zone of control and increase to withdrawal within the zone (this is something that pretty much all forts should have for archers and other ranged units (or seige units.)

Protecting the pass between to impassible terrain points seems different and should have a high defensive fortress style coding.

One question though. Why would you prevent a civ from building fortresses side by side? If I want to tediously build my own Great Wall, then why not let me?

maybe because of flavor, but that's a question of taste, but more so because of the AI. If you let it, it *will* spam them everywhere, and, depending on how they are implemented, this could have drawbacks...

for my own games im thinkin im going to just bump up forts to 50%, allow them to be built anywhere, and give them a +1 production and +1 commerce, and hopefully AI's will build them and they'll be useful lol

after i get that done if they use them i may try more things

Let us know how you go with your +50%.....

Anyone mind pondering this idea for a moment?

What if workers and a new "militia" unit (mass draftable) could build a barricade improvement? A barricade prevents more than 1 unit from moving on to that tile, stops anyone who moves onto the tile in their tracks (except heroes and commandos if raider no longer gave that promotion for free). Have the AI place this improvement on borders with other civs.

What I imagine this improvement would do is prevent a single stack of doom from entering and instead force the opposing sides to fight along fronts in a struggle to bring each other's barricades down and unleash the full force. There is no equivalent to the railroad in this game yet so reinforcing positions will be tough if there isn't already a large force in an area waiting or you have The Hub. Nearby cities and fortresses will serve as staging grounds for these forces to protect against fireballs and other spells thrown out to weaken and destroy the other forces.

So right there fortresses become more useful and frontal warfare is encouraged.

Breaking right through these defenses will prove to be difficult because that would require moving one unit onto one tile, survive a turn, and then pillage. Naval warfare will be of greater use if it becomes easier to send units around barricades and on the enemy's shore than to breakthrough the barricades. The Queen of the Line will actually be used.

Militia units would be a great addition, in my opinion I remind you. I picture the people of a city under attack decide that they had enough of feeling helpless without the trained military units around run out with whatever they could use as a weapon and just fight regardless of how hopeless the situation seems. In the game I would see 5 new militia units pop out of a city with one click on the draft button. Each militia unit will only have 1 strength but that will be all they need. Their attacks will first cause the enemy to become tired (negative promotion), then fatigued (negative promotion), then utterly exhausted (negative promotion) from the tension caused by seemingly random attacks by the local militia and population. Then the real military comes in to destroy their crippled foe. I imagine that because militia are not trained, they are disorganized and would actually have a greater chance of surviving in an area full of barricades than anywhere else, making them ideal units to take down enemy barricades (can retreat out of barricades when being attacked in a barricade).

So the idea is a new improvement called a barricade effectively halts the advance of an enormous stack of units from entering without splitting up first, breaking through the barricades, heading for the seas, or sending heroes on a lone mission. Militia units become the essential generic unit for huge wars involving frontlines combat.

I don't really know if this is possible to implement but just think about what if it is possible.

How about restrictiing it to forts? Every single tile surrounding a city in an empire would have around +200% defense, and only 1 unit would be defending the actual city.
Not if it caps out at +75%, and drops by 5% each turn no unit is holding it.

mmmm Interesting but militia usually retreat quickly under pressure from a professional army. So if that idea did exist how would you compensate for this? Also what about golems and other fantasy residents of the mod, seems a few of them would easily bypass barricades.

Not trying to dump on your idea, it just sounds really complicated. Seems like it would raise lots of balance issues. But the thought of slaughtering thousands of civilian militias does sound like fun ;)

How about something along the lines of:

Militia; Strength 1, Move 1, 80% withdrawal ?

mmmm Interesting but militia usually retreat quickly under pressure from a professional army. So if that idea did exist how would you compensate for this? Also what about golems and other fantasy residents of the mod, seems a few of them would easily bypass barricades.


My point is they probably will retreat but they will do their best to build tension in the professional army like guerilla warfare. That stuff can really drive the stress on the army way up and weakens the army overall when the soldiers go into panic and lose their minds. Of course things like golems and the undead would be unaffected.

When I mention barricades I mean any and every form of a barrier against an attack: moats, stakes, walls, magical curses, ditches, anything available. Something in all that should stop a golem and other fantasy residents I would think.

Not trying to dump on your idea, it just sounds really complicated. Seems like it would raise lots of balance issues. But the thought of slaughtering thousands of civilian militias does sound like fun

Yeah I figured the idea would be tough to implement. The toughest part I think would be somehow limiting the amount of units in one tile since that has probably never been implemented in a civ game. I just thought the idea would be fun, especially if we find out later that it can be used. Hey the idea of having units use spells probably seemed pretty crazy and hard to implement at first right? Look where that idea had gone.

How about something along the lines of:

Militia; Strength 1, Move 1, 80% withdrawal ?

I think those would be appropriate values. Militia are weak, disorganized, and too worried about there own survival that they will run long before their unit is entirely destroyed.

Why would it have a withdrawal chance at all ? It's not like they would be likely to regroup and strike again after being dispersed. Or if they did, that could as well be represented by the rising of a new militia unit.

I would say they were planning on running away to begin with. I would assume that is the same idea with catapults having an 80% withdrawal rate cause those should be way too slow to retreat otherwise.

When militia are caught off guard and were the ones being attacked, then the group would be fully dispersed since they probably were not ready to run then.

Would that explanation be reasonable?

>>>I would say they were planning on running away to begin with. I would assume that is the same idea with catapults having an 80% withdrawal rate cause those should be way too slow to retreat otherwise.<<<

That was pretty much my thinking. An abstract way to convey the effect of undisciplined units.

Perhaps a way to better signify a rout rather than a fighting retreat might be to give them a promotion that prevents any unit that withdrew from attacking on the following turn and is considered to have a strength of zero if attacked.

Call it 'Disorganised' perhaps.

...

An idea just occured to me. Would it be interesting and/ or playable for certain units (perhaps most of the tier ones and some tier twos) to have a promotion called 'Green' that gave them a high chance to withdraw, but provided the penalties mentioned above? The promotion would be removed from the unit upon reaching level two or three.

Any unit that required a training camp or some such to build would lose this negative promotion at level two (which should mean their first battle will do the trick in FfH), simulating the arduous training the unit went through in preparing for the rigours of combat, whereas the basic warrior unit would not lose it's status until level three.

And why not made the fort being a unit, having some of the ideas in this thread (too long to read all, sorry), but you can kill it like other unit. In fact, they are not real unit, but the troops inside are.

So worker (or other unit) build (spawn) it, they are just like guardian vines, but they can give skirmish/defense bonus/effect area promotions to units in the stack or something like that

I'm not sure giving like free XP to the ennemy is a good defensive stance :D

The fort as a unit, that is an interesting idea. Give it a high maintenance cost etc. A list of reasonable promotions. Towers etc. The higher its level the more it costs to maintain. Interesting idea, i like it.

On withdrawing, doesnt a unit have to have a free move point to utilize witdraw? So would militia be used mostly to just hold ground?

Ok, I'll now put my thought forward about what I think is best for Forts.

They have a defensive bonus, but the also have to other abilities.
1st) They grant all units stationed there the city garrision ability
2nd) They grant any unit stationed there a +50% to +75% withdraw chance.
3rd) They grant all nice surrounding tiles the ability of +1 movement cost. This would get around the lack of ZOC problem, in that the enermy would find it harder to just stroll past and not get attacked from the fort.

Now, these forts do cost money. For every unit in a fort, it counts as two units for upkeep cost.
The fort themselves also cost a gold unpkeep per turn (for supplies & repairs)

I think this should give a good fort feel, maybe then a fort can be upgraded in some ways once other techs have been learnt.

They have a defensive bonus, but the also have to other abilities.
1st) They grant all units stationed there the city garrision ability
2nd) They grant any unit stationed there a +50% to +75% withdraw chance.
3rd) They grant all nice surrounding tiles the ability of +1 movement cost. This would get around the lack of ZOC problem, in that the enermy would find it harder to just stroll past and not get attacked from the fort.

Now, these forts do cost money. For every unit in a fort, it counts as two units for upkeep cost.
The fort themselves also cost a gold unpkeep per turn (for supplies & repairs)

Sounds good to me.

There is a very good mod for forts (for vanilla civ4) called Realfort, also part of the big Sevomod package. It is very nice, as they are more useful at all techs, and get more so as you advance.

The fort as a unit, that is an interesting idea. Give it a high maintenance cost etc. A list of reasonable promotions. Towers etc. The higher its level the more it costs to maintain. Interesting idea, i like it.
Hmm.
Forts are interesting.
I think this modeling is best. It is complex and would require much SDK work, but I feel that it simulates sieges very accurately.
Treat forts as units. Buildable in cities would be the non-combat "architect". These cost 100 shields and have the "build fort" ability (in anyone's (or no one's) territory) which destroys them.
These forts are immobile. (duh)
Forts are also nearly useless all by themselves, because they start out with strength 0 and always automatically defend the tile (note a fort's defensive capacity starts as 1).
But forts with units in (on) them act like civ3 armies. Whenever a fort is attacked, the strongest 2 (this number is the defensive capacity of a fort, and it changes through various things) of them have their base strength added to the base fort's strength for the battle. If the fort wins the battle then any received damage is divided among the two strong units. The experience is divided among the two defenders. If the fort loses the battle then the two strong units are reduced to 10% hp, the fort's hp is reduced by 1/2, and the defensive capacity of the fort is reduced by 1. The defensive capacity is the number of strong units whose strength is added to its for defense. If the defensive capacity would be reduced to 0, instead the fort itself is destroyed.
Each fort costs one maintenance a turn for each unit in a fort, with double maintenance being paid for each unit above the defensive capacity.
So how does defensive capacity increase?
Various technologies allow your forts to be upgraded. These upgrade can only be done by building another architect and bringing him to the fort. The various upgrades include--
+1 defensive capacity
+1 base fort strength (for forts with small garrison that want to be effective anyways)
+1 level. Yes, forts level up not through combat, but through architects. The available promotions are combat I-V, shock I, cover I, drill I-IV, and sentry I-III.

Technological progression of forts:
Architects allowed with Construction: Basic fort-0 strength, 1 defensive capacity, max level 1
Military strategy: Level max +1
Engineering: Max capacity +1, max base strength +1
Blasting powder: max base strength +2
Machinery: Max capacity +1
Metal casting: Level max +2

Notes--Building a fort and every subsequent upgrade removes the improvement/forest in a square, but in the meantime the square can be reimproved without harming the fort.

--Siege weapons get +100% withdrawal, +100% strength, and +100% collateral damage when attacking forts. This means that they can bombard with impunity and damage the units in it moderately. Otherwise forts would be too hard to take.

--A fort's base strength will heal as though it were a normal unit. The only way to restore a reduced defensive capacity is an engineer however.

--Totally undefended forts are captured, not destroyed.

So how will sieges of forts function?
Example scenario:
My basic fort is defended by 2 warriors, against 4 warriors.
First warrior attacks, loses to terrain advantage.
Next warrior attacks, same thing.
Now both defenders are injured.
3rd warrior attacks, wins the battle. Instead of killing the defender, the fort is destroyed, and the defender is hurt.
4th warrior attacks, killing the other injured warrior.
So instead of both defenders dying, only one does.

But higher level forts really swing the tide of the battle:
8 axemen attacking a 2 capacity, level 1, strength 1 fort, defended by 4 axemen.
First axeman attacks, loses horribly (4 vs 9). 2 defenders injured slightly
Second axeman attacks, loses (4 vs 9). other 2 defenders injured slightly
Third axeman attacks, loses (4 vs ~7). 2 defenders injured
Fourth axeman attacks, loses same way
Fifth axeman attacks, loses (4 vs ~5). 2 defenders injured
Sixth axeman attacks, loses same way.
Seventh axeman attacks, wins (4 vs ~4). 2 defenders nearly killed, fort strength reduced to .5, fort capacity reduced to 1.
Eight axeman attacks, wins (4 vs ~2). 1 defender nearly killed, fort destroyed.

So this fairly low level fort helped half as many units defend without dying, although they all were injured. This also shows the necessity of mass assaults on forts before the units (and fort) have a chance to heal.

This would not be too hard to teach the ai to use IMO, just code when to build forts (easy), how much to garrison in them (easy), and how to attack them (mass assault, not too hard)

Okay, so now I've explained how these forts accurately show sieges, but how do they protect the countryside without a ZoC?
1. Terrain improvements can be built "on" forts, allowing them to protect them during times of war.
2. Attacking a neighboring stack and then retreating into a well defended fortress is a way of attacking with impunity.
3. Mages in fortress can attack nearby units with spells, or even defend a fortress entirely alone through summons. Summoning a skeleton to defend the fortress and then fireballing nearby enemies is very safe and deadly.
3. Two strong forts can between them create a bottleneck where enemies can be attacked at will. Or you can just make giant (and expensive) walls of forts around your border with an enemy.
4. Forts can now be offensive weapons. Bring 10 architects with a small invasion force and set them up outside of their capital. They’ll have to besiege you to get you out of their lands.

*out of energy now*

If the AI can really get taught to use this system well it would be fantastic.

Some more ideas (when you are going for these big SDK changes):

- Architects can be sacrificed to build sentry towers. Immobile units with the sentry promotion. Strength 0, never defend. When an enemy unit moves into a tile with a sentry tower it is destroyed.

- Dwarven Architects. Cost less hammers and start with the mobility I promotion.

- Architects can be sacrificed to build sentry towers. Immobile units with the sentry promotion. Strength 0, never defend. When an enemy unit moves into a tile with a sentry tower it is destroyed.
maybe, i guess we'll add in sentry towers later if the forts proves feasable. I for one just don't want to confuse the architect using ai.
- Dwarven Architects. Cost less hammers and start with the mobility I promotion.
Well i presume we'll do lots of race specific fiddling (such as undermining), but right now I'm just working on the concept and the mechanic.

Some revisions to my earlier post--
--Siege weapons get +100% withdrawal, +100% strength, and +100% collateral damage when attacking forts. This means that they can bombard with impunity and damage the units in it moderately. Otherwise forts would be too hard to take.
I realize that this is kind of difficult to do. Perhaps its simpler to do it this way: Siege weapons next to forts can "bombard fort". This gives the fort a negative promotion that gives -x% (x is the siege weapon's bombard value). this negative promotion is transferred to the combined defensive value (fort strength + strength of strongest unit(s)). The promotion wears off at the end of the defender's next turn, but even so a couple of siege weapons can make a fort much easier to take.

Each fort costs one maintenance a turn for each unit in a fort, with double maintenance being paid for each unit above the defensive capacity.
I'm changing the maintenance system a little:
One maintenance is paid for each fort where the number of units in it is less than or equal to the defensive capacity. Then one maintenance is paid for each unit above the defensive capacity. Summoned units are not counted. (so 5 units in 3 capacity fort= 3 maintenance.) This makes forts more afforable and still encourages you not to have more than the defensive capacity.

I also want to point out that my system shows what happens when the wall is breached (attackers win a battle): every subsequent battle is significantly easier.

--A fort's base strength will heal as though it were a normal unit. The only way to restore a reduced defensive capacity is an engineer however.
I change this again. A fort's defensive capacity will also heal like the hp of a fort/unit. However, it will heal at a slower pace.

Architect's onhand during a battle also have the opportunity to "repair" the fort, restoring its defensive capacity and strength back to pre-battle condition.

there is a mod that does a lot of that already (what Chandrasekhar said, dont have time to read the rest)

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=169009

JFort

ive seen it, but im not sure it addresses the problem of the AI using it effectively

And why not made the fort being a unit, having some of the ideas in this thread (too long to read all, sorry), but you can kill it like other unit. In fact, they are not real unit, but the troops inside are.

So worker (or other unit) build (spawn) it, they are just like guardian vines, but they can give skirmish/defense bonus/effect area promotions to units in the stack or something like that

You just gave me an idea. The Chess mod, lol.

I think that my idea will simulate more accurate sieges, and is actually easier for the ai to use. Harder to code of course.

NOTE: In my above posts I forgot to mention that only one fortress in allowed per square. Just making a note of it.

There is a big risk of getting overcomplicated with forts, and i think we may be running into that situation now.

Forts should be extreamly basic and provide a very simple function that is either very useful, or very NOT, depending on the situation.

Personally a bonus to defence, and a simple ZOC would suffice. Getting the AI to understand it strikes me as odd, since the CIV2 AI understood it fine, what happened to the AI that it stopped finding Forts useful?

Anyway, im just issuing a call for simplicity in forts, if they're to be (and they should) implemented as a reasonable function.
-Qes

Ja, I guess that QES is right. Simple forts like that would be nice.

Turthfully the thing I want to see is the ability for siege weapons to bombard forts and lower their defense. This way a fort can give a lot of defense (which increases with techs), but not be totally untakeable if need be.

My thought on forts is that it should be a lone improvement (so the need to spam them isn't necessary) that gives simple bonuses (complicated isn't usually better and is harder to implement). The purpose of the fort is that it should provide a strongpoint that an enemy can't easily ignore while also serving as a safepoint for your units. You could accomplish this with a ZOC but that may become a problem for AIs, would invite spamming them every 3 tiles, could be exploited depending on how ZOC is implemented, and may be hard to implement.

My suggestion is to give units stationed in forts bonuses and of course a defensive bonus. The defensive bonuses make it harder to attack that single tile. This of course suffers from the CIV4 vanilla problem of units just running past it unless you luck out with a one tile chokepoint. Forts should also increase the healing rate of stationed units or provide some other incentive for units to stop/be stationed at a fort. Temporary bonuses given to units would help forts become a presence that threatens nearby opponents.

Suggestions for fort:
Defensive bonus for units if attacked head on.

Increases HP recovery of units stationed in the fort. (Important as it provides an incentive for military units to rest at a fort. Armies would often rest in a city or a fort, not a random forest or jungle.)

Provides a temporary Haste and/or March for units starting their turn in the fort. (Provides extra mobility for military units in the fort. This lets stationed units threaten the area around it moreso then a random unit on sentry.)

Provides a temporary generic bonuses like Drill, Flanking, or Strength increases for units starting their turn in the fort. (Optional bonus but it helps military units further threaten the area around it. Increased withdraw chance would be the most realistic.)

Provides an increase of ranged spells by one tile for units starting their turn in the fort. (Optional and potentially abusive but I like the idea of a mage stationed in a fort to artillery passing enemies.)

Provides sight into fog of war and/or reveals hidden units. (Very optional. I'm just looking for random bonuses now)

So basically a fort would act like a base of operations where a stack of units could threaten passing enemies while providing a rest area for units if a city isn't available.

i have a idea for forts, allow military employment units (MEU) to settle around citys and so forth that can only produce units and upgrades of the fortess to make it a impregable fortress. So we have two units that can make new things, Settler and MEU.

Pointing out once more that all of those features are in the mod JFort, which I'm sure could be adapted to FFH. Simple and it works, and it is already coded :P

even simpler, JZoC, which just stops enemy movement and does some damage to enemies that enter a forts ZoC
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=181921

The unit idea is a pretty neat idea, especially with an Engineer or Architect unit that built it. But the unit would have to be imune to the Marksman ability.

I think that we are getting a bit complicated though. For upkeep, make it cost 1 (it is a unit, no change to code). Any unit inside will count to upkeep in the standard manner. Why go to any more trouble.

Treat it as a zero strength, capturable unit. For effects, have it grant a bonus to defend to all units that start their turn in the square (similar code exists for tree-top defense spell). Then allow the fort to gain XP (this would require code to give it XP for any battle that took place in that square). That XP could be applied to a limited number of promotions:
- Heal (medical facilities)
- Sentry line of promos
- Increases to defensive benefits
- Rally (mobility or withdraw promotion provided to units starting their turn in the fort)

All this requires only a small amount of coding, but lets just about everything be accomplished that has been discussed. It also alows for the flexibility to use the fort in a variety of ways.

All well and good, but can the AI use it?!?

ya, thats one of my main concerns, AI useability.

one that i think the AI would be able to use amazingly is this one from another thread
i really like the idea of using Forts are a resource gathering building... but maybe for Sentry towers?!

wow thats a good idea! :D since sentry towers are considered resources, why not make forts be the building they need? then AIs would atleast build forts on sentry towers, itd prolly look neat, and protecting it would be useful!!

maybe have it give some promo, like free Sentry promotion for scouts.

a few more like your Dark Eye thing would be fun too, and we'd see forts being used more often! great idea

i made a simple modification to two xml files (bonus infos and improvement infos) and now the AI's build fortresses on sentry towers and guard them :)

super easy fix, makes sentry towers useful when theyre in your borders (normally theyre not since they dont show much you cant already see), and most importantly the AI builds the forts and protects them!

(i also made forts give +100% defense instead of 25%, since 25% is useless!! :p)

Well, using a resource is at least an interesting idea... then you could also use map scripts to place those resources on choke points...

i made a simple modification to two xml files (bonus infos and improvement infos) and now the AI's build fortresses on sentry towers and guard them :)

Do you have those files uploaded somewhere? I'd like to test it.

no, ill upload it in a sec tho

here's it, just a change to forts in improvement infos to make them work sentry towers, and a change in bonus infos to give sentry towers +1 happiness until something more fitting is setup (they need a non-yield bonus to make the AI value it outside of a cities radius).

Thanks!

(they need a non-yield bonus to make the AI value it outside of a cities radius).

Hmm, then how come they value strategic resources outside base radii? (or at least I assume they do.) :hmm:

hmm.. im not sure, but the first try i did they didnt seem to build forts on the towers outside their radius, maybe they had other pressing concerns

ideally theyd work like mana, offering instead something like +2xp to recon or free sntry promotion to recon, or some such

Here's a notion:

You could implement something like a ZOC with something like the old bombard (think how the Wall of fire works).

You can stroll past the fort just fine, but risk getting chopped up by the collateral damage as the defenders snipe at you.

I like +100% though - I've patched mine to that, as +25% is downright silly.

grab my assets.zip thingy in post 129

it does forts at +100% and makes forts improve sentry towers, the AI's build them and guard them then..
try it with dreiches flavour maps for great effect, since that places sentry towers strategically in bottlenecks/chokepoints so the forts there come in handy and the ais use them well :)

How did someone so new to posting find this thread? It's been dead for over a month!

EDIT: Nevermind, found out that Sureshot pointed back at this thread

i mentioned and linked it when he brought up fortresses in balance thread ;) figure its better to put all posts about certain topics together until somethin is done about them

grab my assets.zip thingy in post 129

it does forts at +100% and makes forts improve sentry towers, the AI's build them and guard them then..
try it with dreiches flavour maps for great effect, since that places sentry towers strategically in bottlenecks/chokepoints so the forts there come in handy and the ais use them well :)

Have done, thanks.

I'll see how it goes next game.

( I'll dust off my Python book, too... )

(i also made forts give +100% defense instead of 25%, since 25% is useless!! :p)
yea... you can't even put them on top of rescource improvements- which is just about the only place i would even consider using a 25% bonus

i made a fort-as-feature change set before, though i didnt like how it looked, would need new images for it

I'm revising this old thread as I still would like to see viable Forts back in Civ. I've been thinking of this for a while and I would like to go back to an idea someone had earlier in ths thread: make a fort a unit. Have workers or a new engineer unit be able to create a fort, disbanding the worker for the new 'Fort Unit'. The unit would be zero movement and a minimal strength (1 or 2). Now the Fort can defend itself, but the better ability is that it imparts a mild bonus to defense on any unit sharing its square (+25%).

This would mean that the fort has a maintenace cost already factored in (as a unit) and can be placed on any tile (including a city - many forts were part of city defenses). The unit would also be able to gain experience and promotions. Applicable promotions would be sentry, healing, and a promotion that increased the defense bonus imparted on units stationed in the fort.

I would also suggest a new funtionality for this (and possibly other manufactured units such as catapults) where you can buy XP for the unit. Maybe 2-5 gold per XP point, buying in lots that get you to the next promotional level. This would simulate building on a barbican, tower, hospital, scrying chamber or other functionality onto the fort.

For the fantasy setting, you could also add promotions to allow for summoning chambers (unlocked at the tech that allows a Conjurer). All sorts of interesting things could be made of this.

Again, I strongly support the idea of fort being a unit. And the ability to buy experience points for some units (catapults, forts, etc) is a good idea too.

including a city - many forts were part of city defensesWell, those are called walls or castles, and are in now.
But otherwise I think it's a workable idea.

I sure hope the fort unit also has some kind of promotion that prevent units with the marksman promotion from attacking the fort itself. I don't want to be able to just throw an assassin at a fortress, kill the fortress, and reduce the defense of everyone on that tile.

I wouldn't have a problem with sabotage, but it should have fairly high strength compared with units availible at the same time. So if some macemen went in a weakened it down, one assassain might be able to desroy it later.

Perhaps give them, say, +50% str compared to comprable units, but a -50% str vs seige units.

I wouldn't have a problem with sabotage, but it should have fairly high strength compared with units availible at the same time. So if some macemen went in a weakened it down, one assassain might be able to desroy it later.

Perhaps give them, say, +50% str compared to comprable units, but a -50% str vs seige units.

So maybe a fortress unit would be the only unit in the game with a +% modifier against recon?

sounds like a good idea....

I was going to suggest making the movement highly -ve, but the idea of upgrading the movement to make a "mobile" fortresse seems so bizarre as to seem interesting... certainly would fit in with a fantasy setting.

Made me think of the floating castle in one of the old "Dragon" books....

So maybe a fortress unit would be the only unit in the game with a +% modifier against recon?I actually wasn't thinking of a modifier, just high strength, with a penalty to seige.

Well your post said a +50% str and I may have taken it too literally. So something like fortresses start with 6 strength or something? Assassins can come at the same time that fortresses appear so they may quickly obsolete fortresses if the fortresses are too weak.

The buy XP system could work for a training yard as well. There were other posts I've read where there was interest in a training function. Perhaps the buildings that allow units to be built could also serve a training function by allowing a unit to buy XP if it is in a city with the building at some cost/point.

My proposal for fortresses:
In principle, they are used to increase the defense on tiles of strategic importance, like resources, isthmuses, or mountain passes. They should be able to share a tile with forests and resource improvements. The fortress is buildable with Construction and the defense improves with Engineering. Civs are limited in the number they can build based on the number of cities they have, civics, and/or Stone resources. A tile with a fortress remains under the control of its owner until captured, regardless of the culture rating of the tile.

Since Elves can build some upgrades without removing forests (and camps have always been buildable without removing forests), there is clearly nothing preventing improvements from sharing a tile with forests. Also, since roads or railroads can share a tile with improvements and forests, there shouldn't be anything preventing a fortress from sharing a tile with a fortress and an improvement.

Since AIs already guard strategic resources, perhaps writing the AI to build them won't be terribly difficult.

I actually tried using forts sor the first time in my current game. Stopped though- I find having my border troops on sentry is better/less hassle. I would rather have my troops wake up and attack than sit in one spot waiting to be attacked, when the enemy can just walk past them and start razing.I think at a minimum an *occupied* fort should have the ZOC ability like cities do in RoM.

the problem with sentrying units is that in multiplayer sentry doesnt work :(

I actually tried using forts sor the first time in my current game. Stopped though- I find having my border troops on sentry is better/less hassle. I would rather have my troops wake up and attack than sit in one spot waiting to be attacked, when the enemy can just walk past them and start razing.

:confused: There's no need to choice between sentry or using forts. Units on sentry also get up to +25% defense bonus.

:confused: There's no need to choice between sentry or using forts. Units on sentry also get up to +25% defense bonus.

Maybe I wasn't clear- Twice I had chariots or nomads zip past my garisoned troops in forts to raze a pasture. So I abandoned them and put my troops in better strategic positions on sentry. It is rare they get attacked first so the bonus defense doesn't help much. I was saying it would be cool if they had a zone of control that stopped troops like the cities do in your mod.

edit: another idea would be if they increased visibility to represent better scouted out terrain, if I could see the bad guys farther out, I could react sooner to protect my territory!

Just in case you don't know, forts also stop units in RoM, even when ungarrisoned (to help the AI who doesn't garrison his forts). Though mounted units are only stopped half the time by cities or forts.

Forts giving units inside bonuses would be great IMO. :goodjob: For the record, reason I haven't implemented this in RoM because I'd like the AI to learn to man their forts first.

I would like to see forts have their own cultural borders based on the strength and number of units currently stationed there (only the current garrison matters, it does not simply grow over time). It would also be nice if when a city is built over a fort it starts with walls and a castle, and if a castle could give a garrison-strength borders boost to cities just like the fort would do on its own. Or maybe forts and cities should just be able to coexist on a tile. perhaps a few more types of units could be allowed to build forts, so that civs with scorched-earth can reserve some territory until new settlers can arrive. I've said this all before in other threads, but I thought I would add it here where it is more appropriate and revive a thread after four months.

I would love to see some useful implemention to forts. Both historically and in fantasy they play such a pivitol role in maintaining a border. There are many interesting suggestions throughout this post, and nearly any would be better than they are now. This is probably my biggest item on my FFH wish list.

It looks like this hasn't been noted here yet, but in BTS, Forts will also function as canals, according to Gamespot:

http://www.gamespot.com/pc/strategy/civilizationivbeyondthesword/news.html?sid=6172983

The new fort system also serves as an airfield for air units, as well as a canal system to help link two bodies of water.

I would think that might be removed, as it would take away from some of the use of Pirate Cove.

Batter yet, make the pirate's cove better, like by letting it block a significant region of rival sea trade on its own.

It is generally believed that forts have been switched to the city code, as it is known they can also act as airbases, claim resources, and and give units friendly territory healing rates.

AIRBASES! I remember those things. That would be nice.

maybe pirate cove will just have to be forts that will work in enemy territory.

forts being like cities would be awesome

well it might be possible to make piate coves like bridges so land units can go on them and give them some cool boni like requiting pirate units that are hidden nationality, can board and act like land blockaders. i also like the idea of spawning prate units if any ship gets near one

As much as forts are part of history, I think if they inhibt the game they shouldn't exist. I would prefer a new resource/improvement to an improvemennt i've never used. Perhaps you could creat a school improvement, which increased your city's GGP, or a temple that would make culture. Just my two cents.

Have you heard how forts have been changed for BtS? You will probably find a reason to use them soon. Is it even possible for terrain improvements to increase GGP or culture? (without significant additional coding, which would not be the best use of our programmers time)