I've been reading here quite a while but never found this mentioned. Since ship can enter forts u can built channels with them ;-)

In a recent game I saw a Persian Caravel in a desert fort, which I found quite impressive: Ship in desert?
Anyway in my current game on Earth map I built the Suez by extending my city with a fort and imagine that...sailed right through city and fort to the Red Sea.

Sry, if this has been mentioned before ;-), but I'm impressed ;-)

BTW Screenies to come

Canals can be created with 1 or 2 forts. I have never tested to see if you can make them longer using cities in between, or if the city counts toward the limit. IOW, can you have FORT : FORT : CITY : FORT : FORT? Can you even have FORT : FORT : CITY?

BTW, I believe this is in the online help for Civ4, but don't quote me on that.

The longest channel you can make is fort--city--fort.

Canals can be created with 1 or 2 forts. I have never tested to see if you can make them longer using cities in between, or if the city counts toward the limit. IOW, can you have FORT : FORT : CITY : FORT : FORT? Can you even have FORT : FORT : CITY?

BTW, I believe this is in the online help for Civ4, but don't quote me on that.

No, there has to be a body of water after every two links.

Edit: except fort-city-fort as leventis poined out.

The longest channel you can make is fort--city--fort.

There is no limit to the length of the chain of forts and cities that can be linked together. The only proviso is that every fort or city has to be adjacent to a water tile or an ice tile.

The second spoiler has an illustration of a long chain

Yeah forts do come in handy when you have bored workers on a cold map (in this case I added the forts via worldbuilder after I finished the game).

Note that it will only work if all forts involved are in your cultural borders, or a vassal's cultural borders.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=201852&stc=1&d=1233205239

Or just plain amusing:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=201851&stc=1&d=1233205239

See the recent Strategy Articles on "forts in bts", contains some nifty screenshots on long fort-chains to work around ocean ice ...

The forts chain aslong polar ice is something that could come in very handy.

From the Boff-03 (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=306561) Succession Game.


http://i31.photobucket.com/albums/c379/liquidated/Boff03/1893canalabuseversion2.jpg

Yeah Muscat is an actual Sally city name, but it was so fitting for a Polar Ice Canal that...

http://i30.photobucket.com/albums/c320/rtchin/Boff-03/set10muscatcanal.jpg

Needless to say we were just effing goofing off at that point of the game.

Cheers!
-Liq