USe of Forts

I find myself never using forts. Typically, if I see myself wanting to defend a spot for a prolonged amount of time I will plop a citadel there instead. Are there any benefits to forts that I don't know of?

I don't believe they need to be inside your cultural borders.. so thats one.
+_% defense I imagine as well

I believe the one situation i tried to use it as was when i was india and wanted to defend until my cultural victory. I put some down and ended up getting run out by poor troop placement and had a more difficult time taking back the land because they used my fort against me.

If you've used them effectively before, please share I would love to use them more effectively.

JimboThrasher said:

If you've used them effectively before, please share I would love to use them more effectively.

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I've actually fully built maybe five total in my life. In every case, it was to seal a single-tile mountain pass that constituted the only route to my isolated peninsula, so extremely situational.

Other than that, I use them to destroy food improvements in puppeted cities before I spam trading posts. You just build it on the wheat or what have you for one turn to destroy it. If they were like Civ 4, where you could build a passage between oceans with them, I'd build more probably.

I think I've only ever built one fort, just out of curiousity. Usually, if I need to defend some land that bad, GG's aren't hard to get because you keep getting attacked. then you just throw down a citadel.

It would be nice, maybe an idea for a mod, if forts built in no man's land could clear some fog of war even when unoccupied by a unit. It would act as a watchtower, so that you could have advanced knowledge if a rival was massing troops outside your borders and it would keeps barb camps from forming too close.

Of course other ideas for improving forts are to make them act as canals and advanced air bases like they were in Civ IV.

And actually, I did just think of another situational use for a fort:
When your enemy is big on naval power and has their main coastal cities in a large natural harbor with a narrow mouth, you could effectively fortify and blockade the harbor entrance with a few ships backed up by ranged units in forts on either side of the mouth. A city would be less ideal for the circumstance because melee naval units can take a city but not a fort, so the fort is only vulnerable to land units and ranged naval units. A citadel has to be adjacent to your borders, but a fort doesn't, so you don't need to build a city near there to accomodate a citadel, just build a fort instead.

But again: forts are near useless.

Imagine how you'll feel about forts (and citadels) when you realize they can be built 1 hex outlying cultural border.

edit: er yeh, you said that in the original post, sorry. Well it's pretty brilliant when you can have a stronger opportunity for dominion over as-yet unclaimed lands, and they're solid at choke points.

Never used them once, and I've never seen the AI use them either. They would be good in land unclaimed by cultural boarders. I often thought it would be neat if civs could make claims over pieces of land that their cultural boarders dont yet touch.

Real world example. Portugal claimed most of south america long before their settlers were able to culturally win it over.

It would be rad if you could tell the other civs that this continent is mine, and if you try to settle it, we're going to war!

I have used them to good effect to guard passes (I.e. between mountains) in spaces within cultural borders but outside workable tiles. Mainly this is in high culture cities. This can really bottle up AI attacks and is quite helpful, but admittedly in very specific situations. Usually I put a melee unit in the fort and put a ranged unit behind for support. I also make sure to build roads into the fort to allow for rapid withdrawal of wounded units and reinforcements. Other than that I have found limited use.

I used them effectively in an OCC game as Babylon. I am a very bad Babylonian player, and the OCC was quite hard. I saw myself sandwitched between Carthage and the Aztecs, and it was the Medieval Times for everybody. I had 4 rings of territory around most of my city, so, as my workers had nothing to do, I spammed forts on many 4th rings tiles, just for fun. They ended up being really useful, as I had few troops and they could all survive the double rush. It would be a shame if I lost those X-bows... Unfortunately, I got bored of the game and stopped playing it... I got the tech lead by industrial era, but I find OCC to be very boring.

Chomes99 said:

It would be rad if you could tell the other civs that this continent is mine, and if you try to settle it, we're going to war!

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Why not? The AI civs already do pretty much that, to the human player.

I'll have to keep some of these scenarios in mind. I usually like to play cultural games and I can see the benefits of a fort when you might have a tough time to spawn a GG.

On another note, I think that having a fort culturally give you the tiles around it would be OP obviously, but I like what someone else was saying about staking a claim to land. Might be interesting to have VERY small cultural output by a fort, so maybe after 100 turns you get the tile the fort is on? maybe 100 more for another around it? This would give you sight and intelligence for certain areas as the game progresses and it would reward you for making the investment to hold a fort. Imagine putting a fort on a luxury resource and hold the area, after 100 turns or so you get the lux without having to put a city there.

Anyway, we can dream about forts being useful. But the overall consensus is that they are underwhelming.

JimboThrasher said:

I'll have to keep some of these scenarios in mind. I usually like to play cultural games and I can see the benefits of a fort when you might have a tough time to spawn a GG.

On another note, I think that having a fort culturally give you the tiles around it would be OP obviously, but I like what someone else was saying about staking a claim to land. Might be interesting to have VERY small cultural output by a fort, so maybe after 100 turns you get the tile the fort is on? maybe 100 more for another around it? This would give you sight and intelligence for certain areas as the game progresses and it would reward you for making the investment to hold a fort. Imagine putting a fort on a luxury resource and hold the area, after 100 turns or so you get the lux without having to put a city there.

Anyway, we can dream about forts being useful. But the overall consensus is that they are underwhelming.

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I’m not sure if it was the same in the Civ 4 version of Colonization, but in the original Colonization you could claim land. When you sent out your Scout to explore the map, the land he discovered would be claimed by you (if it wasn’t already claimed by someone else, I believe. It’s been a while since I played it). When you hovered the mouse over the tile, it would tell you what civ had a claim to it.

I only use them if I'm anticipating a fight against an enemy who is superior to me. Also, remember that Citadels give +25% Str to units adjacent to them and forts give extra defense on top of that.

The other benefit of forts over citadels is forts don't remove forests or jungles.

I'll build them between workable tiles, or in unclaimed territory I want to expand towards. If I have a worker that has a few turns waiting for a tech to unlock something, I'll assign forts for busy work. Rarely do I build one for strategic reasons, but in passes and toward super aggreSsive civs I will.

Peng Qi said:

I only use them if I'm anticipating a fight against an enemy who is superior to me. Also, remember that Citadels give +25% Str to units adjacent to them and forts give extra defense on top of that.

The other benefit of forts over citadels is forts don't remove forests or jungles.

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I suppose if you have a citadel up and REALLY need to defend the area you could put forts all the way around the citadel. thats quite an interesting concept that could really help take a city. i might try that, SUPER defense

JimboThrasher said:

I suppose if you have a citadel up and REALLY need to defend the area you could put forts all the way around the citadel. thats quite an interesting concept that could really help take a city. i might try that, SUPER defense

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The best feature of a citadel is that it damages enemy units that finish a turn next to it. Forts give added defense to any unit in them, whether yours or the AI's... so unless there's some hidden mechanic to the game that says otherwise, an enemy unit that finished its turn next to your citadel, but also inside one of your forts, would not take as much damage as it would without the fort being there.

So no, forts all around the citadel would be counterproductive. You want your enemies to get right next to the citadel, and you don't want them also getting defensive protection from a fort while that is happening. It would make sense to put forts directly behind your citadel, to give some defense to covering ranged units, but not in front.

Smokeybear said:

The best feature of a citadel is that it damages enemy units that finish a turn next to it. Forts give added defense to any unit in them, whether yours or the AI's... so unless there's some hidden mechanic to the game that says otherwise, an enemy unit that finished its turn next to your citadel, but also inside one of your forts, would not take as much damage as it would without the fort being there.

So no, forts all around the citadel would be counterproductive. You want your enemies to get right next to the citadel, and you don't want them also getting defensive protection from a fort while that is happening. It would make sense to put forts directly behind your citadel, to give some defense to covering ranged units, but not in front.

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1. The added defense from forts has no effect on citadel damage.
2. Units only gain the benefits of a fort that is in their own territory or neutral territory.
3. If you're actually trying to hold the territory, having supporting units near the citadel is crucial. The AI can easily overwhelm and pillage forts that don't have their flanks secured on higher difficulties.

So yes, you wouldn't want the entire citadel ringed with forts, but you may very well want one or two forts flanking the citadel to shore it up a bit.

Peng Qi said:

I only use them if I'm anticipating a fight against an enemy who is superior to me. Also, remember that Citadels give +25% Str to units adjacent to them and forts give extra defense on top of that.

The other benefit of forts over citadels is forts don't remove forests or jungles.

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Nitpick alert:
Citadels do not give +25% Str to units adjacent to them.
Also, I believe they DO remove forests & jungle.

Jaybe said:

Nitpick alert:
Citadels do not give +25% Str to units adjacent to them.
Also, I believe they DO remove forests & jungle.

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Forts do not remove forests or jungles. Citadels do. Hence not removing forests and jungle being a benefit of forts over citadels.

However you're right about adjacent tiles. Could have sworn it gave like a 25% boost.

I've built two ever. There was maybe a 15 tile wide continent with just myself and the aztecs on it. At its fattest point, there was a 13 tile wide mountain range, with one tile pass on either end. I protected either end, and slaughtered the Aztec forces every time they DOW'd me. Poor Monty...

Adjuvant said:

Imagine how you'll feel about forts (and citadels) when you realize they can be built 1 hex outlying cultural border.

edit: er yeh, you said that in the original post, sorry. Well it's pretty brilliant when you can have a stronger opportunity for dominion over as-yet unclaimed lands, and they're solid at choke points.

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I did some experimenting tonight. Workers can only build forts inside or adjacent to your cultural borders. Legions, Roman or from Militaristic city-states, can build them ANYWHERE!

Peng Qi said:

So yes, you wouldn't want the entire citadel ringed with forts, but you may very well want one or two forts flanking the citadel to shore it up a bit.

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1 & 2 are news to me, tooltips are pretty skimpy on hard facts, sadly. As for 3 and your last comment, that's pretty much what I was trying to recommend.