Super Forts

1. When a fort is built in an unowned plot it gives the building player cultural control over the plot it is built in.

2. If you move a unit into an unowned fort, then you will gain cultural control of the fort.

3. If you move a military unit into an enemy fort, then you will gain cultural control over the fort.

4. If another player has more culture in your fort’s plot than you, then the fort will culture flip if you have no defenders. Forts will never flip as long as you have a defender in the fort.

5. Forts can be bombarded to reduce their defenses just like cities. Their defense will also be “repaired” over time like cities. [Edit: As of Version 1.00, whether an improvement is bombardable or not is controlled by an XML tag. Any improvement with a defense can be bombarded if this XML tag is set true, and not just forts.]

6. When you control a fort your culture borders may extend to the plots around it if they are within the range specified by the <iCultureRange> XML tag. Your ownership of the plots around the fort is calculated in the same manner as plots around cities: if more than one player has a city/fort within range of a plot then the one that has the most culture in the plot owns it.

<iCulture> - the amount of added each turn to the plot the improvement is in for the owner. i.e. forts have <iCulture>2</iCulture> so each turn the owner of a plot with a fort will get 2 culture added to the plot from the fort.

<iCultureRange> - Determines the range of an improvement's cultural influence. If the improvement acts as a city, then this is the range of its borders. An improvement with iCulture will add culture to all plots within its range, but only one that ActsAsCity will extend borders.

<iVisibilityChange> - increases vision range similar to the &#8220;sentry&#8221; promotion, any unit in a plot with this improvement will be able to see this much farther while in the plot.

<iSeeFrom> - this tag influences how far you can see from a plot. A high enough &#8220;see from&#8221; value allows units to &#8220;see through&#8221; terrain/forests/hills to the plots behind them. For example, this is the way units are able to see farther from a hill in the unmodded game.

<bBombardable> - Now any improvement can be bombardable or not. An improvement will be bombardable if this is set to 1, and it has a defense modifier.

<bUpgradeRequiresFortify> - Make improvements upgrade by fortify-ing their plot with units instead of being worked by a city. Note: No improvements currently have this active in the XML.

<iUnique> - This is the range within which you cannot build another of this improvement.

Thanks to new fort rule #1 you will now be able to get cultural borders in the plot a fort is built in even outside your normal borders. This means if you build a fort on a resource outside your borders, then you will gain that resource! (provided it is connected by road or sea to your cities) This is the main use I see for this new rule.

There&#8217;s not much to rule #2. If there is a fort in a plot with no culture border then move a unit into it and it is yours! Any unit that can move into the fort will work for this, so even a worker, missionary, or spy could do it.

Please note the differences between rules #2 and #3. Rule #2 is for unowned forts and #3 is for forts in an enemy&#8217;s culture borders. If you move a unit that &#8220;can fight&#8221; into an enemy fort, then you gain control of that plot. One great use for this would be to establish a place in enemy territory for your units to heal or launch air strikes from.

With new fort rule #4, I have ensured that you aren&#8217;t going to be pushed out of your forts the moment another player has more culture in the plot than you. Thus, you can hold forts deep in enemy territory or surrounded by another player&#8217;s culture. Basically it is a simplified city revolt. The way I imagine forts, if you are in control of a fort then there aren&#8217;t civilians from other cultures inside the fort with you that could rise up and kick your soldiers out. It would take military action to destroy or force your troops out. However, if you have no troops in a fort and the surrounding populace is mostly a different culture than your own, then they could easily take control of the fort.

[Edit: As of Version 1.00, whether an improvement is bombardable or not is controlled by an XML tag. Any improvement with a defense can be bombarded if this XML tag is set true, and not just forts.] Finally, yes you can now bombard forts to reduce their defenses just like a city thanks to rule #5. With all the new advantages I have given forts in this mod I think they would be unfair without this way to overcome them. It seems to work great in all the tests I have done, but please let me know if you see anything weird happen while you are bombarding with this mod. Forts will slowly regain their defense bonus just like a city does after bombardment. If you are in range to bombard multiple forts, then the fort with the least damage will be bombarded. If you are in range to bombard a city and fort(s), then the city will always be chosen until it has no defense to bombard.



Rule #6 was added in version 1.00. Forts extend borders to all plots within a range specified in the XML with <iCultureRange>. This border extension is done in the same manner as cities, which means big fat cross (BFC) style. If a plot is within range of more than one player's fort or city, then the owner is whichever player has more culture in the plot. There is no difference in the calculation between cities and forts. Improvements besides forts need iCulture to be greater than 0 for iCultureRange to do anything, but a fort can still extend borders if iCulture is set to 0 (the fort will just not add culture to the plots each turn). iCultureRange is set to 1 for forts in the downloadable version, but the screenshot in the spoiler below shows an example of iCultureRange set to 2.

The <iCulture> tag allows improvements to influence the culture of the plot they are in. Keep in mind that this in no way affects the in your cities. This is the just the culture of the plot itself which is used to determine cultural borders. Every turn, the improvement will add the amount of culture points specified in the tag for whoever owns the plot. Thus, this makes it a little harder for the plot to switch to another culture. If no one owns the plot then no one gets culture from the improvement. I think it makes sense that if your civilization went through the effort of building something in a plot, then that place would become more culturally significant to your civilization and your people would not let it go to another civilization as easily as an unimproved plot. [Should be 0 or a positive number]

<iCultureRange> determines the range of an improvement's cultural influence, and is heavily related to iCulture. For the rest of this paragraph I shall use X to refer to the number that iCulture is set to. What iCultureRange does for forts was covered earlier, but iCultureRange can be used with any improvement. If an improvement does not have this tag or has it set to 0, then they only add X culture to their own plot. An improvement with iCultureRange=1 will add X to their own plot and all adjacent plots. When iCultureRange is greater than 1 things get more interesting. The BFC (big fat cross) style that cities use for their borders is used to determine if a plot is in range of an improvement. An improvement with iCultureRange=2 will add 2X to their own plot and adjacent plots, and X to all plots at a distance of 2. An improvement with iCultureRange=3 will add 3X to their own plot and adjacent plots, 2X to plots at a distance of 2, and X to plots at a distance of 3. And so on... [Should be 0 or a positive number]

<iVisibilityChange> and <iSeeFrom> both influence your units&#8217; vision when in a plot with an improvement with these tags. I was thinking of creating a watchtower improvement for a mod I am planning to help see through the &#8220;fog&#8221; near your borders, but I realized it would be better to just make this a part of forts. You can use it for other improvements if you want, but forts were the only one I wanted it for. Now the towers of your fort actually act like a tower, and if you put a unit in the fort they can better see the land around them. iVisibilityChange changes your unit&#8217;s vision range and iSeeFrom changes what they will be able to &#8220;see through&#8221; or over. The attached thumbnails below contains some screen shots of what different forts can &#8220;see through.&#8221; In the examples iVisibilityChange=2 and iSeeFrom=1. [Should be 0 or a positive number]

<iUnique> - As mentioned elsewhere you cannot build two of the same improvement within this range. The range is a normal square instead of a BFC (Big Fat Cross). Also, this currently does not check the improvement's upgrades, so if you used this tag on a village it might not have the desired effect due to the village upgrading to something else.[Should be 0 or a positive number]

The <bBombardable> tag determines if an improvement can be (surprise! surprise!) bombarded to reduce its defenses. However, one other thing is also required for an improvement to be bombardable. The improvement must have a defense modifier or there will be no defense to bombard. [0=off 1(or other numbers)=on]

<bUpgradeRequiresFortify> makes so upgrade progress (on an improvement that can be upgraded) is made only when the the improvement's plot has units that are fortifying. Thus, if this is set the improvement will only upgrade if its plot is fortified for enough turns. A city working the improvement's plot will not help upgrade an improvement with this set, so don't set this if you want improvements that upgrade the original way. The units fortifying the plot must belong to the owner of the plot. If the plot is unowned or owned by another player, then fortifying your units there will not help with the upgrade progress. Also, having multiple units fortify the plot will not speed up the upgrade. [0=off 1(or other numbers)=on]

• Mod the AI to better build forts under the new rules - Added in v0.91
• Add in messages for when a fort is captured or flips - Added in v1.00
• Add in XML tag that determines range of a fort's culture borders - Added in v1.00
• Add in XML tag that makes so upgrading requires garrisoned/fortified units - Added in v1.00
• Add XML tag to control if an improvement is bombardable or not - Added in v1.00
• Fix a bug with sight/vision when improvements or cities are pillaged - Fixed in v1.00
• Mod the AI to better defend and attack forts under the new rules - AI improved in v1.01
• Mod the text that is displayed for improvements that require fortified units to upgrade - Added in v1.01
• Make fort&#8217;s defense bonus visible like a city&#8217;s? - Dropped
• Change bombard to allow you to select the target plot instead of selecting for you? - Dropped
• Expose my new functions to python if there is a demand for that? - Dropped
• Continue improving the AI's defense and offense with forts - Hopefully all done with v1.02
• Comment the code better to make it easier to merge - Improved the commenting in v1.02
• Update the Civilopedia - Completed in v1.03
• Prevent AI workers from replacing forts that are outside the range of any city - v1.03
• Make some final AI fort defense tweaks - v1.03
• Fix a bug with automated workboats - v1.10
• Make so two different players cannot have workers building a fort on the same plot - v1.10
• Add in <iUnique> tag to control how closely together the same improvement can be built - v1.10
• Make some internal details accessible through GlobalDefines.xml - v1.10
• Slightly improve efficiency by changing the culture range forts array to short instead of int - v1.10
• Make some adjustments so forts are not overused by the AI or humans - v1.10
• Adjust the AI so forts won't be so over-defended in the late game - v1.11
• Improve AI/automated worker logic to put in less effort to build forts outside borders on resources the player already has - v1.11
• Rewrite some of the AI bombard code so that it can be more easily merged with mods that make changes to the same section of code - v1.11
• Add keywords to my code comments to help mergers - v1.11
• Make so the iUnique tag will work with improvements that upgrade - v1.12