Forts and castles!

I currently never bother building forts, they seem a waste of space to me, they only provide a defensive bonus, so if the enemy can just by pass/sidestep a fort they will. and 99% of the time this is the case. During medieval times forst and castles were big features, towns and cities formed around them or they were built in hugely strategic places. Units operating out of them were fighting to defend their realm, they didn't take up huge space.

I think forts should be much stronger than they are now. To do this I would give units attacking from a fort a bonus, and I would allow forts to be built in tiles with other improvements. This way you could build a fort to defend a mining community, you could also build forts in specific tiles along borders to defend them. You would only need a fort ever 3 tiles as each fort would aid defence of the tiles either side (in certain circumstances cavalry/mounted/specialist units could cover 2 tiles and so a fort would protect 5 tiles).

Walls, forts and castles should give archers huge bonuses, maybe this would over power them so I can understand it not being implemented, but I still think that an archer defending a walled city against musket men would stand a chance. After all, arrows can be fired in an aimed arc over a wall, gun fire is impossible to aim in anything but a straight line.

Once in the modern era, forts should serve a different purpose, requiring a different tile improvement, this time consuming the tile. Modern era forts should allow unit training, a mountainous fort would improve/train something like the guerilla upgrade, coastal forts could train ocean/sea related upgrades, airbases could train paradrops upgrade, military bases could become miniature cities, with only the capability to build military units. This ability would disappear from cities. These military bases would consume local resources. In civ IV it would be the hammers hammers in the surrounding area that are consumed.

I have no problem with forts destroying or prohibiting other tile improvements. I like that BTS apparently (because I don't have it) allows you to base aircraft and naval units in forts. I think the thing that forts should have that would make them useful is a ZOC, this would actually allow them to control your border regions and force attackers to confront them instead of just marching around (or even between) them.

the use of forts i find is connecting different seas and oceans, saving time that my ships use to get from point a to point b. also i put them on my borders and station troops there to protect against barbs and rival civilizations. Castles are part of a quest and give d-fense bonus.

They can be very useful as canals i agree. I believe that the old Zone of Control (or something like it) could be implemented to make them worthwhile to build. Fortifications were major structures that could project power and secure areas. As it stands, forts are only seldom useful, as on a land bridge.

What if the ZOC gave you cultural control and allowed you to build improvements? Then, you could use them as colonies and get resources without the hassle of a city.

How about this?
Fort (Improvement)
-Can be built outside Cultural Borders
-Extends Civilization's Culture around Fort (depends on number of units, civics, etc)
-Can act as Canal
-Provides 50% defensive bonus to all units within (could be replaced with cultural defense)
-Provides 25% attack bonus to all units within (could be replaced with cultural defense)
-Can be upgraded to City (would cost a TON!)

I don't know about upgrading to a city...

But the colony idea i like. It could be useful for grabbing that resource in a terrible location, where that city would never get off the ground, like the random oil in the middle of the ice.

No city upgrades and no cultural presence. Let's not go nuts. A defensive bonus, a zoc to control/defend your borders, canal/airbase, and a +10% healing rate for units. That should make them worth building.

bestbrian said:

No city upgrades and no cultural presence. Let's not go nuts. A defensive bonus, a zoc to control/defend your borders, canal/airbase, and a +10% healing rate for units. That should make them worth building.

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You're talking about something in the direction of combining forts with Civ III colonies, really.

I'm unsure about them. I think they distract from the focus on cities in a bad way, and anything that does both fort and colony functions should be upgradeable to a city eventually; it should really be a prot-city rather than an indepedent thing, possibly even with a penalty or a finite lifespan if not upgraded. [ "Note: next time we try to colonise somewhere, do not send celibate monks." ]

rysmiel said:

You're talking about something in the direction of combining forts with Civ III colonies, really.

I'm unsure about them. I think they distract from the focus on cities in a bad way, and anything that does both fort and colony functions should be upgradeable to a city eventually; it should really be a prot-city rather than an indepedent thing, possibly even with a penalty or a finite lifespan if not upgraded. [ "Note: next time we try to colonise somewhere, do not send celibate monks." ]

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Never played Civ III so I can't comment on that. However, the whole point of forts is to control a border region and keep the AI from just popping in and pillaging. A fort with a zoc allows units in them to control the border. They have nothing to do with being/becoming cities; that's why I don't think they should have culture or be able to hook up resources. Just make them relevant to be what they should be - forts.

bestbrian said:

Never played Civ III so I can't comment on that. However, the whole point of forts is to control a border region and keep the AI from just popping in and pillaging. A fort with a zoc allows units in them to control the border. They have nothing to do with being/becoming cities; that's why I don't think they should have culture or be able to hook up resources. Just make them relevant to be what they should be - forts.

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I suppose coming from the perspective of primarily a Civ III player, where Civ IV seems to be ridiculously small-scale in terms of the number of cities most people seem to think are reasonable for an empire, is shaping my thinking here; I'm quite used to expecting to expand enough to have a couple of hundred cities by industrial times, and one more for border control at a particular point does not strike me as a big deal. [ Yes, that takes a heck of a lot of micromanagement. That's much of the fun of it. ]

rysmiel said:

I suppose coming from the perspective of primarily a Civ III player, where Civ IV seems to be ridiculously small-scale in terms of the number of cities most people seem to think are reasonable for an empire, is shaping my thinking here; I'm quite used to expecting to expand enough to have a couple of hundred cities by industrial times, and one more for border control at a particular point does not strike me as a big deal. [ Yes, that takes a heck of a lot of micromanagement. That's much of the fun of it. ]

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I used to rex and cover the world with cities in Civ II, but I also built useful forts then too.

I agree about the city upgrade thing, now that I think about it. However, a culture zone (IMO) is equal to a zone of control, so why not? Just make it a 1 tile radius, so that way a fort would be like:

XXX
XFX
XXX

where X is that Civ's culture. However, a fort could be captured in the event of war with no anarchy, nothing; just replacement of one Civ's culture with another.

In a real life/historical sense, a "fort" in civ is best represented by a fortified stack of units on the outskirts of your cultural borders, no improvement necessary really. What is a fort other than a fortified garrison of troops in a strategic location? Giving a "fort improvement" cultural control of 9 tiles would turn it into a colony-like feature of civ iii days, not what a fort really should be. Forts really don't emit "culture", just simply a military presence in the area. At most it should get the single tile it occupies for healing purposes. I don't think they need to be changed from what they are in BTS.
Bringing back colonies is another issue, which there may be a place for IMO, as city maintenance makes settling full blown cities to grab distant resources tough. Not that I liked them in civ iii tho.

I just feel that in most cases forts are left alone, they only provide a defensive bonus and 9/10 the enemy can just bypass them and move onto a city. If they gave an attack bonus, or if morale was implemented and they provided an increase to morale, or if armies required supplies and forts allowed nearby areas to be farmed then this would solve the problem. At the minute the enemy can just take the city. Perhaps my tactics aren't that great, perhaps I should build forts next to resources that I am harvesting and station troops there to watch over the resource, if they move onto the tile then they will have reduced defence as it will be out in the open. I just feel in real life forts were a much bigger deal.

In a sense, they do provide an "attack bonus" by allowing the fortified troops to decide where the battle will take place. A fort in "real life" would certainly not translate into an actual percentage attack bonus in a civ game against a different tile. Again, forts were "invented" to provide a military presence in an area, a safe place to garrison troops. Because Civ IV allows troops to sit on any tile for any amount of time (and "fortify" at that!), actual fort structures can be seen as being out of the scope of the series, civ is more of the bigger picture.

But you CAN build forts in civ as well as just fortifying, and in real life they would provide an increase in morale meaning troops attacking from there would be better than the enemy who is trudging through unfamiliar enemy territory. I think of fortifying as digging in, maybe some simple base made of spikes from cut down trees or something. But a full on castle like Neuschwanstein its not like the Civ 4 castles in a city, it has a little village nearby but that probably came after the castle.

I agree with you all that forts are pretty stupid in civ 4 one possibility would be that if all your city's are captured your civilization can still fight on if you have units fully fortified in forts. possibly some guerilla civic enabling this option. Also forts should have attack and defense bonuses along with healing bonuses. ALso forts should decrease the chance of local citys flipping encouriging players to build forts next to borders more
Maybe you could combine forts with other improvements but definently no forts acting as colonies or culture border beyond one square.

That was never what I intended. All I ever wanted was a fort that didn't make the entire useless for something else. This way you can build a fort to really defend resources.

Also ranged units should receive extra defensive bonuses in forts, I mean can't they fire from crenellations.

Scilly_guy said:

Also ranged units should receive extra defensive bonuses in forts, I mean can't they fire from crenellations.

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I agree, are you sure "city defense" bonuses dont apply to forts aswell? If they don't, they probably should IMO