Coastal Fortress patch?

[Food Eater Lad]

Is there a patch that will upgrade the coastal fortress? As of now its pretty much usless?

 

[Mathias]

What more do you want from a cheap improvement with no maintenance?

 

[Tomoyo]

+50% defense in city, 6 bombard defense, doubles effect with wonder?

 

[Stylesjl]

Sea Bombard defense, Sea Zone of control

1 mentainence

Useless but i build 'em anyway

 

[thetrooper]

I have built exactly one coastal fortress in my entire civ career, my first game. I really see no point in building them.

 

[.Shane.]

Sorry, still learning the ropes here...

Why are they considered useless? Do they provide defense from attacks that never occur?

 

[oldStatesman]

Sorry, still learning the ropes here...

Why are they considered useless? Do they provide defense from attacks that never occur?

The bomardment feature is not useful in practice - the AI will not move from one controlled square to the next activating the ZOC. It will only move into a ZOC controled square from a non-ZOC square then back out again rendering the guns useless. So it does act as detterent - but not an active one.

 

[HellboundHeathcliff]

In C3C it is always the first thing that gets destroyed. Double useless. I have seen them fire in VC3 or PTW though.

 

[TomOC]

In C3C it is always the first thing that gets destroyed.

Yep... had a city being constantly bombarded. Decided to build a coastal fortress for the first time since getting C3C... it was destroyed by the third bombardment.

They are a real waste of time!

 

[Theoden]

They only act as a shield for more valuable improvements as they are destroyed first. But it is definately not worth the cost unless you can place in a city with a location like Gibraltar.

 

[wombatoftruth]

In the Napoleonic Europe scenario they come in handy if you have control of Denmark and Russia tries to get its fleet out of the Baltic Sea, as the ships will have to pass through connecting ZOC squares. On Sid, I saw about half of a stack of 20 Russian Ships of the Line take damage before they made it to the North Sea. It did help even up the odds in the ensuing naval battle quite a bit.

But, aside from that singularly unique geo-political situation, I'd say they're pretty useless. And yet I still build them.

 

[Pounder]

Usually destroyed by first naval bombardment, but sometimes that saves you a hit point that may save a unit. Can be important to possibly save a unit, especially on the harder levels. Then again maybe you would be better off building another unit with those shield, but that adds maintenance, give and take.

On the coast I have bigger issues with artillary, as they do not wake when put on sentry when a naval unit passes by, only land units will wake them. As well it would be nice if artillary had defensive bombard against naval units.

 

[NP300]

Well, you could add a "Coastal fortifications" imporvement. And/or you could make the coastal fortress stronger. You coulkd increase its bombard, naval defense and such.

But, as others have said, they rarely seem to be useful.