Coastal Fortresses

[Panda]

As huge fleets of Persian Ironclads curently are bombarding the railroads around my cities that have Coastal Fortresses, I was wondering -

do these things actually work?

I checked each Ironclad (11 in total) and they all had full HP. Considering they have a bombardment range of 1, they had to come right next to the city, in other words, into the range of the Coastal Fortress.

I'm playing with PTW 1.14, and as I recall earlier versions of vanilla Civ3 had this bug, I wanted to ask abpout your opinions on CFs.

 

[Ville]

Someone had it working. Don't remember who

 

[Ralph-x]

Dont they only work when they bombard the city? The AI always goes for pointless tiles around citys, and I never build costal fortresses.

 

[Paalikles]

I've never seen them work. It surprises me that they do not work in your situation though, as I assumed they would work that way. I have a feeling that Ralph X has a point

 

[Gote]

I never noticed any kind of artillery, cannon and so forth to fire automatically at any enemy ship - they are absolutely useless in my opinion, even if used in battle.... There are some nations, who can´t get enough of those ironclads-if I have such a sinister fiend in my vincinity, I prefer to position cruisers or battleships in every second or thrid citiy and "use" them on demand... this can annoy an enemy more then onemight image, especially if thy continue to built ironclads (In one game, only Abe Lincoln was left equal enemy, and he sent myriads of ironsclands to my shore-wasted! He lost dozens of them and finally the lead of the game-I won... but only by domination)

Gote
_________________________________________________
"A snarl of defiance comes from above as you face death itself in form of 999 hellhounds..."

 

[taper]

I've been bombed by coastal forts before, usually as I was passing by an enemy city. I never build them though, as their ships never get close enough to do damage.

@Gote
Welcome to CFC, but I have to disagree with your view of artillery. When it comes time to attack cities, they are absolutely neccessary. When there's 10 mech infantry fortified in a city, bringing them all down to 1 hp makes a huge difference.

 

[Gen]

Coastal Fortresses do work, but their usefulness is limited. They basically work like an unit with ZOC, that means they open fire only at passing by ships (from square IN range of fortress to other square IN range). If an enemy ship comes close to city, bombards and goes away (that is what Persians do), it is completely safe from fortress defensive fire.

 

[farting bob]

i think your right gen, they have to end the turn in the tile, not just pass through it, although ive never noticed myself, but then in one of my current games im doing a all future ech world war, with every civ having hundreds of MA's etc. (its taking ages for hem to build a respectable army, and i dont want to use all this build up, litrally weeks, just for a attack that would whipe them out in 6 turns. maybe i should have played on a higher level...) and naval warfare is playing a big part in romans army as far as i see, so ill let you know.....

 

[Gote]

Originally posted by taper
I've been bombed by coastal forts before, usually as I was passing by an enemy city. I never build them though, as their ships never get close enough to do damage.

@Gote
Welcome to CFC, but I have to disagree with your view of artillery. When it comes time to attack cities, they are absolutely neccessary. When there's 10 mech infantry fortified in a city, bringing them all down to 1 hp makes a huge difference.

Mmmmhh, interesting, I never did this before... Normally, I try to crush my enemies before they have 10 mech inf in the city - else I use bomber/ships for this dirty job. But it´s true, I a little wimpy: If I wandered around with cannons and my enemy has already large numbers of mech inf, I would have had resigned before, I guess..

Gote

 

[Gen]

Actually they don't have to end their turn in that tile, farting bob, moving from one tile to another one is enough as long as both tiles are in range or fortress (which is only 1 BTW ). Anyway, computer civs never are stupid enough to do that... they know fortress is there.

 

[Panda]

Thanks for the answers.

 

[Padma]

Gen is right. The ship must pass from one tile in range to another tile in range. And the AI is apparantly smart enough to not do that. Which makes the Coastal Fortress one of the most useless buildings in the game, IMO.

 

[sealman]

can you increase the "range" of the fortresses to make them a little more useful.

 

[Paalikles]

I suppose it must not have been Firaxis intention to render the fortress "useless". How can you be sure that the AI has knowledge of fortresses - is it the "AI knows all map-civ3 feature" that's streching out to include city improvement knowledge as well?? (pardon my french)

Edit:
@Sealman: I think tampering with the editor would give you an answer to your question. I am not sure though, as I have never had the time to explore the aspects of it.

 

[sealman]

paalikles: true, the editor may give me the answer but I am not allowed to look until Easter

 

[SewerStarFish]

I build the CF only at the mouth of narrows where enemy ships are likely to pass. Also when my OCD requires me to have every building in the city - but it's one of the last to be built.