Does anyone use forts?

[senwiz]

Very rarely do I use them. And usually only to bottleneck up another civ. They aren't worthless, but darn close to it.

I usually find a nice defensible bottleneck on the map and build a few cities there. The cultural border expansion should keep most intruders out. THe fort just helps to solidfy that, just in case.

 

[Pantastic]

I tend to build my cities so that there might be small gaps between the fat crosses. I try place my cities in positions where there are extra resources and/or fresh water available. I don't build cities just to fill the gaps. Do you think I am wasting land space here? I also usually build lots of culture, so the borderline is often relatively far away.

Small gaps between fat crosses is not neccesarily bad, though if most cities have gaps then you probably are wasting land The thing is that a borderline far away from your cities is something that generally only happens on lower levels, because on higher levels the AI will crowd you in very early on.

 

[JaniSpetke]

Small gaps between fat crosses is not neccesarily bad, though if most cities have gaps then you probably are wasting land The thing is that a borderline far away from your cities is something that generally only happens on lower levels, because on higher levels the AI will crowd you in very early on.

By saying "relatively far away" I mean the borderline is approx. three spaces away from the city.
You're right that AI usually builds it's cities wherever he finds a reasonable place. One of my favorite tactics is to raze one or two enemy border cities.
Especially when I am attacked by neighbouring country, I usually defend few turns so the enemy loses it's best edge and then plot my counter-attack. By razing the enemy border cities I let my own cities grow and expand borderline further.
At certain point of the game I don't see any real usage by capturing cities and thus expanding territory. It usually takes ages to get captured cities back to business and production. I'd rather develop my existing cities.

 

[gunkulator]

I built my first fort yesterday in a 1 tile bottleneck between me and my neighbor. The tiles on either side of the bottleneck were all desert so no danger of an AI city showing up to envelop the fort with culture.

 

[aviator99_uk]

A general theme seems to be; Forts could be useful if they could be built outside your culture boundary in nutral territory.

One reason why I would want to do that is to stop a cultural civ building a city (in a useless blue circle) right on my boundary, (so place a fort there), and me loosing tiles if I'm not a cultural civ also, which really p***es me off (so I always play a cultural civ or an islands map).

Playing a non cultural civ is such a handicap to expand cultural boundaries in the early stages that all forts would be built within the fat cross if not the small square which seems pointless unless its a map with specific chokepoints, which is hardly the norm.

But if you can build a fort outside your culture what's to stop a civ building a city next to the fort and placing it inside its culture boundary......

But if you allow forts to have their own cultural boundary then either you or the AI is just going to cover the world with forts from one city and get a domination victory 2000BC....

So forts can only be built inside your own cultural boundaries and if you are a non cultural civ then that means you are unlikely to want to use them much, and if you are a cultural civ then you probably don't need to.

In short they just don't seem to be much use....

 

[Penguin?]

if forts were given a ZOC, perhaps exploits could be used by rushing workers off at the start of the game, and setting up forts on the valuable rescources. (i.e expanding ur territory/empre without paying the maintenance cost of a city.) Or maybe this would be a good thing?
P

 

[Krupo]

Forts are worthless. They should change them to minefields.

Minefields should remove all movement points from enemy units and deal a one-time 25%-50% damage (maybe even collateral damage).
It aids your defense, can only be within your own cultural borders, doesn't require ZoC.
This shouldn't be too hard to develop. When a worker creates a minefield, an invisible unit (like a spy) with 0 movement points should be put on top of that tile.

Whoa, one or the other. Minefields are an obstacle, but that idea doesn't reflect how armies deal with them in real life.

Most of the time minesweeping detachments clear a path through the field before units proceed - so slowing down units with a move penalty similar to mountains may make sense - going along single file obviously sucks. If you want to extend the single-file column weakness, you could argue for a defense penalty.

Conversely, you could let the unit rush through, and take massive damage (25-50% is definitely massive) - but that would happen with no move penalty.

Also, no need for the unit to be invisible - mine fields, from what I understand, are usually pretty obvious - depends, of course, on how much effort is put into building the minefield, though.

 

[scooter]

If you were allowed to build forts ALONG WITH cottages/farms instead of replacing them, then I might actually build them now and then.

 

[rilke]

It's funny cause in civ II forts were really good and also added some kind of coolness to the game, those borders up in the hills with forts all over the place blah blah. You know. And now they're useless. Kind of miss ZOC actually. Had many points.

 

[scooter]

It's funny cause in civ II forts were really good and also added some kind of coolness to the game, those borders up in the hills with forts all over the place blah blah. You know. And now they're useless. Kind of miss ZOC actually. Had many points.

It used to crack me up when the AI would build them all over the place, especially when they used to build the "Great Wall" on the North and South Pole

 

[TheJopa]

I liked fact that civ3 forts could be upgraded with barricades to hamper enemy movement and further increase their defense bonus. I wonder if anyone could put this in mod- upfradeable fortresses, with following upgrades:
Barricades- Slows down enemy in adjecent squares, increases defense by +25%
Radar station- Increases air superiority efficency by 50%, additional first strikes for garrisoned troops, +2 visibility
Airbase- allows planes to land in fort
Flak cannons or SAMs- anti-aircraft upgrades
Resupply stations- earliest ugrade, increases healing for units inside etc.

 

[interwurm]

I liked fact that civ3 forts could be upgraded with barricades to hamper enemy movement and further increase their defense bonus. I wonder if anyone could put this in mod- upfradeable fortresses, with following upgrades:
Barricades- Slows down enemy in adjecent squares, increases defense by +25%
Radar station- Increases air superiority efficency by 50%, additional first strikes for garrisoned troops, +2 visibility
Airbase- allows planes to land in fort
Flak cannons or SAMs- anti-aircraft upgrades
Resupply stations- earliest ugrade, increases healing for units inside etc.

Cool idea, but a mod for that would require some extra graphics.

 

[TheJopa]

I think that graphic isn't really biggest problem. You can use Airport building art for terrain improvement art and so on. Biggest issue would be AI. I'm not sure how would he use those upgrades.

 

[Pantastic]

cds0528, that was just the AI building training grounds for the yellow-jumpsuited ski troopers that became the primary defensive unit later in the game.

 

[Krupo]

If you were allowed to build forts ALONG WITH cottages/farms instead of replacing them, then I might actually build them now and then.

That's the key issue; I'd love to build a fort on my iron mine, but can't. Very irritating.

Then the French cavalry swoops in, floods my mine, and suddenly my cannon production ceases.

It's only the 19th century - you don't have to already be using "just in time" production strategies you jerks - STOCKPILE some iron!

</rant>

 

[Crighton]

lol

the more threads i read the more i keep being reminded of Civ Call to Power.

Bring back usable:
Forts
Air Fields
Rada Towers
Undersea Cities
Space Cities
[more sea and deep sea resources]
the Old bombardment system(s)
the Aegis Cruiser (yeah really WhTF did that go off to?)
Nuclear / Modern Subs

and so on and so forth