Fortification

[Sweetchuck]

There is a "fortify" action button that I use to heal units, then they activate when they are fully healed. I use this option for damaged ships and military units.

However, I think that this only works when that unit (ship or otherwise) is on a city (doesn't need a barracks or harbor to work), but units can fortify in the field.

Can ships fortify on the water? I tried a couple times and couldn't get it to work. I even stacked ships thinking that might do the trick, but nada.

I also tried to look up some help on this in the Civilopedia, but couldn't find anything on it.

Thanks for the replies!!

 

[The Professor]

Ships can only heal in port, so that's probably why you can't fortify at sea.

 

[Othniel]

Sure, ships can fortify in open waters. Using the "F" hotkey or clicking the fortify button should work. They get the +25% defense bonus for fortifying, too.

And no, ships cannot heal unless they are in a town. However, they do get +1 Line of Sight when fortified in open waters.

Edit: x-post with the Professor...

 

[Mursi lives]

Military units (not ships) can heal outside a town, but not in ennemy territory.

 

[againsttheflow]

...unless you've built Battlefield Medicine. Also worth noting is that barracks and harbors (and airfields for that matter) decrease the heal time to one turn.

 

[Tasslehoff]

Any military unit except a ship can fortifying anywhere but enemy territory and heal 1HP/turn.

Any military unit inside a city can fortifying and heal faster (not sure of the exact rate).

If the city has a barracks, the land units fully heal in one turn. If it has a harbor, ships fully heal in one turn.

 

[Quintillus]

Military units inside cities without barracks/harbor/airport heal at 2 damage per turn.

 

[PaperBeetle]

And to be eligible for hp recovery, the unit must not have moved during the turn; specifically, the indicator at the top of the unit's hp bar must be green, not yellow or red. Note that movement along a railroad preserves the indicator's green status, as does being ferried about on a ship.

 

[Pyrrhos]

Now there remains only one, rarely used, way to heal even redlined troops in one turn to mention - to upgrade them.

 

[ZzarkLinux]

Do units really heal on ships if the ship moves ??

For some reason, I don't remember it.
I think I have a memory of wishing that units would heal at sea, but they didn't.
But I can't remember if that's Vanilla Civ3, Civ2... etc...

Now there remains only one, rarely used, way to heal even redlined troops in one turn to mention - to upgrade them.

Best idea ever. There should be a variant around this...like
"You win when you successfully upgrade any 50 redlined units, and use those units to take a capitol"
It'd be like "Survivor's Revenge".

 

[PaperBeetle]

Certainly in C3C units heal while on a ship, I'll look out for it in PtW too.
I found it particularly handy in the recent sid COTM, where we were given a lot of amphibious units; first turn they amphibiously attack a town, and get a bit toasted. Only the unit which takes the town ends up unloaded, the rest are still on their ships, and their status indicator is red. Next turn, the ships sail on towards the next town. The marines on board are still damaged, and their status indicator is green. The turn after that, they have healed a hit point, the ships reach the next town, and I can attack again. Or maybe I wait out at sea for another turn so that the marines can heal another hit point. Of course the same principle applies to non-amphibious units.
To get this healing, you need to be in friendly or neutral waters, just like trying to heal on land.

 

[Gosnork]

If you have Battlefield Medicine units can heal in enemy territory.

 

[Simak]

Ummmm, I read that a unit has to skip its entire turn......."skip turn/do nothing" in order to heal. I never knew units could heal while in fortify. Kinda makes you wonder why a "skip turn/do nothing" button even exists. If you can fortify and still heal, why ever skip a turn. Wouldn't it be better to fortify to get the defense bonus and still be able to heal. Sheeeeesh, another upgrade to my playing strategy. Thanks guys.

 

[againsttheflow]

The skip button exists to make sure a unit is active next turn so you don't forget about him/have to go looking for him.

 

[Aabraxan]

Also (&, as usual, someone correct me if I'm wrong), if you fortify a unit that's wounded, it will wake up when it's healed. At least wounded units fortified outside of cities seem to do this. If yo fortify a fully-healed unit, though, it just stays fortified. Gets really easy to forget about units that way.

 

[Snarkhunter]

Also (&, as usual, someone correct me if I'm wrong), if you fortify a unit that's wounded, it will wake up when it's healed. At least wounded units fortified outside of cities seem to do this. If yo fortify a fully-healed unit, though, it just stays fortified. Gets really easy to forget about units that way.

Although all of my fortified units seem to wake up after a while, no matter where or who. I think it is trying to remind me I have units, even if I don't let them do anything, and to make sure I still don't want them to do anything

I hesitate to bring this one up because I don't have a good explanation of it, but at least twice I have had a unit heal 1 hp in enemy territory. I didn't have battlefield medicine, & my territory boundaries didn't expand to include the unit in question. The first time, I just noticed it in passing & thought I had overlooked something. The second time was rather more obvious: unit sat fortified on a mountaintop watching out for activity in an area I had bypassed. After about 10 turns or so, it suddenly healed, still in enemy territory. I decided to label it a rarely activated bug of some kind, but I'm still scratching my head, as I've had hundreds of units never healing in enemy territory before then. (And after then, as well.) Anyone else ever run into anything similar? I feel the length of time elapsed had to be a major factor, and I'm betting most players wouldn't leave units sitting in bandit-land that long. So maybe not. (And there might well be other factors activating this, if it is a bug of some kind.)

kk

 

[Aabraxan]

Although all of my fortified units seem to wake up after a while, no matter where or who. I think it is trying to remind me I have units, even if I don't let them do anything, and to make sure I still don't want them to do anything

Hey, at least yours wake up. My problem (particularly if I'm playing someone with green or brown colors) is that I forget about that one lone archer fortified in the jungle (or wherever else they may be camouflaged) until my stack of Modern Armor rolls by!

 

[Simak]

SnarkHunter, I'm no expert on the game, but I have an idea of what might have happened. If your unit was near in enemy territory it means that a city was nearby that had influence to make those tiles theirs. Of course, you could of had a city nearby as well. Maybe if the enemy city wasn't there, you would have influence of those tiles instead. So, maybe the game give tile preference to working them, but if you influence would normally be there, but is interfered with another civs influence, maybe your influence still allow your units to heal? Don't know, just guessing.

 

[againsttheflow]

Although all of my fortified units seem to wake up after a while, no matter where or who. I think it is trying to remind me I have units, even if I don't let them do anything, and to make sure I still don't want them to do anything

I hesitate to bring this one up because I don't have a good explanation of it, but at least twice I have had a unit heal 1 hp in enemy territory. I didn't have battlefield medicine, & my territory boundaries didn't expand to include the unit in question. The first time, I just noticed it in passing & thought I had overlooked something. The second time was rather more obvious: unit sat fortified on a mountaintop watching out for activity in an area I had bypassed. After about 10 turns or so, it suddenly healed, still in enemy territory. I decided to label it a rarely activated bug of some kind, but I'm still scratching my head, as I've had hundreds of units never healing in enemy territory before then. (And after then, as well.) Anyone else ever run into anything similar? I feel the length of time elapsed had to be a major factor, and I'm betting most players wouldn't leave units sitting in bandit-land that long. So maybe not. (And there might well be other factors activating this, if it is a bug of some kind.)

kk

I find there's often a reason for that kind of thing but it's hard to say without a screenshot or save; unfortuneately these things are hard to come up with for something like that because of the unexpectedness of it. If I were to take a wild guess I would say there's a chance that your enemies border took a turn right there that you didn't notice because it was hidden by trees or something therefore leaving you in neutral territory. Are you playing a fully patched version? For the waking units if you're using the senty option they wake up when an enemy comes near--just another possibility.

 

[Snarkhunter]

I find there's often a reason for that kind of thing but it's hard to say without a screenshot or save; unfortuneately these things are hard to come up with for something like that because of the unexpectedness of it. If I were to take a wild guess I would say there's a chance that your enemies border took a turn right there that you didn't notice because it was hidden by trees or something therefore leaving you in neutral territory. Are you playing a fully patched version? For the waking units if you're using the senty option they wake up when an enemy comes near--just another possibility.

To answer the latter, I never use the sentry option. The wake up call usually takes something like 10 or more turns of inactivity, & that is usually for units left on guard duty back in the empire. It's a minor annoyance, at worst; I don't usually need too many guards. I play C3-Complete, which is fully patched, AFAIK.

Memory is always suspect, but the healed unit I remember best was fully a tile inside the enemy boundary, and the boundary didn't change in all that time, because I had bypassed the area. He was on a mountain, fortified, with grass all around. As you say, it's so unexpected you usually don't note all the circumstances before & during. I was just curious as to whether anyone had ever noticed anything similar. It hasn't happened to me since, so if it is a bug it is a rare one. (Of course, since then I haven't had occasion to leave a wounded unit in bandit-land for so long, either.)

kk