Fortified Units (Implementation and Value)

[Gorbles]

This is a general topic, but I don't mind if it gets moved somewhere more appropriate.

I wanted to talk about Fortifying units, how useful people consider this to be, and in turn how useful the various Affinity-related perk upgrades that grant bonuses vs. Fortified units.

In my experience, I find placing my units on Alert to be functionally-superior, in that they wake up when hostile units are within sight range. Does anyone know the specific defensive bonuses of Alert vs. Fortify?

It seems to me that Fortify, for the most part (apart from leaving units on your Cities) is a bit "all or nothing", and lacks the tactical flexibility that Alert provides. Adding to that, the AI doesn't seem to rely on Fortified units either, rendering the perk upgrade (which features across a number of units) really quite irrelevant.

Thoughts? Contradictions?

 

[Lucius_]

Well alert IS fortified. If your unit is on alert and you get dow'd, I believe he stays fortified until your turn. Question I would have is does the fortify bonus improve after a turn like it did in CiV?

Calvalry class, of course should use alert 100% of the time since they no longer get fortify bonuses.

 

[Gorbles]

If you encounter a unit on Alert, does that mean the perk bonuses still apply? I need to sandbox this, but the AI is remarkably resistant to sandboxing

(and I haven't had the time to figure out that Editor mod thingamabob yet)

 

[Bezurn]

AFAIK a unit placed on alert gets the fortify bonus until the make an attack or movement from their alert position. So if you place a unit on alert and it wakes up and then you re-alert them they should retain their fortify bonus.

I find the AI seldom leaves units on alert / fortify as it is always looking for new hexes to expose to 'gather information' The only time I see them fortifying is when they are fortifying to heal.

I liked how fortify worked in Civ 4 where-in you would get a small amount of a fortify bonus per turn (I think 5%) up to a max of 25%. As it is now you get the full 25% bonus after one turn of inaction in fortify / alert mode.

As for the perks, I find them not really useful in single player. In multiplayer I imagine they would be quite a surprise when your opponent finds out that their 15 heal per turn marine tank is at a 40% disadvantage to your rover. But I haven't played a lot of multiplayer to be of any authoritative speaker of the subject.

 

[Gamewizard]

Well in Civ V, there is 2 levels to the defensive bonus for fortifying, 25% and 50%. In that game, if you use Alert and the unit wakes and you put it back to Alert, it would lose the second level defensive bonus and it would start back at the first each time it wakes up.

I would be surprised if it is different in this game.

 

[Ryika]

I agree in that I find the "against fortification"-bonuses to be relatively useless in singleplayer, as the AI will usually not fortify that often and instead just suicide their units. That combined with the fact that the other bonus is not that much lower but much more versatile actually made me never choose it... so don't really know how useful it is when it actually comes into play.

I think the "bonus to fortification"-perk(s) is relatively dependent on the strategy and goal you're aiming for. If I remember correctly the counterpart is an offensive perk anyway, so I think it's relatively obvious which one to take in which situation.

Not quite sure if BE really has the 2-step-fortification that was later introduced in Civ 5, but if it has, then real fortify is obviously superior stat-wise. Which is a problem with the bad implementation, I always thought a unit that awakes in alert-stance but is put back on fortify immediately should keep the full bonus - but then again... I found that in Civ 5 the downside of having to check your borders manually wasn't really that much of an issue anyway - after all, it's a turn-based game and you can really take as much time as you need. But when I was too lazy to pay attention myself I usually put some guards on alert and the rest of the unit wall on fortify - that way, you see units coming and still have full fortification bonus on most of your units. Biggest problem with alarm is obviously that it doesn't warn you until the enemy declares war.