Axis Kast said:
How about taking a page from Sid Meier's Colonization and applying it to both forts and cities (via a new improvement, the Coastal Battery) - i.e. allowing fortified tiles to fire upon passing units.
Just to throw out a comment or eight.
I really like the concept of a 'Fort' granting a moderate Withdrawal chance., maybe 15%. That would allow even the greenest Mounted units a decent chance to sally forth and survive. But I wouldn't want it so large that just any unit could casually risk an attack.
The only 'bad' thing to creating a sort of pseduo-fort condition based upon the number of turns of immobility is that defensive bonus goes back to 0% if the unit attacks. Attack=movement, at least often times. At any rate, there'd be no swapping of garrisons when a better unit type became available. For whatever reason, when the unit moved, there goes the 'fort'.
Since the AI is not good at placing forst, could this be mitigated somewhat by creating a 2nd type of tile improvement later on in the tech tree? Mine -> Fortified mine. Windmill -> Fortified Windmill. Etc. Make the 'fortified' version slightly better economically, as small a boost as possible, just so the AI would want to replace existing improvements with the upgraded version.
Different 'Fortified' improvements could even have different fortification bonuses, if that'd be desired. It might be 'easier' to fortify a mine than a windmill or plantation, perhaps. Or since mines are (almost aleways) built on hills, and lumbermills in forests, the defensive advantage could be tailored to match the expected terrain. A fine-tuning if you will. e.g A fortified mine gives +75% defense while a fortified lumbermill gives only +50%. But when added to terratin effects, each tile defends at +100%. Or a fortified hill could end up at +110% and a fortified Forest at +90%. Or vice-versa ... whatever Kael & Ko. decide works best.
Perhaps no version of Fortified Cottage and/or Farms would be avaialble? Traditionally, dwellings outside city walls are generally where residents fled
from in crisis, to behind the safety of city walls. And it might help from a play-balance/tradeoff-making perspective, to prevent filling a realm with Forts from border to border. This twist would make for a good debate, I bet.
Speaking of border to border, might it be possible to code Forts so invaders would not benefit from the forts inside the enemy's cutural borders? Would it be desireable to do this?
The 'Fortified; improvment might perhaps add another level to pillage? That is, the first enemy pillage in the tile turns a Fortified Mine into a Mine, then next pillage destroys the Mine. That might add quite a twist to Khazad defensive abilities, given thier unpillageable Mines in 0.15.
Is that eight yet?
Oh yeah ... Malkim towers (city building) have the ability to shoot fireballs at enemies. They represent a significant investment in hammers. I dunno if you'd want to give away this special ability to just any fortified tile out there. If the garrison is incapable of risking sally missions, a fort SHOULD just protect the tile it is in. There were scores, hundreds of small castles built for every large fortified city. No one of them controlled a vast swath of land. For that, a network of castles were built.
Great Commander
