Forts as Canals

[KMadCandy]

two unrelated thoughts about forts:

i finally got smart today (about one thing) and found a use for bored workers. sometimes i have to place a city so that it needs a fort for ships on a tile where i'd really rather have a lumbermill, mine, or farm. often with captured cities too. well, when my workers are bored, i just leave a stack of them appropriate for game speed sitting on that tile. build a fort there to within one turn of completion, then put them to sleep. when a ship needs to go thru, make it a fort. when ships are done for a while, drawbridge comes down and the workers can turn it back into the mine/farm or whatever that's more useful for the city to be working in the meantime. you guys probably thought of that on your 2nd BtS game, it took me maybe 20,000 .

now the AI use of forts for ships. they are really dumb about it. in fact, i have only ever noticed them moving a ship thru a fort in two games. in both instances, the fort was on a resource which wasn't in a city cross. shaka's case, fort on stone and when his caravel needed to travel, using the fort made the path quicker by one tile. mansa's case, fort on fur at the south pole and using the fort was the only way for him to get a ship from that city to his cities on the other side of the ice at the far south.

is that the only way they know how to use the new canals? if a fort happens to be there by the automated-worker logic (resource on tile), and the "go-to" order it gives a ship makes using the fort a shorter path than not using the fort? that's sad. but i guess it would be really hard to teach them to be smart about it.

has anybody seen the AI use forts for ships any other way? obviously i haven't carried out extensive experiments, i just played games, so i'm curious.

 

[Walkabout]

Clever girl....

 

[scorth]

is that the only way they know how to use the new canals? if a fort happens to be there by the automated-worker logic (resource on tile), and the "go-to" order it gives a ship makes using the fort a shorter path than not using the fort? that's sad. but i guess it would be really hard to teach them to be smart about it.

has anybody seen the AI use forts for ships any other way? obviously i haven't carried out extensive experiments, i just played games, so i'm curious.

I've never seen the AI use forts, except in similar ways to what you experienced.

I'm currently playing a Terra map. The North and South poles of the "New World" are completely blocked my ice and land. So, I build a city on the "new world" near the midpoint to act as my own personal Panama Canal (need to spam my Priv's EVERYWHERE!), it required forts on both sides of it for transit. The AI built a city in a similar location further south. Instead of taking advantage of the fort-city situation that he had, he basically would travel around the world to ferry troops and ships from his land in the "old world" (say China)....all the way around to where his city was (lets call it Panama South).

Don't get me wrong, his loss was my gain in a big way. I didn't have open borders with him and I just camped a couple of Priv's along his travel route and pounded away to a couple lvl 10's and countless GGs.

But for the sake of one fort on a hill, he could've saved himself the hassle (and the piracy)

My guess is that the fort option is completely for Human players.