Forts - what good are they?

[The Condor]

*Couldn't resist* Hey Exavier, I hate your forts and your subs and your face! Bwahahaha! (j/k). However, on a more serious note: Exavier I still feel even though you modded them to be superior I feel they are inferior because I never get around to using them (still). I never get around to using them because A: I usually have no bottlenecks in my civ allowing Ais to go around them. B: My army of workers usually are spending their time either 1: setting up my new cities I conquered. 2: setting up my new cities I founded with roads and basic improvement. or 3: reimproving my core cities to bend towards my liking at that moment (swapping from great person factory to military provider to Silicon City). and C: Nothing really, I just feel my statement would be empty without a C.

 

[adz102]

you guys are a bit off topic i think.

I would like it if forts had a single ring of culture and 50% defense bonus.
Then you could use them to block other civs and extend your borders a bit. without having to build a city and cop extra maintenance. for example theres a 3 wide bottleneck and its all desert IE poor land. further north theres a nice place for a city. if i settle the bottleneck i can stop the ai from settling that area, but i'll be stuck with a sad city. If i settle in the good area, i'll have to wait Xturns before that city's culture rating will block the bottleneck and i might not have the space or money to build both, but if i build a fort there i can block the bottleneck and have the city.

Troops stationed in a fort over a long period of time would have a cultural impact on the surrounding areas, they would travel to nearby villages for rations and their patrols would interact with the natives. so a culture ring is not unrealistic.

A single ring of culture would also make it fairly easy for it to be swallowed by a rival civ, reflecting the fact that a neighbouring city would have a much greater impact than a single fort.

furthermore, archers should get a "garrison bonus", not a "city bonus" so they get the 25% bonus in cities and forts. afterall, whats the difference shooting arrows from city rooftops or from the battlements of a fort

 

[Exavier]

lol. you talking about forts or subs?

Forts are still rather useless even with the Realfor Mod merged in but hey they can be powerful if you use them right (not that i play on a map where i can use them right, islands).

Submarines are nice because if you can get them 2 promotions out of the drydock (Flanking, Sentry I) they can see a good distance (beware Aegis gets Sentry I and II by default) and are good for spying... that and they are fast enough to play interception (as long as you spread them out right first)

EDIT: @adz102 - sorry about getting off topic... I have a habit of that. I like the idea though I wonder how easy it would be to impliment

 

[The Condor]

you guys are a bit off topic i think.

I would like it if forts had a single ring of culture and 50% defense bonus.
Then you could use them to block other civs and extend your borders a bit. without having to build a city and cop extra maintenance. for example theres a 3 wide bottleneck and its all desert IE poor land. further north theres a nice place for a city. if i settle the bottleneck i can stop the ai from settling that area, but i'll be stuck with a sad city. If i settle in the good area, i'll have to wait Xturns before that city's culture rating will block the bottleneck and i might not have the space or money to build both, but if i build a fort there i can block the bottleneck and have the city. A single ring of culture would also make it fairly easy for it to be swallowed by a rival civ, reflecting the fact that a neighbouring city would have a much greater impact than a single fort.

But then the game would become incredibly unbalanced (and not to mention boring) cuz all the players would spam forts across the world to get a quick domination victory. And also I think we are very on-topic aren't we people! *Commence nodding of heads*

 

[adz102]

Good point. i didnt think of that. i wonder if you could make it so that only city culture would count towards a domination win.

Domination counts population as well so would it make a difference? you still have to have the right amount of population for the win, and forts would only put out the culture if they were manned. if you had enough military to man all those forts, you'd be better off going for a conquest win.

 

[The Condor]

But then what purpose does it serve? If it doesn't count towards anything now it is as worthless as before. Also, then the land would be seen as like a "dead land" of sorts in that a person could effectively prevent a domination victory from every happening by successfully planting enough forts to make the rest of the world (unless it declares war on you and destroys your forts) unable to ever get enough land for that win without declaring war on you (well at least it would make conquest with domination checked actually possible!).

For the pop thing it would also allow (with your current fort mod vision) OCC dominiation victory! Basically you'd just spam enough forts to have enough land for the victory and then a lot of farms around your only city to build pop to a higher level than the enemies you will decimate with your also large army that can only raze cities.

 

[Flak]

Yeah that RealFort mod is nice and definitely thought out a bit, but the only use I can think of for forts in my games is to build them to protect resources. That simple (and seemingly obvious) implementation would bring forts into the strategy of building a successful civilization in Civ IV. The ZOC would just be a sweet extra.

I've never built a fort in Civ IV yet, but if they fix it, I'll definitely invest the time and effort to get them into place. I'd hope the AI will atleast try to do the same. Boy that would make capturing enemy resources a very interesting challenge!

I would suggest:

1. Obviously have got to be able to build them over developed resources.
2. Zone of Control
3. Because of ZOC, cannot build forts on adjacent squares relative to each other. This would go a long ways to prevent the spamming of forts all over the place. Especially since some resources tend to be clumped together. You have to really think about where that fort is going to go.
4. RealFort mod - which is basically unit promotions specific to forts.
5. An extra possibility of stopping sabotage of the square on which they are directly located (NOT squares in ZOC, very important for game balance).

edit: Put some more thought into this....

6. They can only be built on a tile that has some kind of improvement already in place, even if it's just a road.
7. Some logical exclusions should stay in place, for example, you can't build a fort where a windmill is without destroying the windmill (or vice versa).
8. Can't ever build a fort outside of your cultural borders, so it's treated just like any other resource improvement in this case.
9. You can build a fort adjacent to an enemy fort as long as you are inside your cultural borders. If your culture overtakes an enemy fort, then this is the one exception to the adjacent rule *or* that fort is destroyed as well as having its units expelled. The latter doesn't seem realistic, but might be necessary for game balance.
10. Along the same lines as #9, if you militarily capture an enemy fort adjacent to your culturally bounded fort, you destroy that fort.

 

[The Condor]

Yeah, that looks good and could probably help stop the spamming (or that could just not be a feature to prevent the spamming from happening in the first place).

 

[Sorceresss]

I asked for ZoC for forts in their Poll ... I don't hold out much hope, but I think it would be logical and make them much more useful.

I second that : great idea.

 

[Wodan]

I still think it might be a good idea to have a "political boundary" and a "cultural boundary".

Wodan

 

[Arms Longfellow]

Yeah I have yet to build a single fort. I suppose I will in my current game just to see what it looks like. They'd be more useful if they let you build them in foreign territory so you could camp out in one while sieging a city.

Man, someone really needs to invent an ingenius FORT RUSH strategy or something to make these things useful.

 

[Natronomonas]

I loved plonking a fort on a mountain in a choke point in Civ1... the ZOC made them so useful. That kind of ability is what we need for forts in CivIV... perhaps forts could even create a ZOC? (not unreasonable, forts aren't only defensive).

 

[joethreeblah]

as far as making them able to be built on improved resources, could you mod them as a new kind of "road"?