forts

[Matty R]

They also act as cities, so you can station CGII troops there.

Is that true of Vanilla v1.52 aswell?

 

[UncleJJ]

One quick question: Do you need to connect the fort claiming a resource outside borders with roads?

It needs to be connected to your trade network like any other resource with the relevant improvement (imagine it was a pasture or farm instead of the fort), so you need either a road or a river or a sea trade route.

I just built a Fort outside of my cultural borders and I still do not have the copper that I was trying to claim. I even stationed a unit in the fort, in case that was required.

You need the fort to be inside your cultural borders to use the resource and it needs to be connected to your trade network. Forts are useful to connect resources that are waiting for a border expansion since you can build the fort in neutral territory before the expansion. If you used the normal improvement type for the resource you would have to wait for the border expansion before you could start making the improvement. You can speed the border expansion up by building culture or running artist specilists in the city if the resource is needed urgently.

 

[FireyFly]

What of these Fort bonuses applies to BtS only, and what applies to all? I didn't recieve my Iron when I tried to use a Fort -> City sea trade route; the Iron itself even had a mine on it, not a fort.
It was roaded to a fort, and then I suppose automatically shipped to my city? Everything was within my Cultural Borders..

/FireFly

 

[Handel]

What of these Fort bonuses applies to BtS only, and what applies to all?

/FireFly

I second this. I don't have BTS but am playng Warlords. I know in Warlords the fort don't remove jungles/forests so on a forest hill I can have a great fortress with 100 defensive bonus.
But what about the other features? Can it give me the resource and can it serve as a canal in Warlords?

 

[travathian]

I totally never knew about the canal thing. That is so freakin awesome.

 

[popejubal]

One other thing that makes forts a great option in BtS is Oil.

For Warlords and before, to get Oil I had to build a Well and I could only build a Well after I researched Combustion.

Since Wells take so long to build, I would often have to wait 3-5 turns after researching Combustion to get access to the Oil. Now I build a fort shortly aftter Scientific Method and I get the Oil starting immediately as soon as I discover Combustion.

The well gets built at my convenience later.

 

[UncleJJ]

That is particularly true as oil wells are usually poor tiles to work at that stage of the game. If the tile is inside your Fat Cross you could turn the fort back to an oil well later when a worker became available. As you say getting access to oil with combustion immediately is important as it means you can build destroyers and transports immediately rather than waiting several turns to build a well.