forts

[hale]

Can you string together the forts? so if I have 2 oceans separated by a narrow plot of land only 2 tiles wide would I be able to build 2 forts side by side and still use them as canals?

 

[Percy]

If the restriction is indeed that a fort can only serve as a canal when near a water tile, i'd assume that you can create canals of two squares of length at most.

 

[slobberinbear]

Can you string together the forts? so if I have 2 oceans separated by a narrow plot of land only 2 tiles wide would I be able to build 2 forts side by side and still use them as canals?

Yes. The limit is 2 tiles.

 

[McGoo]

Can you string together the forts? so if I have 2 oceans separated by a narrow plot of land only 2 tiles wide would I be able to build 2 forts side by side and still use them as canals?

Looks like we both had the same lightbuld go off at the same time.....

 

[Chrispy]

Regarding the strings of forts: I think you can go 3 across with fort-city-fort. You can go even further if you account for lakes.

Great point. It needs to be impressed that the fort can be built outside your cultural borders. I can see this also being useful on an island, where you want the resource but don't want to pay the maintenance for a city.

I don't think it would work with an island because you cannot connect it via roads. I still needed to build a road up to the fort; I just didn't need to wait for cultural boarders to get there.

 

[Cabay Jet]

Do you think fort-fort-city-fort-fort would work for going 5 across?

 

[Defiant47]

Do you think fort-fort-city-fort-fort would work for going 5 across?

Forts can only harbor ships if they are beside a body of water. Simple actually.

The thing I'm concerned with, and I would love for someone to test this (I'm not home right now), is does Fort-City-Fort work? The two forts are OK since they'd be beside a body of water, but would an inland city be capable of harboring ships? Could someone please check?

 

[Genghis Khan II]

A fort Must touch the water to be a canal, however, a city can act as one without touching water. Lakes can also be used in the equation, so I could have anything from FF to FCF or FCFLFCF, or FCFLFCFLFCFLFCFLFCF. The longest it can go over "dry" land is three tiles, however.

 

[DarkFyre99]

I just tested how canals work using Worldbuilder, and cities only count as harbors when they're adjacent to water... just like forts.

So you can't go FCF, only FF, FC, or CF.

Lakes do count as water, though, so longer canals are possible, as long as you can chain together two forts between water.

The screenshot below shows two valid canals, and one invalid canal.

 

[Percy]

Thanks a bunch for illustrating what's possible and what's not.

Oh, and having a destroyer this early in the game... tsk tsk tsk

 

[Defiant47]

Thanks a lot!

 

[Thalassicus]

Great point. It needs to be impressed that the fort can be built outside your cultural borders. I can see this also being useful on an island, where you want the resource but don't want to pay the maintenance for a city.

I'm not sure forts outside cultural boundaries count as being "owned" by any player though. It's in neutral territory, so I believe no one gets credit for the resource. It's something to test.

To make things really easy to remember, in game terms, all forts now count as city tiles. This means they have many of the same abilities cities do, minus cultural expansion and production:

• Promotions that work with attacking or defending cities also count with forts (attacking forts with City Raider, or defending with City Garrison).
• Forts give the +healing/turn bonus like Cities.
• Forts allow you to station air units there like Cities.
• Building a fort on a resource within your borders counts as an automatic universal pasture/mine/camp/etc to that resource like a City, and gives you +25% defense to any unit guarding the resource.
• Forts do not clear Forests or Jungles when built on top of those tiles. It still counts as a City tile, it just doesn't clear the terrain like a City would.
• Forts link land and sea trade routes like a city does. This means if you build a fort on the coast, it connects any roads or railroad running into the fort with the sea. So if you have a city near an island, and there's a resource on the island you want, within your cultural borders but an inconvenient location to build a separate city (such as Uranium on a single 1-tile tundra island), you can build a fort and road on the island and it will link the resource up by a new sea route.
• Likewise, building a fort or city directly touching a body of water (1 tile next to a Coast or Lake tile) makes that tile count as a "port", allowing ships to move through that tile. Only forts or cities directly next to water count as ports. So water-fort-city-fort-water doesn't count because the middle city is not touching a Coast or Lake tile, so it's not a "Port". Ships can move from one port to another though, so water-fort-fort-water does work. (Edit: See jerVL/kg's next post for an example)
  Basically, any strip of land 2 tiles across you can now bridge with 2 forts on those tiles, something impossible in any version of Civ up till now, and you don't even have to build cities there.

 

[jerVL/kg]

Here's something fun you can do with forts in BTS:





The downside is I had to use up some valuable land tiles in my coastal production cities, but the strategic value more than makes up for it, I think.

 

[Defiant47]

*drools*

That is an insane tactical advantage!

 

[Thalassicus]

Here's another example from a military perspective.

In my current game I've bordered Hammurabi along a narrow strip of tiles since the beginning of the game, but I've been conquering westward since Asoka's lands were easier and closer, then onward to the leaders bordering him. I've owned this particular tile on the hill in my cultural borders since the start due to having the Confucian holy city there to the south.

So I dropped a fort there and ran a few roads to it, then moved up two longbowmen. The thing is, a fort on a jungle-hill tile is an automatic, instant +100% non-bombardable defense rating! It's a castle that can't be beaten down. I gave the two longbowmen Drill I and II instead of City Garrison for survivability against the multiple attacks they'd receive from large stacks, and their total bonuses were:

6 base
Tile bonuses:
+50% Jungle
+25% Hills
+25% Fort
+25% Fortified

Unit bonuses:
+25% Hill Bonus
+25% City Bonus
=====
+175%

= 16.5 total
2-3 First Strikes
20% less collateral damage

I dropped 4 catapults in that same tile and never had to worry about attacks from that direction. If an attack ever had actually occurred, I could move up a few units (crossbows/knights, some other things) from the city into the fort and counterattack from the fort tile. Easy location to attack an invading stack from and not worry about withdrawals or victories at low strength, as they're defended by the longbowmen. They'd also heal quickly since it's considered a city tile. Now I've got two mech infantry there and 3 fighters on intercept duty.

 

[herwin]

Yes. The limit is 2 tiles.

I've used a two-tile canal to connect an inland city to the ocean. I don't know why it worked, but it did.

 

[popejubal]

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.

I know that the resource would disappear if another Civ moved in and dropped their cultural borders over my fort, but I'm the only civ on my continent and I still don't have that copper. Can anyone suggest what I'm doing wrong?

I REALLY want that marble at the bottom of my continent and don't feel like placing a city there yet.

 

[mzprox]

A question: if I connect a city to the sea via forts can that city build ships and/or lighthouse after? guess not, but would be great.

edit:

and an other q.: can I connect resources from an other continent with forts? (assuming the fort is next to the sea and I have the technology for this)

 

[nbcman]

@ popejubal
The resource still has to be inside your cultural borders to be used. The forts are not like the colonies in Civ II in that respect.

nbcman

 

[blitzkrieg1980]

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