Forts

[The Q-Meister]

Forts: Do you use them or not?

The AI loves to use them and seems hell-bent on putting them right...on ...top...of precious resources! .

EDIT: Forgot about India.

 

[wr4th]

Forts do also provide the ressource, so if it's outside a fat cross i usually build a fort instead of the regular improvement. Plus you can prebuild the fort on things like oil and hook it up directly after you got the required techs. It also adds up with forest and hills, i almost always use a fort as india in the north east to fend of the hose archers.

 

[Panopticon]

They have minor uses, but they're not useless, because they can make distant resources easier to defend.

 

[AnotherPacifist]

Forts are great to defend resources (stick a machine gun in there and nothing can bomb it--well, except nukes). The AI tends to build them if it can't use the improved resource in one of its cities, and rightly so, because if that area gets flipped to another civ, the latter has to improve it for a city to use it.

And oil, well, that just is the best reason to build a fort in eastern Brazilian jungle or the Saharan desert.

 

[blizzrd]

Worst of all however, the AI loves to use them and seems hell-bent on putting them right...on ...top...of precious resources! Which seems incredibly dumb.

If the tile with the resource is within a particular city's cultural boundaries but outside of the city's 'fat cross' then building either a plantatation/mine/whatever or build a fort will hook up the resource. Forts can be pre-built before city culture expands though whereas other improvements can only be started within cultural boundaries.

 

[kravixon]

Building them on the other side of rivers if there isn't a forest there really beefs up your units. On top of hills without forests is pretty good to if there is a narrow pass, like between France and Spain. Hills with forests are actually a lot better to defend though, as you said.

That, plus the resource collection, plus the "canals" that you can build at Suez and Panama without having to have crappy cities (like the Aztec Oaxaca that I should have razed and built a fort over) and they're pretty nifty if used right.

 

[Elucidus]

Yeah and putting two together as a double canal is great.

 

[kravixon]

I take back part of what I said, apparently you can build forts over forests and it won't remove the forest. I haven't tried it since vanilla Civ4

 

[thadian]

as england, aztec, japan, greece, rome, egypt and khmer i have gotten great naval advantages from moving transports through my peninsulas (instead of taking 3 turns to move around them). they also make a great improvement on a tile you plan to pile defensive troops on.

mostly of all, the only thing worthless about them is landing air units on them. if you see someone doing this, send over a spy and destroy their whole air force!

 

[onedreamer]

in RFC, forts are LESS useful than Civ4 because resources are pre-positioned in a way that cities will almost always grab them. Still, they aren't totally useless IMHO. I think you'll count more forts than watermills on the map at any given time.

 

[Cethegus]

I don't use them for any other reason than to create canals.

 

[AnotherPacifist]

I also build forts so that I can air strike places like San Francisco--I build a fort just in my cultural zone west of Denver (which is too far from the west coast for fighters to reach) in the mountain passes. It's a perfect choke point that the natives usually retreat and have to come around south of the mountains, and guess what, I also have a fort south of the coal there. The 4-plane limit is really annoying, so this is a way around it. It wouldn't hurt to have a resource on that particular fort either.

 

[Lone Wolf]

The only place where I use forts is Panama Canal when I don't want to build San Jose. Seriously, time for the Panama tile to be unjungled.

Althrough I may use it as England, to cut down the ship travelling time.

 

[ledat]

I generally only use forts for two purposes. I use them to make canals (Panama or Suez especially) or I prebuild them to grab oil as soon as I get the tech.

I have built that one fort in India to help ward off barbs (and Persians), and that was somewhat effective. There is also another choke point which can be fortified north of Byzantion that helps with barbs, but I am not sure how useful it would be with current barbarian army sizes.

 

[kbk]

They provide vital canals.
They provide resources outside of your fat crosses.
They provide airports for bombers.
Choke points against the AI.


Not useless.

 

[Deego3]

There great if you want a safe harbour for your navy.

eg. rase Istanbul, and build a fort instead, to protect your navy in the black sea. (and concore the Med when the AI isn't looking )

 

[Elucidus]

That's pretty good. Only did that once, by accident.

 

[blizzrd]

Yeah and putting two together as a double canal is great.

Wow, I never even thought of doing that. What a great idea!

 

[AnotherPacifist]

Double canals only work in certain instances. For example, I thought that I could ease the travel of my missionaries from China to New Orleans by build two forts, one on the coast, one inland. I could not reach the inland fort.

On the other hand, double forts seem to work if both tiles are on the coast or border an inland lake.

 

[kravixon]

On the other hand, double forts seem to work if both tiles are on the coast or border an inland lake.

I think that's what the deal is. I build forts all the way between France and Spain hoping to cut across, but to no use.

However, it was a great choke point!