Infantry in a Fortress = Offlimits(?)

[Lord Emsworth]

I have known and been using this for some time now, but I have never seen anybody else point it out.

Infantries which are placed in a fortress are never attacked by the AI with units equal to or below an attack of six.​

Infantries are those units that come with Replacable Parts, have 6/10/1 as stats and require Rubber. And it doesn't really matter what experience level they have. It works for veteran units just as well as for regulars.
Fortresses are tile improvements that come with Construction and give the Defender a bonus of 50%.
Units equal to or below an attack of six are of course other Infantries, Cavs, and everything that is earlier.

OK, I think I need to point out that I still play Vanilla, and I do not know how far this applies to the more widespread Conquests extension.

But for me it has worked out as a pretty strong battlefield technique/exploit. I have used it to effectively block attack routes to (just conquered) cities, protect workers connecting just conquered cities, completely seal off even wider chokepoints etc pp. True, armies can do the same (and more), but Infantries+Fortresses are far cheaper.

Anybody else noticed this or something similar?

 

[psweetman1590]

The AI doesn't attack if it doesn't think it has a decent chance of winning. This applies to Conquests too. It's the reason why armies are almost never attacked. The AI only compared units on a one-to-one basis, so it has no conception of sacrificing units to wear a stronger one down. And because the AI doesn't use artillery, they have no way of taking down stronger units.

 

[Lord Emsworth]

The AI doesn't attack if it doesn't think it has a decent chance of winning. This applies to Conquests too. It's the reason why armies are almost never attacked. The AI only compared units on a one-to-one basis, so it has no conception of sacrificing units to wear a stronger one down. And because the AI doesn't use artillery, they have no way of taking down stronger units.

Yes, certainly. But in this case you have something that works as reliable as armies.

And as an aside, I have seen Infantries forted on a mountain (10+10*1+10*0.25=22.5) being attacked by Cavalry, while even unforted Infantries are completely ingnored if they are on flat terrain in a fortress (10+10*0.5+10*0.1=16).

 

[scoutsout]

One thing I've noted in C3C is that the AI will attack a weakened army, and they'll use bombers against strong units. If your unit (or army) gets weakened to the point that the "one on one" odds start to look favorable, the AI will attack. It would not surprise me one bit to see an upper level AI bomb an infantryman in a fort to oblivion, or wear it down to 1hp and attack.

OTOH... some of what you might be observing is a facet of "puppet strings". If your infantryman is in a fort and there is a "soft target" nearby (like an undefended city) they might bypass the infantryman on the way to the "undefended" target.

 

[Marsden]

Two little stories to add.

1. Invading a Sid homeland one time, I was very fortunate that there was a one tile peninsula only reachable by one tile, which was a mountain. I settled on the penninsula and built a barracade on the mountain. While under construction, I encountered heavy assaults but held out to have fortified musketmen holding it. If I pulled the musket men back to the town the enemy would advance, but if I then reentered the baracade they would search out other targets. After the pillaging campaign I undertook to destroy every road I could, his speed one units were 90% neutralized. IOW, let them walk 2 or 3 tiles away then draw them back and so on.

2. Invading a deity home island, I tried to bait them with a spearman. I was on a mountain on the corner of the island, no one tile to settle on here, and tried attacking the other side. He had more horsemen than last story so my effectiveness was reduced but it was working, the enemy horsemen all went after the spearman, but they reached the spearman after only 2 turns, attacked and the spearman defended successfully 3 times, promoted to elite from the victories and ruined my plan. The very instant it became an elite spearman the enemy turned around and went after my main attack force. Then an enemy archer killed my veteran pikeman on a hill, but that's getting off my point, being as soon as that extra hp was on that spearman the AI no longer calculated it was a good target.

 

[jdladson]

Infantries are those units that come with Replacable Parts, have 6/10/1 as stats and require Rubber. And it doesn't really matter what experience level they have. It works for veteran units just as well as for regulars.
Fortresses are tile improvements that come with Construction and give the Defender a bonus of 50%.
Units equal to or below an attack of six are of course other Infantries, Cavs, and everything that is earlier.

OK, with your infantry having a defense of 10, being in a fortress which gives them a 50% increase in defense, they have a defense of 15 AT LEAST, depending where they are. Why? (10*.50)+10=15. BUT that's only on a desert, plains, or grassland. if they are on a hill, correct me if i am wrong, they have another 50% defense increase, (15*.50)+15=22.5, so now we are getting into the modern age in the middle of the industrial age, and thats just on a hill! For a mountain, with 100% increase in d, you would get
(15*1)+15=30.

Grassland/Desert/Plains: 15
Hills: 22.5
Jungle/Mountain: 30

That 's why they won't attack you on a fortress.

 

[sercer88]

well, your conclusions are right, jdladson, but your methods are a little flawed: defensive bonuses are not multiplied to the previous result, rather, they are just added on. (i.e. Infantry on a mountain wouldn't be ((10*0.5)+10)*1.00+((10*0.5)+10)=30, instead, it would be 10+10*0.5+10*1.00 (+ 10*.25 if fortified)=25 (27.5 if fortified)

Here's something amazing I found: I once played on an extremely hard level I created (based on Bamspeedy's "Beyond Sid" Game) and I just couldn't beat it!! But the amazing part was that the AI would even send in SPEARMEN to attack my defending spearmen. Now, I know that shouldn't sound too interesting, unless you're like me and had the pre-conception that AI builds units for offense and units for defense based on the tag the unit is given in the editor...and Spearmen only have the "defense" tag selected, not "offense"!!!

 

[stee]

jdladson, nice signature. That almost did happen to me once. I was so ticked.

 

[Spoonwood]

Edit: You need an artillery also in the fortress in Conquests (it could have fired last turn, so you may as well do that to the units you've trapped). I wonder if the AI will attack a rifle in a barricade with a cannon.

 

[Lord Emsworth]

Edit: You need an artillery also in the fortress in Conquests (it could have fired last turn, so you may as well do that to the units you've trapped). I wonder if the AI will attack a rifle in a barricade with a cannon.

In Conquests is has to be a veteran Infantry plus the artillery; regular is not enough. So, I am very doubtful about rifles and cannon.

What I know works too are elite Infantry on flat in a fortress without artillery, or veteran Infantry on a mountain in a fortress without.

Barricades do not seem to make that much of a difference. Fortresses are somehow magical, though.

 

[Divaythsarmour]

And because the AI doesn't use artillery, they have no way of taking down stronger units.

Is it that the AI doesn't use artillery or that it doesn't use it well?

I've been playing Ricoteh and Savarok's Barbarossa scenario as the Germans. One single Soviet artillery piece shoots at my units in the captured city of Byalistok every turn. It's sitting in a forest square protected by an infantry division. I don't bother going after it because it's so perfectly ineffective in what it's doing. It's hilarious!

Clearly in this scenario the AI is using artillery - just badly. I don't recall if the AI is using artillery in past games (of mine) as things are often decided before I get to the industrial era.

 

[Elephantium]

In the current "SG Military Conquest/Domination" (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=430980&page=15), we had a RoP with Egypt, fighting against the other AIs on Egypt's continent. During my last turnset, I watched Egyptian Artillery bombarding Ottoman troops for about five turns in a row. They were actually using two or three units to bombard, too - it was astonishing!

 

[Spoonwood]

A sufficiently powerful AI will sometimes have artillery type units in cities which bombard defensively. I have seen them bombard with units out in the open before. However, I have never seen them systematically use a bunch of artillery type units to redline units (or in the case of the Hwacha kill units). They do bombard, just ineffectively, and not often enough.

 

[Elephantium]

They do bombard, just ineffectively, and not often enough.

Key point

Sometimes I think "Wouldn't it be nice if the AI could use some of these tricks, to provide a more even challenge?"

Then I think about all the bonus units the AI gets at higher levels.

 

[Spoonwood]

Key point

Sometimes I think "Wouldn't it be nice if the AI could use some of these tricks, to provide a more even challenge?"

Then I think about all the bonus units the AI gets at higher levels.

Depends on the level, in my opinion,. That said, no matter the level, it would feel a little better to me if the AIs at least appeared to play for a victory condition, instead of hapless playing.

 

[Spoonwood]

I've checked and found you can build a fortress in friendly territory. So, just to get very sure of things here, if you have a veteran infantry in a fortress with an artillery and a settler in that spot also, will an AI you're at war with attack it before tanks and bombers? Might they try and bombard such an infantry if it's land-locked (and they have artillery type units around... which generally seems the case in most upper level AIs, as they DO have them in cities)? What if along a coast... will frigates bombard it?

 

[Spoonwood]

I dredged up one of my old saves, parked a veteran infantry 2 squares away from Babylon with an artillery and a settler (HINT) in a fortress in a landlocked square, investigated Babylon, and noticed it had two artillery proper units in it. They didn't attack it, which we already knew wouldn't happen basically. They also didn't bombard the veteran infantry (which prevents them from attacking it later in the turn). This doesn't prove that if they had more artillery proper, they wouldn't have tried to shoot at it.

Maybe I should explain my idea I've wanted to hint at here. You sign an RoP with the target AI before the war starts and systematically figure out where you can plant cities so that you can shell out the enemy's city when you want to. It, of course, can get hard to figure out how much force you need when using an RoP before a war. But, don't worry about it here. Just concentrate on placing the settlers with an arillery and an infantry in a fortress, then start the war either by declaring on them and spoiling your RoP, or getting them to declare on you in some way. Plant each settler when you're ready to bombard the nearby city to a bloody pulp. With that sort of tactic, if it works as well as I believe it does, do you even need armies?

 

[Spoonwood]

With an emendation for Conquests, this deserves to exist in the War Academy.

 

[ultimaIX]

Wow... that is brutal Spoonwood... I have to try that, hehe.

 

[Spoonwood]

So, I've checked and enemy calvary will attack a rifle and a cannon in a barricade (as well as a fotress also). Not sure if longbows, knights, or medieval infantry will attack such though.