Reworking, forts, castles and citidels - and adding a mage tower

[sputnik323]

I have an idea for reworking what forts do. Its just an idea to get people thinking. Im not exactly sure about some of the balancing issues will be with this idea, so if you like the idea but not the figures let me know.

I have never really found much use in using precious city space for the defensive bonuses of forts and castles; and when under attack units are rushed to defend the city, not moved to forts.

After playing the Lanun and making pirate harbors, I thought a similar concept could really be cool to make forts and castles work like pirate ports, and pirate harbors in times of peace, and make them the primary focus of attack until units have been cleared in times of war.

To make this work, fort like improvements have a passive and active bonus. The passive bonus can be what they give now, or lessened a bit for balancing. To get an active bonus a unit must be stationed in the castle to give other units an increased bonus. So for example a warrior moves into a fort and is given the promotion ability to "Garrison the Fort (Castle, Citadel)"

Garrison the fort ability =
For production: Forts, Castles, and Citadels can be worked like Pirate Harbors. Forts giving +1/-2/+2 and +2% military unit production to nearest city. Castles give +2/-1/+3/+1 and 5% military unit production to nearest city and citadels give +2/+1/+5/+1+3 +10% military unit production and -5% maintenance. These bonuses are lost when the unit using Garrison the fort leaves the tile. Only 1 fort can be garrisoned within +3 squares to prevent abuse of this ability. Some races should be able to only build forts, more castles, and maybe only "homeland" leaders can build citadels. Arcane races can build Mages towers from forts instead of castles giving +1/-1/+3/+2/

Garrison the fort ability =
For defense: removes passive bonuses to units - fort = +25% bonus to tile defense, +20% defense bonus and +5% strength within +1 tile, and +1 to visibility. Castle = +40% bonus to tile defense, +10% heal rate on tile, +30% defense bonus and +15% strength within +2 tile and +1 visibility. Citadel = +65% tile defense +20% tile heal rate +40 defense and 20% strength within +3 tiles and +2 visibility. Mage tower + +40% tile defense, +15% tile heal rate, +30% spell resist to tile, +30% defense and 15% strength and +20% spell resist (fire, ice, poison, ect) within +2 tiles and +2 visibility +1 free fireball spell (1 garrisoned unit can cast fireball while in the tower). A lot of these bonuses would be negated or reduced by gunpowder units.

Garrison the fort ability can be used by any warfare unit friend or foe occupying the tile.

I know these bonuses seem large, but the point of making them big is so people will build forts in the first place, and place units in the fort/castle, making them the primary target. Enemies will need to take out the units in the fort to make capturing the city easier. Once the units in the fort are destroyed they make a good place for the enemy to launch attacks from because the enemy gains the bonus.

I also thought of upgraded bonuses for multiple units garrisoned in the fort like +1% attack and defese on tile and sourounding tiles per unit garrisoned and cap it to like 5 or 10 units...

Maybe this is too uber and unbalanced, but I think it would be fun, and it would add more diversity to civilizations favoring defense, ect.

and in the end, sorry if this idea has been disscussed before, I did a search and did not find anything similar...

Other ideas?

 

[Niley]

I like this idea. Adds even more flavor. I'll give it a good 9/10.

 

[Gilg]

Perhaps they could add a short duration bonus to simulate riding out in the field with fresh horses full stomachs and high spirits.
This way it would make sense to place them close to the front and players could opt to trow away the garrisonbonus in order to turn off incoming attackers.

The bonus would be something like +1 move and +1 strength, it would be gained after five turns and have a 33% chance of wearing off per turn.

 

[fuzzy_bunnies]

I have never really found much use in using precious city space for the defensive bonuses of forts and castles; and when under attack units are rushed to defend the city, not moved to forts.

Just a quick clarification... correct me if I'm wrong but I believe in FFH fort defense bonuses actually apply in a radius around the fort. The largest fort has a radius of 3, so really you don't need to have any units in the fort itself, but you should build the fort 3 squares away from your cities and they shouldn't be in your BFC (preferably behind your front lines so that you get the defense bonus and they can't be easily occupied by attacking neighbors.

 

[Jean Elcard]

... correct me if I'm wrong but I believe in FFH fort defense bonuses actually apply in a radius around the fort. The largest fort has a radius of 3, so really you don't need to have any units in the fort itself ...

Iirc you are only getting the bonus if at least one unit is occupying the fort.

 

[Mailbox]

I think adding an "OnMove" Python call to the fort line that ends the movement of all units in a stack if that fort is occupied would be interesting. Forts would then be major obstacles because you could only move one square per turn when within one square of them. Then all you'd have to do is teach the AI to build and garrison forts on their borders.

Also the fort line producing culture when garrisoned would be interesting.

 

[sputnik323]

@bunnies FFH Citadels do have a radius bonus of 3 (castles 2 and forts 1), but forts have to be "worked" to become Castles and then Citadels. That means if you build a fort outside cultural boundaries you wont get defensive bonus until your borders expand and the fort turns to a citadel. So you can get the bonus outside the city radius eventually. (like my idea, FFH already gives radius bonus different from the tile bonus)

But the reason for my idea is to make castles and forts mainstream by every city having 1 and making them the primary target of attack. I think the bonuses should be large enough that people would want to take out garrisoned units, and then, once caputred the castle works in favor of the enemy. Maybe have different garrisoned units have different bonuses (archers give different bonuses than warrior). This could even be more expanded with "homeland" leaders or defensive races by giving garrisoned units more abilities, like the fireball idea for mages tower, other races can have a bombard ability that does colateral damage to sieging foes from the citadel once the catapult tech is researched, or boiling oil that slows and damages foes.

It changes the dynamic of seige warfare in the game so it might be too much, but like niley said it adds a lot of flavor to an already GREAT mod.

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

I think adding an "OnMove" Python call to the fort line that ends the movement of all units in a stack if that fort is occupied would be interesting. Forts would then be major obstacles because you could only move one square per turn when within one square of them. Then all you'd have to do is teach the AI to build and garrison forts on their borders.

Also the fort line producing culture when garrisoned would be interesting.

I like this idea A LOT. Zone of control ftw!

 

[sputnik323]

Also the fort line producing culture when garrisoned would be interesting.

I didn't think of the purpose outside city limits but I like this idea too. Having culture prevents other civs from taking your spot in placement of your new cities, and building forts with culture can prevent barbarian raids. Implimenting all of this would really bring out the benifits of building forts. Although it may be too powerful, if garrisoned forts produce culture, you could build a fort by a resource far away and build on it. May make the game really interesting though. Having forts near mana nodes or mithril.

 

[Jean Elcard]

Would also be nice, if you could actually see the radius of a fort, castle or citadel. Maybe similar to the blue overlay you get around cities, if a settler is active.

I'm sure there is a mod around already implementing some of the stuff suggested in this thread. Stuff like Forts outside cultural borders and letting them produce culture. Don't remember the name, though.

And "yes", I like the idea of forcing the enemy to one movement point around holdfasts too. Maybe it's also a good idea to implement a promotion alongside this, which would allow some units to overcome this disadvantage.

EDIT: Just had one more idea. Why not giving citadels the option (I wouldn't like to force it) to turn into fully fleshed cities after some time. Many of the cities in the real world started as castles and stuff in the past.

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

Would also be nice, if you could actually see the radius of a fort, castle or citadel. Maybe similar to the blue overlay you get around cities, if a settler is active.

seconded, good idea.

I'm sure there is a mod around already implementing some of the stuff suggested in this thread. Stuff like Forts outside cultural borders and letting them produce culture. Don't remember the name, though.

you're thinking about Jeckel's excellent JCultureControl I guess. http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=283686

 

[sputnik323]

If we are giving forts, citadels cultural bonus and the chance to become cities, they should probably have a small maintenance cost and have the ability to train units at a set rate (quite slow) like a training yard or archery unit 60 turns for a fort, 40 turns for a castle 20 turns for a citadel.

And if they eventually become cities they should become settlements before becoming cities.

Except for the Kuriotates which should have no maintenance cost for forts or settlements.

 

[sputnik323]

unless the maintenance cost is considered having units garrisoning the fort.

EDIT: actually I think forts becoming cities is a waste of effort, Kael and others are already working on so much that there really isn't a need for replacing what settlers already do. plus if the first idea is implimented (being able to work garrisoned forts) then you would want to put a city next to the fort instead of replacing it.