Tile improvements and slaughtering villagers

[Rossimus]

I have some newbie questions, but I promise I'll deliver on the topic title

First, as you improve tiles around your city, does every improvement require roads to be built through them to be useful? Or just resources? Does every cottage/farm/mine need to be "networked"? I generally do this, but I want to be sure I'm not wasting tons of time with it.

Also, when you're invading enemy lands, do you generally pillage your way through? I don't mean iron/copper/horses, i mean cottages, villages, farms, mines and other resources. I can see some short term benefits in how this could hurt a difficult opponent, but I would think it to be counterproductive if you plan on occupying his/her lands. Especially cottages, which take time to rebuild. What are your thoughts on this, oh community of civ-sages?

 

[Rossimus]

Oh, and another thing: does anyone use forts? What is a good strategy in using them? Unless there is an obvious choke point with no better use, it seems like a wasted tile. But I could be missing something.

 

[DMOC]

I basically ignore forts all the time, although I do understand that they have merits (canals, air bases). But again, my games rarely reach the modern age anyway and I usually play on continents maps which don't have much canal opportunity.

I almost never pillage cottages on my way through in enemy lands. I want those towns for myself. The exception would be if I'm about to capture a culturally pressured city and am planning on gifting it to an ally of mine. Then I would want to pillage cottages to gain the money and force my ally to rebuild the cottages.

Not every improvement needs a road underneath them. Resources need them only if they aren't already connected to your capital such as in a river. You shouldn't build too many roads, as that's a waste of worker turns.

 

[Gwynnja]

Roads don't need to connect cottages or farms, but it makes travel faster.

 

[Rossimus]

Oh man, I can't even begin to explain how much time I've wasted on road building. I have been connecting literally every single improvement with a road, thinking it was necessary. Ugh. Thanks for saving me time in the future though I'm glad for that, too, because too many roads make the map look messy to me. For practicality as well as aesthetics, thats good to know.

 

[ecuizbest]

I do use forts but I don't normally build them while I don't like automating workers for cities I do automate some to build my trade network and those workers will build forts on any resource outside of a BFC and since those are usually near my borders I'll put units in them to guard my borders

 

[DMOC]

Oh man, I can't even begin to explain how much time I've wasted on road building. I have been connecting literally every single improvement with a road, thinking it was necessary. Ugh. Thanks for saving me time in the future though I'm glad for that, too, because too many roads make the map look messy to me. For practicality as well as aesthetics, thats good to know.

Late game, though, roads will be littered across your empire when your workers run out of things to do.

I've been seeing that trend as I play more and more games that last into the industrial era, etc. I'm thinking that a better idea would be to prebuild all of the cottages in my commerce cities to workshops and then when space parts are ready to be built, I can take 20 workers (1 for every city tile in my commerce city) and BOOM! In 1 turn, 20 workshops. I haven't done this yet, don't know why.

 

[Roxlimn]

Forts are one of those things you can build outside of your cultural influence (IIRC). If you have a resource in neutral territory you really need to hook up extra fast and you haive extra worker-turns on hand, building a Fort nabs you a few turns premium on that resource.

Also, improvements like refineries and camps on tiles that aren't workable by a city are basically the same as Forts, except they don't house airplanes and ships, and don't have the defensive advantages. For defensive fighting, Forts are plausible points for engaging in defensive stack to stack combat, if it's on a vital strategic resource that's unfit for city tile work or you expect to have to deal with a few collateral damage attacks (though ideally, you ought to be facing none at all). A Fort on a hill is an acceptable enough spot to control tile to tile movement against enemy stacks, and is a convenient point from which to station and launch Mounted sorties for eliminating siege weapons.

 

[DMOC]

I wasn't aware that you could build forts outside of cultural borders. I may be wrong on this, though.

 

[Gwynnja]

I'll build forts on top of oil, that way as soon as I finish combustion I can start terrorizing my neighbors with destroyers.

 

[Bleys]

You cant build them outside your culture.

There are quite a few maps that can take advantage of the Fort for naval travel. Other than that, the best use for a Fort is to put one on an Oil tile that is revealed, so the instant you get Combustion, you have the Oil. A Fort claims the resource if its built on one.

Also, as has been noted, workers set to automate, even just trade-network, will usually build a fort on any resource not claimed by a BFC. This can be good and bad. Forts are treated as Cities for battle purposes, so City Raider units are rough.

I really wish they would have made them somewhat more use useful though, worth building inside your borders in case of invasion. But they just arent. Your best bet is still just wait til the enemy stack is exposed in the open and hit it with siege and flanking before it gets to your city.

 

[mirthadir]

A cheap use of forts is as a kill zone for an enemy SoD. Place one or several forts along a path the AI needs to transit to reach its target. Using CRII/III seige overcomes the defensive bonus and gives you better odds. Likewise before gunpowder or after industrialism your best all around attacks are CRII/III axes/maces/tanks. It seems a bit odd but if you have the enemy SoD in a fort they are actually easier to kill.

 

[henrebotha]

A cheap use of forts is as a kill zone for an enemy SoD. Place one or several forts along a path the AI needs to transit to reach its target. Using CRII/III seige overcomes the defensive bonus and gives you better odds. Likewise before gunpowder or after industrialism your best all around attacks are CRII/III axes/maces/tanks. It seems a bit odd but if you have the enemy SoD in a fort they are actually easier to kill.

Haha, this sounds like an epic strategy. I may try it, but only if a map specifically warrants it (ie a one-tile chokepoint through which an enemy needs to approach me).

Also, totally did not know Forts can claim resources... damn.

 

[SnowlyWhite]

the strategy would be nice, only that troops can't use forts in enemy territory

 

[JammerUno]

Added to the fact that using flanking mounted units to cripple the siege and then letting your CG units and the still high cultural defences take care of business is usually a better way to overcome your invaders.

 

[AdamG]

I can see forts being useful in a bottle-neck access point like Mirth said.

 

[DMOC]

A cheap use of forts is as a kill zone for an enemy SoD. Place one or several forts along a path the AI needs to transit to reach its target. Using CRII/III seige overcomes the defensive bonus and gives you better odds. Likewise before gunpowder or after industrialism your best all around attacks are CRII/III axes/maces/tanks. It seems a bit odd but if you have the enemy SoD in a fort they are actually easier to kill.

Why would you want CRII/III siege?

 

[Joshua368]

Why would you want CRII/III siege?

Almost 80% of my seige goes down the City Raider line... it stills does plenty of collateral damage and it has a much higher survival rate than anything else. If the city is on a hill or at tech parity I'll send in a barage or two to soften it up... but these don't usually live very long.

 

[Elkad]

Forts on your border let your paratroopers jump deep into enemy territory on the first turn of the war

 

[Kietharr]

Roads in general you only want to use to connect resources, even then you don't always need a resource to be connected, for example a wheat farm near your heavily forested start. You won't need health for a hundred or so turns at least, so you don't need to road it up the second you farm it. Roads only improve movement rate, I only use them to connect cities and I generally use them on hills too.

Forts are very useful late in the game, but early game they're only even marginally usable in a few choice situations, if you've got a mountain chokepoint/small border or have canal potential (ships can travel through forts in BTS for up to one tile, you can use inland seas to chain canals too).

Later on, you can put forts on top of oil before you can use it (it's one of very few cases where this works, revealed with scientific method and only usable with combustion), automatically connecting them as soon as you finish the tech. You can also use them as airbases in BTS with the limits on city aircraft.

Pillaging is only situationally useful. Example: A few games back I was playing Genghis Khan and had some decent production land yet only one decent research city. Huyana Capac was north of me and teching way too fast to make space a viable victory. His cities had huge cultural defense from terraces and he had Grenadiers verses my Keshiks and Macemen/catas (no engineering or guilds) so direct offensive attacks were mostly useless.

So I flooded his land with Keshiks and pillaged everything I could, used the money for deficit research, even razed a few cities left weakly defended, trying to chase my Keshiks. Huyana's neighbor to the east, Montezuma, declared on him and zerged his beleaguered cities into oblivion while I teched directly to cavalry, upgraded my keshiks, and then blitzed his hordes of longbows, macemen, and jaguars. If it weren't for all of that wonderful plunder I wouldn't have gotten the continent to myself for an easy space win.