Would improving AI use of forts improve overall AI gameplay?

[Emptiness]

+2 and +2 per tile for an Aristocracy's Citadels with the Feudalism tech, not bad. My elves would build them in every tile...

I agree that it would be nice if the Ancient Towers did something more. I was thinking of suggesting that they get a small +defense bonus, maybe 10%. Having them automatically upgrade to forts might be inconvenient since (rarely, I admit) they can be nice to keep around for their sight radius even after they are inside your borders. What about making it easier to build a fort in their tile? For example, an Ancient Tower in the tile adds +100% worker productivity when building a fort.

 

[Jabie]

+2 and +2 per tile for an Aristocracy's Citadels with the Feudalism tech, not bad. My elves would build them in every tile...

Point taken, maybe tone down the bonuses. The point is to make the tile a little more useful so that the AI isn't so badly penalised when it starts to spam forts.

 

[MrUnderhill]

Maybe give the prod bonuses to Military State (or Conquest if you really want to diss the elves) and have Aristocracy only give gold bonuses.
Using forts to build units faster seems like a very fitting bonus for Military State, not so much for Aristocracy.

 

[Imuratep]

Another idea would be to make forts zero-move units which can attack adjacent tiles with an arrow spell or some such. They could also provide a defense bonus to units in their tile, but at least they'd serve a purpose and need to be destroyed.

I like this idea. Forts that increase the tile income are IMHO somehow strange. They were really just made to defend the area nothing more. Production boni are derived from the materials you get by using this working technique in this area not from the training you can make there.

My basic idea
Workers get a spell enabled by construction that needs 8 turns to be completed (or what is the normal work ratio of forts? I never built them before). This spell summons an immobile "Fort" unit with guardsman. At engineering they can upgrade to castles and at machinery to citadels.

Further ideas for forts as units
1. Forts start with a medium defensive strength like 4-5 that can be increased by sacrificing archer units that give them promotions similar to bronze, iron and mithril weapons like "garrisoned archer", "garrisoned longbowman" etc. To allow multiple garrisoned units there are multiple levels of this promotion --> garrisoned archer I-V. By removing the promotion a new fitting unit is created (i.e. an archer for garrisoned archer, an longbowman for garrisoned longbowman etc.).
2. Forts start with a high defensive strength but cannot gain xp from combat. Instead you can sacrifice units to give it xp based on the xp the unit had.
3. Forts start with a medium defensive strength and the strength can't be increased. Instead they can cast a spell that increases the defensive strength of all positioned units a lot.
4. Forts normally don't regenerate but workers can rebuild them by giving them a promotion that increases the healing rate. This promotion wears off once the worker leaves the tile.
5. To have a counter against this mechanic Catapults and fireballs have +50% against fort units

 

[Jabie]

Forts that increase the tile income are IMHO somehow strange.

The economic / production concept is that it confers a sense of safety and authority. You're less likely to have your caravans raided if there's a fort nearby and the peasants are more likely to be productive if the local lord lives nearby. Additionally, it's a simple XML hack which makes it a tweak to the current system, now FfH is feature-locked.

 

[Imuratep]

The problem is that the AI still would ruin itself by building forts early on. +1 +1 is not good enough to base an economy on it. The only tiles I could imagine them being good are 1-2 and 0-3 forests, but the AI builds them on tiles that are completely nonsense.

 

[Kyroshill]

Another idea would be to make forts zero-move units which can attack adjacent tiles with an arrow spell or some such. They could also provide a defense bonus to units in their tile, but at least they'd serve a purpose and need to be destroyed.

I never understood why this didn't happen in Civ.... how many forts were built on points and at bay or harbor openings to fire at enemy ships? There was a time when Pirates had forts like that.... but even those changed


Of course... the ship-attack is a little potent for FfH.... but having larger weapons stationed in forts seems likely.... and should be able to attack adjacent squares....

 

[Honor]

Old school colonization-like fortress-auto-attack-on-units-passing-by action could be interesting to see for forts and whatnot.

 

[Ribusprissin]

You could make them like forts in BtS, where it's essentially a held unit with a ranged attack. You could even make it like the citadel of light as long as they don't set forests on fire.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

Letting forts autoattack or stop movement used to be rather processor intensive, but thanks to the <PythonAtRange> tag it should be rather easy.


I haven't put much thought into it recently, but I haven't ruled out the possibility of adding civ-specific forts and making the Citadel of Light and Chancel of the Guardians be such forts instead of buildings. I'd probably want to first merge FfH (or FF) with JCultureControl: Beyond City Border and JImprovementLimit: Tighter Control. Setting it up so that only specific civs could build specific improvement without having to make worker UUs for all civs would probably be important to that too. I'm probably not up for the DLL changes that implementing this well would probably require. I could handle it in python, but that just wouldn't be the same. For one thing, it would probably make the AI suck even more.