Forts - What gives?

[joncnunn]

Personally I almost never build Forts and convert forts that become mine into the real improvement.

My one use for forts has been as canals, and when used that way I try to use otherwise useless tiles.

Forts do provide some defense and the base forest & hill can improve the defenders still further and City Defender promotions work there as well.
The downside is that enemy City Raider promotions work attacking forts.

Some aircraft can be based in forts as well.

Oh, and if you want oil connected ASAP you can build the fort as soon as you have Scientific Method and it will come online immediately Combustion instead of after you build the oil well.

[wodan11]

Forts do provide some defense and the base forest & hill can improve the defenders still further

None of which can be removed by bombardment....

[Sir Og]

I also use forts on calendar resources sometimes, so that I can get the happynes/health bonus of the calendar resource as soon as I get calendar.
The same, as already mentioned, can be done for oil.

I often build forts in deserts near borders (to serve as airfields to help acheive air superiority in case of a war) if I have spere workers.

[rah]

and attackers do not get the defensive bonus when in others cultural territory. So there is no downside to building forts since your enemy can't use them. (I think this was done more for the AI's benefit)

You do have to be careful because ships that are moving on auto will move through forts along the coast and if they end their turn there may be vulnerable to be destroyed by land units.

[mzprox]

An other use of forts is to connect resources which are on small islands and you dont want to build a city there. Forts act like a cities in this case.. You can even connect resource from a one tile island which is inside your borders. You just have to build road aswell.

[wodan11]

There's contradictory information... do or do not forts allow connection on small islands w/o a city there?

[mzprox]

There's contradictory information... do or do not forts allow connection on small islands w/o a city there?

They do, i have tried it. But it must be inside the cultural borders.

[Jaybe]

City Garrison & City Raider promotions apply to Forts as well as Cities.

[Unimatrix11]

Does the word ´redundance´ tell you anything guys?

[wodan11]

I remember back with Vanilla I noticed that a river on a small island gave you access to resources. No city. No fort. Wonder if that still works.

[Theben]

They do, i have tried it. But it must be inside the cultural borders.

I have tried that also but I did not get the resource, even building a road. It was within my cultural borders (even in city limit! but on another island). It may not have been 3.17 so verification is needed.

[Arrian]

+25% defense, city healing rate, city garrison promotion works, connects resources, does not remove forest/jungle.

In the right circumstances, they can be useful. Chokepoints being one. Another is, say, a forested hill next to a city, with flat land all around. You want to prevent the enemy from marching up, parking themselves on the forest hill and making a nuisance of themselves. You build a fort and stick a couple of units in there, forcing any invader out onto the flat ground.

-Arrian

p.s. As far as I know, resources on 1-tile islands are simply lost causes.

[wodan11]

p.s. As far as I know, resources on 1-tile islands are simply lost causes.

You can sometimes put a city on it.

[rah]

Yeah you can always do that. It's always irritating when the copper appears on that 1-tile island in your caps bfc but no where else near close.

[Lord Avalon]

I have tried that also but I did not get the resource, even building a road. It was within my cultural borders (even in city limit! but on another island). It may not have been 3.17 so verification is needed.

I have BtS 3.17 and tried this last night: started a game with archipelago map, used worldbuilder to put an island across the water but in capital's BFC, added copper to island (it wasn't on the "mainland" so I didn't have to erase any), gave myself math & put a worker on the island.

I started the worker building a fort then road. Got copper after wheel, mining, BW, and sailing were researched, and cultural borders expanded to island.