Anyone use forts to slow down marauders?

[stormwriter]

I'm sick of having wave after wave of mounted units razing my land. I need to have something to slow them down. I was wondering if units stationed near my perimeter in a fort might help? Would i put 2 movement units in them?
I wish there was an improvement to the fort, like to make it stronger, but it's the same type of fort from the old days.

In a game yesterday though, i couldn't stop laughing, cause they sent waves of units to their deaths at my cities. They wised up and realized they should be pillaging, or at least attacking my defenses with catapults first.

[Velociryx]

I must confess that I've not yet even BUILT a fort in this game.

My methodology for stopping marauders is thus:

1) Have a bigger army than the opposition. Check the f9 screen to see where you place in terms of military size. I live and die by this screen.

2) Pillage Zones - I tend to play culture-heavy games, and as such, can push back my borders, giving me more than the standard "fat cross" at my outermost border. In this zone, I'll drop tile improvements I can't use, specifically to give the AI something to pillage if I'm attacked. Result: They cross the border, stop to pillage my unused enhancements, and give me enough time to rush some rapid responders to them to dispatch them. Yes, they make a bit of coin at my expense, but I get it back on the counter attack when I take a city or three, and in the meantime, they're not directly threatening a city.

3) Hit the AI. Hard. This, in my experience (Noble to Monarch levels so far) will freak the AI out, and they'll mostly hole up in their cities to guard against you. Sure, you might have the odd unit running across the border to pillage, or try and sneak in the back way (transport to another front, which I've seen 'em do enough times that I always keep decent garrisons in coastal cities), but by and large, you can really mess with the AI just by hitting them hard at the city gates.

-=Vel=-

[khumak]

IMO forts are useless except maybe in an OCC game with raging barbarians on or in cases where you have obvious choke points that you could build forts in. Without zones of control you'd have to build and garrison an entire unbroken wall of forts along your border to have any effect. Even a 1 tile hole in your "wall" would allow the AI to just ignore your forts and just pour in through the hole. You're better off just having some cavalry or something on the edges of your borders to quickly take down any invaders before they can pillage much.

[Redwuff]

Forts can be very useful in certain limited circumstances...

In my next to most recent game (Monarch, standard size, continents) as Rome, I was sharing a smallish continent with Asoka. We were pretty much tied in military power, while I was ramping up my production and population and he was dominating culturally. We each had roughly half the continent. I could see war was inevitable, both because I needed more living room, and because he was starting to erode my borders culturally. I was already in contact with other continents, so I didn't need him to keep up in tech.

Our initial border had formed naturally along a north-south mountain chain (just as it would have in the real world - I love this game), through which there were several passes, only one of which (the southernmost, which had a wide flat forested area with his capitol city just on his side of it) was wider than three squares - Two gaps were three squares wide, two were two, and there were two one square wide with a single mountain between them, which means I could treat it as a single three-square pass. Most of the passes had forests or jungles and hills on my side of the pass. These made ideal points to control AI pillaging incursions with a minimum of force - placing one or two high-attack units in the middle of each pass, and anything trying to sneak through was guaranteed to get attacked, and if a major attack was pressed against me through one of the passes (something I judged unlikely), it would stop long enough to kill the garrison, which would give me warning.

Now, it has been my experience that the AI, if you fortify a lone unit or two in a chokepoint, WILL go out of its way to kill it, so any defensive advantage is helpful. So as part of my preparations for war, I put a fort in the center of each of those passes (on a hill if possible) and roaded the adjacent forest/jungle squares (judging that it was more beneficial to me to slow down horse-riding pillagers with forest than to get rid of the defensive bonuses), and placed a pair of defenders in each fort. Anything trying to get by to pillage (and there turned out to be quite a few) gets mired in the forest, where they are promptly *****-slapped by the defenders, who can then jump right back into their fortress because of the road.

Throughout the extended midieval era war that followed, they served their purpose perfectly. Not a single pillager got more than one square past the forts. Not a single fort fell, although they were attacked by multiple attackers several times. Not a single fort needed more than two units in it, although I had to replace single lost units in one or another fort a couple of times. These ten units (maybe thirteen including replacements) managed to kill two to three times their number in units, and more importantly, almost completely eliminated the pillaging of my heartlands that has hurt me so badly in major wars in a few other games. They certainly could have done this /without/ the forts, but I doubt they would have done it so cheaply or effectively.

In the meantime, my macemen/praetorians and catapults stopped the massive incursion through the southern gap cold, followed by the destruction of his heart cities on the other side. };>

I should note in passing that I noticed some interesting behaviours in his cities during this war - since they were all of MY religion, I could watch them very closely...

1) every time he got a new tech he was definitely upgrading every unit he could. Money would go down, and a bunch of experienced archers would suddenly become longbowmen... *sigh* It cost him a hell of a lot less than it would cost me, though.

2) his building program definitely reflected what I was throwing at him. I had no horses, so no horse-based units, and I usually don't use missile units as attackers. If they are along at all, it's as additional stack defenders or as healers. Almost everything I through at him were melee (mostly macemen with Combat 1 and Cover 1), and catapults, and the only thing I saw him built after I attacked were longbows for defense and crossbows for attack, and a few horse archers for pillaging raids, which seemed to get less common as they kept dying in front of my border forts.

3) once my attack was pressing home, he definitely was concentrated on holing up defensive units in his cities than in assembling a counterforce, but unlike what some other people have reported, I was seeing definite, coordinated troop movements from his backline cities into the cities under attack, particularly with Delhi. He never dropped his back garrisons /below/ two or three longbows and a melee unit in support, but EVERYTHING else those cities built was being rushed to the frontline cities. Delhi, in particular, ended up having eighteen combat units in it I had to kill before taking it. (Thank all the gods for catapults! They made it MUCH less expensive than it would have been otherwise).

Redwuff

[ghen]

Redwuff, I appreciate your account from the game you played and I don't want to diminish it.. but the fact remains that forts are extremely non-useful.. Even the upgraded ones in the fort mod, because they have no zone of control. They can be passed by, which defeats their defensive bonuses, in almost all situations.

[Redwuff]

Like everything in this game, they are situational. But I disagree with your flat statement that they are 'non-useful', even without ZOCs.

Because of the promotion system and how the computer seems to use it (it prefers +attack bonuses), given equivalent tech and production cost, CIV seems to favour the attacker, except in cities with their large defensive bonuses. On those occasions where you have an strategically important point that's /not/ suitable for a city, a fort can mace all the difference between losing that axeman to an opposing swordsman. And the computer does NOT ignore fortified units - they /will/ be attacked, at least at higher difficulty levels. Yes, they also will try to push units past them to pillage, but you can't stop the pillagers if your anti-pillaging units get wiped out...

Would they be more useful with ZOCs or with upgrades that got them bigger def bonuses, or ZOCs, later? Hell yes. But they're at least sometimes useful, just as they stand. Even in open terrain, a line of forts along your border spaced FxxF would be cheap in worker-turns (and far more so than in Civ3, there are times you have them to spare, occasionally) and would make that border significantly easier to defend against raiders. Not because they stop the raiders, but because they'll protect the units who WILL do the stopping.

Redwuff

[slebrun]

But Zone of Control is an artifical concept. If there's a castle in a pass, the attackers can simply march right past it, thumbing their noses at the defenders, unless the defenders actually bother to come out an attack.

One change I would make to forts: When an enemy unit passes within one square of a fort (and with the fact that roads/rails are useless to enemies, they'll have to stop beside the fort on the way past, most likely) the units in the fort wake up, and if they choose to attack the enemy units:

a) a retreat chance, even if the unit doesn't normally have it
b) if the unit is victorious, it stays in the fort, rather than occupying the square the enemy unit was in
c) the unit retains it's fortification bonus, if any, until it leaves the fort.

Siege weapons would act on forts just like on cities; reduce defense, which slowly builds back up.

This would more accurately simulate the effect of a fortress, I think.

[Firecrak]

Originally posted by Redwuff
CIV seems to favour the attacker, except in cities with their large defensive bonuses.

I couldn't disagree with you more on this one. 3/4 of all promotions in this game are defensive in nature. Theres a 25-75% defense tile almost everywhere, cities provide MASSIVE cultural defensive bonuses, most units can also fortify for an extra 25%. Its the other way around. Attackers need more boosts.

But the topic still stands. Forts are useless. Castles and walls become obsolete VERY quickly also, which is a shame, it seemed in previous Civs that walls and things like The Great Wall wonder, where marvelous to have. Now....I never build them, even in epic games, I out tech walls too quickly to waste time on them.

[Drachasor]

Units running by a fort should take damage as if attacked by an artillery weapon. I think that gives forts a purpose and gives an incentive not to rush past. At the same time you might want to pay that health cost and ignore the fort.

I think ZOCs are too strong, at least how they were in Civ II. It is better to allow a way to bypass the ZOC, but you have to pay a price.

-Drachasor

[Quillan]

In history, no army would EVER march past a fortification and just leave it there if the defenders failed to come out and attack. If they had, the garrison would either harrass them to death, take them in the rear at a critical moment, or utterly prevent their entire supply effort from reaching the army. The attackers would either have to take the fortification, or leave a sufficient force besieging it to keep the defenders bottled up in the fort continuously. That is what is simulated by a zone of control.

[solo]

In OCC, I'll build forts when my worker runs out of other things to do. There is usually enough time to build a nice wall of them if my land borders are limited. I can't see much use for them, though in a non-OCC game.

[slebrun]

In history, no army would EVER march past a fortification and just leave it there if the defenders failed to come out and attack. If they had, the garrison would either harrass them to death, take them in the rear at a critical moment, or utterly prevent their entire supply effort from reaching the army. The attackers would either have to take the fortification, or leave a sufficient force besieging it to keep the defenders bottled up in the fort continuously. That is what is simulated by a zone of control.

Very true, but rather than simulate it via a ZOC, why not actually let the player have a fort that they can sally forth from? Or let the attacking force cut the fort off and wear it down?

[Kc7mxo]

I think forts should have ZoC, and should cancel out collateral damage.

I only ever built a fort once and actually used it, and that was in a one square isthmus between me and that bastard tokugawa. And he just over ran it anyway with catapults in one turn.

Its only what, a 25% defensive bonus? I think it should at least be 60%.

[Hauptman]

The biggest problem i have with forts, they destroy the square. its worth more to leave a forest up then make a fort. Forests are the new forts. And castles can still be surrounded by farmland so bring back the civ3 fort plz. especially the barricade fort.

[Slartibartfast]

Originally posted by slebrun
But Zone of Control is an artifical concept. If there's a castle in a pass, the attackers can simply march right past it, thumbing their noses at the defenders, unless the defenders actually bother to come out an attack.

I have to agree with Quillan here. Leaving an enemy fort in your rear is extremely risky business in real life. The problem with CIV is that lines of supply aren't modelled, so you can choose to bypass these forts.

The solution would be either to:
1) Have ZOCs for forts, or
2) Give attacking units out of supply (due to forts sitting on their supply lines) some hefty penalties.