Fortresses, Schmortresses!

[bongo]

It's always smart to let the AI waste the best part of his troops in suicide-attacks before you attack yourself.

TheStinger , I have never seen the AI build forts in my territory in preparations for an attack. Considering the fact that I have never seen the AI build forts at all, that is expected. But I have had an AI exploit a ROP. Cost me 20+ workers...

[Romanus]

Hey minke19104,
Never played Warcraft, but did this a lot in Age of Empires2....Wall in my city, but leave a long walled opening...AI would march thru the opening and get slaughtered......not effective against human opponents unfortunately.....they just kick in the back door

[Nym]

Originally posted by bongo
It's always smart to let the AI waste the best part of his troops in suicide-attacks before you attack yourself.

TheStinger , I have never seen the AI build forts in my territory in preparations for an attack. Considering the fact that I have never seen the AI build forts at all, that is expected. But I have had an AI exploit a ROP. Cost me 20+ workers...

I have seen the AI build fortresses... in the desert.

[steven8r]

I will build Fortresses in areas that I use as Rally Points, or Military Reserves. I find that the Fortress helps to quickly locate where to send my troops until they are needed. So I use them more as a visual aid rather than for the defensive bonus.

However, they are useful in the later game when using Artillery. (I love HUGE stacks of Artillery!) Send in a couple of defenders and a stack of about 30+ Artillery and enough Workers to construct a Fortress in 1 turn. I've rarely lost any Arty stacks using this method.

[Theseus]

I build fortresses all over the place. I'm sort of a fortress fanatic.

Forward defense, Maginot Lines, kill zones, protecting key defensive points... I can;t understand why people don't.

Workers? Nada problemo once I've been in a few early wars. And later? You know what I LOVE?? Cultural expansion so you can get within 2 tiles of a biiiig enemy metro... drop a 4X Infantry Army on it, backed up with 30-40 Arty and god knows how many Workers... you have one turn to get the fortress built, but then... steel rain.

What I miss is fortress healing, like in Civ2. Took me forever to get used to that.

[Jaybe]

... backed up with 30-40 Arty ...

I still say the PRIMARY advantage the player has (other than a brain) is the "ability" to concentrate offensive artillery. I am currently self-imposing a 5-bombardment-units stack limitation (or was it 6 ) on land. Naval/Air not limited.

[Theseus]

5 or 6 Arty??



Hey, in my defense, it's only when I get into a "Thesian" (patent pending) come-back-against-all-odds situation that I lay into the AI civs with massive Arty.

[Jaybe]

Theseus, in MY defense please understand that I am STILL playing at Regent level, large maps. May try my first Monarch after my current game in which I made some more rule modifications.

Also, that stack limitation is per tile: Multiple stacks against same target permitted.

[Theseus]

Fair enough.

I've been playing the "Dark Side Challenge," and actually having a blast with an Infantry/Arty offensive.

It does take, hmmm, a LOT of Arty.

Yum yum.

[Theseus]

Oh, and OT:

Fortresses have been critically important. And with probably 100-150 foreign worker slaves:

Insta-Fortress. (tm)

A good thing.

[Willem]

I build alot of Fortresses! What I do is space them every two squares apart, generally two squares from a city, then stick a bombard and a defence unit in each one. The AI will tend to go in between them trying to get to the city behind, and generally get turned into coleslaw while trying to get through.

[Jaybe]

Willem, I presume that you also lure the AI to the particular city with it being defended only by a single spear (or less) until the last moment.

[Willem]

Originally posted by Jaybe
Willem, I presume that you also lure the AI to the particular city with it being defended only by a single spear (or less) until the last moment.

No, I haven't actually tried that one, I usually don't have to bother. I'll have to keep it in mind though.

[bongo]

Too bad the AI will never figure out when to avoid a hard target and when to go right at it.

[aaglo]

I like fortresses. If nothing else, it's something to do with my extra workers...

Once I made a "Mannerheim-line" across the continent, approximately 50 fortresses side-by-side. It was beautiful