Openciv3 - Fortifications

[Victor Galis]

This is an idea I had back at Firaxis, which never got included in the Civ3 list Maybe we can do something with it

I think that Civ 3 should have multiple level and types of fortifications (for cities and outside.)

Inside cities, have levels based on tech and amount of work put in. (more advanced= higher bonus) These are examples:
a) Wooden palisade. (z.B. Small bonus vs. archers, medium bonus vs. melee units, high bonus vs. cavalry. No bonus vs. tanks and artillery.)
b) Small stone walls.
c) Castle fortifications (w/ towers, moat, etc.)
d) Trenches
e) Sandbag walls
f) Barbed wire fence.
g) Mine field.

Outside cities fortifications would fall into two categories: Fortresses and walls:

Walls, (like Great Wall of China), effectiveness would depend on whether adjacent squares also have a wall of the same type. Examples of walls include: Stone Wall, trenches, mine field, etc. Most would require a unit behind them to be effective, though they would impede enemy movement (at least cavalry units) anyways. Mine fields could do damage without actual defenders, but would also hurt your units. (Also, would be used up after a couple units passed through.)

Fortresses would be 1 by 1 defenses and act as small cities. Their food and resource production, would go to unit repair and unit maintenance. They could also build specialized improvements (extra moat, towers, upgrades, training ground etc.), but not normal city improvements (like marketplace, bank, etc.) They would cost resources and maybe money to build in addition to engineer time. Over time, as they grow they could develop into small cities. Of course provide a defense bonus. Irrelevant of being surrounded or anything like that

Examples of this include The Great Wall of China, Hadrian’s Wall, Maginot line, Siegfried line, etc. I think this will make the game easier to play defensively (especially if the Computer is programmed not to always throw all its armies at one city.)

This would also add more strategic complexity. Now you would not just throw your units at a city, you would try to bypass the defenses and make an attack from the flank, like Germany did in France in WWI and WWII.

[heardie]

I do belive that this is an excellent idea, and one that I believ wouldn't be too hard to program in.
First of all, for those that don't know me, I'm heardie, kind of the first person who started organizing the prject and webmaster/graphicc artist for ociv3.
This idea allows great complxity to be used in the game, and allows a model that can be used in the scenario system, to create complex scenarios. I do believe that scenarios should be a very important part of ociv3 and that we need a very good system. This would also allows more customization intot the game, as I am prsuming there could be an option in a 'rules.txt' to allow you to change this, if you wished to do so, which would allow maximum playability for the game.

[amjayee]

I like the fortification idea. I have some points to consider:

Perhaps there could be two kinds of fortifications - military base type, like castles, forts and such, and "fortification line" type, like great wall and Maginot line. The fort lines could be like roads, a chain of fortifications. The military base types would reside in one tile, and work somewhat like cities. The fortifications would need to be "manned" to be effective - without any troops defending the forts, enemy could just pass through - well, except if there are mine fields or some other kinds of automatic defenses.

Which brings me to... you could customize the fortifications, by adding different kinds of walls, trenches, fences, minefields, booby-traps, automatic defenses etc... Minefields and such would cause losses to the enemy troops trying to enter the tile. The amount of losses could be lowered by using engineers or minesweepers etc.

Fortifications should definitely be added, in my opinion.