I would like to be able to build forts that you can build around the map to help your armies and your nation. I don't just want the generic civ4 forts that boost defence to your 15 longbowmen but forts that are actually realistic(magic is realistic here) and tactical. I have some ideas in mind:
1. Castle, regular fort that can maintain a limited amount of soldiers but costs maintenance (will become ruined and maybe ahunted if you stop maintaining it). Can only hold a set number of troops but gives them a good bonus to defence.
2. Army camp, where soldiers sit between wars. The soldiers stationed here work on farms and likewise therefore costing less upkeep but taking time to be ready for war. So that someone can ambush you with your pants down. Also alerts enemies that you are mobilizing for something they might not want you mobilizing for.
3. Wizard's Tower(Or Dark Fortress depending on taste), boosts research/spell points generated by your specialists while they are stationed within. Gives good defence towards regular units, but bad defence towards champions (or certain specialists in case the empire can't have heroes).
They would all of course cost lots of resources to create, so that you can't spam them. Thoughts?
Actually down the military tree there is a Fort but it's not the kind you want. The fort that is in the game simply boost your cities defense in some way, I forget exact stats.
As for your idea I'm not sure how useful it would be. I know myself and many others never bothered with forts in Civ4 because the AI or other players simply went around them.
forts are good to house your slower unit who are vulnerable, like catapults and archers. This is a great idea and would love to see forts be part of the game. Also, walls would be great too. However, these should not be cheap to build otherwise you get alot of turtleing.
The problem is making forts useful, and what consists of a fort. Right now you can have a size one city, upgrade that to a fort (although the building requirement for fort should be taken out), and bam! You've got a fort (in the form of a small fortified settlement, which is what a fort is). What use would a one tile fort serve gamewise, without a supply mechanic?
Good idea!
well we do have ranged attack in the game. maybe a fort could actually attack out to say 5 squares. this way you could build one and have it attack a settlement, or perhaps use it to defend an area at range.
But cities cost essence and take up a lot of space, I meant this as a tactical option, to be built near caravan routes, in mountain passes, or as a base for hit-and-run attacks.
I know about the fort in the city, but that works like a wall. Simply something you place in cities that might be attacked. What I mean is that a large nation can set one side of the country on the defensive, or someone who has to defend a key position can do so without going through the whole city process.
I guess. I just have a hard time thinking of how I would use them. Historically this type of thing was used to control the countryside by establishing a strongpoint that didn't require a great deal of manpower to defend. With countryside not being modeled really, nor with there being any supply lines to cut, I just don't see how the mechanics of you being able to defend a single tile would be useful.
It'd be extremely useful, actually. Place one in front of your city, and your enemies can't go past it without leaving themselves open to being rear ended by your troops. You can station archers in there and use them to harry enemy troops without leaving themselves open to being attacked. You can shove one in a choke point and use it to prevent enemies getting back without having to spend a crap tonne of cash on a city.
Oh, and don't forget using it as a place to rest your troops after they've been injured.
Lots of different strategies. I support the OP on this.
This has been suggested already [You lads should check out the stickied sugg. list before making a "new" suggestion.] -> Overland military buildings
Crying out to be built by pioneers. Perhaps they could be built in stages (improved and all that), and maybe imbued with magical defenses by a sovereign.
If "getting taken in the rear" would be a negative effect in tactical battles then I would see this. If I could have two armies attack a single army (one from the front and one from the rear) simultaniously and that provides a tangible benefit, ok. That makes sense to me. I think that tactical battle maps would have to make it worthwhile though, or it would have to be something that you could build in enemy territory that would support your operations there (having a relatively safe, friendly place where you can pull back into to regroup while in enemy territory would be helpful). After all, a lot of nations began extending their control into hostile country by building a fort there. Ancient Greece is replete with examples of this, but more medieval instances are Britain in Wales and the Teutonic Knights in Lithuania.
Well I like how CIV4 Orbis did Forts. Maybe Forts could be linked to opening supply lines for troops in enemy territory.
Given the ability to capture outlying resource tiles, it would be nice to be able to fortify them to some extent.
A Fort may be a bit of over-kill, but how about a wooden fence of appropriate height , similiar to the one we get around a Level 2 or 3(?) city, with the right tech researched, currently.
Then with the defenses in place, a Caravan could be assigned to haul the resource to the nearest city and have the Tile resource provide 100% bonus instead of the current 50%.
Question:
Has anyone been able to take away a remote resource tile from the AI?
Nope.
But you can slip pioneers into other people's cities using them. Useful for spying.
Castles were major factors in medieval warfare. Having an enemy castle nearby was a big no-no, because at any time the enemy could send troops to harass your own forces, and then retreat safely.
I say, make castles a sort of 'second city'. Not that you just build a city and voila, you have a castle, but instead you build a castle and certain options are available solely for the castles. They are a bit like station in GalCiv, but instead of being able to build willy-nilly, you are restricted.
TOWERS are the first restriction. Towers are required to add siege engines to defend your castle, and must be built individually. You are limited in building them by a value that grows with more research into the military tree. Each addition to a tower effectively 'consumes' that tower, meaning it cannot be used for another addition.
Tower Upgrades
The second restriction is based on LOCATION. The further away a castle is from any of your cities, the longer the build time (as resources to build the structures have longer to go for transportation). Likewise, having a castle located between cities makes build times faster.
General Castle Upgrades
If castles were to be included, and I think an inclusion like this would very much add to the game, then they would have to be expensive, to both build and maintain.
Or very limited in just being build. But castles were not a small undertaking in history. Castles took a ton of men, workers and soldiers both, to make a castle work. But a single castle was often enough to hold enemies back, easily. Not to mention that laying siege to a heavily fortified castle was an undertaking that took unholy amounts of soldiers.
If castles were in the game, I see them taking a good 10 turns to build just the citadel - added towers (if my idea is taken) or structures would take a large number of turns to work. But the benefit would be equally huge, including a massive defense boost that a city just can't compare with.
I like that thread and agree with the OP. Even if it would be just to build some of those AoW's fortified watchtowers to get warned of incoming armies, that would be worthy.
And living 100m from a magnificent XIIIth century castle, here is its picture to heat some interest :
One of the reasons I wanted forts is to defend passes that are already in the world (if you can make mountains you can make passes btw).
To make forts/castles better to hold territory we could have a field of influence (line Empire:TW but for forts not units) where you can't pass through without engaging the fort. And one thing I did in Civ4 was to have archer cavalry in the forts and send them out to shoot a bit then retreat in before they died.
But without supply lines, forts would only be useful on the defensive. Or against the ignorant enemies by building it next to their cities.
Well, forts really only are useful on the defensive, at least tactically.
I like the idea of forts as well. I think they'd be justified simply for the RP fun factor. Forts and Castles are just plain cool! But they are also significant battlefield assets which could add interesting possibilities to the tactical play. To quote Brad... "Elemental is a strategy game that takes place in an RPG world." I think castles and forts, fit well the bill of strategy and RPG.
I'd want to see Caravans expanded to support fortifications. Providing a supply route which must be protected from enemy disruption, or the units within will weaken (perhaps the existing Morale feature could work for this). This gives the enemy some options to defeat an uber turtle point. And it adds a balancing cost, while also making Caravans and roads even more purposeful. I'd think that fortifications would increase unit defense, allow a slow heal rate, and project a limited zone of control which includes range support and gives a Morale or other stat boost to nearby units. I don't think that the building of units should occur at fortification sites. Fortifications would already have enough boni. Possibly including...
Fortifications could also impact random events in such a way as to make event resolution more dynamic and interesting (more on the dynamics in paragraph 3). Fortifications could reduce/increase the odds for certain events to occur. They could also randomly trigger quests. An impressive Castle within the badlands might encourage a band of wandering nomads to settle down (added prestige or recruit non-hero units). The presence of a remote wildlands fort might randomly trigger a quest to track a rare Griffin. But the existence of a fortification might also perturb some unknown Sovereign who leads a covert attack on it (randomly generated units of no known allegiance). An abandoned or otherwise unkempt fortification might become infested with a monster colony which expands to threaten the countryside. Or the presence of a pre-existing fortification turns a rolled negative event into something positive... instead of dealing with a random bandit event, the player instead gets a positive event as the citizens celebrate their Sovereigns foresight and wisdom. And on and on... Fortifications provide more event fodder.
The building of fortifications could also be used as one of the possible responses a player makes to certain random events: such as bandit raids, civil uprising, and creature spawns. Bandits start raiding a city from a nearby lawless region, so you decide to build a field base to exert some control over that unsettled region. Hostile creatures have colonized nearby and are spawning in great numbers to murder your citizens. Something must be done. You have a choice: attempt to protect the citizens by stationing more units in the city, invest a little more and send out extermination parties, or go all out and build a fortified hunting camp.
And instead of solving random events with static and predictable event resolutions; Each choice could instead impact RNG odds. Having dynamic odds would keep things interesting. Otherwise, players will 'learn' the best route to take when they encounter the same events again. Terrain and a variety of other variables might be used to give the player a clue as to which option is best for each specific event occurrence. This gives the player more reason to choose one option over another. Such as: garrisoning extra troops within a city might generally be an effective and cheap pest control method when the creatures have nested in, and attack from, open grasslands. But the greater number of global infestations, the tougher it is to deal with a regional infestation. And/or the more fertile land a region has, the easier the extermination. etc Then also, a player might be in a situation where they don't want to risk even good odds, so maybe they play it safe and spend a bit more to send out organized hunting parties instead of the cheaper option of garrisoned troops. And maybe the creature dens are located in a nearby dense forest, but a player decides to gamble on even odds that hunting parties will be able to do the job. But perhaps even a normally ballsy player would want to construct a fortified hunting camp to deal with creatures spawned in particularly difficult terrain such as swamps, jungles or mountains.
I think adding RNG odds to random events would make things more interesting. But the player needs clues so they can make informed decisions, take calculated risks, and just generally have more motivation for selecting one choice over another when dealing with random event resolution.
As happens in my brainstorming sessions, I travelled a tangent. I don't expect that fortifications would make it into the core game in all the ways we might imagine it. Elemental IS an epic game, and it allows for Lots of growth. But Fortifications is one of those things that I think it might be worth it for the developers to code in a module for, even if fortifications don't make a big presence in the vanilla game. A fort module opens the door for all sorts of possibilities. Who knows what creative ways people will find to tweak a code base for forts. Perhaps in a game where the entire world map represents one modern city; Forts might allow for corporations or something. In space mods, forts might make the perfect foundation for star-bases. etc. I think it might be helpful to the community if a fort module was created which allowed for the turning off and on of various things... Caravan required, resource gathering, bonus and penalties to unit stats, event and quest triggers, diplomacy modifiers, and ??
It could be a resource... A "Defensible Position" and then a pioneer has to go out to it and claim it. Easy to add, harder to code it for general purpose. You could even add a spell that makes a defensible position. Just a thought.
Or it could be built anywhere by a pioneer but remains an empty shell until a unit is sent to man it.
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