What is the point of permanent forts?

[Naja]

I began really enamored with the idea of permanent stone forts.

Visions of epic fort seiges danced in my head.

But after a lot of playing around with placing forts in the descr_strat, I've noticed that they're barely ever used enough to go through the trouble!

The AI just walks around them. They never besiege a fort that I have soldiers in. The only time a fort has a real purpose is when it's located in a mountain pass. But practically nowhere else does it add to the feeling of an extra layer of security - they're just landmarks that the AI occasionally attacks, but mostly leaves alone.

If there's no battle, and they don't fortify my provinces any more than average, than what is the real point of having them?

[Darkarbiter]

This is what zone of control is for... if you have units inside forts that have 1 space in between them it will seriously slow the enemy down.

1 2 3 4 5
6 F 7 F 8
9 a b c d

F=fort... as you can see with zone of control... it will take 3 moves for them to get past your forts (and usually the AI avoids the zone of control areas anyway). So this is a major defence against a human... and a near exploit v.s. the AI.

For the most part though they are still quite useless. The main problem being that if you sally from a siege your the attacker.

Also.. if you have a fort at a chokepoint (mountain pass... like the way they are supposed to be used) that means in theory the enemy can only sorround you on one side. Therefore they shouldn't be able to siege you since supplies are still coming in (but they could obviously still build siege equipment... just your men wouldn't starve). Hopefully this is fixed in empire. If it was fixed... we could set up forts for similar purposes to hadrians wall or the great wall of china. Unfortunately with the way siege works they are pretty gimped. Also in theory the objective of a besieged person would either be to escape or get supplies in. Therefore the besieger shouldn't be able to "hill camp" as this is entirely unrealistic unless the terrain in very special circumstances allowed them to do so.

I found it interesting that britannia had permanent forts.

Yet everyone knows the English had a huge ring of castles on the border between wales and england... yet there are like 4 forts only.

[EDIT] Just remember forts also give free upkeep... this is adds a lot to the use of forts. Although admitabbly on the Brittania campaign the provinces are quite small compared to movement so it's not so much of a big deal.

[Candelarius]

I found it interesting that britannia had permanent forts.

Yet everyone knows the English had a huge ring of castles on the border between wales and england... yet there are like 4 forts only.

The number of "forts" are just abstractions, for gaming purposes. Of course there were more forts in reality. But you can't very well have the map littered with little forts.

[Darkarbiter]

The number of "forts" are just abstractions, for gaming purposes. Of course there were more forts in reality. But you can't very well have the map littered with little forts.

Why not? Sure I don't want 300 but 10 along the line between wales and England is what I'm after.

@ MWNN the great thing about the permanent forts is free upkeep. So you can keep any militia unit in there

[FuriousSpurius]

For me it's all about the free upkeep. I usually stash my expensive cavalry in there to keep my finances in tune. And then if I ever need to reinforce a region that's under siege, I can usually storm in some extra horse from around the map.

Also, they're good for keeping an army in for cleaning bandits out of the countryside. I usually keep my rebel killing force stacked in a fort so that they don't traitor on me and I lose them. Great to keep them from mucking up my cities and has them close to the countryside to wipe out those randomly spawning bandits.

[Oberhut]

Used in chovckepoints they can buy you time.

[Farnan]

Yea, one peasant unit in a fort on a chokepoint buys you two turns to move your main army to counter the threat.

[Lost Crusader]

During my English campaign I found those stone forts very useful.

My small garrison on Scottish border stopped a few medium sized armies. But that's only because they were fullish enough to mount a direct assault, instead of waiting for defenders to surrender. The bulk of my forces were busy conquering Ireland, so I wouldn't be able to relieve them.

[Naja]

Actually, they don't even have to be militia units.

You could, theoretically, have 20 units of Chivalric Knights upkept for free, assuming that you made the necessary modifications in the right text file.

[Darkarbiter]

Yes but all should be balanced

[Naja]

I find free upkeep more balancing, actually, because the AI uses it.

This means more standing AI armies, a better balanced budget for the AI factions, and therefore a greater challenge for the human player (especially if you restrict garrisoned troops under your own house rules).

[antaeus]

its actually closer to the purpose of a castle and fort in reality.

the point is never to completely block an enemy advance. static defences will never do that successfully unless the attacker is completely stupid.

the point is to delay an attacker enough to allow you to bring your own forces to bare on them in a favourable way. early roman forts were designed as little more than heavy camps which a legion would use as a base of operations rather than a place to sit down inside. they served better as a place to collect taxes and control the movement of trade in peacetime - eg hadrians wall... which was designed as much as a control on peacetime traffic as anything to do with war.

late roman forts were heavily armed, but still designed as a basis for defence in depth where there would be a fast moving army waiting to pounce on any attacker trying to pass through the defensive perimeter of a region.

castles of later times were built with similar purposes... rather than completely blocking an enemy, they simply delayed for the maximum ammount of time, hopefully giving the defender time to bring up forces, or if not making a territory difficult and expensive to suppress as each fort must be taken one at a time at lengthy cost in time, and any bypassed fort can then assemble with troops from other forts behind an attacking force.

i think the game captures this well... even the old temporary forts did this.

[Lost Crusader]

antea, I couldn't agree more! That is the main purpose of the forts, to delay the enemy until you can gather your own army.

[Darkarbiter]

Well I still think you should be able to build them next to each other to wall out a chokepoint (or if your crazy with money... do something like the great wall of china)

[Exarch]

i like the idea of beig able to build permanent stone forts
in fact i woulda liked it in m2:TW besides kingdoms.
given the amount of extra factions u ahd to contedn with, they woulda been useful
like having a fort near gibraltar to ward off te moors....

[cfmonkey45]

Well, they have the Kingdoms retromod which does that and adds in a bunch of units to the ole grand campaign.

[Skyline Pete]

Retrofit doesn't allow the building of permanent stone forts on the GC map that appear as stone forts in the battle map.

Also, the lack of unit sounds of the additional units bothers me.

[Spurius]

I really wonder about their usefulness as well, I can only say that if you run the game on auto and comment them out, everything suddenly goes into turbo mode, there's MUCH more action.

[redhawk13]

just a random thought, but does anyone know if sending troops to occupy a fort in enemy territory in the Britannia campaign affects the culture ratings in the enemy settlement?