Forts: When to consider and Improve fortification?

[jeff00seattle]

Hi

Family members can choose to create a watchtower (cost 250) or fort (cost 500).

1. Is it ever worth considering to build a fort over a watchtower?
2. Can forts be improved with better fortifications?

Thanks

[Townsaver]

Well, watchtowers are just thikngs you build that let you see from.
Ive built a few forts when i wanted to interdict or at least slow down an enemies advance, when they had to go through a bottleneck.
I try and remebmer to block off things, so I at least have a turn of notice that soemthign is afoot at the Circle K..
What is it, 3 forts, and AI needs a boat to get off/on the Iberian penne...
can slow things down around innsbruck or constantiopole pretty easy, too.

[Shasqua]

Forts are good in certain chokepoints for allowing infantry, archers, and artillery to kill enemy cavalry (especially if your archers can deploy stakes). Otherwise, they're deathtraps.

[Ishan]

Hi

Family members can choose to create a watchtower (cost 250) or fort (cost 500).

1. Is it ever worth considering to build a fort over a watchtower?
2. Can forts be improved with better fortifications?

Thanks

• Forts are like small settlements which help in creating a barrier between the AI army and a settlement. Yes they are worth it. Watchtowers are also useful in viewing the AI armies from a distance and prepare for a defense in advance.
  
• No Forts can't be upgraded like settlements.

[shikaka]

With placing forts* into mountain passes and next to straits you can cut off agent traffic, and also are warned before an attack. (the AI attacks your fort, not your city)
A good place for a border area like this is the Pirenees as Spain/Moors, or the Alps as Venice/Milan (actually as anyone holding whole Northern Italy)


*and putting a unit into them, so that they don't disappear. My favourites are small bands of cheap units, like a ghazi beaten up so badly, that it has like 17 men.

[Townsaver]

good point. you dont want it well stocked with lots of men, unless you have an incoming attack.
I try and keep them where I can dump a large force from a nearby city, but.. I am not usually too worried about that.

[Il Medico]

Forts cut off choke points, and provide a settlement like area (walls and gate) for an army to hold up in. Watch towers give you longer sight. (eliminate fog of war)

I use both extensively. watch towers on borders and in territory that you own but have no city near (like the interior of France). Fort, are good for holding mountain passes, river crossings and providing a place to hunker down if your field army is getting overwhelmed. I use forts to hold the alpine passes and man them with 2 spear and 2 archer units. The enmy invaders have to attack there first, giving me advanced warning. It also blocks enemy agents from entering that area.

[Steven the conqueror]

Well I like playing big maps with reduced movement points, so its really a pain to support sieged cities Ex: there are two turn from london to nothingham so if the danish attack with a full stack and decide to attack inmediatly I wont have the time to mount a proper defense , this is what I do, I left both nothingham and london with around 6 units and then place a fort in the middle of both, making sure infantry units can get to both cities in just 1 Turn, and I pack it with around five units, so If nothingham is attacked I can inmediatly send the reinforments. and as the other says, to cut off choke points, and towers are really usefull too.

[beckyolt]

Forts rock. They're cheap and they're good like a settlement. Only bad thing about them its that you cant put archers on walls. Also, they can "recruit" : If you have a family member on the fort, you can recruit mercenaries while in the fort.

When you're outnumbered and surrounded by strong armies, they rock, because theyre very useful and very cheap. Im playing France right now, and i have a extensive net of fortifications in all the passes in my eastern border


They will be useful now that a notorious Italian faction i was allied with naturally backstabbed me. One cookie for who guess who are them.

Don't overdo the Bold

[Steven the conqueror]

They will be useful now that a notorious Italian faction i was allied with naturally backstabbed me. One cookie for who guess who are them. [/B]

venice??? xD

[Ishan]

They will be useful now that a notorious Italian faction i was allied with naturally backstabbed me. One cookie for who guess who are them.

Oo I Know I know.... It's Milan.

[shikaka]

Ah, also according to my experience, there is no plague in forts! (= put important family members into forts during the black death)

[Ishan]

Ah, also according to my experience, there is no plague in forts! (= put important family members into forts during the black death)

True Plague is a scripted event meant only for settlements, so Forts are perfectly safe when Black death hits.

[Fireright]

Wooden forts are deathtraps so I seldom use them and prefer using a cheapo peasant unit to keep guard on passes. Stone forts are groovy and worth having and holding. Watchtowers are the business in busy areas, on islands, and in desert regions.

I'll send a guy toddling off through the desert on watchtower building duties so I can keep an eye on whats what...and bring him home along the coast knocking up watchtowers so my seas are nicely visible and naval invasions dealt with sharpish

No point 'fighting em on the beaches' when its easier to sink em!!

[zcylen]

True Plague is a scripted event meant only for settlements, so Forts are perfectly safe when Black death hits.

didnt know that!
ok, one more reason to build forts

[Il Medico]

They will be useful now that a notorious Italian faction i was allied with naturally backstabbed me. One cookie for who guess who are them.

Hmmm. That's a tough one. I'll say the Pope.


Or me......

[Shasqua]

It's probably Mila-GAAK! (crumples to the floor with a dagger in his back)

[Mountain_Commander]

Forts are necessary buffers. Best used to bottleneck a region off. Of course watchtowers are handy for seeing all of your territory.

[Lysimachus]

There's a modification you can download for Kingdoms which allows you to replace the wooden forts with stone forts in the Grand Campaign. Doing that enables you to have forts that aren't just death traps

[Chad29]

Why does everyone keep calling forts death traps? They're just supposed to be temporary, and a palisade defense is better than nothing.