Building fortresses
 

Some tips for a newbie please. I notice the AI tends to build a lot of fortw, while I hardly build any cos they are so expensive.

I know like all things it depends on 1,000,0000 factors and variables but I would like your thoughts on
Reasons you build a fort. Strategic chock points? For efficient recruiting of good indies and/or nationals? Others? How do you decide whether to position them? Any rules of the thumbs.

I find that using forts for chock points is not very good. Mainly because it doesn't combo well with PD which is great for defense. Your commanders in forts have to be set to patrol to defend the province together with the PD right? Usually i got better things to do with the commanders (I usually have a lab/church there, so the mages are researching/forging/searching, priests preaching), so my PD gets wiped out over and over again, before i break the seige, sigh.

It's really irritating, when the Ai brings in a modest army that I can beat, but cos I'm not patrolling , he disrupts my recruiting for one turn, before i wipe him out, and he repeats it over and over. Sometimes I swear he sends out sacrifical troops just to siege my castle for one turn to stop me from recruiting... I really should set my mage commanders to patrol...but research is much better...

Do you guys really set your commanders to patrolling to prevent this?

Also forts don't really hold off the enemy, cos they don't have to seige your castle to move off to another province, they just got to defeat your PD plus any patrolling.
So it works only if you have 2 provinces side by side, one with a large army and/or high pd, and the fort province with a token force.

I don't really think forts are that worth while. They take a long time to build (6 months?) , so I have to remember to send a sucky commander to do it. Sometimes it is worth it, once I found a province that allowed recruiting of the elephants!!! another time i got sages. Build a fortress quickly, clean out the surrounding provinces, and lots of resources for recruiting!!!

But Most of the time i would be just happy to get archers http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif. Plus national troops of course, but the best nationals are usually capital only anyway.

I'm looking at the AI positioning of forts, it's probably just me, but they seem to build a *ton* of forts and they are very close together. It generally isn't a good idea to have 2 fortresses one province apart right? One time i thought i saw 2 fortresses next to each other..

In general how many fortresses should i be building on average (i know it depends), but when i play a medium map, i built only 1 fort, the rest i got from the AI.. Heck I sometimes even demolish the ones i get.

Somehow I think i'm using forts wrongly. Please help.

Re: Building fortresses
 

I'll position my forts based on chokepoints, resources, etc, but the reason I build them is mages. More forts -> more mages -> more research/more battle mages -> more effective battle magic/summons.

More national troops are good as well. More accurately, being able to recruit national troops close to the front line is good.

Protecting labs/temples so you can research/summon etc without worrying about raiders.

No real problem with setting forts one province apart. Just don't try to recruit from that province. Just don't put a fort next to your capital if you're relying on resource heavy capital only troops.

All that said, against the AI, I usually only get one or 2 forts built before I start taking them from the AI as fast as I need them. Can't think of any reason to demolish them, except to keep them out of enemy hands.

Re: Building fortresses
 

I agree with thejeff. The main reason I build forts is to protect my mages. Nothing sucks like having a whole team of sages wiped out by Call of the Wild/Winds or (worst of all!) a random unlucky event. Say, for example, that Caspar finds the deepest cave in the middle of your research lab, and then your sages all get trampled by Troglodytes.... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif

The OP is right that fortresses aren't much good for defending chokepoints. It's ironic, but true. It's usually much easier to defend a chokepoint by purchasing a load of PD (especially if your PD is decent) and a lab, then send in a couple of mages to summon new (cheap) beasties every month. For example, if you have E2 mages, Clockwork Horrors are nasty & cheap.

Another good reason to build a fort is to maximize the income of a rich province. Any province with a high population and a good income will get a substantial boost from a fortress. After several turns, that fortress has paid for itself, and the rest of the game is pure profit.

Re: Building fortresses
 

I've demolished a few when they appear on their own next to my capital and thus suck resources away from building capital-only troops.

Re: Building fortresses
 

It's important to be careful if you're trying to build fortresses for increased income. They never really pay for themselves in the short run. A fortress increases the income of the province that it's built in by a % value equal to (admin value)/2. If you have a 1000 gold fortress Citadel with admin of 40 and you build it in a plains that rakes in 200 gold a turn. That means you get 20% more gold each turn (40 gold a turn). You aren't making any profit off of this investment until *25 turns* have passed. 25 turns is a long time to earn back no money on your investment. If you put 1,000 gold into troops you'd be more likely to invade a neighbor, take a territory, and see a quicker return.

That doesn't mean that you should never build a fortress to increase income, in some circumstances, especially if you have great scales, it's a good idea. Especially with some of the higher admin fortresses. Just keep in mind how slow the payback will be.

Also, it's important to note that I completely ignored growth scales in the above calculations, which would make your return come back faster. If someone with more time would like to add that in, feel free to!

Jazzepi

Re: Building fortresses
 

But if you're building forts anyway, for recruiting mages, and don't care much about resources, you might as well go for high income provinces to get back some of the cost.

Re: Building fortresses
 

Right. There are definitely secondary benefits to building fortresses beyond the gold income. These have to be considered as well.

Jazzepi

Re: Building fortresses
 

Castles are good for choke points but they do not have to be ON the chokepoint. They might be better for you if they are within REACH of the choke point. Like 1 move away from it. I find it more important what indepts it can get and to hit the "8" key to look at how many provinces it can draw additional resources from.

For maximum effectiveness keep in mind that a castle uses the provinces it is connected to. And another castle will use the provinces connected to it. So build them two provinces away from each other if possible.

Check the different terrains which can give you different fortresses that you can build. Do you want the cheaper one? Or the stronger one? the one that has a higher admin rating?

Of course my suggestions are from playing solo on pretty large maps. Playing fast blitz games on small maps would probably change the suggestions

Re: Building fortresses
 

Wow, good comments. A lot of things might seem obvious to you, but not to me..

Here's a scenario, you are playing a double blessed strategy, leading an early charge. After clearing the provinces around your capital, you strike out, and very soon you run into a fort build by the AI. It looks poorly defended (the main enemy force is probably raiding elsewhere), you can probably beat it, but it will take a few turns to break the walls which is time you cannot waste in the early expanding stage. Or perhaps you should ignore it, and just take the other equally poorly defended enemy provinces.

What do you do? I always try to take the fort, which I think is a bad idea on big maps...

Re: Building fortresses
 

It really depends. What you have to understand is that forts allow you to produce units. Unless there's a mine, or an extremely high resources neutral territory, fortresses provide the *only* source of troops that a nation can produce.

With that in mind, sieging a fortress prevents a nation from producing troops/commanders there. This is very important when it comes to seiging the capital, as they are often worth 2-3 times as much production as other fortresses.

I'm in a game where an ally of mine was able to completely shut down the opponent's production of his sacred units by sieging his capital for several turns. Even though he had lost over 80% of his provinces to that opponent's raiding forces, the fact that my ally had his home capital producing troops, and had sieged the enemy capital, meant that the opponent's troops defending, plus his mages were going to slowly begin to starve.

In this way, it made sense to lay siege to the capital. In some cases, it's more important to starve your opponent of resources. In The Boiling Ocean I attacked an Ulm player as Mictlan. I had a good bless rush strat, but they had a lot of archers. Instead of engaging them head on, I took as many peripheral territories as possible, leaving them with only about 5-6. I, on the other hand, was expanding 2 territories a turn to the north. This gave me a huge income advantage, and allowed me to amass an army and finally conquer their home territory. While I never laid siege to either of their fortresses until their main army was defeated, I was able to win the war by making their gold income, relative to my own, minuscule.

So there's basically two options. Raiding your opponent's lands and jacking up the tax to 200%. Or sieging their fortresses and trying to take them over. It really is a matter of circumstance and relative power as well as troop location that makes the difference.

Jazzepi

Re: Building fortresses
 

Something else to remember, you gain the income from any territory that you have any army in that the opponent has a fortress in.

Jazzepi

Re: Building fortresses
 

For a large map against AIs I often take the province but not the castle. At least not for awhile. I can move armies thru that province and continue attacking deeper. As long as I keep a small force there I do not have to retake the province and I can still get gold and blood slaves from it. But the big advantage is that if another AI suddenly swarms up on me I can pull back. That AI will stop to try and take the castle from the first AI. I get an important benefit for a front-line castle (able to hold an attacker there while they seige me) without the expense of having to take the castle from whoever is inside. Once I no longer need to worry about a rush attack in that area, then I take the castle and the other provinces around it.

It might also be a worthwhile tactic in MP games. Using the province to move thru a beaten foes area but leave him there until you are sure that you can hold the area. If you get pushed back then let HIM defend it.

Re: Building fortresses
 

It's true that it can be frustrating to try to hold a chokepoint with a fortress because, as you point out, the enemy can wipe out your PD unless you're patrolling, and that disrupts recruiting at that fort. Part of the problem here is that you're confusing chokepoint forts, which are intended to hold territory, with recruiting forts, which are intended to build troops. If he captures a chokepoint fort, it doesn't matter that you can't recruit troops there, and he's got an army tied up besieging your fort. You're correct that he can just move right on past, but the AI usually doesn't. Also, if he does move on past he's now cut off in enemy territory while you build reinforcements behind him, and it should be pretty easy to build pincer-movement him from in front and behind at the same time. Note that as soon as he moves past your fort you get your province back and can now recruit again, which is one time you might want to recruit at a chokepoint fort.

I've taken to playing lately with NI mods (No Independents, by Edi), which makes forts even more important because they're pretty much the only place you can recruit at all. I found it useful in my latest game to sometimes build two forts adjacent to each other. It slightly reduces the resources each fort gets (by 15 points or so, out of 160), but allows them to easily reinforce each other in case of attack. Since I'm playing LA Agartha, I was actually hoping they'd break down my walls and attack me in the darkness of my Cave Fort (with my F4W4N4E9B4 Sepulchrals that would have been fun), but it was so easy to break the siege from the neigboring fort that I did that instead.

Anyway, key point is that if you have enough forts, you don't mind letting the enemy occupy the province outside a fort because it doesn't slow down your recruitment any, it just shifts it elsewhere. And it also ties up an enemy army for a good long time.

-Max

Re: Building fortresses
 

You can't ignore the fort, or else he'll pump in reinforcements through it. Take the fort, turn up taxes and blood hunt for a turn or so to get the unrest above 100, and *then* take the poorly-defended enemy provinces. Then come back and actually take down the fort.

Too bad you can't pillage until the fort is down, or else you could do that instead of blood hunting.

-Max

Re: Building fortresses
 

Great info.. thanks everyone.

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