Anyone use a Fortified City?
 

Just curious, never really tried it, was considering it for a nation which IMO would require a lot of capital-only troops requiring high resources and without a great need for indy troops. Marignon standard with a good blessing fits this bill for me. The 5-Turn wait puts me off, but the 50 admin sounds appealing. What is your experience with the fortified city?

Re: Anyone use a Fortified City?
 

I have used them with Man-std (bad results with LotT, good KoA production) and Marignon-std (Good results when I had a good starting prov) and Arcoscephale-GE (to help counteract forced sloth in an unsuccessful attempt to make armies of Arco-GE units). Their effectiveness depends on what starting location you draw, but you'll end up with a little bigger army of strong national troops. I would say the only good use for it is squeezing a little extra resources out of your main at the expense of being able to expand your unit production over a large area. You also cannot place them within 2 squares of each other because if they share a square that you want to produce something on (e.g. a sage or something) the two adjacent fortified cities will consume all of the provinces resources. It's a very restrictive castle and I usually just go with the Castle or Fortress if I need a little extra production boost. My brother uses FC with Pythium on occasion to increase his emerald guard production. You have to be very picky about your new fort positions, but they pay off pretty well if you pick a nice mountainy/foresty area.

Re: Anyone use a Fortified City?
 

I like to use a fortified city for Man (standard) in combination with a big blessing for my wardens. Clear out the provinces immediately around the capitol and watch the resources pour in. Note that I usually play on smaller and/or crowded maps, and my choices (Man, fortified city) reflect this.

Yes, build time is a pain, and like Verjigorm said you do need to be very selective when building a new one. I suspect Ulm could make good use of a fortified city (needs lots of resources, has lots of gold) but I've never tried it myself.

Re: Anyone use a Fortified City?
 

I have used Ulm several times with a fortified city. It works okay, but a castle is probably better. Fortified cities are definately better than castles, but the extra 300 gold you pay sucks. On a super-small map they might be worth it (because the first one's free!).

I personally think all 300 gold castles should cost like 350, and all 750 gold castles should cost like 650.

Re: Anyone use a Fortified City?
 

The cost of fortresses is currently 150 * time to build.

Re: Anyone use a Fortified City?
 

As far as I am concerned there are two castles worth considering on land:

1. The watchtower - cheap in design points, cheap and quick to build, and a
stumbling block to any invader.
2. The castle - slightly inferior to the fortified city, as a castle, but cheaper
and much faster to build.

The wizard tower is a very nice castle, but costs 120 design points. Who can
afford this?! Everything else is crap. It is true that in a game of mine I am
getting frustrated besieging Mountain Citadels with 350 defense, but I cannot
help but think that maybe, if my opponent had taken a better castle, he would not
have had to man his capital's walls three turns after invading my lands. By the
way, Caelum fell, it just took four turns.

It is no wonder that in Multuplayer, you mostly see watchtowers. I would say
that the best players use them exclusively.

Re: Anyone use a Fortified City?
 

How about Mausoleums? They have walls but Watchtowers don't.

Re: Anyone use a Fortified City?
 

You know Kristoffer, you should really export this in a text file... I never ever saw somebody playing with a mountain citadel eg. The added defense dont compensate in any way the feeble eco bonus, and the huge cost and build time.

Re: Anyone use a Fortified City?
 

About the administration. Does 'admin 50' mean that a Fortified city can 'pump over' up to 50 resources from each adjacent province? If yes, then admin 40 is more than enough. Usually I consider myself lucky to get even one adjacent province with a res 40+, and two with resources 30-40, even when I have a strong production scale.

Re: Anyone use a Fortified City?
 

Nope. That number is a percentage of available resources, so a province with two adjacent Fortified cities (each sucking 50% of its res) has no resorces at its disposal.

Verjigorm already mentioned this in this thread...