Forts... what's the point?

[RollingWave]

Seriously... why build forts? for example.. if ur holding a bridge, if u have a field army... they have to fight a field battle with you, but if ur in a fort, they can just seige you... and now u have to force him to fight -.-...... if ur in a fort u can't retreat, and it really doesn't give THAT much extra protection in a assault...

I had this one example... where the AI stupidly parked he's main army in he's fort and left he's city lightly defended... I took the pleasure of seiging both he's fort and he's city at the same time.... if he was a field army and i tried to attack and seige at the same time it would have being far harder to acomplish as he could just retreat he's field amy then break the seige..... so seriously.... why build forts?

[Ellesthyan]

First things first: Never put a real army in a fort.

Forts are to delay. If you have a fort between one of your key cities (for example, Padua) and a full stack of enemy troops, you'll be happy the opponent will have to waist time sieging the fort. He can't just beat the fort in one turn, nor can he ignore it. That gives you time to gather your forces.

Now, if you have enough money, you might want to put a battle ready force in those strategic places. However, changes are you will lose and you will not delay your enemy. Also, it is extremely expensive and certainly not efficient. Having one or two field armies to defend 6 cities (Jullii North-Italy for example) is much better than having 6 or more because you need to defend every pass through the Alpes. Putting a fort into place will allow you to get your field army where you need it.

A few inexpensive missile troops combined with the best defensive force you have (for example: two archers and one levy pikemen) are quite a tough nut to crack. Your enemy will either choose to lose a significant amount of men in an assault, or waist 3 turns sieging the thing.

Besides that, the AI is quite reluncant to actually besiege forts. This should have changed with the patch though.

[Besieger]

Well....actually forts can be very useful initially depends on how u use it.For instance, if i wanna defend the northern mountainous area of italy from e invading babarians....all i hav to do is to build a couple of forts in the mountain pass blockin them from advancing thus this may prevent my cities from being seiged and while giving me more time to build up my troops...as for bridges, forget abt fort...i prefer putting a mass missile armies with a couple of heavy infantry blocking e bridge.....cheerz!

[Wishazu]

also building and garrisoning forts in your provinces reduces the likelyhood of rebellious natives appearing.

[Ar7]

Forts are great and make protecting borders way easier. I always have an army protecting 3 provinces on average, the soldiers are based in the central town and enjoy the life of a civilized city. Now if somebody wants to invade, they will have to attack one of the forts first, this gives me time to send that central army to a needed location.

[The Stranger]

Forts are great and make protecting borders way easier. I always have an army protecting 3 provinces on average, the soldiers are based in the central town and enjoy the life of a civilized city. Now if somebody wants to invade, they will have to attack one of the forts first, this gives me time to send that central army to a needed location.

forts are bad and i never use them holding bridges i'll do it the way besieger said with a mass missile army and passes with a normal elite army so forts arent usefull exept for some mercs to give some delay or light troops
cause i modded merc so their upkeep rose with 100 denarii and cavalry merc with 200

[master of the puppets]

i almost never use them except in greece. in my greece campaign i cut off most of north of greece as i expanded to turkey and africa. each fort i had i made sure they had one hoplite ,one archer ,one pelast. i had like 5 holding off much of dacia and brutii when my elite were off in syria.
one of the best things about forts are they are cavalry friendly, a strait path from the middle to the gate. as enemies flood through you make a mad charge and crush them in the bottle neck.if you have a lot of cav you can keep this up a while.

[Vlad Tzepes]

Seriously... why build forts? for example.. if ur holding a bridge, if u have a field army... they have to fight a field battle with you, but if ur in a fort, they can just seige you... and now u have to force him to fight -.-...... if ur in a fort u can't retreat, and it really doesn't give THAT much extra protection in a assault...

You should try to use forts somewhat... tactically, not strategically, to delay or block your enemy advance, to keep your enemy focused on something without much value, while you grab the goddies left defensless on the map . Or if you have a weak army, led by a general, stranded in enemy territory, and you need to buy some time to send in reinforcements. Or stuff like that. IMO, forts can be fun and add to the complexity of the game.

[Ar7]

forts are bad and i never use them holding bridges i'll do it the way besieger said with a mass missile army and passes with a normal elite army so forts arent usefull exept for some mercs to give some delay or light troops
cause i modded merc so their upkeep rose with 100 denarii and cavalry merc with 200

I never said anything about bridges. I meant a situation where you do not have many resources, but instead you have a large border. Say you hold Gallic lands and have a huge border with the Germans, in that case forts help one army control a vast area.

Bridges are another case.

[Lichgod]

I use forts as recommended above to block choke points and high speed avenues of advance.

The neat thing about forts, is garrison size to maintain it. So far, I have used as little as 2 guys (not two units but one remanent unit of 2 men). The AI would rather walk around (like Spain/Gaul border putting a fort in the middle pass) than take the time for his 1000 man army to take out the 2 guys "holding down the fort."

I have yet to do this in V1.2, but would be pleased to see the AI attack more often.

Note that a garrisoned fort projects a zone of control (ZOC) stopping movement of enemy armies.

Forts serve to give you early warning of invasion and buy you a couple turns to prepare. Well worth the money to build them (just leave the smallest garrison possible).

Now bridges are different. The concensus above is the way to go for bridges near the border of an enemy until you can advance to take the provence.

[Doug-Thompson]

Like others, I use them in Greece to close mountain passes. I'll build a fort and put some peasants in it.

Another use for them is as "staging areas" for reinforcements. Build them one-turns march apart. I've never had a "string" of them more than two or three forts long, however.

[Nelson]

I have yet to see the AI build a fort or attack one. The AI has declined to assault my forts so far in my current campaign despite several opportunities. "Invitations" might be a better word considering the tiny garrisons.

Then again, the patch is only a few days old and there will many more chances in the future.

[afrit]

I have seen the AI build forts in 2 situations. The Julii AI often builds a fort to protect Arretium from direction of Mediolanum. The other situation i saw was with a mod I did to weaken the Scipii and help carthage (pre-patch). Both factions ended up building forts opposite each other in sicily and watched each other for about a decade.

Personally, I rarely use them. I prefer offense to defense. But they can be occasionally useful to delay enemy.

@Wishazu
I haven't read that before (forts decrease likelihood of brigands). Are you sure about it? If so, I am definitely gonna build more!

[LordKhaine]

I've seen the AI build forts even before the latest patch. And they've attacked my forts too!

Personally I think forts can be very useful, but also expensive. If I'm really settling my border and want to defend it well, I'll usually place a few forts at key locations. Then any attacker must either attack the fort (delaying his attack so I can prepare an army), or he can ignore it, risking being trapped between two armies.

[Sam Adams]

forts are ideal to defend stationary borders with the fewest number of men and costs.

In this game they do restrict the movements of your best armies, but in real life the Romans used them to great effect, read casear in gaul.

[Razor1952]

Forts are indispensible. Try playing RTR as Gaul when you are attacked from all sides (Britons/Germans/Dacia/Romans/Iberia/Carthage), being able to block or slow down attacks is critical to the defense of Gaul.

Even in RTW 1.1 the ai seiged my forts and sometimes took them
though I then usually seiged them back when my armies had time to arrive. But the critical thing was I never lost a city. Looking forward to see how much ai has changed in RTW 1.2( RTR 5.0 works with RTW 1.2 though I've yet to push it far)