Forts... what's the point?

**Ar7** · 02-06-2005, 13:38

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** · 02-06-2005, 16:30

Originally Posted by 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.

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** · 02-06-2005, 18:18

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.

**Ar7** · 02-06-2005, 19:03

Originally Posted by Emperor Umeu 1

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** · 02-07-2005, 18:38

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** · 02-07-2005, 19:39

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** · 02-07-2005, 19:41

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** · 02-08-2005, 02:00

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** · 02-08-2005, 02:41

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.