Forts... what's the point?

[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)