Fort enhancement

[mrcool830]

I think that there needs to be a bigger focus on the importance on forts and why we build them. This would not affect any of the existing features, but add new ones.

• Increase the unit building time, it is crazy fast as it is now.
  
• Make it use the original unit building time in provinces with a fort, or make it only available through those provinces. Maybe increase the speed from the fort province and / or the zone of controlled provinces' base manpower, so that you can increase recruitment speed.
  
• Reduce the supply limits for all non fort provinces, and increase it for provinces with forts.
• Add something like a -80 % manpower modifier for all provinces that are not in the zone of control of a fort.

 

[t6.28]

Sorry, but no. That would only encourage fort spamming. Forts are supposed to be something you have to think about where to build, provinces with forts need mali rather then boni.

 

[mrcool830]

Sorry, but no. That would only encourage fort spamming. Forts are supposed to be something you have to think about where to build, provinces with forts need mali rather then boni.

What if the cost and maintenance of the forts were increased. Now that I think of it, maybe the -80 % manpower was a bad idea, but I feel like the forts now are just road blocks, and do not contribute that much to strategy, as much as they should. Having your entire army in fort provinces makes more sense than in some farmland further into your country, unless there was a fort there.

 

[Grand Historian]

This was a suggestion I had for forts a while back:

First: Increase the size of Garrison that later forts give. Star Fort and Fortress should probably give 2,000 instead of 1,000. This would make late game siege numbers on the defenders side more accurate, as historically they could get into the tens of thousands in the really big sieges. So a fully fortified capital would have 7,000 defenders instead of 5,000, requiring a minimum attack force of 21,000, which would both make the sieges more accurate, and ZoC better. Fort Maintenance could be increased for balancing. If this is unfeasible or unbalance, I understand; I'm not a dev, and naturally don't have the innate knowledge of one.

Second, and this ties in more directly with my upcoming suggestion: remove Forts from the Building Tab in the macro-builder (but still have them cost a building slot), and replace them with a 'Road' Chain. The Road Network building was a good idea, being able to move armies through provinces quicker, but I think now with the new building system it can be refined where you can plot out optimal paths to get armies from point a to point b as efficiently as possible. The building chain could go something like this (not the names, naturally, I just couldn't think of anything for them):

Road Level 1: +10% Local Movement Speed, +2 Local Supply Limit
Road Level 2: +20/25% Local Movement Speed, +4 Local Supply Limit
Road Level 3: +30/50% Local Movement Speed, +6 Local Supply Limit

Now, that I've gotten those two out of the way, the real purpose of my suggestion: though I love the changes that came with the new fort system, I think one big problem actually arose from it; there's no way to distinguish forts. Granted, there aren't as many forts as there used to be, but now that there are only four fort levels, there's no way to distinguish a great bastion like Belgrade/Rhodes/Malta/Vienna/Himeji/etc from some relatively unimportant fortification in the countryside, whereas you previously could by just giving a historically important fort an extra level ahead of time. Terrain contributes to this slightly, but it doesn't really do it justice. So that's where this comes in: the Fort Tab.

The Fort Tab is exactly what it's name would imply it to be; an tab on the province screen that will hold the status of a province's fort: it's Garrison, Garrison Recovery Rate, Defensiveness, Fort Level, Option to Mothball, Fort Chain, Fort Sub-Chains, and all those other goodies. Wait, Fort Sub-Chain? Yes: this is essentially the jist of my suggestion; make Forts somewhat customizable to better simulate differences between major bastions and minor holdouts by giving them 'mini-buildings' that don't take up a building slot but still cost money to build.

There can be four sub-chains, each focusing on a certain aspect of the fort, and each reliant on the level of the Fort itself (I.E must have a second Fort built in a province before building the second building in a sub-chain) to prevent an exploit. Likewise, for both realism and to ensure someone doesn’t just spam these buildings to create mega-forts everywhere, each sub-building should increase fort upkeep in addition to costing a lesser amount of money upfront, which in addition to deepening the depth of forts and sieges, would require strategic planning to not bankrupt yourself. Here are my suggestions for them (and, much like the everything else, I am completely aware that these number may need, and probably could use, balancing, as they're only here for a template):

Spoiler

Garrison Chain:

Level 1: +500 Local Garrison size
Level 2: +750 Local Garrison size
Level 3: +750 Local Garrison size
Level 4: +1,000 Local Garrison size

Defensiveness Chain:
Level 1: +10% Local Defensiveness
Level 2: +10% Local Defensiveness
Level 3: +15% Local Defensiveness
Level 4: +15% Local Defensiveness

Garrison Recovery Chain:
Level 1: +5% Local Garrison Recovery Speed
Level 2: +10% Local Garrison Recovery Speed
Level 3: +10% Local Garrison Recovery Speed
Level 4: +15% Local Garrison Recovery Speed

Supply Chain:
Level 1: +1 Local Supply Limit
Level 2: +1 Local Supply Limit, +0.5 Hostile Attrition
Level 3: +2 Local Supply Limit
Level 4: +4 Local Supply Limit, +0.5 Hostile Attrition

 

[Maq]

I've been considering another thing, less ambitious.
Zone of control is generally fine idea, but I can't avoid feeling that it fits better to the mid-to-late period than to the early one. In times when armies were relatively small, castles and fortified cities served as safety spots for unarmed people and/or for small military units. These were too weak to prevent invading army from moving through the country, in other words, they had no zone of control.
And actually, many times the invaders were not strong enough to take fortified positions, but still could do a lot of damage by plundering. In any case, the invading army could quite freely choose on which castle or walled city lay siege, while small garrisons in other castles nearby did not present any serious obstacle or even threat.
So, I wonder what would happen if we add a 'Fort grade 1' with no zone of control, while stronger forts would follow only later in the game.

 

[Podtxt]

Ive seen many, many rants about lack of ability to move an army INTO a fort. While I understand that rebulding whole combat system is far too much, maybe we could achieve some middle ground?

Like: +100% to Local Supply Limit only for owner and allies on a provinces with Fort

This encourages to keep the armies on forts (more realistic - yeah i know I shoudnt use this word), is not gamebreaking, and makes forts deep inside the players territory still useful.