Is there any reason to build a higher tier fort than 1?

[Pellucid]

Before release when fort level could occupy provinces for you and protect your provinces from being occupied I imagined high level forts would be awesome, but since they decided to scrap that aspect of them I honestly can't think of a single reason to build a fort higher than tier 1. The ZoC of a tier 1 fort is the same as a tier 4 fort, and the increased cost of a tier 4 fort doesn't seem to come close to being justified by the increased time to siege unless you have a REALLY important chokepoint with a VERY strong enemy on the other side, and by the time tier 4 forts are available a human player isn't going to have much to fear from even the strongest AIs.

I'm beginning to think that it was VERY late in the development cycle when they decided to make forts have no effect on enemy provinces, because there are so many things that don't make sense with forts right now that seem like they'd be instantly resolved by allowing forts to exert ZoC over enemy provinces the same way they do over friendly ones.

 

[durvas]

To lessen the chance of a wall break, I guess. Assaults on low level forts seem much more effective this patch but you have to wait for a break. Higher level forts lessen that chance.

 

[Mauer]

To tie up more of the enemy's forces, the current attrition and manpower regain levels make it very worth it to increase fort levels at least in key provinces IMO.

 

[Pellucid]

To tie up more of the enemy's forces, the current attrition and manpower regain levels make it very worth it to increase fort levels at least in key provinces IMO.

To lessen the chance of a wall break, I guess. Assaults on low level forts seem much more effective this patch but you have to wait for a break. Higher level forts lessen that chance.

But I mean, are these things worth 1.5 gold/month during peace and 3 gold/month during war? Because that's what you're paying for them over tier 1.

 

[Incompetent]

Because castles will have all the resilience of a wet paper bag later on in the game. Not only will everyone have enough cannons to get a +5 siege bonus, the besieger gets an additional 'obsolete fort' bonus IIRC. If you want to hold up an army for more than a couple of months, you need a proper fort.

Also, it's only money to upgrade your fort, which is something you will have a lot more of in the late game. By that point, the main cost of having forts everywhere is that they use up precious building slots. If you don't see the point in upgrading the fort, it might be better to just tear it down and put something useful there instead.

 

[Pellucid]

A tier 1 fort is useful for the entire game due to its Zone of Control. It's not there to withstand sieges; it's there to prevent the enemy army from chasing your stack after a defeat.

 

[Tacticus101]

To cause it to require larger armies to siege a province. A tier 1 fort can be sieged by 6k troops, a tier 4 fort requires 24k.

Also, because the "having better fort technology" penalty means that if you still use tier 1 forts when tier 4 forts are available the siege goes much faster. Its a +3 modifier for the attacker at that point, +1 after the fort level, as opposed to the -8 they would have if you had build a tier 4 fort. It also applies the same +3 bonus to breaching, which vastly increases the chances.

Higher fort level also requires more artillery to get the bonus, 5 times the level for the max bonus I believe. Which contributes to making the fort much harder to siege, particularly combined with the effects on breach chance.

Ultimately, if you want your forts as a paper wall in the off-chance your armies have to retreat, then keeping your tier 1 forts is fine. But if you expect the fort to get sieged at any point then you need higher level forts, because tier 1s will melt.

 

[solidprice]

So lv 1 in the inner part of the enpire for zoc/not get owned by rebels and past 1 for if your ming rich/mountains/key points?

Nice.

 

[Pellucid]

So lv 1 in the inner part of the enpire for zoc/not get owned by rebels and past 1 for mountain/key points?

Nice.

Basically, although I haven't had need to build any above 1 in any game yet. I might end up putting a higher one in Hormuz in my Jerusalem game just to effectively shut off that approach.

 

[Clownie]

In my current Carib game, I haven't even built forts.

It's been a slight inconvenience at times, but in return, I'm hella rich.

 

[happymix91]

It is your choice. If you can trash all of your enemy with your armies from not building high tier forts which need more maintenance, there is no reason to build high tier forts.

 

[ceteris.paribus]

I build past tier 1 on forts near hostile borders. And if I make too much damn money, I just upgrade other not so critical forts just for the hell of it.

Its up to you I suppose. I played a campaign not upgrading, and lucky nations with Offensive Ideas just roll through w/o much resistance mid-game and on.

 

[TingJonKi]

It's useful to stop your mainland or other high value areas from getting steam rolled when your armies are overseas

 

[fleetothemoon]

I agree with OP.

You can build four Tier I forts at the cost and maintenance of ONE Tier IV fort. Unless if money is really of no concern, or if there is a very vital chokepoint, having four Tier I forts will always be superior than having ONE mega fort.

 

[Incompetent]

So lv 1 in the inner part of the enpire for zoc/not get owned by rebels and past 1 for if your ming rich/mountains/key points?

Nice.

Yeah that makes sense. Against rebels you just want to buy a bit of time to stop them wrecking your country in the time it takes your army to arrive. Against a foreign invader, either their army means business, in which case a bunch of level 1 forts won't do much, or you have a big enough advantage that you don't really need to defend, in which case border forts are irrelevant. In contrast to rebel occupations, having your territory briefly occupied by a weak but sovereign enemy is essentially harmless.

In any case though, building a bunch of level 1 forts next to each other is worse than building one good fort. Once you have enough forts to just barely form a ZOC barrier, i.e. a line of forts near your border like this (+ = fort, - = unfortified province):
-+--+--+--+-
then if you want more border protection, you're much better off upgrading the existing forts rather than just stuffing more weak forts in the gaps. The maintenance cost may be low, but you don't want to waste all those building slots (not least because building slots earn you money, which lets you afford better forts). Also, if the enemy is strong he will be able to besiege a bunch of forts at once, so just building more forts won't really slow him down.

 

[Pellucid]

Yeah that makes sense. Against rebels you just want to buy a bit of time to stop them wrecking your country in the time it takes your army to arrive. Against a foreign invader, either their army means business, in which case a bunch of level 1 forts won't do much, or you have a big enough advantage that you don't really need to defend, in which case border forts are irrelevant. In contrast to rebel occupations, having your territory briefly occupied by a weak but sovereign enemy is essentially harmless.

In any case though, building a bunch of level 1 forts next to each other is worse than building one good fort. Once you have enough forts to just barely form a ZOC barrier, i.e. a line of forts near your border like this (+ = fort, - = unfortified province):
-+--+--+--+-
then if you want more border protection, you're much better off upgrading the existing forts rather than just stuffing more weak forts in the gaps. The maintenance cost may be low, but you don't want to waste all those building slots (not least because building slots earn you money, which lets you afford better forts). Also, if the enemy is strong he will be able to besiege a bunch of forts at once, so just building more forts won't really slow him down.

No no, you don't stuff more forts in the gaps. You set up defense in depth. After your line of forts, you have another line of forts, and then another and another. The advantage of this over one line of megaforts is that if a single fort in the megafort line falls, your entire nation is now open to the enemy; if you lose one unlucky battle you're gonna get chased down and stackwiped. If you use defense in depth, any defeat is momentary at worst; you don't even need to fall back particularly far after losing a battle because your next fort line is only a province or two away.

 

[Incompetent]

No no, you don't stuff more forts in the gaps. You set up defense in depth. After your line of forts, you have another line of forts, and then another and another. The advantage of this over one line of megaforts is that if a single fort in the megafort line falls, your entire nation is now open to the enemy; if you lose one unlucky battle you're gonna get chased down and stackwiped. If you use defense in depth, any defeat is momentary at worst; you don't even need to fall back particularly far after losing a battle because your next fort line is only a province or two away.

Defence in depth assumes you have enough strategic depth in the first place, given that you lose the use of this border land as the enemy chews through it. Given that each line of ZOCs is three provinces thick, if you start talking about many successive lines of defence, you're looking at a geographic scale too grand for most countries to contemplate.

 

[Pellucid]

Defence in depth assumes you have enough strategic depth in the first place, given that you lose the use of this border land as the enemy chews through it. Given that each line of ZOCs is three provinces thick, if you start talking about many successive lines of defence, you're looking at a geographic scale too grand for most countries to contemplate.

You don't need to separate the secondary defensive lines in depth. Two or three rows of provinces are all you really need.

 

[chochko12]

In my observations if you have tech for level 4 forts and you siege level 1s they drop in 2-3 cycles - auto surrender or assault after breach, because the starting modifiers are usually +5 from arty, +x from leader and the bonus from having higher level tech. On other hand if you have high attrition province in a choke point - high level forts do miracles, i`ve seen France bleed their MP pool in just one fort.

 

[lolada]

High level forts are awesome if you have the money, and late in the game there's plenty of money. I played England campaign to 1750s and have around quite a few level 3-4 forts that i don't even need to mothball since england swim in money. And lower level forts drops much faster, if the fort is important upgrade it.

Examples:

- have level 4 forts in Antwerp and Ghent, had Holland uprisings there - they hold extremely long and the army needs to have 24+ units to even start a siege; many HRE nations got stuck there for ages trying to siege

- had lvl 4 in north italia and 1-2 around border with HRE; i can conquer India while ignoring european wars most of time - allies are fighting there often, i just let commonwealth kill everything If Austria ever managed to break a fort or two i had plenty of time to prepare 50 units stack to kill them

- took Aden, placed a lvl 3 and later lvl 4 fort there - rebels spawn later size 22 couldn't siege. Went back there, i forgot about fort for a time, was busy in India - stack was reduced to 12 - attrition i suppose, killed them and forgot about area again..

- many conquered forts in India - they mostly stop rebels for sieging too quickly - i just upgrade some if i want to block enemy. For example fighting Delhi who is allies with Malacca and Wu. Both of them have 40-50 stacks and they get stuck for a time in eastern India sieging while i killed Delhi's 40 stack and sieged half of their land. Forts give me plenty of time to amass 80k stack and wipe them completely.

Now, i know game can be completely played without forts but its much easier and more fun to have them.