Coastal Fortresses - Don't seem to do anything...

cerebros · December 16, 2001, 13:22

Finally got far enough the tech tree in a game to get Coastal Fortresses (is it me or has this thing got a LOT harder compared to Civ2). However, as far as i can see, they do diddly squat.

In Civ2 you always got a message when a ship attacked a city with coastal fortress saying something like "Coastal Fortress increased defence against naval attack", but in Civ3 it says nothing.

Also, looking at the Civilopedia it says a Coastal Fortress automatically bombards passing enemy ships. With what? Cabbages? I've had a city that's had enemy ships parked in front of it and moving into adjacent squares for about 20 games turns now, and i've seen no sign that the coastal fortress is doing anything against them.

I've got the v1.16 patch installed, which i thought was supposed to fix things like this...

Sigh...

Guess i'd better hope its fixed in the next patch (along with the absurd time it takes to load the game and give control back once your turn starts - what the hell is the game doing for the 2 minutes between running through all civil disorder/completed production and me actually being able to move units again????)

FrantzX · December 16, 2001, 14:09

Coastal Fortresses auto-bomards passing enemy ships with an attack value of 8. Firaxis has said that you don't see anything, however, if the bombardment fails.

Moraelin · December 16, 2001, 14:28

I've had slightly modified privateers parked in front of the city, bombarding it (the change was making them able to bombard weakly at range 1), and the fortress didn't seem to do anything. Now I don't expect it to sink the ship or anything, but it would have been nice to at least shave one or two hp off it. I've let it be for like 100 turns, just for curiosity sake, and nothing had changed. Then I got bored and brought an ironclad to sink it.

barefootbadass · December 16, 2001, 14:29

Coastal fortresses always worked, before and after patch. They are worth having IMO but not near as powerful as they were in civ 2.

Moraelin · December 16, 2001, 14:40

Maybe they just don't work against barbarians, then? I mean, really, even at 8 attack, I find it hard to believe that it kept missing a a lousy Privateer for 100 turns straight.

simwiz2 · December 16, 2001, 15:31

coastal forst only bombard when a ship moves from one of its ZOC to another. kind of useless when you consider that you dont move along the coast, just come in, bombard, and leave, and it wont take a shot at you so if your opponent knows how to avoid the ZOC, the coastal forts are useless. and its easy to avoid the ZOC, even the AI can do it

cerebros · December 16, 2001, 16:47

Well in my game the enemy ships (Ironclads & Frigates) have been moving along the coast past the city & camped out infront of it. Surely the coastal fortress would fire at an enemy as they moved into the dquare to bombard from? That would make sense...

as it was, i was left to hit them with artillery pieces in the city...

And that brings me onto another thing... Anyone else have very high bombardment missed rates with artillery?

Jaybe · December 16, 2001, 17:36

Firaxians have stated that Coastal Fortresses will almost never have an effect on modern ships. For that reason I had believed that their bombardment strength would be a '2'.

Can someone lead me to the source of the '8' bombardment figure?
I understand that City Improvements and Citizens have a post patch bombardment DEFENSE of '8', but I do NOT understand that an 8 is a Coastal Fortress' offensive bombardment strength.

Redstar · December 16, 2001, 17:36

"Anyone else have very high bombardment missed rates with artillery"

Artillary would be way too strong if this were not the case.
Almost killing something is just as good as killing it.

Your other units are assured of easy victory and promotion.

The important thing is that artillary seem to have a higher chance of succeeding than cannon..and cannon more than catapults.
Not sure if this is true but i'm fairly sure it is.

edit: oh..and i have observed that artillary is way more accurate when shooting at units in open terrain.

I don't use coastal fortresses as artillary does a very good job --you just miss out on getting the first strike is all. The AI needs that advantage as they always seem to take 2 turns to actually attack a city (ie they pull up to a city and then stop).

cerebros · December 17, 2001, 15:20

>"Anyone else have very high bombardment missed rates with >artillery"

Sorry, should have said "Artillary type units"

>Artillary would be way too strong if this were not the case.
>Almost killing something is just as good as killing it.

I'm not complaining about missing on the odd occasion, this is real game situaiton where i've had:
6 canon firing on a city for 4 turns and every bombardment failing
8 canon in a city firing at enemy units on open ground for four turns and not inflicting any damage.

Now 50% miss rate i'd say would be reasonable, but 100% over first 24 then 32 bombardments? If my guys couldn't shoot that good, any real enemy would have wiped me out in a year...

>I don't use coastal fortresses as artillary does a very good job -->you just miss out on getting the first strike is all. The AI needs
> that advantage as they always seem to take 2 turns to actually >attack a city (ie they pull up to a city and then stop).

The obvious solution would be to write the game code so that the computer players use their naval bombardment units like human players?

Kolyana · December 17, 2001, 15:50

Coastal fortresses are actually bands of monty-python-like-men lined up on the beach shacking their fists angrily.

Well worth having.

Voidman · December 20, 2001, 20:19

Yep, the Coastal Fortress thing needs to be fixed, else why bother.

I like your idea of using cannons... going to use them now until the Fortress is fixed in a future patch... if it's a ZOC issue, can someone figure out a fix.

yin26 · December 20, 2001, 20:25

Quote:

Firaxis has said that you don't see anything, however, if the bombardment fails.

Yet another in a long line of distinguished design decisions! LOL!

Badtz Maru · December 20, 2001, 22:37

I think it's one of those things that you don't need in every game, but under certain conditions they could be useful. They are fairly specific, however, i.e. if you had a strategically important narrow strait with cities on either side of it and there was naval warfare going on in the medieval/early industrial phase of the game, it could be a good idea to build one on either side. Other situations where hostile ships are forced to go past one of your coastal cities or where you want to discourage it are possible too, I'm sure. I have seen them work in situations like what I describe, but the thing is the AI seems to avoid doing things that set off a coastal fortress when there is one present. If you move adjacent to the city with the fortress and then move away to a square not adjacent, it won't fire. The bonus to defense against naval bombardment can come in handy too, though the AI rarely seems to bombard my cities themselves from ships I do it to them a lot, and anyone who has done a lot of city bombardment in pre-artillery days knows how much walls can slow it down.

I personally bumped up their naval attack power to 12 as well as their defense against naval bombardment, to make them a bit more useful, but as they are designed they can serve a purpose, just not every game (kinda like the Heroic Epic, the Iron Works, etc.).