This is a guide to advanced fortifications for mid and late game forts post Battles Update from 29 October 2022.
Before delving into this guide make sure to read all sections concerning Game Concepts and War, and for a more general guide about early defenses and fundamentals of fighting a defensive war read A 2023 Comprehensive Guide to Defense and Survival.
This guide is a simple and short extension of the basic concepts presented before.
By: LariLaranja, May.
You've survived to bronze age and built yourself a strong economy, your RC is still growing and has outgrown the small hillfort, a second and third may be on the way, or you might have chosen the path of the City State, either way your limbed fort started looking a bit wimpy. Not just that, but, hoglites either started to roam the world or are on the way to, with that being able to ignore your natural fort, and that leaves you afraid, afraid of invasions, of having your entire game thrown away.
Glossary of Terms[ | ]
- CS: Countryside, the subordinate territories to your Regional Centers.
- RC: Regional Center, your Hamlet, Village, Town and City level tiles.
The Fundamentals[ | ]
Here the same concepts from the previous guide will be referenced, so in doubt check it here.
There are only two forms of attacks that you will suffer to a RC, one to cripple your population and thus the industry, and one to take over the tile. Both of which need different approaches.
Deterrents - Scaring Away your Foes[ | ]
The best defense you can have is to never need to defend, and while that is not possible for cs once war breaks out, it is still, more often than not very doable for RC's. Given this the basis of your defense will be a deterrent, to make your defenses be, but specially look, so painful and intimidating to take any action against that your enemy will just never engage against it if they have a choice.
The 3 Layers[ | ]
The core of fort designs are the outermost layer which is in place to wall off your housing blocks, as in, your actual city, from raids and sacks that may burn housing and your population, this outermost layer has to be placed beyond the range of your ranged units sitting on your innermost layer, The Acropolis, for the purpose of ammo waste and the near uselessness of your few limited shots at extreme ranges, as discussed on the basic guide. Then, beyond the outermost layer comes a long empty unwalled segment of your fort, a place where you do not want obstacles delaying your attackers outside effective range, and then, starting at half maximum range of your units comes your series of inner rings for holding them in ideal firing range during breaching, right around your acropolis, past that series of rings your innermost layer at the acropolis is ideally guarded by a gate-on-wall final layer with a climb height of 15 or more.
The Acropolis[ | ]
This is your true fort, the spot actually made to resist unreasonable numbers, the be-all end-all of forts, the point of death that's near unbreachable without multiple players worth of armies, it is small and dense, just as much as you need to actually hold a siege that's allowed by the attacker to siege through your city anti sack defenses. This layer has most of your defenses, most of your militia and any additional garrisons, this is the layer meant to endure a Occupy action and come out on top to all but the most determined forced.
The Habitation Block[ | ]
This is where all your housing goes, your city proper, and everything that has just as much priority in protection as your pops, markets, one or two storages and granaries and so on. This layer will hold a small part of your garrison, maybe a couple towers or firing platforms, enough deployment space for a two or three mounted bow squads or full platforms. The units and defenses of this layer only exist to make it so painful to get inside and kill part of your pop that the material cost to do so is simply not worth it, specially once losses by the fire of the acropolis pile up.
This layer is outside range of the acropolis range, fully, so no ammo is wasted by units trying to breach into it by ranged fire other than its inner garrison.
The Industrial Block[ | ]
This is a optional but separate walled space for all your industrial buildings, it helps with specific targeted sacks but those are as rare to happen as it is to get to steel age, it can possibly have use however odds are it won't, so you may completely skip on it and leave your industrial basis outside of protected barriers if resources are scarce, however, when built it makes for interesting city designs and shapes. However, due to its dubious usefulness, it won't be discussed.
Terraforming rules[ | ]
- If the average height between all cardinal neighboring tiles and the target 'center' tile height is more than 0.5 but less than 2 then it can be increased in height by 1
- If the average height between all cardinal neighboring tiles and the target 'center' tile height is equal to or higher than 0 but less than or equal to 0.5 then it can be increased in height by 2
A Victorious Defeat[ | ]
A sufficiently large force will be able to force through any fort when garrisoned with only its maxed militia, but your goal is not to be unconquerable under any circumstances, only that if taken it will provide you a victorious defeat, a loss so costly that it leaves your enemy much weaker and vulnerable than yourself for the time being, allowing you and your side a chance to strike back.
The Hill, The climb and Me[ | ]
As discussed under Height in the basic guide units at a height advantage have a clear and great advantage when fighting ones at lower elevations, however, another note of value to height are climb times, which become most important once you can terraform and build platforms.
Climb times are like breaches and embarks, they're dependent on the unit damage dealt, imagine the ladders placement and climbing as dealing damage up to a goal, where, when the goal is fully damaged you get to the top, however damage done to climbs is not linear and decreases very, very fast with height difference. Units will climb height differences up to 15 without much avoidance, no matter how slow it is, however height disparities beyond 15 will make so units straight up decide not to climb it unless there's absolutely no other path in.
The nature of how climbing works also entails that the best climbers are also the units most vulnerable to ranged fire, those being axes, macanas, longswords, wolfs, bears, however whenever you don't prepare to fight climbs someone will innevitably see the vulnerability and exploit it, thus ideally you should seek to create a height difference of at least 20 for your acropolis platforms, and optionally place walls on the outermost layer of your platforms, as climbing units still must breach the wall on top before 'entering'.
Tall climbs leading directly into gates also make your gates significantly more resistant and as of 22/09/2024, after the adjusts to it 5 months ago, at 15 difference they takes about a time and a half the damage of a ground level gate to be breached.
Trench Sweet Trench[ | ]
Trenches are incredibly cheap for the absolute mayhem they cause on any potentially attacking force, at a few hundred shovels per RC your choice of trench affects your positioning of towers, firing platforms and gates just as much as all other aspects of your fort. You may have deep trenches accompanied by high ramparts, which are in turn more resource intensive, or just about high and deep enough to force a climb. It may be compact with less layers but a smaller land area or wider with more layers, that when combined with how compact you want, leaves you with a incredible variety of possibilities but that boil down to some sort of variation of the following ones:
The Full Trench[ | ]
Costs 6 shovels per straight tile covered to the minimum height of function, is very deep with a huge land area usage of 4 tiles in depth but with 4 climbs needed to cross. Cannot be built all at once and needs two waves of terraforming, one to lower the trench by 2, raise the rampart by 2, and another to do both by 1.
The Half Trench[ | ]
Costs 4 per straight tile covered to the minimum height of function, has only two climbs but can be built in one go, costs 33% less than the full trench and if half walled only has a effective area usage of 2 tiles in depth post terraforming or 1 tile if not walled at all, making for a very compact trench that needs 3 tiles of free land while being terraformed. Its built by terraforming the trench two deep and raising both sides by 1, then you can wall on the inside, outside or both.
The Compact Trench[ | ]
The cheapest and most compact of all trenches, in effect only taking 3 shovels per tile, 4 in truth from digging but netting you 1 'free' unused height level to add somewhere else, thus saving in the total terraforming by pilling up the extra dirt into your Acropolis or for use on the corners. It only needs 2 tiles in depth to terraform and only occupies one after terraformed and walled, however it only has one climb and can be upgraded into a half trench by sacrificing one tile of depth from the inside. Its built by digging the trench by 2 then pilling 1 in the outside and pilling 1 for other works.
The Demonic Checkers[ | ]
Being 33% more expensive than the full trench, with more land and depth needed but no more climbs than the full trench makes the only use of this bringing absolute terror and psychological warfare towards your attackers, which, sometimes is the best you can get from fortifications. It looks absolutely harrowing, so much that someone who would attack a full trench probably won't the checkers, specially since its 7 tiles deep if double walled and that just brings fear.
Its built by unleashing the demons that haunt you and digging a checkers pattern with 2 depth while raising the other pieces of said pattern by 2, then surrounding the entire thing with the same pattern but by raising and lowering by 1. The wall around it has to be on the tile after the last terraformed tile and surround the entire thing.
Area Usage[ | ]
The difference in area between the full and the compact trenches is enough so you can fit a entire extra row of houses. Specially useful for fitting in roads or just pilling more houses if you're building a moloch's hellhole.
Rampart My beloved[ | ]
Ramparts are used for more than just accompanying trenches as shown before, the biggest use of ramparts is to act as a foundation to a higher level of a platform. Being 4 height higher than a multiple of 5 means your platform will build to a full "extra" level of height, in effect gaining you 6 extra height and saving one level of height modification.
Ramparts and Mounted Bows[ | ]
The other major use is to create elevated firing platforms for mounted bows which by themselves cannot be deployed on top of walls, thus the only way of getting any height bonus is with heavy terraforming of tall ramparts. Mounted bows can however still be set to path into walls midway through a battle through clever initial deployment
Designing the Fort[ | ]
Any competent attackers will send probing attacks, both to test out your archer positioning by forcing deployment, and to check the AI pathing to measure their chances. Thus you must create a reasonable coverage, something that even if breachable is still so costly to do so that no sane attacker will risk it unless left with no other choice. Your outer layer must clearly not show waste of ammo by your inner formations, and your wandering or static ground ranged must offer full coverage of the walls so no unscathed entry is possible.
Whats that on the hill? its death[ | ]
Advanced forts built on and around a hill are the easiest ones in design as you don't need a lot of worry about basic terraforming and half the time you could get away with a simple fort with not sorrounding wall layers, specially when incapable of building said layers due to distance to the map border or a feature affected by the map border and thus impossible to terraform effectively.
Hills can usually be very easily terraformed up and down at the same time to create that gap of at least 5, with platforms placed on top for 15 height difference, it isn't ideal, but it is the maximum bonus to damage you can get, its decent enough for any small strategic hamlets you may cheapely throw around for the exploitation of localized strategic resources. There isn't a lot of secret to these, if you need more layers you can folloe the principles of the 3 layers and expand into a full fort while applying the basics of tower placement from the base guide.
Roncho gave me plains, I Built a Hill[ | ]
Plains forts differ in core design only as far as you have to build your own hill, which is much more expensive than being gifted by luck, however sometimes you simply lack a choice not to, or some tiles are just too good to let go, it is however perfectly doable and affordable.
When terraforming a entirely new fort on plains you should seek to make best use possible of already existing height degrees like on coasts or rivers to save on a couple hundred shovels, other than that try maintaining your design under control and planned to the basic concept of the 3 layers. There is no real need to terraform more than strictly neccessary to raise your future platforms by 5, but that also means to try and afford getting a two layer deep platform so you can possibly deploy all your garrison and militia units in there.
If ressources have stopped being a issue you could keep in mind the rules of terraforming, as stated on point 2.3 and create a difference height of +10 terraformed for your outermost platform layer on the acropolis so you may get that sweet +20 height and de facto immunity to climbs.
And as the last, and previous examples show advanced forts are only a extension of the initial concepts presented on the previous guide, with very few new caviats and possibilities to keep in mind. Tower usage must be extrapolated from before and the change on the nature of war by later stages means you can get away with a lot of wasted space and bad choices just to make a place arguably prettier.
Also do keep in mind any water sources, like on swamps or beaches which add up to very cheap extra layers of outer defenses.
The Resources Needed[ | ]
Stone, Mud, Shovels and Planks are the core of forts, with Stoneblocks being a superficial, overly expensive and net negative in cost return through the duration of a server, however they make for really pretty platforms and battlements. Of these Stone and Mud are extremely work intensive but can be scavenged in large volumes by formations, which, if done over time can ammount to half, if not more, of the many thousand mud and stone you'll need for walls.
Planks and shovels are relatively expensive to the volumes needed when compared to the pure walls. But can be produced at a much smaller negative impact than straight up wasting workforce on stone collection. Lastly Stoneblocks are extremely work intensive, low value, low wealth and bothersome but they make for some very fucking pretty platforms.
The Coin Cost[ | ]
Coins are the easiest part of a fort to supply as you'll have plenty of coins given a well enough developped industrial basis. A fully built fort costs anywhere from 300 for a small one to 900+ for the very large ones, upkeep which is reduced by priviledges as all other forms of upkeep
Sourcing Enough Materials[ | ]
Some of these are best stockpilled since the early game, as stone and mud simply take far too long to build up to the volumes needed, while shovels entail setting up the production yourself for a couple of weeks or knowing a friendly producer who will make those few weeks of production for your piles of coins. In the end its a question of diplomacy and economic development over your whole game.
How do i actually afford this?[ | ]
For e long and controversial explanation of economy check May's Comprehensive Guide to Wealth, Power and Fortune and The Premade Hunter guide to Beating Oldpigs and Company
How do i KILL the people inside of this?[ | ]
For help at offensive moves go to May's Comprehensive Guide to Murder