The underrated case for forts

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Re: The underrated case for forts

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Post by dansil92 »

Warno wrote:Anyone have a video of top guys building a fort in 1v1?

I don't remember seeing one, but would be fun to watch.
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Re: The underrated case for forts

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Post by Le Hussard sur le toit »

Warno wrote:Anyone have a video of top guys building a fort in 1v1?

I don't remember seeing one, but would be fun to watch.
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Re: The underrated case for forts

Post by fei123456 »

Fort is always great, but it's never easy to finish it. If you lost your fort wagon or an unfinished fort, you'll have 1100 resource gone: it'll cost a game.

In AOE2 you can at least get some stones back if a castle is denied, and you can build another later. If AOE3:DE sets the fort wagon shipment to enable building forts, it will be a cool choice.
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Re: The underrated case for forts

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Post by Aizamk »

any nilla scrub will know that forts are great because your enemy always sacrifices half their army trying to siege it down while it's building
oranges.
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Re: The underrated case for forts

Post by P i k i l i c »

@deleted_user4 you could've quote the Goodspeed's guide Portuguese part about the fort:
Goodspeed wrote:Ports use a lot of food. This means they have to push for map control earlier than most civs and won't have the time to really get their boom going while camping safely in their base. This is a situation in which Ports find themselves sending fort. Yes, I mean the thing where they waste an entire shipment on a big building with mediocre damage. Despite all its flaws though, the fort is actually not a bad shipment. It secures 1 place on the map like no other building could, and its damage/HP is stronger than putting 4 towers next to each other for the same purpose. Of course, towers are not meant to secure 1 spot but more for LOS and cheap antiraid, but that's another story.
Anyway, forgetting towers, Ports are kind of a fan of the fort. It secures resources without the need for a strong army and allows Ports to boom for a while longer, and their opponent's army isn't quite large enough to take on the fort head on. Circumventing it is of course a good idea, but a well placed fort is hard to circumvent without opening yourself up to some very strong counter-raids or your army getting trapped. This is exactly what Ports need in many cases, to get enough time to boom and get mams out.
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Re: The underrated case for forts

Post by LegalPenguin »

I love forts, especially as China in teamgames.
Send good faith agreements, ally Russia and lockdown the map in age 3.

The team can defend it as it goes up and if everything goes bad, you only lost about 500 export (including the switching of allies).
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Re: The underrated case for forts

Post by helln00 »

Forts are good , nothing is stupider than comps building fort chains that just make the map impassible. Also agra kind of shows how good it can be.

The main problem with them though has been said is build time and the fact that you can only get it in age 3, when there are more mobile options that can bypass it without some map chokes and also like cheese options to take it down (petards)

I think the way to solve it is instead of sending a wagon. make the cards unlock fort as a buildable option in age 2 and the second card unlocks another one in age 3. Since you have to send a card and sink resourece into building one I think it wont be broken, but might be nice if you need to hold a position in age 2 or potentially recover after a fight.

edit: also china should get it as a build option after sending the russian consulate research
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Re: The underrated case for forts

Post by harcha »

^^ yeah the above makes sense. i see it the same way as the chinese blockhouse works. once you research it (send fort) you get the wagon, but you also unlock the building with build limit of 1 which can be constructed by villagers. this way even if it fails to go up you at least still could get it up theoretically. this also makes it more viable to try and place it in more greedy/risky positions

and the price of 500w 500c seems appropriate
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Re: The underrated case for forts

Post by Le Hussard sur le toit »

helln00 wrote:Forts are good , nothing is stupider than comps building fort chains that just make the map impassible. Also agra kind of shows how good it can be.

The main problem with them though has been said is build time and the fact that you can only get it in age 3, when there are more mobile options that can bypass it without some map chokes and also like cheese options to take it down (petards)

I think the way to solve it is instead of sending a wagon. make the cards unlock fort as a buildable option in age 2 and the second card unlocks another one in age 3. Since you have to send a card and sink resourece into building one I think it wont be broken, but might be nice if you need to hold a position in age 2 or potentially recover after a fight.

edit: also china should get it as a build option after sending the russian consulate research
This would just make the fort completely useless in most cases.
In the current situation, you have to invest one age 3 card (about 1000 ress) to build a fort.
In your option, you'd have to invest 700 ress (one age 2 card) + the price of the fort (600 wood 400 gold) + the villager time to build it. There is just no way it would work unless you decrease the fort cost to like 500 ress but then it would be completely broken in age 3.
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Re: The underrated case for forts

Post by helln00 »

Le Hussard sur le toit wrote:
helln00 wrote:Forts are good , nothing is stupider than comps building fort chains that just make the map impassible. Also agra kind of shows how good it can be.

The main problem with them though has been said is build time and the fact that you can only get it in age 3, when there are more mobile options that can bypass it without some map chokes and also like cheese options to take it down (petards)

I think the way to solve it is instead of sending a wagon. make the cards unlock fort as a buildable option in age 2 and the second card unlocks another one in age 3. Since you have to send a card and sink resourece into building one I think it wont be broken, but might be nice if you need to hold a position in age 2 or potentially recover after a fight.

edit: also china should get it as a build option after sending the russian consulate research
This would just make the fort completely useless in most cases.
In the current situation, you have to invest one age 3 card (about 1000 ress) to build a fort.
In your option, you'd have to invest 700 ress (one age 2 card) + the price of the fort (600 wood 400 gold) + the villager time to build it. There is just no way it would work unless you decrease the fort cost to like 500 ress but then it would be completely broken in age 3.
I can see that but sending it as a wagon in age 2 would be too much. I see the role forts would play in age 2 as a tool to either solidify a position or as a sort of tool to force a delay of the game as ur opponent has to age to beat it, like how castles in aoe 2 forces players to go to imp. We can probably tweak the hp and res a bit, using an age 2 as the baseline.
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Re: The underrated case for forts

Post by Jotunir »

Snuden wrote:I once lost 5 Ronins trying to take down a fort.
This was forseen more or less 2500 years ago by a chinese fellow :chinese:
Sun Tzu wrote: The general, unable to control his irritation, will launch his men to the assault like swarming ants, with the result that one-third of his men are slain, while the town still remains untaken. Such are the disastrous effects of a siege.
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Re: The underrated case for forts

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Post by RefluxSemantic »

I feel like some people here could be slightly more open minded about this card. Yes it's not a top tier card, but the fort definitely has a ton of potential. Instead of instantly dismissing that potential and just jumping to "how should we buff the fort", I feel like it'd be nice if people actually engaged with the strategic aspects of aoe3 and thought about how to unlock the potential of the fort. In like 15 minutes of thinking I already came up with 3 potentially viable uses of the fort:

1. I've seen Gibson use the fort as Dutch to stop a very predictable Otto FR and honestly, it seemed really strong. I always struggle against FR as Dutch and I see quite some serious potential for the fort here.
2. I feel like there's potential against a Brit VC boom to use the fort. If they go VC semi FF they are generally pretty slow, so maybe some civs can just counter that by slamming a fort right in their face. Starving a VC Brit boom is really effective too, so that makes it extra nice.
3. I wonder if Otto can do a fake tower FF on Lumaco, and then just ship fort first and plant it in the face of their opponent. You wall off the tiny choke and then just have 90% of the map at the cost of one shipment. Maybe you place a TC next to it (you save all the wood for barracks/art/stable because you get a fort) and you get to boom away.
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Re: The underrated case for forts

Post by Garja »

I think everyone agrees fort has potential but it is just too slow to come up.
And yes Otto can do FF with fast age up and essentially drop the fort uncontested. I used to do that for fun together with the 4 outpost shipment. Depending on the map and the MU it is actually legit, combined with the other standard Otto lame stuff.
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Re: The underrated case for forts

Post by Kaiserklein »

RefluxSemantic wrote:I feel like some people here could be slightly more open minded about this card. Yes it's not a top tier card, but the fort definitely has a ton of potential. Instead of instantly dismissing that potential and just jumping to "how should we buff the fort", I feel like it'd be nice if people actually engaged with the strategic aspects of aoe3 and thought about how to unlock the potential of the fort. In like 15 minutes of thinking I already came up with 3 potentially viable uses of the fort:

1. I've seen Gibson use the fort as Dutch to stop a very predictable Otto FR and honestly, it seemed really strong. I always struggle against FR as Dutch and I see quite some serious potential for the fort here.
2. I feel like there's potential against a Brit VC boom to use the fort. If they go VC semi FF they are generally pretty slow, so maybe some civs can just counter that by slamming a fort right in their face. Starving a VC Brit boom is really effective too, so that makes it extra nice.
3. I wonder if Otto can do a fake tower FF on Lumaco, and then just ship fort first and plant it in the face of their opponent. You wall off the tiny choke and then just have 90% of the map at the cost of one shipment. Maybe you place a TC next to it (you save all the wood for barracks/art/stable because you get a fort) and you get to boom away.
Cause you think no one here has put 15 minutes of thinking into this..? People used to send the fort on a regular basis on nilla lol, we know about it. We had time to figure out it's shite.

1. You can't always be sure he's gonna revolt, if he doesn't maybe your fort instantly goes down and you lose. Besides, revolt is shit vs dutch, and it's easy to counter it with just units.

2. What civ can afford to ship the fort first vs brits? Any semi ff civ would be too slow, brits has units in transition to fortress so you can't risk sending a fort next to his base lol.
Maybe spain would be able to but then do you want to be spain that's not pressuring brits? You just lose even if you get a good fort placement. If brits even VC boom at all lol. Same goes for otto, no brit is gonna boom vs otto, and regardless you don't want to play slow vs brits. It's not like you control every hunt of the map with the fort either, surely brits will go to another hunt which you won't be able to deny because you wasted a card...

3. Well Lumaco has that dynamic for any kind of fb. You can wall the choke to prevent raids and basically control the entire map with your blockhouse or whatever. So the fort may be more relevant there, but it's still at the cost of fast aging (realistically not gonna risk dropping a fort next to opponent's base at 8 mins) so you don't get 4 huss, plus the cost of a shipment of course. Maybe they can even just siege the wall and push your base cause you have a useless fort. Or just herd that 3rd hunt out of range of the fort anyway and you have food till minute 15 or something, again not food in your base but food you control anyway cause otto wasted a card.


So essentially, the fort is just too risky basically everytime, and when it's not, it's not worth sending. Not to mention it's easily spotted in your deck. Maybe in a few niche situations it can be somewhat viable, or if you get lucky, but that's not a reliable shipment in my book. And even when it's efficient, you could deny your opponent's resources with unit shipments, and these are actually mobile too.
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Re: The underrated case for forts

Post by WickedCossack »

I'd reiterate what some players have said that the build time is the biggest factor as to why it's not used more. I used it twice in EPL1 and both times it was hit within about 15-25 seconds of being placed because unsurpisngly top players are able to find and identify that kind of play and then to try to punish it. At lower levels when people are less active with armies/scouting then this weakness doesn't really show as much.

There are definitely times when it is 100% viable to send though, it's just incredibly MU/map/strategy dependant and probably not worth to have in your deck for random map.

If fort was more meta I think we would see petards more too. Fort gives you the overconfidence not to need army and continue with the boom but if petards snipe it then you can instantly lose the game.
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Re: The underrated case for forts

Post by duckzilla »

I just laugh at your pathetic forts when I send my completely overpowered 4 Nitro Petards as Germans and then pike you to death.
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Re: The underrated case for forts

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Post by RefluxSemantic »

Kaiserklein wrote: So essentially, the fort is just too risky basically everytime, and when it's not, it's not worth sending. Not to mention it's easily spotted in your deck. Maybe in a few niche situations it can be somewhat viable, or if you get lucky, but that's not a reliable shipment in my book. And even when it's efficient, you could deny your opponent's resources with unit shipments, and these are actually mobile too.
This is the thing. My main criticism here is that some people skip this part. They go from 'probably not good' directly to discussing how to buff it. I just feel a bit said when 90% of the discussion is people theorycrafting their 9000 iq balance change, instead of them actually trying to come up with a way in which the shipment might be used. There are 144 match ups, a bunch of maps and scenarios against different strats or even player specific match ups, there might be a one time cheese usage of the fort that's actually awesome. That's part of the beauty of aoe3, and I just feel a little bit sad when some people ignore this part. Even just suggesting some ideas like I did can lead to much more meaningful (imo) discussion, as your post is a good example of.
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Re: The underrated case for forts

Post by gibson »

As someone who’s used the fort a lot, it’s stats are fine but like wicked said it takes fucking forever to build, it seems like hours.
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Re: The underrated case for forts

Post by dansil92 »

Just use Russia musks to build foundation and keep a wagon around to finish it after stevastopl- 10 second forts ;-)
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Re: The underrated case for forts

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Post by Imperial Noob »

I think dojos are underrated too. They produce
2,70f/sec + 1,30c/sec when set on ashigaru,
1,87f/sec + 2,05w/sec when set on yumis,
1,95f/sec + 1,95c/sec when set on naginatas, or
1,05f/sec + 2,65c/sec when set on yabusame.

That's like an age2 shipment + age1 shipment, which is ok for age3(?). Or close to an age3 porcelain tower.
Send two of those and you have an upgraded European factory on res in age 3. For 2 fortress cards that's honestly not horrible...

And when you get to age IV and have 10% cheaper units, u can still research 33% faster production for the cost of one 3 cav batch.

Is there something that fortress age Japan needs more scaling against?
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Re: The underrated case for forts

Post by harcha »

Imperial Noob wrote:I think dojos are underrated too. They produce
2,70f/sec + 1,30c/sec when set on ashigaru,
1,87f/sec + 2,05w/sec when set on yumis,
1,95f/sec + 1,95c/sec when set on naginatas, or
1,05f/sec + 2,65c/sec when set on yabusame.

That's like an age2 shipment + age1 shipment, which is ok for age3(?). Or close to an age3 porcelain tower.
Send two of those and you have an upgraded European factory on res in age 3. For 2 fortress cards that's honestly not horrible...

And when you get to age IV and have 10% cheaper units, u can still research 33% faster production for the cost of one 3 cav batch.

Is there something that fortress age Japan needs more scaling against?
needs 50% ashi HP upgrade to counter CIR
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POC wrote:Also as an objective third party, and near 100% accuracy of giving correct information, I would say my opinions are more reliable than yours.
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Re: The underrated case for forts

Post by harcha »

dansil92 wrote:Just use Russia musks to build foundation and keep a wagon around to finish it after stevastopl- 10 second forts ;-)
well with 8 musks they build in like 10 seconds anyway, and that is also no impact to your eco
POC wrote:Also I most likely know a whole lot more than you.
POC wrote:Also as an objective third party, and near 100% accuracy of giving correct information, I would say my opinions are more reliable than yours.
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Re: The underrated case for forts

Post by duckzilla »

harcha wrote:
Imperial Noob wrote:I think dojos are underrated too. They produce
2,70f/sec + 1,30c/sec when set on ashigaru,
1,87f/sec + 2,05w/sec when set on yumis,
1,95f/sec + 1,95c/sec when set on naginatas, or
1,05f/sec + 2,65c/sec when set on yabusame.

That's like an age2 shipment + age1 shipment, which is ok for age3(?). Or close to an age3 porcelain tower.
Send two of those and you have an upgraded European factory on res in age 3. For 2 fortress cards that's honestly not horrible...

And when you get to age IV and have 10% cheaper units, u can still research 33% faster production for the cost of one 3 cav batch.

Is there something that fortress age Japan needs more scaling against?
needs 50% ashi HP upgrade aura to counter CIR
don't forget that it needs to stack with all other upgrades, just like CIR.
Whatever is written above: this is no financial advice.

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Re: The underrated case for forts

Post by Dolan »

Imo, you could make fort wagon speed high enough that nothing can catch it, so that it's still killable but only by a very skilled and persistent player.
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Re: The underrated case for forts

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Post by harcha »

you could give the wagon same hp as the actual fort so that it is just as viable to use it as a tank
POC wrote:Also I most likely know a whole lot more than you.
POC wrote:Also as an objective third party, and near 100% accuracy of giving correct information, I would say my opinions are more reliable than yours.

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