One of the most endearing aspects of Stardock's current offerings (and perhaps one of the coolest implementations of this type of concept I've ever seen in a 4X strategy game) is their implementation of starbases.
Starbases serve as potent defense, sometimes offense and possibly economic boons to the player. They are customizable (to a limit) and properly restrained.
I believe that this implementation could be carried over to Elemental in the form of forts. Granted, the developers have long stated a desire to stop "city spam," so forts would have to be very restricted in their placement in order to work well.
Here are some examples of horrible implementation of the concept of forts:
* The Total war series. Forts cost a paltry amount of capital to erect, but can actually serve to hinder any forces that you garrison inside them. Reasons being: your troops must funnel out of a tiny fortress gate to engage the enemy. Forts are VERY situational and ultimately not worth building.
* Civ 4 was a tiny bit better, whereas building forts over resources could allow your empire access to that resource, but again, this was only necessary if your city could not directly mine that resource.
Some ideas for a good implementation of forts (if there is time to develop them!):
* Allow them to be customizable. For example, the base level fort could only provide minor defensive benefits to the garrisoned army. A handful of tiers of upgrades could further customise the fort if paid for.
* Make their placement limited. Perhaps a "half" rule could be implemented? You can build 1/2 a fort for every city you maintain (obviously this equates to one fort for every two cities). This way, you directly limit the player's ability to "fort spam" and make placement of forts far more tactical. Also, include an upkeep cost for maintaining the fort.
* Make forts multi-functional. Perhaps allow upgrades to be purchased that turn the fort into an economic center. Maybe allow for military upgrades that "harry" enemy forces within a certain radius of the fort, thereby damaging them, sapping morale or reducing movement speed. Also, the magic system could play a role in the upgrade system of a fort. Perhaps medic attachments or possibly even unit production (with some penalties).
* Restrict their placement. Make it so that a fort cannot be built within X hexes from a player capturable landmark. This would promote more "active" player army use, as forts could not be built around critical nodes and thereby "camped." Also, forts can only be built in your influenced region.
* Make fort capture dynamics robust. For example: an enemy army attacks a defended fort and wins! They are immediately given an option to loot the fort (receive money, some fort upgrades remain, fort can be retaken after X turns), capture the fort (they garrison the fort, one or two upgrades lost in the scuffle) or to raze the fort (minor money, deny it to the enemy).
* Change fort dynamics for the different factions. I think even minor diversity between factions would go a long way to enriching this game!
I hope this sounds like a good idea, and I thank all who read it.
