Bombard Tower needs some kind of (defensive) buff

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
1

In general, out of a few niche cases (like with a specific civ, in a specific map), nobody is building BBTs; meanwhile BBTs remain very expensive.

So, BBT needs some kind of buff, to begin to see some kind of proper use, as well as to see use of the various bonuses and UTs that several civs have.

I thought that a conservative buff would be to let them have 10 garrison spots, in order to compete with the Castle (and the TC?) as Villager shelter at strategic resource points (which is a defensive use).

What are your thoughts?

2 Likes
2

Maybe garrisoned unit give a secondary attack of bullet ? One problem is that we can easily dodge the cannonball.

3

Give them some bonus against Rams. They don’t need to melt them completely like in the Age of Kings, but currently they are pathetic against them.

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4

BBTs are fine as they are in my opinion

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5

Give some bonus damage against rams not as much as aok but something like 12

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6

I’m thinking let garrisoned units shoot arrows, but not as many as the watch tower line.

A small bonus against Rams would also be nice.

7

Really all defensive structures perform poorly in a defensive situation. But they cannot take a general buff or else they will be overpowered. In nearly every case it is better to build the tower aggressively than defensively. The main reason I think that is, is this: would you rather slightly shift the balance of power in your own base, or the enemy’s?

A slight shift in your base doesn’t do any good vs a large army or a significant raiding party, but in the enemy’s base it can prevent the enemy from gathering resources there (as a raiding party would do) or can provide a slight edge to allow your army to snowball just a little harder. To put it another way, towers and the like are better at doing raids than at preventing them.

Idea 1:

With the Mountain Royals patch they added a mechanic that could be utilized. Namely, that garrisoned villagers don’t fire less arrows when tower attack upgrades are researched. Technically, villagers get a garrison DPS increase with the attack upgrades, meaning this could be further utilized more directly.

Perhaps Arrowslits and Towers could be reworked for that purpose:

  1. Arrowslits moved from Imperial Age → Castle Age,
  2. Arrowslits effect changed from Watch-Tower-Line +1/2/3 attack by upgrade level → Villagers +1 garrison firepower, Foot Archers and Skirmishers +10% garrison firepower.
  3. Keep attack increased from 8 → 10.

Thematic reasoning: more openings to fire from means a soldier could get a better angle to fire from and tighter openings means a soldier could concentrate more on firing and less on dodging, meaning the shots that are fired would be more effective.

Idea 2:

Towers (and all buildings) take just as much time to build defensively as offensively, but what if that wasn’t the case?

Thus;

  1. Tower build time increased from 80 → 120,
  2. Farms increase the work rate of nearby builders by ~10% each (normally reaching a maximum of about +90% but optimally placed it could go up “infinitely”)

Thematic reasoning: a well-established infrastructure means everyone knows their part and can increase their effectiveness by a little bit when time demands it.

Although these ideas are not specific to bombard towers, they would, in my opinion, move things in the right direction more generally.

1 Like
8

BBTs are marble droppers. Battering ram tanks and titanium alloy trebs are impervious to them. A villager with bare fists and a ferocious attitude do more damage than BBTs

2 Likes
9

I would give BBT 12 range (and +1 with siege engineers), same as cannons… I don’t think it will kill a lot from 12 range, but it would annoy enemies and force them to micro

Also I would make towers shoot more arrows maybe watch towers can shoot x2 arrows (reduce damage to 4), guard towers shoot x3 (5 damage) and keeps x4 (6 damage)… that way it could be useful to upgrade them if you want to play with towers

10

Guard towers is actually fine to fend off siege. Keeps without bonus defend poorly in imp age. BBT towers are much more useful in water maps imo.

I also agree to move arrowslit to Castle age. The original effect can remain. Perhaps let towers deal more damage when enemies getting closer. (i.e. damage increases with proximity of the tower)

1 Like
11

I think a good idea generally. I think the easiest way would be to give Town Centres (which you know are supposed to be the Centre of your Town) an aura that increases construction speed around them.

Also I think Towers are generally too expensive in late game compared to what they offer. They offer less DPS per Stone then Castles, which also have a lot of additional features like training your UU and Trebuchets. Giving Towers an increased Wood Cost but reduced Stone Cost would make them the same price in early game but more affordable in lategame making them actually viable compared to Castles and Bombard Towers.

I think buffing normal Towers helps Bombard Towers because they kinda cover each others weaknesses

I think Arrowslits should be changed to +3 attack for the entire Tower Line. None Keeps are already weaker anyway so this would help to compensate for that a little. Now you basically never want to research Arrowslits if you don’t have Keeps.

Also maybe there should be a technology that replaces part of their Stone Cost with Wood to make them more affordable in late game.

That would be totally OP. Every civ would suddenly be Turks.

I do think it would make sense if Bombard Towers would benefit form Siege Engineers instead of the Archer blacksmith upgrades. They don’t shoot arrows after all. To compensate their base range would be increased from 8 to 10. Though that would reduced the Turks range by 1, so maybe they would need their UT changed.

Technically garrisoning units gives them additional cannon balls but that only works when you garrison 10 Hand Cannons into a Teuton Bombard Tower.

But the bullet attack would be a cool idea.

Or just reduce the Rams crazy pierce armour to a level where they actually get more then 1 damage from Bombard Towers. The only other unit that has a pierce attack anywhere in that range is Trebuchets and those are really bad against units anyway so it wouldn’t change anything there.

2 Likes
12

I think it needs to be effective against siege (except trebs). Maybe not as much as it was in AoK but far better than it is now. Improving the speed of the projectile would also help.

2 Likes
13

First, only 1 out of 4 civs have BBT, and not all of them have siege engineers or a similar UT

I think the range is the only thing that would make them useful… if they need some balance you can easily reduce the rate of fire, increase the cost or give a minimun range similar to cannons…

14

I do hate too the slow cannon balls… it breaks the immersion somewhat. They did fix this on Cannon Galleon ball, if i remember correctly.

Also, I believe that elevated cannons on walls/towers, historically had increased counter battery role. In this game while BBT doesn’t counter BBC, nor Treb (which is good)… it should convincingly counter some other things (maybe Ram, or BBC instead of Ram via equal range and projectile speed - BBC would still be able to dodge/reposition tho).

BBT must offer reliable area protection for its cost, or enough shelter size that protects from raids your hard working miners that steal precious contested resources, so enough Vills at least would beat the Ram.

Currently we count 3 siege units that hard-counter BBT. All 3 are more accessible than BBT, I believe.

1 Like
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It would still be OP if only one civ had it. That would actually make it even worse. Totally dominating some game modes like deathmatch.

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It’s about the same actually. FU keeps have 8+7==15 damage/arrow (same as castles), and castles fire 5 arrows while 5 keeps costs 625 stone (slightly less than a castle). Castles do have more bonus damage against ships and stone fortifications, but outside of those cases, the keeps barely edge out castles in damage output/stone. Certain UTs and missing tower techs do change the math though.

But having to invest in several technologies just to match castle firepower is a bit lackluster. The main advantages they offer is greater HP/stone and the ability to spread out to cover a wider area. But I think that another major reason we don’t often see towers is because stone tends to be limited, and maps with lots of stone on them are considered unbalanced.

For BBTs, I think a little bonus damage against rams (just enough to keep them on par with keeps) and faster cannonballs (to more reliably hit) would be good buffs.

17

More damage the closer Is implizit the case by better hit chances. I don’t want another hidden mechanics to deal with if you add further bonus dmg the closer

18

We don’t need auras of town centers, the game shoild try to stay closer to its root. Simple mechanics but deep gameplay. Not convoluted hidden multitude mechanics and causal burnout

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I know changing it now would destroy the current balance. I just think it would be a elegant and logical solution to a general RTS problem. In some ways Starcraft 2 already does that with Zerg creep and Protoss Pylons. AoE3s solution of simply banning people from building close to an enemy TC is kinda ugly.

1 Like
20

Given the current balance, BBTs are so powerful that one wonders whether they shouldn’t cost 1 population. If you’re going to ask for some buffs, you should also introduce some nerfs.