Look, on the mod page you find a mod with the desired change you want. Look for people that want play the same way you want and with the same changes you suggest and you are fine, this don’t mean they need change the game balance back again.
Imagine what a civ do without good siege? Trebs are also not really a option, maybe petards but everything have pros and cons.
So here is what you are looking for have fun:
Can you explain this one? It does seem like many people are hesitant to use trebs against bombard towers. They seem to be the best counter, and are available to every civ. It is much easier to protect a treb that is 16-17 tiles away than to guard siege rams with pikes or archers while standing in cannon fire.
Is the concern just that your Castles will be destroyed and you’ll be unable to make trebs to take down towers? That is a valid fear, but if the opponent is spending 125 stone per BBT I think it is acceptable to require a stone building to produce counters. Maybe this means hiding a safe castle in some games, instead of using all your stone on a risky forward castle.
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Castles are more expensive let’s give them all anti-ram bonus damage /s
All defensive buildings deal pierce damage. Here’s your consistency.
Just replace BBT with “keep” or “Cuman watch tower” for this matter, because they have the same stone cost. And only Japanese (and maaaaaybe Korean) keeps are actually as good as bombard towers, so even if you spend the BBC’s gold cost to buy stone for more keeps instead you’re still not getting something as good as BBTs for your money.
Really the only thing that could be changed about BBT for the sake of “making sense” is to make it so that they no longer require blacksmith upgrades to have max range. Because yes, the dude who “knows how a cannonball works” decided that BBT would need fletching &co to get more range. But even then only the Teutons get BBCs but no bracer so it’s not like it will change much.
Fair point, but visually it is inconsistent. If there must be a slow-firing tower with high pierce damage just give it the scorpion/war wagon projectile and call it a ballista tower. No need to show cannonballs for this when it operates differently than every other cannonball projectile.
I agree that BBT range should be independent from Bracer, just like Hand Cannoneer and all other gunpowder units.
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The damage per shot is so high that only rams and unpacked trebuchets (and technically the siege tower) really care about whether the damage is melee or pierce. For any other unit it makes almost no difference.
The change in update 1.0b from melee to pierce was to give the bombard towers another counter in the form of rams, rather than requiring that they be taken down at range. Otherwise if you don’t have a castle for trebs, you can be in a situation where there is no unit you can make to deal with them.
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Exspensive? What are you comparing them to? You can place TWO bombard towers for a cost of ONE bombard cannon, which die like flies.
Besides switching back to melee damage will require many other considerations, like a negative bonus against buildings or else a bombard tower push will become even more menacing.
Personally id also like to see how it would work, but thats obviously not something on top of rebalancing priority list. Bombard towers do have their uses as they are now, just search the youtube for “bombard tower” and sort by date
I mainly compare them to keeps, both cost 125 stone and Bombard is 100 gold vs Keep’s 50 wood. Really anything with stone cost is a significant investment (it means fewer Castles and TC’s), and if we’re talking late Imperial Age then gold matters as well. If I plan on using it for garrison then the Keep generally seems like a better option, with better accuracy and multiple arrows, especially for civs like Koreans or Japanese. I find it very strange that Keeps are more effective against rams than Bombard Towers are. Keep also has a lower upgrade cost and researches sooner, it doesn’t require chemistry.
All that being said, it is very rare that Keeps are worth building. Bombard Towers are almost never seen in serious games, maybe occasionally as a meme (correct me if I’m wrong here, I just can’t recall any tournament games or anything with bombard towers as a legitimate strat). I personally end up making them only when I’m playing Portuguese and end up with a few Feitorias and excess stone, or as Turks where the extra range makes them harder to counter.
BBT’s have relatively high HP for what they are, it takes a very long time to siege down even a few BBT’s with trebuchets. Trebuchets are also extremely expensive, and losing any number of them to a cavalry charge and/or BBC/onager while trying to take down a BBT is a huge loss. The case against castles is much different, because castles are far more valuable to make and much harder to place, which justifies risking a large number of trebuchets to take it down.
BBT don’t do melee damage because melee damage BBT’s are broken. They can be spammed up in a conceded area in groups in a matter of a minute or so. Pushing through BBT’s is slow. Attempting to circumvent them gives your opponent an overwhelming positional advantage on the map, similar to giving up water. Attempting to siege them will often result in a loss of the siege spent, whether or not the attack is successful, as raids pull your army back and separate your army from your siege or your army from your town, whichever you feel is less likely to end your chances at the game.
Don’t confuse “I don’t see them” with “They are bad.” You don’t see a lot of things in Imperial age, especially in 1v1’s. An underabundance of opportunities, combined with a scarcity of good matchups make a lot of things a rare sight.
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That is arguable since you still need 600 food and 600 wood to upgrade from watch tower to keep anyway. And while going for Keep is a no-brainer if you`re Japanese, bombard towers niche is still considerable for many civs and strats.
EDIT: besides, Chemistry is beneficial in many other way, although i agree that Bombard Tower technology itself is a bit too expensive.
I’m pretty sure that even if you use the gold cost of BBT to buy stone for more keeps, it would still be worse than just using the gold to build BBT. Especially if it’s a TG.
It’s this way because the Japanese don’t get BBT anyway, so it’s not like they get to choose. Afaik the only BBT civ that might go for keeps over BBT is the Koreans as they can build them with 0 reseach needed (they still need chemistry for BBT) and they have more range than the Korean BBT. For every over BBT civs keeps are basically never used.
And if bbt deal melee damage how are you supposed to deal with bbc + bbt ? the only option currently to push it is with rams. 120 or 100 is exactly the same
Turks the new meta civ in team games!