Except I read the context.
You said Hussars don’t counter skirms because they don’t have a multiplier. But that isn’t a fair standard. Skirms as a unit class usually have low hp and a low base damage, on skirms it’s the multipliers against heavy infantry and light cavalry that make them powerful. on top of the low damage they have negative multipliers against heavy cav. Low damage that is cut lower by a negative multiplier and even lower by the ranged armor most cavalry has.
Most heavy cav have high hp and do decent damage to skirms because they have high base damage and skirms don’t have melee armor. That puts melee cav in the position of receiving little damage while dealing reasonable damage. You even have the option to back up the cav with anything dealing ranged damage to kill the skirms while your huss take very little damage. Musks can even do this because they can dish out damage to skirms fine they just can’t take the hits back. It’s hard to mirco all the skirm shots over the hussars to hit only the muskets without significant overkill.
Artillery (falcs, horse art, etc) counter infantry. they deal siege damage that cuts through armor and have a multiplier against “infantry” as a class. It’d be the same as giving falcs a 3x vs light infantry and a 3x vs heavy infantry.
You pointed out that infantry can kill falcs in a field, which is true, but that doesn’t change that they are a counter. They have very high ranged armor and are easy to defend. You have to micro to keep your artillery well protected (abusing their range etc) and punish the attacking force if he tries to take them down. Sup games are often won and lost on overcommitments to take down a few cannons. You are correct though that you usually can’t go pure artillery.
Then you look from the other way; why so many skirms in treaty if they can be countered? it’s simple;
1, melee units are less effective (not ineffective) late game because the armies get bigger (and walls change things too).
2, pop efficiency becomes more important than res efficiency (meaning 1 pop units generally shine over 2 pop units. This results in more musk/skirm armies and skirms are made to kill musks. who cares if skirms shot each other because they don’t deal or take much damage.
3, the best counter late game to mixed skirm/musk is artillery, so everyone builds culvs for the right to have other artillery on the field. If I win the culv war you don’t get the most efficient counter to the bulk of my army. If you win same thing goes for you. 5 horse art will do a lot of damage to skirm/musk masses.
It’s all civ depentant, but that’s the basic reason you see skirms ‘tanking’. skirms can tank skirm shots and since skirms don’t kill each other all that fast the skirms are cheap to replace.
As @DRIVE2024 pointed out, if you simply said skirms always use ranged attack, skirms would fair better at close range vs most heavy infantry who have melee armor.
If your suggestion was giving skirms a minimum range (meaning they can’t shot the close guys at all) than you failed to state that was your suggestion even after receiving pushback. Instead you decided to insult his intelligence and use your treaty rank as if any treaty rank to shut down the argument.
Moving onto this, it most certainly does. If my culvs survive an extra shot they can keep shooting at full DPS until you kill them, it’s massive on artillery that does a lot of damage while having low HP. Small stats differences can be a big deal. If our auxiliary dragoons are fighting and mine have an extra 10% attack upgrade they will win in the long term, and over a long battle you will drain faster.
Sounds like you need to mix upgraded Cossacks (per pop one of the best heavy cav in the game) and use your artillery better. You should always have culvs, and usually have more training to replace the current set. Also build lots of walls on the battlefield while the battle is going (in treaty this is important).
Coming back to the main topic of towers;
- Fair enough. Not everyone need to use something.
- You underestimate the mid-game value of LoS. At that point they aren’t too expensive.
- I might want to send shipments to more than one place. And to your suggestion of being able to ship units to barracks that would massively change the current balance of rushes.
- I don’t expect my tower to kill more than 5 units, I expect it to stop 4 vet huss from killing all my hunters while I’m fighting elsewhere.
- Sure, it’s about an even trade.
Do you mean TCs? There’s nothing special about Portuguese towers other than a card no one uses to make them cheaper. Unless you mean Team Costal Defenses, which many civs get and only helps vs ships.
Firstly, Lionheart tends to play unusual builds. Secondly, “Rush civ” is used somewhat loosely. Russia will almost always rush, but sometimes that doesn’t end the game. Russia is perfectly happy to rush, deal damage and age and boom having taken an early advantage if the rush didn’t kill the other player outright.
A long game is a win condition for late game civs. It shouldn’t just “Be long” because of the civs playing. It should be long if 1, we both feel that is in our best interest, or 2, one of us feels it is and the other fails to stop it. With all the turtlely FI plays going on with Mex and Otto we don’t need any boosts to that kind of play atm.
Multiple people have said that you expect too much of towers. They are useful now, and don’t need a 50% attack boost or a massive HP increase. The penalty against vills should go, and I’d change the base build limit for Blockhouse to 10. Malta needs something else, too many of their units suck.
The decision to have towers be weaker than units was an intentional one to make the game more focused on moving armies than on static defenses. I don’t believe you are fully considering the ramifications of further changes that lengthen the game. Some civs are already struggling because they have a hard time breaking a turtle, and Mex and Otto already have some builds that use the age 3 tower card to give them a base that you can’t push without a lot of siege to get them to age 4 very early.
I could easily see an argument for “Buff towers remove walls” but that is a different argument entirely and would necessitate the rebalancing of a lot of stuff because walls are one of the strongest “anti stupid strat protection” there is currently.