Making Towers more viable in the mid to lategame

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
1

Towers are of limited use at the moment. While they do see use early on and in the extreme lategame in team game scenarios, between those two extremes, they see very limited use, thanks in large part to their stone cost, which places them in direct competition with Town Centers and Castles.

Which is a shame, because Towers could offer a neat way to assert map control in isolated sections of the map and deepen the strategy of the game quite a bit.

I’ve got two ideas to help make them better.

  1. Guard Tower and Keep upgrades should shift the cost from stone to wood.

The goal here is to retain the existing early-game choice of towers vs economy. It’s at a really good balance point early on, where towering slows down your castle age booming fairly substantially, but also offers the opportunity for rapid military growth.

But as the game goes on, towers massively lose out compared to Castles, which basically do everything Towers do, but better. Really, given that towers can’t produce trebuchets or unique units or research vital technologies like Conscription, they really should do far more damage per stone, but at present, they don’t.

  • I’d see the Guard Tower upgrade change the cost of towers from 125S/35W, to 100S/60W.

This means that if someone gets the Guard Tower upgrade, they can build 1 extra TC and also built 1 tower without needing to collect stone. This is, admittedly, a somewhat niche situation, but at the very least it means Town Centers and Towers are more directly parallel, and there might be some cases where you might be inclined to build a tower instead of a TC.

  • The Keep upgrade would shift this further, going from 100S/60W, to 80S/80W.*

At this balance point, you can now build 8 Keeps for the stone cost of one castle, getting approximately 50% more overall firepower. In situations where the other benefits of the castle are less necessary(like base defense), the broader distribution of the towers could be worth using them in some situations.

  • Fun fact! This change, in combination with Detinets, would give the Slavs towers which only cost 48 stone!
  1. Increased Garrison Capacity

Lastly, I’d like to see the garrison capacity of Keeps and Guard Towers increased. I’ve suggested this before, but bumping their garrison capacity up to 12 and 8, or 15 and 10, would again allow them to serve more practically as an alternative to a Town Center in the right situation. For example, a Keep, with its potential for up to 15 damage per shot, could be much more appealing than a Town Center, with just 9 damage per shot, especially in situations like having an enemy going for Paladins, with their seven pierce armor.

  1. Bombard Towers

These changes would also apply to Bombard Towers, but in that case would instead shift the cost towards Gold instead of Wood. You could skip the upgrades if you just want bombard towers immediately, but if you want to make them cost less in the long term, you’d need to get the Guard Tower and Keep upgrades.

Thoughts?

2 Likes
2

I’d probably make them and their upgrades cheaper, in general – cheaper than what you show even – make them more accurate and powerful in early game since they are practically useless in Dark age, increase their HP in mid- and late-game because they have become cardboard cutouts that battering rams and other things destroy in like 3 seconds, and add one more tech in Imperial Age that makes them stronger to further defend somewhat against trebs and rams which come in greater numbers later in game… maybe fire that spills down tower.

To support attackers with something new, could maybe add a ‘Tower Mining’ tech ability for fun, where they can secretly undermine towers when they get close to them Not sure how to do this visually, or if it would just be faster HP loss, but might be interesting:

Medieval Castle Defense: Mining

A good way of attacking a stone castle was through mining. Attackers would dig a tunnel underground up to the castle walls, under the gatehouse if possible. They would then set a charge and make an explosion which would make the walls crumble and collapse. The advantage of mining was that the attack could not be seen by those living in the castle. However, if those inside the castle were aware that attackers were mining underground, they would often mine from the castle to meet the attackers underground and there would be a sword battle.

Source: Medieval Castle Defense and Assault: How Did It Work? - History

I’m pretty sure castles and towers have been nerfed quite a bit the past few years. I’m okay with that somewhat since a defensive slog-fest probably isn’t too desirable, but I think there is some room to make towers better

3

Japanese towers and Georgian towers (which people overlook at) are actually pretty damn good.

Maybe makes sense to make generic civ’s tower align / close to what those two do?

1 Like
4

Notably, Spirit of the Law said that the Georgian towers’ pass-through damage doesn’t do much, but it actually does quite a lot if you spam a bunch of towers in the same area. Units attacking the base of one tower will probably be lined up for shots from another. It’s a very strong ability, and encourages the spamming of towers, which fits the Svaneti region that the tech is named after.

5

It wouldn’t help civs who miss upgrades, only having guard towers would make them more expensive than the stronger keep. How about making the cost shift automatic when aging up ?

6

It would still help some. Some civs aren’t really meant to have top-tier towers. I’d start carefully and then, if it turns out the keep balance isn’t too bad, maybe bump it up over time.

That said, earlier on stone is relatively plentiful, so you wouldn’t really need to change things TOO much. Just making them equivalent to town centers in stone cost alone is pretty good in the midgame.

7

I feel like even if it pierces another unit 20% of the time its like 30% more DPS (consider the +2 atk) so its quite something (esp if you mass lots of them in closed maps)

1 Like
8

Allow tower upgrade to be researched in tower itself. It will be more viable. Towers deny crossbow, cavalry archers and siege push, which is actually good for long swordsmen.

Or you can also apply some of the Teuton boni. Like Double garrison space and infantry shoot arrows thru a tech researched in towers.

9

The big thing about the teuton bonus is that it works in feudal age, so their tower rushes are supercharged. I think it’s fine leaving that as-is. Sure, they’ll have towers with ridiculous garrison capacity in the lategame, but past a point extra capacity becomes a little superfluous.

10

I mean lock the double garrison + infantry garrison shooting arrows behind a tech. As title suggested, the tech should be Castle age tech.

11

Just reduce the bonus damage they take. Already said that for a long time.
Could be a tech researched in the university, potentially replacing arrowslits which instead could be partially built-in.

Towers currently go down to fast to stuff that deals anti-building damage in the midgame - and we add this all the time when we get a military advantage which would be exactly the time the opponent would like to protect his eco with towers when they would be any useful (still see it sometimes in the guard tower defense scenario, but in most cases they don’t work).

The interesting thing about the proposal here is that it completely ignores the main factor of the downfall of the towers and would help almost nothing against what makes them so useless - only if the opponent doesn’t field the right tools it would be of help - but towers are already enough of a noob basher strats anyways.

12

Bombard Tower’s projectile speed could be increased to 4 as well.

13

Why not just make the Tower cost less Stone and more Wood? Stone only really becomes valuable in the late game so no reason they need to cost a lot of Stone in the early game.
I suggest 100 Wood 75 Stone. So +75 Wood -50 Stone (only +50 Wood compared to what they used to cost until recently).

The only other change I would suggest is to give Arrowslits a flat +3 for all Towers so it can compensate for leak of the Keep for some civilisations. It’s an Imperial Age technology anyway.

14

Perhaps add new ultimate watch tower line upgrade called Ballista Tower which has base attack 20 or 25.