Seige tower rework suggestions

Age of Empires IV IV - Discussion
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So in all my viewing I have not seen this unit in play even once!

Lets examine why…

Has little tactical benefit, and is better to just take out walls and once long range siege comes into play is worthless.

How to make it better.

I think we were all expecting and hoping for some more on wall fights. From what I have seen this is partially impaired because units scaling downed wall sections cant attack upwards if blocked from getting to the top.

So the siege tower should be incredibly tanky. I am not sure if units on walls can use their flame attack on them, but since the machine would be covered in fire retardant skins, should be resistant to units on walls using torches. It is something hand units should have to melee attacks on the base to quickly destroy, like a unit rather than a building.

it should stroll up to the wall, and then drop its bridge, and any units under the bridge, should get hurt or killed. this would then make some room for the garrisoned units to get onto the wall. and cause the defender to micro away from them.

Each tower while garrisoned should get up to five archers and one for every 2 untis garrisoned. That means it would take atleast 10 units to garrison in the unit to fire all five shots. 1 unit would not give any archer shots, The range would be shorter than most archers and any units on the wall would not get their defensive bonus for archer shots from the tower. However since the tower would be pretty resilient to archer fire the advantage would go to the attacker. then once in place the tower would act as a path way for units, so no longer would you have to garrison, or ungarrison them, units would just find a path from the ground to the tower to the walls to the other side (using the enemy gates)

Any unit near an enemy gate tower should then make the gate open for the rest of the army to get through.

Another thought for a special unit is to have one with a small springald at the top, that would be less range and less damage(but faster ROF) than a normal one, but since it would be at tower height could shoot over the walls which other springalds would be vulnerable. (trebs and mangonels could attack them though)

Will it even be enough? maybe not… but could make for some fun diversity and niche scenarios. Right now it seems to have no viable use. But if it were easier to control the high ground advantage that walls gave then people may want to fight to get that advantage using enemy walls.

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I’m not sure about all the Uggestions here, but I like the idea that it acts as a pathway up walls without garrisoning units.

It definitely needs some loce, because right now it is basically never used.

Resistance to torch damage from wall attackers seems like a good idea.

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I am not sure about all or part of these suggestions either, but something needs to be done. I really want to see more advantage in using enemy walls. Right now siege is just so good at shooting them down its so fast its hardly worth it. but if repair is so good, then there is a totally new defense needed for a tower that needs some offensive abilities

I think to start when the door drops need to do some damage to soften up the troops near it so when units come out can fight their way into them easier, or have to kite wall units away which then there is room to deploy,

On like the first day seeing some being made, they were kind of buggy to deploy and need some fluidity.

Ideally all siege should be reworked that units from the field need to man them, so you would need to garrison like 10 units to get it to move, and that would give it a few archer attacks and then they can ungarrison onto the walls and the tower acts as a natural pathway, or one can put units back in and move it, and regain the archer attacks. This would make for some tricky wall fights. I think mangonels would be a good counter to them, or units on the ground using torches. but this would be a good counter to units on walls and possibly other siege that can not fire over walls.

Thank you for contributing

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Imo, the tower is not useful at all. I think I only have made 3 of them in the past 2 months. Why not give us some ladders as well?

In combination with what you said you might force a player to defend there wall.