Thoughts about Towers

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
1

Towers are mostly famous as a hated offensive weapon in Feudal and not as a useful defensive tool in Age of Empires 2.

As soon as you reach Castle Age you want to use your precious Stone on Castles and TCs and not Towers.
Castles provide very strong DPS, they give access to some of the strongest units (your UT and Trebuchets) as well as critical technologies (UTs and Conscription mostly).

The only Towers that see some usage in defence without massive civilisation bonuses (Korean, Japanese, etc.) are Bombard Towers.

How to make Towers strong in defence without making them strong in Offence?

One of the first things to make Tower rushes more manageable was increasing the damage of Villagers against Stone Defence from +3 to +6 in AoC 24 years ago.

My suggestion is to reduce the damage of Towers vs. Villagers by 2 the same way Shotel Warriors with Royal Heirs take 3 less damage by Mounted Units.

Villagers with Loom have 2 Pierce armour.
With that change the damage from Watch Towers (with Fletching) would change from 4 (5+1-2) to 2 (5+1-2-2) making them a lot weaker against villagers.

This change would basically not change the effectiveness of Towers in Defence since villagers are way to valuable to send to the enemy base in an offence in Feudal Age.

To improve Towers in their defensive role, especially in the late game, I would suggest following changes:

  • Watch Towers get their full HP in Feudal Age again (850 → 1020)
  • Tower cost from 35 W 125 S changed to 100 W 75 S
  • Arrow Slits +3 attack for all Towers

The change to the HP is simply reverting them to their original state. This change was only done because Tower Rushing was too effective.

The cost change is designed to make them more affordable in Late Game.
In the early game Wood is a little “cheaper” then Stone since it collects faster, in the Late Game Stone runs out first and the market price can only go up. Making the Tower cost more Wood and less Stone makes them a lot more Affordable in the late game. Now one Castle costs over 8 Towers worth in Stone instead of just a little more then 5 Towers.
I changed the overall resource cost for Towers from 160 to 175 so they don’t become too cheap in the early game.
Also Towers did cost 175 resources until very recently.
This would also happen to be the same price the Slavs paid after researching Detinets.

The main potential balance issue I see is that players can make more towers with the starting Stone without mining any additional Stone.
But since towers do less damage against villagers that would be less exploitable.
Maybe it becomes more viable to build towers instead of walls in the early game.

The changes are not very big overall so I wouldn’t expect Towers to become super popular over night.
I thought about suggesting giving all Towers +1 attack but that would probably be a little too much.

2 Likes
2

How about allowing research town watch and town patrol+ tower upgrade in towers instead of nerfing tower rush?

Personally, I dont hate tower rush. Currently, we see so many scouts in feudal. As long as you scout tower rush, they can be dealt with fairly fine.

Besides, Guard towers is not useless in defence. I think Guard towers are still useful to fend off mangonel push. But Keeps are really very situational.

1 Like
3

I think you should be able to produce and upgrade rams from towers from castle age onwards.

4

No. Tower rushes are fun and I hate that the devs nerfed them. People finding them annoying ruined towers for those who actually like that strategy.

4 Likes
5

Not really, they are used really defensively in 2v2 TGs and maps that you cannot wall (say haboob / land madness)

Walls are OP does not mean that towers are bad.

6

In fact, I am surprised by the number of flanks in TG that rather die when they can survive using (feudal no-bonus) tower.

7

I they like never. Tower gold people no know no stop. Tower cheat is player when. Was better soldier then people was tower lazy and cheat.

8

日本語に固執できますか？そうでなければあなたを理解するのは難しいです。

1 Like
9

Practice English improve. No practice never improve

1 Like
10

You can practice before posting in any translator. Nobody here will correct your english. So, you waste your time.

11

no ask help your, not bother

12

Build a counter tower once you spot enemy’s towers in construction. Better scouting and outpost can help spot towers.

13

thank you 10000 understand

14

Disculpá, no te entiendo amigo…

15

私は言いました：私はあなたの助けを求めていません、私を煩わせるのはやめてください。

16

I’ve never been a big fan of defense buildings not being able to have 100% health in the Feudal Age, although I understand why.
Maybe just let their basic health points become that low, but introduce a new technology in the feudal age that can bring their health points back to their original 100%.

This also encourages tower rush especially in the late game of the tower civs.

Maybe just allow towers to be built a little faster in TC’s LoS, so towers will be better used for defense rather than offense, and town watch and town patrol will benefit towers.

17

But this is not useful at all.

18

Thinking about my suggestion.
Maybe the Tower cost change should be behind a technology.
So civs with very strong Towers don’t get it.
It would make Towers a lot more useful for civs that don’t get all Tower upgrades.

Oh I forgot the Tower Upgrades in the Tower like AoE3 or AoM do.
Not sure if Town Watch and Town Patrol should be there too but it would make sense.

I don’t want to nerf Tower rush.
I want to buff Towers but without making them better at rushing as their are now.

If we’d simply buff Towers then Tower rushing would become too strong again and dominate the game.
The majority of people doesn’t want to get Tower Rushed in every second match.

That is a strange suggestion. Why should Towers be able to train Rams of all units?

Would make more sense if the Militia Line could build Rams like Infantry can in AoE4.

The problem with some strategies, and that includes Tower Rush, is that it’s a lot easier to learn how to do it then how to counter it.
That means in a huge ELO range those strategies are very powerful and ruin the enjoyment of many players.

Most people play AoE to have soldiers fight each other and not to destroy enemy Towers in their base with villagers.

I don’t want Tower rush to be nurfed, I want Towers to be buffed without making Tower Rush stronger.

I don’t think that would be too much of an issue.
But maybe this discount should be locked behind a technology that they don’t get.
Like Romans not getting Supplies.

I love the idea of adding an Aura around the TC that makes construction faster.
But then making every construction outside of this Aura a little slower then now.

This would make a lot of sens but I think there would be a lot of people that would absolutely hate this idea.

My thoughts

  • Watch Towers full HP in Feudal Age
  • All Towers +1 attack
  • All Towers -3 attack vs. Villagers (effectively -2 compared to now)
  • Tower Upgrades available in the Tower instead of University
  • Tower cost back to 50W 125S
  • New technology that changes Tower cost to 100W 75S (+50W -50S)
  • Arrow Slits +3 attack for all Towers

AoE3 completely eliminates Tower Rushing by giving them 1/4 of the damage vs. villagers. AoE2 can now also do negative damage so we should use this feature!

Towers have good HP but they suffer a lot from Low DPS. That’s why they become a lot more useful with UTs that give Towers more damage.

The Tower discount Tech would be very useful for civs without fully upgraded Towers. Those would now rarely build and Towers at all in late game.
The technology could be mutually exclusive with Arrow Slits. So you either get strong or cheap towers.

19

If you wish to buff the defensive value of buildings, without increasing the offensive potential, there is one simple solution: buff the stats. In return, adjust the building time relative to the distance to the nearest own town center. This could and should hold for all buildings and be done in such a way that a moderate distance (such as the radius of a fairly standard base) leaves the building time nearly unchanged, but further departures tend to increase it much more. With some upper limit of course, we don’t wish to have wonder-like construction times for a tower, even if it’s at the other side of the map. So it also needs to be map-size dependent. Needs a bit fiddling around with the formula but it’s definitely doable. And it could be easily justified from historic/real life point of view: Establishing a new base far away from grown infrastructure is of course initially much more complicated from logistics point of view than just extending an existing settlement. And while we luckily don’t actually have to transport resources from A->B in AoE, building times could reflect the more complicated logistics in a fairly simple manner.

1 Like
20

I think tower rush is too strong when towers cant be spotted. If we buff slightly outpost LOS,
Dark age 6
Feudal 8 → 9
Castle 10 → 12
Imp no change

It may help against tower rush while towers can be buff slightly.

1 Like