Problem to address:
Some civs have castle age unique technologies that improve towers, which indicates that they are supposed to make use of towers, and not only in the super late game.
However, making use of towers post feudal and having a castle for researching a unique technology are usually mutually exclusive in practice. If you built already a castle (either offensive or defensive), there is little room for additionally making enough additional towers from economic perspective, and there is also less need, at least during castle and early imp.
Solution:
Just turn the UTs affecting towers into civ boni, and let them start from castle age in order not to screw up feudal balance. That way, certain civs would have an actual opportunity to decide whether going for castles or towers.
In four cases (Britons, Celts, and the other two the forums doesn’t let me spell out) the UT affects towers and something else (archers, castles, walls). In these cases, one could even keep the UT in principle, only remove the part that affect the towers, and turn that into a civ bonus, possibly while adjusting the price of the UT a little bit (yeah, this might be some kind of a buff, but in a niche area anyway).
Only in two cases (Koreans, Japanese) is the corresponding UT only affecting the towers and nothing else. In these cases, one would need to come up with some other cheap low-impact UT. But it’s not that Koreans and Japanese are currently OP, so this might be not such a big deal. Provided the towers of these two civs turn out to be too oppressive early castle, one could slightly tweak the effect:
Japanese: +1 arrow in castle, +2 in imp
Koreans: +1 range in castle, +2 in imp.
For what it’s worth, Koreans DID have that as a bonus before it replaced the old UT, which simply made Turtle Ships move 15% faster. It was a useless tech that makes me sick just thinking about needed an urgent overhaul, but now that you mention it, Eupseong could potentially be replaced, again, with a better one.
I know there’s been lots of discussion about how to buff Koreans since they’re pretty weak right now, and I’m too tired to think how to swap Eupseong, but I would like to see some brainstorming in this thread.
It was literally like this before. Devs locked the bonus behind UT for a reason. The only way to revert this change is to remove free tower upgrades from them.
I think the reason it was moved to be a UT was to lake Koreans less tower focused, because Koreabs had too many bonuses and because they needed a new UT
TBH I would prefer if they added some specific tech to towers in the university that is available to most civs.
Something that makes towers a more flexible alternative to castles (but ofc stil not comparable) in the midgaeme.
I don’t think a lot of civs should have as powerful towers as japanese, koreans or sicilians. I actually think it’s better if more civs have “useful” towers than only a few “overpowered” ones.
And I like the concept of locking these behind techs for japanese and koreans. It would be too much if they got them for free.
The problem with Towers is that they lose out against Castles is most ways.
Less cost efficient in terms of DPS/Stone cost (unless you are Japanese), can’t train your UT, don’t provide population.
The only advantage they have is more HP/Stone cost.
The solution to fix Towers would be to add a technology to the University that concerts some of the Stone cost into Wood cost (could me more then 1 to 1) like the Slavic UT does for both Towers and Castles.
This way Towers become a more viable alternative to Castles in late game.
This technology would also not require a Castle.
I’ve been thinking about towers, and they are a weird building. They are mostly useful in early game, dark age to early castle. However, they are pretty expensive at that stage of the game.
Once you get to castle age, you are far better off making castles or even town centres. Castles are extremely hard to take down in castle age, while towers are pretty easy, especially without murder holes. After this point, there is literally no point in making towers over anything else.
To make them viable, the stone cost needs to be removed or vastly reduced past castle age. They should cost like 25-50 stone and 125-200 wood. And, they should serve a function. The best one I can think of is to prevent hussar raids. So, they should get more damage, specifically against common raiding units like the hussar line.
I think that they will work reasonably well even without any specific buffs except changing the stone cost. This can be done via a university tech, and the devs can restricts which civs get the tech to make it more balanced.
Keeps give you a lot more HP per Stone but there is one issue.
Castles have a lot more armour.
Keep has 3/9/0 and Castle has 8/11/8 (Melee/Pierce/Building Armour)
They get another 2/2/6 though University.
Castles also provide 20 Garrison space on top of doing more damage in the first place compared to Keeps only having 5.
Reducing the Stone cost and increasing the Wood cost could help Towers in late game without making them to powerful early on.
In early game 1 Stone is worth like 1.2 Wood maybe from collection rate but the value goes up a lot in late game when Stone runs out.
The issue is that you shouldn’t be able build 2 Towers with starting Stone so you would have to reduce starting Stone which also impacts other things like how many TCs you can build in Castle Age before starting to mine Stone.
A second change they should really do is moving the Tower Upgrades to the Towers themselves so you don’t need to build a university.
Use the free slot in the University to add a technology that reduces the Stone cost for additional Wood cost.
Maybe 75 Stone 125 Wood.
Hot take:
Increase Tower construction time by 50%.
Reduce Tower construction time by 25% when it’s inside of the range of the Town Bell of a Town Centre or equivalent range of a Castle.
It makes sense that it should be faster to build buildings closer to your logistic hubs so that would be realistic.
This way it is harder to do a Tower rush but easier to use Towers defensively. You could even build counter Towers against a rusher since you build 2x as fast.
Also gives you an intensive to combine Castles and Towers in defence.
Well you can still Castle drop and then build Towers around it more quickly if you want to use annoying tactics.
Why would I post that if I thought Arrowslits would be enough?
Arrowslits is also a bit too expensive for a midgame “pickup” just to make towers a viable alternative… But the tech just also doesn’t provides what midgame towers would need to be more competitive.