I find quite strange that it’s the only UT that cost stone. Yeah, is a powerful tech, but not that OP to cost 500g AND 450 stone. Plus, is on a civ that is already on a budget…
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Crenelations also costs 400 stone.
The argument, I believe, is that it allows towers(or castles, in the case of crenelations) to cover a larger area, so you can cover the same area with less towers, and ultimately save stone in the long term.
In this case, artillery allows BBT’s to cover a 13-tile radius instead of 11. Using the circular area formula, that gives us a total covered tiles of 531 with Artillery, versus 380 without it.
That means that, seeing as BBT’s cost 125 stone and 100 gold, you’re getting an additional 48 stone value and 38 gold value per bombard tower.
So you would need to create 12 bombard towers to make this investment worth it, even ignoring their ability to counter bombard cannons.
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Well, that makes sense… But at the end you might get it only for bombard cannons and bombard galleons. Quite expensive if anyone ask me
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Welp, bombard towers are quite a popular and powerful option for strong late-game pushes. A tech that removes one of their counters can’t be cheap.
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Cool analysis and explanation, makes total sense. GJ bro!
Great Wall also costs stone.
I think Great Wall needs most help in all stone-costing unique tech.
Usually, university tech can be available more easily and be more effective than Great Wall when the players wanna improve their tower or wall.
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First, it’s not that expensive since it’s a Chinese tech, and secondly Chinese get Masonry and Architecture, so you can stack the 3 techs to get some beefy bombard towers.
- It is more expensive than university tech and a castle is expensive than an university. That was what I mean, it is not about civ bonus.
- Since the players may prefer to research university tech first, they may not research Great Wall if those university tech are good enough to satisfy the need.
- I never deny its benefit but it is such a shame that the unique tech is less attractive than the common tech.
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Then why people who play Briton research Yeomen then, since the blacksmith and bonuses are cheaper and “already satisfy the needs”?
Do you think the crossbow can be compared to the wall in the same standard? It is not fair.
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Yeomen is much more expensive than even bracer, and only gives +1 range instead of +1 range and +1 attack. Your civ bonus do the same in Castle and better in Imp for free. So like with Greatwall and university techs, one could assume that this tech is too weak or too expensive. But in both case it’s the wrong reasoning. The point of both these tech is that once you’re FU and have a god eco, you research it so you have even better troops/buildings.
To be fair, there’s a massive difference between bonus armor/range and bonus health. Giving something 30% bonus health always means it’s just 30% more durable. Giving something even one armor can mean the difference between taking 2 damage and 1, or a 100% increase in durability. And giving a unit one more range means they’re virtually guaranteed to win any fair fight, simply because they always get the first shot off.
If the Chinese weren’t already an extremely powerful civ, I’d probably advocate for Great Wall being changed somehow, simply because its effect isn’t particularly gamechanging in any respect. Maybe something like, make it block enemy arrow fire from going over it. Or at least through it, so they at least have to put their archers up close to the wall to be protected. THAT would actually change the way they play a bit. The bland statistical buff could stay just so it would still be a useful tech even without the actually cool bit.
But like I said, totally unnecessary given the Chinese are already a dang potent civ.
I wouldn’t ignore the design failure of the unique tech itself even the civilization is already pretty good. Buffing Chinese is not my point, I just state the problem of Great Wall itself.
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Design failure? But the tech:
makes sense for historical accuracy
is balanced with the rest of the civ
is useful.
Sure, it’s not Kamandaran, but it truely gives you an advantage for some defensive strats and pushing with BBT.
If we were to treat Yeomen like Great wall, one could argue that since Britons already outrange the enemy, Yeomen sounds like overkill. And while it’s actually a really good tech, most of the time, it’s reasearched after Bracer and Chemistry. Just like Great wall goes after Masonry and Architecture, or Tower shield after Ring archer armor. But in the end yeah, it already gives one more good toy in the Chinese’s arsenal, no need to buff them yet again.
- Accuracy? Great Wall is just a famous specific wall at the north China. Being a building of the scenario editor would be better than an unique tech in my opinion. But this is not the main cause of the problem.
- Don’t think so one-sided please. You can see that every Britons game researches Yeomen but Chinese game is not. Chinese has great defense already and improving the defense abilities is totally not urgent than improving the archers’ range, so people may not be attracted by Great Wall like Yeomen, this is why I said the comparison is unfair.
- I explain again and again that I never deny the benefit. However the low attraction is still a problem when it is an unique tech, especially it costs stone, a super precious resource in the late game, the time you finally need the better defense indeed. This is the main cause of the problem. Maybe you don’t consider it is not attractive, but the reason I just stated before. Chinese not goes BBT rush as often as other civ like Teutons, that is also one of the reasons.
In the forum in my country, Great Wall is the tops of the list of the meaningless unique tech. Buffing is not the point. There definitely is a solution to deal the low attraction and keep the balance for it.
Great wall could actually update the skin of chinese fortified walls into an even cooler looking one 
but now that I think of it, since you can choose which one you research first, that would be stupid and maybe even buggy. Anyways, the great walls cost is what it is for the mere reason of what you get with it, not how often you necessarily need it. You can’t lower its cost based on how often a player decides to go on a BBT push, but on how powerful the said push becomes with the said upgrade. Also if a civ is already powerful, having a less effective UT than a comparatively weaker civs UT is not really a bad thing. And GW is far from useless, unlike what you implied.
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That’s good, on paper. In reality 2 more range on BBT is worth more than the added value from area coverage. You out-range everything.
Having same range as normal cannon galleons too, which many civs are capped at is also a very nice perk of this upgrade.
Still don’t outrange Trebs, so personally I don’t wanna overstate that benefit. It’s nice, for sure. And cannonballs move slow enough that even BBCs can dodge them, so…yeah. Dunno.
Yeah, but requires micro and any defensive structure can be countered with good micro. The whole point of a defensive building is to demand micro, thus time, from your opponent. More range means more micro. I do agree, however, that 950 mining res is a lot for an upgrade like this.