Great video! At the very least I would love to see a buff to crenellations. Getting dived by contarius under TC + 4 towers and seeing the cavalry barely getting scratched just feels wrong.
This is what towers are supposed to look like; this was without a proper egyptian turtle and just having them up. This is a realistic setup of someone tower pushing to defend himself and kill you with them ua-cam.com/video/dQZwHSl0o5Y/v-deo.html
it definetly feels like this. I remember towers beeing super strong in legacy but since retold they seem to be only an annoyance for passing cavalry and other units. They buffed the TC to prevent the crazy all in classical age rushes from launch but with such weak towers its difficult to secure any ressources without your own army
yea definitely crazy to see no decision making on whether or not to dive eco-lines. its just always the correct decision, even if they garrison. There should be at least some risk if there's a tower, I find myself not even casting pestilence when I go for it because its just not necessary unless your diving farmers.
Age of Empires in general has been scared of making towers strong. Sure, tower rushes are terrifying which is why tower rush strats all got nerfed, but they make the later age towers so irrelevant it's kind of depressing. In AoE2, it takes five full-upgrade towers to equal the output of one no-upgrade castle, and the tower's only advantage is extra health in comparison. It's even worse in AoM where even a Stronghold/Hill Fort is weaker than an AoE2 castle, and the towers even weaker than that.
I think they could definitely be rebalanced. They should either improve their dps/utility or reduce their cost. It's absurd that two towers cost the same amount of resources as a fortress-type building which can also train units. What would you think if the towers had different functions depending on what unit is inside? For example, a hero could give it bonus damage vs myth units, a villager or a scout unit gives it extra vision range, archers give it extra damage and attack range etc.
Easy fix. Increase towers hack armor by 20%, and increase the attack by 15% per age (or something like that). OR make towers 30-50% cheaper. Because like you say, making towers just makes no sense in the game right now
First of all, glad to know surgery went well. Even after the last buff, defensive structures are very weak. Literally melted by non-siege units without losing any of them bc such buildings dont deal damage. Not to mention that you are losing resources if you upgrade towers so you are putting yourself behind. I get the point of some players of not wanting to be hard zoned by a couple of towers for raiding, however Its not fun to have 6 raiding cavarly idling your entire eco in classical age wothout punishment. The game is bit volatile and focused on rushes/timmings.
@@30Salmao Thing is, here your spykes are pretty good early in the game. You get to really strong units and decent god powers in classical age that you can sit there and mass army. And in Heroic age you are even stronger due to combos like Ancestors+Eclipse, Restoration+Bronze, Flamming weapons itsfel is game changing... Getting to mythic age inst as important compared to AOE2 (IK they are diff games and want to diff things but just to put in perspective).
As someone who generally preferes the Age-Series to other RTSs in no small part for its much more cmplex and detailed base building, I sure hope that Towers & Fortresses are getting a buff. As great as Retold has been, I feel that this causes it to lose some of the identy of the Age series.
Every now and then I'd reinstall Extended Edition and watch myself lag to death everytime I queued for a game. Years ago, I discovered Boit's channel and would watch AoM matches and reminisce about the original game. I'd drop by the AoM Heaven forums to read about some of the players featured in Boit's casts. Reading the backstories, playstyles, and rivalries between these AoM legends in Boit's videos was always riveting. Three names that were always in the discussion were the three M's as they were called. A lot of the threads and discussions were over a decade old, and I realize that times change and so does the competition, so when Retold was released I didn't really know what to expect. Getting to see some of these hallowed names dominate Retold and compete against eachother in the finals of the recent event was incredible. It was like all of the stories, names, and legends I had read about had finally come to life.
bro these are epic tales, I also want to conserve HG in a time capsule, epic place for good nostalgia that I didn't actually live but read about. In my case I read a lot about aoe 2 and most of the names from old 90s never returned to aoe 2 de. But aom retold really called oldschools. What a title, Retold is a gem even with some flaws (towers are one example)
I have tested out many scenarios, of course not all the possible scenarios, but towers in Retold are such a net negative - that if both players have the same armies, but one player spent their money on towers and the other on units - the player that didn't waste their money on static defence wins every time. And I didn't even factor in the cost of upgrading the towers, heck in some cases I only balanced out the gold cost, completely ignoring the towers cost wood - and the player without towers STILL won
A good benchmark for useful towers would probably be garrisonning Your villagers inside them instead of shanking the raiding cav or other units with them! Right now shanking with villagers is a "viable" way to defemd against raids. Certainly better than waiting for towers to do their job 🤔
I personnaly am a defensive player like you say (Hence why i play mostly Hades) and i agree that towers/Migdol like need a slight buff or different approach. My main argument would be "casual" games which represent the majority of players either vs bot or multipayer versus friends usually enjoy their PvE centric strong building defense with good walls architecture and i totally get that ! For "competitive" play, less defense mean more action mean more entertaining for the spectators but too rewarding for agressive players. I'm sure given enough time we can find a good middle ground like buffing defense and buffind myth unit damage to buildings or modifying the sieges units to be more usefull. At least 3/4 games that i do and watch never use a single siege unit which i think is not good for a medieval/myhology setting strategy game.
I think with the new pop limit that goes in the 200s, the defensive building nerf isn't warranted. Units can easily steamroll towers now on top of their dmg being super low
I definitely prefer to play a more defensive style and would love to see a buff to towers and defenses in general. I think I learned to play defensively from some older RTS games that were a really buffed defensively. But to be honest, I'm just a chill casual player. PS love your vids and love watching all the pros (or even just better players), play the game. Thanks for the thoughts and conversation.
I agree 100%. I’ve mostly been playing multiplayer vs AI with friends and it’s been a good time but the AI gives zero f***s about towers, 1 gap opens up in the wall and they just bum rush through ignoring defenses and troops and go straight for villagers. Takes so long to kill anything with towers even 2-3 units at my farms can keep me garrisoned up for almost a min, absolutely wrecking my economy.
As a lot of other comment i’m defensive player, i like a lot the medieval thought of having to protect my castle from invasion! And as sush i use to play atlentean for their better walls and also suntowers; actualy the tower are so hawful that they make the wall bad too, cause you cant put research for the atlentean last wall upgrade and think to be alive.. i have for exemple never seen a reel strong wall in a pro game.. and so their is also like no siegeweapon in the game; a wole plan is missing (i like the game a lot even so! But i wish for next step!) thx for the video maybe it will help developers to realise a little
Fully agree my man. I added all the details of the defensive buildings in your reddit post. Is great a more notable player also discuss about the trash towers we have in retold :)
defensive power of fortresses is laughable too. 2 antlantean destroyer are enough to take down 1 fortress. I think cost should be nearly doubled, and defensive power 5 times easily.
@@30Salmao well then u delete an important part of the game, there defences and quiete a lot of siege and myth units to counter defences in the game. When u can just run through with infantry and cavalry the siege units are basiclly useless. U still need to do an investment and decide on the positioning, so imo it adds more variety into the game the just an army snowball
My main grip is the arbitrary build limits. If people want to build a super stronghold base let them! The defences are so weak and there are plenty of anti building options so it just feels restrictive and artificial.
At the moment the only good value turrets you can get, are those you get with Hades. Not only are they built near-instantly, you can build them forward without any risk of villagers, they look much cooler, you can also bait your opponent in. I've had games 1v1 games where I've built up such a large economy in the backrow and being on the verge of defeat if it wasnt for the JUST IN TIME production of Hades towers. You also get tracking and whatnot for free with Hades. So yeah, they are really the only viable towers at the moment. They should make the towers have a lower building time and more DPS. maybe even a smaller minimum range. I think they should be a type of building you build not to defend against a large army but instead be a type of unit you build to protect yourself against a single-hand digit number of hopolites and perhaps some villagers. It would be interesting if there was some sort of "entrenchment" mechanic that made the towers and fortresses stronger over time. Meaning that they wouldnt be considerably dangerous before at least 5-10 minutes having passed.
I think towers and fortresses are there just to tip the balance between two armies. They are not design to be solo defenses. I think this was made by design to harass becoming more viable and wall investment become more useful. I just think towers could be a little more cheap. Like 25 resources would be enought.
As in Age of Empires: IV, they completely reworked walls, they should do at least something to improve tower's utility or give them a proper strategic value. It shouldn't be hard at all, either by modifying some numbers, at least not making them so costly and ineffective or adding some new mechanics or bonuses. 19 to 30 seconds to kill a single unit is insane + the tracking seems stupid and easy to avoid. I hope this video reaches the Devs. Thanks Magic always for your imputs and insights as well as your tutorials and builds!!! Regards from Argentina!
I think they should either lower the price and give us more towers OR make them twice as strong and half the amount we get. Do they get steonger when you ring the town bell if villagers are garrisoned? That would be cool. It would be cool if they were strong against myth if you garrison heros or garrison myth to be strong against humans etc. that adds layers of strat if you ask me
I think a good change would also be to buff the number of projectiles per upgrade and to give them a damage buff with age upgrades. Like, a freely upgraded egxpt tower in classic age shouldn't be as menacing as a ballista tower in mythic age. Something similar could be done for fortresses, or fortresses benefitting from tower upgrades. The ballista tower should, instead of getting more projectiles, actual high damage ballista shots. Coolness factor is important too! To balance, towers should take long to build. The base building fantasy is important afterall and the decision to build towers to protect spots on the map should be a viable option, even if it isn't pursuited in some or even many games!
they should make new building type that can't be constructed which takes the place of your starting towers. they get additional arrows per vil garrisoned, but can't be upgraded so they get less powerful with ages. towers around the map are meant to dissuade enemies, not stop armies.
i don't like the tower lame from the original for sure but i prefer tower to have meaning , i would make them strong and lower their number rather then having them completely cosplaying pillow fight.
Giving towers and migdol their accuracy back also indirectly increases damage. Make it so where only cavalry can be fast enough to dodge towers, but have lower resistance.
True but there’s such a massive pop limit in aom so I feel like it doesn’t really add too much value there either, only if games are insanely long which don’t happen often
Without looking at the video, towers aren't useless. They are meant for researching technologies, such as fire. Which on its turn helps for roleplay purposes, such as keeping your units warm at night.
Personally I would like to see a buff to all defensive structures. Maybe if they are looking to avoid tower rush stratergies they could make them scale with age like heroes and myth. For instance buff tower dps and health in general, but they take longer to build at lower ages. Potentially on top of that they could make them weaker while being built at the lower ages.
Please Also make a video on upgrades please like when we have to use eco upgrades, line/troops upgrades, armory upgrades. You have some really good guides.
It also comes down to most civs not having a defensive focus like they would in say AOE. I mean sure there is Freyr but its not like he is making those towers that much better.
The problem strategy games have with strong fortifications is if they can be built quickly, because then they become a cheese, i.e. players building them in enemy base (cannon rush in starcraft 1 & 2, tower rush in age), which is not their intended purpose. I think fortifications should be stronger, BUT they need a long build time. This means that players need to control and area for a good amount of time in order to place fortifications. I like the idea of fortifications getting stronger, but we don't want the cancerous situation like in aoe2 where players can run villagers into the enemy base and build a castle, and it goes up before the defender can do anything.
The build limit of 20 is also too low. Armys are a lot bigger than in the original game, because of the increased pop limit. The unit cap got a huge change, but the tower cap got no change.
I agree on this. Although I dislike legacy's tower because I know how strong was the turtling strategy was at the old days (because towers had very strong dps), but I do agree that tower is underwhelming in retold to be honest. Somehow I don't think I even upgrade my towers thesedays, because I know that making some ranged units are much better than investing at the tower.
I had noticed this, but tried searching info about but found nothing. Compared to the previous AOM versions, I found that in way it seems that units like heroes do less damage in general. Towers as well. I ended up not relying that much on them as result.
I think that they nerfed them to make a more ofensive gameplay and thats fine, they work as support while the troops engage and can help clear difficult units and cut the movement of others. Amazing video! Thx for all the data.
I lose like 95% of my games to some timing push. I think a well timed push should work but I agree that if my opponents fights for 3 minutes under two of my migdols and a town center that they should lose the fight, but thats sadly not the case
Yea I would love to see building defenses buffed and unintentionally make Atlantean finally balanced with its mediocre siege. Barely any way to stop the forward temple rush with Kronos or mass Turma.
I dont think it needs to be balanced in the same way as say Age of Empires II, but I think they need to majorly buff DPS. I think Fortress style buildings should have solid DPS on their own while Towers should have relatively mild damage output that gets buffed the more units you garrison inside them. Its ridiculous that two towers cost the same as a fortress. And I know the aggressive players will reeee at the idea of buffing defensive playstyles but just as a reminder: In Age of Empires II you can use these same buildings to your advantage during a push. Tower/castle rushes are a notorious strategy. Id love to see more of this in AoM to change up some of the flow, games often end within fifteen minutes right now due to aggressive timing strats and defensive structures are essentially worthless
They may have weakened towers for some of the reasons they were being used for before. Less pushing aggressively with towers. More using them defensively. If you place them more strategic or have enough, I believe you can fall back behind them. Use them at pressure points and with walls.
I agree with you. I'm a defensive player, and I'm feeling a lil bit odd about this way about Retold. You told everything, they have to equilibrate both players play style. Besides, what's the point of "defensive fortifications" since they don't defend well and are easily destroyed.
If anything I'd like tower strength to be strong in earl, mid in mid and weak in late game. Still able to kill units but not condusive to old aom stall
With useless towers the game is more sutable for playing rang games and less for players who like playing against AI bots. FOr example me and my friend were cool in extended edition against AI using some towers defence, but in retold it's not helping us at all. So the solution was to add a mod which increases hp of all defence building x5. This made the game more comfortable for playing against AI.
As a 1000 elo player. I agree either I attack first and wipe the enemy or they do. I understand aggressive play for pros is maybe more favorable but there needs to be a balance. As at the end of the day most players are like me kinda noonish. And we like being able to defend. Aoe2 does a great job while defense is strong you lose valuable map control. Age of myth has tons of outside resources so I am surprised the defense are also so bad
for fortresses i absolutly i agree with your ideas but honestly what towers need cheaper cost rather than higher power so you use them as scouting and delay in raids cheaper upgrades is a no brainer for any underperformer to catch up but the most radical would be getting additonal bonus multiplicator & dps for units inside(not for fortresses) why? the starting towers give 5x4 pop garrison it should increase dps about 10% per unit helping massiv vs raids and fimbul etc (also 20 tower limit /vill 100 limit) bonus multiplicator: a hero should give like 1 diving dmg and x2 vs myth(greek +3dmg x3vs myth ) ;a speer +0,5 vs cav ;a bow +0,5 vs inf so it gives reasons to garrison them and use them as fallback line to break the snowball effect so concept of tower being defensiv powerful when garrison still being weak without to prevent them being resitrictiv
On the one side, weak towers are good, because players can't just turtle they way through early-mid game with greedy eco builds. On the other side - sometimes turtling is the only way. Magic gave a good example with fire weapon push. For example, i know, that my opponent will push right about now, what should i do? Try to catch him in the middle of the map and kite the entire duration of flaming weapons? Push him 1st, so he might use it defensively? What if i just can't, my army not so strong etc etc? I can't prepare more defensive structures, because they don't do anything. We can't protect our villagers from 1 cav unit, because one raider will kill 4 villagers before tower can kill him. And raiders don't walk alone. We have good defensive structure situation in different RTS - starcraft 2. No, i don't talk about canon rushes, i talk about overall situation: canons, towers and crawlers are good defensively, but not as good as actual units. They are cheaper and tougher, and really help if you not fast enough to split your army into defensive groups and react to small harras. But you can never defend good actual push with just defensive buildings - you need army too. Towers will help, sure, but - they can not counter attack or make you more money. And 2 best options after beating a push - counter attack or greedy macro to secure your lead. And you need units or workers for that, not towers.
Tetold have really overcorrected on the towers for no reason. Not only the damage has been nerfed, the new accuracy system means plenty of missed shots, and for what? You can't turtle up too much because your resources will run out, you can't really tower rush the opponent because everyone starts with towers of their own, and even if the towers were insanely powerful - AoM still has probably the strongest siege in the history of RTS that can decimate any static defense in the matter of seconds if needed
I dont think they are totally useless. If you face an enemy that show signs of agression early on (building temple or houses close to your base) its a good call to get towers. I usually make a 5th one on the direction of the enemy building. I get houses protecting them and thats it. It usually works, i send some scout to their base to do the same, since its normally noob vs noob that works perfectly. He is too busy attacking me to remember his poor vills alone back there.
@@30Salmao This argument doesn't make sense when you see AoE 2 and even the original AoM having the same principles and working well with way better defenses.
@@agnuswulf that's not the point it MUST be this way. My point is: is a design issue, it is on purpuse. And if yoi don't like is not because is stupid, is just because Retold and legacy AoM are not the same game at all. Retold, given the diferences, is closer to SC2 than AoE2 by now.
You are right IamMagic. They definitely need buff. i think every game needs to be in balance. (both in attack and defence) Thankyou for your insight Magic.
Try playing Odin vs Ra and see how one sided that matchup is because of free upgrades to towers and easy sim city. I'm fine with buffing towers as long as you give more pierce armor to Norse units.
The way it is balanced is ok. You can harass, you can hide from atacks to your vils. You can get the upper hand when behind in troops. I think this design is intended and works well if you know how to train enought troops and position them. And if you see to much flank atacks being useful agaist you: make walls or get more map control. It takes little bit of skill, not much. This isn't SC2, but RTS should have harass as an option. Otherwise you can advance ERA 3 and 4 with no punishment.
Aoe4 does harass beautifully. AND they have defences that matter, that are worth their cost. Aoe4 rewards both aggressive and defensive play, retold rewards nothing but aggression. Lose 1 fight? Game over. Aoe4 you lose one fight and its not just insta-gg
@minimcune well, if you are high ELO maybe 1 mistake = losing. But if you are a normal player this is not true. Defence works, economic focus (greedy) can work, coming back with good comps works, water maps have some comebacks too. I don't see this "1 mistake is everything lost" you say. Maybe 3 to 4 mistakes do the trick, but not 1 or 2. But then is practice and tecnique. You can't blame the game if you don't learned to come back.
Hey man, great video. Do you think it would be possible to turn down game volume in the future? There was once or twice i had a hard time hearing you over "PROSTAGMA" or the tower drum beat lol
I think towers being too weak is not a matter of opinion really, it's ridiculous for it to do so little damage even with still units. E.g. you can get rushed early and the enemy can just take down your building with a couple of units + myth unit without worries of taking tower damage, because in the time it takes to kill a temple their single hoplite would lose 1/3rd hp
They are weak but having a Fortress next to your gold mine does give you time to save you poor villagers that are going to get killed by 10 Raiding cavalry
They are just a way to win time to not loose that much economy. And are still good against low amount of units so like against small groups of raiding cavalry that would make u crazy otherwise
And i think i don't want better defenses because it would make small agression everywhere less usefull, and i do like this way to play because it's kinda hard to control all those troups and it takes a lot of skill. And there are ways to defend yourself against big push timing like having a second TC that you can sack and regroup to hit afterward. I don't feel like a lot of galmes from the last tournament did end on one guy pushing on one timing and winning the game like that. Maybe there are more games like that on the ladder
@@30Salmao I just kinda dislikes the fact that they can't shoot underneath them without upgrades. If they are weak you don't want to buy this upgrade. Maybe it's possible to just give them strait away the ability to shoot underneath themselves. It's like a small buff but a nice add on for defensive players early on.
@@raphlecrabe8373 you have a point, but what you do with rushes? You can also use towers and fortresses to rush, and the upgrade at least is a expensive tool to grab as a rusher.
Is there a list of changed between legacy and Retold? I feel like a LOT of stuff has changed but I don't know if I'm remembering wrong. For example, do units across the board have less HP? Feels like everything dies faster (other than to towers it seems lol).
I think things die faster since the multipliers are a lot higher for counter units, and yeah there’s been a lot of changes not sure if anyone can log it all
aoe4 strikes such a beautiful balance between offence and defence. Towers and keeps/ fortresses matter, they hurt, but they're very much able to be destroyed. Also, siege in retold seems just pretty....erm....meh? I often just never see it. With stronger defences siege becomes more relevant.
Why not just make towers like in Aoe 2 ? 1st you dont start with any, 2nd increase the damage and add projectiles when units are garrisoned, 3rd increase the cost so you cant just spam them espeacially during the early game. In Aoe 2 building a tower in Feudal Age for example always comes with the downside of having less stone in Castle Age which forces you to either delay your castle, 2nd or 3rd TC, send more vills on stone which in return will slow down other resscources or worse case buy stone from the market. Towers imo are really easy to balance while adding a bit of depth to it in terms of decicion making.
The towers aren´t meant to be used unsupported in AoM retold. They are cheap and don´t count to unit count. Set next to a rallypoint with autoqued army and it makes a difference for beating that push. I feel they might need a small buff and repairing buildings suck in this game (unless you play Gaia) which should be fixed and walls and tower suffer the worst for it. Couldn´t they just make it that if you set some to repair they repair all nearby buildings when first is done like with building stuff? Anyway, that would be how I would like it. Slight buff to towers and fix repairs to not require micromanaging.
Agreed. Upgrades could be almost free. Just taking the right prerequisite of era/buildings/time. Not resourses, like they did with the god's special upgrades.
I personally love it. I wouldn't mind them scaling up a bit in power as the game timer progresses (not as age ups occur), but I know that's very hard to do properly when you start factoring maps like vindslaga and such. Migdols are also significantly better because of their size and ability to abuse garrison. I didn't like the idea that a single building prevents you from fighting on a location. To me, interaction between armies is so much more interesting and nuanced than units and buildings, with the defensive player trying to full greed.
The utility of towers/castles varies if you fight against AI or players. Against players they are mostly useless indeed even in classical age, the enemy will move a lot and towers will always miss them. Against AI however towers have an ok dps in classical age since the enemy tend to stand still a lot, but above all they work well as distractions. More often than not the AI will be lured to the tower so you can react and save your citizens. I upgrade the 4 starting one but never build any tower in any of my games. Castles are decent to help holding some locations but key word is help, they can do nothing by themselves. I agree, both towers and castles must be buffed, it is really unfair that this game lean too much towards the agressive players and basically does not care about defensive players. This is why i do not play against players but only against AI, i am a defensive player and i cannot fight against agressive players.
So, it really came to it, as I feared. I'm very defensive players, and in most of my games, as soon as I reach Age 2, I build 4 aditional towers next to starting TC, and my tactics is to lure AI enemy raiders with few units I have next to the TC, ring a bell and keep raiders being shot at from all directions. However, I feared devs do this, same as they did with fortification in AoE 3 DE. I quote one person (keep their name and nick anonymous, let's have at least some decency), who said: "...Seen it in every other RTS I've played. The entire game becomes centralized around fast match turnaround times because I guess it keeps a Tik-Tok addicted audience engaged and retained better and they're worth more than the dying breed of people with even a modicum of patience..." and "...Rushing is not being precisely targeted for total obsolescence - defensive play and turtling are. Rushing is good for eSports. Turtling is not. The tactic is not "doomed" because it's fundamentally unfair, unbalanced, or over-centralized. The tactic is "doomed" because the devs have made a deliberate, obvious, and possibly even pressured decision to kill it on purpose..." and I agree with them. The question that remains I suppose is: is there even some semblence of hope that devs will eventually buff fortifications and make playing defensively viable once more? Or will the voices of e-sport fanatics prevail regardless?
In my opinion as a def player Tower should get an early buff to have better anser agains poseidon or kronos for example who are way to strong in early. Be they should loose there power more the game is getting longer . It could also open new strategy like tower rush . But main buff should be any forteress on this game is supposed to be here to help you to old a position but exept use it to put unit on garnison the dmg are way to low
I agree. Fortresses already got nerved in the first patch. I don't know why... They should've stayed the same and towers need a boost in damage. The greek fortress was nerved the most. From 13 to 9 damage. In the original game they had 17 I believe. They did boost damage of TC's and Citadels in the first patch wich I personally like. But why nerve the castles and have such weak towers. Doesn't make sense to me. Being afraid of tower rushes is unnecessary because even when you double the damage of towers it still takes a while to kill units. And towers can be killed quite easily.
All for buffing towers. My ideal for everything you build in the game is that it doesn't need to be great but viable enough that it's worth. When something is a clear negative over the other option it's just sad. Still cracks me up that Tower spam is sometimes the only viable option in Campaign. Would you prefer base damage increase for towers or attack speed increase? And congratulations on 2nd place at Genesis giving Mista his first tournament match loss.
AOE2 has better fortifications even than original AOM, or at least it feels like it. But AOM has good siege units, even in the third age so in original AOM it feels almost perfect, you still have to lay proper siege, but it's not as annoying as in AOE2 where your only good siege unit in third age is a ram, that's slow and gets killed easily by cavalry or infantry. Now it feels like Starcraft where the only point of building defences is to delay the enemy long enough so your army can return to your base. In short, original AOM has a good balance of sieging an enemy and not making it annoying and it makes sense to build fortification on your own.
![1 Orc vs 7 Computers [4K]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/7BWNchvzG1Y/mqdefault.jpg)
Great video! At the very least I would love to see a buff to crenellations. Getting dived by contarius under TC + 4 towers and seeing the cavalry barely getting scratched just feels wrong.
This is what towers are supposed to look like; this was without a proper egyptian turtle and just having them up. This is a realistic setup of someone tower pushing to defend himself and kill you with them
ua-cam.com/video/dQZwHSl0o5Y/v-deo.html
it definetly feels like this. I remember towers beeing super strong in legacy but since retold they seem to be only an annoyance for passing cavalry and other units. They buffed the TC to prevent the crazy all in classical age rushes from launch but with such weak towers its difficult to secure any ressources without your own army
agreed
yea definitely crazy to see no decision making on whether or not to dive eco-lines. its just always the correct decision, even if they garrison. There should be at least some risk if there's a tower, I find myself not even casting pestilence when I go for it because its just not necessary unless your diving farmers.
Age of Empires in general has been scared of making towers strong. Sure, tower rushes are terrifying which is why tower rush strats all got nerfed, but they make the later age towers so irrelevant it's kind of depressing. In AoE2, it takes five full-upgrade towers to equal the output of one no-upgrade castle, and the tower's only advantage is extra health in comparison. It's even worse in AoM where even a Stronghold/Hill Fort is weaker than an AoE2 castle, and the towers even weaker than that.
I think they could definitely be rebalanced. They should either improve their dps/utility or reduce their cost. It's absurd that two towers cost the same amount of resources as a fortress-type building which can also train units.
What would you think if the towers had different functions depending on what unit is inside? For example, a hero could give it bonus damage vs myth units, a villager or a scout unit gives it extra vision range, archers give it extra damage and attack range etc.
That’s actually a really interesting idea !!!
I love this idea!!
Just put them back like they were in the original game.
Make them stronger with garrisoned units at least.
I hope you recover completely soon. Your content is the best, thank you for sharing your experience and knowledge.
Thank you for the kind words, I appreciate it!
Easy fix. Increase towers hack armor by 20%, and increase the attack by 15% per age (or something like that). OR make towers 30-50% cheaper. Because like you say, making towers just makes no sense in the game right now
First of all, glad to know surgery went well.
Even after the last buff, defensive structures are very weak. Literally melted by non-siege units without losing any of them bc such buildings dont deal damage.
Not to mention that you are losing resources if you upgrade towers so you are putting yourself behind.
I get the point of some players of not wanting to be hard zoned by a couple of towers for raiding, however Its not fun to have 6 raiding cavarly idling your entire eco in classical age wothout punishment.
The game is bit volatile and focused on rushes/timmings.
A game of timing and rushes are not more skill based? It is not a good thing?
@@30Salmao Thing is, here your spykes are pretty good early in the game. You get to really strong units and decent god powers in classical age that you can sit there and mass army. And in Heroic age you are even stronger due to combos like Ancestors+Eclipse, Restoration+Bronze, Flamming weapons itsfel is game changing...
Getting to mythic age inst as important compared to AOE2 (IK they are diff games and want to diff things but just to put in perspective).
As someone who generally preferes the Age-Series to other RTSs in no small part for its much more cmplex and detailed base building, I sure hope that Towers & Fortresses are getting a buff. As great as Retold has been, I feel that this causes it to lose some of the identy of the Age series.
Every now and then I'd reinstall Extended Edition and watch myself lag to death everytime I queued for a game. Years ago, I discovered Boit's channel and would watch AoM matches and reminisce about the original game. I'd drop by the AoM Heaven forums to read about some of the players featured in Boit's casts. Reading the backstories, playstyles, and rivalries between these AoM legends in Boit's videos was always riveting. Three names that were always in the discussion were the three M's as they were called. A lot of the threads and discussions were over a decade old, and I realize that times change and so does the competition, so when Retold was released I didn't really know what to expect. Getting to see some of these hallowed names dominate Retold and compete against eachother in the finals of the recent event was incredible. It was like all of the stories, names, and legends I had read about had finally come to life.
bro these are epic tales, I also want to conserve HG in a time capsule, epic place for good nostalgia that I didn't actually live but read about. In my case I read a lot about aoe 2 and most of the names from old 90s never returned to aoe 2 de. But aom retold really called oldschools. What a title, Retold is a gem even with some flaws (towers are one example)
I have tested out many scenarios, of course not all the possible scenarios, but towers in Retold are such a net negative - that if both players have the same armies, but one player spent their money on towers and the other on units - the player that didn't waste their money on static defence wins every time. And I didn't even factor in the cost of upgrading the towers, heck in some cases I only balanced out the gold cost, completely ignoring the towers cost wood - and the player without towers STILL won
A good benchmark for useful towers would probably be garrisonning Your villagers inside them instead of shanking the raiding cav or other units with them!
Right now shanking with villagers is a "viable" way to defemd against raids. Certainly better than waiting for towers to do their job 🤔
Villagers get killed way quicker in retold. Shanking with them isn't a good option.
Fighting raidinv cav with villagers is almost never a good idea.
I personnaly am a defensive player like you say (Hence why i play mostly Hades) and i agree that towers/Migdol like need a slight buff or different approach. My main argument would be "casual" games which represent the majority of players either vs bot or multipayer versus friends usually enjoy their PvE centric strong building defense with good walls architecture and i totally get that !
For "competitive" play, less defense mean more action mean more entertaining for the spectators but too rewarding for agressive players. I'm sure given enough time we can find a good middle ground like buffing defense and buffind myth unit damage to buildings or modifying the sieges units to be more usefull. At least 3/4 games that i do and watch never use a single siege unit which i think is not good for a medieval/myhology setting strategy game.
agreed
Didn't know about the surgery man. I hope for a quick recovery and glad to see you back 💪
I think with the new pop limit that goes in the 200s, the defensive building nerf isn't warranted. Units can easily steamroll towers now on top of their dmg being super low
I’ve lost too many games to flaming weapons pushing my main base, makes me always call it brainless and get frustrated when against Thor and Loki
I definitely prefer to play a more defensive style and would love to see a buff to towers and defenses in general. I think I learned to play defensively from some older RTS games that were a really buffed defensively. But to be honest, I'm just a chill casual player. PS love your vids and love watching all the pros (or even just better players), play the game. Thanks for the thoughts and conversation.
I agree 100%. I’ve mostly been playing multiplayer vs AI with friends and it’s been a good time but the AI gives zero f***s about towers, 1 gap opens up in the wall and they just bum rush through ignoring defenses and troops and go straight for villagers. Takes so long to kill anything with towers even 2-3 units at my farms can keep me garrisoned up for almost a min, absolutely wrecking my economy.
As a lot of other comment i’m defensive player, i like a lot the medieval thought of having to protect my castle from invasion! And as sush i use to play atlentean for their better walls and also suntowers; actualy the tower are so hawful that they make the wall bad too, cause you cant put research for the atlentean last wall upgrade and think to be alive.. i have for exemple never seen a reel strong wall in a pro game.. and so their is also like no siegeweapon in the game; a wole plan is missing (i like the game a lot even so! But i wish for next step!) thx for the video maybe it will help developers to realise a little
Fully agree my man. I added all the details of the defensive buildings in your reddit post. Is great a more notable player also discuss about the trash towers we have in retold :)
defensive power of fortresses is laughable too. 2 antlantean destroyer are enough to take down 1 fortress. I think cost should be nearly doubled, and defensive power 5 times easily.
they even nerfed fortress type buildings with one of the earlier patches of retold, they already felt weak to me back then
Destroyers are siege weapons dressed like infantry. You know, that's their deal.
thats how you make awful stagnant games
@@frank6013 yes, defences are good enought now. People must use army composition to play rather than want static defence play for them.
@@30Salmao well then u delete an important part of the game, there defences and quiete a lot of siege and myth units to counter defences in the game. When u can just run through with infantry and cavalry the siege units are basiclly useless. U still need to do an investment and decide on the positioning, so imo it adds more variety into the game the just an army snowball
My main grip is the arbitrary build limits. If people want to build a super stronghold base let them! The defences are so weak and there are plenty of anti building options so it just feels restrictive and artificial.
THE LEGEND HIMSELF!
At the moment the only good value turrets you can get, are those you get with Hades.
Not only are they built near-instantly, you can build them forward without any risk of villagers, they look much cooler, you can also bait your opponent in.
I've had games 1v1 games where I've built up such a large economy in the backrow and being on the verge of defeat if it wasnt for the JUST IN TIME production of Hades towers.
You also get tracking and whatnot for free with Hades. So yeah, they are really the only viable towers at the moment.
They should make the towers have a lower building time and more DPS. maybe even a smaller minimum range. I think they should be a type of building you build not to defend against a large army but instead be a type of unit you build to protect yourself against a single-hand digit number of hopolites and perhaps some villagers.
It would be interesting if there was some sort of "entrenchment" mechanic that made the towers and fortresses stronger over time. Meaning that they wouldnt be considerably dangerous before at least 5-10 minutes having passed.
Remember that one campaign mission where towers play an important role? Feels like they were OP in that level lol
The one where you enter a pirate ship to reach the settlement ?
I think towers and fortresses are there just to tip the balance between two armies. They are not design to be solo defenses.
I think this was made by design to harass becoming more viable and wall investment become more useful.
I just think towers could be a little more cheap. Like 25 resources would be enought.
wow this man is determine! eye operation and dropping videos every day? The determination!!
great video, didn't realize they were that different from original
Love your videos. Keep going! :)
As in Age of Empires: IV, they completely reworked walls, they should do at least something to improve tower's utility or give them a proper strategic value.
It shouldn't be hard at all, either by modifying some numbers, at least not making them so costly and ineffective or adding some new mechanics or bonuses.
19 to 30 seconds to kill a single unit is insane + the tracking seems stupid and easy to avoid.
I hope this video reaches the Devs.
Thanks Magic always for your imputs and insights as well as your tutorials and builds!!!
Regards from Argentina!
I think they should either lower the price and give us more towers OR make them twice as strong and half the amount we get.
Do they get steonger when you ring the town bell if villagers are garrisoned? That would be cool. It would be cool if they were strong against myth if you garrison heros or garrison myth to be strong against humans etc. that adds layers of strat if you ask me
I think a good change would also be to buff the number of projectiles per upgrade and to give them a damage buff with age upgrades. Like, a freely upgraded egxpt tower in classic age shouldn't be as menacing as a ballista tower in mythic age. Something similar could be done for fortresses, or fortresses benefitting from tower upgrades. The ballista tower should, instead of getting more projectiles, actual high damage ballista shots. Coolness factor is important too! To balance, towers should take long to build. The base building fantasy is important afterall and the decision to build towers to protect spots on the map should be a viable option, even if it isn't pursuited in some or even many games!
they should make new building type that can't be constructed which takes the place of your starting towers. they get additional arrows per vil garrisoned, but can't be upgraded so they get less powerful with ages.
towers around the map are meant to dissuade enemies, not stop armies.
not sure about the rest of the video
but you've convinced me to start rushing with zeus again
haha
i don't like the tower lame from the original for sure but i prefer tower to have meaning , i would make them strong and lower their number rather then having them completely cosplaying pillow fight.
agreed!
4:21: Errata: 27 seconds, top right. While looking at the unit stats, at least in single player, the game is paused.
Giving towers and migdol their accuracy back also indirectly increases damage. Make it so where only cavalry can be fast enough to dodge towers, but have lower resistance.
One factor you didn't mention is that towers don't take up supply, so there is some utility when you're maxed
True but there’s such a massive pop limit in aom so I feel like it doesn’t really add too much value there either, only if games are insanely long which don’t happen often
Without looking at the video, towers aren't useless. They are meant for researching technologies, such as fire. Which on its turn helps for roleplay purposes, such as keeping your units warm at night.
Bro brought real life sound effects into the video
haha my wife was cooking
I also heard some animal sounds that I wasn't sure if they were coming from the game or not😂 great video btw, as usual!
Personally I would like to see a buff to all defensive structures.
Maybe if they are looking to avoid tower rush stratergies they could make them scale with age like heroes and myth. For instance buff tower dps and health in general, but they take longer to build at lower ages. Potentially on top of that they could make them weaker while being built at the lower ages.
Please Also make a video on upgrades please like when we have to use eco upgrades, line/troops upgrades, armory upgrades. You have some really good guides.
coming up!
Towers are lacking, but I’m afraid that if they get buffed, we might end up with photon cannon rush meta from StarCraft
Retold villagers have bonus multiplier to the tower than other games' villagers, so it's pretty easy to clear up any tower rush.
It also comes down to most civs not having a defensive focus like they would in say AOE. I mean sure there is Freyr but its not like he is making those towers that much better.
The problem strategy games have with strong fortifications is if they can be built quickly, because then they become a cheese, i.e. players building them in enemy base (cannon rush in starcraft 1 & 2, tower rush in age), which is not their intended purpose. I think fortifications should be stronger, BUT they need a long build time. This means that players need to control and area for a good amount of time in order to place fortifications. I like the idea of fortifications getting stronger, but we don't want the cancerous situation like in aoe2 where players can run villagers into the enemy base and build a castle, and it goes up before the defender can do anything.
Yes, you are right, specially if you have played other RTS like AoE2 or Warcraft of Starcraft where Towers and defensive buildings are good.
The build limit of 20 is also too low. Armys are a lot bigger than in the original game, because of the increased pop limit. The unit cap got a huge change, but the tower cap got no change.
I agree on this. Although I dislike legacy's tower because I know how strong was the turtling strategy was at the old days (because towers had very strong dps), but I do agree that tower is underwhelming in retold to be honest. Somehow I don't think I even upgrade my towers thesedays, because I know that making some ranged units are much better than investing at the tower.
I had noticed this, but tried searching info about but found nothing. Compared to the previous AOM versions, I found that in way it seems that units like heroes do less damage in general. Towers as well. I ended up not relying that much on them as result.
I think that towers shpuld be especially strong against cavalry, just a personal opinion not backed by any kind of argument or anything
I think that they nerfed them to make a more ofensive gameplay and thats fine, they work as support while the troops engage and can help clear difficult units and cut the movement of others. Amazing video! Thx for all the data.
We need tier list and great video
I lose like 95% of my games to some timing push. I think a well timed push should work but I agree that if my opponents fights for 3 minutes under two of my migdols and a town center that they should lose the fight, but thats sadly not the case
Maybe some walls are the new building of choice to secure new town centers with.
Agreed. Towers are in desperate need for a rework or a at least a buff.
Yea I would love to see building defenses buffed and unintentionally make Atlantean finally balanced with its mediocre siege. Barely any way to stop the forward temple rush with Kronos or mass Turma.
I dont think it needs to be balanced in the same way as say Age of Empires II, but I think they need to majorly buff DPS.
I think Fortress style buildings should have solid DPS on their own while Towers should have relatively mild damage output that gets buffed the more units you garrison inside them. Its ridiculous that two towers cost the same as a fortress.
And I know the aggressive players will reeee at the idea of buffing defensive playstyles but just as a reminder: In Age of Empires II you can use these same buildings to your advantage during a push. Tower/castle rushes are a notorious strategy. Id love to see more of this in AoM to change up some of the flow, games often end within fifteen minutes right now due to aggressive timing strats and defensive structures are essentially worthless
They may have weakened towers for some of the reasons they were being used for before. Less pushing aggressively with towers. More using them defensively.
If you place them more strategic or have enough, I believe you can fall back behind them. Use them at pressure points and with walls.
I agree with you. I'm a defensive player, and I'm feeling a lil bit odd about this way about Retold. You told everything, they have to equilibrate both players play style. Besides, what's the point of "defensive fortifications" since they don't defend well and are easily destroyed.
Either make them cheaper or make them more threatening. They are bad at protecting villagers and can be dispatched by a handful of units.
If anything I'd like tower strength to be strong in earl, mid in mid and weak in late game. Still able to kill units but not condusive to old aom stall
With useless towers the game is more sutable for playing rang games and less for players who like playing against AI bots. FOr example me and my friend were cool in extended edition against AI using some towers defence, but in retold it's not helping us at all. So the solution was to add a mod which increases hp of all defence building x5. This made the game more comfortable for playing against AI.
As a 1000 elo player. I agree either I attack first and wipe the enemy or they do. I understand aggressive play for pros is maybe more favorable but there needs to be a balance. As at the end of the day most players are like me kinda noonish. And we like being able to defend. Aoe2 does a great job while defense is strong you lose valuable map control. Age of myth has tons of outside resources so I am surprised the defense are also so bad
for fortresses i absolutly i agree with your ideas
but honestly what towers need cheaper cost rather than higher power so you use them as scouting and delay in raids
cheaper upgrades is a no brainer for any underperformer to catch up
but the most radical would be getting additonal bonus multiplicator & dps for units inside(not for fortresses)
why?
the starting towers give 5x4 pop garrison it should increase dps about 10% per unit helping massiv vs raids and fimbul etc (also 20 tower limit /vill 100 limit)
bonus multiplicator: a hero should give like 1 diving dmg and x2 vs myth(greek +3dmg x3vs myth ) ;a speer +0,5 vs cav ;a bow +0,5 vs inf so it gives reasons to garrison them and use them as fallback line to break the snowball effect
so concept of tower being defensiv powerful when garrison still being weak without to prevent them being resitrictiv
Good points
The old towers shot the arrows I think a lot faster, and their were more of them.
The towers attack is weaker, but it can garrison more units now
Maybe it compensates somehow
It doesn't, because they get melted so fast the units don't really stay there for any helpful amount of time...
Buff range by 1 and damage by 4
You are completely right
We’re more powerful in extended edition
On the one side, weak towers are good, because players can't just turtle they way through early-mid game with greedy eco builds.
On the other side - sometimes turtling is the only way. Magic gave a good example with fire weapon push. For example, i know, that my opponent will push right about now, what should i do? Try to catch him in the middle of the map and kite the entire duration of flaming weapons? Push him 1st, so he might use it defensively? What if i just can't, my army not so strong etc etc? I can't prepare more defensive structures, because they don't do anything.
We can't protect our villagers from 1 cav unit, because one raider will kill 4 villagers before tower can kill him. And raiders don't walk alone.
We have good defensive structure situation in different RTS - starcraft 2. No, i don't talk about canon rushes, i talk about overall situation: canons, towers and crawlers are good defensively, but not as good as actual units. They are cheaper and tougher, and really help if you not fast enough to split your army into defensive groups and react to small harras. But you can never defend good actual push with just defensive buildings - you need army too. Towers will help, sure, but - they can not counter attack or make you more money. And 2 best options after beating a push - counter attack or greedy macro to secure your lead. And you need units or workers for that, not towers.
Tetold have really overcorrected on the towers for no reason. Not only the damage has been nerfed, the new accuracy system means plenty of missed shots, and for what? You can't turtle up too much because your resources will run out, you can't really tower rush the opponent because everyone starts with towers of their own, and even if the towers were insanely powerful - AoM still has probably the strongest siege in the history of RTS that can decimate any static defense in the matter of seconds if needed
I dont think they are totally useless. If you face an enemy that show signs of agression early on (building temple or houses close to your base) its a good call to get towers. I usually make a 5th one on the direction of the enemy building. I get houses protecting them and thats it. It usually works, i send some scout to their base to do the same, since its normally noob vs noob that works perfectly. He is too busy attacking me to remember his poor vills alone back there.
Yes, I felt it a lot during our Isis vs Thor game. Built all of the towers, yet my sidebuilds were kinda useless.
This game is balanced around armies. Walls, towers and fortresses are there to tip the balance a little bit. Only this.
@@30Salmao This argument doesn't make sense when you see AoE 2 and even the original AoM having the same principles and working well with way better defenses.
@@agnuswulf that's not the point it MUST be this way. My point is: is a design issue, it is on purpuse. And if yoi don't like is not because is stupid, is just because Retold and legacy AoM are not the same game at all.
Retold, given the diferences, is closer to SC2 than AoE2 by now.
interesting considering youu made quite some towers vs the mista as egypt
That’s the moment I realized haha
You are right IamMagic. They definitely need buff.
i think every game needs to be in balance. (both in attack and defence)
Thankyou for your insight Magic.
Your army and walls are more than 50% of you defence. Beside era II first skirmishes, building defences are not that relevant for you actual defense.
Try playing Odin vs Ra and see how one sided that matchup is because of free upgrades to towers and easy sim city. I'm fine with buffing towers as long as you give more pierce armor to Norse units.
The way it is balanced is ok. You can harass, you can hide from atacks to your vils. You can get the upper hand when behind in troops.
I think this design is intended and works well if you know how to train enought troops and position them.
And if you see to much flank atacks being useful agaist you: make walls or get more map control. It takes little bit of skill, not much. This isn't SC2, but RTS should have harass as an option. Otherwise you can advance ERA 3 and 4 with no punishment.
Aoe4 does harass beautifully. AND they have defences that matter, that are worth their cost. Aoe4 rewards both aggressive and defensive play, retold rewards nothing but aggression. Lose 1 fight? Game over. Aoe4 you lose one fight and its not just insta-gg
@minimcune well, if you are high ELO maybe 1 mistake = losing. But if you are a normal player this is not true. Defence works, economic focus (greedy) can work, coming back with good comps works, water maps have some comebacks too.
I don't see this "1 mistake is everything lost" you say. Maybe 3 to 4 mistakes do the trick, but not 1 or 2. But then is practice and tecnique. You can't blame the game if you don't learned to come back.
Hey man, great video. Do you think it would be possible to turn down game volume in the future? There was once or twice i had a hard time hearing you over "PROSTAGMA" or the tower drum beat lol
hah sure
I think towers being too weak is not a matter of opinion really, it's ridiculous for it to do so little damage even with still units. E.g. you can get rushed early and the enemy can just take down your building with a couple of units + myth unit without worries of taking tower damage, because in the time it takes to kill a temple their single hoplite would lose 1/3rd hp
They are weak but having a Fortress next to your gold mine does give you time to save you poor villagers that are going to get killed by 10 Raiding cavalry
They are just a way to win time to not loose that much economy. And are still good against low amount of units so like against small groups of raiding cavalry that would make u crazy otherwise
And i think i don't want better defenses because it would make small agression everywhere less usefull, and i do like this way to play because it's kinda hard to control all those troups and it takes a lot of skill.
And there are ways to defend yourself against big push timing like having a second TC that you can sack and regroup to hit afterward. I don't feel like a lot of galmes from the last tournament did end on one guy pushing on one timing and winning the game like that.
Maybe there are more games like that on the ladder
I think the same. Deffenses are fine now.
@@30Salmao I just kinda dislikes the fact that they can't shoot underneath them without upgrades. If they are weak you don't want to buy this upgrade.
Maybe it's possible to just give them strait away the ability to shoot underneath themselves. It's like a small buff but a nice add on for defensive players early on.
@@raphlecrabe8373 you have a point, but what you do with rushes? You can also use towers and fortresses to rush, and the upgrade at least is a expensive tool to grab as a rusher.
Is there a list of changed between legacy and Retold? I feel like a LOT of stuff has changed but I don't know if I'm remembering wrong. For example, do units across the board have less HP? Feels like everything dies faster (other than to towers it seems lol).
I think things die faster since the multipliers are a lot higher for counter units, and yeah there’s been a lot of changes not sure if anyone can log it all
Do towers get stronger with masons and the other building defense upgrades?
And don’t towers do more damage if you put an archer in the tower?
yeah, masons buff it, archer in tower helps too I believe but it's better to have him out. (i didn't test this though)
aoe4 strikes such a beautiful balance between offence and defence. Towers and keeps/ fortresses matter, they hurt, but they're very much able to be destroyed. Also, siege in retold seems just pretty....erm....meh? I often just never see it. With stronger defences siege becomes more relevant.
I would like to see them take a page from League of Legends, and have each consecutive shot on a target ramp up
I like that
Those special EYES.
Why not just make towers like in Aoe 2 ? 1st you dont start with any, 2nd increase the damage and add projectiles when units are garrisoned, 3rd increase the cost so you cant just spam them espeacially during the early game. In Aoe 2 building a tower in Feudal Age for example always comes with the downside of having less stone in Castle Age which forces you to either delay your castle, 2nd or 3rd TC, send more vills on stone which in return will slow down other resscources or worse case buy stone from the market.
Towers imo are really easy to balance while adding a bit of depth to it in terms of decicion making.
The towers aren´t meant to be used unsupported in AoM retold. They are cheap and don´t count to unit count. Set next to a rallypoint with autoqued army and it makes a difference for beating that push. I feel they might need a small buff and repairing buildings suck in this game (unless you play Gaia) which should be fixed and walls and tower suffer the worst for it. Couldn´t they just make it that if you set some to repair they repair all nearby buildings when first is done like with building stuff? Anyway, that would be how I would like it. Slight buff to towers and fix repairs to not require micromanaging.
I think towers are fine as they are now just that the techs inside it are way too expensive
Agreed. Upgrades could be almost free. Just taking the right prerequisite of era/buildings/time. Not resourses, like they did with the god's special upgrades.
I personally love it. I wouldn't mind them scaling up a bit in power as the game timer progresses (not as age ups occur), but I know that's very hard to do properly when you start factoring maps like vindslaga and such. Migdols are also significantly better because of their size and ability to abuse garrison. I didn't like the idea that a single building prevents you from fighting on a location.
To me, interaction between armies is so much more interesting and nuanced than units and buildings, with the defensive player trying to full greed.
good points!
The utility of towers/castles varies if you fight against AI or players. Against players they are mostly useless indeed even in classical age, the enemy will move a lot and towers will always miss them.
Against AI however towers have an ok dps in classical age since the enemy tend to stand still a lot, but above all they work well as distractions. More often than not the AI will be lured to the tower so you can react and save your citizens. I upgrade the 4 starting one but never build any tower in any of my games. Castles are decent to help holding some locations but key word is help, they can do nothing by themselves.
I agree, both towers and castles must be buffed, it is really unfair that this game lean too much towards the agressive players and basically does not care about defensive players. This is why i do not play against players but only against AI, i am a defensive player and i cannot fight against agressive players.
they honestly do feel useless, until im faced against them, then they wipe my army
Ahha
they should buff upgraded towers and fortresses in damge by a little bit
So, it really came to it, as I feared. I'm very defensive players, and in most of my games, as soon as I reach Age 2, I build 4 aditional towers next to starting TC, and my tactics is to lure AI enemy raiders with few units I have next to the TC, ring a bell and keep raiders being shot at from all directions. However, I feared devs do this, same as they did with fortification in AoE 3 DE. I quote one person (keep their name and nick anonymous, let's have at least some decency), who said: "...Seen it in every other RTS I've played. The entire game becomes centralized around fast match turnaround times because I guess it keeps a Tik-Tok addicted audience engaged and retained better and they're worth more than the dying breed of people with even a modicum of patience..." and "...Rushing is not being precisely targeted for total obsolescence - defensive play and turtling are. Rushing is good for eSports. Turtling is not. The tactic is not "doomed" because it's fundamentally unfair, unbalanced, or over-centralized. The tactic is "doomed" because the devs have made a deliberate, obvious, and possibly even pressured decision to kill it on purpose..." and I agree with them. The question that remains I suppose is: is there even some semblence of hope that devs will eventually buff fortifications and make playing defensively viable once more? Or will the voices of e-sport fanatics prevail regardless?
I trust in our devs, I’m sure they’ll make it right
In my opinion as a def player
Tower should get an early buff to have better anser agains poseidon or kronos for example who are way to strong in early.
Be they should loose there power more the game is getting longer .
It could also open new strategy like tower rush .
But main buff should be any forteress on this game is supposed to be here to help you to old a position but exept use it to put unit on garnison the dmg are way to low
I agree. Fortresses already got nerved in the first patch. I don't know why... They should've stayed the same and towers need a boost in damage.
The greek fortress was nerved the most. From 13 to 9 damage. In the original game they had 17 I believe.
They did boost damage of TC's and Citadels in the first patch wich I personally like. But why nerve the castles and have such weak towers. Doesn't make sense to me.
Being afraid of tower rushes is unnecessary because even when you double the damage of towers it still takes a while to kill units. And towers can be killed quite easily.
All for buffing towers. My ideal for everything you build in the game is that it doesn't need to be great but viable enough that it's worth. When something is a clear negative over the other option it's just sad. Still cracks me up that Tower spam is sometimes the only viable option in Campaign.
Would you prefer base damage increase for towers or attack speed increase?
And congratulations on 2nd place at Genesis giving Mista his first tournament match loss.
With the Thor nerf it is difficult vs aggressive rush gods with theses weak towers
If IamMagic says I don't need towers then I don't need towers, period. Message to Microsoft -- make them strong again so they have a use!
If tower rushing was the issue, couldnt they just nerf towers outside of TC range?
50% dmg buff to towers, 20% to castles.
To me it just doesn't make sense for a building to exist and not fullfill an objective.
Yeah... I have been getting into AOM. The towers need a bit of a buff. They feel irrelevant right now
AOE2 has better fortifications even than original AOM, or at least it feels like it. But AOM has good siege units, even in the third age so in original AOM it feels almost perfect, you still have to lay proper siege, but it's not as annoying as in AOE2 where your only good siege unit in third age is a ram, that's slow and gets killed easily by cavalry or infantry. Now it feels like Starcraft where the only point of building defences is to delay the enemy long enough so your army can return to your base.
In short, original AOM has a good balance of sieging an enemy and not making it annoying and it makes sense to build fortification on your own.