Are Stone Towers Too Powerful?

[Huffman3829]

I've noticed from playing that when I raid, my Units get killed of very quickly. I now use Battering Rams a lot more often when Raiding, but still, even weaker AIs seem to spam Stone Towers everywhere. They really are a nuisance. I'm not asking to remove them, I just think they are a little too powerful. Anyone feel the same way?

[Gurken Khan]

I try to prevent the enemy to garrison the towers. If I really take it by surprise I might capture it before the AI has time to react, or I can kill the line of units that tries to get to the tower. Sometimes I move out of sight from the tower to get it ungarrisoned and then try the above again. (Reversely, I like to man my towers. Hated it when the enemy took over one of my towers...)

[thephilosopher]

As a beginner player, I definitely find it easier to raid human players than even an AI set to Easy or Very Easy. I don't know whether that's a good or a bad thing, but the AI does oddly prioritize stone towers over, say, generating more soldiers.

 

If there were a fix needed, I'd think it would be less about how powerful towers are and more about nudging the AI away from lining its borders with them.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

Towers are ridiculously easy to capture if they are ungarrisoned, but then if they are garrisoned they are ridiculously difficult to capture and ridiculously difficult to destroy without siege. But your troops default to capturing behavior so they get massacred needlessly. The implementation of the capturing mechanic in the game is supremely frustrating and it's one of my chief criticisms of the "game design", such as it is.

Edited October 1, 2021 by wowgetoffyourcellphone

[Gurken Khan]

24 minutes ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

But your troops default to capturing behavior so they get massacred needlessly.

That's for buildings just standing around, right? I think if a units gets attacked by a tower the default behavior then is to chip away at said tower. AI is stupid, that's why you gotta watch your units closely.

[Player of 0AD]

I think that towers are not too powerful anymore. They might have been in A24, but they have been nerfed so much that they are not OP now.

[Huffman3829]

22 hours ago, Gurken Khan said:

I try to prevent the enemy to garrison the towers. If I really take it by surprise I might capture it before the AI has time to react, or I can kill the line of units that tries to get to the tower. Sometimes I move out of sight from the tower to get it ungarrisoned and then try the above again. (Reversely, I like to man my towers. Hated it when the enemy took over one of my towers...)

Thank you for that. I will try.

I usually do attempt to kill units before they garrison.

[bigaxd]

On 02/10/2021 at 12:08 AM, Huffman3829 said:

I've noticed from playing that when I raid, my Units get killed of very quickly. I now use Battering Rams a lot more often when Raiding, but still, even weaker AIs seem to spam Stone Towers everywhere. They really are a nuisance. I'm not asking to remove them, I just think they are a little too powerful. Anyone feel the same way?

I don't

I actually thought they are too weak

[LetswaveaBook]

On 02/10/2021 at 12:08 AM, Huffman3829 said:

I just think they are a little too powerful. Anyone feel the same way?

For me, they feel very situational.

Without garrison, it can be captured easily. You can't have forces nearby to quickly garrison a tower once an enemy arrive. If a large enemy force(50+ units) arrives, then they can take out the tower and its garrison. Every unit that is garrisoned adds one arrows which does 10 pierce attack per 2 seconds, which is not much. You can ignore the towers to some extend and use your army for easier targets. Furthermore, towers distribute their damage over all enemy units instead of focusing some units down. This means that in some situations, the tower can get decent damage output but fail to get a kill.

A way to render towers ineffective is by healing your units that have sustained damage. When a lot of your units have sustained damage, it is better to retreat. Also, if your army is big enough the damage of the tower does not compare to the things your army could achieve.

[Yekaterina]

I think stone towers are quite useless against cavalry. 

However, they do decent damage to infantry, especially ranged ones if they are forced to fight under a tower. 

Towers are useless in a big map against a huge push with siege and cavalry. However, in a tiny map, it can be used to deny enemy resources and snipe enemy units, as well as gain some vision. In that situation, a well placed tower would be OP. 

On 01/10/2021 at 11:08 PM, Huffman3829 said:

even weaker AIs seem to spam Stone Towers everywhere.

That's a mistake by them. Send in rams first to destroy the towers and let your infantry stay somewhere else. If the AI try to hack rams, then use some cavalry to kill their soldiers and research the siege weapon armour techs. 

Tower spam = slower eco, so you can outboom your AI opponent and crush them with a train of siege early on before they have a chance to mass anything significant against you. 

[BreakfastBurrito_007]

At this point, I like the way towers work. You can build them strategically to deny resources and you can prevent an enemy from having a long term presence underneath it. The towers do not function to deny entry to the area that they can shoot because they don’t kill units fast enough.
 

 

[davidsrsb]

I don't understand the historical reason why cavalry are far more effective against towers than infantry. Apart from rams, the traditional attack on towers was bundles of kindling or fire arrows

[LetswaveaBook]

11 minutes ago, davidsrsb said:

I don't understand the historical reason why cavalry are far more effective against towers than infantry. Apart from rams, the traditional attack on towers was bundles of kindling or fire arrows

In 0ad cavalry is not significantly more effective against towers. Cavalry only has the advantage of being better at avoiding and running away from them.

[Gurken Khan]

23 minutes ago, LetswaveaBook said:

Cavalry only has the advantage of being better at avoiding and running away from them.

And running to them.

[Lion.Kanzen]

11 hours ago, Gurken Khan said:

And running to them.

There should be an anti-cavalry technology that gives defense bonuses to the tower and walls.

[Gurken Khan]

7 minutes ago, Lion.Kanzen said:

There should be an anti-cavalry technology that gives defense bonuses to the tower and walls.

Naah!

We're talking about if they're too powerful here, not about buffing them.

[BreakfastBurrito_007]

@

1 hour ago, Lion.Kanzen said:

There should be an anti-cavalry technology that gives defense bonuses to the tower and walls.

I agree with this, but I think it would be better to just give an inherent .3x counter vs palisades to melee cavalry, this way, palisades actually offer a more significant protection vs cavalry and will allow a smart player to position his units and palisades in such a way as to prevent cavalry from going in. I also think there should be some adjustments made to palisade and stone wall placement to make it easier to seal off an area, like going between houses or barracks.

 

[Lion.Kanzen]

1 hour ago, Gurken Khan said:

Naah!

We're talking about if they're too powerful here, not about buffing them.

the technologies are optional, it can even be balanced.

[davidsrsb]

Yes bonus against cavalry, maybe slightly weaker against melee infantry.

[davidsrsb]

How about stone towers and fortresses becoming stone quarries when knocked out. They can then be mined or rebuilt at the same site with reduced stone requirements

[Norse_Harold]

Huffman3829, if you mass enough troops, especially champion and hero types, then you can surround the tower and capture it relatively quickly. In my opinion, the most likely root cause of the problems that newer players have with towers isn't the towers, it's their economy. Watch replays and read guides on how to have an efficient and highly productive economy in the game. Then you will be able to produce a large army, which can walk right past towers or else capture them quickly. Experiment with different strategies.

Also, did you know that you can garrison up to 10 infantry units in a battering ram or siege tower, and this protects them from 99% of piercing damage, such as from tower-fired arrows? It's unrealistic, I know, but it can be useful when your opponent has garrisoned swordsmen ready to defend against your rams.

Select a battering ram, right-click on the largest picture of the ram at the bottom of the screen, and you will see the statistics for how much armor it has against different types of damage. Garrisoned troops benefit from that armor.

If the battering ram is attacked, you can ungarrison troops in it by selecting the ram and pressing "U" or the ungarrison button at the bottom of the screen. Then the troops can defend in the vicinity of the ram.

[Freagarach]

11 minutes ago, Norse_Harold said:

Garrisoned troops benefit from that armor.

Even better: They aren't damaged at all!

[rollieoo]

13 hours ago, davidsrsb said:

How about stone towers and fortresses becoming stone quarries when knocked out. They can then be mined or rebuilt at the same site with reduced stone requirements

Or when they are ungarrisoned for a while. Historically, abandoned castles / fortresses / city walls were a major source of building material for the local population.

[Huffman3829]

On 10/10/2021 at 2:13 PM, Norse_Harold said:

Huffman3829, if you mass enough troops, especially champion and hero types, then you can surround the tower and capture it relatively quickly. In my opinion, the most likely root cause of the problems that newer players have with towers isn't the towers, it's their economy. Watch replays and read guides on how to have an efficient and highly productive economy in the game. Then you will be able to produce a large army, which can walk right past towers or else capture them quickly. Experiment with different strategies.

Also, did you know that you can garrison up to 10 infantry units in a battering ram or siege tower, and this protects them from 99% of piercing damage, such as from tower-fired arrows? It's unrealistic, I know, but it can be useful when your opponent has garrisoned swordsmen ready to defend against your rams.

Select a battering ram, right-click on the largest picture of the ram at the bottom of the screen, and you will see the statistics for how much armor it has against different types of damage. Garrisoned troops benefit from that armor.

If the battering ram is attacked, you can ungarrison troops in it by selecting the ram and pressing "U" or the ungarrison button at the bottom of the screen. Then the troops can defend in the vicinity of the ram.

I have done this in the past. Just early in the game, (I prefer to use all-Citizen-Infantry armies early on) it's difficult to make any offensive maneuver without losing the majority if my troops. This can only work in City phase.

[Yari Koen]

On 02/10/2021 at 12:08 AM, Huffman3829 said:

even weaker AIs seem to spam Stone Towers everywhere.

I went back to the game after a year and this is the only thing that frustrates me a little. It is perhaps the only RTS where I feel that AI is trying to spam me with towers and fortresses. It's a game of cat and mouse. In my opinion, two steps should be considered:

- option in Settings to set DESTROY/ATTACK approach as default, not the CAPTURE. That would make life a little easier than constantly pressing Ctrl. If it's there, I didn't find it; feel free to correct me.
- adjust AI behavior to build stone walls around critical structures / city rather than towers across the map at least in case of Defense or Balanced AI mode. 

Personally, I think that the power of towers is not such a problem; but rather their use by AI in general.

Edited December 20, 2021 by Yari Koen