5 towers cost about the same as a castle. Because a castle volley can overkill most foot soldiers and I'm not sure I fully understand how the garrison bonuses apply, I was wondering if anyone could help me out doing the math on this.
Posted Dec 17, 2017, 5:46 PM UTC
One thing that never gets mentioned (and I'm not even 100% sure it's true) is that castles actually cover more ground than towers because they have a 4x4 base. The 8(+3) range is from any point on the building's base outwards, right? So doesn't that give a castle almost two tiles of "extra" range in every direction?
Yep you're right.
Yeah, but you would never build all the towers in a 2x2 square etc.
Practically the towers have a MUCH larger effective area if you spread them out but with a lower dps on any particular tile.
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Agreed. Things like the greater range of castles versus towers, the susceptibility to melee damage (remember castles also have four times as much surface area to attack as a tower), the pros (protecting and even healing units; castles heal garrisoned units twice as fast as towers if I remember correctly) and cons (not getting res with vils or damaging with military units) of garrisoning units isn't being discussed at all in this analysis, and so many other things are being ignored. Here's another idea to consider: those towers aren't going to be putting out that damage constantly, whereas the castle will, because you don't incrementally destroy the castle's firing rate like you do by destroying each of the towers in turn. Also, castles will notoriously "overkill" enemy units; towers could potentially get more actual DPS out of their attack pool. Each building/unit is definitely highly situational. AoE2 = 4D Chess as Resonance22 always says. All the same people who really analyze this stuff to death like SoTL ironically aren't even the very best players though.
All the same people who really analyze this stuff to death like SoTL ironically aren't even the very best players though.
That's because SotL's methodology is to try and reduce the game to the simplest possible numbers and formulas. Which is great to give you a baseline and interesting from a theoretical standpoint, but the reality is that situations are constantly in flux in AoE2 and the best players are not those who have the numbers memorized, but rather those who can read a given situation and instantly know what is best to do and what (if anything) they have to change about their strategy.
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BBT is better use them in all situations even in castle age
I know you're a deathmatch player and all, but let me break it to you buddy. BBTs aren't available in castle age. Sorry. I know it's hard to deal with such news, but that's just how the way it is.
Unless you're playing as the turks their bonus is that all gunpowder is available in castle.
._.
Umm, I don't think that's how that works.
Trolling?
;P
Both towers and castles have the same fire rate. So we can measure the damage per volley to compare DPS.
Ungarrisoned:
One castle shoots 5 arrows per volley. Each arrow does 11 damage. Total: 55 damage
Towers do between 5 and 8 damage per shot. 5 towers shoot 5 arrows. Total: 25-40 damage
Garrisoned:
Castle can garrison 20 units, shoots up to 21 arrows per volley. Total: 231 damage
Towers can garrison 5(10 if teutons) units each, shooting up to 5 arrows per volley. Total: 125-200 damage
However, the arrowslits upgrade in the university adds +1/+2/+3 damage to watch/guard/keep, meaning that 5 keeps would have the same DPS as a castle ungarrisoned, and slightly more than a castle when garrisoned.
In addition, Koreans, Japanese, Britons, and Chinese all have nice tower bonuses that can make them more attractive than castles in some situations.
I would add Teutons to that list, as well. That 10 garrison room can be great both offensively and, especially, defensively. If you’re ever raided and you happen to have some Keeps in the gaps between farms and whatnot, you can keep your vils safe.
Fully garrisoned with 10 of them, a FU Teuton Keep can fire 4 arrows at a time for a potential damage of 14*4 or 56 damage per volley. Now that’s some serious firepower!
That said, teutonic castle also has extra ranged so it's tough competition
And Teutons also get BBT so it's an even tougher competition since their UU is so niche
Also the castle range is another 400 stone cost which is almost the price of a castle (little over two thirds).
BBT have the best overall dps vs non ram units.
do 10 vills garrisoned in a teutonic keep max out the arrows fired(which is 5, not 4--the number in parentheses is the extra arrows)? Cuz that sounds awesome.
It’s the one standard arrow a tower fires along with 3 others, indicated by the (3) next to the attack strength stat.
Chinese usually want castles for CKN production though.
Edit: And have equally bonused BBTs.
And Japanese Towers? ;)
Garrisoning as a means of stationary defense is pretty bad though, since it costs pop space.