Guard Towers useless?

[Dreepa]

So maybe I am just not using them right, but is there any reason to choose a guard tower and have a minimal defense plus, instead of something like a farm in a small building slot?

Because why would you go with the guard tower, if you can have more money and thus more army that is mobile and not locked to the city?

Guard towers on their own never are enough to defend a city, so you gotta have an army there (or move it back) anyway.

Right now, in my estimate, Guard Towers seem pretty useless.

[madracc00n]

Nah they are not useless if upgraded they are pretty ok.If u have good troops in the garrsion to back it up.Could mb see a buff,but u should only build them in like middle map town or something,when it is very likely to get attacked.

[Sloul Des Tucs]

@op Yeah, it seems to be the concensus.

[Nate]

Some maps have neutral towns which come with 3 guard towers already built. This is a nice thing. Otherwise, they are not very useful.

As long as you can see approaching enemy from far enough away, its better to leave unpurchased troops and save some money to buy them as defenders.

[G4tlingGh0st]

The guard towers are crap, helpful in early game or against a "forth wielder" (after the first 3 with bigger armies)... but in mid to late game absolutely useless. Towers in Hoi3 werent exactly strong, but since there were up to 3 towers and real defenses including a closed gate, they could kill 2-4 behemots over the course of one battle.

In late late game they also became basically useless in Homm3, but in SoC they are useless ANYTIME after the earliest game phase and in the earliest game phase, you do not normally prioritize building level 2 towers. So yeah, they certainly need a buff.

[Will be deleted]

Guard tower do have an "hidden" advangtage that it let you see how the enemy position before battle, if they are in view of the tower.

I don't think they are supposed to defend your city on their own, see them more like a force multiplier, a city defence can be a few garrison stacks, guard tower garrisons and a wielder and given the advantage of adding more stack to battle is significant, adding a few guard tower on frontline cities can make those very costly to take, assuming you defend them with a wielder and garrions.

Keep in mind you should sell the guard towers if you assume the city is in no danger in the next 5-10 turns as the return of selling buildings is like 75% and the guard towers don't directly improve your global power.

[cifrelettere]

Defense in general is a waste in the game currently. I hope there are some changes to make holding chokepoint/villages/etc. beneficial beyond the economic benefits.

[Reddz]

Originally posted by Goodluck:

Guard tower do have an "hidden" advangtage that it let you see how the enemy position before battle, if they are in view of the tower

That's... almost useful. Your positioning will be the same no matter what though, ranged up on the elevated spots and melee near the little choke point.

In general yeah towers are pretty useless, you'd need like 8 of them for the troops and ballistae they provide to make a real difference.

[Maloney]

Agree they are a bit week. It's a hard thing to balance though. If they were strong to the point where they could actually defend a town, you'd almost never be able to take a town that has one. Now suddenly you've got a game that doesn't go anywhere. They are enough to give the defender a "home turf" advantage and little more. Agree more troop growth and money are currently better investments.

Soft buffs could include making the garrisoned troops upgrade along with the units dwelling. preventing buildings from being pillaged in a town with a tower.

[Papa Pasda' Ⓢ]

They patched the towers

[Reddz]

Yup they get more troops. That doesn't change much though, undefended towns will go down easily. As they probably should. All the troops in the world couldn't defend against a decent army without a wielder anyway, they'd be very weak without the stat boosts.

I guess this way you can at least soften up the attackers a bit, for when you wanna fight them and retake the town.

[Turska]

I think the above comment about guard towers making the buildings in settlement immune to pillaging might be good idea. The towers themselves are already unable to be pillaged but if they made the other buildings too, it might make the towers worth building more often.

[Chixdiggit]

An idea to make guard towers more useful would be if it wasted a whole turn attacking one. For example if you had 2 guard towers, you would take 3 days to attack the actual town or less using multiple wielders.

[madracc00n]

They should let u have gates in the city,then towers would be better.