Not to mention their Villagers get Sanctity and Fervor, so it's harder to stop them from putting them down. Then again, is that really useful when the Bombard Towers get bonus movement speed?
Can we just give a shoutout to the engineers who discovered that putting fletching and bodkin arrows on the balls and a bracer on the cannon would so drastically increase the range the cannonballs would fly.
That Jadwiga scenario when, at release, the devs massively increased the cost of all stone structure except having forgotten bombard towers. What a bombard tower spam it was.
A while back (I think in the patch that came with the Sicilians and Burgundians) they changed defensive structures to count extra projectiles when determining how many arrows an archer adds. This change made it so towers went from thinking Chu Ko Nu deal 14 damage with full upgrades to dealing 26, a huge jump.
Yeah Koreans were extremely OP. In AoC 1.0 they had +1 range in onager as team bonus, another +2 as tech. So they outranged castles and towers without bracer ( franks, celts, persians for example).
@@Joakico with + 2 range on UT makes their onagers outrange all non teuton castles, afler the nerf to +1 makes them to outrange just castles with no bracer, like celts.
Koreans main BBT weakness is exactly the same as the upside for Turk ones, outranging BBC in messy late game situations (the only time you really see them) is a huge advantage and means the only practical solution is Trebs most of the time. If you're against civs who lack BBC though I think it suddenly becomes a decent option, especially in some kind of Halb + Siege comp.
I played a Black Forest team game as Dravidians back before they were given bombard cannons and was at my wit's end against the Siege Onager spam I was facing. Bombard towers saved my team's skin on that side because the enemy was spending all their gold on SO and didn't have any trebs or bombard cannons to dislodge me.
You have no idea how much I learned my English typing from building Bombard Towers. Back in the day, "rock on" only gave 1000 stones; I had to type every time it said not enough stone. My 6 year old self did not even know ctrl + v yet
Not to mention for Spanish: Supremacy villagers with Sappers are a credible threat to enemy rams. They aren’t frightened by a few accompanying skirmishers or archer units to the degree of most villagers, they’re very cheap, and they’re thus able to defend against one of the most practical counters to bombard towers they were just setting up (others being the somewhat less common bombard cannon, and the trebuchet which is expensive and even slower than a ram). Nasty surprise for civs who like to rely on the siege ram late game. In turn, the bombard tower is a credible threat to any paladins, heavy infantry, onagers, etc who think they can pick off builders uncontested. And using villagers this way saves on gold, affording more towers (on top of that lovely late game trade bonus). You could even use them for coastal defense, given that your own cannon galleons are utterly superior to everyone else’s (except -maybe- Turks for range, but the accuracy and speed of Spanish fire tends to dominate) and can protect the bombard towers while they make landings or galleon and fire ships floating coffins.
My guess is that they slowed down the game too much, since the only counters would be cannons and trebuchets, but the fisrt isn't aviable to all civs and the second would take a while dealing with them
I swear, after playing with Spanish Cannon Galleons, I'm fully convinced that Bombard towers could be so much better if they just had faster projectiles. Now, I'd also like to see the research removed and an armor-ignoring blast radius, BUT I will take a projectile speed upgrade if that's the only thing changed.
The speed boost Arquebus granted to everything gunpowder in HD used to be alarmingly fast, including BBCs and BBTs. Wouldn't say it was particularly broken on the towers.
@@TheCoincidenceIts a shame they took away everything unique about the portuguese, they where never a top tier civ anyway, so why could they not have great BBTs?
imo BBT should get reduced stats but also make them cheaper (50 gold?) and easier to tech into. Now it's pretty much only used for meme strats or in low elo BF games.
NIce list. Always loved that unit since I saw Age of Kings for the first time. I wish it was played more. But competitive pace leaves little space for it, realistically speaking.
The Bohemians actually have a pretty decent array of civ bonuses that could benefit their bombard towers. Stone and Stone shaft mining being free, blacksmiths and universities costing 100 wood less which allows you to get them up sooner while also reducing the wood impact to your eco, Hussite Reforms which gives massive gold savings that can be spent on bombard towers, Chemistry being available in the Castle Age means you can get that technology squared away so once you hit Imperial you can tech into Bombard Towers much earlier than your opponents. Fervor and Sanctity giving your villagers speed and health boosts which makes building forward towers a less stressful experience. Plus their unit lineup is pretty solid too.
Bombard towers were my jam back about 15 years ago, before the age of Internet in my dwelling, when I was just a wee lad with age of empires 2 the age of kings installed on my computer. Didn't even understand half the words or the options but had all the time in the world and full of wonderous curiosity. Watching aoe2 pro players with all the meta game aspects and the apm took all the magic out of it for me. Similar thing kinda happened with chess. But I plan to get start enjoying these games again and ignore all the fun sucking noise.
In 4vs4 Amazon Tunnel games they were my jam, I'd either play Spanish or Portuguese and just spam 100+ trade carts, drive the price of stone at the market up to 1000 for 100 or so (or Feitorias) and spam ridiculous amounts of bombard towers that the opposing team simply had no hopes of dealing with. It was great.
As a Turk my heart started beating faster and faster the closer you got to your nr. 1 pick. So much so that I started to panick when you were at nr. 2 wondering if Turks were gonna be nr. 1 at all 😅. Was glad to see we made it to nr. 1 after all!
Love these videos, keep them coming! If you're ever looking for video ideas, here are two: what units are most "population efficient", ie can kill the most before going down themselves. 2nd, what units are the best "generalists", ie can handle the largest variety of enemies
I always thought you could only get more cannonshots with Janissaries but now I really want a 10x shared civ matchup with Spanish Chinese and Teutons for rapid cannon towers
Sometimes the best offense is a good defense. Byzantine Bombard Towers are my favorite with how durable they are with Turks being a close second with how long range they are.
This is the result of a Patch like a year ago that included additional projectiles into the tower damage calculation of garrisoned units... before that Cho Ku No basically had not effect when garrisoned.
I like that Sotl really did open this year with a bang with these bombastic piece of explosive fun! Lol Okay joke aside, i agree with Sotl here that: 6: Chinese can indeed go for BTs but forgoing Castles do hurt them because Chu Ko Nus are that great of an UU for their deathball army. 5: Byzantine can also do the same thing if Cataphracts are not concern to be used for, say, to counter Huskarl+Halberdier spam, and because they are trash units heavy Civ user so its fine for them to spent golds on it. 4: Korean was a great civ to go for BTs strat and to this day still are, but some nerfs actually quiet messes them up for effectiveness compared to old day Koreans. Also like Chinese, War Wagons are great UU for their deathballs, so losing several Castle hurt. 3: Spanish doing a BTs strat - on enemy base is a big, bold YOLO moves that can sure screw them up if they are not ready to deal with either the villagers or the towers, and they better decide it fast because that 30% faster build time will definitely makes those towers up way faster than they anticipated. Thou missing Conquistadors is a bit painful ngl. 2: Portuguese BTs actually having ballistic is insane - can hit pesky micro'd archer lines and melee horsemen. Also Organ Guns are not that great of an UU for them anyway as they can make Hand Cannons in their place, and Bombard Cannons (BC) replaces Trebuchet. And lastly: 1: Turks sums it up with these lines: "I need no introduction in these, My HCs are goated, my BTs are goated, and so the BCs"
The Byzantines unique tech would be better if the shots very slightly past the opponent for optimal splash damage placement (or have a slightly bigger splash radius).
I thought Turks would be second and Portuguese first because 11 range + boosted accuracy seems better than 13 range and passively reducing accuracy/longer time for projectile to move before it hits. But I guess SOTL's points are good.
Extra range is almost always better than accuracy alone - just ask Britons. And that's even more true for towers and castles since they obviously can't get any closer to the enemy if they're out of range.
BBTs are affected by ballistics anyway, so Portuguese ones don't have any better accuracy, do they? A tiny increase in speed may make them a bit more accurate though.
china: can use a tiny version of a canon in their hand can use a canon (maybe a big one) in a tower stationary but have no clue how to mix both or like put the canon on some wheels
This just makes me want to see a tower defence community scenario. 50% trying to destroy wonder (not sure how many years to give it) at end of maze. 50% trying to build ranged units and towers and castles etc on top of the maze. Each player starts with fetorias. 🤓 I bet it probably doesn’t work though as someone who understands scenario creation will probably tell me lol
A interaction that Sotl missed there 09:15 or an open question for me: What happens with the combination of multiple shots of the bombard tower if you have the splash damagde as byzantines. From my perspective there are multiple outcomes: a) every shot get splash damagde b) one shot gets splash damagde, the rest don`t get it c) something else happens maybe someone can help me there Beside that thanks for your videos, the effort and the entertainment. :)
I wanted to try mass bombards on 4v4 black forest as turks mostly to stop raids but games kept ending before they mattered. I also remember that old video showing they're basically as good against Hussar raids as guard towers.
Elite jans have bonus against rams, bombard towers can range other bbcs and turk bbcs can easily snipe trebs, so yeah good luck if you let the turk player get to bombard towers
Hello there great AoE II! I was wondering who is the Spirit of the Law for the Age of Empires III. I'm trying to find out which one may be the very best one to get information from...
On the topic of starting the year with a blast, and high damage values, could you perhaps make a cost-effectivity analysis of the demo ship line against land units? Unlike bombard towers, they're single-use, but they have a large blast radius in which allies aren't hurt though. Against units like siege or archers it is possible to get cost-effective exchanges quite easily, for example you only have to hit a single trebuchet per demo ship for the exchange to be cost-effective, or kill about three arbalests, which, considering the high speed, decent pierce armour, high damage and large blast radius of particularly the heavy demo ship should be possible to pull off on the shallows for a skilled enough player against a surprised opponent. I don't know how difficult it is to blow up heavy cavalry cost-effectively though, so that would be something I'd be very interested to learn your opinion on. There's also another part to the situation: if you blow up the enemy invasion army with a few demo ships, you take away the opponent's momentum and have time to act with your own army, or if you just lost it, you have time to rebuild it. This aspect is likely much more difficult to quantify, but I believe it's possible to make a case for demo ships versus land units just based on resources destroyed if one were to pick their engagements cleverly. If this strategy proves to be good, I would also be interested in some suggestions to counter it. I think having a small number of own demo ships on standby to take on enemy demo ships could be effective, but there might be more consistent and more cost-effective methods that I, as a rather unskilled player, can't figure out on my own.
He's made several tower and castle and town center videos, but not in a "top ten" format. They should be a in a playlist though, because sometimes I forgot some of the ways they interact, like the first arrow being affected by building armor and the following arrows not, or something like that.
Fantastic video analysis. The only thing I am not really sold on are the Spanish and Portuguese. If we go by that villager logic, that should also put them in one of the top Castle civilisations... but it doesn't. As for the Feitoria... it is a long tradeoff to recoup all those costs.
I feel like this video over-weighs the effect of villager tankiness techs. By the time you're constructing bombard towers, you shouldn't have any problem affording extra villagers and replacing any that die. You should have already saturated your villager count for your economy so your TCs are free to replace any villagers you lose. At only 50 food they're as cheap as any other trash unit.
Great Video. But I think the Spanish could get a 4-5 place instead the 3rd, for his bonuses of tech give them gold to build some few towers more, they are only builded faster and the builders are more tough, if you consider purchsing Supremacy, while the other civs give direct bonus to BBTs. But it just my opinion. Otherwise, I love to see yours "top x Civs" on your videos!
Back in my day we had Bombard Towers with MELEE damage. Yeah rams would be MASSACRED👍🏻👍🏻 either get a Trebuchet out or research 2 consecutive techs to get bombard cannons💪🏻💪🏻💪🏻
Am I the only one who now thinks Koreans should be #1 instead? The FREE bombard tower tech is better than Turk's Free chemistry, Spanish's faster construction or Byzantine's splash damage ALL COMBINED!!! Those quick bombard towers can also be mixed with several Eupseong towers to deny any bombard cannons too! Then you have the tanky war wagons to hold the ground until your villagers construct fortification! :D
What about Bohemian Houfnice, can it outrange Turkish Bombard Tower? I believe it used to have bigger range than bombard canon but it was nerf since or am I mixing and forgeting previous videos?
Thought they removed projectile speed from portuguese, i have never noticed arquebus doing anything for my BBTs, cant be much of a speed buff they still get then.
Towers are way too useless once trebs and cannons cone into the scene, which means by the time they are available the time and resources needed to make them are better spent elsewhere.
"Paladin are useless once heavy camel and halbs are on the scene. The time are resources needed to make them are better spent elsewhere." You can make a sentence like this for any unit in the game. All units have counters and all units have uses in the right situations. Thats what the entire game is about. There are maybe a small handful of meme units that are borderline useless in the game that wouldn't really be missed. Towers are nowhere even close to making that list.
They're just way too expensive and are rarely used at a high level. MBL is the only pro player who ever builds them. They need either a major price reduction or a huge buff. I think the Bombard Tower tech should be removed and they should be unlocked upon researching Chemistry.
