WHAT'S NEW Carcassonne Expansion 4: The Tower and PLAYTHROUGH and RANKING 

Almost every major expansion is really made up of several mini-expansions packaged together. The advantage of this is that no individual expansion can overwhelm the game. The Tower is different in that it is one big expansion which adds 18 places where you can build a tower, that's a lot especially if you're adding it simply to a basic 72 tile game, I personally don't mind it in a 150+ tile game - some expansions lose a lot of their appeal in a bigger game (The Dragon, for example, becomes almost pointless in a really big game as there's a good chance it won't get to do anything when lots of tiles are out) but it makes The Tower much less dominant. As with any expansion, if you play with a specific group who don't like it then I think it can be fun trying some house rules. With The Tower, limiting its height to 2 or 3 works quite well. Alternatively, making it that a Tower can only be built on the turn the tile is played (but added to later if the first tower piece was played) limits it a lot. Another possibility is making it that once a Tower has captured a Meeple, it cannot be used again or introducing a way to stop the tower without sacrificing a Meeple. There are lots of possibilities.

Interesting opinion on the tower expansion, it sucks to have dead zones on the board... So if you play that expansion with the Princess and the dragon, the dead zones might not be a problem, right? Because you have the portals to go anywhere....