tower functionality

[Pillager]

Yup, I pretty much agree with LPhillips on this one. No upkeep, no specific restrictions on placement. Otherwise KGB's tower model seems about right.

[Moonknight]

Will towers be built instantly or will it take a turn or two?

So can a tower be attacked and have ownership transferred? If it can be attacked, I think Elves should have a tower bonus if defending a tower...

[piranha]

Towers are implemented in beta4. The do have upkeep, and we want to test them with upkeep this beta at least.

They can be placed anywhere except on buildings or bridges. Current price is
wall 0: 350 view/def: 0 Upkeep: 3 g/t
1: 400 view/def: 0 Upkeep: 3 g/t
2: 450 view/def: 0 Upkeep: 3 g/t
3: 525 view/def: 1 Upkeep: 5 g/t
4: 600 view/def: 1 Upkeep: 5 g/t
5: 675 view/def: 1 Upkeep: 5 g/t
6: 775 view/def: 2 Upkeep: 7 g/t
7: 875 view/def:2 Upkeep: 7 g/t
8: 1000 view/def: 3 Upkeep: 10 g/t

Towers are constructed instantly and wall level can be upgraded when you want to. You can self raze your tower.
Towers can be captured and the upkeep will be transfered to the player capturing it.

We plan to give it the same terrain bonus as the terrain its build on instead of city terrain since that terrain bonus is already so good.

[Pillager]

Nicely done! Not sure about the upkeep..but being able to self-raze should prevent me from bankrupting myself with excessive tower construction.

Keeping the terrain bonus is a good choice. But if I see a tower in the open, filled with pikemen and an elephant, I think I may just go around.

[KGB]

Let me second that 'nicely done' comment. Especially on having the tower retain the terrain that it is placed in.

A few questions/comments

1) When you build a tower does it initially come at L1 walls, cost 350 so that you must then upgrade twice to get a defense bonus? Or does it initially cost 525 and come with a defense bonus with no need to upgrade the walls?
2) Will mouse over/clicking on a tower give it's defense bonus like it does for a city? Players definitely need a way to know how strong the tower is.
3) Is the view bonus added to the best unit or just a plain view radius of value X for the tower itself?
4) It would have been nice if there was a +1 view bonus at wall level 2 so that you didn't need to upgrade all the way to level 3 walls to get any real value from the tower. I was actually hoping the view bonus would have been done like the table I posted a few posts back so that it was separate from the defense bonus.
5) Speaking of self raze, has this capability been added to cities and your own units (disband) in Beta4 (I sure hope so).

KGB

P.S. Pillager, you can't see what's in a tower. So you won't know if there are Elephants + Pikemen in there unless you send in 1 unit and check it out.

[Pillager]

P.S. Pillager, you can't see what's in a tower. So you won't know if there are Elephants + Pikemen in there unless you send in 1 unit and check it out.

...actually, I a habitual user of the 'red shirted spy' to check out what lies beneath the top unit. Mainly because I lay fight order traps in almost every game, and suspect others of the same underhanded behavior.

[piranha]

You select from a dropdown which level you want the tower to be so you can start on L:0 and then jump to L:5 if someone approaches for example if you have enough gold. You can't decrease levels at the moment (only reason is if you want to lower the upkeep).

View radius is separated from def level, but I put the same numbers there. It will increase the view for the unit standing there by 0,1,2,3 depending on the wall level.

Clicking the tower will give you info about defence level just like cities. There wont be any graphical difference depending on levels. This would however be a nice feature for towers and cities but we will need to buy more graphics which is quite costy so I think it will have to wait a while longer before we do that. Perhaps tooltip on mouse over.

[KGB]

Piranha,

View radius is separated from def level, but I put the same numbers there. It will increase the view for the unit standing there by 0,1,2,3 depending on the wall level.[

I meant more along the lines of this table I posted earlier. This gives view upgrades at the levels of wall when you don't get a defense upgrade. Otherwise players literally buy L0, L3, L6 or L8 walls and nothing in between because there is no value to having L4 or L5 walls over L3 walls.

Code: Select all

Wall Level     View     Defend
      0          0         0
      1          0         0
      2         +1         0
      3         +1        +1
      4         +2        +1
      5         +3        +1
      6         +3        +2
      7         +4        +2
      8         +4        +3


Clicking the tower will give you info about defence level just like cities. There wont be any graphical difference depending on levels. This would however be a nice feature for towers and cities but we will need to buy more graphics which is quite costy so I think it will have to wait a while longer before we do that. Perhaps tooltip on mouse over.

[/quote]

Agreed. No rush to have graphical differences right now as there are plenty of other graphics (like new units/heroes/terrain etc) that are more important than different tower/city visuals.

KGB

[Pillager]

KGB's table IMO is the way to go. View increases on the upgrades that don't grant added defense makes every upgrade meaningful.

[LPhillips]

KGB's table IMO is the way to go. View increases on the upgrades that don't grant added defense makes every upgrade meaningful.

Thumbs up, for what it's worth.