[422] Vaugen's Tower Deluxe

Get your hard hats on, it's building time!

I present to you my Tower Deluxe (patent pending):



Just a normal tower you say? You'd be wrong sir! It's deluxe! First, let me remove the darkness creating door for you:


BOOM! BAM! Still just a tower you say? Let me explain.



Yellow Arrows: The vaulting block (lower arrow) sends a fleeing character into the trap door (upper arrow) and into safety. I feel this greatly increases the effectiveness of the tower by preventing solo knights from hacking at lower doors and slowly ascending their way up the tower.

Red Arrow: Shop pieces on the vaulting block prevent (or at least delay) an enemy builder from placing stone or wood on the block and messing with its purpose. They also prevent the placement of ladders. Anything that delays an enemy builder by even a second is a boon to your team. (From Sargra13's Le Bear Tower)

Green Arrow: IMO, always build against a tree. It prevents laddering on the tower, stoning of the tower, and bubbling into the tower.

Blue Arrow: I've been building these for months, and they have made their way into game culture somewhat. I feel it should be built (dug) on all towers. This is a bomb chute. Any improperly timed bombs go into the hole rendering them harmless. Furthermore, the stone column delays any tunneling.

Orange Arrow: Build on bedrock. If the enemy team digs under your bomb chute, they still can't dig up into the tower. (In order of importance, build against a tree first, bedrock if no trees.)

Purple Arrow: My preferred type of archer nest. It allows an archer to charge up on the ladder, move down into door, fire, and move back up the ladder. This limits the time a knight/archer has to bomb/shoot you and gives you the most important shot for defending a tower, which is down. I prefer the block next to the door as shown (rather than no block) because it prevents squeezing if the enemy team does ladder up the tower (because the tree is gone, or they laddered next to it). For longer shots, there is a perfect set of doors just above the murder hole.

White Arrow: Remember, this area is dark (obscured by a door). So the enemy team gets their act together and digs through your stone. Not to fear. There is a second back up point/murder hole to fire through upon builders and knights. Furthermore, because it is dark, the enemy may mistakenly trigger the bridges, which can thus no longer be destroyed (protecting the tower from collapse). It will require a team effort to back out of the hole they've dug so the bridges can be reset.

I typically build this tower during the build phase. If time and/or space and/or resources do not permit. I go with a modified version. The modified version is also what I build in forward positions. Same thing, but without the back portion.



In the advent of wood, it is sometimes hard to find adequate stone for the tower in a non build phase scenario. In such a case, I try to use my stone on the base of the tower (4x3 section), the front of the tower below the doors (or the whole front in case of catapult fire) and the bomb chute. Also, instead of backwall stone, backwall with wood.

Lastly, in the event that the modified tower is built without a tree in front (because there aren't any in the middle of the map for example), I will add shop pieces to the front. If you recall, they prevent laddering (though they don't prevent stone placement). As follows:



Questions or concerns, feel free to comment and I'll respond in kind.

See you in combat,
Vaugen

 

Reminds me of a type of tower that was semi-popular some months ago on the Australian KAG servers. It's a pretty solid tower and I like where you've gone with it. You addressed the main issue I had with it in your post. The amount of wood that the tower uses on all the team bridges is brutal. Greenpeace would be appalled. You've got the bomb chute which is nice, you've got multiple points of entry/exit which is nice and a nice archer hole which is also nice. Nice.

It's something I'd definitely want to build in warm up as opposed to a forward position though. It's a fairly expensive forward tower even in the modified version. I find the larger forward towers are, the less value for resource investment you get. Well built short towers with overhangs are all that is really required for a tower to stop incoming enemies from my experience. The height becomes superfluous if you know what I mean.



I think it may be wise to add a team door to the place in this picture. If an opposing knight/archer is inside the bottom of your tower, he could potentially throw a bomb/arrow (respectively) up the hole, damaging the tower's bridges and the people in it. The team door allows you to regulate the opening and closing of the murder hole, giving you the upper hand at least in archer combat.

EDIT: I just realised after reading over this again. What is the point of having a vertical murder hole? It will only work when people are already half way through destroying your tower. A kneecapper at the foot of the tower will be preventitive rather than curative. It's better to be able to attack builders etc trying to ladder up or dig through than try to kill them when they've already done significant damage to your tower. It's a cool idea, but it's I think it just doesn't stand up to a traditional floor based archer hole.

That said, trying new things with building is how the metagame evolves, so keep at it.

Also, take note of the fact that if a builder manages to stone up the bottom door, you have no safe way out of the tower. The top door will cause fall damage/stun which is detrimental in terms of combat situations and mobility. Might wanna check that out, but it's nothing major.

Good effort.

 

This might sound silly, as it's commonplace in almost all towers, but my only concern is the susceptibility to catapult fire. Your best defense against catapult fire is archer fire, or knight tactics if you're feeling bold. Enemy archers would easily be able to lock down that single forward archer slot, allowing a catapult to take out the thin layer of protection on the upper level. From there, it's all downhill.

 

Have you noticed though the enemy could get up with a few well-timed slashes. If you charged up a slash and use the block you could take out the team door creating a notch. This is something that has been overlooked in many towers.

 

The chance of you getting killed by a defender is extremely high if you do this, it's just better off getting a builder.

This tower is a bit expensive to make and repair, and like guro said it's best to make it during build time.
With a few extensions this tower could be effective defending against enemy sieges.
There are still a few problems with it but it is better then most towers you see people making.
Good Job and I hope you think of more towers to show us.

 

Maybe instead of notched walls they use jumps pads with team bridges and maybe some re-positioning spikes