Curious if you looked at difference in plunder between the two builds? Great post btw and shows some effort went into it.
This is pretty simple. If u want to try out spy towers, or war for a season n stop, lowlands are a option. Highlands are more expensive, because they are logistically a better use of land. If u want permanent sdt, build there, until the hoarfrost melts.
Are you freaking seriously telling ME to do the math? I used to have LL towers!!! Now I have HL towers!! I make more money now!! Why do you think you know what you're saying when you don't even have a tower at all? I recommend 1 colony, 48 Tier 1 L3 spy defense towers, and 1 castle. The 47 tier 1 towers offer similar spy defense as the T2 towers, but this way, spreading them on all but 1 land leaves you with maximum plunder. /sarcasm
When it comes down to it, there's an algorithm that gives you numbers every time you push a button. Figure out the variables the devs have used. Take data. Build and drop buildings. Watch how it affects the numbers. I've been looking at it for over a year. Rvw page 6. 15 towers on lowlands BEATS 6 towers on highlands in a) cost b) better stats and c) effect on plunder. Check it yourself. The "trust me, look at my stats" argument doesn't work when it comes to the math.
I think the experiment is 1) drop a ll and build a tower. 2) restore. 3) drop a hl and build a tower. I bet the gold lost is fairly close, perhaps more lost to the hl. But as established you need far fewer hl towers to get the stats, so my guess is less plunder loss for hl towers. Good points though on how long to make up the tower cost vs the plunder loss.
@Monster_Lo-Carb, Each changeling watchtower reduces total gold made by about 615k /- 30k (at least for an HLBC attack build - for a big Hansel like yourself, this will probably be around 450k, but the value of your assassinates will go down as well so I think end results would be the same) Bulldozing 5 watchtowers would give you a net increase of 3.5 mil per hit. A CoE contributes about 520k /- 20k. So bulldozing 5 of those means you lose 2.6 mil per hit.
@Sensi - dropping 1 of 10 lowland towers showed total gold to go up by 200k. Do you know how much it went down for you when you added your last tower?