I don't know why all these people are whining about tower builds AND hansel builds having special protection that all other builds do not have. Get over it and get a life. I do not have a problem with it. But I do have a problem with calling this "Defender too weak", which should mean zero troops and spies. Devs, please call it what it is. Please! Please CHANGE "Defender too weak" in tower and hansel builds to "Defender too good and too smart. You can't touch their full troops" Dtw means dtw.
It is part of the game. The drawbacks being the negative impact on plunder as you grow. Once HLBC tr5, the big advantage over growing players is that u can convert to Towers and become almost untouchable. It's part of the game.
I would like to clarify something, Tower Builds taking advantage of the DTW exploit has nothing at all to do with their BFA. When CanadianGal first referenced her high BFA making this type of build effective it was in the context of going up against non-Tower Builds outside of an Estoc's Trials environment. Her point was other Builds could readily break her when her Spies were not pinned if she did not also have such a high BFA with which to bolster her Defense. In an Estoc's Trial lasting only four hours however keeping your Spies pinned is relatively easy, making you practically invincible, with only Assassinations being your Achilles' Heel. There are downsides to this build strat, but not in a four-hour Estoc's Trial. Tower Builds finding a target to hit in an Estoc's Trial with Equipment, Pots, and Mithril Spells activated is far from an issue. And comments about the decreased earnings become moot when Clans full of these Tower Builds are carrying Level Five Estoc's Edge Bonuses. Whether you are on the Allies Leaderboard or carry a single Ally, folks fielding a Tower Builld in an Estoc's Trial have a significant advantage should this DTW exploit not be addressed.
In response to Game's well thought out post (which is completely spot on, IMHO), the issue of Osw then becomes a moot point. After all, pinning a strip target in osw just closes the strip. The advantages to a tower build in osw is the heavy spy defense (note: I have spy towers as well for this very reason, and set up equip for max spy def during osw). Should a tower build osw, they are undoubtedly a tough nut to crack, as they should be. *IF* these towers were intended to protect one's gold, that would be one thing, but they are being used more predominantly to exploit the loophole Game referenced.
Agree wholeheartedly. Sitting out of wars until I either have the right build, the devs do something, or I get bored and move on to a different pastime.
I wouldn't advocate sitting out wars entirely. The benefits of winning far outweigh the negatives. Fact of the matter is that tower build mechanics directly relate to the PollyAnna/24dude situation, which is part of the reason I brought it up. The Devs added an extra object to manipulate in the highlands on top of the existing lowland code which was tweaked due to the early days of Tower Farms. That situation saw two players stripped of over 100k battle wins each. As such, the Tower Build was created. Without significant stats outside of Towers in the lowlands, the mechanic meant to prevent one exploit has led to another. This often happens in object oriented programming, as the objects in question don't directly "speak" with one another. Realistically, the patch isn't overly difficult, it just requires that the objects communicate with one another via a third object before referencing the main code in order to take full build into account. This can be achieved client-side or server side, though server-side would likely increase lag slightly, while client-side could significantly bloat the source code. Those are the only logistical drawbacks.
Joe, it's more the Ghandi approach. People spent a long time doing different builds. Now a combination of 2 builds dominates for mith due to your points. All of my time and mith goes to feeding the exploit. Congrats to those that figured it out and had the resources to take advantage of it. I can either fuel their ability to exploit or begin working towards saving in that direction. I will war, just not in Estoc where you have a known disadvantage. In older war terms, don't choose a bad battleground. It is a valid strategy to choose when to fight and when not to.
The devs should reply to this thread they wrote on 12/24/12 on kaw update "We will start posting regular updates to the forum to address all aspects surrounding Kingdoms at War. This way, everyone can know what we are up to, and there is a easy way for the community to voice their concerns in a public manner. " Maybe this matter should have been posted on there official ee feedback thread but I feel it merits it's own thread. But the devs silence tells a story another oversite that they don't know the answer to of there own making.
I find tower average tower builds easy as hell to KO. I can take them down with my 6m spy, bearing in mind he is pretty tanked with equip. Only builds like Ryan and rocket from YAFI are the problem. But they make 9m a hit on haunt. Hugeeeee sacrifice
I hope devs respond on this topic soon... Because many people are paying the sacrifice of switching to these builds and will be peeved if the mech. are changed. In retrospect: Beta wars weren't really a beta test. I think the Estoc system was rushed into effect without giving us the flexibility to TRULY test different builds against each other (hansel vs tower, etc) under the new mechanics. And since the Estoc mechanics haven't been implimented into regular system wars, we still aren't able to test this stuff meticulously. If we could, we woulda found a way to beat the tower build or we woulda spoken up about its unfair advantage sooner.
As has been said by others, unless you have huge bfa, which few have, this build is rather useless. new hlbc spies will still own it. And if you are an attackbuild with 4m in spydef then you have just gone of the rails and at best you are now nothing more then a potburner, no different from the 1000s of small spybuilds. The very few exceptions are a few lb accounts with that kind of stats.
The only ones that support the tower build not being changed (fixed) are the ones that probably want it for themselves.