ā | Powerful attack with extensive line of sight. Attack bonus vs. ships. | ā |
—Age of Empires II description |
The Bombard Tower is a gunpowder tower in Age of Empires II that becomes available once the Imperial Age is reached and the Bombard Tower technology is researched. The Bombard Tower has an extremely powerful attack, but its projectiles travel quite slowly.
Availability chart[]
Available | Unavailable |
---|---|
- x means that the civilizations gets fully upgradeable Bombard Towers. The technologies being considered here are Architecture, Bracer and, Heated Shot.
- + means that the civilization gets some civilization or team bonus or a unique technology that benefits the Bombard Tower.
Tactics and placement[]
Towers are an essential part of any kind of fortification. Compared to the Keep, Bombard Towers deal significantly more damage, especially against targets with high pierce armor. However, this is with the drawback of a slower projectile speed, making them much easier to dodge. Overall, the Bombard Tower is a significant improvement over the Keep. When going for a Wonder or Relic win, Bombard Towers are very valuable when included in the defensive structures.
A Bombard Tower has 120 attack, enough to one-hit-kill any infantry or archer and two-hit-kill any other unit that is not an elephant, ram, or Turtle Ship. However, they can be outranged by Trebuchets, Cannon Galleons, and Bombard Cannons. So essentially, these three units and the aforementioned rams are the only units Bombard Towers have to fear.
Bombard Towers should be placed in choke points to make them more effective or behind cliffs or forests. They work better if placed within range of each other, regular towers, or Castles since those buildings will provide cover fire for each other. Using walls protects them to some extent from rams, but against rams, the help of melee units is needed. On maps like Archipelago and Islands, it is a wise idea to have several Bombard Towers near the shoreline to take down potentially dangerous enemy fleets and give some support to the player's fleet near the coast.
Offensively, Bombard Towers can also be used for front-line support as their high attack makes them very dangerous to approach. In this regard, they are better than a Castle since they are cheaper and are created quicker, while also featuring a high attack. Bombard Towers can even be used like a siege support building, if a player is attacking an enemy location they can take some Villagers to create several Bombard Towers outside and around an opponent's fortifications to take them down with the support of units. Employing the Bombard Tower offensively also has the side effect of letting the team gain and retain map control.
Elite Longbowmen also outrange Bombard Towers, but deal very little damage and are a much smaller threat.
Turkish Bombard Towers have an extra long range and can only be outranged by Trebuchets, Elite Cannon Galleons, and Turkish Bombard Cannons, making them even harder to deal with.
The Byzantines can research Greek Fire to allow their Bombard Towers to deal 25% blast damage in a small radius.
Further statistics[]
Building strengths and weaknesses | |
---|---|
Strong vs. | Most units, buildings* |
Weak vs. | Rams, units with longer range, massed units |
Upgrades | |
Hit points | Masonry (+10%) Architecture (+10%) Great Wall (+30%, Chinese only) |
Attack | Fletching (+1) Bodkin Arrow (+1) Bracer (+1) Chemistry (+1) Heated Shot (+125% attack against ships) Greek Fire (0.5 blast radius, 25% damage, Byzantines only) |
Range | Fletching (+1) Bodkin Arrow (+1) Bracer (+1) Murder Holes (eliminates minimum range) Artillery (+2, Turks only) |
Accuracy | Ballistics (hit moving targets) Arquebus (hit moving targets, Portuguese only) |
Armor | Masonry (+1/+1, +3 building armor) Architecture (+1/+1, +3 building armor) |
Line of Sight | Town Watch (+4) Town Patrol (+4) |
Conversion defense | Devotion (+1 min, +1 max) Faith (+4 min, +4 max) Heresy (die upon getting converted) |
Construction speed | Treadmill Crane (+20%) |
Other | Herbal Medicine (garrisoned units heal faster) |
Civilization bonuses[]
- Byzantines: Bombard Towers have +40% hit points. Town Watch and Town Patrol are free.
- Chinese: Technologies that benefit Bombard Towers are 5%/10%/15% cheaper in the Feudal/Castle/Imperial Age.
- Italians: University technologies that benefit Bombard Towers are 33% cheaper.
- Koreans: The Bombard Tower technology is free (requires Chemistry to be researched beforehand).
- Spanish: Bombard Towers are built 30% faster. Fletching, Bodkin Arrow, and Bracer cost no gold. Researching technologies that benefit Bombard Towers provides 20 gold each.
- Teutons: Bombard Towers can garrison up to 10 units. Murder Holes and Herbal Medicine are free.
- Turks: Chemistry is free. The Bombard Tower technology is 50% cheaper.
Team bonuses[]
- Bulgarians: Fletching, Bodkin Arrow, and Bracer are researched 80% faster.
- Georgians: Bombard Towers cost 25% fewer resources to repair.
- Lithuanians: Devotion, Faith, Herbal Medicine, and Heresy are researched 20% faster.
- Malians: University technologies that benefit Bombard Towers are researched 80% faster.
- Portuguese: Technologies that benefit Bombard Towers are researched 25% faster.
Changelog[]
The Age of Kings[]
- Bombard Towers deal melee damage.
- Bombard Towers have an attack bonus of +7 against camels because they share an armor class with ships.
- Bombard Towers have 92% accuracy, and 0% dispersion, which means they have 100% accuracy practically.
The Conquerors[]
- Herbal Medicine introduced.
- Heresy introduced.
- With patch 1.0b, Bombard Towers now deal pierce damage. Even though it does not make much of a difference in many cases, it makes them ineffective against rams.
- Turks: Artillery introduced.
The Forgotten[]
- Chinese: Great Wall introduced.
- Koreans: Bombard Towers are built 33% faster.
The African Kingdoms[]
- Camels are moved out of the ship armor class, and the Bombard Towers lose their attack bonus against them. They now have +1 attack against them.
- Portuguese: Arquebus increases the projectile speed of Bombard Towers by +0.5.
Rise of the Rajas[]
- Koreans: With patch 5.8, Bombard Towers are built 5% faster.
- Portuguese: Arquebus has a smaller effect on gunpowder units, the speed modifier is reduced by 75%.
- Portuguese: With patch 5.2, the Arquebus speed modifier for Bombard Towers is removed.
- Portuguese: With patch 5.7, the Arquebus speed modifier for Bombard Towers is +0.2.
Definitive Edition[]
- Koreans: Bombard Towers are no longer built faster.
Dynasties of India[]
- Byzantines: With update 81058, Greek Fire gives Bombard Towers +0.5 blast radius which does pure 5 damage, and a new fire projectile. However, since Bombard Towers have 92% accuracy, their blast attack fails to do damage sometimes. With hotfix 82587, their accuracy was increased to 100%.
The Mountain Royals[]
- With update 99311, Devotion was introduced.
History[]
ā | By the end of the Middle Ages the development of cannon had changed military engineering by making standard castles obsolete. Their high vertical walls were particularly susceptible to direct cannon fire aimed at their base. Military engineers responded by building new structures that were less susceptible to cannon fire and by mounting cannon within these structures to augment their defensive positions along coasts, at important river crossings, and at other strategic points. These new bombard towers swept the approaches to harbors and towns, making them more difficult to attack. | ā |
—Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings manual |
Trivia[]
- Because Aztecs and Mayans do not have access to Bombard Towers, there was no design for the Native American Bombard Tower in The Conquerors and if given one in the Scenario Editor (or via the Full Tech Tree), it would have the Central European style. However if a game like this was started, it would not load or the game would crash completely. This was fixed in The Forgotten, and the Native American civilizations got their own Bombard Tower design. The same happened in regards to the Stable, but was fixed too.
- The Bombard Tower model of the Native American civilizations is inspired by the Palace Observation Tower in Palenque.
- Bombard Towers usually fire one cannonball. Teutonic Bombard Towers can garrison up to 10 units, and garrisoning 10 Hand Cannoneers gives the Bombard Tower a second projectile. If 10 Elite Janissaries of a Turkish ally are garrisoned, three cannonballs are fired. Since update 50292, if 10 fully upgraded Elite Chu Ko Nu of a Chinese ally are garrisoned, four cannonballs are fired.
- The Armenians and Tatars are the only civilizations that can build Bombard Towers, but not Keeps.
- In The Conquerors and the HD Edition, the Spanish are the only civilization using Western European architecture that can build Bombard Towers. After the Spanish were changed to the Mediterranean building set in the Definitive Edition, as well as in The Age of Kings, the Western European Bombard Tower could only be seen in all tech or campaign mode. Now the Western European Bombard Tower is unique to the Burgundians.
- This also happened to the Southeast Asian and Middle Eastern Bombard Tower, which became unique to the Malay (as the Vietnamese building set was changed to the East Asian architecture) and Turks (as the Byzantines building set was changed to the Mediterranean architecture) respectively.
- Before the Definitive Edition, the Eastern European Bombard Tower was only seen in Full Tech mode, but then became unique to the Lithuanians. Now the Bohemians and Poles share it as well.
- Likewise, the Central Asian Bombard Tower is unique to the Tatars.
- The Bombard Tower for the Western European architecture is darker than the Keep.
- The Bombard Tower for the East Asian architecture is shorter than the Keep and has a black roof.
- Because Ethiopians and Malians lack access to the Bombard Tower, the African Bombard Tower appear only in Full Tech Tree games and campaigns. Native Americans do not have access to gunpowder units at all.
- Before Dynasties of India, there was no civilization which used the South Asian Bombard Tower model. This is no longer the case, as the South Asian Bombard Tower is unique to the Dravidians.
- Among all buildings and units with the gunpowder armor class, only the Bombard Tower's attack is increased by Chemistry. It is also one of two objects (with Persian Castles with Citadels) which benefit from Chemistry to not have a flaming projectile when it is researched.