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| “ | Stronger than Watch Tower, with greater fighting ability. | ” |
| —Age of Empires II description | ||
The Guard Tower is a tower in Age of Empires II that becomes available once the Castle Age is reached. Guard Towers are good against infantry and archers, but are quickly overpowered by siege weapons and cavalry charges.
Guard Towers are available to all civilizations except for the Cumans, Goths, Huns, and Sicilians.
Tactics and placement[]
This upgrade is well worth it over the Watch Tower. It increases hit points by 480, which makes it much more durable, as well as increasing melee armor by +1 and attack by +2. It does not cost any Stone that would otherwise detract from building more towers, although this does require a sizeable amount of wood, partially because of the requirement for a University. Consider also researching Masonry at the same building for further increased armor and hit points.
Towers are an essential part of any kind of fortification. Guard Towers are very useful and valuable for defending the player's settlement against enemy raiding parties. Turtling strategies usually require the use of several Guard Towers among the use of walls and Castles in order to create a strong fortification. Guard Towers should be placed in choke points to make them more effective or behind cliffs or forests. Guard Towers also work better if placed within the range of each other or within the range of a friendly Castle since both buildings will provide cover fire for each other. Also using walls and Gates will protect them to some extent from rams. In maps like Archipelago or Islands it is a wise idea to have several Guard Towers near the shoreline in order to take down potentially dangerous enemy fleets and give some support to the player's own fleet near the coast.
Offensively, Guard Towers can also be used for front line support as in a retreat they can hold troops that can be healed once garrisoned and they also provide cover fire for offensively placed military buildings if they are placed near an enemy location. In this regard they are better than a Castle since they are cheaper and are built quicker.
Guard Towers are highly vulnerable to long range siege units and rams, so to protect them the player should have melee cavalry near to their fortifications, or some Fire Ships that can deal with the Cannon Galleons in case of towers placed near the shore. Garrisoned foot archers and Villagers increase the number of arrows Guard Towers fire, thus increasing the damage. Up to five (10 for the Teutons) foot-soldiers (infantry and archers, although infantry do not increase the firepower) may be garrisoned in a Guard Tower. Garrisoned units slowly regenerate lost hit points.
Further statistics[]
| Building strengths and weaknesses | |
|---|---|
| Strong vs. | Ships, archers, weak melee units |
| Weak vs. | Siege weapons, Tarkans, Huskarls, War Elephants, Cannon Galleons |
| Upgrades | |
| Hit points |  Masonry (+10%) Architecture (+10%) Great Wall (+30%, Chinese only)
|
| Attack |  Fletching (+1) Bodkin Arrow (+1) Bracer (+1) Chemistry (+1) Arrowslits (+2) Heated Shot (+125% attack against ships) Yeomen (+2, Britons only) Yasama (adds two extra arrows, Japanese only)
|
| Range | Fletching (+1) Bodkin Arrow (+1) Bracer (+1) Eupseong (+2, Koreans only) Murder Holes (eliminates minimum range)
|
| Firing rate | Stronghold (+25%, Celts only)
|
| Accuracy |  Ballistics (hit moving targets)
|
| Armor | Masonry (+1/+1, +3 building armor) Architecture (+1/+1, +3 building armor)
|
| Line of Sight |  Town Watch (+4) Town Patrol (+4)
|
| Conversion defense |  Faith Heresy
|
| Construction speed |  Treadmill Crane (+20%)
|
| Other |  Herbal Medicine (garrisoned units heal faster), Crenellations (enables garrisoned infantry to shoot arrows, Teutons only) Detinets (Replaces 40% stone cost with wood, Slavs only)
|
| Upgrades | |