Okay will probably do something like:
- Slightly increase elephant cargo
- take franks bonus back to 50%
- make a tech to upgrade a dark age tower

i agree,defence strategy has changed alot!!
maya is not good anymore cause the best strategy is to spam power towers and everybody can do it!!

my opinion to rebalance the game is to up the power towers cost so that defensive civs will be able to choose different ways to defend than 100% power towers!! and franks would be less advantaged

oops ... as screenshot shows i was in castle age .... lol ... forgive me ...

Is power towers the most common strat? would slightly increase the price or build time, will be hard to get right though.

i was about to comment the same as now the common stratergy is to spam power towers with few axe tower in mid .i cant see rapids and chukonu towers like before ......power tower owening the game it would be great if cost of power imcrease like rapids and chokonu

I think I will go with a price around 35 stone, IMO they are so good because of the low price so it needs to stay below the average. Should probably keep frank bonus at 75% if im going to be increasing the standard price.

Power towers are easily defeated if you have a solid forager and a solid slinger with the mindset of rushing. Its just so uncommon to have two people like this on the same page. A 20k+ hp dino 2 rush is very difficult for power towers to eliminate *unless spans*.

And to answer your question directly power tower spamming has become the most popular strategy.

Promote the "rush effect" is a good idea.

Proposal:

[*] There are 40 levels/waves. Additional auto speed on 5, 10,15,20,25,30 and 35th level/wave. +2% every 5th level/wave. 6 bushes with 8% bonus and 2 bushes with 9% bonus. Speed will lower the "power tower effect/spaming". And nothing else must be changed. Doubleplus: it will promote the using of other tower types

[*] Boost foraging at start. Build University for 500 wood and get +25% foraging speed for free (disabled for teutz/teutz uni only 300 wood). The 1st 20 min of the game are so boring .... And the game will be faster ...

[*] maya -50% for axe towers (50 wood) instead dark age towers for free (basics are free for all now)

[*] brits get to normal +10ap a addtional +10ap for every tower upgrade in university (power tower, axe tower etc).

There are no updates needed from an editing the map viewpoint to promote rushing. I mean you could edit things to make it slightly easier or to make the beginning faster. But without the edits people can still rush a power tower strategy effectively.
Its just a math problem. You need to know what you need to accomplish and what sort of income you need to be collecting to pull it off. Power towers are only popular because people see how effective they are to the standard foraging times. But once more people learn how to work at maximum efficiency *or close to it* you will begin to see less double power tower strategies. Most slings seem to come 1:05-1:10+... most foragers start at a similar time. If you can learn how to sling at 55:00-1:00 and start foraging around 1:00 with the same percentages as most have at 1:05-1:10 you will see great results v a power tower strategy. When rushing you save your gold for essential technologies instead of saving it for all technologies.

I also agree about the foraging taking slightly to long @ start. But I can't see a better way of doing it unless you wanted to make the earlier waves come faster or made them more difficult.

Mayans would be to strong. Could just 3 defenders with Mayans going axe and never lose before mega rams.

I really think +10 is fine. Easy to get fast resources and +10 AP in imperial can be very expensive late game. Another civ that power towers has hurt but like Mayans I think both bonuses are ok.

ok. I am understanding your point of view.

But why change franks bonus ? Or change the price for power tower ?

This is franks only plus. And how many times franks are not part of the game ! Its the same plus as turks goldmining bonus. but no one saying turks are owerpowered ... but they are !

Power tower spaming with other civs is very hard. That requires experience plus a strong economy plus a good defender partner.

And sorry ... but mayas bonus is s... now. basics are free. accurse towers cheap. So where is the plus for maya ? Building fire towers/keeps instead basics ? Every bonus of other civ is better ...

may be a dark age tower technology will change it ....

here is a example for owerpowered turks. +100% more gold !

Teams are chinese (blue), huns (green), turks (teal), mongols (orange) vs japanese, teutz, koreans, franks.

Our foraging was much slower, but we win cause we had u.a. franks/japs bonus. And we dont using only power tower. It was a combination of power tower/castle age/imp towers

Heres another idea: switch bombards with power tower so bombard is feudal age and power is castle. Altho they have the same icon so would be quite anoying for awhile.

good idea !

Add BBT upgrades in university (like these you do in TDI - faster shooting) instead these useless onager upgrades ? Disable tower building @ spawn ?

@ ForgiveMe

... skilled teams will ever play till ram waves as you had seen in our last game ...

Is the upgraded onager tower not very good?