Sacred Haven of Debauchery

The weakness of the Tower in tournaments isn't due to poor design or the high cost of Titans (although that does play a role, of course). It's due to the completely insane build tree, which forces you to scrape together every possible resource to get mages that aren't particularly useful in the first week, and if you're lucky, build a Knight in the Castle, or even a Fortress. And there's a lack of decent melee units (there's only one decent late-game Knight stack and fat, but slow, Golems; the rest of the units die with half a sneeze). IMHO.

In the oligophrenic, low-IQ third game, where the masterpiece of game design is the autistic spamming of archers on neutral creatures, mediocre Imps perform a mediocre role in a mediocre Castle, and the overly casual, non-damaging Liches simply add broken mechanics to the already over-powered Necropolis. That's all you need to know about the design of AoE units.

Even though I love the third game, this post really captures the essence of the balance between the Castles. I upvoted it.