The upgrade is needed for ZW.
The starter need to add equal amount of heros on both sides. So when teams are 2v1 so 1 can have 2 heros otherwise the main spot is out of reach in 2 hero vs 1.
The tower gets more hp and firepower and range with average mex upgrade level. Ideally you put something like storage besides mexes, and when you upgrade mexes, you send upgrade to tower, with couple upgrades avialble like upgrade armor, upgrade range, upgrade reload, the thing that comes from

czesio mod that often is used in ZW.
At start all mexes are on CTRL-1 so you can press 1 and upgrade them mid hero play, so you dont have to click back and forth when you play at middle with hero. Also would be cool to have original constr as 0 at start, to pull off other constr in case you dont wanna feed that way to experience heros or something.