Towers Encourage Problematic Gameplay Patterns

I don't really mind doing the towers themselves, it is the gameplay patterns they encourage that are problematic. You are incentivised to clear out as many 'bad' maps as possible before putting any tablets into towers, so that the tablet effects land on the 'correct/optimal' nodes. The main problem with this is that as you are clearing these bad maps (which feels like a chore and is not very engaging), you are constantly finding more towers and more bad maps on the edges of your current setup area. This incentivises you to basically endlessly clear bad maps, or at some point pull the trigger and accept suboptimal juicing so that you can stop doing that and start doing good/fun maps. Either way doesn't feel the best.

It seems like to break this pattern, something like tablets applying their content to all maps in range might be good, rather than limited to 5-10. This way you can put tablets in towers as you go, and the bad maps will still be somewhat juiced and feel a bit less crappy to run, and you can hit the good maps as soon as you've put a tablet in all the towers in range, instead of only after clearing every bad map in a 2-3 screen radius as well. I don't think it would be particularly OP to have extra content on the bad maps you are using to travel, since they are bad and thus not fully juiced. Even if it is OP, surely that can then be adjusted and balanced around.