Reducing heights of covers of topological spaces

For a countable cover $\mathcal{A}$ of a compact (Hausdorff) space $Y$ with closed subsets we define its height, which is a measure of its complexity and generalizes the notion of the Cantor-Bendixson rank. If $X$ is another compact space and $f : X \to Y$ is continuous, the cover can be pulled back to $X$ and its height may drop, but can never increase. We inspect how much the height can be reduced as $Y$ and $\mathcal{A}$ are fixed while $X$ and $f$ vary.