The main priority is the farmland. Once we get that, we can recruit more people – hopefully finding a scientist among them – and then see about some research. The only research path I’ve really pursued is lookout towers to machinegun nests. I’m not really sure about the other branches. Any suggestions?
A second hospital can definitely come in handy. An injured character will heal up faster if he’s got a hospital slot. I’ve often had more than one injured character! And if you look at the layout…
…that second hospital, the lab, and the South Mall are arranged perfectly to give us a nice neat square layout with compact frontage. We’ll eventually have two malls, each fortified for extra defense. That’s the mid- to long-term goal.
Unless the iOS version of the game is different, I don’t think that’s the case. Finding definitive explanations for how the game works is hard, but I’ve read several hint guides for the game in its various forms and not one of them has suggested a value to having a second hospital beyond having an extra one in case the first gets overrun at some point. From what I understand the only value of the hospital is when you get the illness event - in that case you only need one. Characters that are injured from a zombie attack don’t go to the hospital, they hang out in a housing square.
Maybe other people can comment on it, but in the games I’ve played I’ve never seen any advantage to having more then one hospital.
Injured characters have to sit in a residential building for three turns to heal up. If they have a hospital to sit in, I seem to recall they heal up more quickly. I could be misremembering.
By the way, where are these hint guides you’re talking about? I can use all the help I can get!
-Tom
EDIT: On second thought, I think I’d like to avoid strategy guides. One of the real delights for me was discovering how lookout towers and machinegun nests worked. It’s a bit like playing through X-Com for the first time. I’d like for the game to keep its surprises for a bit longer, even if it means losing. :)
I mentioned above that I always research food preservation first, since it helps in the scavenging phase, so it’s kind of pointless to get it once you have a farm-based food economy. Later levels in the food tier reduce crop failures (which I’ve only had happen to me once), but eventually also double per-farm food output.
I think the zombie danger decrease is along the signaling branch, oddly. It’s a long time until machine gun towers, and some of the other stuff definitely helps in the early game. Of course, your strategy may be different, but I rarely have enough space to sacrifice something for a watch tower early on, and once you fortify those malls, you’ll probably have enough defense bonus for a while.
No, you’re right. I’ve specifically seen injured characters healing for 2 turns in hospital spaces rather than three in housing. It might be specific to the iOS version, which I believe expands the game over and above even the most recent Flash version.
That may be the case then. My only experience is with the flash versions, where there are other things missing as well. Most of the hint and strategy stuff I’ve seen concerns the flash versions.
I’ve only played the flash version (Rebuild 2) but when I had someone get injured they went to the hospital for 2 turns, but without one went to housing for 3 turns.
As for research, I only noticed 3 branches and only explored 2. The food branch increases scavenging gains, then increases food production by one and prevents crop failure, and then doubles farm output. The zombie killing branch increases zombie killing, makes missions away from base less dangerous, and I forget what the 3rd upgrade did. The other branch increases the chance of recruiting people at level 1, but by the time I look into it, my leader had 10 leadership so it was moot…
This all may be different in the mobile version though.
You can also set up people in police stations and fortified malls to be on guard duty which I believe reduces zombie population by small amounts and gives like .2 soldier skill per turn. Manning a farm gives scavenging skill.
Signalling gets you the following: lvl1 - phone line to the trader from one type of building ; lvl2 - 2 scientist show up to join, lvl3 : random chance of other people showing up, due to hearing your radio message.
I think the 3rd tier for zombie killing is that you learn to setup traps, but I’ve gotten trap messages after combat without this tech. The 1st tier of zombie killing is what I always go for 1st since it’s fast and I’m always desperate to reduce the threat level.
I think hospitals also help with infections, but that may be something else.
I need to spend more time with this game–I’ve only played easy and “medium” difficulty so far…it’s completely different. Although easy mode helps one get into the game, it also “spoils” all the stuff (because one can play past the winning ending and keep doing all of the research, all of the story lines, etc.).
Like the write-up, just wish I had an easier way to find it. Just like the real game, it’s dragging out!
I’m unconvinced that perimeter distance (or shape) has anything to do with the game…is this false?
Your threat level is decided by the amount of zombies directly beside your perimeter. So expanding increases the number of bordering squares to count zombies in. Expanding in strange shapes increases this further
Quartertown would have gone from 121 surrounding zombies on day 16 to 135 surrounding zombies on day 17. But not all heavily armed gangs are bad guys.
We have 119 zombies in the area now. Thanks, Riffs!
Day 16 results:
Business as usual
Day 17 missions:
Jeansberg and Kyrios killing zombies in the fields
Tim James tending crops
Ed Solomon reclaiming a hospital
Jarrodhk, Nixxter, Delta, and Shieldwolf on defense
Timely too, as I picked up Rebuild last week during the “Because We May” sale for $0.99 and have been addicted to it ever since. I spent damn near every free non-Ascension iPad moment over the holiday weekend saving Cincinnati and then Tampa (two cities I call home) from the Zed. I love that victory in one game allows you to carry over a few survivors into the next, while also upping the difficulty. FUN!
Only certain buildings. Malls and something else I forget but that’s also double-size. Police stations and upgraded watchtowers also contribute defense rating.
I notice that if I put people into a police station, the buildings adjacent to it are fortified. So during a zombie horde attack, I just pumped in more people into the police station. That way, I can withstand any horde attacks, well, theoretically, because in this game, you always die!
The danger tab includes a threat entry that shows how many zombies are in the surrounding territories.
Habibi, the developer says that staffed police stations make it less likely during an attack that you’ll lose adjacent tiles. However, staffing a police station doesn’t change your defensive value.
