Been playing very easy games to get settled (22% and 30% difficulty). I had two promising games go south when a lateish game horde (day 100+) showed up in a not as well defended location and broke through even as I was reinforcing with a large (and largely veteran) ranger squad as well as Titans. Places where I had forgotten to turn all the Ballistas into Executors. And in the second game I actually missed the horde notification until it was too late.
It’s a fun game. I wish there were more randomized upgrade choices like the mayor selection. I quite like those.
Yeah, I tried one do-over on my last game but it still didn’t work out. I just want it to be built in.
Next game I’m going heavier on the troops, and leave more paths open to be able to move them around. I’ll get that 22% win yet. I just want a new map so I have have a little brighter scenery.
I got my first two wins - 22% only so still being pretty conservative.
The last win was really bad as I had this really narrow gap but the game wouldn’t let me build because I was too close to the edge of the map! This took one retry & some creative building to hold it. And the thing was the first time I saw it, I was like "oh cool, landlocked area only accessible by this little bitty area. I can defend that easy.
This game really, really needs a color blind option. I can not see where I am getting attacked unless it highlights it with the blinking ‘[ x ]’ square brackets and they only show for a small bit.
I had to restart one game because it was near the beginning and I was getting attacked & with only my 4 rangers + soldier, couldn’t see them. Because I can’t rotate the map and can’t see the red on the mini-map, it was hiding behind a tent & we all know what happens when the tent goes in the early game. Re-start.
Stone is the most important. I’m always running low even with advanced quarry’s. Space management with power & food is really hard, hell the hole game is hard. This is crazy but it’s crazy good once you start to get it.
Trying 75% and I gave up after 4 bad map starts. Just completely fractured and/or putting me in a canyon with no way to expand. Tried to make 2 of them work, but as expected, didn’t work.
I wonder if map seeds get more difficult with increasing difficulty or if I just happened to hit 4 random bad seeds in a row.
God how this game needs a seed generator so we can share seed starts aka Minecraft.
Came here to say the same thing, took about a dozen tries but I beat 22% last night. The key was to stay mobile and push expansion beyond where I’d been settling with previously. That really got my economy moving. In my winning game, I had cleaned out both ToDs on the map and the resources from them really helped as well (as did the early Lucy I got from a mayor).
That said, the main part of the final wave did break through, and it was only because of my mobile army and the extra defenses that I put up around my command center that I was able to kill off that last of the chubbies and spitters.
Well, I’m done. I’ve bitched & moaned about having crappy maps, finally rolled a great map. I had 3 city centers with banks & markets, had 70-80% of the map completely covered, I had about 12 titans, 15 or so thanatos (1-2 at every stop), had 1-2 executors + shock towers and a shitload of ballistas.
Completely over-run.
At 55%
Cool concept, but if that doesn’t win it, then this game isn’t for me.
EDIT: I’ll share my final saves before the wave if anyone is interested & tell me how this can be improved.
At that level there probably was 8-12 choke points in your defenses for that final assault, perhaps more. A couple of titans and a thanatos with a couple of towers per gate is not going to stop that horde. If you want to post a screenshot of your defenses I will be happy to supply some advice but it sounds like you simply did not have enough firepower.
You are going to need 3-4 executors, multiple wall depths and a host of soldiers backed up by titans to stop any given wave. My goal is 3 executors, 20+ soldiers and 4 titans behind 3 layers of walls at any choke point with any nearby ballistas a bonus. Notice I did not mention traps. Forget them. I would make a couple of Lucifers (remember, they need towers because they do not shoot through walls) before making traps.
I also try to have a retreat area if possible to stand the horde up against another series of 2, more interior walls before they get to any of my houses. If the horde is still pretty large as they are bursting through the last of the 3 walls I abandon my prepared defenses and move my 20+ soldiers and titans back to the interior wall. Hopefully another wall segment held and I can also bring the remains of the defenders of that choke point in to bolster my defenses. In that final horde you need to buy as much time as possible by having defenses in depth. Some choke points will hold (hopefully). Others will not. You need to give the troops from the successful choke points time to move to the breakthroughs during this last siege and you need to give them a place where they have some time to clear the horde before becoming overwhelmed themselves.
With the maps the way they are, it’s a challenge. You have to expand to get a housing district and when that falls, you get 16 x more zombies that just accentuates it.
So I tried it again, going back & scrapping all the shock towers & building a lot more executors with my defenses back to the original walls.
Still overwhelmed. But I did notice something that I didn’t catch the first time through - that ballistas can be upgraded to Executors. I don’t have the temerity to go back 2-3 hours and refine the strategy around that.
It does show the game is woefully unbalanced as from other guides I’ve read, it’s executors and titans and ignore everything else. But it is in EA, so hopefully they’ll balance it more and give us more toys to work with that will actually do damage.
Thank you for sharing and here are a couple of ideas.
Why are your walls still wood? Those should have been upgraded to the far more sturdy stone walls long ago.
Putting another layer of wall one space out can buy a bit of extra time for your executors and snipers to do more work.
Narrow choke point defenses are okay but too narrow prevents you from building proper defenses. 20 soldiers can be quite effective in such an area though, so bolster these areas with a squad. Snipers are effective but cannot fire fast enough to prevent the horde from pushing through.
In the above screenshot I think I would have deleted that isolated farm and dropped the walls back a bit. By putting a tower at the end of the farm, one in that nook formed by the rocks and another across the water the towers would have worked to support each other. Right now each gap is sort of on its own. A lucifer in a tower next to that power plant dead center of the screen could have done some serious damage. Put a backup wall and a soldier squad and the horde could have dashed itself forever against that area without a breakthrough. On the right side that one ballista that is further south is simply out of place to do anything. I would have moved that wall back a bit too and then stacked my defenses in the narrower area. You have that right angle on the right-most wall segment and that is an unneeded point of vulnerability.
And I agree the game is hard and needs a bit more balance. The Thanotos unit does not seem to be very useful. Shock towers also need a boost. I hope this helps.
I think they (Thanotos) are pretty critical. As is setting your defenses to attack the high level stuff, not the closest stuff. Kill the spitters at all costs.
They aren’t. Just a few of the interior ones were? Which I upgrade last. (again, I’m scraping for every cent / stone I can get)
Yes, I’ve seen others do that. I think it’s a good idea. Need to budget for 4 squares in front when you’re laying out your base.
I tried soldiers, they are just so squishy (spitters just decimate them) it’s hard to keep a squad around for very long. Whereas I can leave a squad of snipers while I’m focused elsewhere and they’re fine.
I saw a video of a guy who used nothing but 8-10 lucifers to defend a choke point. No walls at all. Pretty impressive. I’m tempted to see how that works.
I’m am giving it another try - paying a lot more attention to how I’m going to defend, fall back than just expanding. Making two concentric hard-core barriers with the outer barrier just being a lucifer / thanatos sponge.
The financial support is there, hopefully they will really start improving it.
I have to keep reminding myself that they started this EA release much earlier than they planned because of the demand. but the units and structures need some major overhaul. It all feels very flat. The thing that gives me pause is their Road Map in the steam discussions does not seem to reflect this need. Instead it talks about new buildings and implies the units are in and working fine.
Great game, there is actually a lot of destroying / turning on and off buildings etc to be done if you really want to beat the later waves on higher difficulties. Once the last push is coming, destroying all farms, houses etc, and putting everything into building as many turrets and walls as you can is pretty much required to have the mobs move slow enough to kill them. There is some funny business that can be done with workers needed to build something, but not to keep it running. That is probably a bug that will be fixed/changed at some point.
My GOTY, which is weird because I usually don’t like games “like this”. I just like the pacing, and micro management is just low enough that it doesn’t put me to sleep or overwhelm me.
Lucifers won’t shoot through walls, but they will shoot through doors, which can set up some interesting funneling tricks.
Snipers in towers are great if they are set to “target highest level”, they can really help with those high hit point mobs. Towards the later rounds, you really do need a lot of AOE damage, and the priority for units tends to shift. It’s got an interesting progression.
Yeah that’s not really well defended, based on my experience. Btw, what difficulty was this? I skimmed but might have missed it. . .
You want not just the “outer buffer wall one space in front of the main wall” (which is helpful but not amazing), bot another set of double walls after the first layer of turrets. And then more turrets after that. And if possible, a third double wall and more turrets. A double layer will slow down end game hordes in mid to high pop density games and really do a good job of thinning them out. But you’ll need additional defenses elsewhere to win. A third outer layer can be nice but it may be too difficult without an absolutely killer economy. Especially since you can get more bang for your buck by concentrating defences at the command center and then building outward. No single layer of defenses will be very useful, ever. Even if a horde spreads out over a long wall section (and I’ve seen them do it), their still going to overwhelm the first layer no matter what you do.
I don’t see your command center, but this particular strategy has worked well for me. When it comes time to prepare for the final horde level everything around it. Build a bunch of Executors in a close perimeter, then double walls around them, then another layer of executors, then another layer of double walls. I move my troops within either the first or second section before sealing off; troops will just get overwhelmed elsewhere (although I’ve wanted to try packs of lucifers at choke points; I don’t think Thanatos will do it because those missles fire slow and they’ll still get overwhelmed). The titans will survive and do a lot of damage to anything that gets close to the command center. Remember, you only need to last until whatever the final day of the campaign is.
I’ve beaten Peaceful Lowlands (2nd map) at 34%. it wasn’t easy, now I need to do it at 50% or 60% to unlock the next map (if it’s 60% I am worried because that means a 120 day survival game and I’ve been doing 150. I need to expand more quickly).
I beat it at 75% key change in strategy was not upgrading the Ballista to Executors until day 80. In my previous game I’d been upgrading them as soon as I could and it really dragged down my income. I also had at least one thanatos at each entrance and Titans and snipers. Two double walls are inside the range of your turrets.
