Putting the 'role' back in role-playing games since 2002.
Donate to Codex
Good Old Games
  • Welcome to rpgcodex.net, a site dedicated to discussing computer based role-playing games in a free and open fashion. We're less strict than other forums, but please refer to the rules.

    "This message is awaiting moderator approval": All new users must pass through our moderation queue before they will be able to post normally. Until your account has "passed" your posts will only be visible to yourself (and moderators) until they are approved. Give us a week to get around to approving / deleting / ignoring your mundane opinion on crap before hassling us about it. Once you have passed the moderation period (think of it as a test), you will be able to post normally, just like all the other retards.

RTS They Are Billions - steampunk/zombie RTS from Lords of Xulima dev

Infinitron

I post news
Staff Member
Joined
Jan 28, 2011
Messages
97,236
Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
 

LESS T_T

Arcane
Joined
Oct 5, 2012
Messages
13,582
Codex 2014
Also update: https://steamcommunity.com/games/644930/announcements/detail/1667898845204173539

Big Update! The Six Wonders

4770c3a931a7e983984f0d1018a860259fed73fa.png


Greetings!

Here’s the teaser video we’ve prepared to announce The Six Wonders. Hope you like it!

The Six Wonders are the biggest and most amazing ones you can build for the colony. But, as mighty as they are, they’re also really expensive to build. Tons of resources are required for both researching and building them. In return, they grant very special features to the colony, and also increase the final score with extra victory points.

You can only build one of each kind in the same map. Building all of them can be challenging or almost impossible, but that's part of the strategy. If you have the resources to build just one, chose carefully which will suit your colony best, given the current map, your resources production...

The Lightning Spire

This portentous structure reaches toward the sky, capturing the energy of lightning for the colony. In addition, it extends the power supply, acting as a huge Tesla Tower.
  • Energy Supply: +800
  • Energy Transfer Radius: 30
  • Victory Points: +1500

The Atlas Transmutator

No one knows how it works, but this extraordinary and smoky metal spawn is capable of transforming common materials into precious oil.
  • Oil Supply: +40 (by transmutating 20 wood, 20 stone and 10 iron).
  • Victory Points: +2000

The Victorious

This unbreakable bunker stands as the most amazing symbol of the victory of humanity against the infected. It's a beacon of hope and courage for everyone in the colony.
  • Colonists Hope: +20% gold generation for the surrounding dwellings.
  • Unbreakable: Defenses Life 8000, Armor 10.
  • Victory Points: +2000

The Academy of Immortals

In this glorious academy, the most famous heroes train the army to battle with the skills and courage of experienced veteran soldiers.
  • All army units and new units trained are veteran.
  • Victory Points: +1000

The Crystal Palace

This magnificent architectural wonder generates its own climate control environment, where the best crops bloom and thrive, feeding the colony even in the most barren lands.
  • Food Supply +800 on any terrain.
  • Victory Points: +1500

The Silent Beholder

It’s the most precise and complex machine ever created. The Beholder is installed on top of the Command Center revealing the entire map. Nothing can escape its prodigious eye.
  • Reveals all the map and enemies permanently.
  • Victory Points: +1500

Finally, here goes a screenshot to show you how the Wonders look in the colony:

94d816cc77a288180ed00aa9de6ec8c04b62e5db.jpg


New Version 0.8

Of course, all the new features we talked about in our last update are now available: Flat mode (F4), World Capture (F10), the new 30 Mayors, Italian language, the new balancing tweaks, and much more.

By the way, as the Flat Mode has proven to be very helpful, we’ve improved how it’s activated. In addition to using the F4 key, you can use any extra button you have on your mouse, other than the left and right ones, to activate this. For example, you can use the central button that is usually available by pressing the wheel.

What's Next?

Now, we want to put most of our workforce into developing the campaign and finishing the game. In the meantime, some of the new campaign content may be added to the Survival Mode, such as new map themes, new infected... and new features.

As many players have requested, we’ll improve the frequency of our updates to two or three weeks at most. We’ll share more about how the development is going, and tell you, the players, more about They Are Billions.

We hope you like this new update! Looking forward to watching those mega screenshots of your colonies with your amazing wonders.

See you soon!
 

DarkUnderlord

Professional Throne Sitter
Staff Member
Joined
Jun 18, 2002
Messages
28,344
Ok, just started playing - seems to take a long time before you get to having soldier production? So far by time I get there, it's too late and Zombies are everywhere so I'm forever sending the same initial 4 man squad back and forth everywhere which is just getting annoying.

No saving. Every game is Ironman, which basically means so far I check the map, if I find Zombie Town too close, or no good choke points, quit and restart (no restart option in the in-game menu??).

It's one of those annoying games that requires you to build stupid "area command" buildings which I loathe.

Love the fact that once they get into your tents, it's pretty much game over. Lesson learned, don't stack all your tents together. :P

Still, only been at it for an hour or so, so expect I'll figure it out eventually - seems fun. Despite some issues.

UPDATE: So far I'm finding my problems are mostly bad terrain. Fucking stone and trees everywhere with water pools means there's very limited building space to properly build walls and what I would consider a "proper" town layout. Couple that with the "you need a Tesla Tower built there before you can build a wall" and it becomes stupidly annoying (for the record, I don't like arbitrary "I can't build there" rules like this in games. Zerg creep or Protoss Pylons are a nice story explanation but come on, we're talking walls with humans). And without saving, one fuck up, and you're gone. Which is really annoying. Be nice to be able to reload and NOT fuck up rather than throwing a 2 hour game away.
 
Last edited:

Alienman

Retro-Fascist
Patron
Joined
Sep 10, 2014
Messages
17,046
Location
Mars
Codex 2016 - The Age of Grimoire Make the Codex Great Again! Grab the Codex by the pussy Codex Year of the Donut Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
You can get soldiers pretty quick, but you have to take care of your initial four. I usually place one in every direction to guard, and slowly build up. When I get to barracks I build a bunch of archers that can go round and clean up some of the map. Remember to build walls everywhere :)

The new F10 function is pretty cool. It takes a high res picture of your whole base. Here is one current base I'm on:

Bxe1IdA.jpg
 

Ashery

Prophet
Joined
May 24, 2008
Messages
1,337
Shouldn't take too long, though I tend to push out half a dozen or so rangers before securing an iron supply. That said, this was from before the most recent patch, and I'd typically completely bypass soldiers and go straight for snipers.

Contrary to what your intuition might tell you, use your starting soldier for expansion and focus on using the rangers as sentries. The soldier has substantially better dps, but as you've likely noticed, he can't be everywhere at once. A lone ranger, however, can easily take down a single weak zombie as well as survive long enough for help to arrive if more come. Once you starting building more rangers, you can send'em off in pairs or trios to do some light expansion as well. Just never leave holes in your defensive line since, as you've noticed, once your tents get breached, it's game over.

Zombie Towns being too close is pretty much the one thing that can cripple a playthrough, but you'll eventually get the feeling for how close you can get before setting off the spawns. Don't be afraid to shoot your own buildings if you end up building something too close to one, either, as that's something you're just about guaranteed to do on the second map when you combine their frequency (Three to four per map) with forests and cliffs. The lack of choke points, however, isn't as crippling as you're imagining. This is the most recent screenshot from my "current" game (Interest faded):

E8E2603D377319CC5F1CA2D91B4AD67AF6367A73


The wall on the NE side is just a temporary one, since I still need to finish clearing out the area before pushing to the choke on the very NW edge; pretty sure I had a wave come from the north, hence the need for a temporary wall. Notice also how there's no wall on the SW side. I'd erect something if I got word of a wave coming from that side, but a few rangers are more than enough for basic coverage.

There are only two real coverage buildings, and both have the same radius and footprint, so it's trivially easy to manage compared to stuff like Anno. Unless I misinterpreted and you meant the power towers, in which case I completely agree that they're one of the major weak points in the game. Though my agreement there is less out of an innate dislike, and more because it's an absolute pain to tweak power grids that've already been placed. Moving a tower a couple tiles, for instance, requires you to first destroy one tower and then place the new one, often leaving a good chunk of your base without power for some time if you haven't planned properly.

Spreading your tents means you won't have as good market and bank coverage, both of which are critical in the mid game, and it also makes you more vulnerable to minor losses. This isn't to say that you should never build housing outside of market and bank coverage, but you should generally hold off until the end game for that.

The game definitely has promise and I got a solid 70 hours out of it, but it still needs a bit more love to really shine.
 

DarkUnderlord

Professional Throne Sitter
Staff Member
Joined
Jun 18, 2002
Messages
28,344
One thing I'm really disliking is cramming everything in. Age of Empires 2 was great in this respect. Huge open land, especially once you'd cut the trees down. Here you've got metal deposits in the way as well as wood, as well as random cliffs, as well as random pools of water. Be nice if there was a little room to grow and build a nice town aesthetically. At the moment, you pretty much cram as much in as you can, where-ever you can. And arbitrary building rules like X can't be built within Y spaces of another X add to the annoyance.

Actually I'd love to build quarries OVER the metal / stone resource piles. And in fact, anything I want. I mean what are these, open cut iron deposits?

The "once your tents / houses are down it's game over" was kind of fun at first, but now just means there's no point bothering once even one section of your walls are breached. Once zombies are in your base, there are too many to handle. GG quit, restart. No point sitting through the next 5 minutes of watching zombies take-over. I had a nice sectioned town with a double layer of wall around most of the perimeter except the North, dealing with incursions from the South. Once the first larger hoarde (with those big zombies) came from the North, GG. They got into an exterior section with a bit of housing and I was done, every other wall between that and my main base didn't matter.

I'd just like a bit of back and forth. A bit of "Oh shit, they got through the walls but holy fuck I managed to survive and now I have to quickly rebuild before the next attack..." kind of moments. Instead, they get through the walls - get to your housing - and... forget it. Maybe even taking a smidge longer before houses turn? As it is, once a zombie gets to a house, that house is gone in about a second, then the rest follow.

Still, enjoying it for the time being but without a save feature, there's only going to be so many "restarts" I'll stomach before I get tired of it.

And ugh, not having wood within the first zone of your main building and having to build silly "area of control towers" out to get to it as asinine.
 
Last edited:

Alienman

Retro-Fascist
Patron
Joined
Sep 10, 2014
Messages
17,046
Location
Mars
Codex 2016 - The Age of Grimoire Make the Codex Great Again! Grab the Codex by the pussy Codex Year of the Donut Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
I think the lack of building areas are part of the lore/story. Humanity is on its last leg and building area comes at a premium. I think the game explains that pretty well through gameplay. You really have to fight for your living space.
 

Ashery

Prophet
Joined
May 24, 2008
Messages
1,337
Sounds like you just don't have enough military, DU.

The "once your tents / houses are down it's game over" comment was more in respect to the early game, when it's quite literally impossible not only for your small starting force to handle more than a handful of zombies, but also to kill them quickly enough before they turn the next tent. By the time the final wave hits, your military should be strong (and mobile) enough to hold back a small number of breaches without suffering a fail cascade.

Also, while it may be considered a bit cheap, keep in mind that buildings can be sold in advance of an inevitable breach.

What's your defensive setup, anyways? I always focus on wood towers in conjunction with a mobile military (Once I recruit half a dozen or so rangers, I switch over to massed snipers). Most new snipers see a stint in my expansion forces and get pulled back for sentry duty once they hit veteran status. It's important to always keep a few vets with your expansion force, though, due to the harpies.

A bad start with wood is workable, but it's definitely a huge handicap.

The game really isn't designed with open, aesthetic bases in mind considering the importance of maximizing your economy in the space you control.
 

DarkUnderlord

Professional Throne Sitter
Staff Member
Joined
Jun 18, 2002
Messages
28,344
Really poor resource balance. A Power Plant really needs stone? So much fucking stone it's double the output of a single stone mine? You virtually have to double your production constantly - which means massive expansion, just to pass break-even - so you can then hit the requirements to build the next SUPER EXPENSIVE yet required research building.

Hordes range from piss easy to REALLY MASSIVE HORDE WHICH WALLS WILL NOT STOP. I'm learning you HAVE to tech up and tech up quickly. I got a Mayor with a bonus Lucifer unit which pretty much is the only reason I survived a lot of the mid-game. But then trying to expand into an open area, which kept getting attacked, by the time I was able to wall it up, it was over already by the next horde which came from a different area (and was far too numerous - and even if I'd been building units constantly, wouldn't have been enough - again, I needed the right tech).

Finding it fun. But the lack of save is seriously pissing me off. You constantly go back to the start game. Choose to explore the wrong way and you can't find the resources you need, then spend far too much time running a group of guys around the map, having to clean the areas out, just to see if you can expand that way.

I'm getting the feeling that there's a single, correct build order - balancing the number of units with resource consumption so you can tech up quickly - and once you've teched up, win. Fail to tech up, and it doesn't matter how many walls you have, they're useless. Which is fun, but the balance seems off right now. Fail to tech up in the right order for example, and you waste a lot of resources upgrading tents to get more workers to get more energy to get more workers so you can finally build a research building.

Make the tech expensive, not the fucking building so expensive that you have to basically sit and do nothing while you wait for your pathetic stone / iron mines to mine enough.

I'm thinking to forgo some things early on, focus on hitting those tech buildings, and forget the rest.
 

Ashery

Prophet
Joined
May 24, 2008
Messages
1,337
The power plant needing stone might not make a lot of sense from a realism perspective, but it works great as a game mechanic/balance. During my first game (No screenshots, unfortunately), I thought their resource consumption made them a pretty shitty option and didn't research their corresponding tech until I was a few days from the final horde and looking for a way to burn gold, but on the second I learned just how powerful they really are. They're absurdly cheap when compared to advanced mills, which I've since realized you should only start building in the final couple weeks of your game.

Again, I get the feeling that you just don't have a large enough military. At least in the prior patch, I didn't need anything more than massed snipers, wooden towers, and stone walls to hold back the hordes for the first half of the game and even beyond. Looks like I started getting titans around the 40-42 day mark on my second successful map, but I was still mostly expanding with snipers in order to get them as much experience as possible.

The closest thing you have to bad territory in any given game would be areas along the edge of the map that have a wide open border. Even if some territory doesn't have your desired resources, you can always cram it full of housing, mills, farms, etc.

I'd be curious to see what your economy, base, and army look like at various points in time.
 

DarkUnderlord

Professional Throne Sitter
Staff Member
Joined
Jun 18, 2002
Messages
28,344
massed snipers
How many snipers are we talking here? My struggles with a large army are often the worker / food requirement forcing expansion. It's not until I get an Inn that I start getting 10+ Snipers (up until that point I'm relying on 6 - 8 Rangers). Usually a group of 10 Snipers + 10 Soldiers is my main-stay and does most of the job.

Finally had a game where I researched Lucifers and as I suspected, easy mode enabled. Of course I died when I focussed on saving up for Titan research instead of spreading Lucifers around, one break-through into a housing area and I managed to survive... but the Tesla Tower / energy / food / worker spiral meant rebuilding was slow and a minor break-through while I had units holding off another attempt was the end of me.

At that point, I was upgrading to Advanced Mills, and Advanced Farms. Had 3 warehouses with all resource levels maxed out and was just building extra houses to farm gold. Gold was my only shortfall at that point.

I am finding you have better results following a very specific build order though. Fuck that up, and you get caught in the "need more workers, to get more workers, you need more food to build more tents, to get more food, you need to expand" cycle... vs Wood Workshop, then Farms + Cottages. Then focus Stone Workshop, basically to avoid expanding too much (which given the Tesla Towers and walling requirements, becomes massively expensive compared with upgrading a much smaller base).

I feel like there should be a better balance between both as viable strategies. And the research / tech levels are too much of a big jump (600 Gold for a Lucifer which can melt all before it vs 300 Gold for a pathetic Sniper that can only kill one thing at a time?). That Inn with +100 Workers is a much needed God send before which I find myself constantly struggling - so getting the Inn as quickly as possible is an important goal. Before that I'm pausing buildings to have enough workers to build another Mill, to upgrade a house, to get more workers, to un-pause the building I paused.

It's kind of fun - but feels very restricted.
 
Last edited:

Raghar

Arcane
Vatnik
Joined
Jul 16, 2009
Messages
22,506
Frankly use easier difficulty and don't use degenerate gameplay with massed tents. You might enjoy it more when you have headroom to play sub optimally and just do stuff.

Otherwise game is easy. And even without abuse of AI it's still somewhat doable with pause even without double walls.
 

Ashery

Prophet
Joined
May 24, 2008
Messages
1,337
When I say massed, I mean you should pretty much be constantly training them, though your economy might not be able to support that during the early game. Once you get further into a game, you should even look to building more barracks so you can pump them out even faster.

Here's one of the few screenshots I have of my sniper force of ~40 expanding into a new area and clearing a town. The titans were nearby in case they started getting overwhelmed. I've probably got around 20 or so veteran snipers manning towers at this point.

197D749FB8682577324149B53C59CD0CE2304A01

If you're struggling with workers beyond the first week or so in game, you're not building enough housing. Personally, I avoid building the inn until I've already maxed out (3) on markets and banks; it has a massive footprint (4x4 and needs a two wide space between adjacent buildings), doesn't synergize well with a market, and the -30 wood upkeep is annoying.

You're right, however, that you should prioritize increasing the density of your housing, but you also need to be aggressively expanding.

An earlier screenshot showing initial expansion: The small expansion to the NE was necessary because real estate was so tight in my starting settlement, as the wide open space to the W couldn't safely be built in until the area was completely cleared. Pretty sure I tore down that central wall and expanded my housing shortly after taking this screenshot.

2916DEBC102E077249F7FE900788B6FD169D13EC

I've never really encountered that cycle you mentioned, or felt railroaded by research. Yea, farms should generally be one of your first research topics, but that's largely because food will almost always be your first bottleneck.

The problem with Lucys is that they can't attack from behind walls, so while they might be great for breaches, they're dead weight until a breach happens. Snipers, however, are great for taking down the tougher zombies from towers while either titans or some executioner towers take down the massed weaker units while safely behind walls. Lucys also require oil for upkeep, which will always be in short supply, as opposed to snipers that you can mass hundreds of by the end game. Lastly, Lucys also don't benefit from experience, while snipers more than double their dps after reaching veteran status.
 

Destroid

Arcane
Joined
May 9, 2007
Messages
16,628
Location
Australia
I think I mentioned this earlier but the game has no chill. Even if you don't feel pressured, if you don't work hard almost the entire time on both your eco and clearing the map you will lose. Between major waves pretty much your entire army should be out clearing and training, you don't need much to fend off minor waves. If you haven't killed nearly every zombie on the map by the final wave things are probably gonna end badly.
 

DarkUnderlord

Professional Throne Sitter
Staff Member
Joined
Jun 18, 2002
Messages
28,344
Oh my God, your units are retarded. I had plenty of Lucifers and Thanatos units to defeat an incoming horde - of course it went the way I wasn't ready for (moving South passed my units which were ready in the top North-East to defend) so I had to relocate their position, effectively walking into the side of the Horde to stop it. Of course the Thanatos units fire their rockets INTO THE LUCIFERS. So about half of them die. Some of the zombie mob then comes around the back of the Lucifers, so they turn around and then BURN THE THANATOS UNITS. Like holy fuck. Another round of rockets though and it's ok, ALL MY LUCIFERS ARE DEAD DUE TO FRIENDLY FIRE.

The end result, a pissant number of zombies breaks through my walls because all my Lucifers were dead and I only had Thanatos units left which are apparently so retarded they can't shoot into a thick mob. I even had a small fucking back-up squad of snipers and soldiers helping out but no, no, the Thanatos units want to engage hand to hand getting disrupted from firing.

With this level of stupidity, humanity deserves to die. Zombies win gg.

The problem with Lucys is that they can't attack from behind walls, so while they might be great for breaches, they're dead weight until a breach happens.
I leave them outside - usually standing in a doorway which I can retreat back through. They're strong enough to handle their own. Mind you I am playing on the 150 day mode.

The game is becoming less fun and things that are annoying me:

Lack of unit diversity. Soldiers, Snipers, Lucifers, Thanatos and the Titan (which I haven't built yet) and that's it. Be nice to have upgrade options for the units for a bit of mix up in variety.

There is definitely a right Workers -> Energy -> Food cycle which once you get right, the game becomes easier. If you fuck it up and run out of workers, or have to wait for Energy which you can't get because you don't have Workers because you made that one Sniper too many, or don't have enough expansion area for that extra farm for Food, you spend a lot of time waiting / fart-assing around trying to fix that up. IE: There's a right way to expand and a wrong way and you need to keep constantly ahead of the curve.

Retarded path-finding which has had my units walking into each other, unable to get around themselves, while zombies attack and they continue trying to walk. In the end I'm hitting space to micro manage units individually to get them unbottle-necked.

Until you "crack" the secret of the right build order, a lot of luck is involved. Map layout, where resources are, which way zombies attack from. They always seem to attack the weakest point deliberately though not sure if that's just how it's working out for me or if this is actually deliberate. If that is deliberate, I'll certainly be keeping a deliberately weak side to lure them in.

Most attacks involve you moving ALL your units to the side where the zombies are coming in and waiting.

I still feel like once I crack the secret of the build order, it'll be a lot easier but that's just it, I'm not finding much variety or fun in that. I'd prefer options like being able to expand to an area rich in minerals with just a small base there versus having one ever larger expanding mass that just keeps getting bigger (again, I really, really, really dislike the "need to build magic control building" concept in RTS games. The only game I liked that in was Starcraft - where Zerg had a game logic excuse for it, Protoss could build anywhere as long as you built a Pylon first, and Terran could build anything, anywhere).

Also not being able to build more than 2 layers of walls next to each other is arbitrarily stupid. And easily fixed by leaving a gap of a single space, and building another double layer wall. Only there have been a number of times now where my wall design (usually at a corner) has prevented me from building a proper 2 solid layers because for some reason it thinks there are already 2 walls next to it or whatever.

Also, base layout is SO important (getting those bonuses) but you have no control over it due to your map. Being able to plan ahead for banks and things doesn't happen until you know what a bank is and does and how big it is. But then you're deliberately leaving space which you may not have.

Also, no save. If I had a save option, I'd have won already because a lot of my deaths so far have simply been unit placement (as above). Which is a shitty way to die in a game like this. Defenses are tolerable but mediocre unless stacked in and again, it depends on exactly where the zombies attack. Canon towers in AoE2 are way more fun.
 

Ashery

Prophet
Joined
May 24, 2008
Messages
1,337
From a Steam forum thread:

Good news is Lucifer is the only unit that has FF.

Name one game where AI units were intelligent on a human level. I'm not sure why you expect something more from this game. Lucy sees enemy, Lucy burns enemy; Lucy was not programmed to have awareness of nearby friendlies.

The problem with putting Lucys outside gates is that that requires you to, well, have gates. Gates are a major weak point in a wall since they have three tiles worth of real estate that can be attacked. You can add walls in front and on the sides, leaving the gate with only one exposed tile, but that restricts movement and can make retreat frustrating due the the pathing getting screwed up (Traffic jams).

Unit diversity could be better, sure, but as it stands, all the units are unique and have a well defined role. If they can maintain that when adding new units, then great, but there's a reason I consider the original FTL better than the add-on.

The right way to expand is to do so aggressively. Do that, and you'll never worry about the cycle you keep mentioning. If you look at my first screenshot on the snow map, with a population of only 298 I had 51 spare workers. A robust economy is central to advancement, and a robust economy means an overabundance of workers.

If you're looking for a game where you setup outposts, then you're playing the wrong game. Factorio on the higher biter settings would work, but not this one. If you've got cleared land between your main base and an outpost, that land needs to be packed full of housing and other economic buildings. The campaign might provide choices like that, but that's a much different beast.

Walls only buy time; if you need more than a single double thick wall, you don't have enough damage output. The only exception is for the final wave, but even then you shouldn't go overboard. I like to add one more (single-thick) wall to my outermost defenses, with some wooden traps thrown in between the wall layers for good measure. That extra wall layer helps buy some much needed time, but putting any more wouldn't be effective since it'd push the zombies outside the range of more of my defenses.

The base layout point is valid, though only for someone's first game or two. I had that issue in my first game, particularly with respect to not knowing I'd be limited to three of each. Fortunately, this game's not like Anno, where buildings have different footprints and coverage zones: Both buildings are identical, and even if you completely forget their exact coverage, you get markets early enough that layouts can be adapted with only minor changes.

Also, use attack-move more.
 

DarkUnderlord

Professional Throne Sitter
Staff Member
Joined
Jun 18, 2002
Messages
28,344
If you're looking for a game where you setup outposts, then you're playing the wrong game.
That's just it, this game doesn't have diversity in build options. As I said, you either build "the one right way" and win, or mess that up and don't.

Walls only buy time; if you need more than a single double thick wall, you don't have enough damage output.
That's my point though, I've never felt like I've lost mid to late game due to lack of damage output. It's been because:

1. Traffic jams because everything was jammed up next to each other.

2. Units on the other side of the map not getting back to base in time.

3. And mostly: Incorrectly guessing where the attack was coming, having to relocate units that simply do not get their in time (hence putting more walls). That too is mostly due to map layout where they've had to take the long way around because of the multiple water / forest / buildings crammed in etc.. choking up the place.

4. Early game, being attacked while attempting to expand and either not realizing a single zombie had managed to get through and was even attacking anything, or just being overwhelmed because I know the expansion is undefendable - while say I'm trying to expand to get iron or enough wood to build the walls I need.

I've not once had a game where I felt like my army was inadequate (except my first few games learning). It is literally always the logistics of getting my army to the right attack position in sufficient time to actually start shooting the zombies. Now some of that is me learning that having your army of 20+ Snipers out map clearing means they won't get back to base in time even if you start them the minute you know a horde is coming in. Some of that as I said, is incorrectly guessing the attack point and having to relocate. By the time they get there, your walls are broken, your housing is down and it's game over.

Mostly always it's the randomness of the map layout though.

I'll add, learning how powerful the late game units are (Lucifers & Thanatos) is going to make me spread them out more and have a handful around the entire perimeter, then wait for the walls to actually be attacked and know where to relocate precisely. I had tried that with the above but made the mistake of being so confident that I knew where they were attacking that 8 Lucifers and 6 Thanatos with just under 20 Snipers all ended up in the wrong position = game over.
 
Last edited:

Destroid

Arcane
Joined
May 9, 2007
Messages
16,628
Location
Australia
I haven't played since Lucifers were buffed (they were shit back then), but it seems like a bad idea to use units that have to be outside the walls.
 

DarkUnderlord

Professional Throne Sitter
Staff Member
Joined
Jun 18, 2002
Messages
28,344
I haven't played since Lucifers were buffed (they were shit back then), but it seems like a bad idea to use units that have to be outside the walls.
6 Lucifers can hold off anything I've run into so far (about 120 days on 150 day mode). They incinerate most things before they take much damage. Then regen before the next lot really hit.

Literally the only thing that's killed my Lucifers so far are my own Thanatos units. Excepting one that actually managed to die in combat.

Without them, you're back to Snipers and Thanatos and yay for unit diversity.

I would say the game so far is about strategic map control. That's more important than any other factor which effects victory. Playing to the map so that you can move units easily around behind the walls and blocking choke points so that zombies hit where you want them too, rather than say running along the outer wall and attacking another point further away where your units aren't.

That and map layout itself. Start with a lot of wood resources nearby and it's a huge advantage.
 
Last edited:

DarkUnderlord

Professional Throne Sitter
Staff Member
Joined
Jun 18, 2002
Messages
28,344
All right, I've figured out the magic build order: Never stop expanding. Forget upgrading, keep expanding until your base consumes the entirety of the map. Send soldiers out to grab an area, build Tesla Towers, double wall it in, add static defenses, cram in as many tents as possible, build whatever buildings for the resources there. Rinse and repeat.

Only after you hit the map limit do you consider upgrades.

Also, yeah forget Lucifers. Useless in the final wave. Thanatos and Snipers (which is boring as fuck because it means you literally never stop pumping out Snipers from the start of the game to the finish. Eh).

Having sufficient defenses at every side is the only way. For me, that's as many Shock Towers as you can afford behind 2 sets of double walls, with a group of at least 20 Snipers and 2 Thanatos at every major choke point. Also, Shock Towers seem to be better than Executor towers? And Titans don't seem worth the bang for buck.

I've definitely been playing far too contained. When you start upgrading, I'm not sure what it is exactly, but your Gold income just starts plummeting. I suspect from the more expensive costs of the upgraded buildings.

Seems every game will play the same - there's not much choice in terms of strategy.

Also, I'm hoping there's some way I've not yet found to "Find all army units" but if you accidentally over-write one of your army groups and then forget where the army you over-wiped is (because they got lost somewhere in your building cram), losing your army is apparently a real possibility...
 

As an Amazon Associate, rpgcodex.net earns from qualifying purchases.
Back
Top Bottom