Holy hell this game is hard. On attempt 5 on the first map now, lowered the difficulty/score to 22%. I can make it to around day 90-100 on a 150 day campaign, but after that the hordes just tear down my defenses like it's a low effort shanty town. Really fun game, feels more like an RTS than a tower defense game. I do wonder though if the campaign will maintain this difficulty. Going to take a long time to complete
After losing colony number 6 to the zombie hordes, I'm convinced you have to use your rangers to bait the zombies away and try to spread them out. Gonna try this but my micro is terrible (my macro also).
Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgggggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhh... building base for several hours, just to make one tiny mistake. One super
tiny mistake and the whole colony falls. RIP number seven! Agesilaus How is your housing layout? It's always game over for me when the reach the housing area, but before that a breach is containable (sometimes).
You must be doing something wrong, because I play on the default 100% difficulty (100 day campaign, challenging) and I consistently survive up to somewhere between days 50 and 70. No kiting or anything unusual that would require rapid clicking (actually you can just pause by hitting spacebar if you don't want to race around giving orders).
In terms of housing, I build all my houses in a bunch near my command centre. Not only are they incredibly fragile and create a lot of zombies when destroyed, but you need them in a clump so you can apply the Market and Bank bonuses. Depending on farmland availability, food can be a real issue mid-late game, so this special bonus is kind of helpful. The bank bonus is huge, though; I'm in a game right now (day 80) where at one point I had over +1000 gold coming in.
So, basically, build your houses in such a way that they will be safe from any contact with zombies, and so they can obtain the market and bank bonuses.
In general, I don't know what your current strategy is, but here's what I do. I start the game by plonking down a couple of houses by my command centre and a sawmill. While I'm waiting to do that, I will run the rangers around so they can scout the area. I'm looking for a good place for additional sawmills; I want about 3 well-positioned sawmills because wood is extremely important early game.
Once I know the lay of the land and where the zombies are waiting, I will start expanding. You have 4 rangers and 1 soldier, so never open up more than 5 ways into your base. In a pinch, you can just build a wooden wall and leave it unmanned; you'll get a warning if any zombies start trying to break it down.
At some point you should have a few sawmills up, a number of tents, a windmill or two, a number of hunting lodges and wharfs, and all the approaches to your buildings should be sealed off with walls. You don't need towers everywhere, you just need to completely seal off your base so nothing can wander in and knock down your tents. A simple wooden wall is enough to stop the first invasion, probably the second one, too.
Your next goals are to start researching, increase your population, and recruit a small army of 4 soldiers. You will need iron for the soldiers, so keep an eye out for that. You don't need stone just yet, but it is going to become extremely important soon. Helpful tip: be careful with where you place the research buildings in this game. You cannot destroy them.
At this point, you're kind of safe for a while. Your wooden defenses can withstand the first couple of invasions; with 4 soldiers you can basically gun everyone down before they break through. When you know which direction the attack is coming from, upgrade to a double-layer wooden wall and place a tower behind it. Maybe even build a backup layer of wooden walls if you are really worried.
During this safe period, you need to achieve the following goals: Increase population so you have a higher income, new mayor, and a market. Build quarries to increase your stone production as much as possible. Keep an eye on all the measurements of your economy; it's a delicate balancing act to make sure that every resource (that includes workers, electricity, food) is available.
If you have enough stone, you should easily survive until day 40-something. Before you reach day 50, you need to be able to create area of attack weapons on a moment's notice. The obvious choice is the electricity tower. You can research it in the stone workhouse; this tower will basically destroy any attack before day 70. Keep enough resources to construct it on hand at any given time (always be aware of your electricity and manpower limits). When the game says that they're coming from the east, wait for the timer to reach 0. Look at the red arrow on the minimap, and figure out which wall they're likely to hit. Build the tower next to that wall so that it can just zap everything that approaches. If you can't figure out which wall... build the towers everywhere? lmao good luck idiot, learn to scout and design a better base.
At some point, probably late 60s, you will get hit with an attack so large that the horde will smash down a double-layer stone wall before the electric tower can kill them all. I think it's because you start to find more and more of those big fat zombies, and the electric tower really doesn't do a lot of damage to them. My recommendation is this:
If you have a lot of stone, which should be the case, then defend in depth. Instead of blocking a chokepoint with one wall, make 2 or 3 walls. Your army of soldiers and snipers can fall back when the first double-layer stone wall is breached. The electric tower will get destroyed, but it will already have inflicted massive casualties on the enemy.
Get the foundry and research the engineering building, and then research the Thanatos unit. I think the Lucifer unit is shit, but whatever. Thanatos has a rocket launcher and is basically a mobile AoE tower. He's not as strong as the electric tower, but if you have 2 or 3 of them it can be very effective. Also, get some snipers and check the setting so that they focus on high-threat targets.
During the down time, keep developing your economy, but also take a moment to examine your base and think about its weaknesses. If you expanded to the south and west, then is there only a single stone wall on your northern and eastern side? As you progress past the early-mid game stage, all land becomes valuable. Expand to the north so that you can develop more defenses in that direction, just plonk down some windmills if there's nothing but wasteland there. Do the same to the east. The goal is to have every path into your base protected by multiple layers of stone walls.
Yes, I said stone walls. That's why you need a lot of stone in this game. Remember that power plants (which I never build) use valuable stone. Wooden walls will do nothing to stop a late game horde. If your economy is really hurting, then just make the outer layer stone. However, you better have stone and gold on hand so that, when the horde comes charging, you can quickly upgrade the walls facing the invasion force. If it looks like your defenses will be overcome, well, don't forget that you can build a wall behind your wall mid-attack, and then just retreat behind this newly constructed wall.
Also, in terms of general advice: be wary about raiding far from your base. Even a decent army can get overwhelmed and destroyed. However, if you do manage to destroy the enemy base (not an impossible feat), then don't grab the resources right away. Just hit pause, figure out what you want to build and what your current resource situation is, and remember that you have a resource cap. If you see several piles of gold, and you already have a lot of gold, then spend your money before you grab it.
In my current game, I'm on day 80. I have a bunch of titans (meh) and thanatos units (great) that I deploy to whichever wall is about to be hit. I have snipers, the original rangers, and some soldiers deployed to specific walls just as a matter of course. I wiped the floor with the last invasion force, so perhaps I've won. It seems that if you build near the edge of the map, invasions won't come from that direction (regardless, I have a few layers of stone wall defenses). As the game progresses, you will find that you have electric towers on every side, backed up by executioner guns, and invasions are just these absurd massacres where billions of zombies are reduced to explosions of blood.