HO HOO! Great time for a thread like this
I'm on my way to ace the Brutal (80 days) area on Desolate Wasteland (always preferring to play around 100%+)--and I'd love to share stuff I've learned by trial and error and natural observation (over and over again T_T)
1. All buildings require a 1 tile/square distance from each other, other than the Tesla Tower which can be placed anywhere. Only the Houses (of any type) can be placed adjacent to each other while following this rule with all other buildings. These apply for Military buildings (which includes all defense towers, so
Walls and Gates of any type follow the Tesla Tower note).
**However, walls cannot be stacked 3 times in a row/column in a 3x3 square (they can be stacked 3 times in a cardinal direction, but diagonals seem to press the 'overlapping' limit). Gates count as ONE wall, and can easily fill the space (although their health, without Mayor-al modifiers, are about 1.5 of a wall [Wood gates are 600, compared to 400 of a wooden wall, and Stone gates are 1500, to 1000]
2. Sniper teams are like steampunk rifle-infantry. Much like our rifle infantry in the earliest days of the rifle where they all stood in line and order--they work well in lines and bunches, with the difference being all your steampunk snipers always hit their target.
I found them to be the most cost efficient and versatile of roles in numbers (as any infantry unit requires numbers to be useful). Other than Rangers, they outclass the Marine when massed (the Rangers serve excellent scout roles, guiding or rather 'attracting' all zombie types [other than the blasted Harpy, which is 1 speed faster]). The big point of the sniper is their 'long' attack animation, which translates more to their attack time. In between the time when they aim their big rifle, and them shooting:
anything within range will be targeted, even if their original target has died. You can clear whole doom village areas with 20+ snipers. You may also see for yourself on this 'quick change' of attack targets, as they can easily one-hit most zombies.
3. The 'timer' difficulty that you pick does not mean the endgame will happen on that day. Usually
eight days before that time, is when the "24 hour They Are Billions
TM" warning hits, and you get swarmed with exactly 4 main waves/hordes in the cardinal directions. All other defended areas (that you have) will also be hit with unmarked waves (the marked ones have a skull, much like all those tiny waves you faced in the months before) but those will be a lot lesser than the ones marked with skulls. Next, the skull-waves will ALWAYS follow a linear direction; they will not branch out or off, unless manually directed by you (eg Rangers), meaning static defenses won't attract them.
4. The Shock Tower pales in comparison to the Executor, when considering the wall layer ratio, and the cost effectiveness (especially at higher difficulties). It does around 100~ damage, which the Executor can do in the same, while the latter has greater range with less energy expenditure (but with a higher gold upkeep, at -50 each). You can upgrade the Ballista Tower to Executors, and having the Ballista tower can make up in their numbers and resource efficiency, alongside being 'markers' for Executors when need be. (Ballista towers are pretty cheap, and depending on the map, generally require only 2 workers and 2 Energy. And wood, which will not be that much of a used resource in mid-end game, compared to STONE).
5. Iron is the least utilized resource by most buildings and units you will mass produce. Compared to Oil (which is more used for mechanized units), Iron is okay in low resource gain amounts, as most buildings that will be mass produced will not need it in the early game. The Advanced Mill, as I recall, will be the most used, using up 10 Iron and 500 gold, as of the 0.4.9 patch. Wood will be an early resource sink, which will be followed up by Stone, once you finish up the Stone Workshop and Foundry requirements. If you're worried about Quarry'ing an area for stone or iron, always pick stone--but at least ensure you have ONE place to get iron from the beginning (otherwise, reroll that map by making a new game; use rangers for early scouting).
Warehouses balance out farms and are the best symbiotic building with farms (as they balance out the # of tiles lost to either non-grass grounds, or your other buildings in the way). Farms are going to be your staple source of food in most maps from the earliest time you will unlock them in the Wood Workshop. Warehouses also aid Quarries as another highlight. This, and the Bank/Market, are prioritized buildings for colony construction planning.
The earliest time you will get attacked is by day 2, by singular zombies. Unlike many other RTS games, zombies are more 'true' to their concept--they won't path around defenses, but will attack head-on generally from their point of origin, so crescent-styled defense patterns (walls + towers/military towers), with open, undefended ends to the sides, work. Unless you are swarmed by many zombies. Which happens a lot.
Brutal Difficulty
Personally, at the early game/first week, I grab my 4 rangers and position 3 to make a perimeter around my City Hall, leaving the 1 marine behind, and scouting in a circle around my colony until I hit the "wall" of weak, 35 hp zombies, then I post a ranger to that area on patrol. This acts as the earliest defense for the first 2-3 weeks until you get enough resources to build up a soldier outpost, or make some wooden walls. That one marine, personally, stays back, but I have found the 'noise' issue being mostly irrelevant, as the noise seems more in context of 'attracting that dude 3 tiles away' rather than 'attract THEM OVER THERE'. I've tested this by shoving marines and snipers to shoot zombies next to doom villages, and they don't aggravate the village itself, but do attract those stragglers next to their targets being shot at; the same occurs outside of the doom village context, when fighting the static horde on your map. So to your personal playstyle, marines and other 'noisy' units can be played quite readily and easily.
Anything you do not kill before the end-wave at the endgame, will be part of the attack. This includes doom villages which will spew everything in them at you. These includes those Harpies and Venoms at the edge of the cardinal map directions. Beware that Harpies can jump walls--the mechanics of wall building actually help against them, as those mechanics enable 'naturally placed' gaps to trap those harpies!
Always rely on multiple layers of walls. Two walls next to each other may look intimidating, but you're facing hundreds of units that will breach through with their bodies, like a wave onto your colony, until all that is left is the salty taste of brine and blood. (Fun fact: No colonist really dies, they just get infected ._. )
As of the current patch, there may be pathing issues where zombies will forever do a moonwalk while facing a wall or cliff-face (but won't fall off u_u), or raised cliff, when they intend to attack your colony.
6. Titans, at least as of 0.4.9, seem less effective and efficient compared to the Thanatos (I've noticed in the past, Titans did not require Oil, and so were mass produced). The Thanatos has an area-of-effect which deals minimal damage to Stone or Wood walls/gates, hits multiple zombies, and they work great in tandem with other units. Back to #2, Snipers in towers provide excellent support fire, as their Veteran counterpart means 110 damage every second (because 0.91 attack speed per second is rounded off for clarity
), and their range means they are the best unit (as of the moment probably?) to place in towers in supporting your final line of defense. I've never used the Lucifer (I have, then I found out they aren't that effective, and light
everything on fire, meaning 'also your units and buildings' in their short range), so what came to mind was 'build the defense around the Lucifer'. Personally, I've found Thanatos teams being very effective in tandem; their rockets 'push' back and kill incoming waves, and I've made a setup of at least 2 Thanatos per tiny chokepoint, to at most 6.
7. Construct your defensive lines to fill any and all gaps, but pay attention to where the 'earlier' hordes/waves attacked as those areas where they spawned and attacked from are usually (at least in my many experiences) where the final waves will attack from. In the end-game, use wood walls inasmuch as stone walls; the 'upgrade' cost balances the cost if you had built and paid for stone walls instead (except you have used wood, and will not get that wood back, when upgrading from wood to stone walls/gates)
8. Mayors are picked by the RNG. You get random ones, but there seems to be some kind of pattern to what category or theme of bonus they usually give at certain times (the time of progress to 'endgame' does not appear to matter, just the population needed to hit the next mayor). In my experience, I've found certain themes in the different mayor slots (or 'tiers'). Initial ones (tier 1), seem to be either resource boosters or additional soldier types. Second Mayors (tier 2), seem to be building/defense boosters. Third Mayors (tier 3), seem to be army/research modifiers (e.g. I've had a Mayor choice which had me pick 'less upkeep for Thanatos or Lucifer'...in my first ever game, since this doesn't have a tutorial--I've no idea what they were even referring to!). Fourth Mayors seem to be a higher upgrade of the earlier tiers, or just 'bonus reserve resources/have this research' which appear in any tier. As of the moment, you may even get 'useless' mayors--those that give you the research that you already have!
In all tiers, there are mayors who will give extra 'reserves' (which does not mean 'extra storage space', but 'more resources in reserve', and they will
not translate to 'sold market resources//autosold resources' if those resources go over your limit). Currently, you CANNOT exit from the mayor screen for 'I'll decide your election later thank you!', as of 0.4.9, and you will be forced to pick their fancy steampunk victorian face.
Also cosmetically, you pick from either a female or male leader. Their bonuses matter more though.
Also if the mayor you get has the 'the colony gets: {x}', this includes research AND the unit, if it is a unit.
9. As of 0.4.9, there are some...strange UI bugs. Like when directing your battle-army units, there sometimes is a popup when moving your mouse to 'garrison' in a tower, even when you're away (in both screen and mouse) from any tower. Sometimes the selection pops back to a different building than what you're selecting, and there are some occurrences of random damage out of nowhere to random buildings. (e.g. I had a cottage, part of the first ones I've built, get 100 damage out of nowhere)
This may also apply to Blade/Spike traps. I've used them once when 'bored' (had more time than usual, because by day 60, I usually end up going in a resource boom on all fronts due to economic focus). I set up a line of blade traps right next to my overly walled defenses, and strangely some of them were getting periodic damage (akin to being 'used' by zombies, sans the zombies). There went any use of those traps at this patch, because of both their high price of construction (Those traps cost 100 gold each), although this is to my personal playstyle. I never use them because I can never find myself filling up my gold storage to the maximum!
...Although that strange damage bug also stopped me, by giving a bad initial impression.
10. Doom villages get grumpy and usually send a 'chubby' (600 hp zombie which smashes 40 damage into your folks) if you
build too close to them. Attacking a building 'squishes' zombies out of it like water from a squeezed sponge, alongside angering a ton of them, which is usually disaster in the end-game.
11? I'd love to see more female units.
I'm having a ton of fun using Rangers, as their utility will never fade. They are also the only unit who does not have a food cost (every 'infantry' unit requires at least 1 worker, upkeep, and 1 food, sans the ranger, which only needs 1 worker and upkeep. The Marine and Sniper requires -3 and -5 upkeep respectively, emphasizing my point about sniper efficiency in this current patch [0.4.9]).
The Marine is probably the cheeriest and most respectful unit (the Ranger is snarky, the Sniper sounds too attracted to heads, the Lucifer loves fire, the Thanatos is all-around badass, and the Titan is pretty high-classy and loves the weather).
"For the Colony! For the Humans! Good day, Commander!"
I'm just loving the voice lines at this early stage of game. I like how the words of respect are said by these folks.
Oh, also on my clunky old computer/laptop, this game runs like a charm
There is seemingly no change of FPS when I pause or unpause the game, so I assume what the developers said about their game engine supporting all those units makes sense.
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Topic: They Are Billions - Hardcore Survival RTS (Read 18926 times)