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[RangerCado]

My notes to self after finally winning a game after 8 losses ish.

WALL AROUND YOUR CC IF YOU THINK THE FIGHT IS GONNA GET THERE! The extra barrier lets armies do mop up if things get to close. If you wanna be fancy, surround a few executioners with walls too.

Get some walls around you tesla's before the final wave hits. So many defences can get knocked out just from the ai hitting those fairly fragile structures. a few walls around them will let your static defences keep up the pressure a little longer.

The second a choke gets to its last wall, delete EVERYTHING behind it to the next choke or the next viable choke. it is fully possible to make more walls and ballistas while the horde hits.

Around day 50 to 65 you'll generally own most of the map. At that point, expand defences to just be jutting wall sections with static defences and towers. You can fill in the taken areas with houses, but just remember to delete them. it can be a pain.

Save gold by DELETING BUILDINGS THE HORDE HAS PASSED! You can actually delete those infested buildings once the enemy is gone. This will save you resources and keep your army from deserting when you finally hit that demolish all button for houses.

And finally, if you want lots of extra gold throughout the game, don't forget to keep building lumber mills! Before day 75 ish, assuming each one is atleast 10 wood and you have all markets up, thats 9 gold every 8 hour tick. 27 per day, so 12 days to pay for itself while still providing you with wood you will be using for stakes and walls. EDIT: Just remembered you sell in 5 not 10. So 6 days to pay back in full, meaning before day 85 is good.

That is all accept to mention one thing.  DON'T PURPOSELY DESTROY A RESEARCH BUILDING!!! You will lose all research from it and have to rebuild and re-research  it all. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!!!

[Tiruin]

That is all accept to mention one thing.  DON'T PURPOSELY DESTROY A RESEARCH BUILDING!!! You will lose all research from it and have to rebuild and re-research  it all. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!!!

I haven't played it yet since 0.5.0, but awh! I always wanted to destroy those once I researched everything

...It's like people store all their information in the clogged up research buildings now, hum!

The second a choke gets to its last wall, delete EVERYTHING behind it to the next choke or the next viable choke. it is fully possible to make more walls and ballistas while the horde hits.

Good to know the ol' idea is still in play since I first played

I settle/push the last ~15 days to my defense, meaning finding the points of attack, and over-walling the outer areas, settling with ballistae as placeholders. That includes the last 9 days being taken out because SOMEHOW that happens (So in computing the difficulty in survival, that subtracts 24 days or so from the difficulty each time, in the least).

[EnigmaticHat]

My notes to self after finally winning a game after 8 losses ish.

WALL AROUND YOUR CC IF YOU THINK THE FIGHT IS GONNA GET THERE! The extra barrier lets armies do mop up if things get to close. If you wanna be fancy, surround a few executioners with walls too.

Get some walls around you tesla's before the final wave hits. So many defences can get knocked out just from the ai hitting those fairly fragile structures. a few walls around them will let your static defences keep up the pressure a little longer.

The second a choke gets to its last wall, delete EVERYTHING behind it to the next choke or the next viable choke. it is fully possible to make more walls and ballistas while the horde hits.

Around day 50 to 65 you'll generally own most of the map. At that point, expand defences to just be jutting wall sections with static defences and towers. You can fill in the taken areas with houses, but just remember to delete them. it can be a pain.

Save gold by DELETING BUILDINGS THE HORDE HAS PASSED! You can actually delete those infested buildings once the enemy is gone. This will save you resources and keep your army from deserting when you finally hit that demolish all button for houses.

And finally, if you want lots of extra gold throughout the game, don't forget to keep building lumber mills! Before day 75 ish, assuming each one is atleast 10 wood and you have all markets up, thats 9 gold every 8 hour tick. 27 per day, so 12 days to pay for itself while still providing you with wood you will be using for stakes and walls. EDIT: Just remembered you sell in 5 not 10. So 6 days to pay back in full, meaning before day 85 is good.

That is all accept to mention one thing.  DON'T PURPOSELY DESTROY A RESEARCH BUILDING!!! You will lose all research from it and have to rebuild and re-research  it all. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!!!

Congrats on winning!  Its not easy.

I'm not sure your math is right on lumber mills; they cost gold to maintain.  Most resource producing structures seem to lose a little money even with 3 markets. 

In general my personal philosphy in this game is less about owning the entire map (although that's nice) and more about reducing the maximum amount of entrances that the undead can come through.  The zombies are the zerg to your protoss, you love fighting over a small surface area and they love a big surface area.  So I try to get whatever area in the center is most chokepointed.  If that means I only get half or 2/3rds of the map, I'm OK with that.  With a small chokepoint and a shock tower, 8-12 thanatos can kill an almost literally infinite number of zombies.

I've found that the earlier I start preparing for the final horde, the better.  Its getting to the point where I'll start constructing my final defense and mostly stop civilian construction around day 75.  When you account for energy/food/space costs, cottages and stone houses aren't that that amazing in terms of gold production.  They're good but as the game goes on they get worse and worse.  Stone houses in particular have a narrow window where they're worth bothering with IMO.

One little trick I use for better walls is to make sure that my corners are towers and my gates have two towers in front of them.  Alternately an extra couple layers of wall with empty space in between can replace a tower.  This is because a corner piece in your wall has 5 adjacent tiles to a normal walls' 3, so its a natural weak point.  Gates are bigger targets for not much more health, so  they're also weakpoints.  Another trick for gates is to put them on an inside corner, thus only one part of the gate needs to have a tower covering it.  The point of the towers isn't to garrison them, just make use of towers's increased health.  With ballista generally all you need is to stick a few pieces of wood wall in their AoE to draw aggro so no zombies run past the ballista.  But if you do need to build a powerful wall good tower placement can greatly increase its lifespan.  Remember, when the horde comes a wall is only as good as its weakest segment.

[ChairmanPoo]

Question: Factorio vs this game?

[Sirus]

They're completely different games, so I guess it depends on what you're looking for?

[motorbitch]

its about the 5th time i read that question during the last days, and i have no idea WHY ppl even ask it. the two games could not have less in common.

[QuakeIV]

Factorio is a superior game at the moment, but its also more finished.

e:  The devs have mentioned it in their dev diaries, and they are visually similar.

[Retropunch]

Question: Factorio vs this game?

Factorio is working out complex production chains and has relatively little combat (in default settings), whereas this game is all about combat and has little in the way of production chains/etc.

Factorio is better if you want a fuller all round experience, but They Are Billions is a fantastic 'defense' game. Factorio also has a lot of mods so that might be of interest to you if you're into that.

[Criptfeind]

its about the 5th time i read that question during the last days, and i have no idea WHY ppl even ask it. the two games could not have less in common.

They are both, at their core, about expanding a base surrounded by groups of hostiles that occasionally attack and making sure that your "economy" is well macroed and expanded at a rapid enough pace. I can certainly see the similarities.

That said, they are still quite different games. They are billions is... I think, important to be hard, as there's not a lot of game there otherwise, it's mostly just trying to survive, therefor that becomes the focus of it, surviving and the difficulty of doing so, so you'd better play on more or less the highest difficulty you think you can win on, because that's what makes it fun, and that's all the fun to be had, in desperately macroing up your economy. Factorio has a lot more depth to it, so, for me at least, I don't need a challenging game to have fun in it. In factorio I can fuck around forever with building a factory and production lines, because that's fun in of itself (unlike placing an woodcutters hut in They are billions at least). That said with the right settings, I think you can probably also have a challenging game in factorio, but it's less important, and the game is probably less tuned to it. So basically what Retropunch said, they are billions is fantastic for a defense game, factorio wins everywhere else.

For my money Factorio is easily better if you have friends to play it with. Mutliplayer factorio is a real blast to play (I know any multiplayer game is more fun then a single player game, but factorio has a lot of the right stuff to make it really shine in multiplayer). I think they are billion is a lot closer as a single player experience, but that's me personally, if I'm alone I can only fuck around with circuits for so long, I think, so I think I'd say I like they are billions better single player? Maybe It's hard to judge, as thinking about it I've never really played either game alone, I've only played factorio multiplayer and played they are billions when streaming, so I guess I don't really know if I'd be up for they are billions alone, but it feels like I could play it alone.

[EnigmaticHat]

I've never played Factorio, so take this with a grain of salt.

But I'd describe They Are Billions as a nostalgic throwback to Age of Empires with modern mechanics and a singleplayer focus.  Also a game about fighting many, many zombies.

Whereas Factorio is one of those games where drawing diagrams can make your gameplay better.  So really... not the same thing at all.  They Are Billions is more game game and Factorio is more simulation game.  Similar graphics, different experiences.

[Tack]

Just got this game. Still am having trouble grasping a good earlygame defense. I think I'm too strategic, and keep on wanting to push to That chokepoint, so I don't build walls or anything and spend an inordinately large amount of time with just the starting troops.

And boy, when one zombie gets through, that's game.

[ChairmanPoo]

I've never played Factorio, so take this with a grain of salt.

But I'd describe They Are Billions as a nostalgic throwback to Age of Empires with modern mechanics and a singleplayer focus.  Also a game about fighting many, many zombies.

Whereas Factorio is one of those games where drawing diagrams can make your gameplay better.  So really... not the same thing at all.  They Are Billions is more game game and Factorio is more simulation game.  Similar graphics, different experiences.

Thanks everyone.

I think... this game is not my kind of thing so I womt rush into it. I think I'll enjoy factorio (and infested planet) better

[EnigmaticHat]

Just got this game. Still am having trouble grasping a good earlygame defense. I think I'm too strategic, and keep on wanting to push to That chokepoint, so I don't build walls or anything and spend an inordinately large amount of time with just the starting troops.

And boy, when one zombie gets through, that's game.

The general rule is to use your army to kill zombies and push out tesla towers along one entrance to your base, and have static defenses covering every other entrance.  What counts as an effective static defense changes over the course of the game, so nothing is stopping you from deleting that wooden wall once you've expanded past it.

[Sirus]

Just got this game. Still am having trouble grasping a good earlygame defense. I think I'm too strategic, and keep on wanting to push to That chokepoint, so I don't build walls or anything and spend an inordinately large amount of time with just the starting troops.

And boy, when one zombie gets through, that's game.

The general rule is to use your army to kill zombies and push out tesla towers along one entrance to your base, and have static defenses covering every other entrance.  What counts as an effective static defense changes over the course of the game, so nothing is stopping you from deleting that wooden wall once you've expanded past it.

Why would you, though? If your primary defenses are ever breached, having a secondary wall or two - even if it only slows the horde down momentarily - can give you enough time to rally the troops.

[EnigmaticHat]

Because houses are money and walls block my troops moving around.

In all seriousness that's a perfectly viable choice.  My preferred way to deal with a breach is to start deleting buildings and building a second layer of walls.  But that's a very expensive way of dealing with that problem, since you lose half the building's costs when you rebuild them, and you have to pay for the walls again (plus they might not complete).  I try to set up my city so the densely populated areas are far from danger, so mostly I'm deleting tents when the horde gets through.  Occasionally I delete farms and windmills which is quite painful.  On the flip side, secondary walls are often blocking areas that are in the radius of a market + bank, which is prime real estate you don't want to waste.