So, Level 2 of the demo.
2 visible entrances, that are basically linked by a main corridor, that branches off to your dungeon heart.
So I build a corridor off one of the entrances, and line it with prestige items, directing heroes away from the corridor that leads to my dungeon heart.
I create a fork in this dummy passage, and place some bats there. Both forks lead to rooms with bat spawns and two treasure piles, and a load of prestige items. The exits to these rooms connect back into one corridor, which has some skeleton spawns and a treasure chest. The exit to this room leads to another like it, with no monsters and a treasure chest. Prestige items tell the heroes where to go, and line the walls of my treasure rooms so they look cool.
I go back and place another bat spawn at the 2nd branch to this dummy wing.
I position my dungeon lord down the hall from the dummy wing, and hero, entrances, around a corner, so that any hero leaving the entrance to go to the dungeon heart, or exit the dungeon, is within spitting distance of him.
The rate of happiness the heroes on the 2nd level get from gold is much, much lower than in the 1st level. The end result of all this is I get the heroes stuck in a sort of loop. They monsters from the nearby rooms aggro, keeping them tied up in combat for a while. They finally clear everything, get a little loot, and start following prestige items. They waste some time looking at them, monsters repop, they do some more fighting, drink their potions, and get a little more gold.
This cycle repeats, and repeats, until finally the heroes are maxed out and, missing most of their hit points, they stagger back to the entrance of the dungeon to leave. And that's when my Dungeon Lord pops out and prangs them.
This strategy basically allowed me to sit back and only have to chase down stragglers and full heroes every couple of minutes. And by chase down I mean, run 1.5 seconds. It seems like only when a TON of heroes were in the dummy wing would new heroes start ignoring the prestige items for places the rest of the adventurers weren't looking. After a while, when I opened the second gate with the same setup, basically, I had at least 8 to 10 heroes running around, all trapped in the dummy wing.
Occasionally monsters would kill the heroes before they were full, and my goblins would pick them up, get their gold, and put them in prison. I may not have been getting all the soul essence from them, but the things you need soul power for aren't super demanding. (Prestige items, some purchaseables from the Dungeon Heart, like your Guardian or higher Goblin capacity)
Prestige item usage actually seems pretty cool. Not only are you using it to guide guys, but its useful for tying them up and keeping them busy so they aren't going everywhere in your dungeon, and it gives your monster spawns time to repop. And there's the whole aesthetic imagination thing, too.
Unfortunately, the level of heroes that comes into your dungeon seems to be tied to your prestige. Luckily, you can buy up the level of all your creatures to the dungeon heart. If you really want to kill heros, you can buy your creature level up way higher than the heroes (although I think it's capped by dungeon prestige), and they'll mow through heroes in large packs. In Lvl 2, at the cap, your monster level was 2 lower than the heroes.
So it should be said, I milked this scenario for all it was worth. With one hero gate open, I racked up thousands of gold and soul essence, with minimal effort on my part. I just had to keep an eye on my minimap, and look for the tell-tale hero icon heading toward the exit icon, to know I had to intervene. Once my supply chain was pretty much guaranteed, I quit paying attention to it and started completing the level objectives.
I think when you let go of the DK II expectations, this game will be enjoyable in its own right. It is far more tycoon like than even I predicted...but there are nice little touches here and there. Adventurers having their own gear, coming into the dungeon with a variety of set ups (2 handed weapons, 2 weapon fighters, pole arm users, sword and shield guys, axe guys...)
After several hours I'm still excited to get my copy, as there is a ton of stuff about the game I can't understand yet (like abilities, spells, scrolls, all the flavor text...) I'm kind of miffed the demo leaves off on what seems to be an open ended level where you lose soul essence every second, and when it runs out, its game over.