Finally I came across something that can cure the DTD addiction. It's video on how the top scores are made. You can learn a lot, but you may also give up altogether - as I said, the game isn't great after all. So if you want to play your own way and improve at your own pace, skip the videos.
Before the video's and the analysis of the top score strategies, I can disclose some tools that may help you to have more fun. In the challenge mode, there is the 3K Fixed game. Instead of 80 gold at the start of the Hard game mode, you have 3,000, but you can't add anything afterwards. It's a fast way to test out your maze, compare your weapons, and measure the unlisted properties of the weapons, such as how much the freeze towers slow creeps down. The weapons, if available, are the same across the games, but the health of the creeps are not all the same across games.
The other useful game is the 100K Gold in the fun mode. It's the same as 3K except that you can play as in the normal mode after spending the initial gold. Even better, there are 100 levels instead of 50 in the main game, everything else being equal. So you have more gold to spend on the first 50 levels and hence more flexibility to test things out.
Finally, there's The 100 in the challenge mode. It's the same as the hard mode but with 50 more levels. So it's exactly the 100K Gold but you have only 80 gold initially as in The 100 game. The 100 doesn't help you with anything but this is simply a superset of the hard mode with more levels. You may or may not want to start with this game rather than the main game. Because the high score strategies are different - that works for 50 levels doesn't work for another extra 50.
Other modes and games are deviations from the main game. For example, some guys hate juggling, the selling and buying of the towers. It became less of a strategy game than a shoot-them game. But then there's not as much challenge because of the limitations of the game.
I used a spread sheet (Open Office) that contains data of gold earned at each level, the health of creeps at each level, and all the measurable properties of weapons, like firing rate. So you can calculate to some degree how much fire power you need at each point and if you can afford them. I also use the Open Office drawing package to help with designing mazes and acting as blue prints during the games. But with modes such as 100K, the need for these outside tools are less. Also, if you see the videos, precise optimizations are either not necessary nor not possible at the end.
I think there's some sort of collective conspiracy in the DTD forum, which missed a lot of critical information, perhaps in order to keep new players interested in the game. Firstly, as I expected, many top scores are fake. They play some other modes and hack the submission forms to change the name of the game to get impossible high scores. Or they can just hack the flash code downloaded to everybody's computer during play. So the top players started to post their fast forward video on Youtube.
The first video I recommend is a classic strategy for the main game DTD 1.5 Hard, with no juggling, or even no selling at all.
Notice it's so easy using only one Swam (6) tower and all Squirt towers. I have done similar things before but I gave up because it wasn't likely to beat the high score. The strategy is easy. I have calculated that I need the equivalent of 4 swan 6 towers to kill the air bosses. When I saw this, I went back to my spread sheet and calculated if I reduce the sw6 to 2, then I need about 7 squirt 6 towers. So I need only two boost 5 towers and one sw6 to give the equivalent of 2 sw6 towers, cheaper that way. And since building extra sq 6 towers is more economical than adding boost towers, it's pretty easy to place the sq towers without worrying packing them together to touch the boost towers. There are more than enough fire power and enough money left for two frost 5 towers to slow down the air bosses to receive sufficient hits.
As for the maze, I said that the optimum pattern for sq towers is the cross, proportional in size to their firing range. But with two or more sq packed together, the cross doesn't make much sense any more. I used the drawing package to draw range circles on each sq. I think the optimum pattern is like peeling an apple - something like the maze in the video. It's not neat, but it doesn't matter because there are more than enough fire power.
With this setup, a new player and an old player differ only in how fast they hit the send-creeps early-button to add extra scores. Very soon you will hit near the high score of this strategy. Note that the no selling is a self imposed rule. The nearest game is the 3K fixed game if you want to fight for the top spot, but 3K is easier because some bosses are less powerful I think.
The next video is the top score of DTD 1.5 Hard:
Basically the guy almost managed to send the creeps altogether, and kill them gradually long after the last creeps came out into the maze. You need always to build enough sw towers to kill the air creeps, because you can't keep them in the maze. Sq towers aren't useful to air defense at all because they will always be distracted by the land creeps. So only bash towers are useful. Since you have very little money left for it, you don't worrying how to put more of them together with boost towers.
The maze isn't that important as long as you have two alternative paths, gold efficient at the beginning, and space efficient at the end. My staggered DNA pattern works rather well, with three DNA pattern on each path, and utilizing the remaining desktop space as maze. But since you have to share the pellet towers in the two paths to save gold and space, the DNA pattern aren't necessary.
The surprise is the splash towers. Not only that they fire at everybody in range, but they are completely frozen for a long time. I gave them up because of the seemingly weak power for the money. But the freezing allows the other weapons to be many times more effective. So killing the air bosses becomes very easy.
After I saw the true master at play, I decided that this isn't my game. It's all about timing, more of a shoot-them-all game than a war strategy game. Getting the timing right initially is hard but there's not much potential to optimize.
I could have completely cured of the addiction if I hadn't see the 10K fun:
The juggling strategy for the hard mode won't work anymore over 50 levels. But, you can't survive without a little bit of juggling. So it's a balanced game. But at the end, you have to use a lot of splash towers, and reserve a large central area for all the towers. So there aren't much variation to the maze and the use of the splash towers become more of a shoot-them-all game.
Showing posts with label desktop tower defense. Show all posts
Showing posts with label desktop tower defense. Show all posts
Sunday, January 6, 2008
Friday, December 21, 2007
Desktop Tower Defence - not so great after all
After some scientific research, the whole game is reduced into a spread sheet. There are not enough randomness to sustain the game. Only the spawn creeps have some randomness in the way they spawn into several smaller creeps. Also the creeps are dumb. Once you figure out a good way to kill the creeps, they are all dead sooner or later. The mazes don't make a lot of difference when at the end it's all about fire power.
Most weapons are smoke screens on the hard mode for example. You have little choice on a few of the useful weapons.
After I killed all the creeps with ease, I researched how the highest scores are achieved. I think they are smoke screens too. The scores with videos to back up aren't that high. I think many high scores in the scoreboard are categorized by mistake or deliberately. I looked at the associated mazes. Though mazes don't tell you the full story because it's a snapshot of the final moment, but some mazes contain too much money in it for the hard mode. Maybe the money is possible at the very end, but then it's unrelated to how to pass the most difficult stages.
After so long, I should think the highest score gurus would have come out to explain how they invented the winning strategy and earn the bragging right. Perhaps they want to keep it a secret because the game is so simple. Once they tell you everybody know how to beat it with ease, unlike every other console games. Perhaps the scoreboard is really one big smoke screen to keep people playing.
The challenge mode and fun mode are giveaways. The game itself doesn't have that much variation. By using totally different rules, you are playing different games when the original game is done and dead.
Killing all creeps gives you about 7,000 points. If you send the creeps earlier you earn more points. These extra points are about linear, more or less the same at every level. So to get some of the high scores, almost you have to send all creeps at once, which isn't possible. I estimated the max scores possible is about 10,000. I don't know how some 14,000 can be achieved in the hard mode.
So this is my final take on the game, unless some guru come out and explain how they earn high scores. And it have to be interesting, that is, related to real war strategy.
Swarm tower: it's much more efficient for air defense than squirt towers. It had to be at the dead center of the desktop. When you have two, put the 2nd one next to the dead center. The upgrade sequence is simple. When you are at level 7xN, your tower should be SW N. But you don't need any swarm for the first flying creeps when N=1. This assumes that you have a strong enough squirt tower to help with air defense, not busy with other creeps.
For level 7x7, you need two equivalent sw6 towers, such as one sw6 touching two bo5 (50% boost) towers. For level 7x8, flying bosses, you need the equivalent of four sw6 towers, such as two sw6 touching four bo5 towers. Also for the flying bosses you need two frost towers, fr6, to cover both boss.
There could be variations that I didn't exhaust. If you only slow down only one boss, each boss in theory absorb twice the fire power. I did tried with one fr6 to slow down one boss. It worked pretty good but not very consistent. If you need two fr6 to slow down one boss, it doesn't save you $250. You can have five bo5 (maximum boost towers) touching one sw6. It's not too good but it works better with an extra sw5 touching four bo5. I didn't exhaust all these, but the money saved doesn't seem to be that great, so you don't gain a lot of fire power for the other creeps.
You need only one bash tower, the priority of upgrade. It kills all creeps all at once passing through, the strategy to have high scores by sending the next wave of creeps early. But you cannot have bash alone because they cannot kill any boss for their short range. The best "maze" for bash is the cross but degenerates into one square block, and you try to surround the bash so creeps have to run along it on all four sides. See DNA defense in earlier post. But this conflicts with boost towers, which has to touch the bash.
The compromise for the bash maze is for the tower to touch two (or even three) boost towers. There are still three sides for the creeps to run along. This still look somewhat like the DNA defense.
You need only one squirt tower. You need a long range weapon to kill the bosses, and certainly the spawns. It's sufficient if this tower is boosted by two (or three) boost towers. The best maze is a cross three square in width initially, and five square in width at the end. You force the creeps to run around your cross. Your cross have to be small to survive the initial attacks with little money, and enlarging your cross is easy and cheap to do, but very effective. You should integrate one corner or one side of the cross with the bash maze.
You upgrade your squirt along with the bash. You need a spread sheet to be optimum. But simply put, you upgrade when you have money, bash first, until you bay $290 for the squirt before $260 for the bash. And it doesn't matter that much if you are good.
So you have one bash, one squirt, and one swarm. When they are all upgraded to the full, you try to touch them as much as possible with 4 or even more boost towers. When you get to the flying bosses, you need in addition one sw6 touching 4 bo5, and two fr6 covering each flight path.
You also need the so called juggling to send the creeps back and forth at some point. With my sufficient fire power, you can keep juggling to a minimum. Juggling means you don't have good design and enough fire power. The creeps will accumulate and divert fire power if you juggle too much.
For the last two bosses, you must send them out together, so no remaining creeps are to be released. All maze blocks part of the creep's entrance so they are forced into the heart of the maze. When no more creeps are released, you can just unblock the entrance, and block the exit of the maze, so the creeps have to go all the way back to where they started. For a good design they will be killed before they reach the entrance. There are no extra maze needed for juggling.
The only other case you need juggling is for the spawns, especially for the bosses at level 48. But since the next creeps are flying with no more creeps coming out for a long time, you can do the same as the final bosses. But if the spawns aren't killed soon enough, the squirts will be diverting fire power from the flying creeps. Anyway, a little juggling can save you a lot of money for other things. In practice, you need to add a little extra maze such as the DNA pattern to slow down the creeps at the entrance and exit, to give you enough response time to sell and buy blocks.
One possible variation, if boosting the frost towers further slow down the creeps, it would be very useful. But I doubt it, the game isn't that complicated, such as that the boost towers don't boost each other. And if the slow down can be boosted, the game would be too easy.
Most weapons are smoke screens on the hard mode for example. You have little choice on a few of the useful weapons.
After I killed all the creeps with ease, I researched how the highest scores are achieved. I think they are smoke screens too. The scores with videos to back up aren't that high. I think many high scores in the scoreboard are categorized by mistake or deliberately. I looked at the associated mazes. Though mazes don't tell you the full story because it's a snapshot of the final moment, but some mazes contain too much money in it for the hard mode. Maybe the money is possible at the very end, but then it's unrelated to how to pass the most difficult stages.
After so long, I should think the highest score gurus would have come out to explain how they invented the winning strategy and earn the bragging right. Perhaps they want to keep it a secret because the game is so simple. Once they tell you everybody know how to beat it with ease, unlike every other console games. Perhaps the scoreboard is really one big smoke screen to keep people playing.
The challenge mode and fun mode are giveaways. The game itself doesn't have that much variation. By using totally different rules, you are playing different games when the original game is done and dead.
Killing all creeps gives you about 7,000 points. If you send the creeps earlier you earn more points. These extra points are about linear, more or less the same at every level. So to get some of the high scores, almost you have to send all creeps at once, which isn't possible. I estimated the max scores possible is about 10,000. I don't know how some 14,000 can be achieved in the hard mode.
So this is my final take on the game, unless some guru come out and explain how they earn high scores. And it have to be interesting, that is, related to real war strategy.
Swarm tower: it's much more efficient for air defense than squirt towers. It had to be at the dead center of the desktop. When you have two, put the 2nd one next to the dead center. The upgrade sequence is simple. When you are at level 7xN, your tower should be SW N. But you don't need any swarm for the first flying creeps when N=1. This assumes that you have a strong enough squirt tower to help with air defense, not busy with other creeps.
For level 7x7, you need two equivalent sw6 towers, such as one sw6 touching two bo5 (50% boost) towers. For level 7x8, flying bosses, you need the equivalent of four sw6 towers, such as two sw6 touching four bo5 towers. Also for the flying bosses you need two frost towers, fr6, to cover both boss.
There could be variations that I didn't exhaust. If you only slow down only one boss, each boss in theory absorb twice the fire power. I did tried with one fr6 to slow down one boss. It worked pretty good but not very consistent. If you need two fr6 to slow down one boss, it doesn't save you $250. You can have five bo5 (maximum boost towers) touching one sw6. It's not too good but it works better with an extra sw5 touching four bo5. I didn't exhaust all these, but the money saved doesn't seem to be that great, so you don't gain a lot of fire power for the other creeps.
You need only one bash tower, the priority of upgrade. It kills all creeps all at once passing through, the strategy to have high scores by sending the next wave of creeps early. But you cannot have bash alone because they cannot kill any boss for their short range. The best "maze" for bash is the cross but degenerates into one square block, and you try to surround the bash so creeps have to run along it on all four sides. See DNA defense in earlier post. But this conflicts with boost towers, which has to touch the bash.
The compromise for the bash maze is for the tower to touch two (or even three) boost towers. There are still three sides for the creeps to run along. This still look somewhat like the DNA defense.
You need only one squirt tower. You need a long range weapon to kill the bosses, and certainly the spawns. It's sufficient if this tower is boosted by two (or three) boost towers. The best maze is a cross three square in width initially, and five square in width at the end. You force the creeps to run around your cross. Your cross have to be small to survive the initial attacks with little money, and enlarging your cross is easy and cheap to do, but very effective. You should integrate one corner or one side of the cross with the bash maze.
You upgrade your squirt along with the bash. You need a spread sheet to be optimum. But simply put, you upgrade when you have money, bash first, until you bay $290 for the squirt before $260 for the bash. And it doesn't matter that much if you are good.
So you have one bash, one squirt, and one swarm. When they are all upgraded to the full, you try to touch them as much as possible with 4 or even more boost towers. When you get to the flying bosses, you need in addition one sw6 touching 4 bo5, and two fr6 covering each flight path.
You also need the so called juggling to send the creeps back and forth at some point. With my sufficient fire power, you can keep juggling to a minimum. Juggling means you don't have good design and enough fire power. The creeps will accumulate and divert fire power if you juggle too much.
For the last two bosses, you must send them out together, so no remaining creeps are to be released. All maze blocks part of the creep's entrance so they are forced into the heart of the maze. When no more creeps are released, you can just unblock the entrance, and block the exit of the maze, so the creeps have to go all the way back to where they started. For a good design they will be killed before they reach the entrance. There are no extra maze needed for juggling.
The only other case you need juggling is for the spawns, especially for the bosses at level 48. But since the next creeps are flying with no more creeps coming out for a long time, you can do the same as the final bosses. But if the spawns aren't killed soon enough, the squirts will be diverting fire power from the flying creeps. Anyway, a little juggling can save you a lot of money for other things. In practice, you need to add a little extra maze such as the DNA pattern to slow down the creeps at the entrance and exit, to give you enough response time to sell and buy blocks.
One possible variation, if boosting the frost towers further slow down the creeps, it would be very useful. But I doubt it, the game isn't that complicated, such as that the boost towers don't boost each other. And if the slow down can be boosted, the game would be too easy.
Friday, November 30, 2007
Triple Cross Defense
After managing to kill everything at the Desktop Tower Defense, I was trying to be scientific to get higher scores. I used the Flying Boss at the easy and normal modes for measuring the effectiveness of the towers, when only one defense tower is present. You need a strong boss to survive after the assault so you can measure the residue health points.
The main deduction is the firing rate which isn't disclosed in the game. It confirms that the Swarm towers are much more effective than the Squirt towers. And that it's always much more cost efficient to upgrade than to duplicate one. And since Swarm towers are for air defense only, we have to have a mixed defense with Sw towers. Though I manage to kill all flying creeps with Sq towers only except for the Flying Bosses.
Looking at the range data explains a lot of things. Why the DNA2 defense is so effective with a Bash tower inside, but doesn't work that well when putting other things inside, or to join the basic unit into larger chains. It confirms what I have been doing is right, wrapping the creep's path around Sq towers, which seemed to be in conflict with the square defense.
Trying to force the creeps around your tower for as long as possible, the basic pattern is a cross build from squares, with your tower in the middle. You try to block the creeps to run around your cross. For maximum range of an Sq (90), the size of a cross is 5 squares in width. For short range weapons such as Bash towers (50), the cross degenerates into a single square, which explains the effectiveness of the square defense. For long ranges, variations of the cross maze are possible, as long as the creeps are forced to run around the circle within range.
Frost towers are the big surprise. They slows down the creeps from a factor of 0.85 to 0.6. So for $200, you can increase the damage of a tower by 1/0.6, or 66%. This is in a way much cheaper than a Boost tower, which cost $500 for 50%. Though they work differently. The frost towers slow down the creeps that pass through, while the Bo's increases the damage of the towers touching them.
Before building the most effective maze, we need to know what weapons are needed and how many of them. Oh yes, it's hen and egg, as the maze determines the total damage that a tower inflicts on the creeps.
Anyway the Flying bosses are one of the most difficult to kill. It turns out that you need 4 Sw6 (Swarm tower level 6, or Storm tower) and 4 Sq6 with Fr6. You can have more Sw and less Sq but the Sq are shared with ground defense. With Boost towers, it's never worthwhile to build more than two towers. So all you need is two Sw6 and two Sq6, all touching two Bo5 (50% boost). Fr6 has the same range as Sw6, so you probably need two Fr6 to cover the two Sw6's, ensuring a consistent 0.6 air speed reduction.
Spawn creeps are the most difficult to kill land creeps. When you kill one, two little spawn creeps are born with half the strength each. So the Spawns are effectively twice as strong as any others in the same level. It also means that you can not kill them with a short range weapon no matter how strong.
So the defense is based on three crosses, one for Ba (which degenerates into a square), and two for the two Sq, which are sufficient for land defense as well as air. You can do without Ba's but since they splashes (killing everyone within range), I think it's the key to high score by sending in creeps earlier. I doubt if you can do without Sq's because given enough time with a proper cross, it provides the most damage per unit cost.
So the basic strategy is for the Ba to at least kill the first generation Spawns, and then the other Sq's take over. Each Ba can deliver three blows when creeps (speed factor 1) are forced to run along it on all 4 sides. The upgrade sequence is something like this, the first is the level number which are spawns.
6 sq3
13 ba1 sq4 sw2
20 ba3 sq5 sw3
27 ba4 sq6 sw4
34 ba5 sq6 sq5 sw5
41 ba6 sq6x2 sw6
48 all +80% fr6
55 ba6 sq6x2 sw6x2 +100% fr6x2
Initially you have to merge a square, as in the DNA 2 defense earlier, with a small cross 3 square wide. Any larger you are wasting resources and wouldn't survive the attacks. When you reach sq6 you have to knock down the borders and enlarge the cross to 5 square wide if possible. When you have two sq you merge the two crosses together side by side overlapping. The total range are halved due to overlapping, but the fire power is doubled there. This also allows mounting space for touching Bo's and Sw's. The first Sw must be in the dead center of the desktop where the Flying bosses pass through.
The other way to force creeps running around your guns is to sell a Pellet tower to open up some 2nd passage and block the 1st passage. It's no fun as it's increasing slow to sell towers. You might save time by having three or more openings so one is open, one is closed and the other is being sold. But I don't think it's the road to high score, which needs a high kill rate. My strategy kill everything without selling and juggling except for the 2nd last Morph Bosses. You may go to the scoreboard to see my humble scores - theplayer, and there is a group score with me in it - players.
Now perhaps when there's nothing to discover, I might go back to my real desktop, top score or not.
The main deduction is the firing rate which isn't disclosed in the game. It confirms that the Swarm towers are much more effective than the Squirt towers. And that it's always much more cost efficient to upgrade than to duplicate one. And since Swarm towers are for air defense only, we have to have a mixed defense with Sw towers. Though I manage to kill all flying creeps with Sq towers only except for the Flying Bosses.
Looking at the range data explains a lot of things. Why the DNA2 defense is so effective with a Bash tower inside, but doesn't work that well when putting other things inside, or to join the basic unit into larger chains. It confirms what I have been doing is right, wrapping the creep's path around Sq towers, which seemed to be in conflict with the square defense.
Trying to force the creeps around your tower for as long as possible, the basic pattern is a cross build from squares, with your tower in the middle. You try to block the creeps to run around your cross. For maximum range of an Sq (90), the size of a cross is 5 squares in width. For short range weapons such as Bash towers (50), the cross degenerates into a single square, which explains the effectiveness of the square defense. For long ranges, variations of the cross maze are possible, as long as the creeps are forced to run around the circle within range.
Frost towers are the big surprise. They slows down the creeps from a factor of 0.85 to 0.6. So for $200, you can increase the damage of a tower by 1/0.6, or 66%. This is in a way much cheaper than a Boost tower, which cost $500 for 50%. Though they work differently. The frost towers slow down the creeps that pass through, while the Bo's increases the damage of the towers touching them.
Before building the most effective maze, we need to know what weapons are needed and how many of them. Oh yes, it's hen and egg, as the maze determines the total damage that a tower inflicts on the creeps.
Anyway the Flying bosses are one of the most difficult to kill. It turns out that you need 4 Sw6 (Swarm tower level 6, or Storm tower) and 4 Sq6 with Fr6. You can have more Sw and less Sq but the Sq are shared with ground defense. With Boost towers, it's never worthwhile to build more than two towers. So all you need is two Sw6 and two Sq6, all touching two Bo5 (50% boost). Fr6 has the same range as Sw6, so you probably need two Fr6 to cover the two Sw6's, ensuring a consistent 0.6 air speed reduction.
Spawn creeps are the most difficult to kill land creeps. When you kill one, two little spawn creeps are born with half the strength each. So the Spawns are effectively twice as strong as any others in the same level. It also means that you can not kill them with a short range weapon no matter how strong.
So the defense is based on three crosses, one for Ba (which degenerates into a square), and two for the two Sq, which are sufficient for land defense as well as air. You can do without Ba's but since they splashes (killing everyone within range), I think it's the key to high score by sending in creeps earlier. I doubt if you can do without Sq's because given enough time with a proper cross, it provides the most damage per unit cost.
So the basic strategy is for the Ba to at least kill the first generation Spawns, and then the other Sq's take over. Each Ba can deliver three blows when creeps (speed factor 1) are forced to run along it on all 4 sides. The upgrade sequence is something like this, the first is the level number which are spawns.
6 sq3
13 ba1 sq4 sw2
20 ba3 sq5 sw3
27 ba4 sq6 sw4
34 ba5 sq6 sq5 sw5
41 ba6 sq6x2 sw6
48 all +80% fr6
55 ba6 sq6x2 sw6x2 +100% fr6x2
Initially you have to merge a square, as in the DNA 2 defense earlier, with a small cross 3 square wide. Any larger you are wasting resources and wouldn't survive the attacks. When you reach sq6 you have to knock down the borders and enlarge the cross to 5 square wide if possible. When you have two sq you merge the two crosses together side by side overlapping. The total range are halved due to overlapping, but the fire power is doubled there. This also allows mounting space for touching Bo's and Sw's. The first Sw must be in the dead center of the desktop where the Flying bosses pass through.
The other way to force creeps running around your guns is to sell a Pellet tower to open up some 2nd passage and block the 1st passage. It's no fun as it's increasing slow to sell towers. You might save time by having three or more openings so one is open, one is closed and the other is being sold. But I don't think it's the road to high score, which needs a high kill rate. My strategy kill everything without selling and juggling except for the 2nd last Morph Bosses. You may go to the scoreboard to see my humble scores - theplayer, and there is a group score with me in it - players.
Now perhaps when there's nothing to discover, I might go back to my real desktop, top score or not.
Thursday, November 15, 2007
Desktop Tower Defender
I stumbled upon this game and I was addicted. This is the winning strategy.
If you like Ages of the Empire but have no patient, this is for you. There are sufficient variations to apply your warfare theories but the rules are limited so the game can be defeated with not too much practice and research. So, it won't last forever, and you will be back to your real desktop very soon.
The weapons:
The Pellet tower is like Napoleon's foot soldiers. They can hold their lines well, their fire power is decent, but they fire too slow. You needs lot of them. Although their damage/cost is good, the (rate of damage) / cost is poor compared to the Squirt Tower which fires much more rapidly. They do not worth upgrading for more damages. However, like pawns in chess, they are very important. They are cheap, they are plenty, they are disposable.
The Squirt Tower is like machine guns or cannons. The rate of damage / cost is best as they fire non-stop. This is the main weapon of choice.
The Bash Tower is like a land mine redeployed in a short time after every explosion. Or it's like a fixed cannon. It has the best damage/cost ratio. It fires very slow but it damages enemies all around it. It's complements the Squirt Tower.
The Swarm Tower is like anti-aircraft artillery. It fires 4 missiles at the same time. It's a little slower than the Squirt Tower, which is for air and ground, while the Swarm Tower is for air defense only. I'm sure this is necessary. In the beginning, Pe and Sq are good at defending the first wave. When all the weapons are upgraded, the Sq seems to be increasing effective. There is a strange value for the last upgrade. It is apparent that it's better to build another tower than paying for the final upgrade. Anyway, one tower is about enough to kill off all aircrafts, except for the flying BOSS, which are almost impossible to kill. But I'm getting there.
All other weapons are not worth it. They do not have sufficient damage at the final upgrade. Just the Sq and Ba can get the job done. The dart tower is pretty good at the Groups but redundant when you fire power increases. I still don't find the Ink Tower effective against anything. The Snap Tower is just too weak for the big Bosses.
One useful piece is the Frost Tower, which slows your enemy down.
The Boost Tower is only useful if you have several towers placed around it. It's may be useful in the final stages when you have a lot of money and a lot of weapons. For example, it only make sense if you have three Sw towers put together to use Bo. Otherwise it's better to buy another one.
The basic strategy is to slow your enemy down to absorb fire. It's the classic square formations to defend against cavalry charge. For the desktop, I came up with the DNA2 defense based on this formation of Pe's. Obviously Pe's are used because they are the cheapest. You replace some Pe's with other weapons, and put others around it.
I think it's the cheapest way to get your enemy run the most, taking fire at all sides, it's also the most compact in terms of area.
Of course you don't use only one. The pattern can be repeated indefinitely, can be packed very closely to fit your desktop defense space. You can rotate it, flip it, to form long strands something like DNA spirals. Typically you shape your strands so you have plenty of spaces in the middle of the desktop for deployment additional weapons, typically air defense.
Actually you don't need anything else but Pe's in the DNA2 formation. You don't need rapid fire Sq because 10 Pe's firing at random is as good as a Sq. However, the Spawn are pretty good at spoiling things. Distributed fire by Pe's cannot deal with Spawns effectively. Every time you kill a big Spawn, you get lots of little Spawns. There's no way to really slow them down and you have to kill them several times. So you need concentrated fire power other than plenty of Pe's.
It should be noted that the Spawns can pass through the gaps some of the times when the squares are barely touching. But when they pass through one formation, they will be caught in the next. Just remember to block those vulnerable corners where the Spawns can escape to their home base. Even for this weakness, the DNA2 is still much more effective when the enemies have to pass on all 4 sides of a middle square.
The deployment:
Basically you block your enemies so they only charge through your square formations. Obviously the first middle square should be a Ba. Then you need a Sq concentrated at the first corner of entry. The position is crucial. If you put it on a middle square it performs poorly. It shoots everywhere instead of concentrating on where you need it. It's optional to have a second Sq at the entrance corner of the 2nd DNA formation. Typically Spawns pass through the 1st formation will be killed in the 2nd.
The upgrade strategy:
A few of the DNA formation can kill most enemies, with just a Ba and two Sq's. You want the most concentrated fire power. So you upgrade the Ba and the Sq on the same first DNA formation as soon as you can. The 2nd Sq should be one or two upgrades behind. I think on the final upgrade, the Sq are more effective with rapid fire, but of course the Ba's damage is impressive. If you survive the initial assaults, it doesn't really matter you upgrade the Ba or Sq first, as long as you don't upgrade all two Sq first. Save some money for the Ba.
Also you need to upgrade the Sw's regularly for each air assault. When you reach the final upgrade, you should buy yourself another Sw just short or the final upgrade. But I'm not sure the final upgrade is useful. It looks like it's better to have two instead of going for the final upgrade.
Mobility:
With the simple strategies you can kill most enemies except for two types of Bosses, the Morph Bosses and the Flying Bosses. Some other bosses are pretty hard to kill too. With mobility, you can certainly kill everything on the ground.
You can trap your enemies within your DNA2 formations by blocking and unblocking exits. They just run around absorbing fire. Therefore only one Ba and one Sq or two will be sufficient.
For mobility to work, you need two strands of formation. When you block one all the enemies have to go back for the opening in the 2nd strand. Timing is very important because unblocking becomes increasingly slow. You want to keep all enemies running pass your Ba again and again. You need very long strands, with 6 or more middle squares each. So you have plenty of time to unblock and block your exits.
Ultimate defense:
I can kill everything except for the flying bosses, which you cannot slow down. With 4 final upgraded Sw I manage to kill 2/3 of a flying boss. So I'm close. I'm not sure Sw is the way to go. Super guns in form of Sq are pretty good. The Bo's are pretty effective and money saving when you have a bunch of Sw and Sq trying to shoot down the flying bosses.
I have no idea how the other defenders defend. I looked at the top score once and the winning pattern is rather misleading. The person could be hiding his tracks in the final stage by selling things and buying things not needed.
I'm sure there are totally different strategies. I rather not look at them because it's part of the fun. I prefer my style, more like a warfare strategy game than shoot them down types.
If you like Ages of the Empire but have no patient, this is for you. There are sufficient variations to apply your warfare theories but the rules are limited so the game can be defeated with not too much practice and research. So, it won't last forever, and you will be back to your real desktop very soon.
The weapons:
The Pellet tower is like Napoleon's foot soldiers. They can hold their lines well, their fire power is decent, but they fire too slow. You needs lot of them. Although their damage/cost is good, the (rate of damage) / cost is poor compared to the Squirt Tower which fires much more rapidly. They do not worth upgrading for more damages. However, like pawns in chess, they are very important. They are cheap, they are plenty, they are disposable.
The Squirt Tower is like machine guns or cannons. The rate of damage / cost is best as they fire non-stop. This is the main weapon of choice.
The Bash Tower is like a land mine redeployed in a short time after every explosion. Or it's like a fixed cannon. It has the best damage/cost ratio. It fires very slow but it damages enemies all around it. It's complements the Squirt Tower.
The Swarm Tower is like anti-aircraft artillery. It fires 4 missiles at the same time. It's a little slower than the Squirt Tower, which is for air and ground, while the Swarm Tower is for air defense only. I'm sure this is necessary. In the beginning, Pe and Sq are good at defending the first wave. When all the weapons are upgraded, the Sq seems to be increasing effective. There is a strange value for the last upgrade. It is apparent that it's better to build another tower than paying for the final upgrade. Anyway, one tower is about enough to kill off all aircrafts, except for the flying BOSS, which are almost impossible to kill. But I'm getting there.
All other weapons are not worth it. They do not have sufficient damage at the final upgrade. Just the Sq and Ba can get the job done. The dart tower is pretty good at the Groups but redundant when you fire power increases. I still don't find the Ink Tower effective against anything. The Snap Tower is just too weak for the big Bosses.
One useful piece is the Frost Tower, which slows your enemy down.
The Boost Tower is only useful if you have several towers placed around it. It's may be useful in the final stages when you have a lot of money and a lot of weapons. For example, it only make sense if you have three Sw towers put together to use Bo. Otherwise it's better to buy another one.
The basic strategy is to slow your enemy down to absorb fire. It's the classic square formations to defend against cavalry charge. For the desktop, I came up with the DNA2 defense based on this formation of Pe's. Obviously Pe's are used because they are the cheapest. You replace some Pe's with other weapons, and put others around it.I think it's the cheapest way to get your enemy run the most, taking fire at all sides, it's also the most compact in terms of area.
Of course you don't use only one. The pattern can be repeated indefinitely, can be packed very closely to fit your desktop defense space. You can rotate it, flip it, to form long strands something like DNA spirals. Typically you shape your strands so you have plenty of spaces in the middle of the desktop for deployment additional weapons, typically air defense.
Actually you don't need anything else but Pe's in the DNA2 formation. You don't need rapid fire Sq because 10 Pe's firing at random is as good as a Sq. However, the Spawn are pretty good at spoiling things. Distributed fire by Pe's cannot deal with Spawns effectively. Every time you kill a big Spawn, you get lots of little Spawns. There's no way to really slow them down and you have to kill them several times. So you need concentrated fire power other than plenty of Pe's.
It should be noted that the Spawns can pass through the gaps some of the times when the squares are barely touching. But when they pass through one formation, they will be caught in the next. Just remember to block those vulnerable corners where the Spawns can escape to their home base. Even for this weakness, the DNA2 is still much more effective when the enemies have to pass on all 4 sides of a middle square.
The deployment:
Basically you block your enemies so they only charge through your square formations. Obviously the first middle square should be a Ba. Then you need a Sq concentrated at the first corner of entry. The position is crucial. If you put it on a middle square it performs poorly. It shoots everywhere instead of concentrating on where you need it. It's optional to have a second Sq at the entrance corner of the 2nd DNA formation. Typically Spawns pass through the 1st formation will be killed in the 2nd.
The upgrade strategy:
A few of the DNA formation can kill most enemies, with just a Ba and two Sq's. You want the most concentrated fire power. So you upgrade the Ba and the Sq on the same first DNA formation as soon as you can. The 2nd Sq should be one or two upgrades behind. I think on the final upgrade, the Sq are more effective with rapid fire, but of course the Ba's damage is impressive. If you survive the initial assaults, it doesn't really matter you upgrade the Ba or Sq first, as long as you don't upgrade all two Sq first. Save some money for the Ba.
Also you need to upgrade the Sw's regularly for each air assault. When you reach the final upgrade, you should buy yourself another Sw just short or the final upgrade. But I'm not sure the final upgrade is useful. It looks like it's better to have two instead of going for the final upgrade.
Mobility:
With the simple strategies you can kill most enemies except for two types of Bosses, the Morph Bosses and the Flying Bosses. Some other bosses are pretty hard to kill too. With mobility, you can certainly kill everything on the ground.
You can trap your enemies within your DNA2 formations by blocking and unblocking exits. They just run around absorbing fire. Therefore only one Ba and one Sq or two will be sufficient.
For mobility to work, you need two strands of formation. When you block one all the enemies have to go back for the opening in the 2nd strand. Timing is very important because unblocking becomes increasingly slow. You want to keep all enemies running pass your Ba again and again. You need very long strands, with 6 or more middle squares each. So you have plenty of time to unblock and block your exits.
Ultimate defense:
I can kill everything except for the flying bosses, which you cannot slow down. With 4 final upgraded Sw I manage to kill 2/3 of a flying boss. So I'm close. I'm not sure Sw is the way to go. Super guns in form of Sq are pretty good. The Bo's are pretty effective and money saving when you have a bunch of Sw and Sq trying to shoot down the flying bosses.
I have no idea how the other defenders defend. I looked at the top score once and the winning pattern is rather misleading. The person could be hiding his tracks in the final stage by selling things and buying things not needed.
I'm sure there are totally different strategies. I rather not look at them because it's part of the fun. I prefer my style, more like a warfare strategy game than shoot them down types.
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