I didn't find a thread about this, if there is one - close this.
Probably the most anticipated tower defense from Warcraft 3 got released a few days ago on Europe, not sure about NA and the other realms.
Elemental TD kind of revolutionized the tower defense community in Warcraft 3 with a huge variety of strategies and game mods that allowed the map a huge life span. While building normal towers for survival you also summon elements to kill that allows you to advance to stronger towers with specific element damage type. All the creeps spawned got different armor types that takes different damage from different elemental types, and it's therefor important to have a good spread of your towers abilities - which means no more spamming a single tower. Elements can be merged into numerous combinations which makes this quite complex. In short: Light > Darkness > Water > Fire > Nature > Earth > Light. - in reality it's much more complex than that.
I tried it out last night and I must say it really got the same feel as the previous versions of the map and are already surprisingly balanced even though it for sure needs some tweaking.
Played this map quite often the last days and at least got one setup of elements/towers that seems to work pretty good for me so far, although I never played one of the harder difficulties (only normal until now).
If you guys are interested, I could try to do a little write-up how I approach this (and try if my approach works on harder difficulties too).
On June 28 2011 20:18 Espelz wrote: Played this map quite often the last days and at least got one setup of elements/towers that seems to work pretty good for me so far, although I never played one of the harder difficulties (only normal until now).
If you guys are interested, I could try to do a little write-up how I approach this (and try if my approach works on harder difficulties too).
On June 28 2011 21:04 Tsenister wrote: Probably the only tower defence map that requires timing and APM to play properly tbh. Record is 50 something fruit kills now.
- Pure light towers + trickery/masquerade towers (which is light+dark) is overpowered and can win u the game at normal difficulty insanely easy.
- Pure fire is the most efficient of the pure elements.
- Manage to make a Penta tower is really hard because you will lack the proper firepower to manage to survive till you have all the stuff you need (especially the credits)
If you are going for the Penta tower I suggest focusing on making powerful triplets towers (the ones who cost 1000) asap more than spamming doublets of every combination to gain the various effect... then when you have all the elements and the pure essence just spam non elemental towers (remember than even if you transform a non elemental tower into an elemental one you can still get 100% refund) and wait till you have enough by ricycling them and get the Penta.
Max you can have is like 4 Penta towers afaik but it doesn't seem as efficient as other combinations such as the aboves...
On June 28 2011 21:04 Tsenister wrote: Probably the only tower defence map that requires timing and APM to play properly tbh. Record is 50 something fruit kills now.
On what difficulty?
I needed some decent reaction time/APM when I played through with Dark/Fire/Earth because I had to constantly zoom a few Amplify Towers over and over.
still dont wana go bank route just yet bc the light fire route is not yet complete (there are tower missing).
Beaten very easy multiple times with life build + well (221 life b4 61) and end up with 110 kills. The main problem with this map on sc2 is the round end when the first guy kill the wave, not the last guy. This make its really hard to learn the game for newb. Also i suggest author to have (default mode as ALL RANDOM) or at least make it so that all the newb gona pick it instead of allpick =_=.
On June 29 2011 01:22 NB wrote: still dont wana go bank route just yet bc the light fire route is not yet complete (there are tower missing).
Beaten very easy multiple times with life build + well (221 life b4 61) and end up with 110 kills. The main problem with this map on sc2 is the round end when the first guy kill the wave, not the last guy. This make its really hard to learn the game for newb. Also i suggest author to have (default mode as ALL RANDOM) or at least make it so that all the newb gona pick it instead of allpick =_=.
legion TD and ETD are so 1337 =_=
it was like that in warcraft 3 aswell. it's competitive survivor. you can either rush waves to try overwhelm other players or play it slow and try get more interest ticks and last longer. players who kill waves very quickly usually lose before wave 60 because of significantly less interest.
On June 29 2011 01:22 NB wrote: still dont wana go bank route just yet bc the light fire route is not yet complete (there are tower missing).
Beaten very easy multiple times with life build + well (221 life b4 61) and end up with 110 kills. The main problem with this map on sc2 is the round end when the first guy kill the wave, not the last guy. This make its really hard to learn the game for newb. Also i suggest author to have (default mode as ALL RANDOM) or at least make it so that all the newb gona pick it instead of allpick =_=.
legion TD and ETD are so 1337 =_=
It's always been the first guy that kills the wave starts the timer. That's what makes it hard and awesome in multiplayer.
On June 29 2011 01:22 NB wrote: still dont wana go bank route just yet bc the light fire route is not yet complete (there are tower missing).
Beaten very easy multiple times with life build + well (221 life b4 61) and end up with 110 kills. The main problem with this map on sc2 is the round end when the first guy kill the wave, not the last guy. This make its really hard to learn the game for newb. Also i suggest author to have (default mode as ALL RANDOM) or at least make it so that all the newb gona pick it instead of allpick =_=.
legion TD and ETD are so 1337 =_=
It's always been the first guy that kills the wave starts the timer. That's what makes it hard and awesome in multiplayer.
It wouldn't be that bad if there wasn't always some person playing on Very Easy and spamming grenade towers at the start all game.
Played this ALL WEEKEND. What a solid game. Never heard of it until now because I never played much WC3 online.
So far I've just been experimenting with different placement and elemental combinations. I've won several times but only on normal or easy. Record is ~215 fruit on easy.
I usually only go for 3 elements because it allows you to get 2 interest upgrades too. Only listing the basic towers.
Light, Earth, Fire - Combine light, electricity, quark, and forge towers.
Light, Water, Nature - Combine light, torrent, spring, and perpetual towers. Enjoy having 100 lives.
Light, Dark, Nature - Combine light, perpetual, annihilation, and trickery towers. Can be REALLY good.
Any more super-good combos?
Placement -wise I've noticed putting 6 grenade towers early on the first corner helps you force out other players early by bringing the next round before they can deal with the first.
On June 28 2011 21:04 Tsenister wrote: Probably the only tower defence map that requires timing and APM to play properly tbh. Record is 50 something fruit kills now.
On what difficulty?
Think it was normal? No one was complaining (too easy/too hard) like they do on EU server so I assume it was on normal mode. it was on AP using double interest start with cannon buy/sell.
I'm not going to lie. I loved seeing the red crit numbers on the war3 version - sorely disappointed not seeing them in the sc2 version. Hopefully though it was kinda like a reassurance your towers are hitting, and in the case of nature+death towers, you could see epic numbers. Now it feels like nature+death doesn't actually do bonus damage because I've massed them before on War3 and they obliterated. On SC2, they're not really that good, they're kinda like the tidal waves of war3 when you're a noob and don't press the release button P
On June 29 2011 01:22 NB wrote: still dont wana go bank route just yet bc the light fire route is not yet complete (there are tower missing).
Beaten very easy multiple times with life build + well (221 life b4 61) and end up with 110 kills. The main problem with this map on sc2 is the round end when the first guy kill the wave, not the last guy. This make its really hard to learn the game for newb. Also i suggest author to have (default mode as ALL RANDOM) or at least make it so that all the newb gona pick it instead of allpick =_=.
legion TD and ETD are so 1337 =_=
it was like that in warcraft 3 aswell. it's competitive survivor. you can either rush waves to try overwhelm other players or play it slow and try get more interest ticks and last longer. players who kill waves very quickly usually lose before wave 60 because of significantly less interest.
not true, you are only behind like 50 to 100 gold when wave 60 comes. i have done it several time and its totally ok.
Also its weird how each person has his own difficulty set up so veryeasy and very hard are in same game? o.O
Just cheesed my way through very easy with Darkness Fire Earth. Was the only person in the game who made it to the last wave though which I found surprising ^_^ There was one guy playing very hard random, but the rest of us noobs were just playing very easy all pick.
I like the flamethrower, pure darkness and mass forge strategy although it happened randomly as I haven't played in years. Kinda cheated cause I knew I wanted darkness and so I looked at the combo towers to see what looked awesome :0
The most effective combination imo is Dark Nature Light, for obliteration towers. Once you get one tower at around level 21, you can easily plow through the next ~10 levels allowing you to build up interest. (Grab interest upgrade at 20 and 25) I play on very hard difficulty.
What sort of placement do people use at the start of a very hard round for their towers? Do you use grenade or laser towers? Do you spread them out or just stack most of them towards the front?
Also, do you really need to wait until 20/25 to get interest upgrades?
On June 29 2011 14:46 Blitzkrieg0 wrote: What sort of placement do people use at the start of a very hard round for their towers? Do you use grenade or laser towers? Do you spread them out or just stack most of them towards the front?
Also, do you really need to wait until 20/25 to get interest upgrades?
I build grenade towers at the bottom right corner and spread northwards. since usually you'll have some players spamming at the front at easy difficulty causing the next level to start very quickly, if you build at the bottom right you can usually clear out the first level before the next level hits.
About 20/25, I don't see much point upgrading interest early on if I still need to spend minerals each round to build towers to survive.
those upgraded life towers are kind of like crack..it gives you tons of lives but the dmg sux so bad you lose lives if you have too many of em, but then they come back around and give you more lives lol
when i play random (for full 100% return) and luckily get the life tower line, and see earth coming up i sell towers and mass the life towers which actually does dmg to earth if im not lazy, tons of lives :D
On June 29 2011 14:46 Blitzkrieg0 wrote: What sort of placement do people use at the start of a very hard round for their towers? Do you use grenade or laser towers? Do you spread them out or just stack most of them towards the front?
Also, do you really need to wait until 20/25 to get interest upgrades?
for very easy it doesnt matter grenade or laser but its better to use laser if you trying to play on hard or so.
Placement early on i place as near spawn as possible so wont fall behind in income as other could kill the wave b4 i do. After 5 its depends on what element you get:
Long range (light): you want to place it at middle but -2 paces from the tip so it could reach both top lane near exit spawn and bottom lane.
splash (fire): you want to place it at choke where your bots will stacked after you get a slow tower in the future.
Other: tower such as life/gold or HP-> chance kill requires last hit so you want to place them where there will be a resting perios between 1 wave (middle left or right handside should be your ultimate choices.
as you advance you will see there are some funky tower such as boomerang or orbit dont only require good placement but also require you to single target/micro them to achieve maximum potential. I.E: i go max Light/life -> i have to micro my refined light tower to only injured my creeps, not killing them so life tower has an easier chance to auto last hit stuff. OR you have to manual cast well/forge to get maximum potential.
On June 29 2011 16:32 Zelniq wrote: those upgraded life towers are kind of like crack..it gives you tons of lives but the dmg sux so bad you lose lives if you have too many of em, but then they come back around and give you more lives lol
when i play random (for full 100% return) and luckily get the life tower line, and see earth coming up i sell towers and mass the life towers which actually does dmg to earth if im not lazy, tons of lives :D
you should never get life tower in random lol... you should always stick with what ever element that most likely gona give you a pure tower. Life in sc2 got reduced range compare to war3 i think... or at least the map structure is a lots different so once i place pure light in the middle, it cant reach the entire map.
Life however in all pick is awesome. You could get 200+ lives after 60 and sell all of the tower to get ~4 pure tower with either 2 level 3 well/forge. I got 110 kills out of that build once
On June 29 2011 16:32 Zelniq wrote: those upgraded life towers are kind of like crack..it gives you tons of lives but the dmg sux so bad you lose lives if you have too many of em, but then they come back around and give you more lives lol
when i play random (for full 100% return) and luckily get the life tower line, and see earth coming up i sell towers and mass the life towers which actually does dmg to earth if im not lazy, tons of lives :D
You can upgrade life towers to nova towers with fire. They did ROCK in EleTD 3.0. I don't know if they still rock in this version.
So in EleTD 3 I first got many lifes and then I stomped the creeps with Nova AOE damage.
On June 29 2011 17:28 [F_]aths wrote: I played it yesterday. Luckily for me, some element combinations still provide the effect I am used to from WC3 EleTD 3.0.
I had some performance issues while I consider my computer okay for standard SC2 games.
some of the effects hammer performance especially when you start getting multiples of some towers. it's beta anyway, most of the sounds/effects are placeholder and trying to work on that.
Element TD was a pretty good TD in wc3, but there were waay better and more fun TD:s such as YouTD, Warcraftmaul and the good ol' wintermaul (well i guess most people think they are crappy), kindergarten TD/maul, sprout TD (because i always win battle mode ^^ I am unbeatable), Shopping maul, Eeve TD(? can't quite remember the name), WMW (fun but laggy), fusion TD, etc... (I've prolly forgotten so many awesome games!). I wonder how long will it take for some good original SC2 TD:s.
This map seems incomplete as it does not have all the options the original did. For example you can not check range as far as I can tell. The command does not work. Where are your lives listed anyway? I went with Lifetower build but could not tell how high my life went.
However I think this TD is the best TD out there. At least in War 3 it was the best out of all the TD I played. Very complex type of TD game.
I dunno if this is the right place, and it's very possible that everyone knows this build already, but since I came up with it on my own I thought I'd share it.
Daigomi's stinking rich build
Credentials: In the last version of Ele TD for War3, I once killed 120 ronalds on Very Hard difficulty using this build. I think I got up to 200 on Hard, but it was a while back so I'm not entirely sure.
Element order: Light->Fire->Earth->Light->Fire->Earth->Light. At this point you have about 4 elements left which you can spend as you please.
With your remaining four elements, the choice is up to you, although there are three sets of two elements that I find effective. They are Fire/Earth, Nature/Nature, and Pure/Pure. These can be used in any combination and it tends to work out quite well. Fire/Earth allows you to get Foundry towers, which give +120% damage to your towers. Combined with the pure Light's and gold towers, this is awesome. On the other hand, nature gives you Supernova towers which gives 30% slow, which is really useful, since you'll have enough cash to cover most of the map with slow. Pure/Pure just adds two (or four, if you go all out) additional pure light towers, which is really powerful at the end. You can also mix it up by grabbing two investments early on (one before your first earth, one directly after), which should allow you to get a networth of around 120,000 near the end. You can also go Water/Water, which allows you to get a Polar tower (creeps take 30% more damage), but I'm not that mad about it.
The Basics: Light and fire combine to form an electricity tower which I think has always been the strongest two element tower in the game. Once you add Earth into the mix, you get money towers which allow you to save up to get tons of cash very quickly. The only real trick is not getting the Money tower too soon as it's slow attack speed makes it very week against almost any special round (fast/undead/images). However, once you can get afford two of them simultaneoulsy (or once you have a couple of additional electricity and light towers), you can start getting the money towers, and from there on in you just try to save up as long as possible, before throwing down another gold/electricity tower. You should also make use of your Blacksmith/Foundry towers (Earth/Fire) to get some extra damage output on your Money/Light towers.
Tower Placement: Because you will be saving as much money as possible, tower placement is very important. Fortunately, all your towers have one of two ranges: 1100 (electricity/gold) or 1500 (pure light). That means the placement is fairly straightforward, and these are the most important tower positions:
The picture isn't quite too scale, but it gives a good idea of the coverage that your towers offer from those positions. The two gold tower positions cover the entire middle area as well as the right side, and then one covers the bottom and one the top. This is true for both money towers and electricity towers. The two light towers cover pretty much everything from the middle. All the other positions are significantly weaker, but since you will be making a ton of money, you need to have an idea of where some other towers can be placed:
Because the slow effect from the slow towers last for a short while after the slows hit, you can cover almost the entire map with just 4 of them. On the image, the slow runs out during the brown areas, while everything green is covered with slow. The same placement should be used for all other slow towers (except perhaps windstorm towers [Water/Fire/Light]), as well as for Polar towers (Water/Light/Earth).
Also, given those locations, not all the gold towers should be money towers. I prefer to have the ones just left of the optimal gold towers be electricity towers, as their chain damage softens up the units enough that, later on, your money towers still kill them in one shot once they enter into their range.
Conclusion: I've only played three games on the SC2 Ele TD (one on hard and two on normal), none of which I played particularly well. They all got to around 20 kills against the fruit. However, it's possible this build isn't as strong as it used to be in War3. That said, if you're having trouble, it's a very easy build to do well with and should give you a start.
I've played a few games of this game on SC2 and it seems like the damage output in comparison to the wave health is just super low compared to WC3 it takes more towers(unless you use grenades) early on to stay alive. The slow health scaling on the levels in the early game is a problem though because it means grenade towers are pretty godlike. One of the issues is the slower firing rate and projectile speed on the ray towers I think this creates a situation where actually going into elemental towers for their effects early is bad because their damage is shit and grenades own so hard that it allows you to stock up on interest by just making grenade towers through the early game. Kind of nullifies the point on going for an early hybrid tower for their effect like people used to do in the WC3 version.
I think theres quite a few towers who can use to have their damage numbers improved as using them is not really possible because their damage is too shit. This also makes some of the buff towers not quite as good % increase on damage when the base damage is low is iffy etc.
On June 30 2011 03:04 Daigomi wrote: Credentials: In the last version of Ele TD for War3, I once killed 120 ronalds on Very Hard difficulty using this build. I think I got up to 200 on Hard, but it was a while back so I'm not entirely sure.
I once killed 900+ ronalds on EleTD 3.0 in the hardest setting, then the computer crashed. I had many nova towers and the storm (monsoon) towers to slow. I also built some of the ultimate light towers in the middle of the map, to snipe single ronalds. I saved up money to be able to afford those maxed light towers, so one needs to be very efficient until it gets to wave 60 and even later on as interest will be the only source of income then.
I hold all waves up to ronalds with storm where the "O"s are and nova where the "n"s are.
The tricky part were dune worms (wave 41). They often broke through. At time you neeeeed super nova towers and sell some normal nova towers to afford super nova towers.
On June 30 2011 03:04 Daigomi wrote: Credentials: In the last version of Ele TD for War3, I once killed 120 ronalds on Very Hard difficulty using this build. I think I got up to 200 on Hard, but it was a while back so I'm not entirely sure.
I once killed 900+ ronalds on EleTD 3.0 in the hardest setting, then the computer crashed. I had many nova towers and the storm (monsoon) towers to slow. I also built some of the ultimate light towers in the middle of the map, to snipe single ronalds. I saved up money to be able to afford those maxed light towers, so one needs to be very efficient until it gets to wave 60 and even later on as interest will be the only source of income then.
I hold all waves up to ronalds with storm where the "O"s are and nova where the "n"s are.
On June 30 2011 03:04 Daigomi wrote: Credentials: In the last version of Ele TD for War3, I once killed 120 ronalds on Very Hard difficulty using this build. I think I got up to 200 on Hard, but it was a while back so I'm not entirely sure.
I once killed 900+ ronalds on EleTD 3.0 in the hardest setting, then the computer crashed. I had many nova towers and the storm (monsoon) towers to slow. I also built some of the ultimate light towers in the middle of the map, to snipe single ronalds. I saved up money to be able to afford those maxed light towers, so one needs to be very efficient until it gets to wave 60 and even later on as interest will be the only source of income then.
I hold all waves up to ronalds with storm where the "O"s are and nova where the "n"s are.
The tricky part were dune worms (wave 41). They often broke through. At time you neeeeed super nova towers and sell some normal nova towers to afford super nova towers.
As mentioned, 3.0 was kinda broken. The most recent War3 version (3.3 I think) was the most balanced one. I remember getting 300+ on 3.0, but they buffed the Ronald's after that and nerfed quite a few of the towers.
kara got to 4.3 in the end . i played both 3 and 4 alot. 4 made alot of pretty radical changes i think, i felt lost the first few times. as people probably did when they tried the sc2 version! haha
Just beat this on normal for the first time. My element choices were: Interest Nature Earth Earth Nature Earth Nature Fire Light Light Light
This allows you to get two Mildew Towers by wave 15 which pretty much own the next 10 waves super quick. Place them here, the green squares in the top left.
These things are seriously rape early on. You'll 1shot every wave up to about 30, except probably roaches.
From there I just kept adding mildew towers and upgrading them to the next level, and finally mold towers until that whole arm was filled with the highest level mildew towers.
Level 2/3 Earth/Nature guardians definitely cost me a few lives. But it's worth it because mold towers pretty much wreck until level wave 52, the fast fire Kerrigans.
After that I added some of the e-bay towers around to buff the damage of those things. Honestly looking back on it I should have probably gone fire/fire instead of light/light/light at this point, but here's what happened:
The red squares are e-bays for +damage, the green squares are mold towers, and the yellow squares are immortal towers which basically make you almost invincible. They cleanup whatever the mold towers leave behind and net you a ridiculous amounts of lives.
Anyway, I killed 24 fruit with this build. Mildew towers are pretty OP at the early stages, but mold towers in the end seem fairly balanced.
i dont like the gold build bc for same way i can go life build and survive much longer last wave. same pure element count(4) with well instead of forge. The money late game is useless since you have to invest into element which give you less pure towers....
My build, haven't lost a single game with it: Interest, Interest, Light, Dark, Nature, Light, Dark, Nature, Light, Dark, Pure, Pure. The goal is basically to get a mixture of Obliteration/Annihilation Towers (Nature, Darkness, Light) because they destroy absolutely everything, Upgraded Light Towers (for the Light rounds) and Trickery Towers to clone the them. All you need to do for the harder rounds (Muta, Kerrigan) is reload manually. The Light Towers are there to deal with any Light-attribute creeps, so make sure you upgrade them before a Light round arrives.
Don't be afraid to mass Light Towers early game. They'll all be transformed later and they have incredible range. Can't get to Tier 3 if you're dead, right?
Because you can't clone the same tower within 60 seconds, always build five towers for every Trickery/Masq/Deceit Tower to avoid inefficiency (Ability cool down is 12, and preventative buff is 60, so your cloning should be cycling through the same 5 towers over and over again repeatedly). You can fit about 12 towers in the center area, which will become your kill zone (especially as the cloned towers start coming in!), no stuns or slows needed. Once you get Deceit Towers, you'll effectively triple your damage output. If you haven't seen it Deceit Towers in action before, it's pretty amusing.
Before you get Oblit towers, you might leak a bit, especially on Earth rounds. For that reason I suggest making 1 or 2 Perpetual Towers (Light, Nature) both to serve as a life buffer and to deal bonus damage against Earth, which your main DPS towers (Light) are weak against. If you can just hold out till you have the money for Oblit towers (and start cloning them!) you won't leak anymore. At all. Sit back and enjoy the fireworks, and watch the money pile up. I've ended games with over 90k saved because there was literally no more space to build in the center because of the Deceit Towers.
On July 02 2011 16:33 NB wrote: i dont like the gold build bc for same way i can go life build and survive much longer last wave. same pure element count(4) with well instead of forge. The money late game is useless since you have to invest into element which give you less pure towers....
Getting life towers is a reasonable strategy as well. Do you go water with life then (for the well?).
The choice you basically have is between 50 additional lives and 50,000 additional gold at the end. There are two reasons why I prefer the gold build over the life build though. For one, the life build suffers on very hard (at least in Ele 4.3). The towers just don't do enough damage to get you kills. You get up to 70-80 lives by level 40, but then regularly die before you get to level 55 as even your immortal towers just don't do enough anymore. For another reason, the combination towers you get with the gold build are considerably stronger that those for life, so while you'll have the same number of pures by the end, your other support towers will much more (due to the additional gold) and much stronger (electricity has higher damage output than electricity, while gold has higher damage output than the water/life/light [tsunami in ele 4.3] combination).
That said, the life build works well, especially on normal. I use almost exactly the same placements as I suggest in the gold build, because the range of life towers is exactly the same as the range of gold and electricity towers. The two strongest spots are in the middle two corners, as they then cover the entire middle and the far-right and far-bottom/top.
One thing you can do is get life and gold towers. If you look at my gold build, where I suggest getting investment you can get nature. I often get nature at the very end for the nova towers, so the nature in the middle doesn't disrupt the build too much. That said, because nature and gold compete with each other, it's a straight up compromise between gold and lives. With this build, you often get around 70-80 additional lives, and 30,000 additional gold, which is also really effecitve. Add to that, you have slow towers at the end, and you have the stronger dual combination towers you get from the money combination, so it does quite well.
That's the nice thing with EleTD, you can make it work with almost any combination as long as you play it correctly. I tried going Darkness/Earth/Fire last night with 4 pure elements (fire). I killed 35 fruit, and I would have gotten more if I had played slightly better, but I leaked twenty lives before the final level. I also think that rather than maxing out darkness and earh, those elements should be spent on getting slow towers, since the build depends on AOE rather than direct damage. Still, it's an interesting build, and mangify (fire/darkness) towers are incredibly strong on the right spots.
On July 02 2011 16:33 NB wrote: i dont like the gold build bc for same way i can go life build and survive much longer last wave. same pure element count(4) with well instead of forge. The money late game is useless since you have to invest into element which give you less pure towers....
Getting life towers is a reasonable strategy as well. Do you go water with life then (for the well?).
The choice you basically have is between 50 additional lives and 50,000 additional gold at the end. There are two reasons why I prefer the gold build over the life build though. For one, the life build suffers on very hard (at least in Ele 4.3). The towers just don't do enough damage to get you kills. You get up to 70-80 lives by level 40, but then regularly die before you get to level 55 as even your immortal towers just don't do enough anymore. For another reason, the combination towers you get with the gold build are considerably stronger that those for life, so while you'll have the same number of pures by the end, your other support towers will much more (due to the additional gold) and much stronger (electricity has higher damage output than electricity, while gold has higher damage output than the water/life/light [tsunami in ele 4.3] combination).
That said, the life build works well, especially on normal. I use almost exactly the same placements as I suggest in the gold build, because the range of life towers is exactly the same as the range of gold and electricity towers. The two strongest spots are in the middle two corners, as they then cover the entire middle and the far-right and far-bottom/top.
One thing you can do is get life and gold towers. If you look at my gold build, where I suggest getting investment you can get nature. I often get nature at the very end for the nova towers, so the nature in the middle doesn't disrupt the build too much. That said, because nature and gold compete with each other, it's a straight up compromise between gold and lives. With this build, you often get around 70-80 additional lives, and 30,000 additional gold, which is also really effecitve. Add to that, you have slow towers at the end, and you have the stronger dual combination towers you get from the money combination, so it does quite well.
That's the nice thing with EleTD, you can make it work with almost any combination as long as you play it correctly. I tried going Darkness/Earth/Fire last night with 4 pure elements (fire). I killed 35 fruit, and I would have gotten more if I had played slightly better, but I leaked twenty lives before the final level. I also think that rather than maxing out darkness and earh, those elements should be spent on getting slow towers, since the build depends on AOE rather than direct damage. Still, it's an interesting build, and mangify (fire/darkness) towers are incredibly strong on the right spots.
well, i only get 2 life tower with 2 light upgraded support the dps. I maxed out the 2 life tower pretty quick so by 60 i could have at least 200 lives (220+ once)
At 60 i sold my 2 life towers for money and have 4 pure light + level 3 wells + a whole bunch of 1500 lights tower. Got 100+ kills b4 all of my life run out without micro.
if you want to go money route, i would strongly suggest you get +2 interested on 5 and 10 and live based on that. Fire on 15 should keep you alive until the rest of the game. Some how i think the money tower animation is a bit too slow compare to war3 and in this game attack speed beat dmg for sure. that is also 1 of the reason i prefer well more than forge, it minimizes the "waste dmg" that tower deal on the last shot the put on creeps.
I think before people post anything they should say if this is a multiplayer build or a solo build because things change drastically based on if you are alone or fighting with other people.
In a solo game you want to delay killing waves as long as possible and build towers far away from the spawn point early on. After every interest is about to complete you want to sell all your towers. I almost always would take 2 interest first and sell all towers even if a wave is still not dead so long as I can build some near the end where they can kill off the remains. Doing things like this you will make a TON of money early on.
Mid stages of the game you can build a ton of cheap towers and covert them after your interest has gone through spend all your cash and then sell towers when you don't need them to make cash on interest.
In a multiplayer game you want to build towers close to the spawn point to pressure other players so they can't play greedy. You can also sell your towers when you can but you will never make as much money as you would in a solo game.
played for about 6games, didnt like it the unit movement speed is faster than war3, like they have speed boost when they are turning direction atevery corner. and the range of towers need some fix too. and i wonder why they didnt use the 'smart ai' of sc2, it is a direct port from war3 without any improvement (Ronald...to fruits >_>). basically it feels like a 'ok' TD(still the best td on sc2 atm i'd bet), while ETD of war3 is awesome :D
Laser towers seem a little bit too strong, going for a pretty simple interest interest dark earth light build lets you charge up a shit ton of money early on and start producing laser towers which shred literally everything the first 30-35 levels. By the time you get near 40 and they stop being as effective you can get your interest gains up enough taht you can be building 2 every round just off of the interest alone. Get the level 2 elements then a level 3 of your choice throw any extra elements into extra pures and keep whoring out interest gains.
Then when level 60 is almost there you can fill almost the entire map with the laser tower upgrade and have pure towers in the center. Nets quite a few fruit kills more than I've been able to find with any other build.
More in depth guide Start off the first few levels by getting some grenade towers once you have 4/5 in place where you want them focus on staying above 50 minerals and upgrading them.
Early Element order:
Interest ==> Interest ==> Dark ==> Earth ==> Light
Once you have your Grenades in place you'll need to start placing ray towers the goal is to build them while allowing your total minerals to accumulate so you gain more interest over time you should look something like this by the time you're ready to build your first laser tower
Your first laser tower should go over the ray towers on the right and should be built up from a cannon tower. Subsequent laser towers shoudl be built from trickery towers so that they can mimic your laser towers while you're saving for enough money to build a new one.
You'll eventually get to the point where you can start buliding laser towers strictly from interest while you let the round gold accumulate to build up your interest. And as you enter the lategame you'll want to get your minerals up to where you can get 3500 per interest and start upgrading your laser towers to phaser towers.
Next portion of element order should be
Dark==>Earth==>Light==>(whichever element you want a pure tower of)==>Pure
Whore interest as much as you can to get your total worth up where you have your pure towers t be build you can start buliding the lower level versions of just to help on the earth levels your endgame should look something like this
L= Laser upgrades P= Pure tower of your choice I can easily hit 300k total worth by the end of the game by doing this strategy and not using gold towers.
just ran this build again just to see and I hit 370k net worth and killed just under 100 fruit and realized that you reallly need to make the players unallied so that when someone leaves resource splitting doesn't happen. It was down to 2 players my opponent went afk and left before he lost so I got 2 extra gas. lol...
3x light/earth/darkness + 2x nature as element picks - light/earth tower (lvl 3) for aoe - darkness/nature tower (lvl 2) for dps - light/darkness tower (lvl 3) for cloning - nature/darkness/earth (lvl 3) for slowing (no pure towers included)
Has anyone else got better score than mine? If so, what tower combinations did you use?
Bumping this thread because I played last night and noticed there have been a few changes.
For one thing, the timing of Pure Essences has been changed. This caused me to purchase and extra one before I got my first Pure Essence automatically! They also give you TWO now, so I ended up with 3.
I noticed some kind of experience bar on the bottom. I guess you can level up now as you play more games. Don't know what that gets you though.
There only appears to be one Interest level available now.
This didn't affect my build much, as I still went for the usual 3 Light, 3 Dark, 3 Nature. Good old cloned Pure Dark and Annihilation Towers! Didn't actually fare that well though (195 Fruit on Normal) because I messed up my timing while trying to get Interest.
Someone posed a good question in the game though, which can be framed like this:
At what point to Grenade Towers become ineffective? Are they useful for the whole game?
anyone got any good general advice on how to survive on random mode? All pick is way too easy for me (i just use the light fire earth money tower strat).
I've never been able to beat random mode though, not even on normal difficulty.
Last night I realized the immense goodness of Laser/Phaser towers. It's funny watching barely damaged creeps walk into their range and just die really really fast. Milked interest hard but lost on Fruit before I could spend it all.
Certain rounds tend to surprise me still, specifically Earth rounds, and usually those that are Healing, Undead, or Fast. I have to memorize when these rounds come and that way I won't lose unnecessary lives before the Fruit round because I was saving up to accumulate interest.
Just bumping, since i was playing yesterday on hard, and i got 2 periodic towers (at 51 & 55) and they really seemed quite underpowered( i still finish though but..), most people in my game, agreed even with damage/speed % increase they still didn't really make up for the amount of elements required.
I've tried lots of others strats and all of them work better than getting the periodic table tower sadly.
Life tower rush > Torrent tower > 4 essences works wonders on very hard! (: You usually hit about high 80-90.
You guys should know that I just implemented MAZING and REMATCHES into the game. Prepare for a whole new feel. Version 1.22b live on NA and soon to be on EU/SEA.
EPT
P
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the unit movement speed is faster than war3, like they have speed boost when they are turning direction atevery corner. and the range of towers need some fix too. and i wonder why they didnt use the 'smart ai' of sc2, it is a direct port from war3 without any improvement (Ronald...to fruits >_>). basically it feels like a 'ok' TD(still the best td on sc2 atm i'd bet), while ETD of war3 is awesome :D![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/S3W43.png)
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