Tower Wars
Voyle Sep 15, 2012 @ 6:55pm
[Guide] Units and Upgrades
This guide will hopefully explain to you everything you need to know about units and upgrades and help you to destroy your enemy's castle. If you have suggestions or corrections please leave them below and they will be editted in as applicable. Most of the raw data can be found on the Wiki Page[wiki.towerwarsgame.com] and on my spreadsheet[www.dropbox.com]. Additional Information on Towers and Defense is provided in a companion guide.

Tier 1
  • Grunt (Mr. Moopsy)
    • Starting unit, cheapest unit
    • Will very quickly become hard to gain BP with this unit, and you will want to transition into a T2 unit as soon as possible
    • Often Leveling up this unit to 1/3 will help you get past the starting block of enemy towers, however upgrades past this should be avoided to instead save up for your tier 2 unit.
Tier 2
  • Knight (Sir Robert Von Pretzelhausen)
    • Strong durable upgrade from the grunt, much better at farming BP as it can live significantly longer
    • 3 parts health 1 part armour - Counter should focus on arrows
    • Strongest at earning battle points
  • Zoombots
    • Fast unit, moves quicker per level upgraded.
    • Very good at getting by arrow mazes.
    • Higher DPS than the knight, useful if you can get a large group of zoombots into the enemy castle
    • Because of the high gold cost necessary to respond to a zoombot tier choice it is best to send a wave shortly after the enemy spends their money. Example, after the enemy upgrades a mine or sends a wave against you. This will give you the best chance to rush through their defenses before they can react and setup a proper counter.
    • Scales very well with number of players (2v2/3v3) as almost all of the cannon shots will be wasted on a single unit out of 2 or 3 front units, and while the cannons reload the entire wave is able to speed on by.
    • Strongest at forcing your enemy to spend gold - Counter building longer more cost effective mazes
    • 1 part health 3 parts armour - Counter should focus on cannons
Tier 3
  • Motivators (Boris/Minstrel)
    • Increases the movement speed and damage of your wave, he does not have a specific radius to reach all of the units, as long as he is alive you will get the movement speed and damage buffs.
    • Best placed near the back of your wave to keep the bonus as long as possible
    • Has deminishing returns on additional motivators being added to a wave. Each motivator you add gives less benefit than the one before it.
    • Also useful in base race scenarios both to get your units into the enemy castle and to bolster their damage
    • 3 Parts health 1 Part Armour
    • Will be targeted last by castle defenses
    • Does not increase the speed of teammates waves in multiplayer, be careful not to outrun friendly units or you may inadvertently make your waves weaker.
    • His position in the queue can either spread out (with him in the front) or clump up (with him in the back) your other units. If you are trying to avoid area of effect damage, it may be helpful to put one at the front of your wave, to increase the starting space between each of your units.
  • Shielders (Sudsie Lennor)
    • Adds a shield charge to units nearby based on which unit has the least amount of total resource (Health+Armour+Shield)
    • Cannot shield other shielders so must be used in conjunction with other units to be effective
    • Very fragile unit, best used with a heavy tank such as Stanley or Mortimer, infront of her
    • Punishes low dps high area mazes with her constant shielding - Counter compact mazes with high levels of upgrades, fans will help keep the units in the damage area longer.
    • Vulnerable to splash damage from lava/lightning/catapult and other incidental damage while moving through the maze. The longer your maze is the better chance you have of killing the shielder unit.
    • 3 Parts health 1 part shield - Counter build few lightnings spread throughout your entire maze, and 2-3 lightning at the front of your maze, ideally you will have catapults covering the pathable area of your maze, but is not a requirement. Beyond that normal cannons / arrows, building a lot of lightning all over will not help nearly as much as it costs.
    • Will be targeted first by castle defenses
    • Shields team mates units in team games which helps her stay alive much much longer than in a 1v1 environment because it reduces the incidental tower fire significantly
  • Healers (Baron von Pepto)
    • Drops a healing aura upon death that pulses every second and heals all friendly units inside of it (including team mates units)
    • Has a larger effect on many weak units than few strong units (provided both would live through the aura)
    • All health, no armour or shields, this causes the healer to scale very well with health upgrades - Counter with a few scattered high dps areas, try to avoid using fans as it will prolong how long the enemy is being healed for.
    • Long duration of healing aura lasts until your next wave is sent
    • The combination of the long healing aura and having a high health pool allows this unit to very efficiently farm BP from enemies and is a useful transition unit to T4
    • Very powerful if you make it into an enemies castle with one of these as it will likely keep your wave alive for the full 90 seconds. Counter - Avoid leaking peptos, or alternative ONLY LEAK PEPTOS without leaking any combat units, this alternative can be fairly risky so use discretion
Tier 4
  • Brute (Stanley Clunkerbottom)
    • Large heavily shielded and armoured unit
    • Very effective for tanking entire waves through enemies bases
    • 3 Parts shield, 4 Parts armour, 3 Parts health.
    • As this unit has all 3 health types it scales very strongly with global upgrades.
    • Further since it is so heavily armoured it will easily push through the arrows at the front of most mazes and cause your opponent to have to invest in much more expensive towers to respond to this unit
    • Counter with a high amount of lightning at the front (4-8) followed by a decent amount of cannons (5-10) and a few catapults.
    • It is somewhat more expensive than knights and when first transitioning to stanleys you can send 1 at the front of the wave to tank for all of your other units until you are more comfortable sending a higher portion of stanleys
Tier 5
  • Transport (Equine Subterfuge/Trojan Horse)
    • Best unit in the game
    • Click on the units face (Left of the red bar) to open up the queue to fill up transports with more units.
    • Allows 5-8 slots of units (up to tier 3) to be placed inside the transport
    • All armour
    • Allows units vulnerable to towers in the front of an enemies maze to effectively skip that section
    • Allows you to gain a lot more BP per wave, as the transport allows you to send a lot more units.
    • Counter with a Heavy front (idealy with several hammers) and a lot of area of effect towers (Fans / Lava / Catapults). This unit will easily overrun most defenses and generally will end the game, its strength comes from mass numbers though, so make sure to use towers that hit more than one target.
Tier 6
  • Mortimer the Malevolent (Mike)
    • Second best unit in the game
    • All the same qualities and uses as the Brute, except better
    • 5 Parts Health, 3 Parts Armour, 2 Parts Shield
    • Will be very hard to stop, you will need an almost full maze ideally with fans / hammers / buff towers throughout.

Upgrades

Specific Unit
  • Putting 3/3 points in a unit increases that unit's stats by around double. This is a 33% increase per upgrade.
  • Will also increase the BP/sec generated by units and increase the bounty for the opponent killing your units (by a marginal amount). 1 Moopsy upgrade is the same as 1 bp upgrade, 1 Knight upgrade is the same as 2 bp upgrades.
  • Unit upgrades are much stronger than global upgrades
  • Defender - Build up your defenses a lot when you start to see new units, and when those units get upgraded, it might seem like you are building too much but the units will slow down in pressure once they are level 3/3 and you will be able to slow down your build.
Speed
  • Very cheap upgrade, and powerful for its price
  • You need 1/3 to advance through the tech tree.
  • When trying to earn bp it has debateable use past 1/3
  • When trying to destroy your enemy castle, it is one of the best/cheapest upgrades available
Health
  • Almost all units have health (except the Transport), this is the least expensive of the three health types
  • Good with Grunts, Knights, Shielder, Motivator, Peptos, Stanleys and Mortimers
  • less effective for Zoombots and Transports
Armour
  • Gives a flat bonus of armour to all units as well as a percentage increase to units with armour.
  • Works best on Zoombots, Stanleys, Transports, and Mortimers
  • Medium effects on Knights and Motivators
  • Marginal effect on Moops, Shielders, Healers. Suggest only taking 1 point if using these units heavily
Shield
  • Gives a flat bonus of shields to all units as well as a percentage increase to units with shields
  • Works best on Stanleys and Mortimers
  • Medium effects on Shielders
  • Marginal effects on Moops, Knights, Zoombots, Healers, Motivators, Transports
  • Suggest getting at least 1 point in this ability for the flat shield bonus, this will protect your armoured units from cannon fire which is significantly reduced by shields.
  • As this is the most expensive upgrade, I would not suggest upgrading it a lot unless fielding either Stanleys or Mortimers. The cost for your enemy to build a few lightning towers to remove your shields is very insignificant to the amount of BP you would lose investing into shields.
Resource Level
  • If you have enough battle points the following order of upgrades (in regards to health/armour/shields) will give you the most cost effective use of your battle points
  • Weak - Mediocre - Splendid
    • 1-0-0
    • 1-1-0
    • 2-1-0
    • 2-2-0
    • 3-2-0
    • 3-2-1
    • 3-3-1
    • 3-3-2
    • 3-3-3
Bigger Barracks
  • Allows additional units in the queue to be sent
  • Can give your wave a sizeable increase in BP gains and distance travelled
  • Increases the gold cost of your wave
  • Necessary for a few achievements (Conga Line/Spice of Life)
Ready Units
  • Allows you to send units quicker
  • Only useful if you have too much gold and are not using it to defend your base
  • Much quicker BP income
Additional Forces
  • Random units that you have already unlocked from T4 and lower will be added to your wave. If you only have knights and moopsies unlocked, you will have 50% chance of Moopsy and 50% chance of Knight, the proportions for when you have all units unlocked are as follows:
    • Moopsy 25% Chance
    • Knight 25% Chance
    • Shielder 15% Chance
    • Healer 15% Chance
    • Motivator 15% Chance
    • Brute 5% Chance
  • Very similar to bigger barracks, except for when fielding zoombots, you should upgrade additional forces and bigger barracks evenly.
  • Does not increase the gold cost of your wave
Last edited by Voyle; Sep 16, 2012 @ 12:48pm
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Showing 1-14 of 14 comments
Voyle Sep 16, 2012 @ 8:21am 
The following will be less about specific units and upgrades and more about the concepts behind the choices and strategies involving them.

Increased Speed vs Standard Units

The following facts are important to note when talking about speed units/upgrades/increases:
  • Speed units do not earn more battle points than slow units, battle points are generated per second, not by how far the units get. This post goes into more detail if your are interested.
  • Speed units can get past towers easier than slow units, in some scenarios when you can get past all of the towers your speed may give you a BP advantage
For the most part speed units force your opponent to build a larger maze, and this can be of strategic use as it will limit the gold your opponent can use to attack you with, however there is a certain point where it will no longer be effective for you. This is because with normal units, they will get progressively stronger and the opponent will need to invest more money in one specific area to deal with their increasing strength. As more money is invested into this area it becomes more expensive to defend against standard units. Speed units however force you to expand out of your starting area, and because you have such a larger zone to work with it is a lot more gold efficient to be able to setup your towers. Eventually your speed units can force your opponent to run out of room, in which case he will have to start spending high amounts of money the same as with standard units, however there is a much longer ramp up time to this. Depending on your motive (to farm BP, or to push your opponent) you may choose whether or not speed units are right for your goals.

Early (Location) Mines

When a gold mine spawns very close to the entrance and limits your ability to build towers close to the start you should choose knights as your tier 2 unit, every time. Maintain low level upgrades of speed, avoid the motivator where possible and enjoy your free BP for the rest of the match.

Attack after you see mine techs

When your enemy upgrades one of their mines they likely spent most of their gold on that mine and will have very little left to defend against an immediate send. This is your best chance at getting “free BP” before the enemy is able to benefit from their new mine upgrade. Alternatively, if you are uncomfortable with your defences you can be pretty confident that the next time your opponent sends units on you will be a few minutes later than you previously thought, and also that the units will be relatively close to what was sent at you in the previous wave. This gives you an opportunity to increase your tower strength and make it even more expensive for the enemy to gain BP for your maze. This can counteract mines and give you time to upgrade your mine later without worrying about being at a gold disadvantage.

This is also true (to a lesser extent) with wave sends, the enemy will always be in a better position to defend against your wave the longer you wait to send it, but will be most vulnerable right after sending out a wave.

Don't Forget your A.R.G. (The Exclamation Point)

When your base takes damage it fills up your ARG Meter, when you press the ! it toggles your ARG on and off. When ARG is on, your next unit launch will become stronger, equipped with more health and more speed. You can use this to push out a strong wave against your enemy and recover from a deficit.

If you can't get enough BP to upgrade your mines - Avoid the mine scam

Stop spending all of your BP on mines, and buy a few unit upgrades. This will set you back in the short term in terms of gold, but increase your BP per launch and save you gold in the long term because of being able to gain more BP with less units. The fact that your opponent has a higher level mine does not mean you need a higher level mine. Often if you are losing your opponent will have better units than you and then will move their advantage to a mine, if you want to win you need to use this opportunity to start catching up in bp rather than trying to trail behind your opponent.
Last edited by Voyle; Sep 17, 2012 @ 3:15am
Balestor Sep 17, 2012 @ 8:03pm 
I learned lots of cool things!
Thanks!
I really love this game because the multiplayer is just what i look forward to in a TD. You can send your own units while at the same time defending the castle. I am looking forward to many new maps and such!
Bastispark Oct 4, 2012 @ 10:19am 
nice guide but could you include the order minions will be spawned?
left to right or right to left?
Bastispark Oct 4, 2012 @ 10:26am 
btw. could you plas include the upgrade prices for every unit???
Last edited by Bastispark; Oct 4, 2012 @ 10:26am
Ghetz Oct 4, 2012 @ 10:54am 
Originally posted by DòÓm$hRÒóm!:
btw. could you plas include the upgrade prices for every unit???

http://wiki.towerwarsgame.com/index.php?title=Towers
Rage Dec 27, 2013 @ 4:10pm 
Hi, i can't seem to load the trojan horse :S
Chuck Dec 28, 2013 @ 1:54am 
thank you so much for the guide
oldredace Dec 30, 2013 @ 6:44am 
Great Guide learn a lot and hope i can beat my friends now
SaM Apr 26, 2014 @ 2:30pm 
great Guide! thank you.
pmouserosu Sep 24, 2014 @ 10:24pm 
why cant i upgrade my first unit, i have the BP, but it just wont work? no matter how much i click it. thanks
Ar-Pharazon Sep 25, 2014 @ 11:23am 
You can't upgrade Moopsy to level 1?
Blubberbutt Nov 11, 2014 @ 3:46pm 
hopefully ill stop sucking..
ERMACenemy Nov 18, 2014 @ 11:22pm 
cool
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