Early game survival tactics

[Lucid]

So, I'm now on map 3 at 260% difficulty. I'm starting to play a lot more aggressively economically, so that I can get the map cleared and be final wave ready in 80 day games.

My timings are usually soldier centre by day 6-8 (stone/wood allowing). Wood workshop either before or right after soldier centre. Get Farm, Market, Cottage, Ballista tech. I'll have the capacity to wall off and lay out Ballistae at every choke by second wave, and be using the market to roll out cottage upgrades and get me up to 600-800 income, while doubling up on troops.

But the early game is so dangerous. I've colonies pre-day 10 over a dozen times because covering so much space with just the starting rangers and soldier seems so tricky. I set them to patrol, watch the minimap, and keep repositioning to cover gaps as I expand, but it always feels like around the time I get my soldier centre down an infected gets through one of the gaps and it's all over.

I've had wave 1 wipeouts because either I'm being safe about keeping rangers guarding gaps and only had 3-4 rangers and kiting pulled too many other runners. I've wiped out pulling too many rangers to cover the wave and being undone by a random walker. It feels like the second I leave any opening the walkers start closing in and I have maybe a minute before I need to be back there.

How aggressive are you in the early game, and do you have any tactics that seem to secure your starts?

[ReverendPaqo]

Crap man, I can't even get past map 2 even on 85%. I'm getting such insanely bad map rolls. 7 in a row where it's just open on all sides with 3 infected towns within very very close range. Getting swarmed harder in the first 10 days than I do on the first wave. On the very poor chances that I get a map with at least 2 chokes I always seem to have only 1 wood or no stone anywhere near.

[Lucid]

Yeah, map spawn can be harsh. I'm learning how to deal with super close doom villages. Once you scout them, just leave a ranger patrolling with as much distance between you an the town as possible, then increase to 2-3 once the soldier centre is down. Leave them alone until around day 15, when you're going to need to get a wall and a ballista.

That should hold until it's time to clear them. I'm trying to make something of every start no matter how screwed it seems. Ironically I tend to fail the hardest on goldilocks spawns because I get too greedy.

[ReverendPaqo]

Just had another one. Got about 400 runners and 20 fat guys randomly on day 16 on 60% difficulty. 2 doom villages within sight of the command center, 1 choke next to 3 large spawns of zombies. only had a total of 13 stone available without putting to close to the doom village. The first wave was no problem. Then I got the random "doom village is just going to flood you for no reason" penalty. Again.

[Pherdnut]

A dozen soldiers can take down villages of Doom with a walled ballista position to fall back to (they can outrun runners). They just need to level and then they can just inch closer and closer until they're in range of the buildings which will start to go down one after another. An early VoD wipe can net you a big boost in resources but you need a little bit of space. I restart when they're right in my backyard and there's no decent choke to wall up. I think if they see enough of you they're just going to come for you eventually but do your best to avoid unnecessary kills until you have a squad that can hold them off. Veteran soldiers in towers are no joke. Still have to watch out for spitters though.

[soulguard]

Depends on my the map layout. Larger spaces with chokes far away, i play more aggressive pushing toward the chokes.

Smaller spaces with lots of chokes i tend to be more reserve, dince its hard to cover so many gaps.

But i finally got this jem...
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1341713943

And I'm playing it super aggressive. I almost wiped on day 6... Hit a vod cause of the soldiers gun. Saved it but it slowed down my expansion. Took 2 days and countless resources to fend off the attack. But i love this map.