Traps Are the Best Defense?

[RealVanillaSmooth]

This is just my early impression since I haven't beaten the game, but it seems like traps are just the best all-around defensive choice. Walls don't hit back and can only be placed inside the town, ballistas are FARRRRR more expensive and can only hit a single enemy at a range that gets uncomfortably close to the town.

Meanwhile, traps can be placed anywhere on the map (including stun traps near the mages with a warp gate), hit multiple targets if using the damage trap, and are dirt cheap.

I guess the cons are of course that you need to repair them every production phase which is a big cost in itself, but the amount of resources it takes to repair a map full of traps is almost the same cost as buying a single ballista.

So for the people who have beat the game and all the harder difficulty stuff are traps just the way to go or are there better ways to use materials?

[Kaysoky]

I used traps once for the achievements and then never again. Ballistas are way better.

A lot of this depends on the placement. Traps get exhausted once they are used, so you end up defending your traps AND your walls, so that your traps only get triggered when you are overwhelmed. They don't deal a lot of damage so your heroes will need to follow up anyway. For stun traps, this seems of limited use since most dangerous enemies tend to have stun resistance anyway.

Ballistas, on the other hand, are capable of killing enemies consistently through the night. They are excellent when concentrated around your weakpoints or around the Seal. This lets them pick off stragglers (like runners or flyers) that sneak past your heroes. This saves lots of movement and AP from your heroes, freeing them up to concentrate on enemies that your defenses would have more trouble with (huge mobs, elites, and the like).

[RealVanillaSmooth]

I guess my experience from this comes from the fact that I've had traps clear entire waves of enemies and haven't done so with ballistas. Place traps right at the enemy spawn points (seems like having a seer is good in any case) and whatever enemies aren't dead usually die to any kind of AoE and elites can get solo'd by one of your boss killer units before they even get a chance to get near you base.

So are ballistas still the meta for this game then? I just started playing but I've heard that after their nerfs (tons of things got nerfed?) that people are using them less. Or are high level players still unanimously just using them?

[Bumc]

Ballistas gain economy, traps lose it.

Having enemies die right as they exit fog of war is actually detrimental for corpse farming.

Ballistas can be relevant if you setup them so they mostly hit stuff already inside the city, traps not so much.

That being said yes, perfect final defense is some combination of ballistas, catapults and traps, and on long maps you can realistically hit the limits on all relevant structures.

[Kaysoky]

Not really a meta. For example, I just played Runenburg (Apocalypse 3) and didn't build any Ballistae (or traps). I simply didn't have enough stone for anything other than walls.

I normally prioritize Outer Walls > Inner Walls > Ballistae. And I'd want reinforced stone walls ideally, before I place any ballistae. Some other players might stay at wooden walls and put ballistae behind them (cheaper to not need mounted ballistae).

There's room for experimentation, so if traps are working for you, go ahead and keep using them. Maybe a later haven or wave will cause you to rethink your strategy. But if something is working, don't fix it.

[Bumc]

Also ballistas steal exp, so unless you have 2+ heroes with potential to get defensive training its better to get catapults instead.

[sandman25dcsss]

Killing enemies far from heaven is a bad idea. Just yesterday I played Gildenberg at Apoc 4 and saw the difference: first night I played normally and killed everyone near spawn points, second night I killed everyone in heaven and near it, just tire 1 enemies without elites in both waves. First night gave me a few weakest corpses, second night gave me 2 mountains of corpses and some "lots of corpses".