How to deal with Crushers?

[Ice_Dragon]

So I played this game when it first released into early Access when enemies had no Armor. I could at least finish a Normal DIfficulty game. I even mangage to complete harder TAB games. Now I have to question myself why I cant beat normal for the life of me.

My biggest Roadblock ist the Crusher. At the 4th Wave(10k) there are like 15 of them sometimes even 3-4 at the same time. Yet there seems to be no good way to counter it.
After asking others there seems to be a colletive answer of "just spam arbalest in tower".

Is this seriously the only answer? Because being forced to play only one specific way doesn't seem very fun.

[Nordil(Hun)]

Sadly it is. Just spam the range armour piercing units. Hunters, arbalests ballista. Nothing else matters really. Basicly from 2nd wave you can also forget about meleers because they become abysmally bad:( Not even sure why they added them.

[Crypto Gamer]

Melee is only for map clearing albeit vizargo faction can use horrified attack speed pikeman to hold wave 3-4 crawlers as they get 2 shooted.

Melee usually clears tier 1 and 2 faster and cheaper than ranged if you micro them.

Only 3 counters exist to crushers.

Worst:Mass flaming arrow archers it is possible very space inefficient but if you mass them they work cause 0.9 nerfed crusher hp and arbalest dmg.
Without flaming arrow they do nothing.


And archers need a lot of micro during map clearing and get two shooted by spitters.

Most used and most space effective:Mass hunter,or mass arbalest:
Up to 40-50 if playing on nightmare last wave.Likely half of it is enough on easy DN 4.
You need more hunters than arbalest about 25% more.

Vizargo faction can horrify arbalest via warlock unit for+50% dmg with NO light source nearby and get them into towers in that case they need less units and space.

Most cost effective is enough hunter/arb to shred crushers and many archer to kill him once he is shredded but that is less space effecitve.


Important:Flaming arrows makes clearing slightly faster makes wave defence slightly better much better againts bursters even in wave defence.
Most useful if you have lot of archers.

The tower perk gives+50% dmg AND+50% shred in towers so arbalest will have(25+5)x1,5=45 shred in towers per shot.

It is very important to have all range units in towers as they gain extra range and armor shred.Towers should always be on high priority.


Easy:Crushers come from Dn 4 onwards:(never played forgiving).

Normal Veteran:Crushers come from DN 3 onwards:

Horrific and nightmare first crusher is only tier 1:
Comes already on DN2 can be killed without iron units has only I think 340 armor and 1200hp.Ballista and archer in towers(2 shred)is enough.


Regardless of difficulty:

DN1-2:Tier 1
DN 3-4:Tier 2
DN 5: Tier 3
FS:Tier 4 which is tier 3 but moves faster.

Tier 3/DN 5 crusher have much bigger armor than tier 2 so you need to account for that.

[Ice_Dragon]

So i tried again.

Spammed arbalset with full dmg upgrade and Tower Buff. Which worked okay.
But honestly the best change was picking Order Faction.
I really don't understand why not every Faction has access to Catapults.
Skilled AOE and Stun for Siege Weapons and they wreck everything even Crusher

At least give the other Factions a siege weapon Alternative.