"Commander" perk and "tower defense style" is too weak compared to "full godlike hero".

[pedrofrigoli]

so if the idea of having so many different perks is to make different play styles allowed, and try to look for synergies in them, I feel like the perks which upgrades your hero are way more efficient than the perks that upgrade your towers and units.

The strongest reason is: if you choose perks to improve your hero, and you get your town center lvl 2 (which you can really quick, sometimes in the first day), you practically have your hero at max strength since the first nights. This allows you to farm a lot of gold before needing to spend any on defenses, and the way this game works, money functions like a snowball, the more you can make the earlier, the more you can make later. So even if you don't take any perk which improves your defenses, or even if you take "warrior mode" which weakens your defenses, by the final waves you'll have so strong defenses that compensates the debuff while still having a godlike hero...

the other way arround, using "commander" perk and maybe "castle blueprints" and some other perk improving your defenses leaves you pretty weak on the first waves, which makes you spend almost all your gold in defenses for the first nights, and then you never get the opportunity to improve your income enough to make a difference in the last nights, in addition to having a weak hero which won't do much to help...

I think these last perks require a balance, either by making more significant buffs, or adding some discounts in the first 3 nights or something like that to make them more viable.

[Krav]

True, the most powerful perks are usually those that allow you to spend the most early game money on eco. As soon as you start buying defences, you're hindering your economy. If you want to buff towers and soldiers, you need to give them better value (smaller cost of opportunity) early game. A couple of ideas:
1. Towers cost 1 gold 1st day, 2 gold 2nd day, 3 gold day 3+
2. Same as above but with barracks / archery ranges and starting at 2 gold
3. Your castle starts with 4 soldiers and gains +4 with each upgrade

[DrunkBunny94]

I agree that the perk that nerfs your damage to buff your towers damage is kinda rough especially with the mutator that doubles the strength of the first 3 waves.
And the schematic for early building is kinda meh when you could take an eco perk and simply upgrade your fortress early and then benefit from extra gold each wave ontop.

I think its more a problem of balance - some perks are really really good, some are good but have crippling drawbacks (made worse with mutators) and some are useless depending on the map so theres an optimal eco perk to pick which is enough to get the ball rolling and then you have 2 options for late game.

Weapon balance also plays a role, the spear normally doesnt have a problem with the first few waves while the bow feels kinda bad (even with assassins 250% damage bonus it feels lackluster vs 75% bonus hp) and the sword struggles against certain enemies as you really need them to clump up.

That said once you have 1 squad of archers up your damage is fairly meaningless anyways so i normally rush a set of those (hunters on the desert, fire archers on the ice) and then i can eco for like 5 waves straight.