Base defense, Tesla's and big enemies

[Squirting Elephant]

How do you place them so that they are safe from monsters? Can they shoot through doors?

I tried placing them in the air but they just make a bridge and quickly kill your tesla endgame.

Basically I just need something to defend my castle. Endgame the enemies are infinite as long as the night lasts. Fighting them from behind the door with dwarves works. But sometimes it bugs and the dwarves won't respond or other stuff like that.
But these towers... I need like 5 of 'em in a safe spot on each side of the castle. But how?
- I also don't want to waste a horn spell on it every time. With 2x gamespeed that is 3 mana wasted every 20 minutes...
- I wish I could force the dwarves to stand on a particular tile (and not retreat or move forward to attack or whatever, like "stand ground").
- Dwarves are standing 2 (clear) tiles from my home and can't find the way back to the home while the wave of enemies busts the door on the other side...
- Yes I chain steel doors but i want to kill the enemies for xp as well (10-20k xp each time).


I did notice that creating a 1-height-entrance will automatically create a 100% protection against mobs that have a collision-box of 2 tiles :). I have no idea why they make 2-tiles monsters but the doors only 1 tile. Like the yeti's. Even better, when they try to fit in that 1-tile gap, they sometimes glitch and get launched into the air and die instantly :).

[Squirting Elephant]

Screenshots:
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=250088982
See that yeti flying? Super efficient :). Best trap: 2 blocks of random dirt/stone/bricks.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=250089015

[LittleMikey]

I tried building tesla towers in a sort of pyramid structure. One two tiles off the ground, one tile space, the next four tiles off the ground, one tile space, one two tiles off the ground, and a final space before the wall to my door. I thought the top one would shoot the skeletons who climb up and destroy the lower ones, but it didn't do anywher near enough damage to protect them :(

[angel-molina]

I just make a long pier of bridges and place the towers right on top of them. The best part is that they can fire through the bridges... I have only tried this with wooden towers on the first world, I haven't gotten as far as you but I will stick to it or figure something else out if it doesn't work (will let you know)...

[Daniel.Kiwi]

What are your bridges made out of?
Any chance for a screen shot?

[glamrockcop]

Personally I use water pits with fences in the bottom and teslas on bridges that are 4 squares above the bottom of the pit. Traps are useless and cages only stop SOME enemies while others just walk right through.

The good thing about water and fences is that they both slow the enemies and there effects work separately. So if water slows an enemy by 50% and fences slow an enemy by 50% then an enemy walking through both at the same time is slowed to 25% of it's usual speed and this increases the hit rate of your teslas on EVERY enemy passing under them.

Here's some screenshots of how I built mine but don't copy the layout of my towers exactly because I'm playing a custom game that only has a 1% chance of spawning shielders and builders and my towers are stronger than the defaults. But the basic principle is sound and I have used it on many games.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=250395909

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=250395958

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=250396171

[Squirting Elephant]

I don't think that your setups will work in a campaign. They will bridge upwards and kill the towers one by one before they proceed to your home. Like 1 out of 2 mobs can build a bridge so they brige to your tower almost instantly.
If you play a custom map without many 'bridgers' then you can just make a wide chasm and you are good.

I'm not sure, but can tesla's fire upwards through bridges? I mean, what if we place the tower beneath the bridge? Will the enemies then attack the bridge to get down to the towers or will they ignore them?

Can't test it right now, I just advanced to the next campaign so I don't have the tech yet.

[glamrockcop]

Installed the original .pak file back into my game to see how it stands up to an invasion.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=250487177

Defended against 30-40 mobs with this set-up and only 1 skeleton boss made it to the other side of the water pit. None tried to bridge to my teslas. They all got to point 1 and dropped down into the water.

When they got to point 2 they tried to jump up to my towers and got within 1 square a couple of times but never managed to hit them. I would strengthen this by building a second layer of teslas at point 5 so any that make it up get hit by 8 teslas instead of 4.

The one boss that made it to point 3 attacked the wall there because it is a weak point but never made it through and only had half a heart left when he got there. I would strengthen this by filling in the room behind with stone or brick and try to force them to jump out of the water rather than go through the wall.

I would also place 3 or 4 doors at point 4 with maybe a wooden tower on the inside (don't know if they can fire through doors that would have to be tested). Since anything that made it that far would be mostly dead you could just use dwarfs to mop them up.

As the waves get bigger I would extend the water pit as far as possible and increase the number of teslas but always leave at least 2 empty spaces between the teslas and the edge of the pit.

Also I noticed you have a "Home" sign above your main stockpile. You don't need this just press the "h" key

[Milaga]

You can't put the the tesla towers below the path to your stockpile. Enemies just drop down from the bridge and bash it.

[glamrockcop]

Milaga님이 먼저 게시:

You can't put the the tesla towers below the path to your stockpile. Enemies just drop down from the bridge and bash it.

Good to know, thanks.

[Squirting Elephant]

glamrockcop, that map is from a custom game right? I thought that they had way less 'bridge-building-enemies' compared to campaigns where they literally build skyhigh.

[glamrockcop]

No I'm playing a campaign game on the first world. I just edited the game files to make a more friendly building environment.

Changed it so that the invasions start after level 10 instead of level 4 and there are 100 mins (approx) between waves and the growth rate of the number of enemies is lower. Got rid of the ghosts (they do nothing but annoy).

Changed what drops from different blocks and enemies so that I have more balanced game play (Silver ore mainly since it doesn't drop from mining blocks in the standard game).

Lots of little tweaks to make the game more appealing to me personally.


But, I replaced the original files and did that test. So it is standard strength enemies and towers. With standard amounts of shielders and builders and bosses.

I faced about 40 skeletons with a few zombies the only thing that didn't spawn was beholders. I would say it was probably the equivalent to a horde you would have around level 7 in a normal game. So you will need to scale up the defense for higher levels but only to the point where you can survive the night. Any extra defense after that point is a waste.

[Squirting Elephant]

Cool I'm gonna try your setup then :).

Wish they would give us an option to make the campaign harder though. Like waves from both sides with stronger enemies but fewer enemies (a few aoe from mages kills the entire wave).

[glamrockcop]

The last line of defense is my dwarves who are all archers.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=250596018

You can see in the picture where I put them and they are standing on bridge. So any enemy that makes it through the water and past the teslas then has arrows rained down on them from my dwarves.

[Squirting Elephant]

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=250657849

I just upgraded my old stone/dirt/sand house from the first 5 game minutes to this one. A huge overhaul as always (I skip everything before brickwalls because it's just not worth it imo).

However, I put water in that basin but it vaporizes or something. I mean, rain water stays perfectly in the level even on dry sand. But my 'brick-lake' doesn't... Probably because I placed it? Does it even work in the desert or do I have to wait for loads of rain?

[glamrockcop]

The bottom of the pit has to be stone it can't be any form of brick or dirt or sand or the water will soak through it.

The background can be dirt but the foreground must be stone. The sides can be brick though.

Like in this picture...

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=250660542