So, mines of the raven

[HeathenSW]

Is it doable on apocalypse without ballistas/shocks? The first swarm kills me always, last time the semi-swarm spawned on the opposite side at the exactly same time, so my 20 soldiers and 15ish ranger could do anything.

As a strat here I just go down to stone, then guard right entrance to the base, then go up, 1 unit per entrance. By the time all of the inner territory is clear I usually have soldier center, so then I go to iron. Mine it for a bit, hire some soldiers aaand then usually I die :) Wasps are not useful in these time constraints and it's the only static defence I have unlocked.

[Liro Raériyo]

i usually micro a ranger early on to gather up bodies for the train to plow through so i can expand to the bottom two golds with comfort in about 5 game days, other then that its business as usual, assuming i dont mess up and get my ranger killed, then its basically game over.

[Andrewbh2003]

assuming you survive the first wave the mission is easy

[Crukih]

I think it might be doable, just very hard. I always rushed the shocking tower. I think the first wave always comes from the West. Best I can suggest is as many walls as possible, soldiers behind. Wasps usually get ignored so even just one can help out. With the new change to the way hit detection works, rangers can kit for days so have 1 or two drawing groups off to alleviate as much pressure as possible. Other than that, good luck!

[HeathenSW]

Definitely possible, just did it finally. Although couldn't do it with only 4 starting units, had to take that soldier with +20% building barriers. That soldier was amazing clearing that right path near railways by himself - regen and armour made him withstand most of the zombie pulling there. Also since I rushed wasps he had +20% damage, that might help as well.

My first swarm was on day 14 (are they randomized, by the way? I swear it was on day 15 one of the previous tries), so on day 10-12 you should already have iron production and 1-2 soldier centers. I've found one batch of iron before that, so I had 6 (1 bonus) soldiers to help clearing iron deposits. Another batch is there for free, that's another 5 soldiers for you.

So by day 14 you'd have 14-20 soldiers. Then it's easy, with two sets of double walls to retreat behind the first swarm was pretty manageble. And yeah only the first one is hard here, then you just pump soldiers as fast as you can and spread north first, since you already have small iron base there to expand from to the gold areas.

Also one more thing. On Apoc diff you really don't want to use more than 1 ranger to clear one destination - I used 4 to speed up going for stone the first time I lost. They simply generate too much noise. 2 rangers are more quite but still can get massive draw of runners for some reason, so 1 it is.
1 sniper is also somewhat good, from that merc tech, it's just that the whole merc tech is suspicious for me as a trap.
1 soldier is very dependant on where you send him to clear - on this particular map it's suicide to send him up or left, there's just too much runners there.