What tech are you getting for your campaign

[hillbillyden]

I went with Expert Workshops (Wood),
Farming,
Assault Rifle,
Wood Buttresses,
Barricades,
Long Range Rifles and
Reinforced Armor.
Mostly in that order, I think. I didn't really want to go with the buttress/barricade stuff but I heard they helped on the Swarm missions and they did. (After I had to noob out and lower the difficulty).

[Horoai]

I grabbed the starting soldiers so I can work towards making him veteran at the start of the game asap. He then continues to rock early game for me.

After that, while there are tons of cool upgrades I feel like the only way forward for me is to unlock the basic economy set first. So, cottages, farms, power plant, maret, storage and bank. Maybe the Inn too.

Stone walls and especially ballistas are a priority that I want to fit in there somewhere.

[loganjamesalex]

I went straight for farms so I could do the fertile ground map right away

[Sipher]

i hightly depends on which difficulty you want to play. On lower difficulty, techs that make the game easier are a good choice, like the tech that lets you start with additional soldiers to make the early game more easy etc. But on higher difficulties you have to be very careful about what you choose, and especially to have a chance against the very hard swarm missions, it is absolutly nessesary, that you pick the techs that gives you barricades and stronger soldiers, so if you want to finish the missions on 500% difficutly, you really have to choose wisely and focus on the techs that makes your units stronger and help defend against the huge end-game waves.

[Vonriel]

Wood towers are a godsend, and build towards stake traps besides, which are basically necessary for the 600 zombie horde.

I unlocked snipers, but I wish I had spent those points on ballistas instead, because I think they're ultimately more useful early on.

In general, I feel like extra starting units and any +% techs are worthless until you've got the basic buildings down. Get whatever prerequisites are needed for them, of course, but ballistas and stake traps are more important than basically anything else as they should easily hold you through any number of standard infected with their aoe damage.

I'm not even sure if soldiers are worth it, you can probably get by pretty well on just rangers until after you have those two. The lack of food without access to farms is a problem, but most maps I've played have had enough food for me to hit 800 people, if only just for the coastal mission.

[Steelpoint]

You could get away with not getting soldiers early on, but you really are going to want to get them, and they are right at the start of the tech tree and are cheap.

I also went on a unoptimal start, I nabbed Soldier then went into Mercenary to start with a soldier at the start of a mission. Then I went and got the train delivering gold tech, then Sniper afterwards.

I've stabalized my tech now and eventually unlocked farms then spike traps.

[Sarnith]

I raced for farms and cottages, then to Sniper tech, got ballista tech afterwards, then unlocked soldier technology, and am now going for either gold on kill (because this ultimately adds up to metric f*** tons of gold over a mission for free cause you're killing infected anyways), and then will go for spike traps. I'm using a ranger to kite the majority of the attack waves that come in, and am confident I don't need spike traps at the moment.

Disclaimer here is I'm playing on Challenging difficulty - so for higher ups you'll probably want spike traps asap - they're a godsend in survival I know that!

That said, I'm very much looking forward to multiple playthrough's of the campaign and trying different things - especially on the next difficulty up after I beat it!

[Microsoft EXCELSIOR!]

More spawning units (Ranger and Sniper), can train Soldiers, Wood Workshop, Farms, and wood wall reinforcement. Whatever that last thing was called.

Went for Ballista's to deal with those Swarm missions and totally forgot they're accessed through the Workshop. Whoops XD

[One Man Army]

By Priority: (For Nightmare 500% and lower)

1. Wood Workshop(Cottages) -> Farms
   
2. Soldiers
   
3. Stone Workshop -> Foundry -> Engineering Center (Lucifers)
   
4. Logistics I (Don't underestimate this, massive early eco boost and free warehouse space)

The rest is just fluff, but make sure to go for snipers and stone walls, as you will need them in the later stages of the campaign.

Go for this route and you will be set for most of the early and mid campaign.
Farms and cottages trivialise normal missions.
Soldiers trivialise clearing maps and defending waves. Lucifers help late game.
Lucifers trivialise swarm missions.You don't have to worry about those missions anymore.

[amordron]

Originally posted by Sarnith:

I raced for farms and cottages, then to Sniper tech, got ballista tech afterwards, then unlocked soldier technology, and am now going for either gold on kill (because this ultimately adds up to metric f*** tons of gold over a mission for free cause you're killing infected anyways), and then will go for spike traps. I'm using a ranger to kite the majority of the attack waves that come in, and am confident I don't need spike traps at the moment.

Disclaimer here is I'm playing on Challenging difficulty - so for higher ups you'll probably want spike traps asap - they're a godsend in survival I know that!

That said, I'm very much looking forward to multiple playthrough's of the campaign and trying different things - especially on the next difficulty up after I beat it!

The gold per kill really seams like a trap to me vs going deeper into the tree. You have to get 2 "worthless" techs in order to get the gold per kill tech so thats a ton of points.

While 1 gold per kill seams like a lot in the early game you prob are only going to kill ~1 zombie per ranger per 3-4 secs 30 secs per 8 hours so lets say 50 gold per 8 hours or 150 gold per day mabye upwards of 200 when adding the starting sniper + soilder if constantly fighting. Witch is not bad but only the same as the train gold that you get for 1 tech at that point. Later game as you get more men sure it gets better but with you "needing" to spam houses for the pop objectives I find gold is not that large of a limiter vs other resources. So well it can be a ton of gold mid/later game dont think its worth the think it was 450 tech points to unlock for the 3 techs least not till you have stronger units. Eg if you spend that into the train path slightly more (after unlocking the workshops) you can get a free turret every train witch saves you not only a good chunk of gold but wood while giving a ton of other resources.

[Vonriel]

My only real concern for Lucifers is the cost of getting to them. In-mission, it requires oil, which I haven't even seen in the early five or six I've done, so if you get them too early there isn't even a way of hiring them and you're sorta just stuck with a bunch of research points spent not helping you.

Meanwhile, in the tech tree, it takes 700 research points after wood workshops to pick them up. For 300, you can get stake traps and do just fine for the first three swarms with clever placement and kiting, and another 240 gets you ballistas for in-mission swarms, both of which just require wood to build and so are available for use from the start.

It just seems to me like the opportunity cost of rushing Lucifers like you're suggesting might be a bit of a waste, even if unlocking the foundry also unlocks oil deposits on maps for you to use.

[AncientsLegacy]

Putting any points into wood towers or traps seems like a waste to me. I've cleared the first 4 hordes without and am now at stone walls/towers and almost to barbed wire.

[Psojed]

Soldiers Tech
Logistics
Wood Tech + Cottages
Farms Tech
Ballista Tech + prereq
Sniper Tech + prereq
Stone Tech + Stone Houses
Wasp Tech + prereq

Next I wanted to get Stone Walls, but I entered the Cape Storm map and decided that if final swarms are going to be like that on other missions, then I hugely underestimated the final waves and I didn't want to deal with them using 5+ lines of towers and snipers. So I started a new campaign to get Wasps and Shock Tower. Undecided about Soldiers yet, I might skip them completely :)

[Irisu]

I spent some time looking at the tech tree and pretty much found that a lot of the unit upgrades is for soldiers. They pretty much want you to mass them it seems considering they get atk up, range, armor, more armor, even more damage for nodes.

[Mikey's Zombie]

Originally posted by One Man Army:

By Priority: (For Nightmare 500% and lower)

1. Wood Workshop(Cottages) -> Farms
   
2. Soldiers
   
3. Stone Workshop -> Foundry -> Engineering Center (Lucifers)
   
4. Logistics I (Don't underestimate this, massive early eco boost and free warehouse space)

The rest is just fluff, but make sure to go for snipers and stone walls, as you will need them in the later stages of the campaign.

Go for this route and you will be set for most of the early and mid campaign.
Farms and cottages trivialise normal missions.
Soldiers trivialise clearing maps and defending waves. Lucifers help late game.
Lucifers trivialise swarm missions.You don't have to worry about those missions anymore.

IMO exactly the wave to go, playing on brutal difficulty, you pretty much described my entire spec tree to a T, though I've always been partial to early stone walls...

[.]

I got farm first to beat The Hunter's Meadow
I got snipers next to beat The Crossroad
Then Ballista and stone workshop ( not necessary ) to beat The Coast of Bones
I am going to get stonewalls next