Campaign brickwalled .. sorta?

[=Snappy=]

I heard it mentioned that the campaign is beatable, regardless of tech tree choices. (True?)

Well, I set out to play it on hard/200%, and did "well", so far, but now I seem to be brickwalled at 3 missions:

• Narrow Pass -- the presumed "next" one I am supposed to play. First horde sweeps thru w/ very little resistance. I am "lucky" to have basic walls up and a total army of 15-20 troops (mostly soldiers) by then. It's not enough.
  
  
• Cape Storm -- new to the game so when I see a bridge that wide, honestly did not "get it" until the end of the mission -- that the swarm would be that wide as well. and that long. :P first playthru i had about 5 rows of wasps and I killed enough of the swarm that the tail end of it was in sight and probably only the last 1k-or-so infected made it to the command center. gj! :P figuring that I now knew the secret strat; I just had to execute it better, I played it again, trying to overall clear the south faster, build a better econ, get more iron faster, build more wasps, bigger army, etc. .........and somehow did worse, overall! will not attempt another multi-hours-long experiment, here.
  
  
• Frozen Lake - after failing each of the other 2 "earlier" missions at least twice -- very time consuming with no "a-ha" moment in sight, and already feeling brickwalled in the campaign map, in desperation I fought the swarm blocking Frozen Lake and surprisingly won. And Frozen Lake itself was seeming surprisingly doable, but I got crushed at day 52 or whatever when the swarms come from all sides. Had nowhere near enough army or defenses to stop them, and even envisioning a best case scenario it's doubtful I could have stopped them.

I believe I have the max research points. Tech-wise I unlocked Soldier, Farm, Wasp, and Iron Transportation, and obviously their prereqs.

I feel like taking some of the more combat-oriented bonuses would have made a difference. Some kind of AoE would be huge, obviously. Not sure there's even potential to unlock that by now. But of course with "no respec" high on the list of insulting anti-QoL atrocities committed by the user-haters who made this game, this sort of experimentation is not an option.

(As an aside I also have to wonder: if I had not unlocked wasp in the tree, would they still be available in swarm missions at this point? Cuz if not I would have been shut down 2 swarms ago, anyway.)

Now that I have the perspective of having tried all 3 missions, I do think Narrow Pass is the most realistic to complete. But it still will require better strat and apparently is going to be highly RNG-dependent, on top of that. (Such an annoying design.)

I was about to start a new campaign then I realized u can turn the difficulty down.

But I'm wondering what veteran comments are re: this situation, vs. the "u can beat it with any tech tree" remark. I would already have to expand that remark to say "u can beat it w/ any tech tree, but no way will u beat it w/ any old tech tree, the first time thru, esp. if u are > 100% difficulty".

[Sajonji]

idc about statements like "u can beat it with any tech tree", but here are some tips if you are struggeling:

your tree so far doesn't sound too bad.
Soldier is the way to go in campaign. Get all soldier upgrades from the tree asap.
For cape storm a form of aoe is recommended (lucifer or shocking towers). But it is doable without. Your defense should stretch from bridge all the way to your command center. Not only wasps, put also walls and wood towers for soldiers into it.
While we are at it: shocking tower with all upgrades is very good in campaign.

As for the rest, you might wanna put some screenshots or at least army numbers here. Then we could at least say: "oh you need at least double the walls & units you got now".
Maybe you don't have enough economy and that may impact your unit numbers, etc etc. Screenshots make for preciser advice :)

[Andrewbh2003]

your tech choices are not bad at all

i personally would of not gone with wasps "the wasp train is usually enough up until the tier 5 missions" and tried to get shock towers

i think the issue here is player error though admitidly narrow pass is perhaps the hardest campaign mission "arguibly" so i would ignore it for now

cape storm would be much easier if you had shock towers but there not necessary 200+ soldiers and whatever wasps you have can manage on 200% "obviously 3 or even 400 is preferable but if you cant you cant" maybe try cape storm again

you SHOULD have at least 250 soldiers by the end

if you need any actual tips screenshots and questions are welcomed

[prayanspray]

if you get stuck, move on to the next one you can do.

narrow pass i left till my last few maps because of the tech route i went, you need to be able to spam soliders with the iron train income so the first wave doesn't over run you

if you don't have stone walls, i would spam 2/3 double layers when you the waves are due. the best advice i can give is spam as many soldiers as you can for the fibnal wave and my fav saying is if you feel safe build more because you aren't.

[=Snappy=]

I wound up beating narrow pass on lowered difficulty.

Overall it took me like 8 attempts and by now I can see there is a certain choreography to getting stabilized but by the time I worked that out I was just too bored by the mission to keep grinding it on hard. but i can envision how just producing the "max" # of soldiers and just doing some crazy ugly walling right before the wave would probably allow u to beat it pretty easily.

But one thing weird that I thought happened, which now I've seen the whole map I find strange ... it's kinda shaped like an "X", right? and swarms are supposed to be able to spawn on only one leg of the X? at least that's how it seems most of the time. but one of my early runs i swear they spawned on both of the bottom legs at once, at the first swarm, and ofc i got owned and i found that rather intimidating. like "how will i ever be able to do this?" :P

Anyway went back to hard on cape storm after unlocking shock tower and i carpeted the whole approach w/ them. w/ wasps and wood walls mixed in. total overkill. they only wound up infecting 2, and one just barely. leaving probably 20 untouched. :P

then unlocked stone walls and frozen lake was similarly easy. also refined my econ approach, getting stone house early vs. spamming tents. basically dominated it.

so yeah i do see narrow pass a bit anomalous in terms of demands made on a newb, especially if it was supposed to be the "next" mission in sequence for me.

i guess doing a throwaway scouting run could have saved me from the experience of having to play thru the map so many times progressively exposing more of the map before i could make a good strategy.

[amisianer]

I don't exactly recall the spawning mechanics here, but it could also be because the noise just attracted a lot of zombies from the other side, so it made you think it was another wave, when it wasn't. This happens a lot in this game, actually. But it's really just noise that pulls them from the surroundings.

It's probably too late at this point, but what I did after my first playthrough on 100% is watch youtubers do it and it helped me a lot, getting to know all the little tricks and quirks of the game.

I do recommend watching either KenseiTV or Imkibitz. Kensei is more the quiet and professional type and plays mostly on 900% difficulty maps at this point, while Imkibitz is mostly entertainment, but he also plays at the highest difficulty. Though he skips a lot of time, where nothing happens, so his playthrough might not be as useful. On the other hand, its less time consuming.

There is so many things you can learn by watching others, like placing single walls in front of exposed lumbermills or food buildings or using the numpad to show health bars all the time. Especially the latter I can't even imagine playing without anymore, its so much better, imo.

[=Snappy=]

Yes, in retrospect I think it was just a random mini-swarm. Which at my novice play-level, made the same impression (and had the same effect) as a normal full-fledged swarm. heh

Eventually I will probably start looking at the pro strats. But sometimes pro strats only work for ppl who can actually pull them off, so, everything in due time. Like .. i have watched a bit of some streams and seen strategies going on that were obviously very deliberate but based on my experience so far, i don't exactly understand why they are optimal at the 900% level because i have been fine doing other stuff on my low-lvl games.

The health bars thing is def a hack. I have an ahk for it. I used it a bit but I'm not 100% stuck on it yet. I can see that being a huge diff between casual and noncasual play tho. It is kind of "annoying" tho in terms of wrecking the normal visuals and I'm just not that devoted yet. ;)

[Bobo]

if you face large hordes of "regular" zombies then shock towers are your best friend. - I was mind blown the first time i build one, it made everything so much easier :D

[=Snappy=]

Agree. Total game-changer. I mean .. u see my anecdote above. It's a bit misleading to say -- esp. since there were wasps there too -- but it almost felt like a row of 4 shock towers basically stopped that whole swarm on cape storm.

So now I'm wondering if I should go all-in and spend a significant portion of my 800 banked points on beelining the tech that makes shock towers use 30% less energy? ;) Cuz esp since i've only had mills, so far, that energy cost has been the main bottleneck.

btw yeah 800 banked points .. those couple tech tree changes -- concrete and shock tower -- got me back to being more predator than prey so .. all i unlocked since then is the bank. I still don't have enough to beeline the wasp train or I would. i need like another 700.

i am definitely focusing on only the "game changer" upgrades, not the trivial ones. i'm wondering what ppl think of the soldier upgrades. obviously they're appealing but i just wonder if they are viewed more as "nice to have" vs. "no-brainer". it would be nice to just try them out but the game is hostile to such easy experimentation. :/

[Qiox]

Originally posted by =Snappy=:

Agree. Total game-changer. I mean .. u see my anecdote above. It's a bit misleading to say -- esp. since there were wasps there too -- but it almost felt like a row of 4 shock towers basically stopped that whole swarm on cape storm.

So now I'm wondering if I should go all-in and spend a significant portion of my 800 banked points on beelining the tech that makes shock towers use 30% less energy? ;) Cuz esp since i've only had mills, so far, that energy cost has been the main bottleneck.

btw yeah 800 banked points .. those couple tech tree changes -- concrete and shock tower -- got me back to being more predator than prey so .. all i unlocked since then is the bank. I still don't have enough to beeline the wasp train or I would. i need like another 700.

i am definitely focusing on only the "game changer" upgrades, not the trivial ones. i'm wondering what ppl think of the soldier upgrades. obviously they're appealing but i just wonder if they are viewed more as "nice to have" vs. "no-brainer". it would be nice to just try them out but the game is hostile to such easy experimentation. :/

Fully upgraded soldiers are the most efficient unit to use for map clearing in the campaign. They also can easily beat the swarm missions.

But all things are relative to how well the player plays. Recently KensaiTV beat the entire campaign on 800% difficulty using only Rangers. No other units, and no Ballistas or Executors. So you can't really say any unit is absolutely required.

[Ramonkey]

Originally posted by =Snappy=:

I heard it mentioned that the campaign is beatable, regardless of tech tree choices. (True?)

No

If only for the reason that without farms, you will find yourself unable to meet the population requirements of the later missions. (Yes, that happens to some people)

[Heron]

I'd give the Frozen Lake another go, it's not too bad. Fortify the upper part of the map to all sides and you should be good.

Narrow pass is one of the most difficult missions the campaign throws at you while Cape Storm is either trivial or a huge pain, depending on whether you have unlocked Lucifers / Shock Towers or not.