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It's not really meant for casual gamers, so there's the main problem. You make some good points though. The game logic is kind of nonsense, but this is video game reality, not actual reality. And I've heard you shouldn't bother with wonders, maybe you're supposed to wonder why they included them in the game :) But I have very little experience with RTS and am playing the campaign on Easy like you. I'm having a blast with it though. Yes you can lose hours of progress with a single mistake, so I just remember not to make that mistake again; victory is sweeter when it's not your first attempt. And higher stakes make the final battle more exciting. I'm not as far along as you, only about 50% having just beat "The Frozen Lake". I got overconfident about the final wave, didn't quite build my defenses strong enough, and some of the infected broke through. Fortunately I was able to redirect my units to the trouble spots and stop the enemy before they got into any houses. With hours of gameplay at stake and a close call at the end, yeah, it was pretty exciting. So yes, I'm not good at the game; I play on Easy and I spend more time on pause than with the game running. I'm enjoying the game anyway.
They say laughter is good for the soul.
I used this one at times (at least it's understandable) until I got the hang of the basic game mechanics:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7pn2R4AEDc&list=PLj_Goi54wf0eNoQKviakxKNULUuACLLUr&index=69
But having to resort to a walkthrough or playthrough as a reference kinda defeats the purpose.
Also, if I didn't spec the tech tree exactly as he did, which chances are fairly high I didn't, with no prior knowledge, I'm kinda stuffed anyway.
As I already pointed out in my initial novel.
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Yeah, I got the sense They Are Billions is not for the faint of heart fairly quickly. The most annoying part is the lack of information, or any sort of "this unit is good vs that" hints. Knowing that mass Warehouses is crucial - and even possible - would be nice to be told too.
Eyy, I see what you did there! :D
Of all the Wonders I've built, the only one that really made sense is "The Silent Beholder", the one that grants global vision. Attaches to the Command Centre, so requires no extra build space. Overall, I'd argue the wonders would be fine at a flat 2000 Gold cost reduction.
Second on the list is Military Mastery, "The Academy of The Immortals". Turns every single military unit into a veteran, and every unit trained after that comes as a veteran. Quite handy when doing mass soldiers.
Climate Control, "The Crystal Palace", which I thought would physically change the terrain, either globally or within X pixels, into farmable land, only gives +800 Food. Useless for its price. Advanced farms are so much better.
Same with the Ray Condenser, "The Lightning Spire". For additional power, the Power Plants more than makes up for it. And the time it takes to even get 8000 spare Gold to build it is crazy!
If you're going through the missions along the top of the map, do not take the last one lightly: The Wasteland of The Giants is merciless on its last wave if you don't play aggressively when you can.
1 giant is fine - 15 of them, not so much. And I have no idea how many there are on higher difficulties. Having tried and failed with my default mass-soldiers, 30+ snipers, plus a couple rangers to run inference while taking them on one at a time, sorted enough of them out before the last wave triggered on my 3rd try.
And yeah, that 3rd and last try got me sweating. With most of my snipers already in the field (and they're not the fastest-moving units I've ever seen), having everything on the other side of the map suddenly move towards my base, I would have lost if I hadn't by sheer chance left enough soldiers behind triple stone walls and inside stone towers back at my base.
With the giants having broken through both my defensive lines before they finally fell, the infected villagers inside my base were already clawing on my command centre when I finally managed to stop them.
I called for a break after that one.
I don't mind the whole limited time thing, as it pushes me to try and figure out a faster approach to economy and what not -- kinda like sc2 but the whole skill tree needs to be reworked or at least give us the ability to respec.
The save thing has been debated on this forum for years. Most of the people who played it liked the no save option, but if you want to save I would think you should be able to. The problem for some, when the weekly challenge was really a thing, was the difference between savers and no savers. There is clearly a difference in being able to back up and redo vs one try, but not too many people are really competing on that anymore. For the campaign I never saw it as an issue, as it is a single player game.
In all honesty, if you really want to get pointers, you have to watch the older videos of the no pause no save 900 percenters. That and learn the optimal housing layout. Having said that, I never use it, doesn't matter to me that much, i just plunk down rows and leave space for the market and bank.
As I included in my initial post, on the subject of a save system or no save system, there is no reason for the developers not to include both.
By all means, for those enjoying a challenge, have at it, I have zero issue with that. But I very much doubt - and my quick look-see at other threads confirms this - I am only one who wants at least some sort of backup / load / checkpoint system.
I enjoy a challenge as well, but only when I understand what that challenge is. And having a random zombie spawn outside the map and walk into the back of my base along the train line with zero notification until it is already too late, that's not a challenge - that's the gameplay equivalent of a punch to the face. And I don't much care for that.
When I clear an area on the map, I expect that space to stay clear unless otherwise notified, without random zombies staggering in from outside the map without warning.
But even as I learned that can and will happen - and I had no way of finding out other than from experience (but only after having wasted nearly an hour as I had to start over from the beginning), and I stay away from walkthroughs unless I'm stuck somewhere - I didn't feel very challenged: I felt angry at the limited save options and what little to no information the game gives me. And that's not a good way to present a game.
I don't care about the victory points or personal stats (playing the offline GoG version). I just want to have FUN when I play, and I play only singleplayer games for that very reason. And I find They Are Billions to be either very stressful due to the lack of gameplay information (build missions), or completely boring as there isn't much to do (late game defense missions). The only part of the game I really have had fun with are the hero missions.
And yeah, I also build bases after my own head now that I know the mechanics. Houses clustered around a market and bank, with warehouses spread out around my main resource buildings, and the research buildings usually clustered away from the centre of the base where they won't take up precious farming land.
That's actually the true irony of it all - I struggled way more on the "level 1" maps in the beginning than I do now, on the level 5 difficulty maps.
And economy grows exponentially... it's a huge boost!
If you're referring to reducing the difficulty to get more time, then I'm already playing at 25 %.
I am not aware of other ways to increase the number of days between waves or to get more time overall to complete the missions.
I am an inherent "turtle" player, so the defensive base building aspect of the game is actually just what I like. But I can spend so much time getting my base up an running the way I like it, the zombie waves clashing against it - combined with the lack of saves, knowing I CANNOT fail or I have start all over - just makes it stressful. Hence the title of the thread.
And yes, I've found that past 50-60 ingame days the economy basically does itself. I have had to hotkey the market to spam sell wood on several maps already. ^^
Add with what you said, and then tack in the fact that you need more ways to get research points to get key items that would be good to get midway or later in the game. Like certain defense towers and such.
Maybe its just me, but I am a casual scrub in RTS games. RTS is fun and all, but when a scrub just wants to have fun, games like this can be a buyers regret.
And I won't lie. Considered many times to use the cheat engine for those research points.
Call it a noob behavior, and it probably is, but those are my feelings on it.
Honestly, I'd argue you should just go for it with the cheat engine.
I have already been forced to resort to a trainer (needed only infinite HP) to proceed on a certain Hero map at the desired difficulty, because I had spec'ed Calliope wrong...and was locked out by the game, same as with research points, to spec her differently!
Combine that with the lack of saves...yeah, when I decided there would be no way through all the harpys with my character no matter what I did - and, damn it, I shouldn't have to reduce the map difficulty because of a locked spec'ing system - then I gladly resorted to a trainer.
Prior to that I believe was the last Hero mission, I gave myself infinite Hero points and maxed out everything on Calliope, just for fun. She ended up moving so fast, I got stuck inside walls twice (the game even crashed one of those times - got no error, it just closed itself) and outright ghosted through a wall twice when I tried to grenade and attack enemies on the other side of the walls. ^^
Honestly, I haven't found much need to "Stack" Warehouses, usually because I have plenty enough space for Wonders after getting Warehouse Buffs on all of my production that counts.
For the Wonders, the point isn't for them to be cost-efficient, but instead to be something that gives big returns in return for little space. In fact in the case of the Lightning Spire its actually more Cost-Efficient and especially Space-efficient(firstly, it doesn't consume the resources that Power Plants suck up. Secondly, you get a LOT more power without using Mill Grids which block most ways of using the land, and finally, it works as a XXL Tesla Tower, which can be useful with expanding your city though within reason)
I Agree with you on the Silent Beholder and the Academy of Immortals, but I disagree with the others
The Crystal Palace, though expensive, is fine. It can actually be incredibly useful on some missions with little regular ground that you can use for farms, but its situational since you don't need Climate Control for important Techs, nor do you really need food that much most of the time as long as you have well-placed farms
As for the Lightning Spire, I often run out of Energy more than I do food, and I find it to be the most easily applicable of those monuments that actually take up space
If you want a useless monument, then look at The Atlas Transmuter, as most maps that require advanced units give you PLENTY of oil slicks to put derricks on, so there's no real need to drain resources to get even more oil
also, hoo boy. If you think Wastelands of Giants is hard, then you haven't seen the last mission. Though the only real difference I have with your strategy is that instead of Rangers I use a Titan or two-they are fast enough to not get constantly slapped by the Giants, while having the Health to tank a few hits while your bois kill off the Giants, though this only works on a few Giants at a Time, though with the big flood I've found that one-wall tile scratch posts often give good returns on how long they last as opposed to individual walls
The main issue I find with the Campaign is that its easy to get techs that end up having little to no use. For instance, the Techs buffing Rangers for instance. As Rangers just run out of use later on, as you run into fresh Zombies and Specials, which at that point you'll have to use so many rangers to clear in safety that you might as well use Soldiers instead. Additionally Prefab Parts(free Great Ballista) and Mercenary 1 and 2(Giving a free Ranger, and then Sniper at start of mission. The reasoning being Rangers have limited use, so why waste points on it, and you shouldn't need a Sniper THAT early on). And one can waste a LOT of research points on such techs, which might prove fatal in the mid to late campaign
Knowing what I know now, I see I wasted some research points.
But what I have learned, or at least think I have learned considering I am playing the build missions at 25 % difficulty, is that numbers is the key. Unlike most games, where the mentality usually is "quality over quantity", in They Are Billions, it's the other way around.
I fortunately haven't bothered with the extra ranger, or even extra anything, at game start. But I have dumped a lot of points into the passive resources down at the bottom of the tech tree. And I usually go for an early Inn - the mercenaries only cost gold, and while more gold than regular soldiers, the mercenaries don't cost any iron, which is scarce on some maps.
AND, most importantly, the mercenaries comes already as veterans (though that may be the result of some other research, I'm not really sure as nothing has specified that).
As for power, I love the power plants. Yes, they drain wood as fuel, but wood is the single one resource I do have enough of once I get the stone workshop completed. Sorry, it may be the way I am playing the game, but you won't convince me mills or the Lightning Spire are better for power than the power plants. :)
And as for those last missions you referred to, it would appear I have something NOT to look forward to with regard to the giants. ^^
But I have to use rangers to run interference for my snipers, because I don't have a single advanced unit building - no Mutants, no Thanatos and no Titans. All I have are Lucifer, and I wasn't informed friendly fire even was a thing in this game.
I would say that the Extra Soldier at the start can be very useful because they can tank infected in case a single building gets hit and they can reasonably quickly kill off infected, and so starting out with an extra soldier actually increases your early game security by quite a large amount
For transportation, I would caution against going all the way into it, and going into it too early. Going up to Iron Transport is fine, but I don't see much use in Oil, Ingot, and Arty Transport(you get plenty of Oil on the maps that need, and some that don't need, oil. Ingots are expensive for what you get, and especially the Wasps).
There's ways to play Quality over Quantity and vice-versa. Normally several Low-Tech things get more stuff than a singular High-Tech thing for the cost. But the issue with going quantity is that you expand the amount of stuff you need to protect, and the chance that single zombie gets through while Quality has the downside of you getting bottle-necked often. The point is to find a balance(with exceptions for instance in examples where you only get one source of something, like say Food on the Desert Missions or some map's supply of Iron or Stone). In regards to troops, there's also ways to play quality vs. quantity, though it usually goes down to the Ratio of Normal Troops vs. Thanatos and Titans(As much as I like Lucifers and Mutants, they just get worn down too fast). On this scale, Normal troops put out more Damage, while quality is more tough(especially when acid spitters start coming into the equation) the best Compromise I've found is to have towers with Soldiers behind the walls(to give my walls 4 different layers, the 2 of wall segments, the towers, and then the de-facto Iron Walls that well-upgraded soldiers are if needed) while I use Titans as my principle mobile force and Thanatos as support vs. the Chaff of the waves
oh, And mercs are always Vets. Also since you are complaining about the Food Monument, you might as well go ahead and get Monuments too. And remember to build the inn within the radius of as many of your houses as much as possible since Prestige determines how many and how high a tier of unit shows up
You say you have plenty of wood. Do you by chance start ignoring wood walls once you get a stone workshop up by chance? Because its still plenty good for making expendable scratching posts in front of a wave, its needed for when you are upgrading housing, its needed for upgrading buildings, and its plenty good enough for defenses not intended to face a wave(for instance, catching the annoying small group "Raids" that the AI likes to throw at you). And seriously reconsider the lightning Spire, it gives a LOT of power while taking up little space compared to an equivalent generated by Power Generators and especially Mills
For future Missions, here's what you got to look forward to:
One of the latter missions involves Infected Mutants, they aren't as mean as Giants. But they also aren't marked on the map like Giants are, so they can and will appear out of the fog at will. And they are plenty fast, plenty tough, and still has hard-hitting AOE Damage
On the last mission, you'll encounter entire waves of Thousands of Harpies and Acid Spitters, which is about as devastating as you'd expect(the harpies in particular are a very hard point as to why towers are still needed in the late game, as they'll still attack towers with troops in them, so that against such waves you still have a semblance of a wall good for use)
No spoilers, please.
I wouldn't be much good at any RTS if I ignored the cheap stuff later on just because I got access to something better. ^^
I still do wood walls, also after I got the stone walls researched. I probably don't put down as many cow scratchers as I should, but I often do build complete wood walls / gates / towers (usually with my early game archers in them) at choke points as I expand as an "early warning" system. And with my stone walls - and towers with some soldiers in them - further in, should my outer walls get breached. Anything in between those walls are (reluctantly) considered expendable, so I slowly move my "main" stone walls further out as I progress on the maps (leaving the old ones standing behind as fall-back positions, obviously).
Point is, my sawmills are...sawing away constantly since the early game, also after I start upgrading buildings (especially stone houses) and walls. And at that point, my stone expenses are much higher than anything costing wood.
I will have to do some more testing with the power in that case. The Lightning Spire might be good, even objectively, but it just feels too expensive, and - as already warned - a great risk of losing power should it get infected. Powerplants, with additional mills, spread around feels to me more secure and more redundant.
Against the spitters, and almost anything else, I just get soldiers. Usually microing an expendable squad further up to bait them, while the rest of my troops do some actual damage behind them.
As I learned the hard way first time I met the spitters, it's better to lose 4 soldiers than 12...
I didn't know that about the Inn, thank you. I knew it was better to place it near houses, but I didn't know the effect (apart from more gold income, same as the Bank). And yeah, I already got both Monuments and Music, wine and wenches for my inn. ^^
As for the resource transportations, I got it up to and including oil at the moment. And I don't think I will go further unless I have excess research points (am 90 % into the campaign). Getting some free oil for the advanced farms was a welcomed addition.
Research I regret taking...the extra Ranger damage and the Great Balista. I've never used the ballista (I find snipers to be better), and the rangers quickly becomes all but useless in my current stage of the game. If I were to do it again, I'd take the extra soldier at the start instead.
I am currently considering the Titan. No idea what it does, but it sounds cool.
...Hence not having researched it yet, because that means it's probably useless. :|
The Combat ARtillery research was fun though! I really like the Executor, though it was NOT what I expected (and for once in a positive way)! If you haven't tried it, it's basically the Wasp's big, bad dad. I had a trio of them - and only that, as a test - as a defense line, and even the Chubbies fell like flies.
I'll probably use the trainer and give myself infinite research points for the last mission, just for all the annoyance this game has given me.