This would be a guide of the fundamentals of any tower defence game, mostly drawn from element tower defence for warcraft 3 but can be applied to most other similar tower defence games.

Basic Tower Defence

The aim is to build towers to kill creeps controlled by the computer that travel a (mostly) predesignated path from a start point to a end point. In most cases, the player loses lives when a creep successfully reaches the end point.

One interesting variation is where the aim to to leak as many creeps as possible as creeps split into 2 (or more) when killed.

2-pass and long pass

A 2-pass placement refers to a placement of towers where the tower has two chances to kill a creep. The entire creep wave must be out of range of the tower at some point for the placement to be considered 2-pass.

A long pass placement refers to a placement where the tower has only one chance to kill creeps. This is usually at the tip of U-turn points or turning points.

The third placement is what would usually be referred to as bad placement, a placement of towers which is neither efficient or effective, though there can be exceptions where towers are placed for a specific purpose. Long range towers, which can cover almost the entire map, can be placed at what is usually considered 'bad' placement.

Slows, armour reduction and similar.

(in progress)

Upgrading and massing towers.

(in progress)

Links to the Element Tower Defence guide for warcraft 3

Element TD Guide
Basics of element TD
4-element builds - roots/muck
4-element builds - nova/windstorm
4-element builds - non-slowing
5-element builds
6-element and other builds
Guide to playing -random
Forum draft strategies
Wave analysis (incomplete)

Tower placement Guide by Cisz