WindStrike

Alright, you know how triple-element damage towers are great vs. the waves but not so good against fruit? Well, there's one tower that is not only good against fruit, it's stupidly overpowered, and tweaking its damage isn't going to fix its problem. Runic is dumb. With one level 2 slowing tower, it's good, it's probably on par with the rest of the triple-element damage towers, maybe some more. With two level 2 slowing towers, it's beyond overpowered. I was just doing a test run on Very Hard (which has been tested for producing less fruit points than Hard) and got 2000 Fruit Points, with lots of screw ups that resulted in me entering the fruit wave with 9 lives. I don't think a single fruit got past the front door till about 1000 points, and it took another 500 before it got past the second bend. So what about all the other triple-element damage towers? Where did they end up? Well, I've been experimenting with Quake, Flamethrower, Haste, Flood, Ephemeral, Oblivion... yeah, pretty much all of them couldn't get past the third wave on Very Hard, even with max level support towers and pure towers supporting. I think Oblivion managed to get the farthest at about fifth or sixth wave, but overall, Runic just outclasses all of them. And it outclasses the level 3 dual-element towers. I believe my Infared build is the only thing I've got that can keep up with it, and that's using a specific build to get to that point that has no guarantee of survival, especially if someone camps the entrance. The problem with just nerfing Runic Tower's damage is that prior to those slowing towers, it's just like Infrared or Vapor or Poison (input some other various examples here) - it's mediocre. It's alright, but not that great. Nerfing its damage will just make it a useless tower till slowing. So it's the exact opposite of Quark Tower, which is stupidly overpowered early but useless later. So how do we fix these? Rework them both. I can see why you wouldn't want to revert Quark back to what it used to be, it was kinda generic then, but it was balanced. As for Runic, well... there's plenty of suggestions in this thread. Personally, I'm still all for that railgun tower idea, though it might be tricky a tower to input. Also, this one may seem like a weird suggestion, but could you increase the range on Hail/Comet Tower to 17? There's a lot of spots where, like other 16 range towers, it can hit a lane away, but the split shot won't go off. EDIT: Oh yeah, I was playing Hero Mode recently and noticed you changed his range to 8... which fixes his stupidity issues, but now that his range is actually... good, could you give him a projectile? It just seems weird waving his sword around 20 feet away and suddenly explosions. EDIT2: Proof of Runic haxorz is now attached and ready for anyone to watch its hax attacks. Holy scaling_ batman.SC2Replay

Alright, thanks. Yeah, I think I got something figured out from the template now. Also, tower I'd vote to ban every single time - Cannon. Bye bye meta, lol.

I recall there being a draft pick mode that could be actively picked in-game in the Warcraft 3 game. I'm just wondering, how did it work with 3+ players? Or something psycho like an 8 player game? I have something I'd like to propose for a potential wars design, but first, I need to know how this worked.

Alright, here is an alternative system, one where player count doesn't negatively impact the game. In this system, it is the standard defense game. There is a wave order (normal or chaos) still. However, we keep that upgrade center and terrazine. The upgrade center only provides offensive buffs to creeps, but they're not permanent upgrades. When you spend your terrazine on an upgrade, it applies that upgrade to all creeps on the next wave. That said, every upgrade will have to serve some sort of purpose and must provide an actual impact. You can only do one upgrade yourself per wave. Yes, upgrades can stack on a wave, so you don't know if you're the only one dropping an upgrade on the wave or not. The intention with this is a offense-heavy mode where players are actually being knocked off earlier in the game, rather than a game where we all just see who can get the most fruit points. That said, this would still go into the fruit wave (if it lasts that long), and terrazine can still be spent on abilities during the fruit round. You know what, this is totally just me reinventing weapons mode with this suggestion, lol. But the way I see it, regardless of what suggestion we go with, I think an offense-heavy approach is the right way to do it, which would technically fix the issue of "too many players" simply because people really can go for ways to kill people off early. Maybe it's crazy, personally I love crazy, it's what makes things bloody fun.

With bidding, I don't see how that's any better, because in order to bid enough for the wave to become yours, you probably wouldn't be able to pull off more than 8-9 waves worth anyways. And in the case of low player counts, a good number of the waves would end up being yours. Unless that bid was using non-minerals (you'd kill yourself if it was with minerals). Yeah, some players might amass enough from interest to not kill themselves, but that's a small handful of players. The rest is a player base that doesn't have a bunch of extra money sitting around. As for the constant flow, it wouldn't just be a matter of tuning damage, several towers would have to be completely changed. Haste might as well not even have a charge-up time, Infrared would be god, Celerity would be completely outclassed by Haste/Ephemeral, a single Ion couldn't slow the whole wave, Magnify's change range wouldn't have as much effect, and Nature > Dark/Light by a long shot. EDIT: Okay, let's take that constant flow... and just add breaks in there. As in, depending on the number of players, there'll be a slightly different number of creeps per wave (can't be helped, 30 isn't divisible by every number). 1 Player - *face-palms*2 Players - 15 each, 30 total3 Players - 10 each, 30 total4 Players - 8 each, 32 total5 Players - 6 each, 30 total6 Players - 5 each, 30 total7 Players - 4 each, 28 total4 Players - 4 each, 32 total Each creep would be rotating around each player, so in a 6 player game, every 6th creep is yours. While this would fix: giving everyone an even chance, offense is constant... it doesn't fix the issue that comes up when you have 5-8 players - the amount of offense you have. Either idea (individual waves or shared waves) will work perfectly fine for 2-4 players, but any higher and you essentially have to gang up with others in order to have a controlled offensive effort. Regarding the defensive issues when ganged up on, I did say earlier about that upgrade center being purely for buffing your own creeps, but I guess that's not such a good idea in retrospect. Seeing as you'd be able to use terrazine to grab elements (defensively), might as well have some upgrades in there for defensively buffing yourself.

Hang on, regarding this constant flow of creeps, are we saying use the current system where towers send creeps, or just "by player's existence, creeps are sent"? If it's the former, there's an issue we all forgot to point out - the late-game of the current Wars. There's simply too much, it's a lagfest, it's a deathfest, there's so many creeps and towers on each side that it's absolutely ridiculous. Now if you're talking about the latter, you were saying earlier that for my system, in an 8 player game, you'd only be able to control every 8th wave. Well, for your system, in an 8 player game, every 8th creep is yours. Granted, that means you're able to take offense at any time, but with only one creep per 8 creeps, that's kind of difficult. The only reason it works in the current system is because the moment you upgrade a tower, no one can kill the bloody thing, especially when you drop a pure tower. Or am I misunderstanding things completely? EDIT: Ah right, the reason I don't like "constant flow of creeps". A while back, in this thread, I outlined the towers that were nerfed due to the setup and those that were buffed. Pretty much, anything with 16+ range enjoyed having waves, because their firepower initially was less than towers with short-range. And then there's the towers that either had to charge up or depend on the creeps stacking up. This doesn't become an issue if the creep flow really is constant, but there's still a number of towers that'll be on the nerfed side.

Good point about the limited control with lots of players. I kind of don't like the idea of having to manually send waves though, cause if that's the case, well then it's even easier to gang up on people. We tried this with the original wars mode design for EleTD and what ended up happening was multiple waves would get sent to one person and several others would have absolutely nothing sent at them, leaving periods of blank space where nothing happens. Alternatively, if the manual control was set to fire at all players, then there could be unit stacks, therefore resulting in AoE = victory... unless there's healing creeps mixed in, in which case everyone is dead. I think something else we tried (for targeting one at a time) was if multiple were being sent to one person, it'd either prevent others from sending more, or it'd just stockpile in an endless wave of creeps with no breaks. All in either, it was either a mess or "nothing happens" for a period of time. Regarding mixing with the current wars mode and then making it so terrazine is also used for elemental picks, I really like that idea. However, we still have to cap the maximum elemental picks at 11 (I shouldn't have to explain what happens if you were able to do 12). So what could be done is that everyone goes ahead and starts with 11 vespene. Each elemental pick is still 1 vespene, but all of them cost terrazine, and higher levels cost more terrazine. Assuming you were to spend all of your terrazine on elements as fast as possible, you'd probably end up with maximum elements by like, 20-25 minutes (I'm just throwing arbitrary numbers out there), and by the time you stop getting minerals, you'd still have some terrazine left over. Heck, some of the really strong offensive upgrades could cost a vespene. Should Wars stay in waves? Well, unless someone can come up with a targeting system or other design that doesn't result in either a complete mess or periods of blank time (current wars mode has periods of both of these), yes. But you pull up a good point, if there's a set wave count, it's not going to be fair for everyone. So instead, it may be better for it to be "endless", as in there is no determined wave count, it could end really early, it could go really late. There should still be a cut-off point at which minerals aren't given anymore, but terrazine would continue. Seeing as you end up firing waves at everyone (including yourself), you could spend more terrazine to increase the offensive power of your waves, but since you're out of minerals, you'd have to be careful about killing yourself as well. It's different from the current wars mode, where your own defense is killing yourself. In this case, your defense and offense (in terms of the creeps) are separate. Regardless of whether people spend that terrazine or not, the waves are going to be scaling every time, so the game WILL end. Unfortunately, this doesn't answer the issue of "if there's lots of players, my offensive abilities only go off once every while." Here's a few things we could do to attempt to alleviate that: This first idea might be a little messy, but an option that costs terrazine that makes the next wave sent to be yours for say 5 terrazine. When one person uses this, someone else can attempt to override, but it'll cost more terrazine (10 terrazine), and so on (15, 20, etc.). If no one uses this option, then it simply goes in the player rotation. The terrazine cost for the initial amount resets to 5 at the start of every wave. I don't know how I feel about this... again, could be messy.Second idea, perfect excuse for Karawasa to bring the weapons back. With weapons, your builder has energy that refills over time, and you can fire active abilities at other players (at any time) that buff the creeps in that area in or nerf the towers.All of these abilities are upgradable. Personally, I'm for minerals being the upgrade cost for this, not terrazine.Unfortunately, this comes with the problem of that it's easy to gang up on someone. While that's technically true with the waves, there are ways to counteract it. But if multiple offensive abilities are going off against that person as well... unless the abilities are weak (in which case, why bother), that person is essentially screwed.Honestly though, it is an FFA, and these things are bound to happen in FFAs. When it comes down to it, if you're in a standard SC2 FFA game, and there's one person dominating, the only real way to take him down is to group up and take him down. There really isn't a way to add protection for this. This is true in virtually every FFA game (hence one of the reasons why so many games are team vs. team based nowadays). Terrazine could also be used to give you lives back, but if that's done, then terrazine would instead cap off at the same time minerals cap off. I dunno how I feel about if terrazine would keep coming in or not. In the meantime, I'm gonna look into ideas that might provide more offensive things to do (that came out wrong) while waiting for the next wave sent to be yours. For the record, while I'm perfectly aware that Squad TD figured out a way around the issue of "how to send things", I don't want to copy that either. Wars mode for Element TD should be unique to itself, with nothing lost in the process.

Additionally, the options to manually go -random or -harder seem to not work either. No idea if that's intended or not.

When Intensify Tower shoots (Fire + Dark, Level 3), it's only firing one beam instead of two.

Revert Quark (Earth + Light) to what it was. As in, before the orbs. It was perfectly balanced then. Now... there is one spot where it is stupidly overpowered at 10 range. 8 range, it's fine, about 8-12 spots where it's usable. But that one 10-range spot at the front of the maze... holy crap. On bloody Hard difficulty, an Electron Tower (level 2) practically solo'd through 35, save for 30 (Earth + Undead) and 32 (Composite + Mech). There's not a single triple-element tower in the game that does even that, except maybe Celerity in single-player mode, and this is one tower that's slaughtering everyone else in multiplayer. I know we balance around Very Hard, but this... this is just ridiculous. I'll post a replay of this soon. It really is dumb. I won't suggest nerfing its damage because then it's a crappy tower in all of the other spots. EDIT: Here's a replay. Pretty sure I just broke the record for Non-Mazing (and that was in Multiplayer, not Singleplayer). Only reason I'm not posting it up officially in its own thread is due to how long that Quark/Electron lasted in that one spot. Regarding fruit points, another scaling model would be to just buff Very Hard to 9 Points (so 1, 2, 4, 6, 9). Hard and Normal... it's iffy which one is higher, depends on the build. v146 _ Hard_ 349 Fruits _ 2094 Points.SC2Replay

Sorry for not replying to this, it's mainly because of the issue of income. I've never seen an income system in a tower wars game work without someone snowballing to the end, with the exception of Squad TD, but that's because it's separated from summoning creeps, so "send to snowball and win" isn't an issue. Battlecraft and Income Wars are safe from snowballing income because it's based on a counter system - the whole point of both games is to counter your opponent and create great unit combinations, so it straight up comes down to whoever counters better. Is the current wars system too simple? Yes. Is B.net capable of learning something more complicated? I can say this for certainty - ever since Global Play, a lot of NA EleTD players switched to EU side, so because of Global Play and there's actually a good number of at least sentient players on the EU side, B.net can learn something that has some complexity. Should it use income? As a primary source, no. As a secondary source that has a impact on the game but not the defining factor, maybe. Currently, interest already serves as this. In terms of a full suggestion of a new wars mode, I'm not putting a thread down for it yet; instead, I'm going to throw some ideas here, where there's already a lot of thought placed into what's wrong with the current mode and various things that can be done to fix it. So below is kind of a sketch of what I've thought up for a new Wars mode. I am going to note something - you should not be able to play Hero mode with Wars mode. The reason is because Wars should add an extra level of management to the game. Having Towers + Wars + Hero would just ensue in chaos, only a very small number of players would be able to even handle that combination. That said, the extra resource of Terrazine should be usable for this. First off, we have your element picker. This one remains unchanged. Then we have your summoning center. First, you pick an element, and then you pick a creep type. Last, we have an upgrades center. This is where you use your Terrazine. We can combine all of this into one center w/ 3 sub-menus that lead to all of this. Something Karawasa didn't like in most wars games is that you only targeted one guy at a time. How did we "attempt" to fix that? Everyone sends everything at everyone. Is that a bad idea? Well, in the case where your own towers are killing yourself, yes. Player 1 (Red) gets to pick first. Let's say he picks Water and Mechanical. 30 Mechanical Water creeps are sent to everyone. Player 2 (Blue) gets the next pick. This essentially goes in a rotating order. What this does is allows everyone to pick out who they want to try and kill, or give themselves breathing space by summoning a wave that they themselves can easily counter, or for some other reason. As for when that pick occurs, the moment the next wave starts, the next person can go ahead and pick the next wave out. He has until that wave is cleared + a grace time based on difficulty. If something isn't picked in time, it'll either use the previous pick you had or something randomized. Creep scaling goes exactly as is does in the standard defense game. ... this can (might be able to) be altered via upgrade center. What this does is essentially maintain all of the elements (no pun intended) of the current Defense game while adding a competitive layer. That's good. But that's not enough. The weapons/upgrade center is where everything else (at least for this sketch/idea) will go. Terrazine is something acquired every wave, might as well keep it at the same rate/scaling as Hero mode. One of the problems with the current Wars mode is that when someone puts a counter out, it's every "5 waves". The only way to counter it is when the next "5 waves" hits, meaning someone can potentially end the game in that period of time just because it takes too long to get out a counter. So Terrazine would have to be every wave, not every 5 waves. Regarding the Fruit wave - it will not exist. However, just like wave 60, you stop getting minerals, element picks, and terrazine. The waves will keep going until there's one person left at the end. What upgrades are available? As far as standard upgrades go, upgrading any of basic creep types would work fine, so Mechanical can go invulnerable longer, Speed's bursts go faster, Healing heals for more, etc. I would have it so that the base levels are weaker than the standard amount, but upgrades can jump them to higher than the standard amount. The other two standard upgrades are HP increase and Speed increase. Here's where I'm going to essentially "put ideas down" for all of the remaining upgrades, because they're all unique and crazy and add counterplay elements. Scaling HP increase - The standard increase in HP for a wave by wave basis is 17%. This places a global increase on the HP scaling for all future waves, meaning yes, the game gets harder for everyone. Personally, I like this idea, because the Wars mode I'm suggesting technically takes the same length as standard defense mode, minus fruit wave. This could potentially end it faster. It's also great for helping to shut down late-game builds if boosted fast enough, so it adds an element of counterplay.Creep Boost - Allows you to select two creep types at the same time. This would be risky, because for one, it's a huge terrazine investment (it'd definitely be a high-end upgrade), and secondly, you can kill yourself with this, easily. Personally recommending this one too.Networth Synergy - The HP of all your creeps is increased by an amount equal to 1% of your networth.Level 2 - 2%Level 3 - 3%Note, this amount is included before difficulty plays a part. So if you have 1000 Networth, it will increase HP by 10, but on Normal difficulty, it's only an increase of 7.5.Minimalist - The number of creeps sent by you is reduced by 5, and the HP of your creeps is increased by 17%. This is a mean upgrade because every time you send a wave, the amount of gold everyone gets is decreased due to less creeps.A reminder that all creep upgrades are supposed to end the game faster, so less gold here is intentional and the primary point of it.Regeneration - Adds a 2.5% HP regeneration. For Maze, the this upgrade increases it to 3% HP regeneration. Another high-cost upgrade.Resistance - Creeps gain 10% resistance to creep debuffs like slow/damage amp.Level 2 - 20%Level 3 - 30%Note, this is multiplicative, not straight. It means a slow debuff of 30% will only slow by 21% instead.Elemental Evil - Whenever you spawn an elemental boss for youself (due to element pick), it spawns a composite version boss creep of that level amount to everyone else.Do note, this scales every 5 waves still, so if you're crazy enough, save an element pick for wave 65. Also, Elemental Evil does not get the benefits of Regeneration. Yes, this one can be very evil for anyone that doesn't have good single-target.Pure Essence summons Essence of Karawasa at everyone, including yourself. You still get the upgrade instantly though.Growth - Increases the creep size of creeps sent, not necessarily visually. In a nutshell, this prevents units stacking extremely close together on each other and sets a minimum distance between any two creeps. Really isn't any point in this one existing if there's Resistance. I'm only suggesting this if it's too hard for Resistance to be added.Dodge - Gives creeps a 10% chance to dodge something entirely. Great against slow attack speed defenses.Can't be upgraded. Any more than 10% would induce too much rage, as painfully tested when it was in Hero Mode.Shields - Since Hero Mode can't be on in conjunction with Wars Mode for this anyways, Shields is something I've suggested as a creep ability before. Creeps have shields equal to 10% of their maximum HP. If the creep hasn't been fired on in 5 seconds, the shield will regenerate back to full.Lethal - Leaked creeps drop lives by 2 instead of 1. Something else to consider is - should the game start at "Wave 1"... or later? If you pick Wars mode, it is literally Defense for the first 5 Waves, and the next 5 after that, there isn't much you can do in terms of upgrades. So the first 10 waves is going to be a Defense clone. That said, for Wars mode, I propose it automatically starting at "Wave 11" (and calling it Wave 1), meaning everyone starts with 500 minerals, 2 element picks, and some terrazine for creep upgrades. There will be a full 2 minutes for the game to start (2.5 minutes on maze). For Wars, automatically having a Level 2 element (no boss sent) should be fine for this, because all someone has to do to kill you is summon a creep wave of your weak element/type. Having three buildings for Wars will simply be too many buildings. The standard building for picking elements still remains. The building for getting creep upgrades (via your terrazine) is fine too. This last suggestion is a replacement for the creep summoning center. Instead, you have a small "workshop" bar, sitting at the top-left/middle of the screen. It gives drop-down menus for the following: Creep Element (Water, Fire, Nature, Earth, Light, Dark, Composite)Something to consider, should all of these be enabled by default? Or should you require at least Level 1 of an element in order to send it?Creep Type 1 (Undead, Image, Mechanical, Healing, Fast)Creep Type 2 (Undead, Image, Mechanical, Healing, Fast)This is greyed out until you have the Creep Boost upgrade, at which point you can select a second upgrade. At the end is a "Confirm!" button, and the next wave will send that. Regarding difficulty - by default, everyone is set to Normal difficulty. Increasing difficulty does the following: The creeps you send are set at your difficulty, inclusive of gold amount.The grace periods are different based on difficulty:Very Easy - 15 secondsEasy - 12 secondsNormal - 9 secondsHard - 6 secondsVery Hard - 3 secondsRemember, whoever clears the wave first sets the grace period for everyone else based on whatever difficulty he's on. And finally, regarding teams, the player rotation still goes as it usually does. The creeps you send are still based on your upgrades only. Ideas, comments, thoughts, etc?

Below is a list of all things that have been suggested for the next patch compiled onto one spot, including stuff from chats: Maze Mode - increase the scaling movement speed buff so that goes back to 2x by wave 60. Before, when there was only 2 checkpoints + endpoint, it was a little too difficult, but now that there's 3 checkpoints + endpoint, the mid-game to end-game needs to be harder. Quite frankly, any newbies that are getting screwed over by the early waves won't feel this anyways, and when they do get mid waves, it'll probably be due to actually figuring out how to make mazes, even in a basic form, so they'll be fine.Trickery Towers - is there a way to transfer all buffs from the original tower to the clone? A huge problem I have with mixing Trickery with Well/Forge is that you have to increase your number of Well/Forge towers to accomodate Trickery, and considering Trickery already consumes more space, that's a pain to deal with.Fruit Points - On the previous fruit system where fruit gained abilities over time, we thought Very Hard gave the most points because virtually every defense died at the same point (speed). On the current one, however, it's actually balanced, and with some testing and experiencing things first-hand, Normal currently gives the most fruit points. Regarding what new numbers to use to fix this, here's two of them:List 1:Very Easy - 1 PointEasy - 2 PointsNormal - 3 PointsHard - 5 PointsVery Hard - 7 PointsList 2:Very Easy - 1 PointEasy - 2 PointsNormal - 4 PointsHard - 7 PointsVery Hard - 10 PointsRegarding List 2, Normal currently beats Hard out, but not by much, so increasing it to 7 Points should fix it. Very Hard needs to be more than double of Normal, and the point spread between levels shouldn't decrease either, so that's why it's 10 Points and not just 9 Points.There's still a few things from this thread that could use implementation (most namely Celerity), secondary to that would be Money/Life followed by Poison.Both voting menus done at the same time. Now that Wars and Defense are chosen in the lobby, all of the settings should be done at once (except for Teams), and then just increase the maximum voting time to 1:30 to accommodate both. Anyone else got any more? Also, finally thought of some stuff for new Wars system, you can check that out here.

Well, I know it's possible to pull sub-30 minutes on Hard difficulty (I'll get a replay up later), but can anyone pull off sub-30 minutes on Very Hard (aka, actually valid for this challenge)?

The reason interest upgrades were removed was because even with one interest upgrade, it was enough to allow someone to fill the entire map with towers due to interest abuse techniques. A suggestion of having it scale would eliminate the early interest abuse, which, in multiplayer games, might cause about 200-300 gold difference max, but once it goes over the standard 2% amount, you'd be surprised how much that adds up even if you only have a little bit of unspent gold. People would probably end up with 200k networth without interest abuse.

Is it really that bad? I don't doubt you, twill give a shot at it later, but if that's the case, I'm going to suggest two scoring amounts: - 1, 2, 3, 5, 7 - 1, 2, 4, 7, 10 I'll get something more concrete out later after some tests. regarding the targeting system, that is the default targeting system for SC2. It doesn't recognize that it was shooting the other target once it's changed. The way around this is tower positioning and manual targeting.

(A complimentary thread towards the extraordinary efforts of Karawasa for the best Tower Defense game of all time. Anyone is free to add their own thoughts.) How do you know a game is deep? When it can be replayed over and over and over, and each time, you still find something new. I've played Element TD for a total of... probably over 1000 hours, be it screwing around, single-player runs to set some records, online against others, testing, and passing the time. I can only say that for a handful of other games, all of which were funded and created by organizations. So what makes it so replayable? Why does it have seemingly infinite depth? What makes it stand out from other tower defense games? I've played a lot of different TDs (namely Warcraft 3 ones). There's a lot of cool ideas everywhere, but a lot of them conform to one style of defense, where the following things don't hold much meaning: Choices Map design Tower position Obviously, map design doesn't particularly matter if it's mazing. But that aside, what choices do you have in most TDs? Different builders maybe. Otherwise, you have access to every tower. The next tower in line is stronger in every way to the previous, and it attacks differently, be it bouncing, AoE, slowing, anti-air, high-damage single-target, etc. The only real choices you have are deciding if you're gonna mass low-level towers or get only a few towers and upgrade them. Map design and tower position go hand in hand. So literally every single non-mazing TD is not a straight path. It's filled with curves and possibly repeated areas. Does that make it a good map design? Not necessarily. In most cases, what you do is place towers in spots that hit the most area. Regardless of their range, they'll probably hit everything within any sort of peninsula or loop. About the only thing you care about regarding tower position is sticking slowing towers in the front and a few more periodically around the defense. Range is rarely a factor. Element TD plays strongly on these things (amongst others, which I'll get to). You have access to six different elements. Each element brings a single-element tower that comes with it by default. Each element can be upgraded to a level of 3, thus allowing you to upgrade that base single-element tower to higher levels. However, by getting multiple elements, you're able to build towers that combine those elements, be it dual-element towers or triple-element towers. It'd be inaccurate to say that every single tower is different, as the various support towers often fulfill the same role for a different element combination; however, each one is different in how it goes about utilizing that role. In total, there are 2 basic towers, 6 single-element towers, 15 dual-element towers (12 damage, 3 support), and 20 triple-element towers (12 damage, 8 support), all with varying degrees of levels. Many TDs use a 3-4 attack/armor type system, where towers will do maybe double damage to Fortified, increased damage to Armored, less damage to Normal, and non-existent to Light. These systems are kinda convoluted, because then it usually becomes "okay, use this tower against Fortified, this against Armored, this against Normal, and this against Light". The problem there is each tower acts differently, so if some high HP creeps come along with an armor type of Armored, but if your only anti-armor towers are splash damage towers designed against masses, then your next best bet is whatever does single-target to them without having a huge decrease in damage. There's also creep types like Air (can only be hit by towers that can hit Air), Invisible (requires a detection tower in the area to shoot them), Boss (low count, high HP), and various others. The two problem creeps are Air and Invisible, because in just about every case, that's two towers you're guaranteed to get because there's no way you can win without them. This limits strategies because you simply cannot live without them, so potentially rushing a certain defense is sidetracked by the fact that you're forced to get these two darn towers. In Element TD, there's 7 types, BUT it's in a cycle, with a constant bonus/reduction between them. Fire > Nature > Earth > Light > Dark > Water > Fire; the last is Composite. What this means is a Fire-type tower will do double damage to Nature creeps, but it'll only do half damage to Water creeps. As for Composite, it does full damage to all elements; notice that the only towers that use Composite are your basic towers and a late-game Periodic Tower that is limited in number. All elements do 90% damage to Composite-type creeps. There's also 6 different creep types - Normal, Mechanical, Undead, Healing, Image, and Fast. Well balanced defenses have a variety of towers, both in elements and roles. Having multiple elements allows you to cover weaknesses in other towers. Say you have a Flamethrower Tower (does Fire damage). It's doing great against the waves, but if a Water wave comes, it's doing half damage. Having a Runic Tower (does Dark damage) would cover that weakness, and if a Light wave came, having a Quake Tower (does Earth damage) would cover that weakness. As for roles, this refers to single-target, area-of-effect, and support towers. Multiple roles are needed in order to deal with the various creep types. Using all area-of-effect towers will slaughter Undead and Image without an issue, but it'll do little against Healing, and Mechanical tends to slip through quite easily. Likewise, single-target will knock out Healing and Mechanical nicely, but it has a lot of trouble against Undead and Image. Fast doesn't really have a counter, though supports (namely slowing) tend to undermine it quite well, allowing area-of-effect to pwn it. Each element has a tower or two of each for the following: Single-target damage Area-of-effect damage Support Each tower works differently from one another. Nova (Light) is a slowing tower that hits everything around it, slowing all targets, so they go great on peninsulas. Muck (Earth) is a slowing tower that lobs giant blobs of goo that slows units in an area; not so great on peninsulas, instead, placing it on locations that will hit creeps on the second time around. Additionally, due to the way Muck hits them, it tends to stack the enemies up in clusters, whereas Nova simply draws them all closer together by slowing them all down. Another example, Celerity (Nature) is an extremely long-ranged tower than does good single-target damage. Magnify (Dark) is a single-target damage that can change its range. At close-range, it's devastating; the longer the range, the less damage it does. Vapor (Water) is an area-of-effect tower that hits all targets around it. The more targets packed together, the more damage it does. Infrared (Fire) is an area-of-effect tower that adds a stacking damage-over-time flame on the target, and when that target dies, everything that passes over its burning corpse (for the next few seconds) takes a bunch of damage. Every 5 waves, you're given a resource to summon a new element, be it a new one or a higher level version of a current one you already have. What prevents you from maxing out one element immediately is that it summons an elemental boss, which requires some serious single-target damage to take it down if you don't want to lose any lives. It's practically impossible to take out a Level 3 boss any lower than mid-30s without taking some damage to your lives. Not to mention that trying to go for a Level 3 boss really early means you're sacrificing the balance of elements and towers/roles needed to clear the standard waves. By the end of wave 60 (last elemental pick is actually 55), you get a total of 11 elemental picks. For good reasons, that 12th pick doesn't exist, or else the endless wave at the very end designed to test the strength of defenses would have to be about 3x harder than it currently is. There's something to be said for hoarding money in this game, and not just for the sake of saving up for higher level towers. Every 15 seconds, you gain interest, aka you get an additional gold bonus equal to 2% of your current gold. That may not sound like much at all, but with higher skill levels, you're able to know the minimum amount of firepower needed to clear waves, meaning you can save more gold and the 2% racks up. Believe me when I say that I've gone as far as having double the networth of my opponents just because I saved that much more (by switching to Geico- *shot*). Very rarely am I able to do that, but I usually end up with anywhere between 30-50% more than unskilled players. Easily the number one thing I love about this Tower Defense game over all others isn't actually in the choices of elements; yes, it's a really awesome feature that provides a really cool balance (looking into it at an in-depth level shows a level of genius that took me hundreds of hours to realize), but there's something better - Map Design and Tower Position. At first glance, new players are going to ignore that fact that these two things matter. Why? Cause they're just trying out various towers, shiny/flashy stuff, explosions, and in general just watching crap explode. The second reason this gets ignored is because too many Tower Defense maps just have an arbitrary map design and practically ignore tower position, so even tower defense veterans that haven't played Element TD before may not have a clue about this. Every new player I've seen just sticks all their towers in one spot. Heck, even a lot of experienced players I've seen still does that, even with element build orders. The reality is, by positioning your towers correctly, towers can seem a lot stronger than they initially seem. There's this giant guide here that goes through the map design and tower ranges/positions. I'm just gonna nutshell it here. Pretty much, there are locations that provide areas idea for short-range towers - they can hit a large area, aka the peninsulas. However, enemies only pass by these areas once. Up next are double-passes, categorized into short-pass and long-pass. By placing towers on short-pass areas (like the left-side of the middle island), creeps are hit once the first way and then hit once against shortly afterwards. Mid-range towers like these spots nicely. Long-ranged towers like the long-pass areas, because they'll still hit a giant range the first way through, and because it takes longer to get to the second time, long-ranged towers are able to fully hit the wave both times. The whole right side pass is ideal for this. These are by no means definitive rules, just basic guidelines. Due to the different mechanics of each tower, there are various ways you can use each tower. Does it matter how fast you clear the wave? For single-player, not really, unless you're trying to amass lots of gold by interest abusing and letting creeps get to nearly the end of the maze before finishing off the last one. In multiplayer, however, builds the favor killing creeps quickly will screw up long-pass builds, because the first player to clear a wave will start the wait timer for the next wave. In most cases, long-pass builds actually deal more damage than builds that focus all of their damage in one section, so when it comes to the endless wave at the end, these builds tend to win. The problem is that depending on how fast those waves were cleared, those long-pass builds might die before reaching the endless wave. This provides yet another aspect to having a balanced defense. For example, I have a particular build that is able to literally camp the entrance, even on the highest difficulty. As in, creeps survive for a maximum of a second, so this forces the next wave to happen very quickly, leaving very little breathing space for other players (the higher the difficulty, the less wait time between waves, so it benefits off higher difficulties). I refuse to put this build on the site, and unless I know I'm up against skilled players, I also refuse to use it online, because the few times I did use it invoked too much rage. So you'd think "well, if I use this build every time, I'll win". Not really. Anyone that is able to live through wave 60 will automatically win by default on the endless wave. The build is absolutely horrendous on the endless wave. So it's meant as a build to screw up anyone banking on any of the following: Minimal towers (MOAR MONEY)I'm looking at you, money tower abusers Long-pass defenses Heck, even short-pass defenses that require creeps to pass through the second time Anything that depends on racking up even some amount of interest to survive What will this build lose to? Balanced defenses Something that hits a good-sized area in one pass (peninsulas) Short-pass defenses that kill most waves (except ones they're weak against) in one pass People sitting on a small number of celerity/torrent towers *cough*, the ultimate wave clearers; coincidentally, the worst towers against the endless wave What will this build will kill every single time: Long-pass defenses are screwed. Period. Either the player needs to be able to adapt or they're screwed. Some builds are really, really good at clearing the waves while racking up interest. My money tower build allows me to have 70-100k unspent gold at the end of the game. The problem? It's pretty crappy against the fruit round, unless I make certain adjustments which then make it vulnerable to a rush-kill build. Using Celerity or Torrent also pwn waves nicely. Rush-kill builds can kill waves nicely, but every time they run into a creep element/type they're weak to, it loses effectiveness. Not to mention rush-kill builds tend to not do so well on the endless wave, though there is a positioning that allows one to both rush kill and have long-pass, something especially vulnerable to waves its weak against, because by the time that wave comes around for the second pass, the next wave has already started. It's risky, but if pulled off successfully, it does fantastic on the endless wave. I'm not even going to attempt to list the number of different builds in the game. Mathematically speaking, there's a maximum number that I forgot how to calculate, but needless to say, there are a LOT, and there's usually multiple ways to EFFECTIVELY use and utilize each one. This allows a whole new level of replayability, allowing players to find what builds can reach the end (hint: all of them can, even on Very Hard, some require higher skill levels than others), what order to get them, how to build things in order to get the most money without dying, what does the best on the endless wave, what rush kills, what lasts long, etc. Element TD is equipped with multiple modes. You can choose between Wars (still experimental, might see another overhaul down the road) and Defense (standard), and within either, you can choose more modes: Mazing vs. Non-Mazing - Non-mazing is the standard, creeps follow a predetermined path to get to the end. In mazing, you build your own maze around various checkpoints for creeps to go through. Yes, the game is balanced around non-mazing, so in mazing, some towers are definitely more powerful than others. However, there's also a TON of new strategies, maze designs, and other stuff that you can try out. Some builds work better in mazing than non-mazing. Personally, I find Mazing really awesome for Element TD. Hero vs. Non-Hero - Non-hero is the standard. With Hero mode enabled, creeps are twice the strength, but you get an upgradable hero that goes around and kills stuff alongside your towers. This is more of a fun mode than anything. Two-Man vs. FFA - FFA is the standard. In Two-Man mode, players divided into Two-Man teams. Creep strength is doubled, but teams share areas instead. Defenses in Two-Man are definitely stronger than lone players by the end-game due to more synergies between more support towers. In a nutshell, it adds EVEN MORE replayability and strategies to the game. The best part? You can mix and match any of these. There's also another set of modes available, assuming you didn't pick Wars mode: Game type. The standard is Competitive; whoever clears the wave first causes the wave timer to start for others. Casual waits on the last player to clear the wave, or one that automatically starts after a long time. Race disables the interaction between players, so whoever clears wave 60 the fastest wins - long-pass defenses not recommended here. And then there's Extreme, which is Competitive except everyone only has 1 life, and there is no wait time between waves. Difficulty. Thanks to a recent update, if you want to challenge yourself against other players in case you don't like how easy the voted difficulty setting is, you can type "-harder" at the start of the game to make it more difficult. The higher the difficulty, obviously the harder it is, but you gain more money overall (provided your skill is proficient enough) and you gain more points per kill on the endless wave. Element choice. In All Pick, you can select each and every one of your elements. In Random, a random element is automatically summoned for you every 5 waves. This is where the most fun of the game is easily. Wave order. Normal, there's a predefined wave order that goes through every element/type combo for creeps in a balanced order. In Chaos, it's completely randomized. Yes, I've seen 4 Water waves in a row before and saw a Fire-based defense that didn't have coverage get slaughtered. Chaos is also helpful for people that have played "too much Element TD" and have memorized the standard wave order of all 60 waves... *cough me*. Game length. Normal, you go through all 60 waves. In short, you start with 3 element picks and 1000 gold at wave 16. In very short, you start with 6 element picks and 6000 gold at wave 31. Both in part "for the lulz" and because I think it'd be really awesome if it ever actually happened, I always vote the following settings in every single game - Extreme, Very Hard, Same Random, Chaos, Very Short. Unfortunately, there are not nearly enough crazy people to actually vote those settings. So that's a quick rundown of why Element TD is awesome. Well, quick relative to how much there truly is in the game. It's extremely balanced both in design and gameplay, with only a few tweaks that might need to be made down the road. It has a ridiculous amount of depth and replayability, even without playing around with various modes. It's unique both with the element system and that it's one of the few TD games that actually makes use of map design and tower position. It has a competitive side to it in multiplayer, albeit not as competitive as something like Squad TD or other PvP type games, but still on a substantial level. About the only problem with Element TD is that it's hard to learn. As of a recent patch, the addition of a sandbox mode really helps out all players, both in testing things out and screwing around. Compared to a lot of other SC2 maps that are played a lot, it takes a lot more to really get into the full layer of depth that Element TD offers, but it's well worth it. Besides, this site contains lots of information for the game along with lots of guides along with players that are willing to help out newbies. A huge thank you goes out to Karawasa for making the best Tower Defense game of all time. This is not an overstatement. More thank yous go out to the community support that has driven the game to a level of quality that parallels big-shot games nowadays that cost $60. This game, provided you have WC3 or SC2 (different version for each, though WC3 is getting a new version closer to SC2's version soon), is free. It was created with budget of an editor, a lot of time, and lot of feedback. At most, it's gotten donations, nothing more. That's how awesome Element TD is. Those of you that play it, you know it. Those of you that haven't played it and want a good TD to play, go play it. Those of you that haven't played a TD before, what better way to introduce the genre than with the best of the best. And holy crap, this turned out way longer than I thought it would. And that's with me excluding stuff, because there really is that much to talk about this game.

With the exception of being able to go infinite on Very Easy (actually, haven't tested if this is possible in non-mazing), it's intended that for the next difficulty, the amount of points you can get utilizing the same defense becomes higher, especially seeing as you get more money on higher difficulties. With a higher level of skill, you're able to utilize this extra money more, despite the difficulty increasing. There's roughly 10k gold between each difficulty, providing a 10-15% increase in money from one difficulty to the next. There's also a 30-40% increase in difficulty from one to the next. So, with Very Easy being the base difficulty of 1, let's stick all these modifiers next to each other, without the point amounts. Very EasyCreep Difficulty Modifier: x1.00 - 50% HP, 10% DMG ReductionActual HP of 100 HP Creep: 55.50Gold Modifier: x1.00 - 58108, base of 1.088EasyCreep Difficulty Modifier: x1.41 - 62.5% HP, 20% DMG ReductionActual HP of 100 HP Creep: 78.13Gold Modifier: x1.15 - 66535, base of 1.091NormalCreep Difficulty Modifier: x1.93 - 75% HP, 30% DMG ReductionActual HP of 100 HP Creep: 107.14Gold Modifier: x1.31 - 76219, base of 1.094HardCreep Difficulty Modifier: x2.63 - 87.5% HP, 40% DMG ReductionActual HP of 100 HP Creep: 145.83Gold Modifier: x1.50 - 87351, base of 1.097Very HardCreep Difficulty Modifier: x3.60 - 100% HP, 50% DMG ReductionActual HP of 100 HP Creep: 200.00Gold Modifier: x1.72 - 100149, base of 1.100 In theory, if we were to divide the Creep Difficulty Modifiers by the Gold Modifiers and then assign exact point values, Very Hard should only deserve to be twice the points of Very Easy, meaning we'd have to raise the point system to accommodate that. However, it would then be the most efficient to get a high score on fruit based on a combination of good gold amounts and not-so-difficult creeps. Normal looks nice for that; half the difficulty of Very Hard, and 76% of the gold amount. But wait, the highest difficulty is supposed to award the most amount of points, assuming same skill level (that is, enough to clear Very Hard without too many issues) and same defense design. See the problem here? So instead, it's based closer on difference between difficulties, with a minimum of 1 points difference. It's based only roughly on the differences between difficulties, otherwise it'd translate to 1 point difference the whole way up. That said, I'd like to point out a discrepancy: Hard and Very Hard. You can DEFINITELY get more fruit points on Hard than Very Hard. Not basing this solely off stats; I'm getting more points in Hard than Very Hard in-game by a good amount. I am asking that Very Hard be pushed to 8 points per fruit, which should theoretically fix this issue, or least help things out.

Guess it scales good then, because the intention is that it's impossible to go infinite now, lol. Thanks for testing it out! Going infinite on non-mazing on very easy is perfectly fine.

I like the -harder command, but wouldn't the -easier command be abusable? Unless it means that if someone on an easier difficulty causes a longer wait time between waves if they clear it first. Dunno, still just seems... yeah.

"Support towers boost rebalanced to 30%/60%/90%" Although I haven't gotten the chance to test this version out myself, that reeeaaally should drop for the level 1 and 2 versions. It's less a matter of elements required versus what combining the total possible number of support buffs you can pull. So with 5-element, you could do Well Level 2 and Forge Level 2 along with 4 level 2 triple support towers, which includes 2 damage amplification towers. That's 1.6 * 1.6 for your towers (2.56x stronger) and 70% damage amplification increase for the creeps, not to mention the slow which'll drop creeps to half speed (1 * 0.7 * 0.7). For this reason, the Level 1 and 2 buffs for Well/Forge/Trickery in the SC2 version are much lower, namely 15%/30%, with Level 3 actually being super good at 90%.

See if it's possible (with the new fruit changes) to create a defense in mazing that can last infinitely against the fruit wave. Must be set to Competitive and Very Hard and normal length. No heroes and no teams. Chaos and random are up to you. Additionally, you must complete wave 60 by the 70 minute mark at the latest. Excessive interest abuse by leaking a creep intentionally is also disallowed. Enjoy!

In patch 2.0.5 (or 2.0.4, can't remember which), they added various features to the game, including Simplified Command List, which is defaulted to being on. This simply causes the top row of buttons on everything to be invisible in favor of "Left-click to move" or something like that; they're still there and active, you just need to turn it off. It's under Options --> Gameplay. Or you can just press X on the tower, hotkey for sell.

Before, creeps had a 20% chance to dodge an attack thrown at them. Included all abilities from all towers and the hero. Pretty dumb when trying to use Grim on something and it misses 3 times in a row.

Ahh, alright. Jinx/erosion really aren't needed anyways considering with the right positioning, they can be utilized to the same effect.

The moment it passes out of range, even for a split second, they will find the new closest target, and this process will repeat. Is there any tower in particular where you're having this problem? I figure short-ranged towers should be doing this all the time, but 12+ range towers tossed in the middle... shouldn't be happening to. On a note, the changes listed in this thread were not included in patch 1.43. Were they forgotten or was there a change of heart about this?