goeido

I was assuming he played single player since he wrote about beating easy mode and not about defeating other players.

The purpose of the life towers is not killing lvl 50+ creeps, but to refill your life after random leaks and to get a comfortable life buffer for the endgame. Of course, in the late game, You will need more damage towers like triples and pures. As leaks arent as bad with life towers, you can also farm more interest since you dont need to kill everything off on the first run.

hard to make a replay when the game freezes... I closed the game.

Im playing the same element combination in alsmost the same order as You (but LNW LNW LNW FF), and I managed VH mode with it. I think the main difference in our styles is that I build life towers (and life catchers) early, and build only one or two tidals to deal with undead and fire waves. I think the starting order was light tower - life tower - 2nd life tower - tidal tower - well tower. I manage tidal manually at first, but switch to autocast later. Wells are always on autocast. In late midgame, I have two tidals and a waterfall in the center, and 4 life catchers and another waterfall on the right side. Later on I build one each of Supernova and one Monsoon and 2 pure light towers in the center, and add some more life catchers and slowtowers for Ronald Mode (72 kills on VH)

my game recently got extremely slow and froze with only 2 electricity towers and a windstorm tower built... something about electricity isnt right yet. No problems with windstorm, and having only one electricity tower doesnt seem to cause problems.

My recent favorite is LFNW, a further development of my LNW noob strategy (life towers and well towers, with one or two tidals), adding 2x fire element for extreme slow with Nova and Windstorm towers. Its also possible to build velocity towers, but Im not good at their placement yet. This is definitely a pretty easy build, no problem to finish hard mode, and vh should be doable even for me.

How do I chose a starting position? I somehow cant figure it out, the menu always has the host grey as red starting position and I end up in upper left... maybe a step-by-step explanation would help...

Im wondering whether its possible to change the starting position in single player, Id like to try the other background graphics... or is this only possible in multiplayer?

There are three factors that are decisive, the first two can be learned easily. 1. Build Choice - when to chose which elements, when to build which towers. There are some pretty easy 3-element builds, for example LNW (for life towers and well towers, maybe life towers are best for beginners) and DEF (forge towers, gunpowder, magic). These can be improved by additional interest (more gold-more towers) or a fourth element for more triple element towers. 2 elements dont have enough flexibility, and 5+ elements dont get lvl 3 dual towers, although they seem to be viable. Chose a build order, then play it several times on normal mode to get experience with it. Improve difficulty after reaching ronald mode. 2. Tower placement - find out what long pass and two pass means, and which towers to place on which position. There is a nice guide on tower placement somewhere here. For example, when playing DEF, i place gunpowder in the center (because of their immense range) and magic on the two pass position on the right side, where they have time to recharge. Forge towers are placed on inferior positions next to each battery, on an 1-4 or 1-5 ratio. 3. Micromanagement - probably the hardest to learn. Build quickly and sell quickly, to improve interest gains and use of elemental weaknesses and strengths. Some towers like tidal tower and golem require micromanagement to work efficiently.

Hi, Im an old fan of blizzard games and their mods, my old favourite being Diablo II in the eastern sun mod. I like WC III, but im not really a competetive player (I did the campaign but cant win against the comp in 1 vs 1 games) so I tried special maps. I finished the saphire tower defense game (from one of the patches) and managed skibis castle up to lvl 39, but skibis is a bit frustrating on the long run. EleTD is a really fun game, its actually possible to beat the game in single player and there are many element and tower options so I hope it wont get boring quickly. Maybe ill try multiplayer as soon as i get familiar with all of the towers.

Is the chance to kill based on the damage dealt by one shot of the tower, or based on the current life bar of the critter? If its based on the life bar of the critter, upgrading to lvl 2 wouldnt be really necessary, and combining it with an ice age tower would be nice.

This worked well for me, I tried it on normal difficulty first, then on VH (actually, it was my very first game on VH and my micro is horrible in WCIII). I do play single player, so no "Life towers suck in Multiplayer" please. LNW LNW NW- then pure essence -build 3 life towers on pos 6 -build one well tower -upgrade life towers to eternity towers -get one tidal/tsunami tower on pos 5. Its nice during the forties and early fifties, but does almost no damage during the last waves. -upgrade well tower to waterfall tower, maybe build a 2nd one. -after wave 45, buy pure essence and build pure nature/water towers and sell the eternity towers. The basic idea of the build is to survive until you can get a combo of lvl 3 well towers and pure towers. The life towers help surviving a few leaks, but dont do enough damage during the later stages of the game. Unfortunately, this build has no slow, so its not that good at ronald stage. (4.1b I think) Eletd VH.w3g