Cisz

Aoe slow will be nerfed, right? So all builds will move closer to each other.

Then I will have to move over to sound design.

I prefer freezing towers to sub zero and ice ages. Monsoon and freezing is the cheapest way for maximum slow.

I'm certain that this will not be the case. Because any great strat or trick that will make one of the 3 not so great builds work will be present in another build with game making towers too. Only if the builds working would depend on 3 of its 4 triples in this exact combination (like some sort of sun/moon/tidal revival), this problem won't occur in a 4 element build. It will ofc occur once some player adds a fifth element to this, all of a sudden having this great trick plus some armour reduction or so. Afaik it's impossible to add anything to the build distribution proposed by me w/o making it less ballanced. Three sucky builds are required to make 12 evenly good possible. Sucky meaning that you don't stand a chance in a competitive match.

So you are using media and part of you're perception is indirect. Often you don't see reality itself, but medial repesentations of it. As a result I predict that your medial observation of reality is highly influenced by the technical rules of said media. For example, anytime you see some sort of film, video or the like, you will be confronted with some sort of camera work, like angle, clipping, movement. Agreed?

Ice age has "ice type slow level 2" and sub zero has "ice type slow level 3". Both slows don't stack. The damage of ice age is higher.

Infernals - no splash, so forget them. Fossils and flamespewing are decent, but you could use refined earth or fire (and pures) and probably get a better result. Vulcano - I have no idea. lfwd-n. Hydrochlorics, incantation, monsoon, freezing, nova, pure and refined water, maybe some scattered poison and moon, and some wells maybe. No need for unlimited elements. The build goes like this: wfldn-wlfd-w-*. Can you view tft v.1.20e replays? If yes, get this. Earth, fire and water make the strongest splash attackers. Water has the smalles splash size, fire has the smallest range and earth the longest cooldown. I think earth rocks the most, followed very closely by fire and very closely again by water. But earth gives you no good support tower at all, so I would go for water or fire.

@Karawasa - Both mine and MrChak's new distributions have 8 triple game making towers and no duals are involved. Those are just the names. @ MrChak - The problem is, I'm not sure myself. I have problems with the "one strong build" phenomenom. I've been trying to improve on your distribution with my own spreadsheet by giving the towers different values, like 0.5 or so, but afaik it's impossible with your version to avoid a big difference bewteen the best and worst builds. And I see your version as 7 weak and 1 good, not "1 crappy and 1 better". Right? Maybe it is possible to get two equally strong builds as top builds with your version, but still there would be a big number that would plain suck. In 3.0 "knowing the game" means knowing about lfdw (and maybe lfwn). Basically everything else doesn't stand a chance. Your version would be a little less extreme, but still a "get the one best build" map. With my distribution this would change to "avoid the three bad builds". Still a problem. 3.0 Original 4 lfwd 2 1 2 1 0 <= 4 lfwn 2 2 1 2 1 1 0 <= 1 2x4 5x2 6x1 2x0 MrChak 2 1 1 2 2 1 1 2 2 2 2 1 3 new best 1 1 1x3 7x2 7x1 Cisz 2 2 2 0 <= 2 2 2 0 <= 2 2 2 2 0 <= 2 2 12x2 3x0 Tough decision. I tend towards my version, as I want the map to become competitive (tournaments, ladders..) and a best build would be a problem on pick games. So the "2 towers everywhere" solution might actually evolve to several of the 12 strong builds beeing played in high level eletd games. (Maybe 7 or so. I think it is unrealistic to expect that all 12 could be equally strong on the highest skill level.) Your version would end up "one build only" or with a bit of tweaking "two builds only" at best, even though the advantage of the best wouldn't be as big as in 3.0. Even in the very optimistic case that the builds with two good towers would be valid and stand a chance vs the top build, there would still be 7 that wouldn't stand a chance, while in my version 12 of the 15 would be somewhat promising and only 3 sucked. But I want more opinions on this. Both new versions improve greatly compared to 3.0. Can we save non rnd games with my version? Is the price of three crappy builds to high? Is the one extra tower of MrChak's one best build to much of an advantage to allow other builds a chance in a tough high level game?

The last tower (NWD) could be a version of well. I like my suggestion better. Your version has 7 builds with 1 strong tower and 1 build with three. Sounds like lfwd all over again. Keep in mind that all three towers in you strong build also show up on "one tower only" builds. So if you weaken one of them, to make the best build weaker, the worst builds get even worse. Imagine a high level pick tournament. Would anybody play anything but the strongest build? Whats wrong with my suggestion? 3 builds with no good tower and 12 with 2 of them (plz ignore the actual tower and element names, they can be moved arround without changing the 3/12 ratio): Tool used: >> Build Explorer << (requires open office)

Thanks. My typing was stuck in the door again..

Agreed. The life loss of race mode is more like a pinch to motivate you.

I've been promoting this message for a long time. And finally it get's the attention I hoped for.

Sure - you are welcome. You do realize you have to play very hard random in the tournament?

Gkj-mo - I'm not letting you out this easily. You don't have acces to media? Books, magazines, internet, games, posters?

That I actually don't believe. You don't have a TV?

You will. Just read the first part: Have you seen krafty? Have you seen the matrix? (Example scene.) Or Nine Inch Nails - Only? Or Puff Daddy - Public Enemy 2000. Moby - We are all made of stars, and Cylob - Rewind, and this scene fron "The Cell" all have something in common. They feature an unusual camera work, I call it inverse rotation. Normally a camera is used in a way that mimics a human observer. It stands still, about 1.7m above the ground, is turned around a vertical axis or shifted parallel to the floor, usually in facing direction. Sometimes it's shaken a bit to imitate footsteps. Sometimes the camera focuses on an object, like a person or a face. This is achieved by moving close to the object, or by zooming in (closeup). Sometimes the camera gives an overview of a place, like a flat or a room or a field. The camera is moved away to give an overview of the room, or it pans - that is, it turns around a vertical axis, as if a human observer turns the head from one side to another (total). Not so with inverse rotation. Here the camera is not rotating but moving on a circle around an object while allways facing towards it. Like in the closeup, the camera focuses on an object, but the background is still visible and part of the shoot, like in the total. Unlike the total, the background is seemingly moving, as the camera constantly changes direction, so the surrounding room gets distorted and blured and seems to disintegrate, while the object, allthough it seems to rotate, stays akwardly still in the center of atraction. Krafty is an extreme example of this, allmost the entire video is done in inverse rotation. (A very close examination reveals some pans, and normal rotations around different axes.) The surrounding room get's a weird feeling about it, as it appears very 3D and orientated, as it is shown like in a pan in a total shoot, as in an overview, but at the same time looses some of the orientation by moving sideways to fast. Normal human vision is not like that, as the camera movement makes the room seemingly move around the observed object. ____End of part 1____ If you wan to know more about the technics behind this, read on: This kind of camera action can be achieved by lots of methods. You can grab the camera and walk around the object, while allways changing direction to keep it in the center of attraction. you can use tracks on the ground, layed out in a circle, and drive the camera around the object on a wagon. You can mount the camera on an arm, as in Rewind or "The Cell". Or you can drive the camera sideways on a straight track while panning to keep the object in the center and maybe zoom in and out a little to compensate the size change (I assume that was done for Robbie Williams Rock DJ). Or you can use a method similiar to the one in "The Matrix". They used a big number of photo cameras and aranged them on a staircase like path. Then they activated them in the right order, with the right delay, so that the resulting photos would look like the frames of a film when put together (this is the scene as it looks with the photos shown as a film). This is of course a fake, no film camera was involved and the nonexisting camera didn't move at all. Now the post production team uses morphing technologies, 3D rendering and modelling, and liberal photoshop correction, to remove all strings, wires, cameras and other unwanted stuff, and to fill in extra frames until the result looks super smooth (look here). This is even more fake, as the resulting frames are like 80% painted and rendered computer gfx. The original photos are more like a sketch for the frames that make up the resulting video. And finally a backgounrd is filled in to get the final scene. And gues what, the background is mostly cgi too. The method is called bullet time, because you can make the photo cameras shoot in a very fast sequence, so the resulting film, with all the extra computer generated frames, will look like an extreme slow motion, so even bullets seem to creep. A company called timeslicefilms uses a similiar technic. Here is an example. They don't have the delay bewteen the cameras, so all fire at once and the result is more like a single photo taken from "all sides at the same time". But as in bullet time, most of the resulting frames are cgi. They use small cameras mounted into rings like this. Now I have a homework for you: Whenever you watch a movie, or a video, or a tv ad, look for inverse rotations, bullet times and timeslice effects. You will notice that you have been surrounded by them for ages, you just didn't notice until today. You don't have to thank me.

Feel free to like them, but steam has to little damage for ronald, fire has to little range and needs dark damage for cover, and magic is single target only. Those are great towers to beat the game, but they loose their edge on level 61.

Imo the game allready is to long as it is.

Since you play on very easy, I assume that you are not familiar with all the guides and terms around this forum, so I will write it in simple words. You will have noticed that you can't build everything in every game. You are limited by the elements you pick. The set of elements, the build, determins what towers are available to you. In the opinion of most good players, the best builds are those with strong slowing towers and splash damage attack. Those would be lwfd, and to a lesser extend lfwn. (The letters stand for the elements, l is for "l"ight and so on.) lfwd gives you monsoon, freezing, hydrochlorics, incantation, and water towers (pures and refined) as main damage. You can also use some moon and poison, but only a few as a little extra. Stay away from steam, fire, light, dark, tidal, lightning, magic, and their upgraded versions. lfwn gives monsoon, supernova, freezing, waterfall, and again water towers (pures and refined) as damage. You should consider to play on a higher difficulty, as you will get even more gold there.

..bla bla.. ..third.. >> New Order - Krafty << Inverse rotation, stable focus, moving background, underweight, virtual camera.

Sounds like no. 1 is the best so far. We might have only two aoe slow towers with water in it (if my build distribution...), so this might end up the new roots. Or thorns? Oil?

Oh, I most likely will be one of them, but I will swallow my anger and release it in some games of public 3.0 vh sr race. And then I will try to get used to 3.1.

I like that attitude.

Sounds like the first beta has a good chance to annoy the fans.

I just happen to be interested in modern art and film making. I've taken some classes on the subject. And recently I found out that some people around the forum share my interest.