All modes and all difficulties?

[akoto]

Does this extend to random mode?

I have been playing this for years (and still do), and I think this is the single greatest TD ever made BY FAR. (by a lot a lot, nothing compares)

But why the crap can't I beat random mode? My tower placement is pretty good I think overall, I'm building the most balanced mazes I can build (everything quite close to 100%), I'm predicting when certain creeps will come and building accordingly, I'm using AND ABUSING the economy, and I just can't even beat HARD mode consistently.

Here's a replay I got to level 50something. I wasn't economy abusing (I usually don't but do sometimes just to prove a point), and I had a really nice starting amount of elements and managed to mass over 70 lives before loosing everything very quickly (as is usually the way of course)

What the heck could I have done differently? Like I say, even hard mode is a big challenge on this mode and cannot be beaten consistently. This is probably the closest I've been on very hard.

Random mode FTW...I don't think I'll be playing AP any time soon.

This is VH btw. I can definitely beat hard often, just not always. VH is a real challange though. I feel like I will have mastered this game if I can beat it with literally any element combo.

eh.w3g

[holepercent]

life towers are good in the early/mid game but late game they don't do enough damage to compensate for the ability. At a late stage, most other towers deal more damage.

it's not so much of having a balanced defense (you don't need to deal close to 100% to every element). what you need is a plan against your main elemental weakness. for example, if you use hail as your main damage tower, your weakness would be earth. for earth waves, you can switch to drowning or impulse. covering towers are typically built in a 1:3 ratio, meaning a covering tower for every 3 main damage towers in one element. in random, this is easier as towers can be switched easily.

Some VH SR games for you. (all 3 to ronalds)

Replay #300

Replay #290

Replay #279

[akoto]

life towers are good in the early/mid game but late game they don't do enough damage to compensate for the ability. At a late stage, most other towers deal more damage.

it's not so much of having a balanced defense (you don't need to deal close to 100% to every element). what you need is a plan against your main elemental weakness. for example, if you use hail as your main damage tower, your weakness would be earth. for earth waves, you can switch to drowning or impulse. covering towers are typically built in a 1:3 ratio, meaning a covering tower for every 3 main damage towers in one element. in random, this is easier as towers can be switched easily.

Some VH SR games for you. (all 3 to ronalds)

Replay #300

Replay #290

Replay #279

So I should have sold my life towers after level 40 or so I guess and replaced them with more damaging towers. They were lvl 2 right off the bat which was nice (extra short mode due to lazyness), so I thought I could get away with stacking them on a later earth level to recover some lives and didn't want to sell them immediately and be called on 'cheating'.

I don't totally understand why I wouldn't shoot for 100% damage though. It's not like I'm being finicky about it, it's just when you have a nice spread of elements all with unique abilities and comparable damage, why wouldn't you try to even it out? In this case I was using mostly hail and evened out with the life towers, and then building drowning on the weak levels. Even with a strong economy I never seem to be able to beat levels with 100% damage and this doesn't seem to make sense on account of saving up about 10000 gold before hand and gaining all that extra money.

I guess what you're saying is I need to transition right away into stronger hitting towers when the life towers fail? What if the later combos suck and lvl 2 life towers still do the most damage out of any of the other ones? (Although I guess its still not much if we're talking damage/$...)

[akoto]

I watched one of those replays...all he does is sell and buy towers like a crazy person...

I can do that...its not even a little bit hard to figure out or play that strat. It's just so un elegant and stupid; I'm really disappointed.

Is it's possible to beat the game on random VH without selling towers like that? Obviously it's allowed if you spawned a new element and need to make adjustments in efficiency...but really if I don't think this game should be about micro.

[Karawasa]

Is it's possible to beat the game on random VH without selling towers like that?

Yes, it is definitely possible. I'm a lazy player and depend more on building the bare minimum than the sell/rebuild strategy. I'm a bit rusty otherwise I'd go and make a replay for you now.

[akoto]

Is it's possible to beat the game on random VH without selling towers like that?

Yes, it is definitely possible. I'm a lazy player and depend more on building the bare minimum than the sell/rebuild strategy. I'm a bit rusty otherwise I'd go and make a replay for you now.

In that case, the fight continues and I'm glad I bought one of your mousepads!

From my previous visits to this forum a while ago (forgot the account info) I was under the impression that buying/selling (even on off elements, even on random mode) was highly discouraged to the point of it being cheating. I still don't like the idea of ele td (or any td) being micro-based tho, because after all I (and I'm sure other people) started playing td from the get-go in starcraft 1 because they were too lazy to play starcraft and I still wanted to see units get slaughtered.

Then ele td happened and it introduced some actual strategy and thought to the game. (Mazes don't count as strategy and thought, neither does generic tower placement and pure knowledge of the game like every version of green td and wintermaul, and every other td I've ever heard of.)