Flash Element TD (Tower Defense)
For the past couple of days I've been playing this great little warcraft-themed, tower defense Flash game and I am certain there are others that will enjoy it too, but it may not be for everybody.
Flash Element TD is a simple implementation of a defend-your-base game that features tower defense structures that are used to repel waves of attacking creatures, or "creeps."
You start the game with 20 lives and 40 gold, the latter of which can be used to buy towers. At first you may purchase only three types of basic towers, with more advanced "elemental" or "combo" towers requiring research before becoming available to you. Once happy with initial placement of your towers, click the start button to begin the wave. You may press and hold [space] to see a graphic display meter of each creep's hit points (HP).
One thing that may not be immediately apparent is that towers may be added or upgraded in real-time, even during a wave. This can come in handy when the next wave includes creeps that are suddenly faster or more resistant to attack and your defenses are insufficient. Also, wood is required for research, and you will receive one wood after every 7 waves of creeps.
Earn additional gold by killing creeps before they make their way around the entire play field and escape back from where they came. If you miss any of them, you lose a life and some gold for each creep that wasn't killed, and they come back around again. The objective is, of course, to kill all the creeps in each wave so you can continue on to the next, but your score is the total amount of gold you have earned in the game.
In addition to earning gold per creep, you will also earn interest on any unused gold that you have, so there is incentive to build a defense commensurate with the strength of the impending attack. Spending conservatively and wisely is very important.
Analysis: This game will likely appeal to people that enjoy games with strategic and elements and upgrades, such as the recently reviewed Bow Master Prelude. It's a simple game that is easy to understand and very easy to pick-up and play right away. However, getting far with it may take several attempts.
On the downside, there is very little warning about what is coming next and so a little trial and error comes into play. That being said, each wave does incrementally increase in difficulty, and some waves are labeled AIR, FAST, or IMMUNE prior to their start to give you some idea of what's to come.
The developer, David Scott, appears to be tweaking the game frequently since the game's release just days ago, and so you probably can expect to see improvements made to it as time goes on.
Cheers to K0sm1k for suggesting this one! =)
Darn, I have not yet managed to beat Bonus level 3, 20k Hitpoints is just insane...
Also about the warning, check the new version (released today!), it shows a small alert if the next wave is air or fast moving.
cu starside
Ice
PS: for a similiar, yet more simple version check this one
Nice!!
It is similar to Warcraft Line TD, but in flash!
Hmmm...sounds A LOT like Master of Defense.
Man, only got to level 21 first time.
So the question is, upgrades or numbers? Quantity or quality?
Go for the combo tower as soon as possible. It's totally worth that 200 gold!
Using IE6.0, it crashed my browser midway through the first bonus level (31). :-(
I did fairly well with tons of arrow turrets, plus some special ones where they provided good coverage. Waters are great because they slow the enemy down, giving nearby turrets more time to attack. By the time you finish level 21, a single combo turret in the center of the board makes you nearly unstoppable.
How the heck did you get 200 gold? I've never got above 50 if I wanted to survive, and that was never passed level 20.
Goodness. Any tips?
This game is a LOT like Master of Defense, just lacking some of the complexity of that game. On the plus side, you can play a round in 15 minutes. On the minus side, you can formulaically beat the game in about an hour. That's what makes it a casual game though.
Combo Towers
Combo towers may seem to be worth the money but they don't do splash damage and that hurts performance in the higher levels
Winning Strategy
Fire towers are currently way overpowered. It is possible to beat the game using nothing but two cannon towers and fire towers. My best score to date is 17,116 and it resulted from spending as little cash as possible and buying nothing but interest upgrades after buying fire. Since score is determined by money you have plus money you spent and since money you have earns interest, not spending money allows you to compound your score.
How can you earn wood? I've earned one, but I have no idea what I did, or how to do it again.
Sorry, I forgot to mention that in the review. I'll squeeze it in after I post this (it was late when I wrote the review, and I was a little tired.)
Wood is required to research the elementals, and you receive 1 wood every 7 levels.
this game is awesome. but it gets insanely hard in the bonus levels. i havn't even made it past bonus 2!
I have to agree that the best strategy is fire turrets, and MAYBE a couple combos.
Ah. That makes sense. Thanks Jay!
That was fun! i got up to the first bonus level, and then it crashed.. =(
Quite easy, but fun (i only let 1 person through)
and that was only on the first try!
sorry for posting again but i noticed otherbill said:
"Using IE6.0, it crashed my browser midway through the first bonus level (31). :-("
This is excatally what happened with me! so i guess its an IE 6 problem!
Yes, IE 6 is a problem. It's also many, many headaches for web developers, and the sooner it dies the better off we will all be. =p
haha, Great game! I beat it on my first try (ie. got to level "How are you still alive?!"), but only had a score of 3743. Time to play again!
Bonus level 3 and maybe 3,000+ pts. I don't get how people get these high scores. Even with the cannon fire turret strategy, and only using my upgrades for interest, I run out of money and can't put down more fire turrets or upgrade them quickly enough.
Do you have to switch to water upgrades after a while or something?
haha, Great game! I beat it on my first try (ie. got to level "How are you still alive?!"), but only had a score of 3743. Time to play again!
Bonus level 3 and maybe 3,000+ pts. I don't get how people get these high scores. Even with the cannon fire turret strategy, and only using my upgrades for interest, I run out of money and can't put down more fire turrets or upgrade them quickly enough.
Do you have to switch to water upgrades after a while or something?
33,000 is my best score... Like denied said, if you methodically work through it, you can optimize the game pretty quickly.
-interest/interest/fire/interest
-you should be able to finish level 1-4 with one cannon (upgrade it each round, 4th is bonus)
-you should be able to finish level 7 with only two cannons
-concentrate on finding places that your towers can have two full shooting passes at the enemy.
The trick is to think about how you place your resources. With intelligent placement I can get to level 11 with just 2 cannons (ignoring the air level for which I build two towers and then sell them before the level is done)
Place the cannons such that the creeps pass by in two distinct waves. One should go in the lower right corner, the other should go in the middle left.
eh, 54th, guess that's good.
Lost 13 lives, ended with about 6gs and probably 30 fire cannons.
i cant get past bonus 3. 10000 hp is insane.
and a question to those with high scores,
quality or quantity.
do you want a LOT of fires, or some awesome high-level fires?
laptopdude: regarding firetowers definitife quantity!
Tried both, quality: died in Bonus 2, quantity got totally through, got still 3000 on the Bank.
Here is the history tower defense games to the best of my knowledge. Blizzard released Starcraft with the ability (it came on the cd) for any user to create their own map with custom triggers. One of the vast amount of games created was tower defense. Then Blizzard released Warcraft III with the same capabilities, and people made similar maps for warcraft 3 (there are about a million different versions of this game...). Then master of defense came out, which was like a perfect clone of one of the warcraft III maps, but with different graphics (and I beat they made money off of it...). Now this comes out, and it uses warcraft III's graphics, copyrighted of course.
This is a kickass game! I got through 21 levels with just 3 cannons and a fire tower, all upgraded to max. Then I got the big tower, max upgrade, nothing got past me. Bought 2 more, maxed out, and I was unstoppable. Then bonus level 3 killed me. 10,000hp's!! I just don't see how anyone gets those huge points or plays for 6+ hours. No way!! Must be a cheat, I'll believe it when I see it.
I believe the hours indicator on the "leader board" is how long ago the score was achieved. This description is take directly from the leader board...
"The top 200 players in the last 12 hours. Scores older than 12 hours are removed."
I got past the bonus round where all the baddies were worth 20,000 hit points, but the next one (30,000) got me.
21 fully powered up fire towers and the Bu***rs still got through...
10k life weren't too hard. The 20khp guys owned me.
interest, interest, fire, interest
Make sure to put your towers next to two lanes, not just the corners. Mid right is a good spot. Mid bottom too.
Awesome game....I know another similar to it
but I was upset after the first level
It said liked killing the sheep click next...I feel bad killing my own kind
oh well the game is my new favorite it seems
Just so every knows, this is a watered down "port" of a Warcraft III custom map, entitled "Element TD". In the actual version, there are 6 elements (Light, Darkness, Water, Earth, Fire and Nature) and many MANY dual-tech and tri-tech towers, not to mention each element can be upgraded 3 times each.
It's one of the best custom maps on Warcraft III, and I'm happy there is a version to be played online when my War3 disc is nowhere to be found.
The key to completing the game is to only deploy the towers as you need them.
Upto round 27 you only need about 10 towers. Save the rest of your money so you can gather interest. Spend additional wood on getting interest bonuses and by the time you get to round 28 you'll have enough money to buy an additional 10 or so towers then you would if you'd of spent your money as you earn it.
What a great game, remember it from my WC days. I got something around 2k points, the 20k hp guys got me. That leaderboard obviosly has cheaters, though. Too bad. Or maybe I just overlooked something... oh well, I'll try again later. Fun game!
Make sure that you place all cannons in spots where they are useful twice or three times -- place them inbetween the paths so that the can shoot them as they come round, then the creeps make a u-turn, and u can shoot them again on the otherside.
Imok20, I reckon it's perfectly feasible to get upwards of 40k in the game, first time I completed it I got 21k.
It's all about the interest.
Get the interest upgrades as soon as possible and spend as little as possible on units, don't buy units until you need them.
While getting 10% interest on 100-200 gold in the early rounds doesn't seem much, by the time you get to round 30 each gold from round 1 is worth approx 50 times it's original value. So 100 from round 3 becomes 1800 by round 33.
Of course, this isn't taking into account interest upgrades or money earnt per level. Neither does it include money spent. But you can see the potential.
When you start to think you might be earning 50 gold a round you can work out the maximum potential you can earn. (without spending on units)
Round 1 = 40 gold + 50 earnt (+ 10% interest) = 99
Round 2 = 99 gold + 50 earnt (+ 10% interest) = 163
Round 3 = 163 + 50 (+ 10% interest) = 235
If we assume you get all the upgrades, so that's .15% @ level 7, .20% at level 14, .25% at level 28 then approximately the most you can earn in the game without spending on units and sacreficing interest bonuses in favour of tower upgrades is
Approximately 140k (of you earn 150+ on some of the later levels so the actual potential figure will be even higher then 140k.)
But when you take into account sacrificing some of the interest upgrades for tower upgrades and spending money on units I reckon it'd still be possible to get a final score of about 60k.
Imok20, I reckon it's perfectly feasible to get upwards of 40k in the game, first time I completed it I got 21k.
It's all about the interest.
Get the interest upgrades as soon as possible and spend as little as possible on units, don't buy units until you need them.
While getting 10% interest on 100-200 gold in the early rounds doesn't seem much, by the time you get to round 30 each gold from round 1 is worth approx 50 times it's original value. So 100 from round 3 becomes 1800 by round 33.
Of course, this isn't taking into account interest upgrades or money earnt per level. Neither does it include money spent. But you can see the potential.
When you start to think you might be earning 50 gold a round you can work out the maximum potential you can earn. (without spending on units)
Round 1 = 40 gold + 50 earnt (+ 10% interest) = 99
Round 2 = 99 gold + 50 earnt (+ 10% interest) = 163
Round 3 = 163 + 50 (+ 10% interest) = 235
If we assume you get all the upgrades, so that's .15% @ level 7, .20% at level 14, .25% at level 28 then approximately the most you can earn in the game without spending on units and sacreficing interest bonuses in favour of tower upgrades is
Approximately 140k (of you earn 150+ on some of the later levels so the actual potential figure will be even higher then 140k.)
But when you take into account sacrificing some of the interest upgrades for tower upgrades and spending money on units I reckon it'd still be possible to get a final score of about 60k.
The expenditure on the final 3 levels are very high so to get the best possible score you would have to get a game over on round 30 or maybe 31.
I can't believe I wrote all that.... anything to put of doing coursework I guess >_>
Grid already answered my question about quantity/quality, but do you want you quantity to have quality?
I had 37 lvl 1 fire towers and yet i couldn't get past bonus 3. should i be upgrading the towers as i get them?
How many bonus stages are there?
Man, someone with a LOT of free time should really write a guide or somethin. Guess it would take a while.
@ Tru_Messiah
True, true. Didn't think about the cumulative intrest and how drastically it could affect the score. Thanks, I will try again right now!
I just got 9.5k points and don't think I could get much more. I must be missing something. I use all cannons, except for air levels when I buy some towers and then sell them. I get the fir upgrade after lvl 21 and build a fire tower and prgressively sell the cannon tower after that and make a LOT of fire towers, at one point having around 6k in my bank. Where did I go wrong?
So... fragging... addictive... *twitches and goes back to tenth or twelfth game*
And I'm supposed to go to bed early tonight. Hah.
LapTopDude, Imok20,
How to complete the game...
For the first 7 rounds I used 4 fully upgraded cannons (2 middle left, 2 bottom right) and that was all I needed, I was lucky I didn't get an air attack wave though.
On the 8th turn I obtained the fire tower upgrade, sold the cannons and replaced them with level 1 fire towers.
Pound for pound it's cheaper to buy multiple fire towers then it is to upgrade current ones to more powerful versions. Think I worked it out as something like 1.5 damage per gold for a level one tower and 1.2 damage for a fully upgraded tower.
Upto round 25ish you only need about 10 fire towers in total to make it through with no escaping bad guys. Five in the middle left, five in the bottom right.
You should then have a crap load of money saved up in the bank.
Then you need to keep on placing towers over the next couple of rounds in the good zones (not too many though as you need to save some money in order to get interest to buy even more towers on the next couple of rounds!!!)
Then on the final round you might actually even run out of room for towers in which case just upgrade a bunch in the middle left and a bunch in the bottom right.
As for making money, it's just about being micro management and being precise with how many units you put down at each round so you don't spend more money then you need. 300 gold saved in round 9 could be worth 3000 in the last round by the time the compound interest is added.
Just to prove that it is indeed possible...
The punchline? I *still* lost! Grah!!
Hey ben. It's possible to get 50% extra towers in the field.
I don't know if it's a glitch or not but the green areas are 4 units wide and each tower takes 2 units square to build. But if you build a tower in the middle to units, you can then build a tower above it and below it and it will cover the one in the middle but it still fires.
Fun little TD - lost out on bonus 3 the first time I played, then read the comments here and got 18k+ in my next two tries using cannons for the first 7 rounds, and fire for the rest...
btw:
You can get a lot more than 50% extra towers - close to 300%, actually. Same trick, just overlap them both vertically and horizontally. Taking this to the extreme, I had a block of 33 towers where ordinarily only 12 would fit... ;) of course, the next bugfix on the author's list is correcting the overlaps, so enjoy it while it lasts...
>_> I know about that one... is that the only way to get past the 20K HP enemies?? O.o I didn't use it because I felt it would be an extremely cheap glitch to take advantage of (I would be shocked if that was intended behavior).
..And of course the author already knows of this glitch and intends to fix it. ;P Reminds me of the long-standing glitch that used to be in Conqueror that allowed you to get a few hundred thousand people without needing to wait an exceptionally long time for every extra 10K or improve the technology of the country (in fact, improving tech actually diminished the amount you could benefit from the glitch).
Small guide I wrote.
http://www.geocities.com/tru_antichrist/Flash_Element_Solution.txt
If you don't have a map looking like this by round 33 then you arn't going to complete the game :P
[URL=http://img363.imageshack.us/my.php?image=finallevelfr5.jpg][IMG]http://img363.imageshack.us/img363/8163/finallevelfr5.th.jpg[/IMG][/URL]
finallevelfr5.jpg
Even....
Oh. My. God. That was crazy.
So I tried out that glitch and it does seem like the only way to beat the last two bonus levels, since I know I couldn't fit this many towers in normally. I have no clue how anyone managed 45K for score though; I nearly lost trying to get where I did through normal enemy waves!
Well, I just took a look at my image with all the space taken up normally, and found that with the glitch there's room for 293 towers. If all of them are fire then the total cost for filling every single space on the board is a whopping 14,650 gold.
Perhaps those people with 40K+ found some way to avoid the need for placing towers? Maybe there's some kind of stupid life glitch that makes it so that if the counter hits -1 or something that the game keeps going like nothing happened?
You guys are on the wrong track. First, I'm at 25K and still optimizing, WITHOUT exploiting the overlap glitch.
Second, I believe that the I/I/F/I upgrade order talked about above IS correct. Tru's walkthrough gives up a lot of compounding because of that, I think. Tru probably did that because of the air levels - I think buying and selling the air towers actually could be optimal, once again due to the magic of compound interest.
Third point is on tower damage: Y'all are totally forgetting about splash radius. I tend to fill the map slightly over half-full with 3rd level towers to beat the 5th bonus level.
Hope that helps! I may post my walkthrough when I'm done. I've only optimized up to level 16 so far. Add your 2nd cannon on level 6. :-)
You guys who are filling up the map with towers, are you upgrading them? It may seem a silly question, but I buy a tower and then immediately max it's upgrade.
I'll play again and get a screenshot. I had a lot, but not nearly 300% of the map, Cheese and Rice! I only ended up with something like 19k, and I easily beat the 20k guys at the end.
Xadrian,
gold per damage ratio, it works out slightly cheaper to buy 5 or 6 level one towers then it does to get the same damage with a maxed out tower.
I also prefer multiple towers because that way you don't have to wait all the time for a few towers to reload. In my experience 10 maxed out towers sometimes let a few bad guys through because of the reloading time whereas with 40 normal towers, all the enemies are getting hit pretty much all the time.
Yeah I guess if you're aiming for a high score over surviving the first couple times through you'd want to save your upgrades and just plunk down only first level towers.
In that case yeah, you'd need all the space given.
Guess that's next on my list. I just "beat it" with about 30 fire towers, all maxed. But it was close. I ended up with 600 gold and 1 life. heh.
wooo hooo the whole game with out loseing one life (not inclunig bonuses but still) :)
The gold per damage ratio analysis is flawed. Upgraded fire towers also have a larger splash damage radius.
True, I didn't take that into consideration. Any ideas on how the splash damage affects nearby enemies?
I got to last lvl with 30k guys.
Tip for all: Get lot's of fire towers.
build them right under in the map and left above.
And later in the game build everwhere.
I NEED to complete that lvl!
Splash damage hurts em a lot =)
I suspect its highly advantageous to do more splash damage at higher levels especially.
I've scored as high as 27k with the policy of using upgraded towers, and that was with some huge mistakes
uh... Tru_Messiah
Splash Damage rips them a new digestive track opening.
Using your walk through up to about level 14 (thanks!)
First of all, there is a third area to build towers that double hit up in the upper right. I use those 3 areas once you get past about level 18. then started upgrading slower than your building new towers. Easy to get to level 30 with a lot more money than you would have. And the end game with upgraded towers just goes off the scale. I need to play a few more times but you should be able to finish off the last wave with a whole lot less than the 50 fully upgraded towers I used to get 22k. Hitting over 30k should not be hard at all and low 40's with some work.
Just to be different, I won it (including all 5 bonuses) with the combo towers. I used basically the strategies listed above, sticking with just a couple towers at the beginning and saving, saving, saving. Then I went
Interest
Fire
Water
Earth
Upgrading a couple of fire towers to 3 lets you get most of the way through the game. Water I've found to be surprisingly useful to slow enemies down as they go through your zone of most destruction. Never built earth.
Once I got all three I started building one combo tower per level until about Bonus 3, when I had to start putting in several. Came out of Bonus 5 with about $500 and 19 lives; had about 14 or 15 combo towers, plus assorted water towers along the track to keep the bonus enemies consistently slow to give my combo towers the maximum amount of time to do damage.
I used the interest,interest,fire,interest method. Instead of using many lvl 1 fire towers i just stuck to upgrading them and made it to lvl 29 with just 3 fully upgraded fire towers in strategic places.
Beat lvl 30 by only adding 1 fire tower and upgrading. In each bonus lvl I added a few more fire towers and actually beat all 5 bonus lvls.
On bonus 5 I had a total of 31 fully upgraded fire towers with no stacking glitches and I beat the game with a score of 25,367 with around 13,000 or so in the bank.
I've managed to get through level 11 with only 2 cannons, and through 14 with three.
For you folks doing interest, interest, fire, interest... how are you dealing with the second flying level (16)? I built five lvl3 towers and it still wasn't near enough. Do you build 6? That seems like a lot of cash to drop on one level. What placement do you use?
after a good interest (and a few goof-ups) i managed to reach this after interest/fire/water/earth:
http://img150.imageshack.us/my.php?image=closetowinningag1.png
Though I couldn't beat the final level. But this is my closest try yet. All combos are upgraded, waters are normal.
Oh no! I finished the 3rd bonus level, and thereby the game, and it was all over. My score was about 7500. How is it possible to reach the ridicolously high scores on top of the leaderboard?
Yay! got 30,267 ...
Here's my more-or-less optimized strat up to level15; beyond that I got a few leaks so I'm going to have to redo to perfect it.
1. 40g - buy cannon (31g left)
2. 56g - upgrade cannon (41g left)
3. 67g - upgrade cannon (41g left)
4. 67g - n/c
5. 95g - n/c
6. 126g - buy cannon (117g left)
7. 150g - upgrade cannon (135g left)
-> Buy interest 1
8. 192g - buy air, upgrade twice (130g left)
9. 172g - sell air, upgrade cannon (192g left)
10.243g - n/c
11.325g - n/c
12.419g - buy cannon, upgrade twice (369g left)
13.470g - n/c
14.586g - n/c
-> Buy interest 2
You end up starting level 15 with 719gold in hand.
I think you might possibly delay the second upgrade on the wave12 cannon with better placement, not sure though.
Keith: I managed level16 with only three lvl3 air towers, all placed in the upper right corner.
Also - I'm not certain about this, but I think you earn interest at the end of the final round as well; if so you should sell off as many of your fire towers as you dare before the wave ends to get a final score boost.
Fire towers splash effect is way powerful, except on fast levels. I beat Bonus 5 easily with 300 dam fire towers just on the right side. I suspect that with water towers bunching up the baddies, there exists the potential to get by with far fewer towers, but maybe not enough to compensate for the lost 5% interest.
The fire towers are undoubtedly "broken". For variety, I went through without using the overlap glitch or building any fire towers. I beat Bonus 5 with combo towers, cannons, and water towers to slow them down, ending with $7k and 4 lives left.
I'm looking forward to the next update. :)
great game
i dunno how people manage 30k+ scores....i made it to the 30k hps, died, and my final score was only 6500
I can't see how some people are getting past any levels with just one cannon. I've tried it in several different places and it just can't be done.
Responding to other comments:
I believe it's cheaper to lose a few lives on level 16 than spend the gold to save all your lives.
Level 16 can be beat with 3 lvl3 airs in the top-middle-right (where they get 2.5X coverage), but that's expensive - 186 gold.
No, you do NOT get interest from round 35, so spend all you want to beat the 30K creeps.
Your first cannon should be in the bottom right corner, minus 1 tower-width in each dimension. (i.e. on the inside of that corner) That will get you through five levels.
MY BEST SO FAR:
My optimizations of the I/I/F/I method with one-use airs and 3rd level fires has capped out at 36-37K.
After 07: 191 (I dare anyone to beat)
After 14: 730 (Could get a few higher on air level)
After 21: ~2670 (2nd air level is tough)
After 28: ~10000
After 35: ~36300
The above solution uses 3rd level fire (max), as I thought that would be more efficient than 4th level fire.
I got to a max of 7 cannons on level 18.
I used the conversion from cannons to fire to get an extra bit of interest: use cannons through a round, sell just before end, then buy equivalent fire.
Anyone have further optimizations for me? Have people capped out at 50K by some artificial constraint?
(By the way, I play without tower overlap, since we will have to soon.)
Good observations, nod and ChrisO ... I was wondering about the water myself - the bonus levels are all non-immune, so the natural place to use them would be right at the end; I/I/F/W makes sense. The question is, would the water towers for the last 7 levels be worth more than an extra 5% interest?
nod - I, too, thought about the 'losing a few lives to save cash' trick; the question was when would be the most optimal time to do it? too early and the money you lose from leaking outweighs the benefit; too late and you don't compound any interest. Now that you mention it, Level 16 seems like the best place; particularly since the towers on that level are throwaways to begin with. How many do you use?
Also - nice trick with the cannon/fire conversion, I used that one too. Which reminds me: since you said the last level gets no interest, how about this? Sell all of your fire towers just before the end of the *second-last* level! You'll get a bunch of extra interest, and buying them all back for the last level shouldn't impact your score at all, right?
One final thing: I beat your dare already ;) my strat (see the spoiler in my post above) ends with 192 gold after 07... you overtake me by 14 though. I'd love to see your walkthrough - preferably with screenshots. (Which reminds me, I can upload some of mine, if anyone wants...)
Also, what's your placement for the 7 cannons? I found myself needing eight before the fire conversion...
Wow, actually scratch that last - I just upped the ante: 209 gold after level 07, with one lv3 cannon and one lv1 cannon! Here's the placement.
Hmm .. odd - I just noticed, selling towers actually LOWERS your score by 25% of the tower value - don't do it unless you're sure you can make it back in interest! That means selling off fire towers in the last few levels is actually detrimental to your final score...
I just got 35,608; I'm sure it can go higher.
7 cannons for level 17? I beat level 17 with 3 3rd-level cannons and 1 2nd-level.
The real key for cannon (and fire) placement isn't range, because you only get more than one shot at the first few in line anyway, it's this: You have to be able to shoot the tail of the string of enemies and then turn around and shoot the head as it enters your range again.
So my first cannon goes in the middle-left, in the middle of the small stretch of road above it. It fires at the string until the last leaves the north dog-leg, then turns around and fires at the head as it comes in from the east. This gets you past level 5 (level the cannon after the first two levels).
My next cannon goes on the outer north-east corner of the inside path. It starts hitting the stream right after the first cannon is done (often killing the first few outright, allowing the first cannon to aim at the middle/tail longer), then can clean up any that make it through the second pass of the first cannon.
These two cannons (upgraded to level 3), will get you past level 15 without losing a life. The third cannon goes on the south-east corner of the inside row...then two of the cannons are shooting at the stream about 60% of the time, which I think is as good as you can do, placement-wise.
That's impressive, tVor - what's your highscore?
I use the same northeast and southeast spots as you, but the middle-left doesn't seem so great; it doesn't get two full goes at the fast waves. Even so, I find myself needing a third cannon on level 12 - getting past 15 on just two is amazing. Mind showing a screenshot of your lv17 4-cannon placement?
btw - what's your upgrade strategy? interest/interest/fire/interest? or something else?
1847th. Oh well. I got to level 25, and got annihilated. Stuck with 2 cannons and 5 Fire towers. A few more needed maybe....
I would stay away from ice, ground and rocket towers. You only need improved income, fire, cannon and air towers to complete the game with a decent score. I get in the 31-34k range.
When you have a wood, you get a fire tower right?
How do you get it to level 2 with a wood (Not upgrading)
Like on the buying place it says Fire tower level 2
But it says I've already researched it so i can't buy it again
Any ideas?
21 grande using tVor's strategy. It seemed like I had to upgrade and place more cannons earlier, but it still worked. I also used the int/int/fire/int and radiated away from my cannon points w/fire. At the third bonus level i began upgrading the fires, mainly because I had so much gold. Before the last level I covered the whole map with fire and upgraded as much as possible. The creeps didn't even make it to the bottom path.
oh yeah air lvl 16 seems like an ok place to lose lives.
Wow, P.j. Dela Cruz, that's... really dumb. What's the point?
tVor, I'm going to have to disbelieve your claim that 2 cannons can beat level 12 - though I would believe that THREE can.
Valarauka, our 191/192 strategies were the same, so that's a little odd. But good job on the 207! I'm trying it out now. My lead by 14 is probably due to level 8 - I buy four basic air towers, and sell 3 before the level ends.
Highest score I got was 40,720. The method I used was Interest/Interest/Interest/Fire.
1st 28 levels: Ground
Just keep your cannons in the top right and bottom right corners for the 28 levels and you should be fine. Fully upgrade them if you can spare the cash without dipping below your previous bankroll. The extra splash helps. You can let some enemies through in level 16. I let maybe 4 or 5 through.
Air levels:
When air comes, use 1 fully upgraded air tower for the first air round, 3 fully upgraded air towers for the second air round, and 6 fully upgraded air towers for the third air round. Sell all but one tower before the last air unit dies so you get the extra interest.
28 and beyond:
once you get the fire upgrade, squish them all into the two right-side corners as well smacking some in the middle of the map. upgrade as needed
JimmyPeter - You only need to buy the fire upgrade once. To upgrade your fire towers you click on each one individually and upgrade it, just like with the cannons. No more wood required.
PJ - heh, I figured the 50k scorers were hacking, but thanks for demonstrating how. I completely and utterly fail to see why anyone would want to, though...
thx nod - I regained the lv14 lead on that run too, actually; changed my single lv3 air to one lv2 and one lv1, ending up with 762 gold after 14. Could be a few more if you manage to sell off a tower before the end (I wasn't fast enough last time I played).
Izzile - nice tip! i/i/i/f gets you past 40k eh? I'll have to try that. I was thinking level25 with buying air and selling after would be too expensive but I guess the extra interest makes it back for you... About how many cannons do you end up needing before you get fire? And do you sell them off after that, or keep 'em around?
To beat the game
(not neccesarily for high score but to simple get past all the bonus levels, you have to go stictly fire towers.
Remeber the less money you need to spend the more money you will recieve from interest. I'm not sure if it matters but often I will build during the turn rather than before it so that I can recieve maximum interest.
Step by Step in order to pass the game: * I understand that there might be other/better methods, but this has sucessfully worked for me!
Lvl 1: start off with a cannon top left area, Uprade it to level 2
Lvl 2: upgrade cannon to Lvl 3 (max out)
Lvl 3: do nothing
Lvl 4: put a cannon in the middle of the map
Lvl 5: Upgrade middle cannon lvl 2
Lvl 6: Upgrade middle cannon lvl 3 (maxed out) (this one get's close with the fast critters, but you should be fine if you place your cannons well)
Lvl 7: Do nothing
*With wood buy Fire tower capability
Lvl 8: sell cannons, Built Fire tower in middle of map and uprade once to lvl 2...These are the first air units
Lvl 9: do nothing
Lvl 10: upgrade tower to lvl 3 *this is the max that I make my tower, I do not spend another 150 to max out the towers, instead I build more towers. It is not worth the 100 more damge.
Lvl 11: do nothing
Lvl 12: Build another fire tower for the fast critters again
Lvl 13: Do nothing
Lvl 14: Do nothing
* Use wood for the investment upgrade
Lvl 15: Do nothing
Lvl 16: Do nothing (this is the second air attack)
Lvl 17: Upgrade 2nd tower to lvl 2
Lvl 18: Upgade 2nd tower to lvl 3, and build one more fire tower (fast guys again)
Lvl 19: Do nothing
Lvl 20: Do nothing
Lvl 21: Do nothing
*use wood to buy another investment upgrade (you should have at least 900 dollars buy now
Lvl 22: Upgrade tower 3 to level 2
Lvl 23: Do nothing
Lvl 24: Upgrade 3rd tower to lvl 3 and buy another tower Uprgrade 4th tower to lvl 2
Lvl 25: Do nothing
Lvl 26: Do nothing
Lvl 27: Upgrade 4th tower to Lvl 3
Lvl 28: Build 5th tower
*Use last wood to upgrade interest again!
Lvl 29: Upgrade tower to lvl 2 and 3
Lvl 30: Build 2 more towers and upgrade them to level 3
Bonus 1: Build 3 more towers and upgrade them to level 3
Bonus 2: Build 3 more towers, I tend to like the bottom right corner for some of these towers now!
Bonus 3: Build 5 or six towers with upgrades to lvl 3
Bonus 4 (How are you still alive?) Build another 10-15 towers with upgrades to lvl 3 (1 or 2 may sneak thorugh depending on your tower location
Last Level: You should have around 4000 dollars to live with and 18-20 lives left, do what you want with your money!
Hope this helps those who are intersting in beating the game!
yikes! jay, couldja maybe put a spoiler tag on kenny's walkthrough?
Kenny - that's pretty good, but you can cut down a lot on your towers by using the top right corner and the rest of the right side instead of the middle and left. That way each tower gets two full attack runs at the creeps. I've posted a guide till level 15 somewhere above, and a screenshot for a two-cannon setup that gets you past level 11.
btw - Yay, new version! No gameplay changes though, afaik. And jay, you'll be happy to know jayisgames is #9 on the top refferers list - just below digg! that's pretty impressive.
yo kenny dude, i did nothing lvl 4, 5, 6 without losing lives. just use one upgraded cannon in top right and it wont leak.
yo nod, i got 250 after level 7, w/o selling!
ok here's what I did. If someone can tell me how to take a screenshot of just the flash window, I could upload a pic of my placements. This most definately isn't optimized:
round 1: one cannon at top corner. no upgrade-->56
round 2: upgrade cannon once-->67 g
round 3: upgrade cannon again-->67 g
round 4: nothing-->95 g
round 5: nothing-->126 g
round 6: add one cannon to bottom right corner-->150 g
round 7: nothing-->209 g
round 8: get interest upgrade, build one fully upgraded air right next to the top cannon. sell it right before you kill the last air unit, then buy a lvl 1 tower to kill it-->240 g
round 9: upgrade bottome cannon once-->281
round 10: upgrade bottom cannon again-->339
round 11: nothing-->435
round 12: build two cannons right next to the bottom cannon, and upgrade each one once. two got through when i did it-->486
round 13: nothing-->604
round 14: nothing-- 740
round 15: buy interest upgrade, then upgrade one of the bottom cannons again-->904
round 16: buy 3 air, fully upgraded up next to the top right cannon. sell one, or two if you can, before the round ends-->964-->sell the other two-->1056
round 17: upgrade the other cannon on the bottom again. add one more fully upgraded cannon at the top right. i messed up and let a couple through-->1190
round 18: add one more cannon to each end, fully upgraded. that makes 3 on top, 4 on bottom. a few got through. oh well-->1368
round 19: nuttin-->1713
round 20: nuttin-->2103
round 21: add one cannon up top, fully upgraded. i added one level 1 cannon too just for insurance. phew almost made it through-->2524
round 22: buy interest once again. add cannons so you have 5 fully upgraded cannons on each side. 5 on top, 5 on bottom.-->3141
round 23: add one fully upgraded cannon on bottom and one lvl 1 cannon up top-->3952
round 24: get 8 fully upgraded cannons on each side. money's not a bigissue anymore-->4676
round 25: 7 fully upgraded air towers up top. again, sell all but one before the last air unit drops. I let two units by, sold 6 towers-->5737-->sell last tower-->5783
so now I have 7 population left and 5783 gold. meh
round 26: added 4 fully upgraded cannons to bottom. was overkill, but oh well-->7078
round 27: nuttin-->8972
round 28: nuttin. oops forgot to sell the cannons before the next round. you guys can raise your score that way. I forgot, so I got-->11340
round 29: FINALLY get fire upgrade. sell all 20 cannons. rebuild...two lvl 3 fire up top, 2 lvl 2 at bottom, 2 lvl 2 in middle. I let one through-->14077
round 30: heck might as well be safe. built one more lvl 3 up top, upgraded the two at bottom to level 3 as well as building one more lvl 3 down there. upgraded both of the middles to lvl 3. was overkill, but-->16583
bonus 1: added two lvl 3s to bottom, and two lvl 3s to middle. again, overkill-->19853
bonus 2: added one lvl 3 to top. slight overkill-->24785
bonus 3: added three more lvl 3 to top. added three lvl 3s to middle-->29543
bonus 4: added three lvl 3s to middle and 6 lvl 3s to the bottom. added 10 lvl 3s to top when I realized this wasn't gonna cut it. 3 got by-->31816
bonus 5: go all out. upgrade all to lvl 4, build like crazy-->40566
Easy as pie. Now someone can optimize this if they want
I want to thank all the people who contributed strategies, I was at first really doubtful that 40k+ was achievable without hacking. This is the only place I found the answer, I was getting there, albeit more slowly.
But most of all, Dad was right after all. Those little bits that you didn't think worth saving.. think again. Starting with placing things all over the place and scores of 2-3k, to optimising to 40-60k. What a difference compound interest makes!
Yay! just got 45k+ using i/i/i/f and NOT selling the cannons... didn't show up on the leaderboard though, for some reason :(
something seems to be wrong with the leaderboard... anyway: 45,622!
There's still room for improvement, of course, but I'm fairly satisfied with that... :)
I had 18 cannons after level 28; again, didn't sell 'em, just augmented with fire. Reasoning was the amount of money I'd get back from selling them is 666 gold; even if I got interest on all of them (by selling before the end of the round) it adds up to 832. That's not enough money to buy an equivalent amount of fire cannons (as far as I can see) so you're actually losing out on interest, not to mention the 234 gold straight loss you get from selling the cannons (18*13)...
45,123 using I/I/I/F. Only small optimizations left, I think.
Level 07: 209
Level 14: 764
Level 21: 2760
Level 28: 12560
Level 35: 45123
Nice job, nod! there's a new version up now, with boss levels and a boost to Earth towers; I'll give it a crack sometime this afternoon, I think.
I'm pretty convinced this game is not deterministic, which is a little frustrating: The exact same placement will work one time, but not another.
first boss level has 2000 life and is at level 11, gives you 45g
The damage-per-gold ratio is flawed because you're not taking into account splash damage. Splash damage is above and beyond the normal damage dealt. A level 3 Fire Tower noticeably damages three or sometimes four enemies; a level 1 Fire Tower will only target the first in line.
4 fully upgraded arrow towers works wonders on the first boss. Otherwise, you'd need 5 or 6 fully upgraded cannons. not worth it for the moment, so just sell the towers before the boss dies. as for boss 2, eh. fire would be nice, but I guess making a whole slew of arrow towers can work too. Now I'm debating whether going I/I/I/I/F will work. Just buy extra lives as needed. Guess someone can try that.
my bad. there IS NO 5th upgrade
I just scored over 82,200. It didn't show up on the leaderboard, so perhaps there's some faulty anti-cheating code in there. I don't see any scores above 70K yet, even though I could probably get a bit higher than 82K.
New info for people:
The boss levels are inserted, so the game is now 3 levels longer (thus the generally higher scores now).
Boss1: 2000 hp, 45 gold
Boss2: 14000 hp, 55 gold
Boss3: 35000 hp, 100 gold
My strategy this last time was to kill the 1st and 3rd bosses in 1 trip, and to let the 2nd boss go around twice.
ALSO NOTE: There was a boost to the hitpoints of the level 21 (new count) creeps, from 925 to 1125. Adjust accordingly.
I experimented a bit with earth towers, but went back to I/I/I/F for my 82.2K game.
The rocket is so cool!!!
you guys are so sad. thomas sutton is turning in his grave. ps i cant win!
38! Dam!
These defense maps are ez. I beat this one on my second try. Key is to resell your towers to buy stonger ones once you have about 5 of the best just upgrade them and this defense map is toast. If you want more of a challenge try Vector Tower Defense it has 50 levels. That one took me 3 trys.
I had about 20-30 rocket towers :-)
the best strategy is go for i/i/i/f. since you already had too much money after that, you could go with lots of fully upgraded fire towers
I downloaded this game yesterday and even though It's repetitive after playing 4 or 5 times, I still think this is an awsome game. So far my best score is 3700 and level 39 (It took over 9 of the 200g cannons and constantly buying lives).
I beat this game my first try. It was very simple I never resold anything and I had 18 lives at the end.
I beat the game by somewhat cheating, in the middle ofo the game when i had alot of GOO Dbuildings i accedentally right clicked and pressed the PLAY button, and the i kliked it again and the game restarted WITH ALL MY GOOD BUILDINGS
I won all the levels, still had 20 lives left but can't score more than 8000 points. how in the world did people get to over 100,000?
The furthest ive been able to get is LV.38 with four combo towers one of them upgaded to double speed,all turrets at 2nd upgrade most water towers at 3rd upgrade,6 fire towers all at at least 2nd upgade, but thats it I dont know what it is else can be done to advance.Any suggestions? A good game.
LOL! i got 20+ lvl 2 rockets and cleared it easily but i dont know why i got 6k+ points
People score over 200k+ points and such because they dont buy rockets and crap. They help, but are not needed. They actually don't mind losing lives, and believe in being cheap. They build JUST enough to get by without losing. And finally, they get the interest modifiers.
My first try - lvl 39 and 11 890 points.
My second try - lvl 39 and 112 587 points!
Second try - I bulit only Cannon towers exept before the air levels, and sold the airtowers right after the level. Only upgraded interest rate!
easy to beat.....beat it my 2nd try
61004 pts
lvl 39
20 lives
yeah
super easy game, beat it multiple times, just gotta use your head and save your $$$ for interest gain
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