You must create an effective way to survive in the game, I have detailed all the information you need in this guide.
Hexes and Pathing
Building an effective path is half the battle when defending our central tower. Knowing how tiles work and how to place them can be the difference between surviving another day or losing. This guide will explore the ideas we should have when laying down tiles to improve our chances at reaching days 10+.
The Starting Point: Tiles
When I talk about tiles, I’m referring to the hexagons that we can place on the ground. These tiles cost Hexagons (they only have an icon in-game, so this is what I named them), which have a chance to drop from enemies. Tiles will cost more Hexagons the more tiles you place.
There are 4 types of tiles:
- Tile with a road path
- Tile with a water path
- Tile with both a road and water path
- Empty tile that doesn’t have a road nor water path
Tiles that have a road and water path can either be split paths where the road and water are curved away from each other, or bridges, where the road path goes over the water path. Empty tiles don’t have any paths on it, so while an oasis tile on the desert map has something on it (the oasis), it doesn’t connect to existing road or water tiles, making it an empty tile.
Tiles can only be placed on the white clouds and can be rotated. The basis of where a tile can be placed and how they can be rotated depends on the tile itself and the surrounding tiles. A tile that has a road path on it can only connect to other roads. An empty tile can’t be placed next to a water path.
Tiles can’t be removed once they are placed, so we have to be mindful of where we put them and how we rotate them. We don’t want to leave dead ends where no tile can be placed on a spot since nothing will perfectly connect to it.
Besides paths (or lack thereof), tiles can also have houses and treasure chests on them, which can be seen before we place down a tile. Houses give passive income while chests give a one-time amount of coins upon clicking it. Of course, tiles also have spots where towers can be built.
Notes on Enemy Paths
Enemies will spawn at any open entrance and follow the shortest path to the castle. We are able to click on the enemy’s portrait to learn what path they take. This can make it easier to know where to build our defenses.
The exception to this are the blimp enemies which can spawn on the later Days. They only spawn at road entrances and will fly straight to the castle. Since they are flying, some towers, like the Catapult tower, can’t attack them. To not get caught off guard by them, we should try to position entrances so that when we draw a straight line from the castle to that entrance, it will cross over our defenses that can hit air.
Finally, bosses start appearing on Hard and Crazy difficulties. They will always spawn at the farthest entrance, giving us a rough idea as to which path to focus on. This also means we can force them on a certain path by just building out one entrance more than others, making it the longest by default.
Tutorial Ideas (The Basics)
From the tutorial, we learn that:
- We can build tiles to expand the path
- Tiles require Hexagons which are dropped from enemies
- We can block enemies from spawning by destroying the entrance
Let’s go over points 1 and 2 first. Tiles expand the enemies’ path by making them travel farther. Because of this, it is generally a good idea to try and evenly spread out where we’re building tiles. On a normal map with 3 starting road entrances and 3 starting water entrances, we should use the first few tiles making the shortest path longer. That way we don’t leave a path that is too short to properly defend. We also have to be mindful of our placement due to there being a chance that enemies drop Hexagons (only slain enemies, any that reach the castle will never give drop a Hexagon), and the scaling cost of tiles. There can be a point where we can only place 1 or 2 tiles down because of how much the tiles cost and we didn’t receive enough Hexagons from enemies.
This brings us to the 3rd point of blocking enemy entrances. A normal map will have 6 entrances, equally divided between the road and water. During the later Days, this could balloon to 12 or even 20 entrances. If all the entrances are split, that will separate our defenses as well, making it more difficult to protect a lane. By blocking off entrances, we can prevent enemies from going down one path, meaning we don’t have to have any towers watching it. That allows more to be placed on the remaining paths and bolster our defense.
Here is an example. Currently, this water lane has 3 entrances with a road over top. At this stage, this isn’t too big of a problem. If we continued the water paths though, those 3 entrances could end up becoming 5 or 6. This could then add more boats that travel down the path and overwhelm our limited defenses. Luckily, we were able to place a tile that has a water lane and a bridge. This extends the road by another tile, and brings the top-most water entrance closer to the other water entrances. Since the water entrances are one tile away from each other, a curved water tile can connect them, erasing both entrances and leaving only 1.
Shutting Down Entrances
In an ideal situation, we have a singular path that enemies spawn from that is long and also snakes around. This way we can focus our towers on one part of the map, and towers will be able to hit the enemies multiple times. This may be a familiar concept for those who played other tower defense games. We want our towers to be able to deal out the most damage they can for as long as possible.
To accomplish this, we will need to close off the paths that don’t intersect with our desired path. That doesn’t mean closing off EVERY entrance except one, just the entrances that are inconvenient. This can also save us from enabling the Enrage mechanic. This can happen when the map has less entrances that it can spawn from than what it wants. If enemies become Enraged, they gain high bonuses which can make even the sturdiest of defenses falter.
To shut down an entrance, we first need to turn it into 2 entrances. Otherwise we would have to rely on getting the road hill or water pond that automatically close off an entrance, and those are rare. The next best thing is to place down a tile such that the 1 entrance becomes 2, then connect those 2 new entrances together to close them. This requires specific tiles which is luck-based, meaning we could leave a tile open to close off 2 entrances forever and end up losing because that path is too short to defend. So, some risk assessment will be needed.
An “easy” way to close of road or water paths is to place down a ‘Y’ tile, which is a straight path with a branch, and connect the 2 resulting entrances with a small 60° curved tile (the curve goes from one edge to the edge right besides it). This requires a total of 3 tiles. There are other ways, such as using the ‘Triangle’ tile, where 1 path evenly splits into 2 paths, using a small 60° curved tile to curve both entrances towards each other, and connecting them using a 90° curved tile (the curves goes from one edge, skips an edge, and connects to the next one).
It is possible to close every single entrance. While the Days leading up to it can be more difficult because of Enraged enemies, once there are no more entrances for enemies to spawn at, we automatically win. This will even give us bonus trophies. But, this will end the game on the Day we are on, so if we need to reach a certain threshold to unlock the next difficulty, e.g. reach Day 21 on Hard to unlock Crazy, we should wait until we reach that Day to place the final tile.
Killzones
Once paths have been erased, our towers can now be placed on a central area where they can focus fire on enemies. This will make it easier to burst down beefy targets and apply status effects. Since we aren’t able to effectively spam towers and upgrades due to the scaling costs, we can designate a killzone where we place a majority of our defenses. Ideally these are on road paths because infantry units can be rallied on to the road and delay enemies. This can more easily group them up and allow AOE (Area of Effect) towers to shine.
Our killzone(s) should be on parts of the road that has multiple tower spots overlooking it. They should also be around intersections where various paths meet up. It won’t be as effective if half of the enemies that spawn don’t run into the killzone. To guarantee that enemies will then group up on our designated spot, we will need ways to delay the front enemies. This can be either from infantry on the road that literally stop them to fight, or status effects such as slowing or stunning.
If we have water paths open, we should attempt to push the killzone close to the water. We also want to try to leave a couple tiles free so that if we have wonders, we will be able to place them in range. Due to the fairly large radius of wonders, it doesn’t have to be right next to where the action is happening, allowing space for more tiles for tower spots.
The entrances leading to the killzone can be left open to guarantee that all enemies go where we want them. We can also open up more entrances to ensure that the enemies don’t become Enraged.
Summary
- To summarize the major points, we should:
- Build a central killzone where we funnel enemies into
- Close off other entrances so that we don’t waste money on defenses for those paths
- Plan ahead on where killzones are so we know which entrances to close early on and how to place our tiles
- We can automatically win by closing every entrance
At the end of the day, a lot of the decision making we have to do will be based on the towers we have, layout of the current path, and the tiles we get. There is inherent RNG in the game, so nothing is set in stone. Hopefully this guide can steer us in a direction that’ll make it easier to reach higher Days.
