I was hoping to find strategy hints here ... with little luck. So I'll make a start with mine:
Which towers?
Land units are easier to keep at bay than air. You can deal with land unit with rockets and rockets also help against air, so rockets are my main weapon against land units (they are also pretty strong against land units, I think the game is a bit unbalanced there).
SAMS are the main defense against air.
Gun towers are required at the start of a game against land units. They get swapped out for rockets starting from wave 30 or so.
Slow towers are essential to both air and land defenses.
Teleports are required to get perfect games and help a lot in all circumstances.
Tower Placement
Your cash is limited so you must maximize the effect of each tower. There are two keys to achieve that.
Place towers so that the bots must follow long zig zag paths from one screen side to the other. Gun tower's effect is thus doubled in the beginning, rockets can reach four such paths each.
Slow towers are placed so that all fast units (air and land) are always slowed. While in the first waves armour is hardest to stop it is speed in later waves. Armoured units can accelerate a bit between slow towers, fast units must not. Slowtowers reach two paths in the zig zag pattern so they only have to be placed in every 2nd row. Their spacing depends on how far you upgraded them. It is essential that slow towers are in the paths of air units. You may have to find a good compromise here.
SAMS are usually best placed in the center of a map. First place them where they intercept air units on multiple paths (if applicable), then place the one that concentrate on single paths.
Teleports are placed in front of the exits so that they catch air units.
Gun towers are placed to channel land units into the teleports. Slow towers are placed along the teleports to slow units there (see below).
Breaking the waves
Start building the zig zag from gun towers and slow towers. In the beginning a units maximal progress depends mostly on its armour. Tanks are the first hurdle, they appear around wave 10. When the zig zag is long enough to keep them contained, save money for the next hurdle: first air unit appear from wave 15. If you can spare the money before wave 15 build rockets that will be converted to SAMS later but also cover the zig zag now. By wave 15 you must have sufficient reserves to place a teleport in from of whichever exit the air unit will take.
From then on you must always keep a reserve to place additional teleports (up to five in a row or so) or at least replenish them. The slow towers beside the teleports give you a bit more time to replenish teleports while a wave crashes into your teleport row. That way 3 teleports can zap 10 jets back to the start (if you are fast and the jets not to closely lined up).
The next steps are building a SAM, finishing the slow tower placement, upgrading the slow towers in the zig zag, swapping out strategic gun towers in the zig zag for rockets and upgrading those rockets (upgrade before swapping out more).
The end configuration is about the equivalent of three vertical lines of fully upgraded rockets and slow towers, rows of four or five teleports in front of each exit slow towers in the air unit paths and beside the teleports and 20 or so fully upgraded SAMS (placed to also extend the zig zag a bit).
The art is balancing everything. If no land units never run into you teleports you invested too much into land defense, same for air. Strive for perfect game, it pays well and it's your only chance to see the Titan (you always see it in higher levels when you're perfect at wave 70 ... or 80?).
Upgrading
Upgrade SAMS/rockets to the max first, then build/swap more.
Focus your rewards in Rockets/SAMS/Explosives. Also spend some on gun towers, slow towers, cash and health. Obviously yu have to unlock the teleport to use my strategy.
I have not unlocked the teleport yet, I use a similar strategy to yours, but have not yet been able to get past level 4. I always fail around level 60.
I'm on to level 33 and am completely addicted. Like, it's getting in the way of doing real-life things.
Probably the most interesting part now is beating all the challenges. Courtyard on the higher difficulties isn't an easy thing.
Strategy-wise, I try to place my rockets three deep, which is their maximum reach. It's less feasible on three- and four-pathway maps, but still worthwhile if you can route everybody down the same path.
I have a hard time getting perfect scores on levels higher than 15 or so unless I get teleports by my entrances quickly; it's too hard to shoot down aircraft early in the round.
I'm realllllly hoping for an expansion. I'd pay $5 or $10 for another set of maps and units! But whatever the devs do, let's just hope that any update/2.0 gives us credit for all the rounds we've already played!
Edit to say, I've apparently beaten the Titan, but I didn't notice! I have a habit of putting it in fastforward at level 80 and setting it aside... that's my only hope to be productive.
Last edited by Cruzatte; November 17th, 2009 at 08:08 PM.
I've been playing the free version of the game and I think it is fantastic. My problem is that I am unable to download the paid version from the marketplace. Is there anywhere else we can download and pay for the full version ?
I just ran into the titan on my first run of the basic level at difficulty 25. It was wave 79. Titan wasn't too difficult to take down, to be honest. I also saw him rather early, apparently? Regardless... what a great game. Has sucked up so many hours of my free time. A great game to play on the toilet. XD
I take a completely different strategy that what everyone else does here... I started with the simple straight zig zag'ing and moved to a more effective diagonal zig zag... and have since moved to a straight line attack.
On 100+ levels, in the squares just below the entrance/exit, I alternate between rockets and guns, all the way to the end, without upgrading at first... that is enough to hold off the first waves while I build cash to buy more towers.
Next I install and fully upgrade slow towers in the squares just above the entrance/exit, leaving 3 spaces in between each slow tower.
Next I begin filling the spaces in between the slow towers with rockets, while upgrading the guns below the entrance/exits
Next I fully upgrade all rockets currently on the map.
Then I start adding SAMS and mortors above and below my two gun lines.
That's it... I have made it past level 100 beating each level with 0 loss with this strategy, without using teleports and mines.
My strategy on the lower levels is a bit different... I stack towers three deep above and below the entrance, extending 6 or so wide. I space slow towers on top with two square between them. filling the rows just above and below with fully upgraded rockets. the second rows just above and below I also fill with rockets. The thrid rows above and below, I alternate SAMS and Mortors. I toss a couple teleports just outside the view (if you are scrolled all the way to the entrance) to catch the occasional straggler that makes it past the defenses... This strategy worked great until about level 50ish, which is when I modified to the strategy above.
I ended up buying the game. It is fun and I see it being played a bit specially when I am bored. One of things I would like to see is some graphics for the flame tower, mortar, and the upgrade after mortar (name escapes me as I type this). Right now all I see are little yellow, red, and pink squares.
When selling and trying to switch out the guns you sometimes misplace them due to how the touchscreen is. You should have like a 2-3 second period to undo a mistake like that due to the touchscreen. I am not sure how to implement that except by doing like an undo period of a few seconds.
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Count me in the addicted camp. It's kind of become my mission to see how may levels there are to this game. I just finished 590 on the basic. I'm averaging about 13,000,000 points per game. One thing I do is watch closely when wave 100 begins, as soon as the 10 dollar guys start streaming out, I go back to slow mode and start selling SAMs as fast as I can. If wave 100 happens to have no aircraft, I've managed to sell everything except one upgraded rocket tower, and one teleport tower. I think I ended that game with about $4000 dollars in the bank. At the 500+ level that gives you an extra remaining cash bonus of around 4,000,000.
Until I came to this site and figured out the darn teleport towers I had been stuck getting past level 400. It was real frustrating to die out of a game on wave 99. Since I started using the teleports I haven't finished with less than 35 lives and even managed a couple perfect games in the 400s.
I don't use anything other than guns, rockets, sams, slow towers, and teleports. My usual setup takes the bad guys straight up, all the way across the top, all the way back to the start, and then another straight shot back towards the exit. I line up 5 teleports at the exit and do my best to get two complete rows of sams across the bottom of the flight line. At these higher levels, I'm usually still upgrading on wave 99. Wave 100 is the selling spree.
I'm with bhmadsen: my zigzags go lengthways. This way I can have huge unbroken rows of SAMs to stop the planes.
With lengthway zigzags, to get the most out of your weapons, one of the walls of weapons must be double-thick. I generally make the double-thick wall one of the middle ones, and have mostly SAMs and rockets in it, because they have the range to hit both sides. Slow towers go in the other walls, because they'd be half-wasted in a double-wall.
With lengthway zigzags, there are fewer turns, and so there is less wasted space needing to leave a path for the enemy to get through.
I just finished level 610. Only lost three lives so that got me a remaining health bonus of 4.5 million. Managed to sell all but five towers and got another 4.6 million for the remaining cash. All told, just over 17 million for that one game.
Has anyone reached the end of this game? I'm guessing there are at least 1000 levels.
Seems to me that most people think there's an end to this, but I'm pretty sure there isn't. I mean, the HP on the enemies and the number of enemies could go up on a scale based on the level you're playing. I don't think you all will ever find an end to this.
I usually just make a zigzag pattern out of rockets and line up teleports at the end... but right now I'm trying a different strategy to see if I can use Artillery/Mortar to handle the ground units for awhile so I can build SAMS at the back end of the map. We'll see how this goes.
I just bought this game and I'm having fun with it. Do you need to start with gun towers at first? I'm getting to the point my gun towers do almost no damage, but I don't have upgraded starting money to the point that I can build all rocket towers to start out with. So I guess I will need to use some upgrade points on guns? Just wanting to see what others have come up with.
I just bought this game and I'm having fun with it. Do you need to start with gun towers at first? I'm getting to the point my gun towers do almost no damage, but I don't have upgraded starting money to the point that I can build all rocket towers to start out with. So I guess I will need to use some upgrade points on guns? Just wanting to see what others have come up with.
Well, there are two main tower types... guns and rockets.
Guns are a cheap answer to the early-game waves. Upgrading these will be *VERY* helpful if you have a problem getting set up.
Rockets are a slightly-more-expensive answer to enemies, but they can handle the mid and late game. I'd upgrade these if you have a problem with mid/late game.
Figure out where your problem is and upgrade accordingly.
I don't know about buying the full version. Just finished level 10 on the free download. The first 9 went ok, but after spending three days to complete the tenth level all I can assume is the full version must be a real PITA. What comes at you and when appears to be random, so there is no way to devise a strategy to win a level once you get to the harder ones. It really comes down to luck and spending a lot of time experimenting with different layouts. It would be nice if the game got gradually harder. Maybe that's what you pay for in the full version, but if each level takes 3-4 hours to figure out, I don't have 400 - 500 hours to spend on it to complete all 120 levels.
I can build SAMS at the back end of the map. We'll see how this goes.
What I found is build your SAMS in the early to middle columns on the game. This gives the missles time to hit the targets if they don't take em down quickly. Placing SAMS at the exit is a waste IMHO since you only get half the distance for the rockets...
Brilliant game. Got 140,000,000 on free game (bit sad, I know). Refuse to purchase any games until developers begin charging to phone bills, bypassing the need for Google Checkout.
sure I have played better TDs, but this one is perfect for a phone like the droid.
I was never a fan of TD games, but this one got me hooked for some reason. I tried three others (Retro Defense, and some other one that had more of a medieval look), but none of the others compares to Robo Defense.
Everything you buy is saved in your gmail account. So if you ever start over or lose your phone as soon as you sign back into the phone it pulls back up all your past purchases all yougotta do is re download them in the market but it wont charge you.
bought this game too, love it, only game i have paid for on the android market. anyone have any insights into how the ingame bonus works? does it go up faster based on fast you kill enemies or something?
What I found is build your SAMS in the early to middle columns on the game. This gives the missles time to hit the targets if they don't take em down quickly. Placing SAMS at the exit is a waste IMHO since you only get half the distance for the rockets...
I wasn't planning on putting the SAMS at the back wall. Their rear range is just as important as their front range. But on the back half of the map was my plan. I later found out that unless you upgrade the living crap out of your artillery reload, this strategy is just not as good as a whole bunch of rocket launchers. (the strategy of using artillery for ground units only)
I love tower defense games. I can't stop playing them. RoboDefense is actually pretty damn good. It was one of the first games I downloaded for my phone and I've wasted a lot of time playing it.
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I just finished level 610. Only lost three lives so that got me a remaining health bonus of 4.5 million. Managed to sell all but five towers and got another 4.6 million for the remaining cash. All told, just over 17 million for that one game.
Has anyone reached the end of this game? I'm guessing there are at least 1000 levels.
I need my life back!
Are you telling me you have completed 100 waves 610 times? lol
I have completed 2 levels so far and that took quite a long time. I can't imagine 610! Do you work?? lol
Can anyone tell me what the paid version gives you over the free version?
Edit: Also, how do you get bonus points?
Last edited by ub3r-l33ch; December 23rd, 2009 at 04:45 PM.
Lot's of fun, where's the updates though? I really wish they would update the gfx a bit, like the fire. Maybe update the sound a bit, add more units, maybe add the ability for you to be on the offensive.
The first pattern creates a short loop - loops are important at higher levels as they allow you to send long lines of enemies backwards and forwards round the loop until they're exhausted. By selling the tower nearest the entrance and moving one space to the right and down (the second pattern) enemies at the end of the loop are made to reverse and head back the way they came. It takes some practice, but it allows you to concentrate on building SAMs which keep you in the game.
I also get a teleport built early in the game to catch the first helicopters. We'll add more later.
Pattern 3 is just an extension, lenthening the loop - you'll need this once the fast trucks appear. Begin getting some rockets in and upgrade to at least one SAM when you can afford it.
Pattern 4 is almost fully extended, though still without many upgrades. By now, we have rockets along the central strip and have upgraded quite a few to SAMs. We've also added a couple of extra teleports.
Pattern 5 is pretty much complete - the central strip is full of SAMs and teleports for aircraft, and the rest is one long loop to keep the ground craft occupied until they're toasted. Once you get the loop technique right, you can concentrate your cash on SAMs and just exhaust the ground stuff.
Happy New Year!
Geof
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I do a similar setup to you, but I do it in reverse. So the maze section is at the exit and not the entrance.
The advantage of this is because different units move at different speeds, they will be spread out by the time they reach my maze and it will be way more effective because there will be more shooting time.
i'm really thinking about getting the full version, but if i were to buy it would my points and achievements be copied over from the free one to the full one?
Titan will show up only on achiving certain bonus score...around 125 I guess.
Suggested strategy: play a game at a lower level where you don't let any enemy pass through to the other side. Otherwise, bonus will revert back to the starting bonus number.
More acheivements you have, higher is your starting bonus number.
i'm really thinking about getting the full version, but if i were to buy it would my points and achievements be copied over from the free one to the full one?
Total newbie here, just started playing the game, and really like it. Have a couple of questions for you guys.
1) I have seen some threads about selling off towers in round 100, but when I try that, the enemy bots sense it as an opening and back up...which brings me to my next question...
2) Why doesn't your money roll over from one level to the next? I need money right away to upgrade and build SAMs, but starting over at $0 makes it tough.
Am I doing something wrong here? There doesn't seem to be any basic ops manual or beginners instructions that I can find.
1) I have seen some threads about selling off towers in round 100, but when I try that, the enemy bots sense it as an opening and back up...
In the last round, I only sell off towers after the bots pass them. When there's only a few bots left, I tend to sell them a little quicker, but use some judgment. If you open up a faster route to the exit, the bots will find it.
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Originally Posted by Wouldcarver
2) Why doesn't your money roll over from one level to the next? I need money right away to upgrade and build SAMs, but starting over at $0 makes it tough.
First, you should be starting with at least $20 even with no Starting Cash Reward. If you need to start with more, spend your rewards points by increasing your starting cash reward. I'm at level 28 and get an extra $140 at the beginning of the round.
