I give up, Command Decision map strategy thread

[JonC1971]

I f-ing hate this map. It's so not what DG is about, IMO. I'm not even close to solving it on a gold medal level let alone in the challenge mode. And tbh I'm not motivated to waste anymore time trying with this map.


How did you do it?

The 4 main phases:


The first part where you just have to the two sets of towers?

The second where your second wave of towers are added?

The third where all your towers get replaced?

4th, what did you do when all your command towers got removed?


Thanks!

[holeydonut]

spoilers below.... don't read down unless you've already beaten the stage (or given up trying).
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I'm 15th on the leaderboard for the story mode on the stage; so this won't get you in the top 10 but it will let you pass the level.

I basically set up the towers in such a manner as to let me juggle the enemies on the bottom half of the map. The timing of the tower sells and builds is hard to describe, but you'll get the hang of it eventually.

This picture is what things look like when all of my towers are built.



In the beginning of the level you cannot afford to build the 5 towers along the bottom of the map. Focus on only the towers at the top-half of the map.

The square in bright red is one of the squares I juggle with. Basically if you buy/sell a tower here along with buy/sell the left-most command tower... the enemies will go back and forth along the bottom half of the map. The juggling buys you time as the weapon-towers kill the enemies. With practice can time the buy/sells in such a manner as to let the newly arriving enemies walk through while the ones returning with cores are going around the long way.

You may be bold enough to even upgrade one of the existing command towers in the high-traffic area to earn extra money. However, I don't know if that decision ever pays itself back.

[Birdorf]

Yeah, I didn't like this level either, just managed to scrape through. I suppose they're just trying to add a little variety to the gameplay.

[megar]

I succeded at it at my first attempt, and I am one of those who strugled at beating the first level (see the woa that's hard topic). I liked this level very much and used another strategy.
It seems that DG levels are very frustrating: you either find a right strategy to use (or THE right one) and you love the game, or you fail and you hate the game.

[JonC1971]

Thanks holeydonut. I'll give your strategy a go.

[JonC1971]

No, can't get it to work. what sequence do you build the towers. The shielded aliens make it too deep and things go bad from there. I can't even get to the towers switching before losing a core or more.

HATE THIS LEVEL

This isn't even in a challenge mode.

[combatcolin]

Ths Makes even Worf looks like a little girl.

[holeydonut]

I hope this picture helps... I numbered the sequence that I built the towers (i highlighted the two juggle towers in red since technically i built/rebuilt those a couple of times).

Also, you may be building too quickly. The trick is to wait until the enemies are almost on top of a tower and then block them off. This way they have to see the next best route which often implies they have to turn around. If you build too quickly then you lose the time they spend having to turn around.

When juggling, you should practice to see how long it takes to sell a tower as well so you are comfortable with when you need to start selling so that you avoid a condition where the enemies have no path back to the base.

Another example of timing is how you use tower #7. Most likely weakened enemies will be sneaking their way back to their base by going over the square that occupies the #7 tower. You may want to let the enemies sneak by so the tesla towers (I think they later become laser towers) can zap them. Then the cores will return the same way. If you make sure that the #11 square is open, now you can build the #7 tower (once the cores have slid below it) and force the new enemies to go the long way. This means the enemies will have to fetch new cores rather than get the ones that were just dropped.

I guess it would also make sense to leave the game at normal speed since timing is so important here.


By the way, I'm on the Xbox360. For all I know the enemy logic is different on the PC which may result in my strategy being completely useless.