by Guffrus » Wed Sep 28, 2011 10:55 pm
Heres how to beat level 4:
Build 2 barracks on the left just past the bridge and set rally point on the bridge, build level 2 arty on the spot closest to the incoming nmes. this is the meat and potatoes of the initial set up, the point of this is to hold the left flank without having to think or worry until trolls come much later, it also ensures that you have gold income from early kills, this side will need to be additionally defended with archer towers to kill the trolls, you will know when its time because shaman will come and this flank will start to fold up, high level towers are much better than multiple low levels (2 x L3 is good), the placement will depend on the location of the trolls when you have the money to do it, if you are well in control of the level these can be placed imediately behind your barracks.
The right flank must be held with specials to start with 2 lots of reinforcements and then a rain of fire will take care of the first wolves but make sure you do not interfere with the stream of nmes going left, keep them seperate.
You can either hold the right side at the beginning with a 3 mage tower as fast as possible and an archer tower and double barracks in additon to reinforcements or you can let the nmes through that side and block them at the end, if you block them at the end 2 early archer towers are good to weaken the bandits and thin out the waves of wolves but the key is again to have a level 3 mage tower early on the spot nearest the exit and right side bridge, this will nearly one shot kill armoured and unarmoured nmes on this path block with reinforcements primarily, you might want a barracks on the spot to the left of this mage tower but remember that barracks costs money and does actually do any killing, if you can get away without blocking with barracks then you have more money for towers that are killing the nmes. rain of fire will destroy those packs of guys you are having trouble with, just make sure you havent broken them up with a failed blocking effort, if you cant stop all of them, then nuke them all, dont block some nuke some and let some slip past with a componded failure. You must release all nmes as soon as possible and remember that kills = gold.
Everything on the left will die on the L2 arty apart from the trolls, you shouldnt get a troll and shaman together but if you do you have big problems, in any case archers are the counter for both, aslong as you get your archers up in time you dont have to think about the left flank at all, its all amount managing the right side, blocking at the end on the right has the advantage that it can help you finish the trolls the disadvantage is that if it folds its game over there is no time / path left to stop any that get through the net and also you will need to place archers on this path to stop the trolls if you dont already have 2 from the beginning as a bandit / wolf spam weakener and these 2 are probably not enough, so you will be thinking about 2 side then when trolls come and also be spreading money between them.
gold is TIGHT if you dont absolutely have to have it, dont place it, the only except to this is some kind of last chance tower / barracks at the exit if your are blocking the right side at the front, incase you dont have a special up to deal with it and to stop you having to waste a rain of fire for one guy.
Final word on blocking, 1 defender stops 1 attacker, if you can kill the nme fast enough with fire support from towers then 1 defender can stop a whole string of single attackers from a wave, if the incoming wave is heavily clustered you will require barrack defenders to block in addition to reinforcements (reinforcements dont cost gold, and defenders kill nothing without support so when gold is tight you spend money on damaging towers and block for free with reinforcements)
If you cannot stop ALL of them from a group, then dont stop ANY of them, let them move on, wear them down with archers / mage (arty cant hit moving targets) and block them or nuke them when you can do so desicively.
Geoff