How to Play Strategy?

 

The Rules

Is there really a universal rule to how you set up strategies? If there were, it wouldn't be much fun then would it, without the thinking involved, it'd just be a boring pattern of rules that you have to follow. Good single-player strategy games try to program your opponents to be as hard as playing a real human, but most fail at the attempt and end up easy to beat. So the answer to that question is NO, if there was a rule that strategists had to follow, then the one who made the rules would be retarded if they think they can anticipate every move a human makes. Computers are easier, but that's because they can't program them well (unless it's chess, then that's hard to beat).

The reason why we can't use a guidebook is because strategy comes in all sorts of different situations, you can even find it in RPG games. Some questions from those are, what points do I invest in, or how much would it cost to make an item, and how much would I be able to sell this for in the end? My favourite application of strategy is in turn-based games. Although I do like the MOBA style games, they aren't the kind of strategy that I prefer, just because those games involve action as well. Getting back to the point, unless the guidebook is made for a particular game that has static strategies, then it would be worthless. I'm not saying that something written down can't help you pass a level in a particular game, I'm saying that there's no formula to winning every strategy game in the world. Tips are welcome, I love tips they help you out, but don't always make you 100% indestructible to your enemies.

Writing Isn't Wrong

I'm not saying that anyone who writes a book about strategy is wrong, in fact I prefer to have something written down for me to better comprehend (I'm a reader, not a listener), in fact there are some strategy books such as "Sun Tzu's Art of War", and I'm sure it has helped commanders prepare tactics for war. However, restricting oneself to symbols on a piece of paper is ridiculous. People should learn to take the lead, most of the people in this new generation like taking orders, and that's not a bad thing as long as they get the job done. But the problem is that new leaders need to rise, and with the population expanding, and books that restrict imagination, there won't be enough leaders to control the over-abundant population that will soon flood the world.

If you want to learn how to play strategy, you have to study, you have to experiment, gaining strategy requires lots of practice, it is a part of wisdom, and like all wisdoms, you can only gain them by patience and thinking. Tips can help you, but you should always look for ways that can improve what paper says. After all, how is the person writing on paper and better than you when you are their age? If they are geniuses, that doesn't mean they can pass on all their knowledge onto refined trees, something is lost, and you can't retrieve it, you can only gain a new version of it. However, it may seem tedious, but later on, your mind would be wired to work out problems with strategy. You will know what to plan for days ahead, maybe be able to anticipate what your opponents will do. Because, when you are in a sticky situation that's not in the book, then you have to act with your strategy-imbued gut, not with your brain.
"By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest. "  -Confucius

You're Going to Need This 

 Strategy will be useful to you, because there will always come a time when there is no one there for you, when you are all you've got. Either when you've lost your parents at the mall, or forgot where you last left your keys, a plan is what will help you achieve your goals. By borrowing a phone from a stranger to call your parents, or looking in places where you least expect to have left your belongings (if you frequently leave your belongings in a designated place, you are less likely to have lost it there, then you are if you had placed things in a new area). As I was explaining, you will need strategy for devising plans to achieve your goals, no matter how big or small the task is, strategy can take you half way there, and the rest is up to your skills in applying the strategy, and of course in luck.

Confucius

Fate has a sick sense of humour sometimes, but you're going to have to live with it until the day you stop existing. You might be spared too much distress but your lineage will always hold trouble, there is no way to stop it, but you don't need to think about that. You should think about how you can help the ones you love that are here for you. You should always have a plan for yourself and for others. Living free is OK, in fact it can be quite nice to not have any stress, but not every can get that opportunity, so you have to make the best of what you have with the worst of what you have. I'm not one to help you understand your problems, but you should always be prepared, taking risks are fine, just don't overdo it, because you might as well be gambling with fate, and here's a tip, fate usually cheats. If you want to secure yourself, you will need strategy, and without it, you won't last long, even if you have tons of money, what will happen once you've used it all? It is in the nature of most humans to look after their lineage, to keep it going on, that's the way we work. So you might be asking how you can secure your lineage to be long-lasting? Well, you can't, you can only carry it on, there is no security on this Earth, you can try to get away from this sense of duty, and I'm sure some have succeeded, but not many people are prepared to leave their human nature behind, so they stay and get stress. I am also on of those people, I'm willing to accept this, but I'm not going down without a fight, at least if you fight, the inevitable will be further off, and that's all I'm hoping for.

"Faced with what is right, to leave it undone shows a lack of courage." -Confucius

"You plan for the life ahead of you, once you're done, you start living."

-The Rooster 

Game Review: Kingdom Rush

Time for a Rush!

The genre that Kingdom Rush resides in is Tower Defence. I know that people tire easily of these types of games, but in my opinion, this game would be an exception, just because it has a unique quality to it, and appealing visuals. Kingdom Rush was made by Ironhide Games and hosted by Amor Games, and there have been over 22 million plays on Armor Games alone.

Campaign Mode

In the Kingdom Rush campaign, you go through stages like many other Defence games. Whenever you complete a level, you will get 1-3 stars, depending on how many enemies you let in, if you let 0 in, you get 3 stars. As I've mentioned, this game has a unique quality to it, one of the ways the game is unique is that, unlike most other Circuit Tower Defences, this one only allows placement of towers at certain areas, so it requires more thinking than most other Defence games. Of course this doesn't mean that this game is any better than other Circuit games, but I like the limited spaces because in other games I feel like I screwed up for good when don't space my turrets properly. But what really captures me is the animations -both audio and visual- that are present in this game. It's also very easy to play, and requires only a minute to get into the swing of the game. Some stages may get boring, but once every few rounds, there's something interesting and new that appears. First it's the upgrades that you unlock, then it's the achievements and new bosses that you have to take down. All-in-all, I like this game quite a lot, and it's very addictive but not in a bad way, just a "play it once a week" kinda way.

Difficulties

Although this game requires thinking, you don't need to exhaust your brain every single round. If you play on Easy difficulty, you won't find much trouble, maybe a 1 or 2 star once in a while, but it's not too hard to just get through each stage. There are also challenges for each stage that you can try only if you have scored 3 stars, but don't worry if you scored less than that, you can always redo the round, or see if Youtube has any tips on how to pass that stage if you're having a brain fart.

Upgrades

There are two ways to make your Towers stronger, one is in game, by upgrading your turret to deal more damage and have abilities, the other is on the Upgrade page. When you pass rounds in Campaign, you will get 1-3 stars, those stars may be used here to upgrade these abilities, you can upgrade your towers or spells. You should know that if you complete a challenge, you will get one star from them, so the total number of Stars you can get per round is up to 5. Of course the cost for a new upgrade will increase as you go up a tier. The description of each Upgrade will be available to you if you hover your cursor over the picture. The each upgrade is restricted to only one class. For example, if you get an upgrade that gives more range, and it is under the Marksman section, only Marksman will get the Upgrade.

Achievements

I guess one of the things about this game that attracts me are the achievements you can earn. They give you a sense of satisfaction, and are like Pokemon, "Gotta Catch'em All". There are 4 pages of Achievements to collect and 62 stages with 3 types of play at each stage (over 180 rounds!). Also, don't forget about getting the upgrades, there 30 Upgrades to obtain.So that would keep you busy for a while if you've been bored lately. 

5 Tips

I can't really give you tutorials on how to win, you will have to do that yourself, but I can offer you tips on the best ways to place your turrets, and what upgrades to get, although everything I will tell you will be fairly early game, when you have few Stars to invest. However, some of the tips should be kept in mind the whole game, you may need to apply the help differently each stage, but if you follow these simple instructions, you should be able to fly through every stage on easy. Maybe with a few tries, even normal mode.

1. The one tower you will always need are your Barracks, they are much used later game, but are also very helpful early game as well. The Barracks will produce up to 3 soldiers for you, if one dies, another will respawn after a duration. The reason why they are so important is because they are good at stalling your enemies so that your turrets have more time to attack your enemies. Barracks should be place in the middle of many other turret locations. You will also need to make your rally point (where the soldiers assemble) within the range of many turrets, so they can hit them while your enemies are barred. 

2. In the early stages, you should build only Barracks, Marksman towers,and Artillery. The barracks for the reason explained in the first tip, Marksman because they have high attack speed and good for taking down tough opponents. The Artillery is for mobbing, they can hit multiple enemies, so placing them at the spawn point (marked with skulls) is ideal. 

3. When you get the upgrade for your Barracks to enlist barbarians, you should place to barracks close to each other if that particular round has many ground units. The first of your barracks will be upgraded to enlist the heavily armoured paladins, while you make your second barracks into a barbarian village. You set your the rally point for your defensive barracks in from of the rally point for barbarians since they can protect the weak-armoured barbarians while they attack with ranged axes. Even if you use this strategy, you will also need to use Marksman towers to pick off whoever happens to slip past your Barracks, and you will most likely need Wizard towers as well, since if your are that much into the game, many armour units will spawn, and your wizard towers will be able to penetrate their armour.

4. How do you decide which turrets you should be upgrading first? Well it's quite simple, you look at what happened during your previous rounds, what have they been lacking? Did you need to constantly use "Call Reinforcements" constantly? If yes, then you upgrade your Barracks, if it's a no, you upgrade your mobbing Artillery turret so that it stays that way. Don't get me wrong, you should always be using Call Reinforcements, but if that only succeeds in keeping then a centimetre from the castle, then you need to stall them for longer, or with more barracks. You also need to check how much health they had after they passed your turrets, if they had lots of health, you definitely need barracks, if they had low health, you should upgrade/buy an offensive turret. 

To determine which offensive turret to buy will take a while to explain, so here it goes. If the enemies that got through are heavily armoured, you get Wizard towers for they armour penetration. However, if you can, you should upgrade your Wizard turret, but if it is already fully upgraded, you should think about placing it elsewhere or construct a second one. If many healthy enemies get through, you should construct/upgrade your mobbing Artillery, but if they persist to get through, it's best to make Marksman and take out as many as possible and hope for a narrow victory. If only a few make it through, you should also place Marksmen, because they can easily take out a few healthy and moderately armoured foes.

5. The fifth tip for you is to constantly spam your 1's and 2's, those are the quick keys for your spells "Call Reinforcements" and "Rain of Fire". Not to contradict tip #4, if you are relying on them too much (unless you are investing your stars in spells) you should fix that. Your turrets are more reliable and the cooldown for Rain of Fire is long, so it should be saved for a particularly large wave of armoured units for better affect. You should always have # 2 on cooldown, since the expiration for them is a bit past the cooldown, so you can stack up a bit each round (they will die easily unless you have upgraded them with stars).

So that's it for this post, the link to the game on the AmorGames website is below. Remember to thank Irondhide Games for this game, and there is also an app for this accessible on your Apple products -iPhone, iPod, etc.- and is #1 in the Strategy genre. This is a note that if you want to play this game, you can link an account to the game with your Facebook or Twitter.

Kingdom Rush

http://armorgames.com/play/12141/kingdom-rush 

-The Rooster

Game Review:Tribal Wars

Tribal Wars is (appropriately) a strategy game in the Castle-building, Faction War game. In my first post, I explained a little about Faction War games. If you've read it, you would know that they are games where you have villages that you build up with Buildings, Technologies, Units, and -in some games- Heroes or Characters. However, you may not know that there are two different types of games that come from that genre.

The Basics

First, you have the Conventional games, most games in the Faction War genre are Conventional. In Conventional games, you build up to a maximum villages and you just build units to kill your enemy's units. The Second sort of game is Domination, and appropriately named since you conquer other villages to win the game. Tribal Wars is a Domination game made by InnoGames and is in fact, browser-based.

Like all other browser games, you have to make and account and log in first, then you select a world to join and you will be registered on that world. You may of course play multiple servers, although these types of games usually take up a lot of your time. So unless you have little to do, I wouldn't suggest taking on more than one server at a time. There is also a maximum of 2 building slots you can use. But if you are a Premium (pay) user, you can have unlimited queue, which is helpful for building while you are asleep. There are also other advantages of paying, but you will find out if you play the game yourself.

In Tribal Wars, there aren't any factions, just tribes. You may create or join one, it is up to you, but you should remember to join a big tribe for protection. The best way to defend yourself is to not be attacked at all. If you want to skip right on to the tutorial, then feel free to do so, for the next one or two paragraphs, it'll be to give you a little explanation of the game in some detail that you have to read. You can also read details on the official wiki website, (http://help.tribalwars.net/wiki/Main_Page) but some parts aren't very well written, and I hope that you can have a better understanding reading this.

It's the Same but Different Game

You probably didn't understand what the sub-heading meant, so I'll elaborate. The reason that the heading implies the game is different, is because of the "world settings" in the game. Each world is unique, therefore world 61 is different from world 62. There are many differences that may apply to a world. Such as resource production, unit production speed, unit movement speed, Paladins (read "Paladins" sub-heading), resource costs, and some others. The game developers do this to see which world has the best response, and will make other worlds similar to the ideal worlds. You can check a world's settings by,

1. Going to www.TWStats.com (homepage --> TW stats)
2. Click one of the worlds
3. Select "World Settings"

Once you're there, you can read all the settings that are applied to that world.

Paladin

First thing to know about Paladins is that you can't level them up like a Character. They can also die in battle, but you can recruit another one for a cheap fee of resources, but it takes over 4 hours to recruit. Although Paladins cannot level up, they are quite strong and they can match their pace with units that are faster than them. For example, if Paladins have 1 speed, and a Cavalry has 2, Paladins will go at the same speed as the Cavalry. Do remember that those are not the actual speeds, and the calculation of troop speed is different in this game. In the previous paragraph, I said that Paladins is a variable in worlds, so some worlds and will have it, and some will not. Another variable relating to Paladins are their weapons, some worlds have "weapons activated" which means that you can acquire special weapons for your Paladin. On worlds that have weapons, you have to fill up a bar in the weapon's room to 100%, you can do so by waiting (+4%/day) and killing enemy units in a battle with your Paladin present (amount varies). You have to equip your Paladin with the weapon, there are 11 weapons in worlds with Archers, and 9 in worlds that don't have them. 

  

 For the list of the weapons and their abilities, go to http://help.tribalwars.net/wiki/Paladin_items.

How to Dominate

Since this is a Domination game, you may be wondering how you would capture other villages. For starters, you shouldn't be worried about this until you have your first village built up a bit, and lots of resources. Any ways, to capture any village, you will need Noblemen, these are special units that are very expensive to build, but you need them throughout the whole game. Before I can explain how to capture/ Noble a village, you have to know about the two different systems on this subject. 

1. Package System                                                                                           In the Package System, you need to pay a certain amount of resources for a "Packet", then you can recruit a Nobleman, the cost for Packets go up as you get more Packets. The maximum amount of Noblemen you can have is limited to the level of your academies. The maximum level is 3 for each village. 
2. Coin System When using the coin system, you only have one level of academy. To recruit a Nobleman in this kind of world requires you to mint Gold Coins. Your coin requirement goes up when you get more nobleman and villages.

So to get back on the topic of Nobling (correct term). by now it is obvious that you need a Nobleman to get a village. To explain how to Noble will require you to know about "Loyalty", usually loyalty will be at 100, if it is any number other than 100, you will be able to see it. Whenever you send a Nobleman on an attack (which it lives through) your enemy's loyalty will be decreased by 25-35 points. Once the number reaches 0, your Nobleman will disappear and you will have possession of the village that you Nobled, it will have only 25 Loyalty and it will rise by 1-1.5 Loyalty/Hour.

Technologies

As with most strategy games, there are technologies involved. In Tribal Wars, Technology is another variable, since there are three different types of technology. First is Simple Technology, you research it once, and you will be able to recruit those units. Then there are the 3 Level System and the 10 Level System, and as the name implies you may upgrade your technology to better enhance your units. To research a technology, you will need a Smithy, the higher level the Smithy is, the faster you can research.

Tutorial

Now that you know the basics of the game, it's time to get on with a tutorial. I'm not the best player in the game, but I'm not bad. The Tutorials will help cover some modes, but not all of them that are in the game. This Tutorial will only cover the beginning of the game, since you won't need a tutorial for the actual Middle and Late stages of the game.

Early Game

When you start off, you have nothing, there are two ways that you can play Early Game, one is for a quick military, choosing this way will require you to actively farm nearby villages. If your world has a Paladin active, you should send him on your looting as well, since they can help turn the tides of an early game battle. Or you can choose to be self-producing, which means having minimal defence units and lots of resource production. Whichever one you choose, you ALWAYS upgrade your resources first. This game does not have any speed ups, so when the building time gets too long, you should upgrade your Headquarters first, so that the building time will decrease. 

Middle Game

When you have your resources to about Level 23-25 each and your first village is fairly developed, you should start thinking about making an Academy so you can recruit your first Noble. It doesn't matter which type of Noble world you live in, you need lots of resources for a Nobleman. Before you have your Noble, you should think about what to Noble, so first you judge distance, always go for villages close to you. Second, if there aren't any that are good (at least 1,000 points) near you, you look for Bonus Villages, these are villages that (if Nobled) will give you a bonus resource production, unit production bonus, storage, or other benefits. If you have to, you can also Noble a Barbarian Village, but you shouldn't unless it has a decent amount of points (1,000).

Spearman

Late Game

When you're in late game of the beginning (3-4 villages), you should have built up an army by now. If you don't have at LEAST 3k/per village, then that should be your goal. Most of these villages should be defensive, meaning that you have lots of Swordsman, Archers, and Spearman. In each village, you should have some Light Cavalry for farming nearby villages. If your world has a looting cap, then only get offensive at villages where you need resources. 

Beginner Builds

As I've mentioned, there are a few ways you can set up your base, either offensively, or defensively, if you've joined the world on time, you can go either way, but if you joined a few weeks behind, you should go for the defensive build, since defence is in favour of the defender if you have a good level Wall. 

Swordsman

If you decide to go offensively, you don't need to build up your resources as much, but you need them adequately at Early game so you can rush Light Cavalry Technology. When you have it researched, you can start mass producing until you have about 500, and keep farming while you're building. You will also need to upgrade your Iron mine since cavalry require a huge amount of Iron, but not so much of the other two resources, clay and wood.

Archer

If you decide to go defensively, you build your resources and wall up, you can build your resources higher than offensive players since you won't need as many units to defend your base. I would suggest that you build Swordsman and Spearman, even if you world has Archers, they can do little, that combined Swordsman and Spearman can do at Early Game. Although, once you have reached middle and ESPECIALLY when you've reached late game, you should replace the Spearman for Archers, since Archers have a decent defence against Cavalry.

 5 Pros:

• paying does not affect the game much
• requires lots of strategy in when in war
• very intense early game phase
• active population in many new worlds
• in Simple Technology worlds, new players can get into the game because only troops matter

 5 Cons:

• hard to communicate because there is no chat
• Tribe members cannot see incoming attacks
• types of units are limited
• no Champions to level up
• cannot return units after it has been sent out too long

Overall, I think this is a pretty good game, and the fact that it isn't "Pay-to-Win" like most other games from this genre is very welcoming. I've played many Conventional and a few Domination Castle-Building games, and this has to be one of my favourites. Although you could lose your village when you fall asleep. The attacks are quite fast when you use Cavalry, and that should be altered. The link to the game is below and thank you for reading this post.

Tribal Wars

http://www.tribalwars.net/ 

-The Rooster

Game Review: Pokemon Tower Defence!

Welcome to the World of Pokemon...TD

For all the Pokemon fans reading this, there actually is a Tower Defence version for this game, and it is quite well made. This was submitted to PlayTowerDefenceGames.com by Sam and Dan who are Pokemon fans and is now available also on Newgrounds and several other websites. The gameplay is simple, although you will have to use your cursor a lot more than for other types of Tower Defence games. I will explain soon enough, but first, let's take a look at the game.

It Is In Kanto

As you can see, these Pokemon are the same starting Pokemon in Fire Red or Leaf green. You may also get special Pokemon by submitting Mystery Gift codes when you are logged in. You may save your progress along your journey like the normal game, and you may also trade Pokemon with other trainers on the Tower Defence website (http://www.sndgames.com/games/ptd/trading_account) by clicking on click on Pokemon Center. What else I like about this game is the storyline, it is quite straightforward, and you will be acquainted with an antagonist and friend. The dialogue is also quite funny and the events that take place, likewise.

So moving on to the game, you should know that there is a tutorial, which I will briefly cover. What makes this a Tower Defence is (as you might have guessed) you use your Pokemon to attack other Pokemon that want (as you probably didn't guess) to steal Rare Candies, although in some situations, you have to protect fossils and Pokeballs. The Pokemon you own can level up, evolve, learn new skills, be dismissed just like the regular game. For Pokemon that require stones to evolve, you can buy stones at the Pokemart, and you use money gained from killing -at least I'm pretty sure they're dead- Pokemon to gain experience for your own when they have gained enough experience, and also for purchasing TMs and HMs. Also, just like the regular Pokemon, your Pokemon will retain it's level, so you can train it at training maps.

GamePlay

Now to move on to the gameplay, at the start of every round, you will have spaces to place your Pokemon and can select what skills they will use against the enemies that will try to steal your Rare Candies. You just drag the picture of your Pokemon onto the available spaces and they will attack when enemies get in range of them. To capture a Pokemon, they must have a red health bar, and you can move the Pokeball on the bottom right of your screen over to it, and you will be able to capture the Pokemon. If the Health bar is Blue, there is no chance of capturing it, if it is green, you just have to lower their Health. The attack animations are similar to those of the older Pokemon ones, but with more style and colour. The only problem I have for this game is that sometimes saving fails and you lose some of your data.

You Have Three Choices

You don't only have to play the storyline,in fact there are 3 modes of play. You can also try out some Challenges, and get awards. For the first few Challenges, you can play it without depending on the Pokemon you have, after that, there are some Challenges that require you to have high level Pokemon to complete. Then there is the Story mode of course, which has a total of 7 Chapters and includes some shiny Pokemon that you can catch. Lastly, there modes of play in the Multiplayer option, you can play a Defence game against another trainer with Pokemon given to you, so you don't have to have strong Pokemon yourself. The second choice is "Zapdos Co-Op Challenge", in which you play with another player also with Pokemon given to you, to team up and defeat a Zapdos.

The Challenges Are (in order)

1. Pewter Gym
2. Old Rod
3. Mt.Moon
4. Mt.Moon 2 (Recommended LvL 36)
5. Vermillion Gym (Recommended LvL 40)
6. Celdadon Gym

Note: some of these are hard, so you can search up how to clear them on Youtube.com

Trading

Before I can explain Trading, I would like to say that there is also a hacked version of this game, it is also connected to the same Trading system, however, the Pokemon gained from the Hacked version (increased Exp and Money) will have a note saying that it was gained from the hacked version. If you trade anything from the Hacked version, your account will also be declared a Hacked Account. I will put the link of the hacked version as well as the unHacked one.

There are a few steps to trading, first you give an offer and state what you want in return (optional). If you do state what you want, then responses will be limited to offers of only that Pokemon (you can also choose the level range you want the Pokemon to be in). Once people have sent offers, you can review them and decide which one it is you want. When you are finding an offer, it's just from the other perspective, you find what people want, if you have it, you may offer that to the person in exchange for whatever he was willing to trade.

Mystery Gift & PokeMart

When you click "Mystery Gift", you can input valid codes to obtain Pokemon, most of them are rare. You may also click "Daily Gift" and you will be sent to the Pokemon Center website and from there, you can test your luck with the Daily Gift by spending some in game money on it. You could get Rare Pokemon or just Casino Coins which you can spend in the Pokemon Center.

The latest code is 46233nc4

The PokeMart is where you can buy stones of all kinds from Pokemon Red, Green, and Blue. Each stone  costs $10,000, it may seem like a lot at first, but later on, you'll be able to get over $4-5k per round. There's nothing else for sale in the PokeMart.

PokeDex

When you click the PokeDex, you will see two buttons, "My Achievements" and "My Collection". In My Achievements, you will see some tasks that you can fulfil for rewards. You can receive Shiny Pokemon and accessories for your avatar as rewards. In My Collection, you can view all the Pokemon you've seen and if you've caught one before. The only difference between this and the regular PokeDex is that it doesn't show Pokemon behaviour, weight, and location in the Collection.

Phases of the Game

As for the levels and such, I think that some are exponentially harder than the last, which requires training your Pokemon a lot, although this game is not as long as the real game. But still, it could take several hours to finish the game, and by then it gets a bit boring, flash games were meant to be short.

Early Game: When you first start the game, it is easy to pass the levels, however the cost for levelling up your Pokemon is quite high in relation to the money you would have in early game. So my advice is to level up as soon as possible, it will help you a lot early on. Remember to catch many Plant types since you will be facing the Pewter Gym, which is Ground and Rock based and then the Cerulean Gym in Chapter 2. Oh, and of course Kyogor

Middle Game:  Once you've gotten a few badges, the level up cost won't be a bother and you will be training your Pokemon constantly on the best map available to you and buying strong TMs for your Pokemon so that they can deal better damage. It does tend to get a little boring at this point -and more mind exhausting- ,but once you've gotten your Pokemon strong enough to complete this part of the game, you're in for much more thinking.

Late Game: Not many people make it here without trying out the Hacked Version, since it takes an extremely long time of training and more training. But if you did get here without Hacks, then I commend you on your patience. Once your at this point of the game, your earlier rounds will seem like a walk in the park, and you are probably getting Solarbeam and Sunny Day for Kyogre. When you are at this point, there's not much I can tell you without you already knowing. So, have fun and enjoy the rest of the game.

The links to both the Hacked and UnHacked Versions of Pokemon Tower Defence will be posted underneath this paragraph. Try the game out, and remember that if you use the hacked version, your account will stay as a Hacked account. So you probably won't be able to trade your Pokemon for UnHacked ones.

Pokemon Tower Defence by SamAndDanGames

http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/566150 

Hacked Version

http://www.hackedarcadegames.com/game/5714/Pokemon-Tower-Defense.html 

-The Rooster

Game Review: Rebuild

 

Time To Rebuild

During my long search for good turn based strategy games, I luckily came across Rebuild, on Kongregate. I wasn't so popular back then, maybe a year or so ago, but now is one of the most popular games in the Strategy section of the website, and on many other sites as well. This game isn't too hard to play, and doesn't require you to be a full time strategy gamer to win. The only fault that I find in this game is that when you have reached a certain point in the game where you have tons of buildings and people, it gets somewhat boring because you are guaranteed to win, even if you don't have half the map cleared. But don't go getting the idea that the game is just a walk in the park, it will take some time before you can secure a victory, and if you play on one of the more difficult modes, it'll be hell and will punish you if you are lazy and put no thoughts behind plans.

The storyline in Rebuild is that the world is taken over by Zeds (zombies) and you are isolated to a part of your city with a few people that you start with. The goal of the game is to first, get people to join you, scavenge for food, and kill zombies to reclaim infested areas. There are specialists that have abilities, but I'll get into that a little later, for now I'll tell you what you have to do to win.

Your Goal

As I've said, the goal of this game is to kill all the Zeds, but there are many ways to do so in this game. Most ways don't require you to eliminate all of the zombies. You could build a city by first securing the City Hall, then using five Leaders to form an official city, and you win. You can also research a cure to the Zed infection with Scientists, or destroy the Zombie portal. Eliminating and reclaiming all the map is another way of winning, and get you more points for it as well. When you win one way, you can continue on in your game to discover other ways of winning, thus giving you more points. I'm not entirely sure I have achieved all the different ways to win yet, but you can try the game out for yourself.

Specialists

So as I've said I would explain, here are the different types of specialists and their abilities.

Leader

1. Leaders, these are very important, in fact you are a Leader, when you start the game, you will get to choose your gender and name, and also the name of your city. Starting the game, you are the only Leader, but there are two different ways to get more, I'll explain the first one. When you are in game, you can see the Zed infested blocks next to your territory, if you click it, you can see if there are any survivors there, if there are, you can send people to recruit them. Recruiting with any citizens other than Leaders may result in a failure, but if you send a Leader along a recruiting mission, you will always have a successes. Whenever you recruit citizens, their occupation will be random, so it depends on luck whether you get the Specialist that you want.

Soldier

2. The second type of Specialists are Soldiers. Soldiers are very important, since they are the ones that kill the Zeds. Whenever you send any other type of Specialist, or even a citizen with no skill, they have a chance of maiming themselves, or get themselves killed, when you send Soldiers along, you can reduce the chances of death. You can see the chances for getting a loss during a mission when you are sending the citizens. There will be a red % that tells you what the chances of casualty are, so you should always check and see if you want to take chances or not. Soldiers are also very capable of defending your city against Zombie invasions, but I'll get to that later.

Scavenger

3. Scavengers are very useful in early game, but you probably won't need them as much when you begin monopolizing the map. Normally, when you scavenge a tile, you can only get a little bit of food at a time, but if you send a scavenger, then you can collect much more, but later on, you will have enough food producing tiles that food won't be a problem to you. It's the early game that requires you to do a lot of scavenging.

4. The fourth type are Builders, they speed up production when changing unusable tiles into usable ones, and also speed up the claiming of a territory. Builders are somewhat useful late game, since they help with the expansion of your city.

Builder

You can change the following buildings
Rubble---Park---Parking Lot---Farm---Suburbs
Motel---Apartment---School
8-12 Mart---McNoodles---Warehouse---Church---Hospital
XXOR Gas---Laboratory---Bar
Graveyard
Big Farm

Red = Unusable
Black = Usable

Scientist

5. Now last but not least are the Scientists. To win the game with scientists only requires time and a Laboratory. You have to study all of the pre-requisite researches and then you can research the cure for Zeds. The pre-requisites also help you in other modes of winning by increasing effectiveness of soldiers, or productivity of farms. They can also help prevent death and some researched can increase the effectiveness of hospitals, which means fewer deaths.


Winning will require you to use these specialists to help your city thrive and kill the Zed. I've mentioned that there are two ways to getting Leaders. As said, you can get a leader if you are lucky enough to recruit one, but the other way is far better and requires no luck. I will explain how in the "Buildings" part of this review. Which is the next paragraph, so enjoy.

Useful Buildings/Tiles

1. Police Station: is one of the first buildings you get. In the police station, or any other type of defensive structure, you may assign citizens to defend the city from random attacks and Zombie Hordes (more detail later). In the police station, you may check the defensive strength of your city and you can add more people on guard duty to increase your strength. You may also check the likely-hood of a Zombie attack killing one of your citizens or taking a building from you.

Farm

2. Farm: These buildings produce food for your population. You start off with one farm, and it won't produce enough for your people, so you will have to either scavenge, or reclaim other farms for food to sustain your population.

Suburbs

3. Suburbs: provides living space for citizens, having more of these lets you recruit more survivors. However, the more survivors you have, the more food you will need each turn to sustain them. So think wisely when making the choice of recruiting. You start off with two of these.

4. Apartment: This building provides more living space than suburbs, if you don't need more space, you can always construct a School out of this building and vice-versa.

School

5. School: Having a school allows you to educate a survivor regardless of whether they are a specialist or not, so that they become a specialist of your choice. It takes 3 turns to educate your survivors, and you may educate up to 3 survivors in one school. Having multiple schools may be useful if you want to change a citizen's profession, but if you don't you can always build an Apartment out of this.

6. Church: allows you to throw parties, increasing your happiness by 10% if you employ a regular citizen, and 15% if you employ a Leader, you may also employ 2 Leaders to make it a 20% boost. This costs 50 food, so you may not want to do this if you are starving your city.

Hospital

7. Hospital: have chances to save lives, where otherwise they may die from a disease or Zombie wound. Always having at least one is very useful, since it can save many lives over the course of an unpredictable game.

8. Laboratory: Let's you employ Scientists to research important technologies, and is provides a means of winning the game. Each Scientist you employ speeds up research time by 1 day. 

Technologies and Descriptions:

     Research Binoculars
Help spot more living survivors while scouting new areas. 

     Research Radio
Hopefully people will hear our signal and come to join us. 

- Requires: Binoculars 

     Research Electricity
Make everyone happier with grid power for the whole fort. 

- Requires: Binoculars, Radio 

     Research Preservation
Get more food from scavenging and stop it from going bad. 

     Research Pesticides
Put a stop to bugs and disease that cause crops to fail.

- Requires: Preservation 

     Research Fertilizer
Farms will produce extra food.

- Requires: Preservation, Pesticides 

     Research Zombie Vitals
Knowing where to aim makes killing zombies easier. 

     Research Stealth
Makes it safer to scout and scavenge far away.

 - Requires: Zombie Vitals 

     Research Antivenom
Big defense bonus when facing zombies in or outside the fort. 

- Requires: Zombie Vitals, Stealth

Church

9. Bar: same as the Church, you may throw parties at the cost of 50 food with the same happiness gains of 10% with a citizen, 15% with a Leader, or 20% with Two Leaders.

10. Big Farm: this is the food producing apartment, provides for food than a regular farm, but may not be changed into anything else.

Useless Buildings/Tiles

1. Rubble, Park, Parking Lot: can be constructed into either Suburbs or Farms.

2. Motel: can be constructed into an Apartment or a School

3. 8-12 Mart, McNoodles, Warehouse: can be constructed into a Hospital or a Church

4. XXOR Gas: can be constructed into a Laboratory or a Bar

5. Graveyard: The most useless of all buildings, cannot be constructed into anything.

Special Buildings

1. City Hall: owning this allows you to create a city with 5 Leaders

2. Evil Graveyard: can destroy the Zed portal with 15 Soldiers

3. Mall: can be fortified to increase city defence against invading Zombies

In-Game Features

Survivors: You are a survivor, and your goal is to recruit other survivors and kill zombies. You can view the number of survivors you have on the bar on the top of the screen. Hovering your cursor over the picture of your survivors will tell you how many survivors you have, how many are unoccupied, and how many more survivors you may recruit.

Food: Keeps your survivors alive if you run out, your survivors will starve and may quite possibly die. You can see how much food you have left, how much you produce, and much does it take to sustain your survivors. Keeping tabs on this will help you a lot.

Happiness: If you do not have happiness, some survivors may leave you, and acquiring all but the conquest victory will require at least 50% Happiness. If you are unhappy all the time, you will not make it far into the game.

Random Encounters:  During your play, you may meet merchants, rival gangs, and events such as Zombie Shoot-Outs. There are many of them and most of them are bad, such as someone getting bit by a zombie and die, or a dog died and you lose happiness. Some good ones eliminate Zeds around you too, although they are few, and only appear when you have lots of Happiness.

GamePlay

The way you play the game is, each turn you are allowed to send units to surrounding tiles to either Scout, Scavenge, Kill Zombies, or Reclaim Land. You may only send one mission per tile. What I don't like about this game is that there is luck involved. If you send one of your only soldiers off early game with a 1% chance of death, and it actually dies, you have to start over or it will be hell for you. 

Early Game Tactics

When I start my game, I look for farms first. If you can't find any on the map, then you can either scout the area and see if you can locate of close by, or restart the game for a better map. Farms are my number one concern because if you do not scavenge enough, you will lose within 20-30 turns with  only one farm. While you are looking for your farms, you should also recruit some people and hope for some soldiers since they are extremely important early game, although you should not recruit too much or you won't have enough food for everyone. When you get about 3-4 farms (1 Big Farm=2 Farms), you should start recruiting more and scavenging more.

Middle Game Tactics

When you've got a decent military, maybe about 10-20 soldiers, and have about 30-40 population, you should find a school and make some more soldiers and construction workers. The reason for this is because you should start clearing out Zed infested tiles so that when they invade, they will be much weaker. With the Builders you can reclaim lands faster, you probably need about 3-4 at this part of the game. If you have those, you will be about to reclaim about 1 Tile per turn. If you have lots of food saved up, you should wait until you get more survivors, you never know when a Zed invasion may take one of your farms and starve you later on.

Late Game Tactics

So you now have about 50-60 soldiers with almost 80 Survivors in total. You should start looking for the City Hall or the Evil Graveyard to win this. Before you do this, you should know that taking these two will require lots of soldiers, so find and fortify some Malls and Wallmarts in case the Zombies attack while you are launching your attacks. During this time, you should also throw some parties to get happiness if you have an abundance of food, since Zombie-Shoot-Outs clear away lots of Zed around your city that may decide to attack.

Later Late Game Tactics

Well, here is when you've taken the City Hall or the Evil Graveyard, now it is time to claim both of them and find some Laboratories. If you found a Laboratory early on, you should start researching. Although, you would only need one so you don't need to claim any more until you have won by making a city or destroying the portal in the Evil Graveyard. When you have finished all the researches, you may begin finding a cure to Zombieism, then it will make conquering the whole map much easier for the last Ending.

If you would like to ask any more questions about this game please leave a comment and I'll answer. If you would like to play this game, the link will be on the bottom of the post. Also, a note, this review is of Rebuild 1, there is also a Rebuild 2, I won't be making a review of that, since it is similar to this, with just a few changes that you can see for yourself. I will be placing the Rebuild 2 link down below as well.

Rebuild

http://www.kongregate.com/games/sarahnorthway/rebuild?acomplete=rebuild 

Rebuild 2

http://www.kongregate.com/games/sarahnorthway/rebuild-2?acomplete=rebuild 

-The Rooster