Some thoughts. Your wall base is OK and you make some good points about attack surface, HP per block, etc - but your wall design lacks collapse tolerance. If anything breaks on the front of this wall, a lot will break with it. You'll lose the windows and even the firing platform, endangering your troops. If you use longer pieces (but side on) on the base, you can support the upper wall structure with blocks from a layer back while still upgrading the toughness on the outer layer. Think of 3x1s as an example. You correctly identify that we don't want to use these with 3 blocks exposed - however, consider a base of these sideways on, two thick (for six blocks length total). You can then put another layer of 3x1s across both of these, 2 back from the front, such that they are over the front layer but are supported by the back layer. From there you can build your wall up with windows etc just as you've done here, but based on the overlap section. If you do this, you'll get an upgraded and disposable front layer that doesn't support anything. For firing platforms, you don't want stone arches to come from your window wall. You want them to come from your further back layers. You can stack two stone arches going across and then put a wooden platform on top of that. Done correctly, your firing platform is actually supported by your third layer, meaning that you need to lose at minimum three upgraded 3x1s, all with an attack surface of 1 block, before your troops are endangered. I think your walls go a bit high. Your walls are cheaper than the design I'm suggesting so you can probably get away with it, but you only want them to be that high for hunters, which are broadly not a very important troop type. With a shorter wall you can use wall banners to buff troops on both floors with one banner as well as it costing less stone. Merlons will upgrade the wall without having to go as high, remember. I do like your staircases. I always make a mess of those, and I hadn't cottoned onto using arches in stone stairways.
Hey there, thanks so much for your comments! I absolutely agree with you that the firing platform should preferably be on a separate set of supports. One small correction is that the current design will tolerate 1 block to fall before the windows fall, and then a second block to fall if it is on an adjacent window. That said, the stone arch firing platform will crumble. I didn't really come across any breaches in my playthrough so long as I had Healing Veil up and had managed my economy correctly/had enough units, so as is this should be sufficient and cheap to get through Extreme campaign! That said, ABSOLUTELY agree that the firing platform will ideally be on a separate set of supports if you can afford it. And yes, you're totally right that I built mine 1 square too high, I forgot to put the Merlons in in the initial clip. If you have Windows/Roof, you can put it down yet another square! Thanks again I just love the nerdy RTS architecture chatter this game encourages :)
Exactly what I had in mind. I've been doing this and it enables you to make best use of your defensive positions, with enough wiggle room to retreat once the front wall collapses without endangering the troops over the firing platform behind it. The support stone blocks of the firing platforms itself shall serve as a very welcome barrier to buy time for the troops to retreat to an inner wall, get into position and make another stand.
@@RocketCatRTS On hard or extreme difficulty this design breaks very easily. On medium you can go 100 waves without any issue (endless), but on hard these designs have to be switched out by wave 40 or earlier. Lost 15 units to the whole wall crumbling because wave 40 smthing broke 3 pieces next to each other. Having units standing on the wall being attacked, and having wood platforms to extend the surface area units stand on; is a mistake. If you play on hard that is :)
@@katel2610 Hey there :) Just hit Extreme Endless wave 60. I'm getting together a video on that! You're correct, this wall is not sufficient for Extreme Endless. I have a slightly revised design, but still with vertical 1x3s at the bottom!
Finally someone made a video about the surface area. It was really triggering me other channels were promoting the "stacking" over single 1x3 front blocks for the front to the point I wanted to make a video about it myself. You literally triple the amount of effective HP just by doing that. That being said there are also additional things to take into consideration regarding stacking the upper layers so your entire segment does not collapse. Ideally you want to use 3x1 flat pieces only exposing one side for max HP and max height left in order to stack on top. I think someone has already mentioned that in the comment below. IMO this is the best/simplest way to build walls. I also use the the space between my 1x3 block and arch for 1x1 pieces to level the surface. I like the stairs with the stone arch. I was doing similar staircase by spinning arches but this one is better. "borrowing" it 😂
Still wrong, u neer 3 long flat 3 high, then 3 tall straight behind and then 3 long flat behind that with a cross flat 3 on top then if the first row breaks the one behind that keeps the higher floors standing so no troops fall or die
@@nick230699 Yes and then you place your cannons on lvl 10 🤣Just because you can build stonger wall like that in theory it doesn't make it a better structure
Hey there thanks for your comment! Absolutely agree with you that there is more min/maxing to do in my design! I'm familiar with the "min/maxed to the nines" designs of CalenLoki's (who also did the stone staircase blueprint linked in the video description). I'm personally fond of my simple wall since it was cheap and sturdy enough to get me through extreme campaign and easy to improvise around varying map features in campaign, and easy to start having success with. But I'm SURE it'd start to fall over once I hit upper waves of Extreme Endless. Still looking for a good Extreme Endless seed to push my architecture nerd-ness to new heights, and it's super helpful to have comments like yours for some food for thought!
Thanks for posting these tips. I just started playing the game last night and had the second tier monsters (w/horns?) tear down a wall in no time flat. Didn't realize surface area was so important! Anyway, need to get some of the other basics down, like using the camera so that I can quckly see what I need to, vs being blocked by the environment.
Been loving this game so far. I caught onto the spiral staircase method pretty quickly but seeing the doorway as support trick for stone stairways and scaffolding short arch for support on wood stairways is going to be a game changer for me! Thanks!
Yeah the arch door as support trick is a legendary find (which I cannot take credit for, blueprint in the comments!). Glad you're loving the game so far, I know I am!
Great game and great set of tips. As others have stated there is collapse risk though so I'll add what I have been doing. I start by rushing lots of stone (when the map allows) then I aim for 3-4 wall thickness (depending on resources in the bank). For the bottom horizonal & 3-4 deep columns, I follow your three high stone stacks, if the ground doesn't allow for flat rows, then I fill in the columns above the 3 heighs with whatever vertical pieces fit until I have a flat surface, 3-4 rows deep. This next part is crucial, the next rows above need to be either the 3 or 4 long stone pieces running along the deep row axis, this adds support from the deeper columns if the front column fails. To make the height needed for full strength walls, I repeat this process vertically and allow for windows at different heights. I haven’t had a single wall breach since using this method. Thanks again for the tips, those spiral staircases are perfect!
I built my walls using a line of 1x1, followed by 2x1, then with a 3x1 on top all of which are oriented in the same direction. Above that I use interlocking 2x1 pieces. Per line, this wall base has two points of contact with the enemy and can tolerate two adjacent lines being broken without structural failure above. As another commenter mentioned, your building lacks any tolerance for collapse. Losing your bottom 3x1s means losing everything above. Reading the comments, I feel I've addressed both of the most common issues with my design: providing minimal attack surface while maximizing health and strong structure that can withstand significant undermining.
Hmm. I just tried out this idea in Sandbox, and I'm not sure if I fully understand your meaning! It will tolerate two breaks, but only if the breaks occur where it is not lined up with the 2x1 above. That is the same as what I have here, which tolerate up to 2 breaks so long as the breaks do not line up with the 2x1 windows above. Of course, the firing platform in the video is connected to that line, so that troop would need to move, but otherwise the breakage pattern seems to be identical? Again apologies if I misunderstood your design idea! A bit hard to grasp without images :)
@@RocketCatRTS it's an interesting thought experiment trying to explain the 3d building through text, certainly! I'll give it another try. In my blueprint the wall is 8 blocks wide, as reference. Looking straight on, you have the two height base layer as described above. Atop that, place three 2x1 blocks, offset one from the left, so the third layer has three 2x1 blocks in the center and two 1x2 blocks to the left and right sides. The fourth layer is four windows. The fifth layer is identical to the third, but with 1x1 blocks on the end. Finally, use four 2x1 blocks capped with merlons. For platforms use wooden long arches in a separate wooden structure. The final build costs 274 stone and is max strength.
Just to be clear, I am by no means am attempting to undermine your video and the work you've done. I'm just proud of my build and want to share it with someone that clearly cares about the game.
If you are struggling with menus like I was initially, make sure to use the dropper tool (v) if your using enough pieces that the shift scrolling is too inconvenient. I bound mine to mb4 and once you get used to it, I find building flows way quicker. If you're struggling with visibility and organizing your troops 'Transparency Filter' in settings under camera can be super helpful to see what going on in chaotic buildings.
Your walls lack a critical feature for them to be good. If a single piece of 1x3 stone on the base of the walls break, the entire section wall comes down with it, killing your units on top. Instead of the stone arches, add horizontal 3x1 stone pieces that will support your windows even if one section of the base wall breaks. For wooden staircases, it’s much simpler to stack 2x1 wooden arches each rotated clockwise from one another, then adding the 2x1 wooden steps to it.
Thanks for your comment! I tried your 2x1 wooden arch idea, but it needs support to place the 4th arch. Curious what you mean here, would be great to have a simpler way to build low footprint wood stairs, especially at a low tech level :) And just one clarification. In my current design the break will stop at the window, and it can handle up to 2 adjacent breaks if the 2nd break is on a separate window. The firing platform will start to crumble after one break yes and ideally the firing platform will be more fault tolerant in the future! Thankfully, I didn't really have many issues with breakages in Extreme Campaign provided I had Healing Veil up and had managed my economy correctly, so this should be sufficient for peeps to get started with a simple design!
@@RocketCatRTS if you spam 2x1 wooden arches where each of them is rotated by 90 degrees straight upwards, you can place 2x1 wooden stairs on each of of the arches sticking out of the wooden tower, does that make sense? its a fast way to make wooden stairs :). If you select the wooden archway as if you were to place it, hover the archway over one block. press left click followed with right click, and continue doing that on repeat. that will make a tower with archways each rotated 90 degrees. Then u can place stairs on the ones sticking out of the towers. Difficult to explain
@@valhalix8397 Ooh I get it now! If I did it correctly just now, we end up with a 3x3 footprint... Hmmm, I think I still prefer my method, but this method seems more easily stackable via blueprint!
That was really helpful! Thank you for sharing. Edit: I think there should also be a way to have the stairs double as support for the back platforms, even if it's only partially.
really good wall tutorial for max hp! lots of space for the flags etc on the platform too. kinda funny you're averse to blueprints, I used them for the individual sections of my walls just to make it a bit quicker then build manually to adapt to the terrain.
Haha yes I wouldn't say I'm averse to blueprints. I definitely was fighting the urge to use them at first... But hell, I'm a Factorio player... I can't not use blueprints in the end!
9:17 Since it almost always for walls then You can replace some stone in your wall for aditional support. (use same blocks as you used for the arch on top, use them every 4blocks going up) This way You will save a lot of wood. Eventually for standalone stairs, You can use stone phillar with arch blocks every 4block and then do the wood staircase around the phillar. Also if you try to reach some cutoff land behind cliff or something then you can combine stone and wood to reach further without support.
Yes, there is ABSOLUTELY more room for greater fault tolerance in wall design, such as the method you suggest! For the purposes of extreme campaign, what I have here was gratefully sufficient so long as I was using Healing Veil correctly and had managed my economy well during the day/had enough units. Since there seems to be quite a lot of interest in this sort of topic, I'll happily dive even deeper into wall design in the future! Thanks again for your comment!
You can use a 3 wide block and just rotate it 90 degrees. So it just exposes a single block but with high HP. It also gives your low altitude troops something to stand on to attack through windows. Having the platform for the troops at a lower altitude also means the troops work better if the wall is in front of a ravine/valley. With your initial design they will fall off hard if the altitude increases due to lower terrain.
How do you deal with scenarios where you need to level the ground underneath with a 1 x 1 block? I've had those become vulnerable spots where a rotated 3 x 1 first layer wouldn't fit. I try to put a cross piece above so if the 1 x 1 falls, the rest of the wall is fine, but I'm out of the 3 x 1 pattern with that solution. I wish the game based the base level block HP on wall height alone and not various block types. Would make wall building less convoluted and people could focus on designing effective walls and not micro-placing specific block types.
@@joek8054 As long as a rotated 3x1 fits, then they aren't a vulnerability point. Since the 3x1 can support the rest of the wall as it's attached to ground behind. If you can't fit a 3x1 you could always try lifting the wall to a higher altitude. Besides that, you could also try to make the lower end of the wall jut out a bit in those locations so you can still fit a 3x1. It's at the cost of some surface area, but horrors also tend to path badly against uneven surfaces. You can also simply just make a thicker wall in the location where you have a weakness by adding some blocks at the back (horrors tend to path away from thicker walls). You could also simply replace the 3x1 brick in the locations where it's outright impossible with a 1x3, in which case that specific spot won't have a window. Last option, just accept the lower durability in that spot..
Hey there! At the top of the build menu, there's a blueprint section. "Create New" will let you make your own. Otherwise, browsing the workshop, such as the one linked in the description, and subscribed blueprints will be listed there! Have fun :)
Curious about your thoughts in interlocking blocks to increase wall durability. I have to imagine that overlapping the 2x1 horizontal bricks will result in the wall being able to take an additional hit unlike in a fully vertical wall like your example.
You would think, but no. I was quite surprised myself. You essentially half the effective HP by exposing 2 blocks to the enemy. It is even worse with 3x1 because your effective is 1/3 with 3 blocks exposed. Once you have laid your initial 1x3 tall pieces you can start stacking up in the brick pattern. I like to keep my walls double so I stack front to back which makes them almost indestructible You keep you soldiers up on the walls even after the enemies went through them if you have built high enough.
@@CostelloDamian Good point. I second the double wall. Learned that one the hard way when everyone fell to their death that one time when everything was held up by a single layer.... If I'm not mistaken you mean a layout like so with this being a side on cross section of two uprights 3x1 and a horizontal 2x1 on top so that the stacked brick is supported by both: _ || Considering it again there may be a way to stack interlocked bricks on top of a horizontal 3x1 (as shown in your video) for making the lower fighting platforms a little more stable.
@@TheOneLichemperor Exactly like that. You can brick stack from lvl3 upwards. The only problem is you need want a window as lvl5. The best I have came up with. Is _ _ _ < double windows _ _ < 2x1 IIII < 1x3 You then position your soldiers on the structure behind not connected to the main wall.
Is there a definitive benefit to staggering the placement of bricks on each row? IRL it makes it much harder for a single section of the wall to collapse.
From what I've seen (and MAYBE there is another way), you can withstand up to 2 breaks at the bottom if the break is on an adjacent 2x1, and it doesn't matter if it's staggered or not!
To a certain extent. Destruction of one lower 2x1 block does not lead to destruction, but destruction of two leads to destruction of all upper ones, both completely and partially resting on them. That is, if you have a shift by one section (conditionally 2x2x2x2 and 1x2x2x2x1), then destruction of two lower 2x1 blocks will lead to the collapse of one 2x1 in the second row, two 2x1 in the third, one in the fourth, two in the third and so on to the very top. Apparently, this is an error in the game code: the block must have at least one edge directly supported on the surface and will collapse if it is not, regardless of how well it is fixed by the side stops. In the game, it is currently impossible to build a symmetrical arch from brick blocks. the situation gets worse if you try to build a wall from 3x1 blocks - the destruction of one block in the first row can cause the destruction of three by the fifth row - and it will get worse. Alas, at the moment the best way is to build strictly vertically upwards with minimal connection between the columns.
FYI I did end up seeing the advantage to staggering. And learning an OP trick with windows + fault tolerance. All covered in new vid! th-cam.com/video/94n_kbfGjXk/w-d-xo.html
I've found stone to be an unlimited resource at even early levels, is it not better to make walls 3 layers thick so when the first layer is broken you don't lose the unit right above it?
Perhaps you've been managing your economy better than I have, but if memory serves, especially on the later levels and ESPECIALLY level 10, I felt strapped for stone and need to budget my stone builds a fair bit. The daytime on Extreme is so short, not much time for gatherers to do their thing. Personally I found with Healing Veil that I did not need extra layers. Sometimes I'd throw 4 high walls in front as a bit of fodder if I had a bit of extra stone, and traps in front of that, but by in large the real hero is Healing Veil!
Hah well! If you have a look through my Extreme Endless playthrough, you'll see some pretty formidable walls. In the higher waves of extreme endless though, I'm not sure there can be such a thing unless terrain generation is extremely favorable!
I don't like tower defense games either actually, ahaha. Well, not since the old days of playing them on Brood War and Warcraft 3 custom maps where they originated. But I LOVE this game, and it doesn't strike me as very tower defense-y... :D
Hello! Love the video and the game. I was wondering if there is a max durability and therefore an optimal max height that we should avoid going over? I could test but I'm lazy :)
Hey there! There is indeed an optimal durability. When you stack bricks on top of other bricks, they change color and go through Low, Medium, High, and Max durability which you can see by the change of color and by clicking on the brick. The purple-ish walls are the max durability, I think it's around 12m, though I can't remember off the top of my head. You can also make them lower max durability by including Merlons on High durability walls, which turns them into Max durability walls, I believe those are around 8 or 9m from memory :)
Hey there! In this design, it's easy to place the cheaper, full sized tactics stations behind the troops on the firing platform. If you prefer the bricks, you can totally place those instead. Just pause the game and inject one where you want it when you need it!
Once you go double, triple, or quadruple thick with the wall, it's not possible to fit Merlons unfortunately. I didn't talk about thickening the wall in this vid, but I will in future when I cover Extreme Endless!
Great question! I have everything on default settings on a GTX 4070ti and i7-13700KF. Aside from trying out contrast settings on your monitor and messing around with the video settings, I'd say that is a question best left for the devs or the experts in this field... I love Steve Saylor's videos in particular and caniplaythat.com/ as good knowledge when working on my own game dev stuff! There is also a subreddit for blind or low vision gamers here where you might find some guidance: www.reddit.com/r/blindgamers/
Bad design. If your walls fall, so do your low units. Always have all units on a structure supported behind the barrier wall, not supported by the barrier wall itself!!
Hey there! Thanks for your comment, this video mainly covers surface area and base block HP for beginners. If you're interested more in redundant and fault tolerant designs, have a look at the sequel in the pinned comment :)
Yes it does seem like a bit of a "gotcha". The devs are aware and we'll see what they do! Personally I think HP of a stone block should just be whatever Max Toughness is and avoid this whole thing!
@@RocketCatRTS can't also build long bridges or archs unless you have the bricks to support it. Just made building very tedious unless you relied on blueprints, which then made it less creative and spontaneous
To each their own, I found the writing and story excellent so far. Reminded me a bit of a Miyazaki film. I also *love* that save scumming is in lore 👍... overall, not major production quality ofc, and yes some of the voice acting felt a bit cringey at points I agree there. Not Baldurs Gate levels of masterpiece storytelling, but not Stormgate levels of tired tropes and hollow characters either.
Absolutely agree! We aim for nerdy powergaming stuff here (most of the time), but that's for sure not the only way to play. Covered here are some concepts to help make your life easier if you just want durable walls and aren't worried about aesthetics or what-have-you, but I encourage peeps to enjoy the game the way they want :)
Want to dive deeper into wall building concepts in Cataclismo? Check out the sequel to this video here: th-cam.com/video/94n_kbfGjXk/w-d-xo.html
Some thoughts.
Your wall base is OK and you make some good points about attack surface, HP per block, etc - but your wall design lacks collapse tolerance.
If anything breaks on the front of this wall, a lot will break with it. You'll lose the windows and even the firing platform, endangering your troops.
If you use longer pieces (but side on) on the base, you can support the upper wall structure with blocks from a layer back while still upgrading the toughness on the outer layer.
Think of 3x1s as an example. You correctly identify that we don't want to use these with 3 blocks exposed - however, consider a base of these sideways on, two thick (for six blocks length total).
You can then put another layer of 3x1s across both of these, 2 back from the front, such that they are over the front layer but are supported by the back layer. From there you can build your wall up with windows etc just as you've done here, but based on the overlap section. If you do this, you'll get an upgraded and disposable front layer that doesn't support anything.
For firing platforms, you don't want stone arches to come from your window wall. You want them to come from your further back layers. You can stack two stone arches going across and then put a wooden platform on top of that. Done correctly, your firing platform is actually supported by your third layer, meaning that you need to lose at minimum three upgraded 3x1s, all with an attack surface of 1 block, before your troops are endangered.
I think your walls go a bit high. Your walls are cheaper than the design I'm suggesting so you can probably get away with it, but you only want them to be that high for hunters, which are broadly not a very important troop type. With a shorter wall you can use wall banners to buff troops on both floors with one banner as well as it costing less stone. Merlons will upgrade the wall without having to go as high, remember.
I do like your staircases. I always make a mess of those, and I hadn't cottoned onto using arches in stone stairways.
Hey there, thanks so much for your comments!
I absolutely agree with you that the firing platform should preferably be on a separate set of supports. One small correction is that the current design will tolerate 1 block to fall before the windows fall, and then a second block to fall if it is on an adjacent window. That said, the stone arch firing platform will crumble. I didn't really come across any breaches in my playthrough so long as I had Healing Veil up and had managed my economy correctly/had enough units, so as is this should be sufficient and cheap to get through Extreme campaign! That said, ABSOLUTELY agree that the firing platform will ideally be on a separate set of supports if you can afford it.
And yes, you're totally right that I built mine 1 square too high, I forgot to put the Merlons in in the initial clip. If you have Windows/Roof, you can put it down yet another square!
Thanks again I just love the nerdy RTS architecture chatter this game encourages :)
Exactly what I had in mind. I've been doing this and it enables you to make best use of your defensive positions, with enough wiggle room to retreat once the front wall collapses without endangering the troops over the firing platform behind it. The support stone blocks of the firing platforms itself shall serve as a very welcome barrier to buy time for the troops to retreat to an inner wall, get into position and make another stand.
@@RocketCatRTS On hard or extreme difficulty this design breaks very easily. On medium you can go 100 waves without any issue (endless), but on hard these designs have to be switched out by wave 40 or earlier. Lost 15 units to the whole wall crumbling because wave 40 smthing broke 3 pieces next to each other.
Having units standing on the wall being attacked, and having wood platforms to extend the surface area units stand on; is a mistake. If you play on hard that is :)
@@katel2610 Hey there :) Just hit Extreme Endless wave 60. I'm getting together a video on that! You're correct, this wall is not sufficient for Extreme Endless. I have a slightly revised design, but still with vertical 1x3s at the bottom!
@Arkenai7 Can you show yours in a video. I have a hard time understanding some of your great ideas.
Finally someone made a video about the surface area. It was really triggering me other channels were promoting the "stacking" over single 1x3 front blocks for the front to the point I wanted to make a video about it myself. You literally triple the amount of effective HP just by doing that. That being said there are also additional things to take into consideration regarding stacking the upper layers so your entire segment does not collapse. Ideally you want to use 3x1 flat pieces only exposing one side for max HP and max height left in order to stack on top. I think someone has already mentioned that in the comment below. IMO this is the best/simplest way to build walls. I also use the the space between my 1x3 block and arch for 1x1 pieces to level the surface. I like the stairs with the stone arch. I was doing similar staircase by spinning arches but this one is better. "borrowing" it 😂
Still wrong, u neer 3 long flat 3 high, then 3 tall straight behind and then 3 long flat behind that with a cross flat 3 on top then if the first row breaks the one behind that keeps the higher floors standing so no troops fall or die
@@nick230699 Yes and then you place your cannons on lvl 10 🤣Just because you can build stonger wall like that in theory it doesn't make it a better structure
Hey there thanks for your comment!
Absolutely agree with you that there is more min/maxing to do in my design! I'm familiar with the "min/maxed to the nines" designs of CalenLoki's (who also did the stone staircase blueprint linked in the video description). I'm personally fond of my simple wall since it was cheap and sturdy enough to get me through extreme campaign and easy to improvise around varying map features in campaign, and easy to start having success with. But I'm SURE it'd start to fall over once I hit upper waves of Extreme Endless. Still looking for a good Extreme Endless seed to push my architecture nerd-ness to new heights, and it's super helpful to have comments like yours for some food for thought!
This game is fantastically fun as it combines a few play styles i love. Good tips here.
It really is a SUPER fun game!
Being lovin The game, cleared The game on médium, gonna eventually scaled difficulty, awesome vídeo.
Picked this game up yesterday and am glad to see it have support on here! Helpful video thank you!
Thanks for bringing up the surface area. Great tip! I'll definitely take this to mind when building my walls. Never felt like such a noob XD
Thanks for posting these tips. I just started playing the game last night and had the second tier monsters (w/horns?) tear down a wall in no time flat. Didn't realize surface area was so important! Anyway, need to get some of the other basics down, like using the camera so that I can quckly see what I need to, vs being blocked by the environment.
Best of luck, hope you enjoy the game as much as I have so far!
making the attack surface small is a great idea
Great ideas for staircases and nice to see examples of your walls!
Nice staircase in the end, good job.
Been loving this game so far. I caught onto the spiral staircase method pretty quickly but seeing the doorway as support trick for stone stairways and scaffolding short arch for support on wood stairways is going to be a game changer for me! Thanks!
Yeah the arch door as support trick is a legendary find (which I cannot take credit for, blueprint in the comments!). Glad you're loving the game so far, I know I am!
Great vid and tips i didnt even know about blueprints
Glad you enjoyed!
Please upload a playthrough of your extreme run! I’d just love to listen to your thought process and commentary over it. Subbed ✨
Thanks for the sub! Happy to post an extreme campaign run as time allows! :)
The game has been great. That said, thanks for the advice.
Great game and great set of tips. As others have stated there is collapse risk though so I'll add what I have been doing. I start by rushing lots of stone (when the map allows) then I aim for 3-4 wall thickness (depending on resources in the bank). For the bottom horizonal & 3-4 deep columns, I follow your three high stone stacks, if the ground doesn't allow for flat rows, then I fill in the columns above the 3 heighs with whatever vertical pieces fit until I have a flat surface, 3-4 rows deep. This next part is crucial, the next rows above need to be either the 3 or 4 long stone pieces running along the deep row axis, this adds support from the deeper columns if the front column fails. To make the height needed for full strength walls, I repeat this process vertically and allow for windows at different heights. I haven’t had a single wall breach since using this method. Thanks again for the tips, those spiral staircases are perfect!
I built my walls using a line of 1x1, followed by 2x1, then with a 3x1 on top all of which are oriented in the same direction. Above that I use interlocking 2x1 pieces. Per line, this wall base has two points of contact with the enemy and can tolerate two adjacent lines being broken without structural failure above.
As another commenter mentioned, your building lacks any tolerance for collapse. Losing your bottom 3x1s means losing everything above. Reading the comments, I feel I've addressed both of the most common issues with my design: providing minimal attack surface while maximizing health and strong structure that can withstand significant undermining.
Hmm. I just tried out this idea in Sandbox, and I'm not sure if I fully understand your meaning! It will tolerate two breaks, but only if the breaks occur where it is not lined up with the 2x1 above. That is the same as what I have here, which tolerate up to 2 breaks so long as the breaks do not line up with the 2x1 windows above. Of course, the firing platform in the video is connected to that line, so that troop would need to move, but otherwise the breakage pattern seems to be identical? Again apologies if I misunderstood your design idea! A bit hard to grasp without images :)
@@RocketCatRTS it's an interesting thought experiment trying to explain the 3d building through text, certainly! I'll give it another try.
In my blueprint the wall is 8 blocks wide, as reference. Looking straight on, you have the two height base layer as described above. Atop that, place three 2x1 blocks, offset one from the left, so the third layer has three 2x1 blocks in the center and two 1x2 blocks to the left and right sides. The fourth layer is four windows. The fifth layer is identical to the third, but with 1x1 blocks on the end. Finally, use four 2x1 blocks capped with merlons. For platforms use wooden long arches in a separate wooden structure. The final build costs 274 stone and is max strength.
Just to be clear, I am by no means am attempting to undermine your video and the work you've done. I'm just proud of my build and want to share it with someone that clearly cares about the game.
@@big_tasty1 Cheers! I'll see if I can wrap my brain around the idea in the morning with coffee... My brain is fried now pushing Endless Extreme :D
Thanks for the guide. Was getting into the game and needed this.
Thanks for making it's content
This is great. Very informative thankyou
If you are struggling with menus like I was initially, make sure to use the dropper tool (v) if your using enough pieces that the shift scrolling is too inconvenient. I bound mine to mb4 and once you get used to it, I find building flows way quicker.
If you're struggling with visibility and organizing your troops 'Transparency Filter' in settings under camera can be super helpful to see what going on in chaotic buildings.
GREAT TIPS, I've started using the dropper tool more and more but it's still not in muscle memory yet.
Thank you so much for this video bro !
Thanks, I think I’ll pick up this game today
Your walls lack a critical feature for them to be good. If a single piece of 1x3 stone on the base of the walls break, the entire section wall comes down with it, killing your units on top. Instead of the stone arches, add horizontal 3x1 stone pieces that will support your windows even if one section of the base wall breaks. For wooden staircases, it’s much simpler to stack 2x1 wooden arches each rotated clockwise from one another, then adding the 2x1 wooden steps to it.
Thanks for your comment!
I tried your 2x1 wooden arch idea, but it needs support to place the 4th arch. Curious what you mean here, would be great to have a simpler way to build low footprint wood stairs, especially at a low tech level :)
And just one clarification. In my current design the break will stop at the window, and it can handle up to 2 adjacent breaks if the 2nd break is on a separate window. The firing platform will start to crumble after one break yes and ideally the firing platform will be more fault tolerant in the future! Thankfully, I didn't really have many issues with breakages in Extreme Campaign provided I had Healing Veil up and had managed my economy correctly, so this should be sufficient for peeps to get started with a simple design!
@@RocketCatRTS if you spam 2x1 wooden arches where each of them is rotated by 90 degrees straight upwards, you can place 2x1 wooden stairs on each of of the arches sticking out of the wooden tower, does that make sense? its a fast way to make wooden stairs :).
If you select the wooden archway as if you were to place it, hover the archway over one block. press left click followed with right click, and continue doing that on repeat. that will make a tower with archways each rotated 90 degrees. Then u can place stairs on the ones sticking out of the towers. Difficult to explain
@@valhalix8397 Ooh I get it now! If I did it correctly just now, we end up with a 3x3 footprint... Hmmm, I think I still prefer my method, but this method seems more easily stackable via blueprint!
Cool I wondered how to maximise durability, thank you and have a good one.
Cheers, you too!
That was really helpful! Thank you for sharing.
Edit: I think there should also be a way to have the stairs double as support for the back platforms, even if it's only partially.
Ooh nice idea!
love this game , thanks for the tips
good to know, thank you
really good wall tutorial for max hp! lots of space for the flags etc on the platform too. kinda funny you're averse to blueprints, I used them for the individual sections of my walls just to make it a bit quicker then build manually to adapt to the terrain.
Haha yes I wouldn't say I'm averse to blueprints. I definitely was fighting the urge to use them at first... But hell, I'm a Factorio player... I can't not use blueprints in the end!
9:17
Since it almost always for walls then You can replace some stone in your wall for aditional support. (use same blocks as you used for the arch on top, use them every 4blocks going up)
This way You will save a lot of wood.
Eventually for standalone stairs, You can use stone phillar with arch blocks every 4block and then do the wood staircase around the phillar.
Also if you try to reach some cutoff land behind cliff or something then you can combine stone and wood to reach further without support.
I've been working on tile-able walls, especially ones that work as extra layers in front of the main wall.
Thanks! That was super helpful. Should use more blueprints xD
Very helpful. Thanks!
Love the game also.
Nifty video, thanks for sharing!
Thanks for watching!
Love this game
Pleeeease continue Cataclismo content!
Excellent and clear.
Great video, I definitely learned some cool tricks and designs!
Yes, there is ABSOLUTELY more room for greater fault tolerance in wall design, such as the method you suggest! For the purposes of extreme campaign, what I have here was gratefully sufficient so long as I was using Healing Veil correctly and had managed my economy well during the day/had enough units. Since there seems to be quite a lot of interest in this sort of topic, I'll happily dive even deeper into wall design in the future!
Thanks again for your comment!
love this, thanks for sharing!
Thanks for watching!
Looks good!
You can use a 3 wide block and just rotate it 90 degrees. So it just exposes a single block but with high HP. It also gives your low altitude troops something to stand on to attack through windows. Having the platform for the troops at a lower altitude also means the troops work better if the wall is in front of a ravine/valley. With your initial design they will fall off hard if the altitude increases due to lower terrain.
How do you deal with scenarios where you need to level the ground underneath with a 1 x 1 block? I've had those become vulnerable spots where a rotated 3 x 1 first layer wouldn't fit. I try to put a cross piece above so if the 1 x 1 falls, the rest of the wall is fine, but I'm out of the 3 x 1 pattern with that solution. I wish the game based the base level block HP on wall height alone and not various block types. Would make wall building less convoluted and people could focus on designing effective walls and not micro-placing specific block types.
@@joek8054 As long as a rotated 3x1 fits, then they aren't a vulnerability point. Since the 3x1 can support the rest of the wall as it's attached to ground behind.
If you can't fit a 3x1 you could always try lifting the wall to a higher altitude.
Besides that, you could also try to make the lower end of the wall jut out a bit in those locations so you can still fit a 3x1. It's at the cost of some surface area, but horrors also tend to path badly against uneven surfaces.
You can also simply just make a thicker wall in the location where you have a weakness by adding some blocks at the back (horrors tend to path away from thicker walls).
You could also simply replace the 3x1 brick in the locations where it's outright impossible with a 1x3, in which case that specific spot won't have a window.
Last option, just accept the lower durability in that spot..
@@joek8054 you place a 3 tile high block first and level off the top instead of the bottom
Thank you ! 😁
this was helpful.
Great video thanks!
Thank you
Great vid!!! Hey, how do I save something as a blueprint? Mabe do a vid on that and some of the most useful prints?
Hey there! At the top of the build menu, there's a blueprint section. "Create New" will let you make your own. Otherwise, browsing the workshop, such as the one linked in the description, and subscribed blueprints will be listed there! Have fun :)
thx for sharing!
Curious about your thoughts in interlocking blocks to increase wall durability.
I have to imagine that overlapping the 2x1 horizontal bricks will result in the wall being able to take an additional hit unlike in a fully vertical wall like your example.
You would think, but no. I was quite surprised myself. You essentially half the effective HP by exposing 2 blocks to the enemy. It is even worse with 3x1 because your effective is 1/3 with 3 blocks exposed. Once you have laid your initial 1x3 tall pieces you can start stacking up in the brick pattern. I like to keep my walls double so I stack front to back which makes them almost indestructible You keep you soldiers up on the walls even after the enemies went through them if you have built high enough.
@@CostelloDamian
Good point.
I second the double wall. Learned that one the hard way when everyone fell to their death that one time when everything was held up by a single layer....
If I'm not mistaken you mean a layout like so with this being a side on cross section of two uprights 3x1 and a horizontal 2x1 on top so that the stacked brick is supported by both:
_
||
Considering it again there may be a way to stack interlocked bricks on top of a horizontal 3x1 (as shown in your video) for making the lower fighting platforms a little more stable.
@@TheOneLichemperor Exactly like that. You can brick stack from lvl3 upwards. The only problem is you need want a window as lvl5. The best I have came up with. Is
_ _ _ < double windows
_ _ < 2x1
IIII < 1x3
You then position your soldiers on the structure behind not connected to the main wall.
Is there a definitive benefit to staggering the placement of bricks on each row? IRL it makes it much harder for a single section of the wall to collapse.
From what I've seen (and MAYBE there is another way), you can withstand up to 2 breaks at the bottom if the break is on an adjacent 2x1, and it doesn't matter if it's staggered or not!
To a certain extent. Destruction of one lower 2x1 block does not lead to destruction, but destruction of two leads to destruction of all upper ones, both completely and partially resting on them.
That is, if you have a shift by one section (conditionally 2x2x2x2 and 1x2x2x2x1), then destruction of two lower 2x1 blocks will lead to the collapse of one 2x1 in the second row, two 2x1 in the third, one in the fourth, two in the third and so on to the very top.
Apparently, this is an error in the game code: the block must have at least one edge directly supported on the surface and will collapse if it is not, regardless of how well it is fixed by the side stops. In the game, it is currently impossible to build a symmetrical arch from brick blocks.
the situation gets worse if you try to build a wall from 3x1 blocks - the destruction of one block in the first row can cause the destruction of three by the fifth row - and it will get worse. Alas, at the moment the best way is to build strictly vertically upwards with minimal connection between the columns.
@@АлександрБровченко-е9ы Ah, so you anticipate this will be changed in the future?
FYI I did end up seeing the advantage to staggering. And learning an OP trick with windows + fault tolerance. All covered in new vid! th-cam.com/video/94n_kbfGjXk/w-d-xo.html
Nice video :)
I've found stone to be an unlimited resource at even early levels, is it not better to make walls 3 layers thick so when the first layer is broken you don't lose the unit right above it?
Perhaps you've been managing your economy better than I have, but if memory serves, especially on the later levels and ESPECIALLY level 10, I felt strapped for stone and need to budget my stone builds a fair bit. The daytime on Extreme is so short, not much time for gatherers to do their thing. Personally I found with Healing Veil that I did not need extra layers. Sometimes I'd throw 4 high walls in front as a bit of fodder if I had a bit of extra stone, and traps in front of that, but by in large the real hero is Healing Veil!
Great video! Do you have a build for an indestructable wall?
Hah well! If you have a look through my Extreme Endless playthrough, you'll see some pretty formidable walls. In the higher waves of extreme endless though, I'm not sure there can be such a thing unless terrain generation is extremely favorable!
I dont like tower defense games, but the building seems cool, might make the TD worth playing
I don't like tower defense games either actually, ahaha. Well, not since the old days of playing them on Brood War and Warcraft 3 custom maps where they originated. But I LOVE this game, and it doesn't strike me as very tower defense-y... :D
Good video
Hello! Love the video and the game. I was wondering if there is a max durability and therefore an optimal max height that we should avoid going over? I could test but I'm lazy :)
Hey there! There is indeed an optimal durability. When you stack bricks on top of other bricks, they change color and go through Low, Medium, High, and Max durability which you can see by the change of color and by clicking on the brick. The purple-ish walls are the max durability, I think it's around 12m, though I can't remember off the top of my head. You can also make them lower max durability by including Merlons on High durability walls, which turns them into Max durability walls, I believe those are around 8 or 9m from memory :)
i miss here the inbound fire arrows , where should i put them `?
Hey there! In this design, it's easy to place the cheaper, full sized tactics stations behind the troops on the firing platform. If you prefer the bricks, you can totally place those instead. Just pause the game and inject one where you want it when you need it!
cool video thx
Actually, this wall doesn't need to be that tall, because of prong on top. It's upgrading tier of wall
Once you go double, triple, or quadruple thick with the wall, it's not possible to fit Merlons unfortunately. I didn't talk about thickening the wall in this vid, but I will in future when I cover Extreme Endless!
thx
I’m on a steamdeck. How do I get to the blueprints?
From what I understand (I don't own one myself), Desktop Mode should allow you to browse workshop. Maybe there's a game mode way to workshop too, idk!
I finished the campaign and then realized I did everything wrong omg
Congrats on finishing it! I hope you enjoyed it so far :)
@@RocketCatRTS I did! I enjoyed it a lot more than endless though. Endless needs to be clearer on where the enemies spawn.
Its a bit counterintuitive i always thought you should interleave bricks on a wall
Have a look at the next video in the pinned comment! There we cover some more advanced concepts like staggered brick placement :)
Comment shhheesh great video 😊
I am visually Disabled. It seems the game is very difficult to see everything. How did you get it lighter? I can see it looks BETTER on Your Video...
Great question! I have everything on default settings on a GTX 4070ti and i7-13700KF. Aside from trying out contrast settings on your monitor and messing around with the video settings, I'd say that is a question best left for the devs or the experts in this field... I love Steve Saylor's videos in particular and caniplaythat.com/ as good knowledge when working on my own game dev stuff! There is also a subreddit for blind or low vision gamers here where you might find some guidance: www.reddit.com/r/blindgamers/
Why not build the walls solid 5 meters thick?
Oh, have a look at the next video, friend!
@@RocketCatRTS hehe thanks for the heads up :)
how do you get windows? I cant seem to find them in my build menu
In campaign you unlock them at Prosperity 2. In Endless you need to unlock Windows.
@@RocketCatRTS in endless is that like smth you buy with points?
@@thegoatmaster4711 Yep!
@@RocketCatRTS awesome ty!
I'm on xbox:( cool video tho
Great vid. Fix your mic.
Yep! Issues with the noise gate are now fixed :) Thanks for watching
Bad design. If your walls fall, so do your low units. Always have all units on a structure supported behind the barrier wall, not supported by the barrier wall itself!!
Hey there! Thanks for your comment, this video mainly covers surface area and base block HP for beginners. If you're interested more in redundant and fault tolerant designs, have a look at the sequel in the pinned comment :)
I stopped playing because of the arbitrariness of the block design/hp and support. Can't really build cool stuff unless you're gimping yourself
Yes it does seem like a bit of a "gotcha". The devs are aware and we'll see what they do! Personally I think HP of a stone block should just be whatever Max Toughness is and avoid this whole thing!
@@RocketCatRTS can't also build long bridges or archs unless you have the bricks to support it.
Just made building very tedious unless you relied on blueprints, which then made it less creative and spontaneous
This is a comment.
I just didn't like the writing when it came to the story, kinda felt cringey some of the conversations with main character.
To each their own, I found the writing and story excellent so far. Reminded me a bit of a Miyazaki film. I also *love* that save scumming is in lore 👍... overall, not major production quality ofc, and yes some of the voice acting felt a bit cringey at points I agree there. Not Baldurs Gate levels of masterpiece storytelling, but not Stormgate levels of tired tropes and hollow characters either.
There is no "proper" way to build walls. That's how games work. You can accomplish the goal many different ways.
Absolutely agree! We aim for nerdy powergaming stuff here (most of the time), but that's for sure not the only way to play. Covered here are some concepts to help make your life easier if you just want durable walls and aren't worried about aesthetics or what-have-you, but I encourage peeps to enjoy the game the way they want :)