Tower Defense Gaming and Computational Intelligence Part 4

The types of enemies in tower defense games are always carefully balanced by the types of towers in each level.

Sometimes, the type of tower in td games you select will match the type of enemy- in terms of whatever the “flavor” the enemy may be. Like some enemies could be ice enemies- they need to be fought by a fire tower. That’s just one example. Each enemy has speed, strength (aka armor), and hit point count. Usually slower enemies are harder to kill but yet more chances to hit them since they move so slowly. Specific types of armor can be linked to specific types of turrets or towers that can be better acclimated to destroy the defenses of that specific enemy.

Tower defense games can also have a boss at the end of each level. These are usually really hard to destroy. At the end of the round or level, it will be deployed and if it reaches the end of the map (or whatever the objective is) then the match is lost.

Usually in tower defense game a normal human player has to destroy the waves of enemies the computer creates. Usually those waves are static, they don’t change based on any other play factors. Some new tower defense games include the ability to upgrade your own character in the game, gaining experience like you within RPG role-playing game. This can add a new mechanism to gameplay.

Tower defense games also have achievements like many other games.

It could be simply the number of towers that you build, number of enemies that you killed, the number of levels that you won, etc.

Like we said before, most td games are just one human competing against the computer- the static set of waves of enemies. Multiplayer is usually implemented as both players operating cooperatively in order to be each wave of enemies. Each person is competing against each other to kill the most enemies.

In tower defense games the strategies are always different depending on what kind of game you actually playing. It all needs to be balanced in order to be challenging. Obviously, everything is about resources and units and where they are placed. Commonly, early in the level it’s better to buy cheaper towers and by a lot of them at once. Then, save up your resources to buy more expensive towers or better upgrades. That way, you have time to find a strategic place on the map in which to concentrate your resources.

And in a lot of TD games, there are irregular enemies that show up from time to time. These can often take the shape of air units. They could be airplanes, birds, anything that flies that you may forget to allocate resources in order to target. Many times, players can be frustrated because they will appear and they will have no way to defend against them because they did not anticipate that turn of events.

Oftentimes, depending what kind of map you’re playing, it can be best to have a very strong frontline defense right near their spawn point. If you position towers around their start position, you can weaken them early in the process of moving from start to finish. However, very fast enemies can often run straight past these defenses. So in a lot of ways, fast enemies are a way to make td games a lot more challenging and force players to move their resources and spread them out throughout the map.

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For more info on good td games to try keep browsing our posts. We play a lot.