Glossary and Abbreviations
description of abbreviation and words you will find in this Guide .
RRS = Random Resource Spawn. The spawn of gold, wood, stone, cast-iron, petroleum that appear on the map largely near your starting item .
VoD = Village of Doom
Zombie Raid: The automaton waves that will sporadically attack your colony from 1 direction and getting bigger with each wave ( not to confuse with RZS ! ).
RZS = Random Zombie Spawns – From day 20 there will be sporadically spawning Zombies ( containing only runners ) from all dircetions who will run to your colony and attack it. ( not to confuse with Zombie Raids ! )
General Tips & Tricks – Getting Started / The Gameplan
This section is a general collection of Tips & Tricks that will help you to get a better understand of the game and will help you to get your first win or climbing up that difficulty share.
Some of these Tips you will find in other parts of this Guide so don ’ thymine get confused about that .
Explore your surroundings at the beginning of the game!
right at the get down of the game you want to send your Rangers in different directions to explore your surroundings. This way you can find RRS for that delicious early bet on hike and can get a better prototype of where you want to expand former, where you gon na place your houses, your farms etc…
Just preceptor ’ thymine research to deep, be careful with runners. If a harpy spots your ranger… rip .
Don’t build walls early
completely surrounding yourself early with walls/towers is a godforsaken of aureate and wood which is much more necessitate in building up your economy and training units .
In the early game patrols of rangers ( 1 or 2 ) are more than enough to keep zombies out of your colony ( most of the meter ). It ’ s wholly fine to place some small walls at choke points and particularly in guidance of VoDs but precisely don ’ t do something like this :
Wood/Stone Towers extends the roll of the units inside. Good for defending against runners when you don ’ thyroxine want to kite and merely want to hold a place without having to manage and concentrate on it all the clock. Don ’ t build to much of them ( lapp as walls ) .
One piece of wall can safe your colony!
Zombies attack everything what is directly in their path of them and don ’ thymine walk around it ( except when they are chasing a unit of measurement ). Placing 1 man of wall in battlefront ( in direction to the zombies ) of a build will make the Zombie attack the wall. First of all this will throw the “ warning alarm ” ( Your department of defense is under attack ), secondary you will get a small clock time buff to react against the threat, before the zombies can threaten your buildings .
Starting at around Day 20 ( rather with or after the 2nd Zombie Raid ) there will sporadically be RZS that come from every direction and will attack your colony.
Until that day you should have expanded to natural choke-points and seal your colony off with small walls and patrols or Ballistas ( one per choke/wall is adequate ) near them .
Expand your Colony
Another reason not to surround your colony with walls early is, that you want to expand.
This game rewards an aggressive expansion play style, when done correctly.
When you want your economy to grow there is no early way than to extend equally often as possible to acquire more room for farms, quarries, houses. You need to push up your aureate income over the game and the only way doing it, is to place down farms and mills and they need distance !
Always try to extend your colony to choke-points that you can defend easily against Zombie Raids.
The best clock time to extend is credibly right after a Zombie Raid, but be careful with RZS. Always protect your expansion with troops .
Push your economy constantly
First of all : Economy = Everything. Gold-, wood-, …., income, food-supply, energy-supply, workers/houses. Everything is significant. You need to push everything of your colony kind of simultaneously. Of naturally you will go low on resources or add but that ’ s finely. You need to find the right balance between pushing your economy, training units, expanding your colony and build your defense .
particularly towards endgame you need to build a great amount of Stone-Quarries to get your Stone-Walls and Executors up ! tied if you may cap your stone provide sometimes, you should aim to have at least 40+ stone-income when starting to build your final defenses !
Clear the Map and kill all Villages of Doom
When the final examination wave arrives all zombies on the map, including the ones inside VoDs trip to attack your colony. Therefore it is significant to clear the map from zombies and VoDs once you have a decent united states army ( preferably Snipers, read more about this in the Strategy Section ) .
Killing Zombies besides gets your troops to that angelic Veteran-Status which iodine will explain late.
For model to clear a greenwich village of doom ( on 100 % trouble ) you need approximately 15 snipers.
After wave 3 you should decidedly start to open VoDs. On Map 2 there are 6 VoDs ( ! ), so you better start early.
Villages of Doom besides drop a huge measure of resources !
Keep a timer in your head when Zombie Raids arrive
Try not to get into the situation where you are fighting with your united states army on one side of the map and then getting the alert that a brandish is coming from the other side. There are approximately 10 days between each beckon thus keep that in mind. Move your forces back to your colony a day before you think the wave could arrive to be prepared. besides don ’ triiodothyronine attack VoDs right before a Zombie Raid !
Don’t build final wave towers to early
A park error is to start making a fortress out of your colony to early on. If you build a distribute of Executors your aureate income will drop down significantly ! Always keep and eye on that. Building up walls has no real downsides then focus on that first. If you have trouble plan where your Executors will stand build Ballistas and upgrade them former because they have a much lower care cost. You should start preparing your final department of defense roughly 10 days before the final wave comes .
Endgame Defenses
For endgame walls you want to have “ double-walls ” with towers in-between. Remember to support your Shocking-Towers .
example for a regretful defense :
The Shocking-Towers will die truly flying to harpies and spitters and precisely 2 Executors will probably not hold the telephone line. It might clear a a distribute of pan zombies but chubbies will be a large problem !
Better :
The Shocking-Tower credibly will survive identical farseeing because every weave to it will be removed from snipers and the Executor .
More Examples for good defenses
Without Thanatos / With Thanatos
General Tips & Tricks
Use Pause
Use it. Use it much. And don ’ metric ton let anyone tell you how to play the game ( not flush me, i ’ megabyte good giving you tips ).
Veteran Status
Standard units ( Rangers, Soldiers, Snipers ) reach a “ Veteran-Status ” once they killed adequate zombies. With the “ level up ” they gain double attack speed and double damage. Snipers get flush more powerful then they are already !
Don’t mix different Units
( This does not apply to Zombie Waves )
It is broadly bad to mix different units to fight zombies unless you want to use intensive micromanagement ( it ’ s up to you ).
Rangers are chiefly used to silent clear surrounding zombies.
Snipers are chiefly used to clear the map ( so you basically want zombies coming to them ) .
When mixing Snipers and Rangers for model, the stick to things can happen :
- Clearing surrounding Zombies:
Your Snipers noise will attract a lot of runners and special infected which can easily overwhelm your rangers. - Clearing the map: Your Rangers will run ahead of your snipers because there are a lot faster and also have a shorter range. This makes the rangers vulnerable to all kind of special infected and will probably result in losing some of them when running into an area that has a lot of special infected.
Support your Units/Towers
Units/Towers like Thanatos and Shocking-Towers need support from either other turrets or snipers
that kill extra infected like spitters ( for Shocking-Towers ) or harpies ( for Thanatos ) .
Upgrading Buildings
lone upgrade buildings ( such as tents or mills ) when you run out of space and/or bank see any opportunity to expand in cheeseparing future .
Example : Mills
An gain mill only gives 2x the energy of a normal mill but has 7x the care cost.
so place barely another convention mill will keep your goldincome higher .
Houses
1 Cottage gives +2 gold over 2 tents, but costs means more ( 120 gold 12 wood against 60 gold ) so if you have space left in your housing area build more tents. Cottages and particularly Stone-Houses besides price you more energy .
Majors
The majors appear at 20 / 200 / 600 / 1200 colonists.
Getting to the Majors is pretty benefit and you should aim for getting them.
You get your first major if you build 5 tents .
There are some bad, a effective ball of good and some amaze Majors, but I will not compare them here. You should pick the one which fits your playstyle .
hush the best first base Major is probably “ TechFarm ” because Farms are therefore important early and you can build them earlier flush having to build a woodwind workshop getting a huge early hike .
Be careful with Superunits from the 2nd Major like Lucifer or THANATOS. They are reasonably brassy and specially Thanatos can trigger like the solid map to attack you ( Map 4 = moment lose ). The 3rd Major can give you a Titan who is besides reasonably loudly but at this time you
should be interfering clearing the map anyways. 😉
resource Majors are often bad because you are capped ( or about capped ) anyways and the resources will be wasted .
Zooming Out
Everything “ fighting ” that happens on your shield ( what you can see ) will not result into an alarm and can lead to loosing units.
Keep that in mind when zooming all the way out .
Refunding / Canceling
Be careful when refunding researches or buildings when you are not in pause mode. You only get half your staff back. ( unintentionally researched Ballista and canceled it without pausing ? rip 350 aureate )
Random Resource Spawns
Don ’ t cap your resources at start when collecting random resource Spawns. You can cap your gold very easy at the begin .
Disable Production
When you don ’ t have the marketplace so far disable sawmills/quarrys. *when memory is full*
Don ’ triiodothyronine forget to turn them back on once you got the grocery store .
ALT-KEY
Pressing the Alt Key shows all health bars above all units and buildings.
Use it to “ descry ” zombies trying to sneak into your nucleotide .
Pressing TAB toggles the visibility of the UI .
Villages of Doom
Be careful with those early game. They “ detect ” sound just like zombies and can trigger even if you are not attacking them. If they are close to your base at startle, build a small wall between base and VoD and patrol it .
In the mid game you should have a decent united states army that can take out these villages pretty well ( e.g. 20-30 snipers ). The destroy buildings will drop a batch if resources, which will be a bang-up hike to your economy. You can besides build 3 ballistas near them and trigger them and let all the zombies run into your ballistas.
You should always try to kill all VoD on the map before the concluding wave arrives because once the billions are coming VoDs gun trigger all their Zombies inside them to attack you anyways .
Going low on Workers
Going out of Energy or Food is frequently not a trouble you just build a Farm/Mill and you are fine. But going out of workers and food/energy at the lapp time can be quite crushing because you probably need energy/food to build more tents to get more workers, but you can ’ t do that, and it could take you a while to get out of this loophole. so try to keep and eye on your amount of workers .
Kiting Zombies
Kiting Zombies is very important in They Are Billions. You might say : “ I never kited zombies, there is no want for it ” and that ’ south true for lower difficulties but once you get to higher difficulties or Map 4 in particular you are going to need it .
It can take a bit of practice but it ’ s not in truth that hard .
basically you clump up your troops, set them on reserve ( “ H ” ) and take one texas ranger who takes all the aggro. Let them chase this Ranger and let the group kill them while you run “ circles ” .
There are two occasion when to kite .
- Alot of runners coming at your squad.
- The waves of Zombie Raids
While both videos are without pause you can/should of run use pause to minimize casualties .
How many waves you can kite depends on your septic population setting.
For example on soap infected population you can kite the first 2 with rangers. For the following you probably need snipers .
early Game Build Order
Build Order
This Game doesn ’ thyroxine in truth have a Build-Order like early RTS-Games Starcraft, but hush has some key buildings to get in an order early game. Notice that this is a general scheme and can differ every game barely because of how random this game is .
I will besides try to keep this early game build decree equally general as possible without shock from Majors ( e.g. TechFarm ) and without
without RRS and basically without scouting. Please besides keep in mind that it ’ s not necessary to get some building at precises times .
If you get the Soldiers concentrate at sidereal day 2 or at day 4 doesn ’ t make that a lot of a difference because you not gon na have the resources at day 2 to pump out rangers constantly anyways. sol building up your economy foremost is all right excessively .
The first thing you wan sodium do at the star of every game is to build a hunters or a fisherman ’ randomness bungalow and then exploring the map with your rangers to find RRS. It will be finished the same time you get your beginning gold income and will allow you to build ( at least ) 5 tents which will get you to 20 settler and your first major.
following thing is a sawmill. strongly recommended to get one with at least 10 wood income. If you don ’ t have such a spot it can be better to build a tesla tugboat first to get to a good topographic point .
The adjacent key building you want to get vitamin a debauched as possible is the Soldiers Center. You need to get troops out angstrom early as possible so you can clear out the surrounding zombi hordes .
You need a prey to farm 20 gem ( for the Soldiers Center ). You need 30 woodwind to build the pit. If you have full forest you can build 2 sawmills to speed it up but you will credibly find RRS with woodwind anyways. You might need to build a Tesla Tower to get to a ( good ) stone spot .
In the mean time build more food production and spam tents. Build the pit and keep build food and tents.
Depending on how many tents and food output you build you besides need to build a mill somewhere in between.
Build the Soldiers Center and pump out rangers .
future key build up is the Wood Workshop because you need the technology Farm because you will go out of places to build food-cottages .
You should aim at day 5 ( or early ) to build the Wood Workshop. once build immediately research farm and build it asap .
Boost your colony to 200 settler while creating more rangers. Start researching Market before reaching 200 and build the Market asap .
You will besides get your 2nd major at 200 colonists and should be finished at around day 10.
This is the clock time the first Zombie Raid will occur .
Example Start
( Difficulty Brutal 320 % )
Example for Day 2-3
production ist set up, Soldiers Center on its direction, surroundings are explored, rangers on patrol .
Example for Day 6
Soldiers Center is training Rangers, Wood Workshop is researching Farm ( no more spots for Fishers/Hunters already ), rangers patrolling the sides, a small police squad of rangers starts clearing the surroundings, tents on the manner for more workers .
Example for Day 10
Soldiers Center calm training more Rangers, 2 Farms build, 200 Colonist reached and Market placed down, the fire warden police squad however clearing quad to expand, small wall between VoD and my colony. Notice besides the short pieces of wall at the sides of the colony ( from General Tips )
Units and Towers
Ranger – Early Game Scout
truly fast, actually quit, very bum, dies quickly.
Pump these out early and clear the surroinding zombies to expand your colony.
Put them on patrol to protect your colony from sneaky zombies .
My to go unit early on game. just be careful when pushing excessively far out as runners can easily kill them.
If a collocate of runners is running towards your Ranger-Squad, fall back and then kite .
Soldier
– Standard Fighter
solid unit. Is sturdy and can tank normal zombies and runners reasonably well.
They are expensive though and besides need iron.
be careful : can attract a lot of runners because of loud shots .
I in truth liked soldiers when one first base got into this, but the downsides came in acquit reasonably soon.
expensive compared to Rangers, kinda behind, weak range, damage and hitpoints/armor are good though.
Biggest downside is the attraction of runners and other zombies ( Map 2 & 4 ).
You can still go for them particularly on Map 3 and on lower difficulties, but if you plan to go higher you should decidedly get comfortable with rangers .
Sniper
– Long Range Killing Machine
rugged unit with high damage and high scope.
One shots most Zombies. extremely good against special Infected.
More details in my Strategy-Section .
Lucifer
overall Weak unit of measurement. besides brassy. decidedly not meant for beginners. Slow and dies to especial infect identical fast. Can kill hordes of normal zombies very cursorily .
Thanatos
This whole is super solid and the key in my strategy that the description of it will be in my Strategy- section .
Titan
highly expensive research ( 6000 gold ). Walking mini Executor. Fast, high scope, splash damage .
Titans are identical herculean and alone a few are needed to clear all zombies on the map.
Getting to Titans is identical expensive and takes a long time and might be a bad idea for inexperienced players. Don ’ t worry to go for them in longer games ( 100+ days )
Ballista
Standard column. Does little spatter price. broken sustenance price .
It can be reasonably expensive early game, but for holding chokes and defending walls it is decidedly worth it. You should have alot of them late game.
In most cases one loom is enough to defend a choke-point/wall from RZS the stallion bet on ( with wall rectify of course ) .
It falls off a morsel in the deep plot against the executor but it is still a actually good supporting tugboat and can help defending your Shocking-Towers from spitters and harpies .
Shocking-Tower
Great to clear pan. Weak against chubbyies. Spitters are Shocking-Towers nightmare.
Decent gold-upkeep price. Extreme energy costs !
They need to be supported by other units like snipers ( best ) or ballistas/executors because they can die to Spitters and harpies very easily. Set your snipers/towers priority-targeting to highest level and they will take caution of the spitters .
Executor
The strongest column in the game. expensive to research ( 3000 gold ) expensive to build and high care cost ( 60 gold ). Does dab damage .
They excel at defending big waves and the final wave. They besides can support Shocking-Towers identical well because they kill especial septic very cursorily.
But careful with building them to early. If physique to much they will hurt your gold income very badly ! I recommend not building them 10-15 days before the concluding wave hits. ( 100 Days- > Wave comes day 92 – > start build day 80 ) .
While they are truly potent turrets and you want to get a fortune of them until the concluding wave, you don ’ t need them to win the plot. I won my first 500 % beastly plot on Map 4 without any executors, because one had a atrocious mid-game and fair couldn ’ thymine get the money. I spend most of my amber to get out more Thanatos and on Oil-Platforms. This was my first game always not building executors .
You can see the final examination wave here .
Technologies
Advanced Mill/Farm/Quarry
Advanced Farm is credibly the only Advanced Tech you decidedly need because of “ space-reasons ”. You need 20 vegetable oil to upgrade it !
Advanced Quarries if you can not excess more stone spots. besides dear at gold-spots !
I talked about Advanced Mills already in Tips & Tricks already .
Power Plants
power Plants grant a great total of energy but consume forest and rock to produce it. Should not be physique if you produce less then 30 stone .
Stake Traps
useless .
Lookout Tower / Radar Tower
Both towers are optional.
Gives vision around it in a big sphere. The Lookout Tower is brassy, the Radar Tower has a much larger radius.
Can be build properly when a Zombie Raid is announced to get more information about the path the raid is talking ( or to spot if it splits into two groups ) .
Stone-Towers
normally you have Stone-Walls in front of your wood Towers. In most cases there is no motivation to upgrade them .
Sniper / Thanatos Strategy
I thought about it and right immediately i think this scheme is not well for beginners. Beginners should focus more on walling themselves of with a fortune of turrets .
The Sniper/Thanatos Strategy is heavenly used by a batch of players/streamers because it is identical effective .
Snipers
Snipers in a big group is a unstoppable effect who can take out every zombi hordes on the map.
For what they do they are truly bum ( alone 60 gold more then soldiers ). They move pretty behind, but make up for that with high damage and a big chunk of life points. It is important to get a lot of these guys to Veteran Status because it doubles their attack speed ( and their price ) !
Thanatos
Thanatos is one hell of a defense machine ! It ’ s a fluid defense tower and shoots with his skyrocket catapult that does massive splash damage and has a huge affect radius. Thanatos excel at holding lines against massive zombi hordes and is generally dear against any kind of zombi except harpies.
He kills Harpies however but he goes into his melee-attack form for this and is wasting a lot of time where he could shoot his rockets. Because of this he should be supported by either some snipers or ballistas ( or both ). While it ’ south broadly bad to put unlike types of units together that doesn ’ t apply for Zombie Waves .
You should start producing Thanatos in mid-game ( day 40-50 ) and get angstrom much as potential until the final wave. They are actually dear at defending the Zombie Raids that come sporadically so getting them in mid-game will help because you because you don ’ t have to put money into towers ( which possibly become useless because you gon na expand or the adjacent Zombie Raid hitting a different english of your colony ). You can good move them inside your colony to where they are needed the most. They walk slow though but as long your colony international relations and security network ’ thyroxine vitamin a big as the map itself they should arrive anywhere just at the properly time .
Gameplan for 80 days (100 is very similar you just have more time):
early Game ( Day 1-25 ) :
- Normal Build up.
- Get 25-40 Rangers and clear surroundings.
- Expand your colony.
- Start producing Snipers.
Midgame ( Day 25-50 ) :
- With 5-10 Snipers you can already move out and start attacking deeper parts, but keep them close when you expect a Zombie Raid!
- Once you get 15-25 Snipers (depends on infected population setting) you can start clearing Villages of Doom to get that sweet supply boost.
- Aim to get around 35-45 Snipers and start clearing the whole map.
- From mid to late-game; get a foundry and an engineering center -> research Thanatos. Remember to research and build an Oil Platform first! Even if you have collected oil to this moment you need an “oil upkeep” to produce Thanatos.
belated Game ( Day 50-72 ) :
- Produce as much Thanatos as possible until the final wave and get 3-5 of them at every choke-point you want to defend. How many depends on how good the rest of the defense is like the amount of towers, snipers and how many layers of walls you have.
- Also distribute all your snipers to your defenses (build some towers for higher range) to support Thanatos (and Shocking-Towers).
authoritative : located every snipers target precedence to “ highest tied ”. Therefore the particular infect ( Spitters in finical ) get killed inaugural. Don ’ t get scared with runners hitting your Snipers once .
