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They Are Billions (beta)
Seems interesting at first, but once you figure it out there's nothing to it and absolutely NO depth.
Play one map and you've played them all, pretty much. This falls off so hard it's unbelievable... But maybe the campaign will introduce reasons to keep playing, idk.
I got interested on the concept of this game but is there more to it than a glorified tower defense game? Do you need to actually get out of your city to accomplish goals, are there unique events or is it just build city and wait for zombies?
It's honestly less deep than a lot of tower defense games in terms of combat mechanics, if you can believe that.
There's nothing out of your city other than more building space (and some rare free resources to pick up, but whatever). Also zombie cities sometimes.
Mostly you just need to expand and maintain a defensive perimeter around your city... The further along you are in terms of game-time, the more zombie throughput during waves you have to deal with, as well as random smaller attacks.
The whole reason you have to expand is for building space and resource amount per cycle.
For example, you need more power. So, at first you get it from windmills. Can only place one every so many tiles though, so you can run out of space inside your base where you can place them. Later on you can get a power plant, but it burns wood and... Stone!? Even though there is oil in the game... Well, whatever. Then you can upgrade your windmills to super-turbo windmills I guess. But for all those upgrades, you need 3 different upgrade buildings. Each one costs more workers, power etc than the last.
For more workers you need food, and power plus money, wood or stone for dwellings.
For more power you need windmills (or whatever), so space.
For more wood per cycle (and stone, iron etc) you need deposits, forests and so on, but you can only place one resource gathering building every so many tiles, just like windmills.
Food for workers you need food gathering buildings, which you can only place once so many tiles away from each other, and on certain spots of the map (fisher huts, farms) and what tiles their gathering area covers determines how much stuff you get per cycle.
Stuff like workers, food, power are flat amounts... You have a pool, and if you build something it detracts from the pool. So you need to keep getting more and more in order to upgrade old buildings and build new ones, therefore you must expand.
Before I forget: The map is populated by largely inert zombies that are separate from waves. You can aggro them, and they seem to slowly cover more of the map and thus wander into your base. You can clear them with troops and/or turret creep. Aggro too many and you may be in trouble.
Buildings, at least civilian buildings, can get taken over by zombies and the amount of workers they cost you originally will spawn as zombies combing out of the buildings. This turns into a zombie cascade as they take over more and more stuff. If they take over a tesla tower, the whole area goes dark, defenses no longer work etc.
Oh, and you need to build tesla towers to expand your building space (power coverage)
You also need space for defenses so that you have enough in one place to deal with zombie throughput during waves against that section of your walls.
At first it seems like tight funnel areas are good because it costs less to shore them up with walls and such, but you also often don't have space on your side to place enough defenses. And all the zombies will keep crashing against just a few wall segments, breaking them eventually.
So instead you want larger defensive areas with plenty of turret overlap (or a fuckton of titans, but why bother if you have executors) and more wall segments.
The only curveball are spitters, which will show up later as the only distance attacker. They can outrange a certain turret type and basic soldiers.
Normally, you want to expand enough so that you can, before the final wave, build defenses such as
2 rows of executors, 2 rows of walls, traps, more walls and traps (or maybe no traps, whatever) until 7 spaces away from your outer executors. That way spitters won't be able to attack them for a while and they can mow down zombies... And you always have more walls for the zombies to destroy. Easy peasy final wave. No short, isolated wall sections with just 2 turrets or some such, otherwise you need to put lots of infantry there to help defend.
Some players section off various inner areas of their city, but why bother. Just takes up building space and means more expansion is necessary. Leaks won't happen if you have solid outer defense, and inner defense takes away from outer defense due to resources.
If the mechanics were more fun, presentation more satisfying and more hooks to keep playing... Well, right now it belongs on cellphones or newgrounds, no joke.
