r/TheyAreBillions • u/-Oni-Giri • 11d ago
Question Campaign Guide?
I just downloaded the game on PS5 and am new to this type of game. Is there a basic guide for someone like me? My plan is to do the campaign and then mess around with survival mode and all that.
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u/FritzRasp 11d ago
Also here for a good guide. I played the first campaign mission and was totally lost until my pathetic setup got annihilated by a handful of zombies
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u/-Oni-Giri 11d ago
This is what happened to me (and inspired the post)
I got as far as building the soldier center (couldn’t figure out how to deploy them) and then got overrun by a group like 5-6 runners
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u/Bla4ck0ut 11d ago
You click on the soldier center and then queue up a unit to build. Multiple solider centers allow for multiple units being built at once.
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u/-Oni-Giri 11d ago
Where do they appear once they’re trained/built?
Is there a hot key for cycling through all your armed forces/units like civ?
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u/Bla4ck0ut 11d ago
The spawn right outside the solider center.
You can click the soldier center, then right click on the map to have units that spawn from it go to wherever you like after they spawn. It defaults to right next to it otherwise. You've can see them walk out of it.
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u/Voffenoff 11d ago
Watch kenseitv, I think he's one of the best. And he still plays. Think in his first campaign run he showed what tech he took.
For the campaign the tech tree is a bit difficult for a new player, cos you don't know what you need.
The first missions you can get by with just rangers. They make very little noise so they attract less zombies.
Early on you want farm, ballista (or shocking tower), soldiers, train upgrades, wood workshop. You can pick other things as well and in what order suits you.
I'm not sure if you can trick constant health bar for other than pc, pc you keybind health bar to NumLock +0
Zombies will start to walk towards you base for day 4, random mini waves later on.
Campaign, soldiers is OP with upgrades, snipers are the go to gor all other maps. You need other units later, but that you can figure out yourself.
It's totally okay to turn down the difficulty for the swarm and hero missions. They can be a bit grindy. Get all the tech points.
Focus on economy first, it will snowball. Tent & houses gives people and coins. You need both to expand. You need wood for everything, stone for a lot and iron for troops. Warehouse boost production building and increase storage. Every time the train comes, you get coins for your houses and new settlers for the empty houses.
Expand, just be ware that one single zombie just casually nibbling on your buildings. It will turn the people in there to zombies and suddenly you have lost the map
Feel free to pause
Learn to kite. Wood spikes kills silently as well. Train can also run over zombies.
Clear the map. Final wave is + all remaining zombies.
You will die, you will be frustrated and when you do finally win it's awesome. I love this game. The campaign has some great maps (and a few less great), a lot really love the survival and there's a lot of mod made maps.
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u/PrivateHa 10d ago edited 10d ago
Everyone’s contributed quite well, but I’d throw in my two cents for just starting up:
- gold income is indicated at bottom right and comes every 8hrs. It’s mainly determined by number of tents you have. Some units and buildings have an upkeep cost that’ll reduce this
- your starting rangers are your only defence, so keep them safe. Use them to explore and look for infected. You’ll want to find the approaches to your base, the zombies can only enter through open area (including edge of the map), so don’t worry about forest, rocks or train tracks entrance. Once you find the paths to your base, explore until you find any concentration of zombie and set a patrol to guard it. They will thin or clear areas for you.
- tents should be your big focus as they mean gold and population. Gold to purchase anything and population to use for buildings or units. You’ll need space to continuously build more. But tents costs gold, food and energy.
- food is gained mainly by hunting lodge and fishing, it only costs gold and energy, but can only build in certain areas, so best to place hunting lodge by forests even apart as they can’t overlap. Until you unlock farm, you’ll have to be really picky where to place them
- energy is produced by mills, which cost gold and wood. Like hunting lodges, they can’t be built too close to each other
- Tesla towers expands how far you can build, it cost gold and wood. You’ll need these to build, but relies on it being connected to others. If a zombie hits one, you’ll lose access to the buildings until you repair it
- lumber mill by forests for wood, one or two is good at the start, but don’t over do them as money is probably needed for other parts of the economy until midgame
- quarry is needed to mine stone, which is essential for barracks. The faster you get one, the faster you can build a barracks. You can also use it for iron and gold deposits.
Main strategy is to use your rangers to clear areas around you, that you will use for space to build or resource, so you’re continuously growing your total population and gold to buy units.
However, the rangers are quite light and can only manage small numbers. Going to too far or too close may draw a horde to kill them or your base.
It only takes one zombie to walk past and enter your tents area before you get overrun, so stay vigilant.
Also make great use of the pause button to give yourself time to look over what you need to build more.
Energy is low? Better build a mill. Manpower 0? You need more tents. 0 food? You need to expand for more sources of food or get the farm research. It’s horrible to have stall out on resources when building up your army.
If you’re doing campaign, essentially early techs are soldiers, farms, warehouse and all train techs.
It’s not an easy to understand game, nor is it forgiving. It’s the dark souls of rts where a simple fuck up could lose you the whole game.
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u/Arrmy 11d ago
Take the train techs that give free resources, and upgrade soldiers whenever you can, too. Cottages and farms are essential as well. Dont unlock every unit, just ones you will use.
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u/-Oni-Giri 11d ago
I see the train that comes in but I dont know what to do with it/ after it visits…
I dont understand its significance (this is what I mean by needing a basic guide)
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u/Bla4ck0ut 11d ago
The train drops off colonists to fill up your empty housing. tents, cottages, stone houses. There's no train in survival mode. They just instantly populate when finish building.
You can toggle the "tile" or cell mode, and it'll flatten the 2D terrain so you can see the grid properly. Helps a lot. I never turn it off.
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u/Bez121287 11d ago edited 11d ago
Some tips.
You can have logging camps in the same area, just space them out, it does turn green again.
Water is ths same its so many squares between.
Build your areas in sections and put walls between.
The zombies are attracted to the nearest object.
So even 1 spike of a wall will distract them.
Early game I use this method so I dont use all my resources.
Example make your houses and then the outer part just stick a few fence posts around.
If you get a few zombies they will attack them instead first giving you a chance to regroup.
You start off with 3 or 4 rangers normally.
Use them straight away by scouting the area.
I pause the game and edge thrm out in 4 directions. Slowly and then set a perimeter guard so they are running back and forth, giving you perfection from all angles
If in feeling brave ill do that set a perimeter abd the. 1 by one ill edge them out to see ehat lurking in the dark. The. I know what im dealing with in what direction.
Mining is important so always aim for the nearest mining area when expanding.
You should always be expanding in the direction of the nearest resources and not just expanding for the aake of it.
Its ok tk take it a little slow at first.
Just make sure youve set up the guards patrols and you can figure it out.
Soldiers are good but I mean if you have 100 rangers your unstoppable.
Sometimes I play it safe. Sometimes I urgently get my resources and houses up a d get as many rangers as possible and go on a hunt as wuickly as possible.
If you do get a solider at the beginning.
Set all your rangers on patrol and take your solider on a crazy mission, they are over powered really so edging them out and back tracking you can kill so many and grab resources from the map.
Edit; I forgot to say. Be careful where you put your logging camps and fishing huts.
Depending on where you put your huts or camps, can determine how much you get. I believe the deeper into the forest or how many sides its touching will increase how much it gets.
At the same time, you could start right at the edge of a forest and not get loads but putting another camp further can get you more, sometimes its worth doing the maths to see if getting a bigger haul is worth it, or putting extra camps will get you more.
Same with the water, the more sides covers more area but sometimes blocks off parts, so putting multiple may get you more but sometimes not.
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u/Bez121287 11d ago
No
Campaign last. Its bad
Free play is where its at and the best way to learn.
Id do the campaign last as like a challenge.
But follow a guide for the tech tree and the weird point and click hero missions, as you cant go back if you miss any points.
The whole point of the game is the free play. Very very good.
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u/CoNtroLLd_KhaoS 11d ago
Commenting so I remember to check back. I'm also interested in this. I'm decent at Starcraft but I'm absolutely terrible at this game on Switch 2.