A severe flaw of the campaign is that it's a poor teacher. You're free to spend research points however you want, without guidance on what is good to take, and points can't be refunded.
You need to unlock farms in the tech tree to reasonably meet population goals, but if you're new to the game and haven't played any survival maps good luck knowing that.

I dropped it yesterday on that Storm coast map. If it states " Only one entry point" Then why do I get attacked in the South as well, while it was clearly stated that this was not possible. I love difficult games, this is not more difficult, just frustrating.

Originally posted by Youmanity:

I dropped it yesterday on that Storm coast map. If it states " Only one entry point" Then why do I get attacked in the South as well, while it was clearly stated that this was not possible. I love difficult games, this is not more difficult, just frustrating.

two possible answers.
1- you made enough sound to make the zombies that are on the map at start get attracted and they then got close enough to agro.

2- it got to the last wave (think its only 1 wave that map) and you have not cleared the map. this makes the whole map agro you.

Originally posted by Youmanity:

I dropped it yesterday on that Storm coast map. If it states " Only one entry point" Then why do I get attacked in the South as well, while it was clearly stated that this was not possible. I love difficult games, this is not more difficult, just frustrating.

"One entry point" is accurate, but it doesn't mean there are no infected already on the peninsula. Part of the challenge is that you have to clear the entire peninsula *before* the final wave. Also, this is not a casual game, and if you thought there wasn't going to be a certain amount of frustration then you didn't do the research. Don't try the double black diamond slope if you've never been on skis before.

are we responding to the jun 3rd user or the other user?

the first user had made poor research decisions and it screwed his campaign. a casual AAA game would have a way around this. I was under the impression farms were mandatory early on from the first two missions, they didn't realize some people wouldn't get farms first.

lowlands is also likely impossible without farms.

not going to justify it. just stating what happened. the devs did not consider the possibility that you would reach that point without farms.

---
the other user.

you have a map, you have one entry point over the bridge or whatever to the northwest.

you also have the entire map which lies south of your base you need to clear before the final wave or it will approach your base.

the wave is on day 40 or something so I normally clear the south by day 20 or 30 and then build up army and defenses like crazy. I *think* about 400 soldiers in wooden towers WILL do it. lemme check. ideally you have AOE towers like shocking towers or even ballista, but without that, econ and then just defend with walls of towers and bodies.

Originally posted by Otleaz:

... on my second attempt I manage to pull through... only to fail because I couldn't get 800 population. I had almost the entire map covered in hunter's cottages and I had fishing stations on 90% of the shore, but still didn't have enough food for all of the houses I needed for this objective.
...

Yes you can soft-lock yourself in the campaign with bad research choices, and maybe that is a design flaw. (El Dorado is another mission where it's easy to get stuck.) But I think you have to almost deliberately *try* to make bad research choices for that to happen. You didn't notice how important food was becoming as the campaign progressed, and didn't think about better ways of getting it when going through the research tree? If you didn't that really isn't the game's fault if you ask me. Also, according to my notes, it is possible to do Coast of Bones without farms, but you have to be pretty good at placing fishing and hunter cottages to get the most food, and that doesn't necessarily mean putting in as many as possible. (The Bearings and Pulleys & Hunting Weapons research nodes are useful for this, though they aren't that useful late campaign and you might want to save the points for other things.)

Yeah, you can do backup saves in the campaign and load them back.
I do this before every mission.
And have a second backup once every few missions.

And YES, farms are basically mandatory.
Warehouses are too, and tier 2 houses likely as well.

On the hardest diffs, you will even need to manage which maps you do in what order.

Lowlands, I would treat it as a difficulty 4 map.
Narrow lands and Lowlands leave them after ALL the difficulty 3s are done.

The bridge map waits until you have shocking towers, at least stone walls can also help.

The raven map is much easier and allows you to do some easy difficulty 3 missions.......

And obviously, NEW players have no idea what is important, what is not also somewhat depends on the difficulty.

You can likely do all maps without farms, BUT you would need to min-max macro placement, likely retire some of the army to clear up food, and have way too slow economy growth for above the very easy difficulties.

And on almost every campaign mission, the final wave will cause ALL on-map zeds to head towards your HQ.
So if you did not do a map clear, you can be attacked from anywhere.

Some zeds are slightly outside the map and can only be killed with the"chase" command.
(They usually noise aggro and get killed normally).

After"full map" clear always test with chase command and most mission will also send out random waves so map is never fully clear so all spot have defences.

I lost because i forgot about a time limit of 77 days, lost about 2 or 3 hours of playtime, had all the other objectives done just needed to kill a giant zombie. Regarding the tech it does seem like farms are mandatory to get high pop. i Haven't rage quit but that timer thing pissed me off tehre was no warning like when there was 3 days left or something. Hate time limits in these type of games i'd rather it just give me increasingly harder hordes to deal with

soldiers cost food

I lost to the timer once on The Oasis, I demolished houses to keep them from the zombies and managed to hold off the wave, but couldn't build the houses quick enough to complete the level. So frustrating, but I did beat it.

Also if you put your soldiers next to the barracks you can dismiss them without having to kill them.

Also few zombies spawn from where train comes. So i always put gates there and rangers when i start making snipers. IDK on which day they spawn but they can make you lose easily.

Also yeah game is bad at teaching and never expects you could reach certain point without some tech. When i first played the game on easy i even got and finished all missions without stone walls lol.

Just succeeded in this mission on 200%.
If you'd really cover almost everything, it would be providing food for more than 1000 colonists.
So you are just not trying good enough I guess.
Last zombie horde is brutal though, I wonder if I could build my defenses better...

Originally posted by argrond:

Just succeeded in this mission on 200%.
If you'd really cover almost everything, it would be providing food for more than 1000 colonists.
So you are just not trying good enough I guess.
Last zombie horde is brutal though, I wonder if I could build my defenses better...

did it on 800% with the tech available I just had unupgraded soldiers and wooden towers. kinda needed to kite the enemies away so you have more time to deal with them. my defenses werent doing so good.

I would recommend buying the wooden stakes defense upgrades. which should take the teeth out of the wave. Ballista would also be nice, but I'm having trouble with research points enough as it is. I went with econ upgrades (warehouse and market) and I don't think I placed one warehouse.

The campaign is about the worst balanced of any game I've ever played.

There are certain technologies which are essential to succeed, but it isn't obvious what they are. If you choose the wrong technology, at the wrong time, you're effectively screwed.

A while back I made a post about how it's mathematically impossible to get enough food without researching farms and other food tech. They aren't optional despite the research tree suggesting they are.


This is one of the few games I suggest following a guide to determine an optimal research path, and adjusting the difficulty down.

You're not a bad player. The developers are bad balancers.

Maps are misplaced and mislabeled difficulty wise

Some research is mandatory while others are useless.

Some research is only useful for the horde missions and useless for the actual building missions.

Can't respec research.

It's an absolute mess.

Granted, the core gameplay is nearly perfect, but the campaign screws it up so bad that this game becomes borderline mediocre. Shame too because they could fix its issues within a few hours of work and elevate this game into a tier all to itself.

I just did narrow pass, I did it at 800% and it basically required me predicting the enemy path and filling the field with enough wooden stakes to deal with it.

I then went back and did it on 300% with good research and didn't have any issues clearing it. 800% narrow pass is in my opinion, insane.

lowlands also.

none of the other maps with good research are anywhere near these maps 2 star difficulty.

coast of bones is rough, but you can kite.

cape storm can be beaten with enough soldiers and wooden towers.

I watched kensai's 3200% narrow pass. he took many attempts, eventually managed a super kensai economy and 2 shocking towers before the first wave (and like 8 ballista)