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Most Potential: Quick Cannons, an illustrated discussion
My personal experience shows that quick cannons offer the most potential for damage to a single target. The greatest disadvantage of quick cannons is their limited range, but this can be made up for with proper placement. An asymmetrical design is required for high scores with the quick cannon. With their limited range, 30% of your quick cannons will be unable to do significant damage to the ant before it reaches the goal if placed evenly around the hill. Watching patterns in the ants' movement you'll notice that they tend to avoid the center, and more importantly, they tend to stick to the top of the screen. Placing most of your cannons to the right of the ant hill will give the ants the most resistance. This strategy may cause the ants to favor approaching the ant hill from the bottom, but this can be avoided. Here is the best quick cannon strategy I've found:
1. Creating three quick cannons initially has shown me the most success. One is placed exactly diagonal from the top left corner of the screen. Two more are placed along this line. (Screen Capture: http://www.billmanolios.com/forfun/antbuster1.jpg" ). The two red cannons are impact cannons. These will eventually become ice cannons, but for now the extra damage is more important than the slowing effect. The order in which these cannons are upgraded is determined by the ants' preferred egress route. For example, if the ants are choosing to go right, upgrade that cannon. At this point the ants will not have a strong preference as to which path they take and will change their minds often. Place your strongest cannons on the ants' preferred path (most likely the right) but keep extra money on hand to upgrade your cannons on the other side if needed.
2. At level 40 the ants will begin to reach the cake easily. This is the time to upgrade one of your impact cannons into an ice cannon. Again, upgrade the one that is likely to be the most effective. (Screen Capture: http://www.billmanolios.com/forfun/antbuster2.jpg ). Continue to build more quick cannons as you earn more money but keep $400 reserved for creating your second ice cannon.
3. Around level 70 it'll be time to upgrade those ice cannons fully. With this strategy you can do well with only two ice cannons on screen, saving more money for quick cannons. (Screen Capture: http://www.billmanolios.com/forfun/antbuster3.jpg ). Meanwhile, the quick cannons continue to grow heavier on the right side. Every once in a while you'll be overwhelmed by the ants as they bring in three or more pieces of cake at a time. Quick cannons will not be able to save every piece of cake, as they are best at attacking a single target. This is OK since the last piece of cake is the important one.
4. Level 78. By this time your cannon setup will be very uneven, and there will be a huge weakness on the left side. It is still possible to convince the ants to walk into your strongest defense. Target ants walking through your weak points and they will learn to avoid it. (Screen Capture: http://www.billmanolios.com/forfun/antbuster4.jpg ).
5. Endgame strategy. When you're down to your last piece of cake all you can do is hope that the ant who picks it up will make a mistake, right?. Well, not completely. Try to keep as many ants as possible at low health. This way, when one of them grabs the cake it's already at less than full health. Meanwhile, continue to attack ants who walk through your weak spot to keep the other ants scared of it. (Screen Capture: http://www.billmanolios.com/forfun/antbuster5.jpg ).
6. Eventually, an ant with full health will grab the cake and walk it through your weak end. This can't be helped. All you can do is hope that it takes them a long while to figure it out. With this strategy I've managed to get scores consistently over 20,000. (Screen Capture: http://www.billmanolios.com/forfun/antbuster6.jpg ).
I'm sure this isn't the best Antbuster strategy out there, and I'm sure you'll get no joy out of copying it directly. I hope that reading this has given you some ideas...
Bill
RL Div
1. Creating three quick cannons initially has shown me the most success. One is placed exactly diagonal from the top left corner of the screen. Two more are placed along this line. (Screen Capture: http://www.billmanolios.com/forfun/antbuster1.jpg" ). The two red cannons are impact cannons. These will eventually become ice cannons, but for now the extra damage is more important than the slowing effect. The order in which these cannons are upgraded is determined by the ants' preferred egress route. For example, if the ants are choosing to go right, upgrade that cannon. At this point the ants will not have a strong preference as to which path they take and will change their minds often. Place your strongest cannons on the ants' preferred path (most likely the right) but keep extra money on hand to upgrade your cannons on the other side if needed.
2. At level 40 the ants will begin to reach the cake easily. This is the time to upgrade one of your impact cannons into an ice cannon. Again, upgrade the one that is likely to be the most effective. (Screen Capture: http://www.billmanolios.com/forfun/antbuster2.jpg ). Continue to build more quick cannons as you earn more money but keep $400 reserved for creating your second ice cannon.
3. Around level 70 it'll be time to upgrade those ice cannons fully. With this strategy you can do well with only two ice cannons on screen, saving more money for quick cannons. (Screen Capture: http://www.billmanolios.com/forfun/antbuster3.jpg ). Meanwhile, the quick cannons continue to grow heavier on the right side. Every once in a while you'll be overwhelmed by the ants as they bring in three or more pieces of cake at a time. Quick cannons will not be able to save every piece of cake, as they are best at attacking a single target. This is OK since the last piece of cake is the important one.
4. Level 78. By this time your cannon setup will be very uneven, and there will be a huge weakness on the left side. It is still possible to convince the ants to walk into your strongest defense. Target ants walking through your weak points and they will learn to avoid it. (Screen Capture: http://www.billmanolios.com/forfun/antbuster4.jpg ).
5. Endgame strategy. When you're down to your last piece of cake all you can do is hope that the ant who picks it up will make a mistake, right?. Well, not completely. Try to keep as many ants as possible at low health. This way, when one of them grabs the cake it's already at less than full health. Meanwhile, continue to attack ants who walk through your weak spot to keep the other ants scared of it. (Screen Capture: http://www.billmanolios.com/forfun/antbuster5.jpg ).
6. Eventually, an ant with full health will grab the cake and walk it through your weak end. This can't be helped. All you can do is hope that it takes them a long while to figure it out. With this strategy I've managed to get scores consistently over 20,000. (Screen Capture: http://www.billmanolios.com/forfun/antbuster6.jpg ).
I'm sure this isn't the best Antbuster strategy out there, and I'm sure you'll get no joy out of copying it directly. I hope that reading this has given you some ideas...
Bill
RL Div
Comments
http://img126.imageshack.us/my.php?image=97bvy8.png
That's the build order and placement I've had the most luck with.
Dacian has a sniper cannon setup that is better than my quick setup in that I've made level 101 2/3 times useing it. first 2 times were 101, the third I was watching a movie, so wasn't paying attention.
Daican's setup is a much longer game, but near the end game when all the snipers have range, you're doing slightly more dps to a single ant than you will with 1/3 of the quicks. Both of us agree that you should beat ants down to a sliver of health and leave them that way whenever possible and just pick on one ant to up your level as fast asss possible while most of the ants are left as low of a level as possible. I usually make 95 with quicks, twice made 99, never broke 100. Dacian I think made 107 with snipers, so his setup is better than mine.
As they increase in range, they are dealing less DPS over a greater range. So while your ant is 200 away, your sniper is dealing dmg, and your quick is still waiting.
So depending on how many of each and the location of the snipers, then can deal DPS over a huge area, more than compensating for the lower dps.
Now then, there is one reason that snipers do more damage, and that is because of the range: a quick's range is not enough to go from the first buildable square near the hole to the wall, so ants can slip in being out of range of half your quicks while snipers have enough range to cluster them between the hole and cake (near the hole) so that every sniper can hit an ant near the hole. This combined firepower is in excess of the firepower the half or less quicks that are currently in range can do to a single ant.
and I did figure in on what you're talking about, but you missed something else on teh war between quicks and snipers (that snipers are winning). The limitations on ice turrets helps quicks more than snipers. 2 ice turrets in the right spot are enough to slow an ant to .3 before it is in range of the quick, so teh ant will be going .3 through the entire wuick range while it takes a minimum of 3 ice turrets to do the same for the increased tange of the snipers, or simply let the snipers start shooting before the ant is in range of the 2 ice turrets. (haven't figured out which is better yet between 2 and 3 ice turret defence with snipers. The 2 ice defence forces the turrets to be close to the snipers so that the snipers get their range cut off both at the hole, and reduced from the ants getting to cover part of the cake side while at full speed. Moveing the ice turrets away form the hole far enough to slow an ant before it's in range will require a third ice turret to cover the gap. This of course reduces the number of snipers available, but gives you more time with the ants in range. if the extra time gives more dps than the extra sniper and less time at full slow, than 3 ice turrets might be better.)
So yes, I have thought it out, and I am very impressed with snipers once I was shown an effective setup for them.
About your idea (Dominion) with the third Ice cannon using my sniper setup -> it's a good idea I'll try and see how I can set it up and I'll let you guys know
Another very good thing about snipers is that they have a very high speed of the cannon, so they catch an ant even at high ranges 60-75% of the time, while the ant has 1 speed (aka carrying cake), that is a very nice advantage, as you're practically starting to shoot at the ant right after it leaves the towel with the cake :)
http://img262.imageshack.us/my.php?image=3icelvl1tb3.jpg
then I upgraded the three ice to lvl 2
http://img98.imageshack.us/my.php?image=3icelvl2ph6.jpg
and then I died at lvl 85 (well, I assume it was bad luck, I'll give it another couple of tries)
http://img266.imageshack.us/my.php?image=3iceturretsending1sttrysk5.jpg
the problem seems to be that you have too weak firepower for the lvl you got to, as the ice turret ate one of your sniper ...
later edit - 2nd try - same setup - reached lvl 90 - I'm sure I can do better with a bit of concentration
http://img208.imageshack.us/my.php?image=3iceturrets2ndtrybk9.jpg
I did come closer (within 4 of my average game with your setup) by useing 4 ice turret level 1's farther out, but it seems so wrong to do that...
There is a long range strategy I've been working on with useing 5 ice turrets-2 right by the hole, 3 by the cake, and leaving 7 long range turrets right in the center of the map, but that only gets me to around 94. I know I could get it higher if I could cut the ice turrets down to 3 (maybe 1 by the hole, 2 by the cake) but that's going to take a LOT of luck in getting the ants to stay close enough to the ice to get hit.
I've completly given up on impat cannons now, even though they do MORE damage than even my happy quicks, but the even worse range makes them all but useless (and they cost far too much). The damage synergy on the impacts is 3 extra damage per extra maxxed impact, and they fire 2.4 shots per sec giveing out even more damage than quicks that only give 6 dps bonus per extra cannon.
http://img216.imageshack.us/my.php?image=longrangegd8.png