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Dungeon Keeper seriesIs the game much harder with KeeperFX?(11 posts)(11 posts)
(11 posts)
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This is my favourite topic
Posted August 22, 2018
I noticed some of the vanilla levels come across as much harder than they should running the game with KeeperFX

a good example is the level "Tickle". I seemingly have no idea how to beat this level as the AI spawns with a slew of high level mobs immediately as the level starts, if I start building in his general direction he suddenly jumps at me with a dozen high level mobs and kills me instantly. I tried a more turtle strategy where I create a well trained force and attack but again his group just destroys me with barely any resistance.

I read a gamefaq guide about this level and it suggested doing a cheese strat where you tunnel to the secret room on the far right and possess one of the hellhounds and then run over to his dungeon heart and destroy it. But this seemingly doesn't work as right at the start of the game less than 2 minutes in he has tons of mobs already like warlocks and Bile demons.

I read the game's AI was changed with keeperfx did they also change all the vanilla missions? I've retried this level more than 5 times and every single time I get destroyed by the AI's superior numbers
Post edited August 22, 2018 by DeadYorick
Posted August 22, 2018
In the vanilla campaign the levels are left mostly untouched, except for the occasional fixes here and there. The AI has become a bit smarter yes, but level 8 should not give you that much trouble. The AI has no advantages over the player, and this level user computer2 as the AI, which is a limited AI, computer0 is the smartest.

Except for the AI being dumbed down, and the player being able to attract 3 additional units, you're actually exactly on equal footing, where he can get the same units and rooms you can.
I can give you some tips:

- Bile demons and Dark mistresses are by far the best units you can get on this map, with orcs after that.
- Build 25 tiles of lair and hatchery right away to start attracting bile demons
- Train your warlocks up to level 3 or 4, while you reinforce the walls of your library. Then send them to research until you can build barracks and a torture rooms to attract the other units.
- Don't be afraid to throw away weak units like demon spawn or flies into the portal if you have too many to get good units.
- Bile demons are excellent against fairies, wait until you've got your prison, let them fly into your dungeon and capture them.
- The AI does not know how to capture and convert units, you can, convert the heroes on this map
- The AI does not know how to get a horned reaper from the temple, you do (now? Sacrifice bile+troll+mistress).
- The AI does not pick up neutral units from the map, you can.
- The AI does not use level-specials, you can claim the 'increase level' one in the north-west.
- If you are too slow, reinforce walls so he can't attack you. Claim and sell his bridge and he won't rebuild it.
Posted September 05, 2018
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Loobinex: In the vanilla campaign the levels are left mostly untouched, except for the occasional fixes here and there. The AI has become a bit smarter yes, but level 8 should not give you that much trouble. The AI has no advantages over the player, and this level user computer2 as the AI, which is a limited AI, computer0 is the smartest.

Except for the AI being dumbed down, and the player being able to attract 3 additional units, you're actually exactly on equal footing, where he can get the same units and rooms you can.
I can give you some tips:

- Bile demons and Dark mistresses are by far the best units you can get on this map, with orcs after that.
- Build 25 tiles of lair and hatchery right away to start attracting bile demons
- Train your warlocks up to level 3 or 4, while you reinforce the walls of your library. Then send them to research until you can build barracks and a torture rooms to attract the other units.
- Don't be afraid to throw away weak units like demon spawn or flies into the portal if you have too many to get good units.
- Bile demons are excellent against fairies, wait until you've got your prison, let them fly into your dungeon and capture them.
- The AI does not know how to capture and convert units, you can, convert the heroes on this map
- The AI does not know how to get a horned reaper from the temple, you do (now? Sacrifice bile+troll+mistress).
- The AI does not pick up neutral units from the map, you can.
- The AI does not use level-specials, you can claim the 'increase level' one in the north-west.
- If you are too slow, reinforce walls so he can't attack you. Claim and sell his bridge and he won't rebuild it.
I've retried this level at least 10 times and EVERY SINGLE TIME the enemy keeper just annihilates me with a swarm of like 10 bile demons. I also very quickly run out of gold so I'm forced to attack the enemy keeper.

Half of the time bile demons just don't spawn at all even if I attempt to remove flies or other creatures. Instead just more trolls or orcs spawn.

I also greatly don't agree that the player is on equal footing as the enemy keeper has a significant advantage at the start since he's near gems. The hardest part of this map for me is running out of gold and upon attempting to attack the enemy keeper just being decimated fast. He also within 5 minutes attracts an enormous amount of warlocks and bile demons as I've experimented with an early rush strategy and he decimates me there while I'm only just getting flies.

I seriously have no idea how I'm supposed to complete this level. I've never seen such a sharp difficulty spike in a strategy game before. None of the other levels before this were this hard.
Post edited September 05, 2018 by DeadYorick
Posted September 05, 2018
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DeadYorick: I seriously have no idea how I'm supposed to complete this level. I've never seen such a sharp difficulty spike in a strategy game before. None of the other levels before this were this hard.
Did you transfer a creature from previous level? That makes all the difference.
Posted September 05, 2018
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DeadYorick: I seriously have no idea how I'm supposed to complete this level. I've never seen such a sharp difficulty spike in a strategy game before. None of the other levels before this were this hard.
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ZFR: Did you transfer a creature from previous level? That makes all the difference.
Given how many times I've restarted? No

It seems to make little difference since regardless of what I do my entire offensive gets decimated. Even if I've trained them up to level 7 or so nothing survives. Regardless of if I try to rush them early or if I build up a mass of guys and assault them later.

Waiting the enemy out isn't a viable strategy like it was in some earlier levels as they have access to gems that I can't tunnel to without attracting the attention of the fairies and barbarians. There's not enough gold to viably train all of my units to a reasonable level while at the same time building enough rooms. And my attempts at just rushing the enemy's dungeon heart with a hell hound proved fruitless as even in less than 5 minutes he spawns a mass of bile demons and warlocks
Post edited September 05, 2018 by DeadYorick
Posted September 05, 2018
I'll replay this level for you to see if indeed it has somehow became challenging.

The computer does not start out near gems, there are some gems to the east, but those you can use as well. If you don't feel like facing the computer, you can mine the outside of the gems by bridging towards them. You should have enough gold on the map to be able to train up and get to those gems.

There are only 10 bile demons in the pool of this level, so make sure to build a 5x5 lair and a 5x5 hatchery and you should get around half the supply.
Posted September 05, 2018
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ZFR: Did you transfer a creature from previous level? That makes all the difference.
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DeadYorick: Given how many times I've restarted? No

It seems to make little difference since regardless of what I do my entire offensive gets decimated. Even if I've trained them up to level 7 or so nothing survives. Regardless of if I try to rush them early or if I build up a mass of guys and assault them later.

Waiting the enemy out isn't a viable strategy like it was in some earlier levels as they have access to gems that I can't tunnel to without attracting the attention of the fairies and barbarians. There's not enough gold to viably train all of my units to a reasonable level while at the same time building enough rooms. And my attempts at just rushing the enemy's dungeon heart with a hell hound proved fruitless as even in less than 5 minutes he spawns a mass of bile demons and warlocks
Something is definitely wrong. I don't remember this level in particular, so can't say if I rushed or not (I did rush on some levels) but I never had this much trouble.
Try reloading the last save from previous level and bring a level 10 creature to this one.
Posted September 05, 2018
I just played the level again, I'm a pretty good player so I tried to play relaxed to emulate a new player, and I found nothing really wrong with this level.

I played sub optimally, but still won without any issues. What is clearly different from the original game, is that the enemy keeper is now better at training his units, and knows how to use bridges. I was not attacked, but if you were early on that could be a bit more difficult.

I gave the enemy a head start, and only took my portal when he already had 9 units. That caused me to attract 4 out of 10 bile demons. I had those long before I had even researched the workshop or barracks. When I researched I got all the rooms before I even hit the creature limit, so I still got mistresses and trolls, so I could have made Reapers from the temple, but I didn't to not be too powerful.

When I mined out the gold on the right, I went to take over the barbarians. Before I could convert them though, I was attacked by the keeper from the east. I simply dropped my units - did not bother to cast any spells - and easily won the battle. My mistresses even were too low a level to cast lightning/drain.

I have no idea what you do to be able to lose. Could you explain why when you are attacked he is stronger than you?
In any case, when more people have trouble with this map I could make it easier by taking away the bridge from the keeper until a certain point in time.
Posted September 06, 2018
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Loobinex: I just played the level again, I'm a pretty good player so I tried to play relaxed to emulate a new player, and I found nothing really wrong with this level.

I played sub optimally, but still won without any issues. What is clearly different from the original game, is that the enemy keeper is now better at training his units, and knows how to use bridges. I was not attacked, but if you were early on that could be a bit more difficult.

I gave the enemy a head start, and only took my portal when he already had 9 units. That caused me to attract 4 out of 10 bile demons. I had those long before I had even researched the workshop or barracks. When I researched I got all the rooms before I even hit the creature limit, so I still got mistresses and trolls, so I could have made Reapers from the temple, but I didn't to not be too powerful.

When I mined out the gold on the right, I went to take over the barbarians. Before I could convert them though, I was attacked by the keeper from the east. I simply dropped my units - did not bother to cast any spells - and easily won the battle. My mistresses even were too low a level to cast lightning/drain.

I have no idea what you do to be able to lose. Could you explain why when you are attacked he is stronger than you?
In any case, when more people have trouble with this map I could make it easier by taking away the bridge from the keeper until a certain point in time.
Here was my general strategy that worked in the previous levels
1. I mined out the relevant rooms and gradually expanded them when needed
2. I mined out as much gold as physically possible and created lots of imps
3. I invested heavily into training and dropped minions into the training room as much as possible
4. As soon as the warlocks were done researching I put them into training
5. As soon as I was ready I started mining into the enemy's lair and started dropping my minions into the fight

Almost immediately my minions were frozen and slaughtered and the fight ends within 5 minutes, all of my minions dead and the enemy invading my dungeon. Half of the time bile demons didn't spawn in my dungeon so I assumed what minions spawn was related to rng.
Posted September 06, 2018
ok, by the way you write that, I assume you figured out where to improve, but just in case:

1. There's not that much gold here and imps are expensive so stick to about 8 until you sacrifice them in a temple. The gold saved can be spent training.
2. What creatures come depends on what rooms you have. There's a minimum size, larger rooms helps but just a tiny bit. Bile demons require 25food+25lair, Orcs require 1barracks, mistresses 9 torture. Get these rooms as quickly as possible.
3. Higher level units are better at everything. A level 4 warlock researches twice as fast as a level 1 warlock, so training them a bit before sending them to research will make your research complete faster.

Also, make sure your rooms are efficient. Look at the little flag, the bottom white bar indicates efficiency. A 20% efficient rooms will cost just as much to use as a 100% efficient room, but only deliver 20% of the results. In other words a fully efficient training room trains creatures many times faster than an inefficient room, a inefficient treasure room can hold hardly any gold, etc. Make good sized square/rectangle rooms, reinforce the walls and if possible place doors to get the efficiency to maximum.
Occasionally slapping units will increase their speed temporarily.

You can also enable 'Flee', which causes your units to retreat when low on health. Look for the icon next to imprison on the 'Query' tab in the sidebar.

Have you since managed to win the level?
Post edited September 06, 2018 by Loobinex
Posted November 19, 2019
Probably obsolute info but in case any other has a hard time on this level.

An easy way to win semi regardless of the enemy:

Build your default buildings fast, expand towards the gold where you are connected by land to the opponent. Mine the walls infront of the gold with a 1-tile gap and reinforce them. Then rush mine the gold at the east to get the hellhounds.

When you have the hellhounds go north and kill the fairy's, outside the gold north from your dungeon heart. Should be fairly easy with those doggo's

Then power mine towards the giants. By now you should have a few creatures trained and researched bridge. Don't be afraid to throw your units away. Kill the giants and mine toward the gems above the giants and go east towards the enemy keeper. Mine out the line of gems and claim and reinforce the wall east. Now he cannot get to you for a long time.

I buildt a Bridge outside to get more surface area to mine from the infinite gem patches. and made a small treasure room to the north close by. I claimed the area and reinforced the walls.

Then i just trained units. stockpiled gold and researched spells. He will come to you since he will run out of gold.

So i just nuked his units with ligthning and put melee in front and spellcasters at the back if he invaded too far into my territory since then he can't drop spam you.

Just chip away like that and his army is dust. Hope this helps

Edit: i went 34 imps due to all the gold i stole from the opponent. Diden't use the temple to sacrifice imps this level
Post edited November 19, 2019 by kidobased
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Dungeon Keeper seriesIs the game much harder with KeeperFX?(11 posts)(11 posts)
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