Advanced Tower Defense Strategies for Ace Defender
Having some trouble completing some of Ace Defender’s tower defense stages in the later stages? We’ve prepared a few advanced strategies that will surely make any player a master of playing this game mode no matter what game they play. As modern mobile games start to favor old-school game genres, a lot of players tend to become left behind because some of them weren’t around when the rise of these game modes were extremely popular so it falls to us to leave some of the tactics we’ve accumulated over the years.
Tower defense games are pretty straightforward and a lot of the earlier stages can be completed by simply brute-forcing your way with really strong units. The biggest problem is when the campaign finally catches up with your level and the enemies simply become really difficult to handle. The game has designed each stage to become even more difficult than the last so players that have progressed far enough into the campaign will surely find themselves facing difficult opponents.
Choosing the Right Heroes
Just like in Versus Mode, players need to choose which heroes they want to include in the fight. Even though the factors that we’ve discussed in our Heroes Guide, such as the factions and roles, do not apply in this game mode, it is still important to choose which heroes work best. To choose which heroes are the right ones, you want to look at their abilities and attack types which play an important role in diversifying the amount of damage that you do against the various waves that will be coming your way.
At the early stages of the game, placing over-leveled heroes at the entrance usually works out enough to complete any stage. However, the difficult stages will demand more strategy, and randomly placing any hero you want will not always yield the results that you need. Always keep a variety of heroes ready to compete. Since this game mode requires up to 8 units in a squad, you might want to level up more heroes than you currently have so that you have a lot of options to choose from.
Hero Positioning
Once you’ve created a proper lineup of heroes that can take on the task of beating any enemy, it’s time to learn the most important piece of information that players need – positioning. Positioning refers to the way players assign their heroes to a specific platform. This is extremely important because of two reasons – attack types and enemy types. Let’s take a look at each.
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Attack Types
Attack types refer to the type of attack that your hero has which can either be area, single, or control. Area attacks specialize in distributing equal damage to multiple enemies at once which is most useful when dealing with large waves. Single attacks are extremely powerful but can only damage one enemy at a time which is most useful when battling bosses or bulky enemies. Control attacks are weak but they disrupt the enemy’s movement to give your damage dealers more time to clear enemies.
Depending on the type of enemy you are facing, you might want to place either area or single heroes near the enemy spawn point. Control heroes are usually placed in the middle so that they affect enemies that slip past the initial onslaught. Position your heroes in a way that deals with the immediate threat and it’s a good idea to have at least 2 heroes of each type on your team.
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Enemy Types
There are three a few types of enemies in Ace Defender which include standard enemies, bulky tanks, disruption units, rushers, and bosses. The most dangerous type of unit is the disruption units that can disable your heroes if they are caught in their area of effect. Placing all of your strongest heroes in one area might cause all of them to get disabled continuously which allows your enemy to slip quickly.
The next most dangerous enemy are the rushers which have really fast movement speed but low HP. Since they move in large waves, it’s a good idea to have a lot of area attackers so that you can quickly get rid of them. The other three units aren’t too much of a threat since they move really slowly so the only challenge that you’ll face is if your units are strong enough to take them down in time.
How to Use Abilities
Abilities play an important role in controlling enemy waves. While it’s true that using damage abilities to thin down the wave is the best strategy, there are times when using non-damaging abilities work just as well. For abilities that do both, there’s a time and place on when to use them so that the player can maximize getting rid of the most troublesome enemies on the field.
The best strategy that a veteran can give you when using abilities is to use it when it counts and never let your energy be unused. This means that as long as you’re using your abilities to hit as many enemies as possible, you don’t have to worry if what you’re doing is wrong. Never let your skill energy go beyond 90/100 so that you don’t reach the point where it overflows and is wasted.
Resource Management
Resource management is the final tactic that players need to learn about in tower defense. At the beginning of the fight, players are only given enough gold to summon a few heroes. This is the most important decision as it influences how the fight will continue from there on and making the mistake of choosing the wrong starters might quickly lose you the game.
A good thing to keep in mind when choosing your starting three is to place your three strongest heroes close together. This will allow you to accumulate gold quickly that will help you build up the board quickly to set up your pieces in the fastest way possible. Once you achieve that, you don’t have to worry about anything else other than using your abilities as often as possible.
