Going from CW1 to CW3

[Altwing]

Hey everyone!  I just bought Creeper World 3 on Steam.  (My Steam name is Aglet Green for those who wish to add or befriend me.)  Any general advice will be appreciated.  Especially if there are particular pitfalls I should be wary off... any strategies that worked in CW1 that don't work in CW3, for example.  Or gameplay stuff to keep an eye on.

I fully admit I have no idea what I'm doing, because I'm coming in directly from Creeper World 1 and barely played CW2. (I may have played it for a day on Kongregate, but the side-view wasn't my cup of tea.)  It's taken me the better part of a day just to unlock the credits.  Seriously.  It literally took me an over to beat the first digitalis map, and I see people have beaten it in minutes.

I consider myself rather good at CW1, usually able to finish in the Chronom High Scores, but none of that is helping me with CW3. 
I find the maps busy and confusing (and I'm still in the first stages of the story mode) and am not quite sure what any of the new stuff does.  Specifically Anti-Creeper, ore-mines, siphons and stuff like that.

Some stuff is obvious: Beam is like SAMS, and Strafers and Bombers are like Drones, and Nullifiers work like intended.  Terp I figured out, and now I'm building walls everywhere!  Walls walls walls it's all good! 

I do miss green totems, though.

[J]

Totems will come later in the story for upgrades.
Make yourself comfortable with collectors, cannons and mortars, that's all you really need to beat the easier maps. Reactors you know how they work. Siphons simply give you some extra energy, ore or aether. Ignore terps (they can easily cost you a lot of time). Anti-creeper is really good when you're low on energy, build an ore mine and sprayer and it'll keep running forever without extra energy cost.
The most impartant thing about strategy is to build out collectors as fast and far as possible and defensive stuff as late as possible. Speedrunning the third story mission without using reactors is a good practice. Don't be afraid to put cannons in danger.
The biggest difference between 1 and 3 is that you (usually) have lots of room for collectors and reactors now. So take it before the creeper does (which can move faster because it's simulated every frame instead of every 7th).

[asmussen]

Those really low times are usually from people who have become expert at the game coming back and speed running the maps. Most of us probably didn't do much if any better than you on the first time through. It does have more going on than CW1, but it should all start to gel eventually as you keep playing.

[Altwing]

All right.  Thanks to both of you for replying!

Seems like the only way to do this is with practice, so now that I've done most of the story, I'm wandering around the Prospector maps.  I don't yet know if CW3 has (for me personally) the replay value of CW1, but there's plenty of maps to keep me busy for now.