Custom Map #79: So I heard you like eggs.... By: Qople

AutoPost · December 07, 2020, 01:02:57 AM

This topic is for discussion of map #79: So I heard you like eggs...

Author: Qople
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Kaiden · December 07, 2020, 09:57:19 AM

Thanks, now I'm terrified of eggs

fractalman · December 12, 2020, 02:11:22 PM

I'm thinking of retrying this but with a focus on terraforming some 20 height land so that if/when my home territory gets covered in eggs one way or another, I can wait for the high ground to dry off.

wobblycogs · December 15, 2020, 01:22:36 PM

Interesting map, I used the high ground technique mentioned in a previous reply. It wasn't fast but it worked. I also tried building a wall but the spinning egg thing would smash against it and destroy itself. I'm at a bit of a loss as to how you'd do it without high ground, I tried it but my base was swamped everytime.

gokenus · December 22, 2020, 01:12:52 AM

Top left corner is a lot safer than bottom left, but bad luck will still happen.

Map is RNG, I've had the following happen on multiple occasions now, in both corners (I call it "the purge"):

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2329522465

The timing changes, the angle of the approach changes, but the purge always comes eventually. That time it happened at 26 min, but it's happened at 15 several times.

The egg monster can break, I believe it's when the primary egg pops (the one all the others are connected to, the center of the spokes).

If I try again (RNG losses aren't fun), I'd do the following three things. (1) top left corner start (north west), it still gets purged, but it seems to get purged less often, (2) I'd raise a small area of about 4 towers worth of space to 5 height and (3) try to pop the primary egg with snipers by pause-timing their arming. I'd probably have to expand over the lower ground a bit to get a shot.

gokenus · December 22, 2020, 10:54:09 PM

Finally beat it.

Quote from: gokenus on December 22, 2020, 01:12:52 AMIf I try again (RNG losses aren't fun), I'd do the following three things. (1) top left corner start (north west), it still gets purged, but it seems to get purged less often, (2) I'd raise a small area of about 4 towers worth of space to 5 height and (3) try to pop the primary egg with snipers by pause-timing their arming. I'd probably have to expand over the lower ground a bit to get a shot.

Good RNG and top left corner was all that mattered in the end.

Screenshots:
Initial setup, high ground didn't matter nor did snipers help: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2330649449
Partially rebuilt after I lost the bottom right 3 towers: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2330649627
Flood after abomination (mostly) broke: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2330649700

I claimed just enough area to build some miners (and then held position), towers were placed to facilitate high ground (high ground was useless). At 12 minutes the purge hit the bottom left corner of the map, and as it traveled back to the right it clipped my miners, but re-arming my stockpile of disarmed mortars manage to clean it up with reparable damage. I reclaimed area and rebuilt miners, then went back to holding position and at 17 minutes the egg abomination eventually mostly broke up (this is the truly good RNG). This created a huge flood, but once again a stockpile of disarmed mortars managed to hold. After that it was just cleaning up the egg forest.

Things I'd change: no terps, no snipers until endgame, maybe a more optimal tower placement but more area would be bad.

Ben_ · December 25, 2020, 06:19:10 PM

I don't get it. How do you not die in the first few minutes?

The best I've lasted was about 2.5 minutes, by doing 9 towers in the upper left corner and building up to about 8 cannons before I got overwhelmed.

When I tried terps, there wasn't even enough time to get a single tower's worth of land to +1 height before the terps were destroyed.

Do you just have to start the map over and over and hope that eventually you get a start where the abomination doesn't come straight to your base?

gokenus · December 25, 2020, 09:51:01 PM

Quote from: Ben_ on December 25, 2020, 06:19:10 PM
I don't get it. How do you not die in the first few minutes?

The best I've lasted was about 2.5 minutes, by doing 9 towers in the upper left corner and building up to about 8 cannons before I got overwhelmed.

When I tried terps, there wasn't even enough time to get a single tower's worth of land to +1 height before the terps were destroyed.

Do you just have to start the map over and over and hope that eventually you get a start where the abomination doesn't come straight to your base?

Hmm, it might be about restarting. After failing my first few runs, I did the following: restarted the map, built nothing at all, and played it forward at 4x and watched the egg abomination. I did this four or five times at about 20-30 minutes of in game time. This how I learned it tended to hit bottom left corner, but that might be user or machine specific, hard to tell with RNG.

But as for how I did it... Not sure if my attempts to attach a replay video will work. I only included up to the point where things stabilized because after that it's just slowly clearing out eggs.

Ben_ · December 26, 2020, 01:34:34 AM

Interesting! Thanks for the replay. Yeah, I had never seen the egg monster stay (mostly) to the right half of the map like that. (Before I came to this thread, I'd actually started to suspect it was attracted to buildings.)

I did maybe a half-dozen more starts, including some where I just put it on 4x and sat back like you mentioned. Only had one game where it stuck to the right for a while, and that was the time when I'd turned on edit mode at frame 0. Interestingly, on that run it eventually dropped enough eggs on the ground that it became a stable circle in the bottom-middle of the map, so I never actually had to finish off the abomination, I could just go around it to the target.

Interesting hypothesis that RNG egg behavior may be skewed on different machines. But I might just be unlucky. :)

Jakobaland · February 24, 2021, 10:42:03 AM

Well, on my computer it does exactly the same thing every time, first it goes straight up, the across the top of the map to the upper left corner dropping 4 eggs that pop along the way (same spot every time, even the eggs pop in exactly the same spot), then it sweeps down to the lower left corner before it goes back to the middle of the map and just kind of flops around for a while.

I have concluded that at least on my computer this map is impossible, because the thing goes across the whole map in less than 2 minutes.

flamewolf393 · February 25, 2021, 10:55:09 PM

So Im assuming this is unwinnable and is basically just a tech demo of something really weird you made happen? Cause I died in less than a minute. The thing just walks all over the map, and then started hitting my base.

Qople · February 26, 2021, 01:51:27 AM

Kind of. I beat it by rushing a cannon over to the other side with a porter to build a nullifier as fast as I could.

Tharifas · May 13, 2023, 05:41:08 PM

It's definitely doable, the key tactic is to have a couple of cannons built and to move out of the harm's way when you see the egg cloud approaching you. It periodically loses eggs and/or you can build a sniper and hit a couple whenever you're in a stable position. Once it's close, you just lift cannons and the HQ and relocate to a different corner - since the creeper is very low on average, the cannons coupled with HQ's default energy output easily clear the corner before you're really hurt.

At times it bounces way too high, so high it doesn't touch the buildings even - thankfully it tends to lower again later.

As it gradually loses eggs, you get to a point where you can take it head on by sniping most of the eggs, then it "dies" and leftovers fly all over the map. (I've toyed around once it did, that the latter part of the gif)