Gentleman's Wars 2: A Tower Defense LitRPG Series

by Andrew Karevik

  The good news was that one of my autocarriages had sold at an auction for quite a high price. The particular model was not cheap by any means, fetching me a solid 10,000 silver! Combined with what I had from the muster, I was sitting on 30,000 silver and 2,200 mana crystals. Enough to build something substantially strong. The only question was what would I put down to ward off the Baron’s forces?

  The first thing I had to expect was the possibility of overwhelming numbers. My ‘pluck’ score had been quite low due to the fact that I had given up in the face of severe opposition when first facing Joeth. It was reasonable, then, to suspect that the Baron might try that as his main strategy. Or at the very least, as his opening move. Therefore, I wanted to deal the most amount of damage possible to the most amount of units in the first minute of a wave appearing.

  The first step was to focus on maze design itself. The large volume of space, with 12x12 rows, enabled me to get creative with my barricades. The first and most obvious step was to create an outer perimeter, preventing the enemy from entering any area except for one, which would be at the far right corner of the map. So in reality, the map would be 11x11. Still, plenty of room to work with.

  Once the box was created, so to speak, I had to organize the interior. This would be a rather large challenge, for I needed to optimize the maze design for my turning boulders. This meant I would need lanes to be as long as possible, while being restricted to a single square wide. That would force all of my enemies to bunch up and move single file, making the boulder a fine-tuned killing machine.

  So, I was quick to place down four lanes, taking the enemy left to right, then right to left, across 10 squares each lane. That gave me roughly forty squares of exposure, with boulder traps to be placed at the end of each opening, so they could fire away when their triggers were activated. With the turn ability, each boulder trap (except for the one in the first lane) would cover two rows, making them exceptionally deadly. I’d place a trigger switch on the corner of each lane entrance, ensuring that the boulder in the lane above activated, giving the trap time to trigger, roll down the top lane, then drop into the second one to hit the encroaching enemy.

  By placing the trigger early, the enemy force would be struck by the top lane boulder, and then upon getting in range of the other boulder trap in the same lane as them, they’d be hit again. So, with some careful planning and pacing, I could design the lanes to strike the enemy with two boulders per lane. Then, by the time the enemy moved up to the next lane, the traps would hopefully have regenerated to fire more.

  So that would be the first four lanes, highly concentrated boulder traps. I’d need to place some other towers in order to supplement these boulders, augmenting their damage abilities. The first useful weapon here would be Phlogiston Cannons, for those great flamethrowers had a secondary effect of slowing down golems who were hit by the fire. I could use these cannons as improvised slowing traps, reducing the enemy speed just enough to let the top boulder get into position. I didn’t know what would happen if two boulders struck one another, but I figured they’d probably destroy each other.

  The costs of the boulder traps added up to 2,000. Not bad for massive damage at the opening of the gate. This would hopefully counter any serious enemy attempts to flood me early on. In fact, it might even force the enemy to space out their attacks more, rather than try to overload me.

  Once I was satisfied with the basic design of the bottom half of the map, it was time to augment the efficiency. First and foremost, I’d place two Phlogiston Cannons right after each switch, making eight cannons total. The biggest drawback to using these brilliant weapons was that they were front line units, making them vulnerable to building-attacking golems. Now, their sheer damage output greatly benefitted that arrangement, for a golem wailing away at the building was a golem standing right in front of a flame cannon’s mouth, but still that put the towers at risk.

  In order to solve that problem, I’d need to place Wrench Golems in the area, and a copious amount, in order to outpace any heavy hitters that might come by. Thankfully, for the first time in my career as a Gentleman of the House, I had access to enough crystals to where the choice wasn’t hard. 10 Wrench Golems for 250 mana crystals. These little monkey-like golems would quickly repair anything injured, hopefully staying alive long enough to keep anything from breaking.

  All in all, between the boulders, the cannons and the barricades, I had 27,560 silver left. And I was almost halfway done with my design! Quite cost effective, in terms of creating pure killzones. Or so, I hoped. There were still some gaps in the boulder section, namely armor. While the boulders were able to roll through enemies, dealing significant damage to any individual, there was always a chance that some armored foe would make it through the four lanes—especially if they had heavy armor.

  In order to counter this potential threat, I placed four Thorn Towers right at the entrance for another 2,000 silver. Costly, but these four would ensure that armored targets would be softened up before the boulders started rolling. And that was certainly worth the price.

  “You might be tempted to lay it all out on the field right now,” Joeth said, his piercing voice interrupting my train of thought, “but don’t waste all your resources on this one battle. Don’t forget, the wall blocks enemies from getting to their objective: your Manor. If they break past the wall, you’ll need resources to shore up your home defenses. Which are both pitiful and lacking.”

  Huh, he had a point there. If I went on a spending spree and burned all of my resources to build a mega-maze, I might be in serious trouble if that maze was bypassed. “Thanks for the reminder,” I mumbled, returning my focus to where I had been beforehand. I think I could make a killer maze for about 10,000 more silver.

  The bottom half of the maze was a solid softener for meaty targets and a great killer of low health golems. But, just as my instructor had advised, I knew it was a bad idea to rely only on one tower strategy. In order to really diversify, I’d build out the top half of the maze into an entirely different kind of beast. One that would focus on high volumes of damage to multiple targets at once.

  While the boulder section was tight lanes only one square wide, I decided to open up the midsection, allowing for two spaces in the lanes. That way the enemy could bunch up, side by side, clustering together for effective artillery in the distance. Instead of creating just a straight line, however, I opted to use the barricades to force the enemy to move up, left and then down, several times in a row. By forcing them into short turn lanes, it would kill the momentum of any fast-moving enemy, such as those charging Siege Golems, or any other creature that might surprise me.

  As the enemy tried to navigate the midsection, they’d be exposed to artillery fire from the Miniature Trebuchets lined up against the wall. As they clustered together, moving up and down, they’d be barraged by a nonstop hailstorm of stone payloads, with the turns slowing them down enough for the trebuchets to hit their targets. This was my first type of damage. As for the number of trebuchets, they were on the pricy side of 500 per unit. But their range, versatility and damage capacity made them worth the expenditure of coin.

  “Would ten trebuchets be overdoing it?” I asked.

  “Hmmm, with that set up? It’s definitely overkill. But then again…” Joeth trailed off. “Go with your gut on this one. Overkill has intimidation value. There’s a bit of shock that’ll happen when your opponent sees ten of those suckers back there. Enough so to rattle him. But will you get your money’s worth? Hard to tell.”

  A salient point. Could I better spend that 5k elsewhere? How about I only do five for now, then if I needed more firepower, I’d add 5 later? That made sense. Another 2,500 down the drain (though considerably worth it!).

  Next up, it was time to place the backbone of my tower strategy in the center of each of those U-Turn lanes I had developed. By lining up the top lane with Karrack Towers, the enemy would be subject to tri-beam fire as they struggled to turn each
corner. And best of all, with the towers behind the barricades of the top lane, they weren’t exposed to enemy attacks. The cost efficiency of these towers (only 150 silver each) made them easy to place in groups.

  Seven total, with three attacks each, equaled 21 attacks hitting golems as they passed through. The ability to whittle down up to 21 golems, or focus fire on one very large target, would ensure that those who had been softened by the boulder section would not survive the middle part of the map.

  “So, the enemy doesn’t need to destroy the Mana Sphere, right?” I asked as I examined the battlefield. The defensive structures were looking good so far, but I needed to account for more variables before finishing out the top section which would be the last bastion before the enemy broke through.

  “Correct, their goal is to break an opening in the wall. And since you used some heavy-grade material, your wall will take a pretty hard beating before crumbling down,” Joeth replied. The wall flashed red for a second and I saw a health bar appear over it. Five thousand hit points! Incredible! Well worth the cost.

  “Color me impressed,” I said. “I didn’t pay much attention to the upgraded material’s health. It’ll take a long time to break through.”

  “Yup. But just remember that your enemy might be anticipating that need, so they’re going to bring some heavy, heavy hitters.”

  Fortunately, I had already worked on that problem, with the boulder strategy. However, I wasn’t quite fully covered yet, as there was one issue with a wide battlefield: it gave fliers all sorts of angles to approach the wall. They could come from any direction from the spawn point, meaning I’d need to spread out my Repulsion Towers in order to cover the entire wall. I took a quick moment to rearrange the Karrack Towers, spacing them out from each other. In between those empty spaces, I put down three Repulsion Towers. Those would easily knock any air golems down to earth.

  The bottom lane took up six rows total and the U-Turns took up three rows as well, leaving a row of three open in the back of the maze, right where the wall was. Originally, I had lined up the wall itself with barricades, but realized that was a bit redundant, since the wall could deal far more punishment than a small wooden box could. I quickly removed the barricades, opening up one more lane. And I moved the trebuchets to the far right, putting a solid two barricade layer in front of them to prevent the enemy from getting to them.

  The left and middle of the top section was completely open now, 4 squares long and 8 squares wide, enough to form some kind of effective strategy there. The question was: what exactly would I want to accomplish? From the sheer amount of damage the two other sections did, what would be left standing? Whatever would reach the wall would either be extremely bulky or very battered. I had to account for both.

  The solution for catching straggles who were heavily damaged was quite simple, though a little pricy for a single tower. The Enervation Wall would disable any golem below half health, making it a perfect choice for swarm control. I placed it at the opening of the wall section, with two barricades beside it to funnel enemies through the Enervation Wall itself. The humming energy field was intangible and impossible to destroy, making it the perfect end point for the two most damaging sections of the map. Another thousand gone, but now I was sitting at a little over 23,000 silver left. Plenty to continue optimizing my map strategy.

  A firing row of Ballistae would do the trick. Placing five in a row, right in front of the barricades protecting the artillery, gave these towers the ability to shoot straight onto enemies who were getting near the wall. Since they randomly attacked targets, they would be useful for spreading out damage across a crowd, should multiple golems make it to the end point. Still, that was only 250 silver out of my pocket.

  “You know, I think I’m starting to run out of space,” I said, overlooking the map. It was quite densely packed with towers galore.

  “I can see that. You’ve got some very strong strategies at play here. Very strong,” Joeth replied. “You’ve got air cover, ground cover and a diverse strategy that keeps any single strategy from prevailing. Even if he manages to break through the wall, the Baron’s going to lose a lot of golems along the way.”

  “Am I done? Should I move on to golems next?”

  “Add those extra trebuchets, I think, then focus on golem placement,” Joeth said. “Your maze is solid right now; I think you can afford spending a little extra to terrify your opponent into submission.”

  Chapter 35

  I had spent nearly 10,000 silver on a single maze, but from the looks of it, it would be a true killing machine. Now I just needed to place the golems on the Grid, using them to supplement my already brilliant defenses. I had 1,950 mana crystals at my disposal, a veritable fortune! I never really used so many in my entire life. Though, I suppose I would need to be discerning with how much I spent. Maybe half?

  I quickly scanned the new golems, pondering the best placement for them. The bottom lanes would be impossible to put my forces down, for they’d be smooshed by the constantly running boulders. Instead, I’d focus on creating a delay force in the mid-section, to keep the enemy in the barrage area as long as possible. Delaying them here would increase my tower’s damage per second by a huge margin.

  There were two solid options for delays: the cheap and relatively ineffective Stone Golems, and the much more expensive Frost Golems. Frost Golems had the additional advantage of slowing their targets down with a powerful vortex wave. If the enemy force was highly armored and unable to be wrecked by the boulders, I could rely on a few Frost Golems to create a devastating vortex that would freeze the enemy in place. Plus, their regular attack did quite a bit of damage to enemies up to 3 squares away. But how many to place? Three? 300 mana crystals wasn’t a small amount. Yet, it was hard to put a price on that vortex ability.

  I spent the crystals and placed the three Frost Golems together.

  “Error!” Joeth said, startling me for a second.

  “What?”

  “I see three units extremely weak to fire standing next to each other. And if an Ignition Golem hits? Or a flame-throwing golem?” he chided, annoyed at having to bring this up to me. He was right though, I had to account for my units’ weaknesses.

  “Sorry, sorry,” I mumbled, moving the units at least three spaces apart from each other.

  “Don’t apologize, just use that alleged brain of yours to piece together basic concepts; it’s not hard. Although maybe that’s not fair to you. Maybe it is that hard.”

  “I think you play the role of the jackass because you’d rather keep people at an arm’s length,” I said, letting the insult slide off my back. Joeth always wanted to provoke a reaction of some kind with those words, but I knew better.

  “And so far, it’s working,” he said. “Focus.”

  I turned my attention back to the map. A few Stone Golems scattered across the middle region should be more than enough to slow the enemy down as well. Plus, they were quite cheap, making it easy to throw a handful of them down without really thinking. I put twenty down for 200 crystals, figuring the targeting upgrade might make them a little bit more than bumps in the road.

  That was 500 already spent out of a self-imposed budget of 1,000. Part of me regretted having not tried to grab the other cache. It was quite the treasure after all…wait a second! Treasure! Had I lost my mind? I had a powerful Treasure Golem stored away, one that had a devastating cannon attack. I quickly opened up my units tab and went down to where the Gorn unit was waiting.

  “Woah, hold it there, bucko!” Joeth said as I went to place the unit. “That golem is worth more than anything you’ve put out on the field.”

  “Exactly! Just what I need to make this maze devastating.”

  “And if you lose this fight…say goodbye to your premium golem and all the resources you’ve invested in this fight. Wall losses aren’t recovered, so it’ll not only be gone, but it’ll be in the hands of your enemy. Do you want to see that Treasure Golem smash
ing its way through your estate?”

  “Counterpoint: If I use it here, it’ll drastically increase my chances of keeping the wall secured,” I said. “This thing is powerful. So much so I rarely use it.”

  There was a moment of hesitation, followed by a long deep sigh. “I get where you’re coming from. You gotta make a choice, I guess. Risk a ton of resources on the wall defense, or divvy them up for your estate defense. Not an easy choice.”

  “What would you do?” I asked, pondering the decision myself. I was an all-in kind of guy, or at least that’s how I had been running this operation from the beginning. But there was wisdom with hedging your bets.

  “Ah, that’s a tough question. Back at the University, I’d put all my chips on the table because there was no cost, but you…you got a lot riding on this defense. If it breaks and you’re out of heavy hitters, it’s end of the Great Game for you. I can’t honestly advise you take that kind of risk.”

  “I’ll save my coin and crystals,” I said after giving it some thought, “but I’m using Gorn. It’s a powerful unit, strong enough to change the game for me. Losing it might hurt, but I can guarantee the golem will take down enough enemy forces to make it worth the loss.”

  “That’s your prerogative,” Joeth replied. “And honestly? Something I’d do. Just can’t tell you to commit in good conscience, you know?”

  “So there is a heart underneath all that sass,” I said. Without another word, I selected the Treasure Golem and placed him in the very back. His heavy artillery cannon could hit just about anything on the map and when the enemy got close to the wall, the short range cannon would be devastating.

  With only 500 more crystals to spend, I decided it would be good to purchase 10 Chase Golems, enough to form one unit. These little buggers were excellent counters to Siege Golems, though I wondered if I even needed them since I had so much damage on the field already. Still, if some unpredictable special golem showed up, it would be handy to have them around.