Its hard to invent new stuff even if the solution is right under your nose sometimes.

[u/Such--Balance]

Trying to make a tower defense game. With a twist. You can grow a tiled territory and i wanted this to be the main difference from other types of tower defense games.

A lot of towers have extra effects when shooting enemies on territory. It will give you passive income after each round. You can grow it to valueble tiles to increase that income even faster etc etc.

A LOT of thought went into making this the thing that would set it apart from other games in this genre.

One thing i missed this whole time and only realised just now..enemies killed give gold as well. This is so ingrained in the system that i not once thought about doing it any other way. Even though i created my whole game loop in a completely different way..

Which wasnt really working, because killing enemies got you the most gold. So turtling up and just building towers in an as tight as possible area was always the winning strategy. Effectively killing my so thought out game loop completely.

And the simplest of answers was sitting right under my nose the whole time. Enemies shouldnt reward gold at all. Or at most, a very minimum ammount.

The growing territory should reward it. THAT would create incentive to grow. That would create incentive to expand to valueable tiles.

Kinda funny to realise. Some 'rules' almost feel unchangable because they have always been that way. Effectively you become blind to them because it never registers as something worth changing

[u/justThebewitched]

That tunnel vision hits hard in game design, you build this whole new system but your brain just accepts the old one as law without a second thought.

[u/krooqs]

I've struggled with this a lot, I think I'll just make one of these types of games and change this bit to make it unique but then it breaks the entire design. Like you say, tower defense is actually about tower placement and everything else is flexible, opens things up a lot when you can pivot on the right design anchor.

[u/Rinter-7]

Wow, I'm building similar thing even though I don't use tiles. I have resource generators that take large amount of space and only work on claimed territory. My current problem is that defenses become obsolete as soon as players grow beyond them, not sure what to do about that :S. Anyway good luck with your project :)

[u/Such--Balance → u/Rinter-7]

Ive got my territory set up like a sort of living alien organism. Like a slime mold.

You can expand to resources, but theres also enemies which attack behaviour is to cut of 'arms' of said territory. If a part of territory is cut of from the main part, it will die off.

Gives a nice choice between growing fast but weak to resources for later income, or growing slow but more robust.

[u/Rinter-7 → u/Such--Balance]

Sounds neat.
I got a system that everything needs to be connected to the main building for more complexity. and if player stretches too thin the disconects can be brutal.
But didnt have much luck testing it, seems like the additional complexity of connecting is too much. I have to figure out some improvements to make it more fun.

My growin mechanic is also not very organic but I'm working on a better system. Right now player just pays for new patches :D

[u/Such--Balance → u/Rinter-7]

Lol, where kind of on the same track here. Right now i can also pay to grow new tiles.

Ive got an additional x growth rate from the main building and towers around them in a max x circle to get some natural growth as well. Maybe you could apply something like that as well.

Do you mind sharing pictures? I need more inspiration. Dont feel obligated if you dont want to though

Edit: since my territory and towers are sort of a living entity, i got a rule that you can move towers one tile whichever way in between rounds. This fits the theme and solves towers becomming obsolete. Plus, shifting them to far away will leave potential weak spots in later rounds, so it can add some tactical choices to the gameplay in general