[360] The Low-Down on Tunnels.

That's part of the reason for digging vertical shafts. Resources are more readily available AND backup is never far behind. It's about advancing along both lines at once, rather than sinking a great deal of time and energy into a risky strategy.

 

I countered a tunneler earlier today with this:

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I saw them tunneling under our last tower, so I dug a vertical shaft, and sure enough the enemy connected to it and I had just enough time to switch to archer and rain death on them, forcing them into a retreat because of units.

 

I had a tunnel similar to this the other day cept it was high enough to kill you from height, I swapped to Knight and shield bashed through enemies who tried to go up it, little to say, no one wanted to go near opening and couldn't go past it due to mossystone.

 

Seems like an enemy could easily go over it by jumping right at the edge, no?

Maybe if it were one two blocks wider with two trap bridge parts and more spikes.

 

Or simply make it one deeper and place the trapbridge one lower and add a stone block up on the ceiling so they cant jump across.

 

The point of my post with above trap is,

Its cheap.
Its effective.
Someone will be dumb enough to fall in.
Even if you can jump over it, if you had to jump over say, 2, 3, 5? Would you succeed every time? These are highly spammable.
Note: They only work as 3x wide, any wider and the corner spike effect doesn't take place.

There is also a version that works well like this:








However I opted out for the other version because it uses 20 less wood. If you're digging a tunnel, you have a lot of time on your hands. Lol

Good ideas though, I just don't know if it would be worth the resources. I experimented awhile with un-passable tunnel traps, but they require too much wood/stone to be useful. I will do some more testing though to see if there is anything I missed.

 

You know, I was just thinking about this today and I think this will work. It may be beneficial to "pre-dig" protection shafts . . .


What if you dig something like this, say on a flat map where tunneling is a viable option (with so much dirt). When you dig these, it lures enemies to try to dig a tunnel to it. With a few archers, and maybe a knight or two you can hold off massive amounts of people with one of these shafts. Especially if you line it with stone or something. (every other block).

This would be something you dig behind your farthest forward tower to keep tunnelers from going all the way to your flag. Because its basically like a tunneler magnet. :)

 

Half doors make these traps more effective in tunnels:

 

I like your idea killa, but it may drain up your wood really quickly if you wanna spam those; when I go builder, I almost always find myself with a shortage on wood. I use these as an overhang for my towers to prevent builders tha ladder up, they work pretty great.

Also BC, is the half door a distraction to make the enemies think they could break through? :p

 

No, the half door prevents the enemy from jumping over the pit. A 3 wide pit is jumpable in tunnels.

Also, half doors are cheaper then full doors and archers can shoot past them.

 

Oh, because that was the only thing that was going through my mind when I saw that xD

 

Avacado spikes work in this build [281] if you use a damaged team bridge:



Here are a couple Avacado tunnel trap designs I've been working on:





I've only done a small amount of testing in sandbox mode but these traps seem effective.

 

I agree that it uses a lot of wood, but I often find myself surrounded by trees on flat maps. If you had 1 builder digging strait down, by the time he got it about 20 deep or so, the guy chopping trees would easily have enough wood.

 

I love that GloriousToast is using this thread to try and sway us to liking tunneling.

I personally am not sure tunneling is ever a good idea. It just costs too much time, effort, and resources. And usually the people who do it don't provide counter-measures to stopping the enemy.

 

This topic is just wonderful, someone with a good english should make a guide, and make it pined-up

 

THIS

... has proven to be an effective strategy which virtually eliminates any threat of incoming tunnels. Trap the shaft and line it with stone and you are in a very strong position, assuming your tower provides archer cover and paths knights well. (I'd throw in a few archer posts above that door, some workshops behind it, maybe an airknife...)

The only drawback to pre-shafting that I've come up with is that it can be painfully time-consuming, and the team (esp. newer players) have very little patience to 'hold position' while a builder fortifies. Experienced teams make the difference.

Also, good points on the half-doors, being a boon to underground archers. That one got me bad on a quick-ctf map. We'll see much of this in the new build, I'm sure.

However, I am still skeptical about the practicality of underground traps (esp. pit traps). Tunnels being relatively low-traffic zones, the time spent in digging the pit (which must also be lined with stone lest a single knight disarms it), would be better spent elsewhere... like the surface.

Reading back on some of these posts, it occurs to me that tunnelnoobs tend to ignore what's going on above/around them. There are cases where a tunnel is appropriate, but these must be judged both constantly and carefully. Digging beyond your team's abilities to hold ground is a recipe for disaster.

 

I was just reelecting Acavado's research on corner spikes, and the advances we found there. This can be applied to maps that have an under hill "cavern" so to speak, like this one:



You can convert that into something like this:



These are very effective traps, and if built correctly are team safe, even if you happen to fall in, or climb up out of them! They will hit you every now and again, but these can be very useful if you're digging up into an enemy base. When the bridges flip over this happens:

You pretty much die every time when you fall through something like that.


If you know some enemies will be coming down through there you can do something like that too. Just make sure to leave at least a few without the spikes on them so you don't get hurt.