Defense Grid Strategy
 

In my hunt for gold medals I discovered something weird.

The damage done by towers is a lot higher (or better aimed perhaps) when running in normal speed than running in fast speed (pressing the F key)

I was having huge trouble getting the fire control Green Tower Only gold medal untill I ran the last few waves in slow mode. Suddenly the big swarmer pack was annihilated a lot sooner (about the length of 4-5 towers)

Retried this a few times and I'm sure that speeding up the game will somehow lose you damage. This won't be a big deal normally but it can turn out to be huge in a green tower challenge or when you're really aiming for a high leaderboard entry. Cause killing sooner = money sooner = more interest.

Wow, nice one.

I'm currently doing the gold medals on early levels, testing mixes of towers. So far a 50/50 mix of lasers and guns seems to be best, with maybe 2-3 inferno/temporal combos when/where the map calls for it. It looks as though the heat effect of lasers is better $-wise that standard gun but that since it doesn't stack, you max out and need to get gun. Someone also said something on their forum about laser+temporal to set up heat effects on mass crowds instead of using a "brute aoe" inferno but I'm skeptical about that.

I read concussion is better vs shield mass and that well placed cannons rock maze levels, but I'm not there yet. I also read that missile towers are best massed at lvl 1 rather than upgraded since fliers don't have enough HP to warrant higher damage rockets. Apparently, some of the "green towers only" challenges require you to build/sell towers to change paths, aka "juggle" creeps, in order to pass them.

I don't yet know whether mortar, concussion or inferno is best for dealing with masses in general; I suppose concussion is best when you have a sweet round spot, otherwise mortar because it shoots much longer.

Has anyone tried the DLC's already? And if so, are the maps any good?

I bought the 1st map pack and I they're good maps. Quite challenging. Do note that each pack only contains 2 maps so don't expect 20 new maps or so. The maps come with several challenges like the normal maps.

I plan to buy all maps, but first I'm working on the master strategist achievement :)

Thanks. :)

Master strategist? That's a gold medal on all story levels, right?
Some maps are really, really challenging to get gold medals on BTW. "Barrier to entry" took me quite a few tries, but in hindsight it was actually really simple. "Containment" was very difficult though (for me anyway)...

Master strategist is a gold medal on all the challenges in the awakenings campaign, about 80 in total. I'm about halfway now.

All gold in normal story mode is 'Alien tears' iirc.

I like guntowers; they seem very cost-effective and quick.

(I haven't played for some time; I've gone back to civ 3; Giga map with 32 civs.)

I can't keep all my cores, so I guess I'm doing something wrong.

You can't keep your cores on a certain level or are you referring to the never have an alien even touch a core achievement? Cause the achievement is really easy on out of fuel map, story reversed challenge.

What achievements? I'm simply referring to story mode, to keep them from taking my cores (to someplace outside of the map). I don't care if they touch them, but if there's a way to prevent them to touch them that'd certainly them from taking my cores ;)