uThermal Plays They Are Billions For The First Time

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#uThermal #sc2 #starcraft2 #RTS

[@sebastianteister]

"I'd like to build a ballista but I don't know where" Everywhere! 😂

[@De4monbe4r]

No. Snipers are much better. And you need a ranger for kite.

[@philiprioux7767]

Hey Mark, great job! You were so close. I lost my first 10 missions, but now I win on apocalypse mode consistently. This game is so much deeper than it seems at first, with specific units countering others like SC2. The Spitters got you on the last wave. They spit acid that goes over the walls and does high AOE damage. They out range shocking towers. Snipers need to be in towers to extend their range to hit them, or you need titans which are fantastic. Higher difficulty makes the zombies have more health and do more damage, as well as increases their agro range for sounds. There are build orders and such for "try hard" modes, but if you want to just have fun with it a few basic concepts make is so much easier. Food first, and that means farms early. Ballista early for defense. Rangers are like reapers or adepts, they lose value fast. Solders scale well to late game, and snipers are great at the special infected as their damage is very high. Basic rule of expanding is you expand when you need to get more space/resources. Just like SC2, try to get away with as little army as possible if it limits your ability to build houses (economy), but build more army if you need to expand...to build more houses. The key is you need a strong economy to support the army (Buildings and units have a constant upkeep cost unlike SC2 that eats your income) The Market makes houses need less food and auto sells your overflow of resources for gold, and the bank is powerful to support income. At high difficulties, if you are not aggressive enough you won't have enough money late game to defend. You were aggressive and did grate! Delete inner walls for money, wood and space. Use pause when loosing to build by selling walls that are not needed, and rebuilding things in the wave path. Wasps are my favorite and they really are broken if their noise doesn't get you killed early on. I really hope you dig into this game, it gets even better! Mutants, Giants, Nest of the Harpy, so much to explore. Have fun!

[@theeraphatsunthornwit6266]

I just checked... higher difficulty does not increase infected stats.... only its number on map. I think one thing he can easily do is market and bank combo and surround it by house.. And i think he might win this if he changed sniper target priority.

[@dubnubgtd8538]

I have 5000 hours playtime on this, insanely addictive. Edit: Wait till you hit 900% on caustic lands survival.

[@TailyonDaath]

The way the houses were laid out hurt my organized mind... 😵‍💫

[@endersblade]

Glad I'm not the only one lol

[@Volkaer]

Lol same. So inefficient for banks / markets too - it was rage inducing!

[@KnownAsKenji]

A lotta people get this wrong at first. Gotta bite the bullet and go for them 2-by-x rows.

[@lonewonderer1979]

It has been a few years since I've played this. Marc needs to get his build order figured out! it matters. Walls matter. Static defenses are necessary. Careful spacing also matters. The campaign is actually pretty fun, especially the end levels. It is worth looking into.

[@missbelled6700]

learning to use one or two walls and a ballista, basic kiting micro, etc... completely changes the game and unlocks so potential.

[@MaxSharpy]

Campaign is great, but hero missions are boring af. I wish they would just remove those.

[@travisc2094]

Awsome to see you try out they are billions. One of my favorites.

[@lodsup]

one of the tips i rmb was that you should put "scratching posts" when fast expanding. just random 1 single wall spaced out for the occasional roaming zombie. they go for walls first. that usually gives you fast notification to pull someone to deal with the problem.

[@marr1977]

They don't really go for walls first, it's just that if a zombie hits a wall first it won't try to go around it but it will start attacking it

[@lodsup]

@@marr1977 unless they changed it from the years ago when i played zombies will attack the "closest" friendly unit or building. aka if you have random scratching posts during fast expands wandering zombies will go for those first because its the closest. it both gives you an alert and have no chain reaction unlike an exposed tesla tower.

[@user-mv2nn6rw2w]

Nothing was changed. The closest friendly unit has a qualifier you missed: it has to contain people. Anything that costs workers or provides colonists counts. So not walls, not unmanned towers, and not wasps, but everything else. They only attack walls if the wall is DIRECTLY on their path.

[@lodsup]

@@user-mv2nn6rw2w then thats a very different game experience from when i played years back. i would literally have one single wall post in between 7 or so empty grids and stragglers would 100% scratch at those wall posts without going past them to my base. i'd skimp out on patrols sometimes because i had scratching posts. idk what to tell ya. maybe im just lucky across countless dozens of games or maybe its a patch some years back.

[@Lesminster]

I recommend to fall in love with Thanatos ;) Also, setting target priorities for heavy hitters is a must. Snipers on towers with order to target high priority targets will make a short work of all spitters and stuff. At least for a longer while.

[@MyDuese]

TAB is about cumulative progression. Games are won and lost often times in the early days of the map simply because every small change early builds on itself for the rest of the game. This is what makes it really fun and engaging. In SC2, you expand because you run out of minerals in your main base. Imagine if those minerals never ran out. Your income would just get progressively more as you expanded. It would really change the entire strategy of the game.

[@KnownAsKenji]

Yeah, it's all very much a snowball principle. Like, if you get a Food and Energy pick-up early, which lets you rush Wood Workshop and Farms early, it's absolutely huge, if you do it right you'll be way more ahead than normal.

[@barrysivadon993]

TAB is an awesome game!!! BEST TIP - On number pad, hold the 7 button down to see health of all units (yours & zombies). While holding 7, turn off Num Lock. Now, you will permanently see the health bars.

[@kyleb3316]

or alt.

[@stevenhinson5919]

More gold: wood workshop i think it's called, can lupgrade tents to cabins (later stone houses with stone workshop), bank and market helps as well. Farms for food (wood workshop). Some maps have gold you can quary. You got most of it. You can double gate as well. If only 1-2 soldier centers produce soldiers/snipers all the time. Get tents upgraded faster. Awesome try. Good work.

[@fenderOCG]

This is my favourite game, 2770 hours, top score 393650. I'd play other stuff but this lets me attend to interruptions better than most.

[@BuddyWudzyn]

Awesome to see you try out more RTS. Only against the storm and battle aces have really piqued my fancy since SC2 and I keep seeing videos of this game and havnt made up my mind if I want to try it. Although I never would have thought battle aces would be fun and it turned out to be my favorite

[@JJ-it3iq]

It's a really good game. If you're feeling bored, just bump the difficulty up a bit and you'll have a good time.

[@jaker4ster]

They Are Billions is pretty fun. As a single-player RTS it didn't hold my attention like a competitive one, but the process of learning how to survive was super rewarding. Recommended!

[@AC-kb1dc]

yeah it’s a fun extremely challenging game

[@dawnstar81]

I noticed against the storm on Steam yesterday while looking for this game. Is it like They Are Billions or more like Settlers or so?

[@BuddyWudzyn]

@@dawnstar81 there’s not any combat, to me it’s like a mix between FTL, slay the spire and city builder games. But I definitely strongly recommend, easily 200-500 hours of gameplay on it

[@dusekdan]

bro, this makes me really happy. i took a break from watching the videos for a while because life wasnt too good, but eventually went back to comfort watching someone play there are billions. now i come back and you're playing it too. pretty cool.

[@diseabronx5075]

There are two early game wall strats. 1. A single wall to draw agro and act as an early warning system. 2. In line of an incoming horde to buy time. Otherwise permanent walls are end game or for helping to empty a doom village.

[@Kaefer1973]

The way he murdered his archer in the south, brutal. But considering their talk, maybe necessary to keep em in line.

[@UnspecifiedHealer]

The best piece of advice I can give you is to think of the zombies in this game as a liquid hitting your walls. If you force all that liquid to concentrate on a single point they will trash your walls quickly. However if you have a large wall they will spread across it. Obviously that requires more defenses but I had way better success back when I played this game once I started thing of the zombie waves as a liquid hitting my walls.

[@davecolwell725]

This is a good tip.

[@KnownAsKenji]

Surface area and concave/convex principles apply here, as well. Jagged walls (such as those placed vertically or horizontally from player's perspective) have more surface area and thus get hit more and get destroyed more quickly. Try to go for those smooth diagonal walls whenever possible.

[@muffinbutton8858]

I personally really enjoy seeing you try out other games

[@davecolwell725]

Glad to see this game getting so many views. Hope to see more runs! I hope you will upload all your runs on YT because I'm in AUS i never catch you online on twitch. I would really love to see you running 800% on the hardest maps. It's so satisfying once you get good enough at the game to crush those maps since it's just feels like you have no hope at all when you first try.

[@MrBlamaker]

imagine to use pause more efficiently and not having 100/100 on resources ! :D When i've played campaign on 700%, i do remember that therer were 10 min cigg breaks to re-think next actions :D

[@cole-nq1ru]

So glad you picked this up. Very fun to watch.

[@hohvideos3238]

Ha, great to see you play this. Have followed all of your SC2 content and have played and enjoyed They are Billions some (long?!) time ago :) would love it if you dig into this a bit more :D

[@kaelinvictus6039]

(Marine stutter step)Focus fire = Select ranged unit then hold A and left click on a target. Pretty handy if you need to quickly dispatch a random zombie before it tickles your tents/incomplete buildings.

[@Ragnarok6664]

They are billions is a treat, got me collecting even more RTS survival/horde games, Alien Marauder, Age of Darkness and Diplomacy is not an option 😄👌🏻

[@Jamerz1]

I love this game! Pretty cool you're giving it a try. My advice is prioritizing market, resource collection buildings and warehouses so that way when you want to expand or build advanced buildings you have a lot more material to spare. Also, it boosts the production of farms and quarries. You got to snowball early to be able to survive the late game! (Maybe not on 100% but usually),

[@davecolwell725]

1:14:40 take the whole map while accounting for the best choke points to the four edge directions. You can really start to funnel the waves to your best defences strategically. I find stone towers full of snipers to be the best defences mid and late game.

[@davecolwell725]

Oh man I’m so glad to see you playing this I’ve wanted you to play this for ages!!

[@homegrownliberty3033]

I am SOOO here for this! PLEASE DO THESE ALL THE TIME!!

[@user-ng1qr4kf2w]

"there's more zombies than I have IQ" , that's hilarious.

[@akruiner]

Really happy to see you play this game! Can't wait till you try the higher difficulties on some of the other map types. Also looking forward to when you truly encounter Mutants.

[@davecolwell725]

53:37 there are gold resources you can mine gold, you also get late game gold by having a market and over producing all materials

[@jonathonwise1280]

Watching you place those tents, nearly set my ocd off 😂

[@davecolwell725]

I think you did surprisingly well considering it's your first time to the end game, snipers needed to be on high value target mode and you needed more towers so they could kill the bile guys before they get to the walls. Just those couple tweaks I think would have made you win, impressive!

[@Elfis99]

I really recommend the campaign. It's not easy; it has selectable difficulty as well. It will add progressively more tech as you do more missions. Each mission is quite unique. If you don't like the hero missions or the 'attack' missions, you can just lower the difficulty for those and blitz them to get the points, then continue with the more meaty missions. For good youtube vids of this game, KenseiTV is the best one who still plays, and of course there are a lot of older vids. BeastyQT had a pretty fun TAB series too. One oddity is that Kensei purposely doesn't micro, except to kite. Micro in this game is sort opposite to Starcraft. In Starcraft, you stutter step for extra movement but can't increase your attack speed. In this game, you can increase attack speed by force firing, but trying to stutter step interrupts your attacks.

[@aortaheart1910]

If you end up wanting always-on health bars, you need to do a small workaround since it's not a setting. You just need to add a numpad number (I use 7) as a hotkey for "Show Life Bars", and then in game hold down that number while numlock is on, and then tap numlock to disable it before letting go of the number key. In this way, the life bars will basically be "stuck on". Note though that if you alt-tab or otherwise lose focus of the game window, then you will need to redo the trick again.

[@homegrownliberty3033]

Marc needs to watch one video of an impossible map by @KenseiTV. I feel like Marc's intelligence level with Kensei's example would be freakin awesome. TAB is my favorite game.

[@chanceyourluck]

Great game! Glad to see you playing it. I know you said the campaign is not for you, and tbh the modes where you have to control a single hero is a bit weird to me but ultimately still kinda fun, but the regular rts missions of the campaign are fun and I think you’d like them

[@108stitches6]

So glad you found this. I love this game.

[@KnownAsKenji]

Tasteless has been checking this out lately, as well. Recommend checking that out if you guys want more TAB content. Dunno if there's VODs on KZbin but they're on his Twitch, of course. He'll be playing it again so you can catch him Live, too, though his Stormgate event is in a few days, so most likely after that.

[@davecolwell725]

The bank needs to be strategically positioned in an area of many houses in order to make them more efficient as you upgrade them.

[@goldnugget3094]

Dude I'm so blessed by you! Thank you for making videos!!!!

[@alexlorda394]

you can set units to prioritize shooting the closest or highest level enemy. you need to set the snipers to target the highest level, then they will kill the spitters in the back first.

[@virtueshope564]

oh HELL YEA! I wanna see a whole campaign playthrough on apocalyptic! DO IT!

[@Mesos92]

Looking forward to seeing you complete a full brutal + no pause map. This game is great.

[@YokeRoel]

This game is awesome and I really love you streaming it! Please give us more of it! :)

[@maciejjaskiewicz3582]

i have to say i love chilling with u thermal watching u playing this

[@jonnyb6700]

Have sunk hundreds of hours into this game. Very satisfying base build and upgrade game loop.

[@ikocheratcr]

Interesting that you are trying to solve it on your own, that looks like a very good thing to see how you progress.

[@macedindu829]

I watched Beasty play this, I don't know, maybe 4 years ago? It's a really impressive game. Obviously it's 1 player, so that excludes a lot of RTS players, but it's really well done. It's kinda sadly overlooked IMO. ETA: the campaign is really great.

[@duckquacker2114]

Your ranger was doing a patented "what are you doing over there" uThermal cross-map queen walk

[@Optimator7]

I would definitely watch more of this content

[@joshuawall2590]

Dang lol remember when this game first came out Splattercat covered it but no one else. Great to see you pick it up!!

[@drewskiwest5284]

i can't believe no one has heard of this game until you uploaded it. i bought the pre-release/beta game before it was available for everyone awesome, awesome, HARD game

[@Volkaer]

Can you do one with ramping infected population to max at the difficulty selector? The other settings don't matter imho - but it's the most fun one :P Also surprised you weren't having a couple of squads of rangers microing the final wave around the perimeter of the walls :P

[@ThoralfSkolem]

I love this game. Looking forward to this series.

[@benjamineidam]

There are billions... of HMHMHMs in this video! :D Love it! :D

[@poweroftheweez]

Love this game as well, glad you are playing it

[@alexandredornellas2319]

ARE YOU KIDDING!!?? THIS GAME IS AWESOOMEE

[@Bullybob77]

you want a challenging single player strategy game? try rimworld, naked brutality on randy random settings. its basically a colony survival game but you start with 1 naked guy and he's lke a sims character who has bad moods so if you dont keep him happy he'll go punch the nearest thing which might be a bear and he'll die. or maybe you'll get food poisoning and be in tremendous pain lying in bed while a 85 year old raider with a peg leg and bad back burn down your entire base. and thats just the potential early challenges

[@washyleopard]

Build houses around banks and markets, you should plan where these go from the beginning.

[@philiprioux7767]

Yes!!!!My favorite game ever made. So happy to see this! Micro!

[@DankChucle]

Pro tip. You can cancel attack animation on archers and marines by using A move as target fire, resulting in doubled attack speed but its heavy micro

[@envymi4238]

Cool to see you play this :D Fun game ^^

[@mranderson978]

This game reminds me of Stronghold. That was an awesome game.

[@nicholasb4218]

yeah, loved this game 6 yrs ago. just started the campaign recently and somehow the medium level is quite a challenge.

[@Nekoyashiki-san]

They are Billions is really a nice game you can dump many hours in. Have fun with the game, gets lots of warehouses and take your time with the city planning at first. ;)

[@MrGustavevil]

Switches games - gets artosis pylon'd

[@henrymoon6351]

build 3x3 then 6x6 traps...draw the wave to them with one fast archer and run around, the waves will kill themselves on the traps...kiting...most important skill to get to advanced stages....build workshop, farms, then cottages as soon as possible...that is 1st priority

[@TestSubject004]

I love TAB. it seems like the Devs have just disappeared off the face of the earth. I guess they went under.

[@borslab]

You should try Age of Darkness: Final Stand, it's like a mix of They Are Billions and Star Craft.

[@SilentSigil]

I second this. I feel like it's superior to tab in a lot of ways. Less RNG, more unit control and customization.

[@joshuaparsons1267]

This game is incredible, iv put hundreds of hours into it. Wish they had another one coming. Have fun!

[@nicklindberg90]

Great game! Glad to see you give it a go

[@fishlobs]

oil is used for advanced tech, wasps are pretty strong when you have good aoe or good vs harpys

[@curtisarchambault5346]

The upgrade sound effect sound like the online Catan game

[@wolvie90]

Man this game kicks ass! I should play this again. I wonder if has changed since release. I remember it had a crazy micro trick with the ranger bow chicks, is that still a thing?

[@HeavyLiftGaming]

What in the heck! We branching out around here? ❤

[@kinggarithos888]

Use your archers to scout in the beginning. Zombies aren't gonna do anything to you for the first few minutes.

[@dirkbester9050]

Yes, yes, this game is pretty crazy.

[@ChavaYang]

Woohoo! I only play a few games and this is one of them!

[@Meany747]

Chatting about being unable to move units through the houses whilst dropping them like they're hot :D

[@Pand0rasAct0r_]

I love this game so much but it can get difficult really quickly at the higher maps. I'm still stuck on the third map due to bad rng. XD Also a pro tip is to properly save space. Don't space things out so widely try and make blocks or rows of houses.

[@sebastianteister]

Challenge: You have your 5 base untis and have to send every built unit on auto hunt

[@Reaver70]

you should build your walls to funnel zombies into your turrets esp when you work out the Area they kill.

[@tjalve1]

Would be nice if you explained the game and your choices a little more when you introduce it to the channel for the first time

[@MerlynMusicman]

Iitc TrumpSC did some more explanatory Let's Play runs, if you wanted, ot was years ago, though.

[@tjalve1]

@@MerlynMusicman No, I think it should have been here. It’s a tip for next time uThermal introduces a new game to his stream.

[@5ur3nh0hn]

please show me how to beat the last map on highest dificulty :D i played it ~700hours and never managed to win it (perfectly. meaning taking over the whole map and lose close to nothing.)

[@user-qy7re1zn7h]

Sniper and titans great units to love

[@Rbog17]

Either this guy is legit the smartest man alive or hes trolling all of us. No way hes this good this fast. I used to think I was kind of smart. Maybe Im just slow or something, but it took me many hours to gey any kind of good. He doesnt even pause. 😮😮😮

[@De4monbe4r]

Finally!! (one of my favorite games)

[@cawcasian820]

mass sniper OP

[@user-ur4nl6dq2x]

Yay! I have this one on my list of games to play

[@MycketTuff]

Title sounds like the kids counting to 27

[@AC-kb1dc]

oh nice this games awesome. wish there was more development for it

[@lordbalbero348]

Marc trying a Tower Defanse :D

[@flauschiflausch]

sehr spannend. vielleicht kaufe ich das spiel auch.

[@MyDuese]

No hotkeys aside from control groups.

[@Reepecheep]

Zombies don't just spawn anywhere

[@zeburgerkang]

you need a market as soon as possible after your solider center... that excess wood you built needs to go somewhere.... you need to spend all your resources asap at the start, floating resources like crazy.

[@MyDuese]

Make sniper. Snowball. Win.

[@randoprime]

Omg Uthermal. I got this on sell. It’s freaking hard!

[@sebastianteister]

I'd like to have a uThermal AI that does the details of micro and I just tell it what to do. Like: expand here, defend there.