- This is a very macro game. Your constant cycle of upgrades is going to be food > housing > food > housing. You need bodies and gold for good soldiers so don't let the houses fall by the wayside. Any resources that aren't used are wasted once you hit the cap (until you unlock the market) so don't be afraid to spend it.
- Early on when walls are expensive it's fine to set one archer on a patrol path between two hard terrain points to serve as a wall. If you make a square with them around your early city you can protect it from doomspiraling due to single zeds getting in. After that it's okay to build walls and just use a roaming band of archers to take down zeds nibbling on it.
- One zombie getting into your base will end a run so make sure you actually do the above. Don't just range out a bit, go "they're far away, it's fine" and then ignore that side until you look back and find that your housing block got infected, each tent spawning four more zeds.
- Build houses in rows and leave some space, later buildings give adjacency bonuses thar can be very helpful.
- Archers are going to be your early exploration squads, sending out 5+ of them as a group unless you want to do a lot of manual kiting. You start out with a couple soldiers but they are *LOUD* and will stir up every zed for miles if you let them patrol. Leave them for dire circumstances until you get your walls all up and a lot of units produced.
- Don't attack the infected hive buildings unless you're good and ready.
- The name of the game is double wide walls in concentric rings. The zeds will find a break point so don't rely on a single set of walls to protect everything. Surround your houses and your city center with a set, and build out from there every time you find a narrow section. Don't be an idiot and try to make an indefensible sixty wall wide section; push forward and explore until you find a hard terrain chokepoint and defend that.
- There is an overlay key that will show you what blocks will block movement of zeds, I don't remember what it is. Use it a lot so you don't accidentally leave a one wide opening they can get in through.