They Are Billions is a strategy game where you have to try and survive against zombies which number in billions. There are a lot of different elements to the game and multiple things you need to be aware of when playing the game. The combat system is complex and there are so many things that new players can easily forget to do.
This They Are Billions Strategy Guide will guide you through anything and everything that you may need help with when trying to beat the horde of zombies that is out to get you.
For more help on They are Billions, you can check out our Beginners Guide with Starting Tips, Defense Guide, and Resources Guide.
Strategy Guide for They Are Billions
In this They are Billions Strategy Guide, we will first provide you with some general tips on what not to do.
This will outline the basic principles that will be essential to you not dying in the game. Pay attention to them, as they will be crucial when you try to follow our strategies.
After this, we will tell you about two specific strategies which are very useful. One will tell you how to win the game in 80 days while the other will give you tips on how beat the Fourth Map on 100 days.
They Are Billions General Tips
It is a comprehensive Strategy Guide that outlines the best strategies, some basic survival tips, and information on how to win in just 80 days.
We have covered all the details in the post below:
Idling
Sitting on your ass doing nothing is the worst thing you can do. Try to explore, train, expand, and upgrade! If you are not doing one of these, then do the other.
It is absolutely essential that you are constantly working to prepare for the onslaught.
Pause the Game
When paused, you can cancel buildings without losing half of your resources. You can also take this time to plan your next move.
Planning is very crucial part of the game and you need to do it effectively if you want to advance quickly. Lastly, you will need to occasionally eat or go to the bathroom, so might as well pause the game when you do so that you do not waste time.
Gold Generation
You must focus on generating more gold as you would need it for everything from units to defenses. There needs to be a large enough storage area to store the gold as well as a high rate of incoming gold so that you can spend where need and recover as soon as possible.
For this purpose, you have to get more land. As more land means more food and with that, you would have more houses and expansion will be easy.
If there is some stone present, it should be saved to be used for the Soldier Center. As you need to protect the area you have acquired so you would need more soldiers.
Farms would be a very good source of food revenue so to get more farms, elect the mayor that offers you farm tech.
Planning the City
There are a few things that you need to make sure that your city has to keep a steady flow of food that fills everyone’s needs and provide safety to anyone.
These things include a hunter’s lodge and a fisherman’s cottage as these would help with getting food other than farms.
Add tents so that more workers can be accommodated and this also speeds up the time for the next elections for the mayor. But don’t reduce the area for farms.
You should also keep markets and banks at the center of the scheme and the bank will help you get more gold income.
The market will make the food cheaper in its vicinity. Plan carefully to make the most out of your districts.
Focus on getting more resources rather than making advanced buildings as it would be more beneficial for the economy of the district.
Environment
The environment is very important in games such as They are Billions. Make sure you send your rangers out to scour the surroundings and find choke points where you can destroy the zombies. Here you can set up your defenses!
Buildings
Make sure you use your resources for the right stuff. Try to have buildings of the similar type close to each other to facilitate resource gathering.
Also, remember to place your towers behind your walls for extra protection.
How to Defend
Make sure you have your defenses spread out on all sides. You do not know where you are going to get attacked from so it is best if you do not prefer one direction over the rest and try to evenly distribute your barricades through the base.
Map
It is not that difficult to determine if you have a good map or not. There are only a few factors that you need to know to determine whether or not the map is good for you.
A map should have a lot of grasslands along with lakes for your food industry. It should also have a black terrain and 2 areas of the wood collection.
A stone deposit and chokepoints are added bonuses that could also really help.
Defense Layout
At the edge of your base, you should always try to prioritize stone walls and try to build 2 stone walls which are double. Ballistas are very important and it is best to have as many of them as you can easily afford.
Apart from this, you should have snipers for their long range and archers for their mobility. This way you will be ready to defend yourself from waves when they come.
Units
Rangers are by far the best units available to you in the game. They are extremely fast, silent, and work well as a scout. Their damage is consistently high and they do not attract a lot of zombies. They can also kill everyone in a 1v1 battle except a harpy.
Have a lot of them to deal with a horde easily. Titans are the next best as they are the most powerful but they cost a lot and have a lot of upkeep. They also do not work really well as scouts.
Then come Snipers which are good because of their range but do not have much use up close, but they are perfect for the early game.
Soldiers come next followed by the Thanatos as they have a really bad melee attack along with having an upkeep which does not justify buying them a lot.
Lucifers are the worse as they cannot shoot over walls so executioner zombies will rip them apart.
Lucifers do have a decent damage and they can be good units if you position them well, just make sure you know what you are doing before you purchase them.
Extra Force
It is always best to have a small force on the side which goes out into the wild and tries to thin the horde as much as it can.
Conversely, it is also good to have a small force on the side for the last few waves as a way to shore up your defenses wherever you find them to be weak.
There will probably be certain areas which you have forgotten to defend properly, and this force will be your saving grace, as it will protect you from unexpected breaches.
Prioritize Units
Depending on the type of unit, it is best if you set up a priority for them. Units like Sniper or Titans will be better off if they attack the target of the highest priority whereas units such as the soldier will be much better if they attack the target closer to them.
This way they can protect themselves adequately based on their stats.
Be on the Lookout for Choke Points
Choke points are your single biggest friend. If you want to keep your losses to a minimum then this is the way you should play the map.
Try to set up a gate near a choke point and try to get the zombies bundled up near a choke point as much as you can.
Then unleash your Area of Effect power upon them and watch them crumble to dust faster than you could have ever imagined.
Learn to Sacrifice
This. You need to understand that sometimes you need to sacrifice some of your units or buildings as the game goes on.
This is for the greater good so that you can be more efficient in the later or the middle stages of the game. Soldiers will almost certainly need to be sacrificed if you want to ensure your success.
As I will state many times in this guide, if you need your soldiers then you have already failed the map and it is just better if you save your time and start the game all over again.
Enjoy the Game and It’s Learning Curve
Before we move on to the more complex parts of the game, it is important to remember that it is just a game and although it is very difficult, you should try to sit back and enjoy the learning curve rather than get frustrated and waste your time being hard on yourself.
It will take a decent amount of time for you to learn this game and it is best if you focus on one thing at a time and do the process slowly.
How to Survive – They are Billions Strategy, What You Should Know!
Basics of Survival
Before we go on to the specific days, remember that any wood spot which has more than 12 wood is good and every stone spot which has over 4 stone is good.
Build a sawmill or a quarry first and keep on building fishing huts wherever you can and then build hunting huts next to the sawmills to ensure they get a positive trait.
Use your free resources to build residential areas, and keep on constantly building troops to house them in. No amount of troops is ever enough.
Also, remember to expand whenever you feel like you can survive it. Lastly, have one ballista on every wall and remember to not upgrade to executioners until the final wave, as executions are very expensive to keep.
You should also remember to have at least 10 archers before expanding and 20-30 to clear the inner parts of the map.
Soldiers can be difficult to manage as they have short range and attract zombies.
Also, remember to completely avoid zombie buildings until you are sure that you can destroy them and to watch your troops while they tread the unknown to ensure that they do not die for no reason.
Remember that the inner city has slow walkers which you can easily kill but avoid the zombies in black suits as they can damage your archers.
Also, avoid fighting a lot as it will attract zombies from farther away which can be a problem for you.
Zombie Behavior
There are a fixed number of zombies that spawn at the start of the map. Apart from this, they attack your base in waves and do not spawn randomly. From the second wave onward, zombies enter the map from the borders and run towards your base.
Zombies try to hear a sound and go towards it. The sound can stack and cause a whole horde to be on your small group of rangers.
Zombies will attack the nearest target but will not jump over walls unless they are special zombies.
Zombies can also infect buildings very fast which will cause everyone housed in that building to turn into a zombie and join their onslaught. Now let us look at how to survive the 80-day attack!
They are Billions Survival Guide – How to Win in 80 Days
In this section of our They are Billions Strategy Guide, we have detailed some of the tips that should help you win in 80 days.
Day 1-10
First of all, if you do not have a 10+ wooden spot near your spawn you should just restart the map. If you do, then send your archers in all directions as we discussed and then decide where you will build a defense, which should optimally be in between trees, mountains, and water.
Remember to build fishing, and hunting huts wherever you can and build residencies, quarry, sawmill and a soldier center.
By the time you are done doing all of these, day 5 should have ended. Now you should use your gold and build a wooden shop, research the farm, market, and ballista.
Keep on building as many archers as you possibly can along with residential areas.
Day 10-18
Prepare yourself for the first wave by building a double wall and the ballista if you were able to research it. You should easily be able to defend this wave with your archers.
After doing that, place a market between the houses and research the wooden residential.
Continue to build mills, quarries, and food buildings to expand your empire along with archers for protection.
Remember to build a ballista at each entrance and decide in which direction you want the majority of your expansion to be. Now move over there with your archers and kill all the zombies in the direction.
Stop if you see an opening where you can easily build a wall or a blockage for defense. Eventually, you want to research snipers and start building them instead of archers.
Day 18-26
Defend yourself from wave 3 using your archers and then research the bank. The bank should be placed next to your market.
Next, build a warehouse near your production place and then begin expanding as fast as you possibly can.
Now research stone houses and walls as you want to upgrade to them for extra protection. Build farms and huts everywhere while upgrading residential until you have enough resources for foundry research.
Day 26-34
Not much to add here. Defend yourself from wave 3 using your stone wall, ballistas, archers and snipers. Then continue expanding and upgrading the way you have been doing. You need to be quite fast if you want to survive the later waves.
Day 34-41
Defend yourself from the fourth wave and try to build a foundry along with a double stone wall. Apart from this continue expanding and researching.
One of your major research at this point should be the oil platform once you have enough gold along with the titan.
Day 41-47
You should be familiar with the grind by now. Defend yourself from wave 5. You need to have at least 2 ballistas, double stone wall and troops to beat this wave.
Then continue to build titans and find more oil. Upgrade your residential and try to get as much energy and food as you can.
Also, destroy all zombie villages that you can and gather their resources.
Day 47-54
Use your titans to kill the sixth wave and continue to build more of them. Apart from this clear whichever areas are still occupied and continue to expand, build and upgrade.
Also, remember to build as many ballistas on your walls as you possibly can.
Day 54-66
You should know the answer to this by now, keep on upgrading and kill the waves. You should make a double stone wall at all of your defenses now.
Day 66-72
Destroy Wave 9, and then stop upgrading residential. Upgrade all of your ballistas and build as many troops as you possibly can.
Have your archers in the middle of the map so that they can go wherever you need help the most. Your gold income will drop off, but remember that this is quite normal.
Day 72-80
Prepare yourself for the last wave. Send your troops to your weak spots and try to prevent your defenses you’re falling apart.
Remember to fall back if your defenses are breached and build new defenses further back. Once you have defended yourself from the plague, take a screenshot and relish the moment. After this move on to the next map.
General Campaign Tips
Remember to always destroy the zombie villages wherever you can find them. They will add zombies to the final wave if you do not.
Destroy the villages when you have enough firepower as they can be quite a hassle if you try to take them on in the early to mid-game.
Surviving the final wave may seem difficult, but all you need to do is to have tons of ballistic, double stone walls and some fallback spots.
Defenses are your first priority, and thus they should be carefully laid out and protected.
How to Beat the Fourth Map on 100 Days
The fourth map functions a little different from the aforementioned map as it has a different strategy and different things you need to be aware of when tackling it.
Let us take a look at some tips which will be incredibly helpful as you try and take on this challenge.
Early Game
As you may have expected, you need to ensure that you have trees where you spawn. You need A LOT of trees as most of this game is based on map gen and you will need a lot of trees if you are planning to survive the game. Grass can be beneficial but it is definitely not important and thus, it can be ignored!
Food is another thing that is extremely important. Tie in everything with 1 food if you can. Remember that if you see any hunter cottages with 5+ food, you absolutely have to take them without even thinking.
The amount of priority that food needs is immense and thus, the hunter cottages and other ways of getting your hands on food are very important for success.
Once again, using your soldier is extremely pointless in the early game as he attracts a lot of attention. Archers can be much better but make sure you do not use your soldiers to even defend a wall.
They may be effective warriors, but soon you will get attacked by zombies after zombies who may have heard them moving about.
Best Defenses
Houses are another thing which you always need to be working on. Build as many houses as you can, and build around 20 Rangers before the first wave hits as it is very easy and does not require anything like ballistics.
Just make sure you have an adequate number of rangers along with a double wood wall and you should be fine.
While we are on the subject of walls, remember that you do not need stone walls for the first four waves and they should not be that difficult to beat.
But that does not mean that you should sit idle. Clear our zombies from the map from the second day by sending your archers around the map in groups of 2. This is done so that you can expand.
For defenses, you can put random walls in the area around your base which zombies will attack first and give you time to react to them.
Remember to kill your soldiers and use their food and income for other things. You do not need to use soldiers if you do then its all over and you will not be able to win the map no matter what you try.
Soldiers center should be up before day 6. And once you have enough rangers then you should try and set up a stone workshop at all costs.
Ballistas are good for walls which have cities near them, but eventually, you want as many ballistas as you can possibly get your hands on.
The amount of protection that they offer makes them so worthwhile and important that often they can end up being the main force behind your defense.
They will also massively assist you in the final wave which is why it is best to build them towards the end of the game on a large amount.
Income and Building
Remember that you will not have as many citizens as you would have in other maps due to the nature of this map.
Your income will probably not be more than 1000 around day 30 and it will only increase to about 1800 by the time you get to day 60.
You need to account for this when you play the map and ensure that you do not waste your resources on stuff which will probably not be that useful to you.
As always, pick up any wood that is 10+, any 4+ stone and any 3+ iron. Also, remember to have planned housing districts so that you can have a bank and market in the center.
This will greatly help your income which will probably be massively strained in this map.
Remember to not have more than 1 warehouse on this map as you will need your workers due to their shortage on this map.
Once you have a lot to do with a lot of resources but not a lot of workers, it is best to build more wall layers for the extra protection that they will offer against the waves.
You cannot go wrong with wall layers so build as much as you can.
Try to avoid gates, as they tend to attract zombies much more than any other edifices.
Destroy a part of the wall to move your units in or out and then rebuild the wall. It may seem expensive but it is actually much more efficient than gates ever will be.
The End
Snipers are good but zombies tend to rush a single spot in quite a high frequency on this map. For this reason, it is best if you be extremely careful with them as they can be easily wiped out if they number below 20.
Move 20 snipers in a group to make sure they do not die. It is best if you set their target to the highest priority rather than closest enemy as it will allow you to send them out on their own and not have to worry about their fate.
Stop expanding around day 75 and then focus on building as many defenders as you can. Ballistas and Walls should be your main focus at this point. Executors are useless unless you can easily afford them, which you will not be able to in this map due to the already low income that you have.
Avoid them and instead focus on building as many titans as you can if you are happy with your ballistas. Lastly, try to avoid towers on this map as they are usually a waste of your resources.
