Solution:  While  holding down the fn key, use the up and down arrows to achieve page up and page down.

This is Sparta:

12.30.08 - Easy: Won this keeping all 3 wings with a score of 11,671 and  13,755 gold left.  You start with three halos, so first thing you should do is to upgrade your interest.  What I did was upgrade interest once and then researched ice.  I started with three arrow towers and then upgraded one to level  4.  A level 4 arrow tower has huge range and will do 250 damage.  Set this one in the middle.  The other two I kept at level three and then upgraded one more at around round 30.  After a while gold was not an issue and I had three storm towers (2nd to last tower I researched) all at level three and they were slightly staggered.   I then researched earthquake and put it as my last defense.  Basically it would clip some of the starting monsters but took out any that made it through the gauntlet I setup before.

12.31.08 – Med:  Won keeping 2 wings with a score of 10,210 and 10,742 gold left.  Very similar tactics I used in ten towers and the easy sparta.  I started with the three arrow towers except I. put two of them where the earthquake tower is on the picture.  I upgraded the arrows to level 4 once they were in-effective as level 3.  I’m finding out that you need to raise enough money, not only to get everything to level 3 but you to buy earthquake and upgrade to level three.  I don’t see any way to beat the politicians without earthquake.

1.23.08 – Hard: Finally won this level keeping only 1 wing, score of   7,264 and 785 gold left.  To begin this level, I researched interest and Magic tower.  I built only Magic towers at first and had only one arrow tower at the end to pick off any stragglers.  I also used three canons to begin.  I didn’t build any level three water until I absolutely needed it.  By doing this, I found that I could go many more turns without having to upgrade, therefore getting more interest.  I would choose the cheapest upgrade first until I was maxed.    I then researched earthquake and got it to level two immediately.  I had to go a few turns before I had enough for a level three earthquake but once I did, it was all downhill from there.  Replaced my water towers with level three ice and added two storm towers for good measure.  This was by far the hardest for me but I also did get in a rut of trying the same thing over and over again which made me lose at about level 24 every time.  Whew!!

Ten Towers:

12.31.08 – Easy:  Won this level losing 1 wing with a score of 37,591 and 137,500 gold left.  Start out the same as you would playing the regular game.  I made sure to upgrade interest twice before I researched any towers.  I had three arrow towers, two water towers and two cannons and upgraded them up to level 3 slowly, not too much to use up all my money.  I then upgraded my farthest arrow tower to level 4 and it acted as a type of sniper.  The first tower I researched was ice and I replaced both of my water towers and upgraded to level 3.  I maxed the rest of my towers with level 4 arrows because you will need them from level 30 to 33.  Once I got past level 33, got my storm tower and staggered them (see pic).  Used the earthquake to finish off the politicians and that’s it. 

1.3.09 – Med:  Won this level with a score of 8,860, 10,267 gold and 10 wings left. This level was pretty easy if you employ the tactics that I mentioned in Credit Crisis.  Lined the path with arrows and two level three water towers in the middle.  I had a few level 4 arrows toward the end, especially when money wasn’t an issue.  Once again, earthquake is a must have and level three ice makes it real easy to kill everything with it.  See pics for my final config.

Silver Spoon:

12.31.08 – Easy, Medium, Hard:  No tips here, just have fun.  The real challenge of this section is to see how much gold you can rack up.  There is no way you can lose it, especially if you research interest with the first two halos that were given to you.  This is a good level to relax to and not worry about strategy and focus on kicking some ass.

Credit Crisis:

1.2.09 – Easy:  Barely won with a score of 5,283 and with twelve gold left.  The key of this level is to only choose towers that you want to keep throughout the whole game.  I started with a level three water canon and two arrow towers.  My big mistake was to upgrade the arrow tower to level 4 (waste of money).  I should have started with two level 3 water canons.  Anyway, you need to get a level 3 earthquake to win so make sure that you have enough money for that.

1.2.09 – Med:  Won this level with a score of 6,586, 17 gold and 18 wings left.  What I had to do is muddle through for the first 7 levels with arrow towers (see pic).  Once I got my first halo, I researched, ice and replaced one of the arrow towers with a level 3 ice.  I put it where it could shoot at monsters coming and going.  I researched the earthquake tower next and put it on top and made it level 3.  Put a level 3 storm right at the beginning and bought as many ice as I could with the remaining money to slow down the monsters for the storm and earthquake towers.

1.3.09 – Hard:  Won this level having a score of 5,230, 15 gold left and 11 wings left.  What I did was line the path with arrow towers (see pic).   I held on long enough to wait to research earthquake and upgraded it to level 3.  After that I lined the path with ice towers to slow down the monsters.  Didn’t buy one magic tower.  The canon was put there because I had just enough money to buy it. 

Solution:  The key sequence is fn – delete and it worked perfectly in both documents and when deleting files.  I noticed when deleting files you can use fn – delete to send it to the recycle bin and fn – shift – del to permanently delete the fil

This is Sparta:

12.30.08 - Easy: Won this keeping all 3 wings with a score of 11,671 and  13,755 gold left.  You start with three halos, so first thing you should do is to upgrade your interest.  What I did was upgrade interest once and then researched ice.  I started with three arrow towers and then upgraded one to level  4.  A level 4 arrow tower has huge range and will do 250 damage.  Set this one in the middle.  The other two I kept at level three and then upgraded one more at around round 30.  After a while gold was not an issue and I had three storm towers (2nd to last tower I researched) all at level three and they were slightly staggered.   I then researched earthquake and put it as my last defense.  Basically it would clip some of the starting monsters but took out any that made it through the gauntlet I setup before.

12.31.08 – Med:  Won keeping 2 wings with a score of 10,210 and 10,742 gold left.  Very similar tactics I used in ten towers and the easy sparta.  I started with the three arrow towers except I. put two of them where the earthquake tower is on the picture.  I upgraded the arrows to level 4 once they were in-effective as level 3.  I’m finding out that you need to raise enough money, not only to get everything to level 3 but you to buy earthquake and upgrade to level three.  I don’t see any way to beat the politicians without earthquake.

Ten Towers:

12.31.08 – Easy:  Won this level losing 1 wing with a score of 37,591 and 137,500 gold left.  Start out the same as you would playing the regular game.  I made sure to upgrade interest twice before I researched any towers.  I had three arrow towers, two water towers and two cannons and upgraded them up to level 3 slowly, not too much to use up all my money.  I then upgraded my farthest arrow tower to level 4 and it acted as a type of sniper.  The first tower I researched was ice and I replaced both of my water towers and upgraded to level 3.  I maxed the rest of my towers with level 4 arrows because you will need them from level 30 to 33.  Once I got past level 33, got my storm tower and staggered them (see pic).  Used the earthquake to finish off the politicians and that’s it. 

1.3.09 – Med:  Won this level with a score of 8,860, 10,267 gold and 10 wings left. This level was pretty easy if you employ the tactics that I mentioned in Credit Crisis.  Lined the path with arrows and two level three water towers in the middle.  I had a few level 4 arrows toward the end, especially when money wasn’t an issue.  Once again, earthquake is a must have and level three ice makes it real easy to kill everything with it.  See pics for my final config.

Silver Spoon:

12.31.08 – Easy, Medium, Hard:  No tips here, just have fun.  The real challenge of this section is to see how much gold you can rack up.  There is no way you can lose it, especially if you research interest with the first two halos that were given to you.  This is a good level to relax to and not worry about strategy and focus on kicking some ass.

Credit Crisis:

1.2.09 – Easy:  Barely won with a score of 5,283 and with twelve gold left.  The key of this level is to only choose towers that you want to keep throughout the whole game.  I started with a level three water canon and two arrow towers.  My big mistake was to upgrade the arrow tower to level 4 (waste of money).  I should have started with two level 3 water canons.  Anyway, you need to get a level 3 earthquake to win so make sure that you have enough money for that.

1.2.09 – Med:  Won this level with a score of 6,586, 17 gold and 18 wings left.  What I had to do is muddle through for the first 7 levels with arrow towers (see pic).  Once I got my first halo, I researched, ice and replaced one of the arrow towers with a level 3 ice.  I put it where it could shoot at monsters coming and going.  I researched the earthquake tower next and put it on top and made it level 3.  Put a level 3 storm right at the beginning and bought as many ice as I could with the remaining money to slow down the monsters for the storm and earthquake towers.

1.3.09 – Hard:  Won this level having a score of 5,230, 15 gold left and 11 wings left.  What I did was line the path with arrow towers (see pic).   I held on long enough to wait to research earthquake and upgraded it to level 3.  After that I lined the path with ice towers to slow down the monsters.  Didn’t buy one magic tower.  The canon was put there because I had just enough money to buy it. 

Solution:  Had to do a full NAT for this and made the internal address of the Astaro box the new source.  After that adjustment, all was well.

Here are the few things that I have learned:

1. Can’t spend all your gold at once.  You need to keep a large enough balance to gain interest for more purchases. 
2. Don’t buy too much of one thing.  Some of the monsters are immune to certain towers. 
3. Arrow towers work well in the beginning but tend to lose their effectiveness as you get farther into the game.
4. Upgraded cannons will inflict damage on a group of monsters. Very helpful unless the monsters are resistant to cannons.
5. Ice and water combined is a great way to slow down the monster so the other towers can pick them off.  Not as effective if there is a large fast moving group of monsters.
6. Upgrade and place your towers where they can do twice the work. IE, on corners or in-between the path.
7. Runs down your battery fast.

With what I know I can approach level 30 on almost all the difficulty levels but then it stops there.  What strategies to you use or suggest to move farther in this game?  My kudos to TapJoy for making a great game and for making it free.

More Tap Defense Tips:

12.7.08: If you have any buildings that you know you won’t want after a level, sell them before the level is finished.  This will give you extra gold to acrue interest.

12.8.08: start out using arrows.  You get the most bang for the buck.  You will then be able to save your gold for the big guns.  Magic is very effective, especially if you upgrade.  After level 33, I believe, the arrows are useless.  When you get to that level, sell them all.  The game will warn you that the arrows are useless.

12.10.08: I got to level 37 and I took Todd’s Advice in the comments and used a ton of Ice.  Storm towers help as well.  Here’s a pic of my tower configuration.

12.11.08: New tap defense update is out.  Deals with the ever important interest rate bug.

12.15.08:  Got to level 43 today.  The trick for me was to hold off researching any new towers until I upgraded interest twice in a row.  How I was able to hold off was to utilize a lot of arrow towers. They are cheap and 4 of them put together is a 24 damage.  I just made sure that the monsters were getting hit at all times on the path.  It’s good to have something work them down.  LVL 3 cannons are great at the start because they inflict a lot of damage and have a splash rating that will inflict damage on nearby monsters.  I didn’t utilize ice until I upgraded interest twice, so that was about level 23 or so.  Then I just fit them in and spaced them out appropriately.  With the interest rate high, I was able to upgrade my ice towers with the interest and not lose too much money.  LVL 2 ice at a minimum toward the end and you need a few LVL 3 ice to really be effective. 
Before you are done with level 33 sell all of the arrow towers that you can.  You will not need them anymore and I replaced my arrow towers with Magic towers.  Almost a 1 to 1 trade.

12.15.08:  Won the game on easy.  Finally.  The key was to hold off on buying and  build up money, then I bought storms and put them on lvl 3 at the beginning where they could do the most damage.

12.16.08: Just got word that Todd beat the medium level.  He sent a pic. Good job Todd!!  Not to be outdone I just finished beating the medium level as well.  I forgot to take a screen shot but I wasn’t as efficient as Todd was with the towers.  As always, storm towers are the key to beat this great iPhone game.

12.24.08:  FINALLY BEAT THE HARD LEVEL!!!!  After a few weeks of frustration and a bit of cussing, I beat the hard level today with 12 angels left.  The key for me was to save money so I started with a ton of level 1 arrows, two by two, up the whole path.  If there was a place that a level 1 arrow could get a hit, I would put one there.  I staggered a few cannons and a whole  bunch of water.  a round lev el 11, I was able to get in enough gold to pay for my water and cannon upgrades with interest earned.  I stayed with the formula of upgrading interest twice before researching towers.  Next was ice and put them in between the water and upgraded to level 2 immediately and the level three within a few turns.  Once magic was available, I slowly replaced the arrow towers and got most of my magic to level two.   I put a crap load of storm on this level and upgraded almost all of them to level three.  I didn’t put them all in the same area like last time.  I staggered them and had a level three far into the path to get any the other storm towers missed.  This will really come in handy when you deal with the politicians.   I didn’t let one politician get by with that config.  One thing I did do was upgrade and add magic as the politicians died.  Just in case I needed to get something that got by all the other defenses.

Links:

• TapDefense Challenge Tips
• TapJoy.com
• http://sites.google.com/site/tapdefense/Home
• http://www.tapdefense.info

Solution:  Clonezilla, an open source solution that met my imaging needs:

1. Clone an entire XP setup and save it to the network (haven’t tried vista)
2. Image the same or like machine from the network share (There is a HD to HD option as well)
3. Multicasting:  (haven’t tried this yet but according to their website, they cloned 42 workstations in 10 minutes with a 5gig image).
4. It’s free (GPL)

I downloaded the “Clonezilla Live” ISO image, burned a disc and had a working image in about 30 minutes.  The only problem that I had was figuring out how to save it to my windows server.  I chose NFS, at first, but didn’t have the Unix services running on my server and didn’t want it to.  Next go around, I chose Samba and mounted my server share all was well.  The GUI isn’t the most intuitive or as user friendly as Ghost or Acronis but after a few tries, you will have no problem working around the program.

Links:

Clonezilla home page

Solution:  Had to do a force install of the Windows Update Agent.  Once I did that, updates installed without error once again. Instructions below:

1. Create a new directory on the c:\ drive and call it “update”
2. Download the Windows Update Agent installer and save it to the newly created directory (c:\update).
   1. WIndows Update Agent download
3. Go to a command prompt and type “C:\update\windowsupdateagent30-x86.exe /wuforce”
   1. the wuforce switch forces the reinstall. If you don’t use this windows will not continue with the installation.
4. Go to Windows Update and continue patching your system.

When you open the program, all you  get are options to make a data or audio disc, burn an ISO image and copy/erase a disc.  I remember the good old days when Nero was that simple to use and not taxing my system.  I have been using this program with great success on Vista, XP and Server 2003.  I only hope that it doesn’t get needlessly bloated as it’s predecessors.  

If you haven’t all ready tried CDBurnerXP, download and install it!  You will not be sorry.

Links:

CDBurnerXP download

Installation Failed: Please remove CD-ROM and restart the system

Solution: I initially thought that the problem had something to do with an error I received that said, “PCI: BIOS Bug #81[00000000] found” but I was wrong.  Still don’t know what that message is about.  The real solution, of all things, was to download the ISO image from a different source and re-burn the disc.  After that, I installed without any problems.

(Update 12.5.08):  Walked away from the installation for a few days and tried to login but I forgot what the default port was for the box.  So just remember if you do what I did the default port after an Astaro installation is https://server:4444.   Now I don’t have to do a reinstall to figure that out again.