When you first start Deciduous Pathways, you'll find the map absolutely covered in trees that only provide 50 wood each. You need to be on the ball from the get go, and achieve the two following things as quickly as possible:

• Clear some space to build advanced production lines
  
• Defend against the small enemies that arrive in groups

This strategy will allow you to do both of these at once, and it's very simple.

The best way to clear space is to go heavy in to chopping wood.

Each Wood Chopper will cut 15 wood per minute, and each belt will hold 60 wood per minute. This means you need to build four Wood Choppers and feed them on to one belt, for maximum throughput with minimal cost.

Try and position these Wood Choppers next to each other so they focus on the same trees - this will clear small patches of space quicker.



Personally, I dedicate two entrances to my tower purely to wood, and saturate those belts. Don't worry about converting them to planks quite yet. You're just trying to gain basic resources quickly, and get those darn trees out of the way.

The final entrance to my tower I dedicate to stone cutting. The stone deposits are much larger and will last a long time. Each Stone Miner will mine 10 stone per minute so, if there's space, use six Stone Miners and saturate those belts too.

The initial waves of enemies are weak little bugs, but they come in groups of four at a time. This means that slow-firing weapons like the Ballista aren't very effective against them.

Instead, use all the (hopefully hundreds) of wood you're gathering to absolutely cover your initial pathway with Acorn Cannons. I mean, try and use every last tower slot you can to build one. They'll last on their own for a good few days, whilst you wait for space.

Production

As you clear space by chopping trees quickly, delete your Wood Choppers and move them back into the forest as quickly as possible to keep them working. Look at the direction the path is leading towards the enemies tower and consider, if possible, to clear the trees in that direction - you're likely going to want to clear some space alongside the path for future towers.


Once you've made a bit more space, add some Sawmills to some of the belts carrying wood. Each Sawmill, to run at maximum speed, can take the full input of two Wood Choppers, so split before and combine afterwards to your hearts content.

Towers

Here's the twist, though. Focus primarily on wooden stakes, and not planks (although you'll need a few). The best weapons against the groups of enemies on this map are the Catapult, and the Hidden Spikes. It takes a while for armoured crabs to start appearing in the waves.

Switch half, if not more of your stone production to making stone bricks. These are also essential for those towers.

Vision

I personally skip the small Bonfires on this map, as they don't clear enough forest to provide any use. Instead, save up for Beacons and build those along the path - you're primarily looking for the stat-boosting plinths to build your advanced towers, and the large radius of fog they clear can treat you to some very nice chests, too!

Strategy

My optimal layout on each of the stat-boosting plinths is to place two Catapults on the furthest spots from the path, and change their focus to the enemy with the most health first. The two closest spots to the path I place Ballistas, and change their focus to the enemy with the most armour first.


Place the Hidden Spikes on the tight twists on the path, ideally so three sides are touching it. This will give you best bang for your buck on them. They're very strong against health, but pretty weak against armour, so place them between your tower and your Ballistas, so that hopefully most enemies' armour has been removed before reaching them.


Remember you'll need to delete an Acorn Tower before you build each new Catapult, Hidden Spikes or Ballista as you should be at maximum capacity. You'll reach a point where enemies don't even reach your Acorn Tower gauntlet, as they've been made light work of before then.

Now all you need to worry about is the flying enemies that come later. But I'll leave that up to you.

Final Words

One last tip for you: in the current build of the game (v0.1.6), it's actually faster to manually chop a tree by spam clicking than it is to hold down the mouse button. Don't be afraid to manually clear a tree or two to help find space to place belts, towers and buildings. At only 50 wood they're gone very quickly!

Thanks for reading. If I get a chance, I'll add some pictures to each section. Have fun in the game, and I hope this helped somewhat!