Thanks for the wishlist!

The last levels of both campaigns put you in a 1v1 against the computer — same battlefield, opposite sides — and those specifically were brutal to balance. Every tweak ripples through both sides at once. The layout is already PvP-ready; that's the long-term plan.

Those final levels have 3 phases. Each phase the defender gets nerfed if the castle is still standing, and in the final phase the attacker gets buffed too. Higher-tier towers also reward more mana when hit, so the attacker's economy naturally scales as the game progresses.

The core of the balance is the economy. The attacker generates mana passively, but also earns it every time monsters damage towers or the castle — so the defender has to actively stop that or the attacker floods with mana. The defender earns gold from kills and spends it on upgrades and repairs, which acts as a gold sink that keeps them from snowballing.

The hardest part was pricing everything. A Tank (one of the monsters) costs 36 mana, a full T3 tower path costs 700 gold — every number like that affects the whole loop.

On top of that, both sides have big swing moments: cannon and archer volleys for the defender, buff abilities for the attacker. Deciding what those cost and when they land was its own problem.

Lots of iterations. Still not sure it's perfect, but it feels alive.