Actually I'm not certain combos do earn you more gold now, but I think they do. Not as much as they earn your higher score, though. The scoring is pretty nuts when it comes to combos as each successively higher combo earns double the points of the combo before.
Scoring System:
CATEGORY
VALUE (PTS)
Combat Kill
50
Trap/Guardian Kill
100
Rift Points Remaining
100
per Rift Point
Combo x3
200
Combo x4
400
Combo x5
800
Combo x6
1,600
Combo x7
3,200
Combo x8
6,400
Combo x9
12,800
Bonus: All Rift Points Remaining
10,000
Bonus: >= 75% Rift Points Remaining
5,000
Bonus: >= 50% Rift Points Remaining
2,500
Time
Subtracts/Adds 1 point per
second over/under par time.
I think that I've been getting more gold by using combos, however. I know that many levels where I felt I had barely enough money to hang on changed completely when I started going for combos and suddenly I had more money than I really needed. The best example of this is Lunch Break. I originally started off trying to setup a choke at the stairs from the big open dining room. (Because those stairs are pretty awesome with a wind belt and some tar, just whoosh and they tumble all the way down!) I'd have to springtrap and wind belt the orcs off the bridge, then I had archers shooting them as they come up the stairs, tar at the top and bottom, and a few traps at the top. But that would never hold out long during simultaneous attacks as they'd reach the top of the stairs before I knocked them all off the bridge so I had to block the doorway just behind the stairs and setup another choke either where the bridge connects to the hallway or at the other doorway to the middle hall with 3 entrances to rift chamber. It was kinda teh suck doing it that way and required me to run around like mad and really do most of the killing myself as I couldn't afford enough traps to really do the job properly and ogres were a real pain to deal with without letting orcs get to the rift.
So then I gaveup on both the bridge and stairs and decided to combo. I blocked the other doorway and setup my choke at the one I left open to the middle hallway with tar, traps, and archers. Bing bang boom the gold is rolling in and before I was done I had that entire area lined with traps and tar and something like 4 fully upgraded archers behind me and not one damn thing came even close to threatening the middle hallway.
There have been other examples, but that was the starkest one, and I didn't switch to using different traps either. I was using the same traps I had before (aside from spring traps) I just setup in a single location and got them to combo instead of hit them serially.
You don't have long for a combo. Just a few seconds or something won't be counted as part of the combo. It turns out different traps and attacks actually have different amounts of time that they can be counted as part of a combo as well.
Here's a list. It's a bit crude as it was taken from one of the devs and he didn't use all the proper traps names. I haven't finished cleaning it up but I did sort it in descending order so you can see what traps give you the most time. Those should be what you hit orcs with first. Basically if you hit an orc with something in the list it has to die within that number of seconds for that thing to be counted as a combo. You also have to hit it with something else, of course, or it isn't a combo, but that's the gist. I'm glad to see there is at least some more detailed info out there.
Trap Name Seconds
Spring Trap 6
Push Trap 6
Blades (DoT) 5
Floor spike dot 5
ArrowTrap(DoT) 5
Ballista (bleed) 5
Pit trap (collapse) 5
Brimstone 4
Floor Spike (Snare) 4
Acid splash 4
Rift Lightning 4
Lava splash 4
Steam trap 4
Oil trap 4
Pounder(stun) 3
Grinder 3
BladeTrap? 2
Swinging Mace 2
Floor spikes 2
Tar 2
ArrowTrap 2
Pounder 2
DLC Floor Flamer 2
Wallspikes 1
Exploding Barrel 1
Decoy 1
Ballista 1
Rolling log 1
Rolling rock 1
Tesla coil 1
Vampire Codpiece 1
DLC acid bomb 0
Also I found this on barricading techniques.
www.robotentertainment.com/forum/topic/Adv-Barricades-and-You#comment-22678Apparently you can leave some gaps next to walls and orcs will still think they can't pass and turn around. It also sometimes matters in what order you place barricades, oddly enough.
If you watch the lines carefully and experiment then you can save yourself a lot of gold on barricades.
My own personal tip with regards to barricades is wherever possible take advantage of placing them diagonally so that you are gaining the benefit of both of their dimensions and not just one.
For example if trying to narrow a hallway down to 1 block width of traps.
W=Wall X=Blockade _=Open space
This:
W_X_W
W__XW
W_X_W
Is just as good as, but half the cost of...
...this:
W_XXW
W_XXW
W_XXW
This also saves you quite a bit of money on traps. Consider that each blockade in the above example is blocking two open places that means two tar pits you don't need to purchase because the 1 on the end will now do the same job of all 3. It also means you could use blade traps instead of arrow walls, and with the orcs all packed in tighter your stuns and AOE spells will hit more of them, barrels will kill more, ect. On top of that you also have great chokes on either side of the barricades because orcs have to pass through the 1 block wide entrance and exit tiles as well. So for the cost of 3 barricades you've created a 5 block long single block wide choke point where every single orc will have to hit every single trap. Those 3 blockades have potentially replaced 10 floor traps, not even counting cieling and wall traps.
Corners are great as well. I love choking corners like this to force a long path through a tight choke point.
WWWWWW
_____W
___X_W
__X__W
WW___W
WW___W
You can get this cheap then expand it easily on a later wave.
WWWWWW
_____W
_X_X_W
__X__W
WW_X_W
WW___W
Like this arrow walls in the corners will force orcs to trudge through tar through the entire length hitting them multiple times and you can blade trap the rest of the wall. Or you can focus on killing at the corner and place spike traps, brimstone, and tar to combo up to your kill point at the corner with two blade traps or grinders and wouldn't need the bottom barricade for that just 3. You might even get way with less using techniques from that thread.
Anyway... Having way too much fun going OCD on this game. >,>