Custom Game Difficulty Setting

This page shows difficulty settings in custom games.

Victory conditions

You can only choose a single victory condition for a freeplay game. You can modify the threshold of the chosen victory condition in a predetermined range. The respective freeplay game becomes endless if your settings don't match the respective victory condition.

• Conquest: Defeat all enemy colonies.

• Domination: Reach a specific combat score (5000 - 30000).

• Survival: Survive for an amount of time (30 minutes - 6 hours).

• Besieged: Survive a number of increasingly difficult attacking waves (5 - 30).

• Hunter: Eliminate a number of uber creatures (1 - 20).

• Biomass: Reach a specific brood-tile construction score (2500 - 15000).

• Score: Reach a specific overall score (10000 - 60000).

• Creative: Expand your colony however you like. Building and spawning is free. Enemies can't invade your nest. You can't win or gain any score using this condition.

Environmental difficulty

Environmental dificulty affects number and form of swarm enemies, preparing time, nest invasion frequency and difficulty increasing speed. You can hover your cursor over the Menu button in the top right corner of the screen to see the current difficulty.

You can set the overall difficulty of a freeplay game from easy to impossible. Overall score increases by 0%/ 40%/ 100%/ 140%/ 200%.

Environmental difficulty is a combination of multiple difficulty values.

• Starting difficulty: You always start a custom game at this difficulty. It can be set up to 60%/ 90%/ 120%/ 150%/ 250%.

• Ramp difficulty: It starts at 0% and increases by 1% every 144/ 90/ 65/ 55/ 30 seconds you play.

• Spike dificulty: It has 10% chance to be included every 60 seconds. It is randomly set between 0% and 60%/ ?/ ?/ ?/ 200% and lasts for 60 to 180 seconds.

• Colony difficulty: It starts at 0% and increases by 0.33%/ 0.44%/ 0.56%/ 0.67%/ 1.25% every time you build brood tiles or upgrade them to level 2.

• Victory difficulty: It can be enabled in freeplay setting menu. It starts at 0% and increases exponentially along with your progress, up to 70%/ 110%/ 150%/ 190%/ 250%. It is permanently reset if you choose to continue after victory.

You can control the changing pattern of environmental difficulty.

• Constant: Only starting difficulty is included.

• Ramp: Ramp difficulty is included. You can only set starting difficulty up to 100%.

• Spike: Spike difficulty is included.

• Ramp with spike: Ramp difficulty and spike difficulty is included. You can only set starting difficulty up to 100%.

• Scale with colony: Colony difficulty is included.

• Random: Random options are chosen for random amount of time throughout the game.

Powerscaled enemies appear on the map after environmental difficulty has reached 100%. Star-level of new enemies changes by 1 for every 25% increase or decrease in environmental difficulty. Powerscaling doesn't affect underground enemies, wave enemies and landmark enemies.

Upkeep

Upkeep is applied separately for workers and soldiers. Workers give 1 point while soldiers give 1% of their original building cost.

Building cost of the respective group increases exponentially along with its population after you reach 100 population points. Upgrading cost and refund isn't affected.

Overall score decreases by 60% if upkeep is disabled.

Nest invasion

You can control whether surface enemies can enter the underground areas. You have a certain amount of time free of invasion to build up your colony, depending on starting difficulty.

If your nest entrance has already been connected to the queen, it will be automatically excavated when surface enemies are about to invade. Attacking waves can invade your nest even if nest invasion is disable.

Large African giant mantises, medium hermit crabs, woodworms, woodlice and nymph earwigs can't invade your nest at all.

Overall score increases by 50% if nest invasion is enabled.

Attacking waves

Attacking waves can be enabled together with any victory conditions. You can only save after all wave enemies are dead. Attacking waves are inedible and can only attack colonies.

You have 13 minutes free of invasion to build up your colony. Attacking waves come from nearby spawners and invade your nest every 6 minutes afterward. If you choose to remain inside, attacking waves will appear consecutively after you dig to the surface.

Type of wave enemies is randomly chosen amongst enemies you have enabled in the respective custom game. Number of wave enemies increases over time and is affected by environmental difficulty.

Overall score increases by 10% if attacking waves are enabled.

Food from dead enemies

Food amount of edible enemies can be set from 0% to 300%. Overall score changes by 1% for every 5% increase or decrease in food amount.

Edible enemies give progressively less food after environmental difficulty has reached 200%.

Surface enemies disappear 3 minutes after death. Titans and uber creatures disappear 10 minutes after death.

Colony termites disappear 10 seconds after death and their food amount isn't affected by these settings.

Other settings

You can control whether surface enemies fight each other. The infighting chance and duration increases along with difficulty. Overall score increases by 150% if enemy infighting is disabled.

Enemies that are too far from your line of sight will be hidden if fog of war is enabled. You can still see landmarks beneath the fog. Overall score increases by 150% if fog of war is enabled.

Trivia

(none)