Cheat Code

This page shows general tips and strategies for the entire game. Informations have been gathered from multiple sources on youtube, steam forum and discord. You can always play the game your own way on lower difficulty.

Informations

You can hover your cursor over icons in the building menu to see brief descriptions of your available units. You can also enable advanced build menu tooltips in main menu settings to see more detailed informations.

You can click on the inspect tool next to the control panel then click on any creatures to see their current stats. Stats for abilities and status effects aren't included so you may want to refer to this wiki for those informations.

The game isn't frustratingly difficult. You can always complete the story mode on medium as long as you are willing to learn and adapt to new gimmicks in each mission.

Economy

Omnivorous species

You should make some extra workers and prevent them from attacking to let them gather food on the surface safely. Move them away from incoming danger if you don't have enough soldiers to retaliate. The extra workers can be recalled inside to help with nest jobs later on.

You can begin excavating more dangerous underground caverns once you have some soldiers. The queen is a very convenient tank unit in early game if you have range units.

Your colony usually have separate population cap for workers and soldiers. You should still make a lot of workers for food gathering even in late game because your soldiers would be locked in combat too often to keep your economy going.

Food storage should be build next to nest entrance for quick deposit, but not directly in front of it to prevent speed penalty. You should upgrade your food storage as soon as you can because it is much more cost-efficient.

You should gather any milkweed aphids as soon as you can. Keep a small number of workers around your host plant for passive income.

Scavenging for food is more encouraged than hunting roaming enemies. Titans and uber creatures are the only valuable targets in late game.

Highway tiles are usually unnecessary if you have good nest designs. You can use them to reduce the cost of upgrading small chambers.

Leafcutter ants

You need a lot of minims to keep up with any omnivorous colonies early game. You should make at least 19 extra minors and prevent them from attacking to let them gather leaves safely.

Leaf storage should be built similar to food storage in omnivorous colonies.

You should build waste storage in secluded chambers away from the main path in your nest to limit the negative effects. You should make more first and refrain from upgrading them until you want to make more expensive units. The ideal leaf storage to waste storage ratio is about 1:1 to 1:1.5 at level 3.

Leaf storage, waste storage and the largest brood chamber should form 3 corners of a triangle with straight tunnels inbetween to minimize the traveling time of minims. You can of course make use of highway tiles if you have extra food.

Fungus-growing termites

You need a lot of minor workers to keep up with any omnivorous colonies early game. You should make at least 19 extra minor workers and upgrade them as soon as you can to make use of the efficiency boost. The nanitic workers should be put in an unused pheromone group and prevented from digesting once you have enough level 3 extra minor workers.

You should also upgrade major workers as soon as you can. You don't need too many of them in early game thanks to the efficiency boost.

Lignocellulose storage should be built similar to food storage in omnivorous colonies. Food will be gone forever if the processing termites become dead so you should keep lignocellulose storage away from the main moving path of roaming enemies.

You shouldn't upgrade fungus storage in early game because it is less cost-efficient and you would also want to spend it immediately for defense.

Matabele ants

You usually start will some soldiers and have to raid termite mounds for food. You should excavate some termite infested caverns first to increase your number for more efficient raiding later on.

You should do intermittent raids in early game. Prevent your ants from gathering and eliminate all roaming enemies on the way first. Fight termites in open space until you have just enough food to bring back. Prevent your ants from attacking and retreat entirely with the most food you can get. Save some food for respawn and start the next raid.

You should do constant raids after you have enough soldiers to eliminate any termite soldiers coming at you. Soldiers should keep attacking the coming termites while medics and extra workers should be prevented from attacking to constantly bring any food back.

Eliminating any termite colonies should only be done in late game for a massive boost of food but you must have a lot of ants to gather it all. Leave the dead termite reproductives for last.

Combat

Unit composition

Quantity is better in open space while quality is better in enclosed space, according to Lanchester's Law. You should always opt for more ants in early game to gather food more quickly and overwhelm small to medium roaming enemies.

Some units have massive stat boost and more valuable abilities at level 3. You should upgrade these units as soon as you can: mortar wood ant shooters, leafcutter ant majors, fire ant soldiers and exploding ant minor soldiers.

Control

Units respond to your command at a constant rate. Split your units into multiple pheromone groups and make use of the hotkeys for quick control. The game doesn't require intensive micro-management but it helps a lot on higher difficulty.

Spawners and nest entrances can only generate units at a certain speed. You can gather your units there to overwhelm the newly spawned enemies before they can do anything.

The game has various toggles next to the control panel. Make use of them to let your units do their jobs more efficiently. Some soldiers and most workers don't drop resources to retaliate if attacking is disabled. Explosive soldiers only explode against attacking enemies if attacking is disabled.

You can disable attacking to make your units move around enemies safely and enable it afterward to swarm over them. It helps immensely in enclosed space against medium and large enemies. It also lets you partially ignore the initial defense of enemy colonies during nest invasion.

You can let your units mount larger enemies to keep them safe and gain massive damage boost. Enemy mounting should be reconsidered if you don't have enough units to occupy all mounting slots because your units may get picked off one by one during mounting and dismounting.