Strategies and Tips: Story Mode: Tier 1

This page shows the different strategies and tips for story mode missions.

## New Home

This should be your first mission in the game. The objective is simple enough for you to learn most of the game mechanics.

### Quantity or Quality

* You can use either quality or quantity. If you choose quantity, build some more worker for the nest group to help with nest jobs.

* If you choose quality, build seven ants and upgrade them. Then expand the chamber to 19 or build another one.

* It also depends on the type of ants you are breeding.

### Soldier or Worker

* You can choose either worker or soldier. If you choose soldier, you can get level 3 soldier that gains extra attacking speed or quantity. If you choose workers only, go for quality as they are weak in level 1.

### Attack Strategies (one of the following)

* This is best in easier difficulties. Turn attack and gathering off for workers who would dig. Bring your soldier to the closest to the enemy chamber. When the chamber is dug, place the soldier pheromone in the chamber.

* On higher difficulties with more adult devil's coach horse, build one large chamber for combat. Choose which chamber to dig out depending on the exclamation marks. Excavate and let the enemies come to you. When the enemies are in the large chamber, attack from many direction to split them up and swarm over them.

### For time saving

* Use multiple pheromone groups to harvest and battle at the same time. Start excavating when the active enemies are about to be defeated.

* Dead enemies become nearby food sources, which helps reduce walking time.

### Common mistakes to be avoided

* The players keep the combat and gathering turned on for the workers and two workers die for no reason when they dig into an enemy chamber.
* The players use the 7 nest workers to gather food. Neither they use soldier nor they build extra workers for gathering food. As a result, it takes ages to gather the food.
* Few players think only workers can gather food which is just wrong.
* The players sometimes do not keep any worker in the nest group and have them gather food when the soldiers are fighting. As a result, they do not get any replacement when soldier dies.
* During the last chamber, the players do not keep enough food in store.

### Challenge mode

* Build large brood chambers to gather the crickets in one place. Start excavating when the crickets are about to be defeated to avoid being overwhelmed.

* Refer to the above pattern to know how many crickets have arrived. The 10th cricket appears in about 18 minutes and the 50th one appears in about 56 minutes.

## Subjugation

### Quantity or Quality

* You can use any of them as both building and upgrading adds to the objective.
* Quantity gives you an advantage. As slave-makers at level 1 are weaker than black ants, you can overwhelm them more numbers.
* Quality, as well, gives you an advantage. You can quickly kill individual slaver ants with soldier's high attack speed at level 3.
* Against funnel web spiders, quantity works better.
* Alternate between building/ upgrading workers and soldiers.

### Soldiers or Workers

* You need equal number of soldiers and workers to win the level.

* Focus on building soldiers in the early game.
* Don't build any brood tiles to the north of the queen unless you want your larvae to be taken.

### Attack Tips

* Swarm over each spider using at least 7 soldiers. The taken ants can still resist. Turn off harvesting so that your soldiers don't get distracted by the scattered food.

* Any stealers must pass the natural choke point to the north of your queen twice. Gather your combatting groups there when it's about 15 seconds left till the next raid. Make use of the in-between time to harvest as much food as you can.

### For time saving

* Use multiple pheromone groups to harvest and battle at the same time. Start excavating when the active enemies are about to be defeated.

* The first 7 queen workers are counted to the objective. Build more workers to help with harvesting and nest jobs. Upgrade more soldiers to let them survive the huge number of weaker ants.

* The last objective only appears after you have completed the first two. Complete them during a raid to turn the current attacking wave into the final wave. This reduces the difficulty of the final wave and lets you beat the mission faster.
* Don't build brood chambers too far for the queen to reduce walking time.

### Common mistakes to be avoided

* The player build brood chamber near the nest and the slave makers get broods for free of cost.
* Only active player survives this level on harder difficulties. Some players take a long time to do the level and slave maker ants' raids keeps getting harder over time.
* The players use workers instead of soldiers against the funnel web spider. Workers do not do well against the spiders due to their low attack rate.
* Few players do not notice the countdown of the next raid at the top.

### Challenge mode

* Build large brood chambers to gather the crickets in one place. Your reinforcement can take care of the crickets if they invade at the same time as the attacking wave.

* Build a big highway chamber on top of a spiderweb. If you are lucky, a cricket may spawn there and goes to attack the spider. You may need to restart the mission a few times to get this achievement.

## Formicarium Challenge 1

* Save at least 500 food and upgrade most of your soldiers to level 3 before attempting the challenge.

### Quantity or Quality

* If you use black ants, try to get as many ants at level 3 as you can. There is no major difference between level 1 and 2 black ant. You can also degrade some of level 2 black ants after getting the middle ones at level 3 by delete tool to save some food. Or else you can build huge amount of them and swarm over the enemy.
* In case of workers being used as soldiers upgrade them as they are weak at level 1. Still remember level 3 worker < level 1 black ant.

### Type of ants

* This level can beaten easily enough with only worker ants with special upgrades.
* You can use lots of level 3 workers or most level 3 and few level 1 or 2 black ants or few level 1 black ants and lots of level 3 workers.

### Special Abilities (Recommended)

* When using black ants, buy "Meat Wall" and "Self-Repair" as "Meat Wall" helps to negate 50% of damage taken and "Self-Repair" helps your black ants to heal, which gives your black ants time to heal in between waves.

### Strategies (one of the following)

* Use one or multiple pheromones and have different soldier groups. Camp them near your nest entrance on the surface. Move your ants inside when the beetles are dropped.
* Use multiple pheromones and have different soldier groups. Camp them near the enemy tubes and let your ants do their work. Move your ants inside when the beetles are dropped.
* Use one pheromone group and camp them just near the nest entrance underground.