Strategies and Tips: Story Mode: Tier 3

## The Harvest

### **Quantity or quality**

* Focus on building a massive number of ants, Quality can help you if you go for the second objective i.e., kill the enemy colony.

### **Soldiers or workers**

* Build either a large number of minors and some media with them or a large number of media. Build a few majors later on to kill critters and fend off opposing attacks.

### **Taunt or stun**

* Because you need more and more media and workers and less majors, taunt is recommended. If any creature attacks the harvesting group, use your majors to taunt the enemy and let them deal with the enemy while the workers and media continue to gather.

### **Gathering**

* Place the workers and soldiers at the same group initially and focus on one big plant at a time. Move the soldiers at a different group if you get attacked by any creature.

* Move your ants to another location when the leaves are about to be depleted.

* Upgrade leaf stores and refuse stores to help cultivate more fungus and save space.

* Clear the lower ground and then move to middle or eastern or western part.

* You will be under constant attacks from the enemy when you are ahead of them by a large margin. This doesn't happen if you beat the mission by a neck. It is best to keep pace with the opponent and don't go too much ahead of the opponent.

* The patches of saplings directly to the north of your nest are the best harvesting areas. Clear them before your opponent does. On harder difficulty, if the opposing colony chooses to gather there first, it's impossible to win.

* Harvest every single piece of leaves you can. You can gather nearby small plants by a small group of workers while the main group is harvesting elsewhere.

* Don't stop harvesting and use every single second of time.

### **Combat**

* Because you don't gain food from killing enemies, don't fight unless it's your only choice. Choose another harvesting area and wait for the more dangerous creatures to leave. Aggressive creatures generally stay away from enemy harvesting groups so follow them wherever they go and harvest near them to avoid unneeded casualty.

* When you reach half of your goal, start attack the area from where the enemy colony is harvesting using majors. Clear the area quickly when they retreat then move away when their reinforcement arrives.

* Only harass when you can confidently clear the area or defeat their reinforcement.

* Alternate your media between combatting and harvesting groups and stop the enemy near your nest entrance.

### **Secondary objective**

* Bring a combatting group to attack the opposing colony near their entrance and steal their leaves. Pick on one harvesting group and move to the other when the reinforcement arrives. Invade the enemy nest when it runs out of food. Use a constant flow of ants to get pass the free level 3 majors.

### **Challenge mode**

* Avoid the flies by checking the minimap. Upgrade a small group of mediae or majors to level 3 during later days to help harrass the enemy and chase the flies away.

* Try to harvest from the plants first which are going to get infested in the future.

* If you are less than 500 leaves away from winning, then you can always harvest a leftover infested patch to quickly secure victory.

## The Front Line

### **Quantity or quality**

* Remember that leafcutter majors gain 400 health at level 3 which is very helpful against the army ants. Clearly quality is more recommended though at easier difficulty, this level can also be won with quantity.

### **Soldiers or workers**

* First start by building a large group of workers, this will create more minims and allow the start of the game to go much faster. Then switch to mediae after about 20-35 of them, which are better gatherers and can fight. Majors should be created after about 40 mediae, or just whatever gets at least five majors created by the start of the second day.

### **Taunt or stun**

* You can use taunt with a lot of media ants but be sure to upgrade them to level 3 as soon as possible to get the extra resistance. Although against army ants stun are better as when they stun the army ants, they cannot get enough time to boost their damage. Remember that army ant scouts are not affected by stun in this level.

### **Starting**

* Ignore the army ants on the first day. Harvest from the plateaus a bit further from your nest and save the closer ones for emergency. Focus on building more media at early game.

* Start building majors from the second night and save a lot of food before dawn.

### **Dealing with army ants**

* Gradually push the army ants back on the second day.

* Generally the front line of the swarm have the strongest ants. Wait until the first few major ants pass by. Kill any scouts you see quickly.

* When the bar is lowered enough, preferably to the first segment, begin harvesting in the western areas to prepare for the next day.

* On later days, camp the spawning point on the leftmost lane. If there don't seem to be enough army ants, let the scouts go so that more ants spawn for you to kill.

### **Dealing with enemies and harvesting leaves**

* At later nights, keep your ants holed up underground due to the increasing number of aggressive enemies. Harvest during dusk and dawn when the creatures are despawning.

* At higher difficulty kill the huge whip spider only when it comes close to your nest on its own and there are less nearby enemies.

* Always check for stray praying mantises and quickly defeat them before moving forward. In case of adult praying mantises, use only majors as majors cannot be picked up.

### **Challenge mode**

* Avoid the flies by checking the minimap. Upgrade a small group of mediae or majors to level 3 during later days to help harrass the enemy and chase the flies away.

* Try to harvest from the plants first which are going to get infested in the future.

## Formicarium Challenge 3

### **Types of ants**

* Using wood ants is vital. You can use any other ant as melee support with wood ants as the main damage dealer.

* You can win with only workers on easy with special abilities and at least 3000 - 5000 food.

* Usually you need at least 1,500 food with all types of ants.

### **Quantity or quality**

* Try to get as much level 3 major ants as possible. If you get few level 2 majors, degrade them with delete tool to save some food as there is no major difference between level 1 and 2 in case of leafcutter majors.

* If you took mortar, get as many level 3 wood ants as possible guarded by a front line of few taunt majors to soak most of the damage along with black ants to deal some additional damage.

* If you took rapid-fire, go for quantity guarded by a group of stun majors.

* Black ants should not be upgraded. But, they should still be numerous. Go for quantity and protect them with level three taunt majors.

### **Taunt or stun**

* It is recommended to take taunt if taken mortar and take stun if taken rapid-fire.

### **Strategies**

* Provoke the enemy using a small group of workers to keep them from grouping up.

* Use multiple pheromone groups to split the rival army and swarm over the army ants.

* Attack from different side so that in case scientist 2 interferes, not all you ants are affected at once.

* Always fight inside the tube and don't ever retreat into your nest. These tricks help reduce the interferences from the scientist. Your reinforcement can safely deal with the mole crickets and the mantises.

* If you feel overwhelmed, gradually retreat and regroup on the way back to your nest entrance. Advance when the enemy retreats.

* You can also draw the enemy ants towards you nest and then retreat underground. When the scientist drop rove beetles are whip spiders, the enemy ants can fight with them. If you have lot of food use this trick. Try to survive the tapping of the scientist and have the enemy ants die. Advance when enemy ants are no longer coming towards your nest.

* Invade the enemy nest when it runs out of food. Gather your ants around the enemy queen before turning combatting on to let them focus on her.

* If you fail to kill her, regroup on the surface and steal any food the scientist drops. Retaliate within 5 minutes so that her abilities can't be triggered again.