Some feedback for the leafcutter formicarium missions. The missions play nice on normal difficulty but there are some things that stand out because they either feel a bit odd or are somewhat more serious. As always I am open to feedback to my feedback.
3.1:
1. There's one thing I can think of for this mission, just one. (Or at least for the moment there's just one.)
The information message says that the leafcutter media are the "staple harvesters" of the leafcutters. Unfortunately minors have better harvesting than media. (Details in the general section.) Going for many media will bring your gathering rates down and will probably lose you the mission.
3.2:
1. Army ant progress continues when no army ants are present on the map.
This means the player can't combat their progress.
2. Army ant progress is only influenced by the player. (other than progress gained over time)
On insane difficulty I've seen army ants getting slaugthered by mantids, getting pushed off the map almost entirely. It just feels wrong to see the army ants struggling to stay alive yet still make progress.
It might be interesting to look into making army ant progress depend on something like food delivered or something similar? (So when they get slaughtered they don't make much progress.)
3. Army ants have trouble against large opponents. A large mantis or cricket can ruin the day of a group of army ants out to forage. If I remember correctly, in nature army ants overwhelm their opponents. Majors pin down the enemy by biting and not letting go, while smaller army ant castes sting and cut it.
Just an idea: Instead of a "swarm" attack bonus the army ant majors could get accumulative stun? When enough majors are attacking the same target it gets stunned.
(Warning: Complicated idea! Skip if you are allergic to math or logic! Some psuedo code to summarise the idea behind each step.)
A creature would have their own amount of stun, their own stun threshold, their own stun resistance, and their own stun recovery.
When a creature is attacked by an army ant major it receives an amount of stun with every hit taken. (Stun taken = stunAttack - stunResist. stun taken can't be below 0.)
This stun is added to their stun amount. (myStun += stunTaken)
If the creature's stun amount is on or past its stun threshold, it is stunned. (if myStun >= stunThreshold, set stunned to true. else set stunned to false)
This allows multiple ants to stun-lock a target as a group, but it is probably a bit too complicated for EotU since it (if I remember correctly) is trying to keep things simple.
In general:
1. Unlike with the other ants, enemies are not food to the leafcutter.
This makes fights a loss from the start. Increased difficulty increases the number of enemies. In the other missions these additional enemies can become food for the nest if the player plays it correctly. For leafcutters these enemies are only extra obstacles to get to those precious leaves. Making foraging far from the nest increasingly costly.
2. There is no renewable food as leaf does not regrow after harvesting it.
This makes missions even more difficult. This can be used as an element to force fights over food or similarties, but it can also lock a player to the nest if there are too many enemies to get to the leaves.
Something simple may be to add a small (or huge for an ant) tree that we can't see the top of. Leafcutters would walk up and come down with leaf.
Another thing may be to add some regrowth to larger saplings. So that food can't run out, but it stays limited.
3. Leafcutters often don't cut leaf at their maximum cutting size.
Example: There's a 20 leaf plant and two level 1 media want to cut it. The first media cuts 15 leaf, the second cuts just 5.
This just feels unpleasant to watch, while other ants almost always cut 15 food from an enemy each.
My suggestion is to have each caste cut their own amount regardless of level, but that the cutting speed is determined by level instead.
Example: a level 1, 2 and 3 media each cut 20 leaf. But their cutting speed is faster with each level.
One major issue with this is the number of media the player needs would be minor reduced to a bare minimum. This may be adressed by reducing media cutting speed to require more to keep the minors running with leaf.
4. Minors are more cost-effective in cutting than media.
Minors cost 1/4th a media, but gather for roughly 1/3rd a media. This means minors are more cost effective than media for harvesting purposes. Media are still highly important to have if you don't properly guard the supply lines, as they can fend off lone enemies with their numbers.
A suggestion that probably increases leafcutter gathering rate and possibly brings the gathering rate closer to that of other ants: Cut or carry.
Simply put, ants either: gather food, cut leaves, carry leaves, or don't gather food.
Cut allows a player to have their ants stay at the vegetation, they climb up, cut some leave, get down, drop it, repeat. This creates a leaf pile for other ants to carry from. (This is an excellent task for ants that cut large leaf chuncks.)
Carry allows a player to have their ants not cut, but only carry leaf already on the ground. This also allows players to raid enemy harvesting sites or lines. (As ants won't simply climb up the nearest sapling.)
5. Enemies tend to walk onto the foraging trails when attacking. I've seen this so many times, a large cricket walks onto the supply line and performs its area bleed attack on workers who are passing by with "no attack" on. Even when attacked by soldiers the cricket keeps attacking the worker ants because they are closer to it.
It would be so sweet to have an "avoid combat" option so the ants just walk around the cricket while it is pinned down by soldiers.
6. When playing media-heavy the leaves backlog.
Simply put when you have more media than minors the leaves in your leaf storages will pile up. This happens because there are too few minim workers to process them.
Suggestion is to make media worker nest tiles spawn two minims instead of one.
3.1:
1. There's one thing I can think of for this mission, just one. (Or at least for the moment there's just one.)
The information message says that the leafcutter media are the "staple harvesters" of the leafcutters. Unfortunately minors have better harvesting than media. (Details in the general section.) Going for many media will bring your gathering rates down and will probably lose you the mission.
3.2:
1. Army ant progress continues when no army ants are present on the map.
This means the player can't combat their progress.
2. Army ant progress is only influenced by the player. (other than progress gained over time)
On insane difficulty I've seen army ants getting slaugthered by mantids, getting pushed off the map almost entirely. It just feels wrong to see the army ants struggling to stay alive yet still make progress.
It might be interesting to look into making army ant progress depend on something like food delivered or something similar? (So when they get slaughtered they don't make much progress.)
3. Army ants have trouble against large opponents. A large mantis or cricket can ruin the day of a group of army ants out to forage. If I remember correctly, in nature army ants overwhelm their opponents. Majors pin down the enemy by biting and not letting go, while smaller army ant castes sting and cut it.
Just an idea: Instead of a "swarm" attack bonus the army ant majors could get accumulative stun? When enough majors are attacking the same target it gets stunned.
(Warning: Complicated idea! Skip if you are allergic to math or logic! Some psuedo code to summarise the idea behind each step.)
A creature would have their own amount of stun, their own stun threshold, their own stun resistance, and their own stun recovery.
When a creature is attacked by an army ant major it receives an amount of stun with every hit taken. (Stun taken = stunAttack - stunResist. stun taken can't be below 0.)
This stun is added to their stun amount. (myStun += stunTaken)
If the creature's stun amount is on or past its stun threshold, it is stunned. (if myStun >= stunThreshold, set stunned to true. else set stunned to false)
This allows multiple ants to stun-lock a target as a group, but it is probably a bit too complicated for EotU since it (if I remember correctly) is trying to keep things simple.
In general:
1. Unlike with the other ants, enemies are not food to the leafcutter.
This makes fights a loss from the start. Increased difficulty increases the number of enemies. In the other missions these additional enemies can become food for the nest if the player plays it correctly. For leafcutters these enemies are only extra obstacles to get to those precious leaves. Making foraging far from the nest increasingly costly.
2. There is no renewable food as leaf does not regrow after harvesting it.
This makes missions even more difficult. This can be used as an element to force fights over food or similarties, but it can also lock a player to the nest if there are too many enemies to get to the leaves.
Something simple may be to add a small (or huge for an ant) tree that we can't see the top of. Leafcutters would walk up and come down with leaf.
Another thing may be to add some regrowth to larger saplings. So that food can't run out, but it stays limited.
3. Leafcutters often don't cut leaf at their maximum cutting size.
Example: There's a 20 leaf plant and two level 1 media want to cut it. The first media cuts 15 leaf, the second cuts just 5.
This just feels unpleasant to watch, while other ants almost always cut 15 food from an enemy each.
My suggestion is to have each caste cut their own amount regardless of level, but that the cutting speed is determined by level instead.
Example: a level 1, 2 and 3 media each cut 20 leaf. But their cutting speed is faster with each level.
One major issue with this is the number of media the player needs would be minor reduced to a bare minimum. This may be adressed by reducing media cutting speed to require more to keep the minors running with leaf.
4. Minors are more cost-effective in cutting than media.
Minors cost 1/4th a media, but gather for roughly 1/3rd a media. This means minors are more cost effective than media for harvesting purposes. Media are still highly important to have if you don't properly guard the supply lines, as they can fend off lone enemies with their numbers.
A suggestion that probably increases leafcutter gathering rate and possibly brings the gathering rate closer to that of other ants: Cut or carry.
Simply put, ants either: gather food, cut leaves, carry leaves, or don't gather food.
Cut allows a player to have their ants stay at the vegetation, they climb up, cut some leave, get down, drop it, repeat. This creates a leaf pile for other ants to carry from. (This is an excellent task for ants that cut large leaf chuncks.)
Carry allows a player to have their ants not cut, but only carry leaf already on the ground. This also allows players to raid enemy harvesting sites or lines. (As ants won't simply climb up the nearest sapling.)
5. Enemies tend to walk onto the foraging trails when attacking. I've seen this so many times, a large cricket walks onto the supply line and performs its area bleed attack on workers who are passing by with "no attack" on. Even when attacked by soldiers the cricket keeps attacking the worker ants because they are closer to it.
It would be so sweet to have an "avoid combat" option so the ants just walk around the cricket while it is pinned down by soldiers.
6. When playing media-heavy the leaves backlog.
Simply put when you have more media than minors the leaves in your leaf storages will pile up. This happens because there are too few minim workers to process them.
Suggestion is to make media worker nest tiles spawn two minims instead of one.
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