Has anyone managed to beat either 3.1 or 3.2 + challenge mode on insane?
I have completed 3.1 on Insane mode almost completely fair with the challenge mode. The new pathfinding, I found, made the enemy trails go into the creature spawns. This made them get absolutely destroyed on Insane by the creatures that were supposed to protect them!
Unfortunately they sent out majors around the 12,000 mark, cutting my "fair" game short. I started using the paused combat glitch at this point to win the level since they were so intense.(Almost wiped my colony before I could put it into effect)
Durburz, upgrading ants can be specifically better than numbers not just on 2.2 but also on 2.1 insane. 50 level 3 rapid fires will get you the win, but 150 rapid fires will not work due to lagging the game (at least before the update, not sure how much performance has been improved on that level ,but I think 150 rapid fires shooting at the same time probably still lag).
If you have seen balanite's 3.1 insane video strategy, that works for me very consistently, sometimes I can win with a bit of overkill with 3000 leaves more. With 3.1 + challenge, the whole strategy falls apart because there is no rapid growth in the beginning due to phorid flies on the patch of leaves to the right of the nest. I think if certain phorid fly swarms are moved further away from the player's nest, Hofnerd's insane strategy of killing the enemy queen may become possible.
Small question to devs: If killing the enemy queen is a way to win 3.1, why not put that up in the objectives? "gather x amount of leaves before enemy or kill enemy queen". It may get more people attempt it, and new players will at least know that it is possible to do. It may not actually be obvious to some people that it is possible to win the level that way, for two reasons: on level 2.2, you can't do it, and second, they may have tried it once and got absolutely demolished due to not knowing how the 3.1 enemy colony AI/mechanics work.
Aggression is not very effective at higher difficulties I think. The enemy will start spawning huge waves of reinforcements at around the 12,000 mark, which will wear down your food supplies already being drained by creatures killing your minors.
You should try and clear all of the patches of food before they reach the target, always keeping slightly behind them. With luck, you will get a perfect number where they cannot harvest anymore and are short of the goal. Then you can harvest the areas they do not go to and win the level. I did this in my original Insane run and it came close(they had 13,950) but they ran out.
I did upgrade my ants, but not the minors, since they do not gain immunity to the flies. It seems that the level three ants, despite having a cool down on deleting flies, still attract them, distracting them from my minors.How did you manage to out harvest them on insane without upgrading your ants though? By 50 minutes phorid flies practically surround the player.
any idea of how many minutes your round was?I just beat 3.1 Insane + challenge on the second try. Tried to upload screenshots but apparantly GoG takes screens that are too large for this forum. The only difference between regular and with challenge is trying to get atleast 1 group of lvl 3 mediae and 1 group of lvl 3 majors. The majors can be used for fighting and blocking the enemy wherever while having the lvl 3mediae group farming the phorid fly bushes. Make sure to have enough mediae in your regular farming group too, and focus them first. I think I went 19 worker, 19 mediae, then made 7 major, made another group of 7 mediae, turned them into level 3 and have them start farming the phorid fly bushes, then added another 19 mediae, then made all my major lvl 3. The round started to go wrong, the bot was at 13,909 and then I started to fight his farming trail and steal whatever he took. In the end I blobbed my entire army in front of his base while letting the lvl 3 mediae still farm phorid bushes and have my worker group pick up and leaves that were dropped on the map. Round ended with me having ~13,980 and killing the opposing queen because I bled their resources to 0 by killing all their troops. Seems you can win either way with the challenge on. Will keep you posted when I do 3.2 Insane challenge.
any idea of how many minutes your round was?