2.2 Troubles

[Redmoth27]

I seem to be having trouble with the very last wave. I am on normal mode and I cant gather enough food for when the enemy colonies come. Also are aphids worth it, to me, they're more trouble than its worth. It's like the ladybugs are just Circling around the beach, I expect there should be some breathing air before the next 1 comes. I started to ignore the aphids and get the wevils that come out at night. Is there any previous post that can answer these questions?

 

[Rayalot72]

Day 1 leave the aphids be, and set up teams of 14 workers to harvest nectar (set to no combat). Use this food to produce only lvl 1 rapid fire spitters. These spitters should be set to not collect food, and be put on the aphid farms night 1 to kill ladybugs and enemies that spawn. Day 2, alternate between defending he aphids and killing attacking armies. Night 2 you want to have a 3rd team of workers/rapid fire, and use these to clear out as much of the underground as you can. This 3rd team will also become the primary defending force day 3, and be used outside along with the nearest aphid defense team. Once both colonies start to attack at once, bring all forces besides the workers harvesting underground. night 3 leave the aphids and finish clearing the underground, and then kill everything you can outside. Day 4 the aphids will be mostly eaten, and this is fine since the lower ground colonies will start fighting you for those resources. Bunker down underground with all of your forces and your food backups to hold out until the lower ground floods.

You may need to make additional nest workers as well to ensure that your forces can respawn faster.

Balanite and I both have videos of insane mode if you needed a few tricks, although those utilize mortars.

Balanite (no commentary): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xqXA0cF2xD8

Myself (commentary): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5JtL7axozg&t=190s

 

[Redmoth27]

I use the fast spitting ants, is there anything wrong with that?

 

[Rayalot72]

No, those actually work better for defending aphids. They're only problematic in insane, where the sheer quantity of ants is not possible to defeat using rapid fire since they out-compete you easily. The mortars are to blast down massive hoards with far less food than rapid-fire strategies would require.

 

[Redmoth27]

So do I still need this intense insane strategy on normal?

 

[BelgarathSorcerer]

Not Really, but it still works quite well with the other difficulties.

 

[Rayalot72]

Not Really, but it still works quite well with the other difficulties.

Yep. It's not a necessity, but if you wanted to go overkill you would have a pretty easy time if you did it right. If you do the 14 workers per aphid farm, you'd even be able to harvest it for longer than we could, granting yourself an immense quantity of food.

The only reason I discourage mortars in lower difficulties is because they will miss ladybugs quite frequently, making them very difficult to use properly if you wanted a nightly defensive team.

When I get back home, I'll have to record a hard-mode rapid fire 2.2 guide.

 

[BelgarathSorcerer]

Mortars work fine for lower levels against Ladybugs only since they need to hit once or twice to drive em off.

 

[Redmoth27]

I did It!

 

[Rayalot72]

I did It!

Woo! Grats.

 

[BelgarathSorcerer]

Good Job man!!!

 

[Soccer51x]

Wow, the way I completed the insane is by getting massive hoards of rapid fire and about 20 soldier ants and workers to be meat shields, the workers do a great job in big numbers, and they only cost 2 food they may die faster, but it's definitely worth it.

 

[Rayalot72]

Interesting, I wonder if soldiers do have application in 2.2.

We knew they were basically useless in 2.1 since most foes have OHKOs, anti-melee abilities, and there was the requirement of numbers to harvest food quickly, but in 2.2 I think they're untested as far as lvl 1 spam for maximum HP buffer.

 

[Serafine]

Not really. You CAN build them because the max number of ants that can tend to the aphids is kinda limited but then the shooters are so brokenly overpowered that you're still always better off spamming cheap workers and investing the big amounts of food into shooters that do ten times the DPS soldiers do.

 

[Rayalot72]

You wouldn't be likely to tend the aphids anyway, unless Soccer needed to do so to have enough food.

The soldiers aren't supposed to do damage, they're supposed to be sponges. If workers have 20 HP each, and soldiers have 100 HP each, then soldiers would be fairly useless in 2.1 where most enemies do over 50 damage per attack. In 2.2, however, they'd be much more efficient at sponging several 5-20 damage hits that an ant might use.

 

[Soccer51x]

How I found the best way of getting food is sending 20 worker ants without attack at the food down by the bank, they would be able to gather and run away It was pretty fun because they had morters on one side, and normal on the other. So I found this was the easiest way of getting food, so I had loaaaaaads of food to invest in soldiers, Which did a decent job of distracting morters and cutting into other soldiers. Totally useful, they made that part of the game WAY to easy, because they destroyed anything in their path.

 

[Soccer51x]

Also, for some reason, they made it so workers are fast. This makes it so that in 2.2 and 2.1 they can get to the lower levels and back I find this awesome for harvesting food.

 

[Rayalot72]

2.1 Insane this doesn't really work, as tiger beetles are far too speedy, and you need a lot of food very quickly.