3.1 has anyone beaten it?

I have lost time and time again to the enemy colony, on medium, and yes, even easy (I'm not that great at games, I just like ants). So I was wondering if anyone has defeated the enemy on hard or insane? Is it even possible? If so please share your ways.

What I know so far,
1, If you don't start out with enough workers, the enemy colony reaches 10,000 before you can attempt to stop them.
2, If you don't have enough soldier, you will never be able to contest a harvest site for long, and will eventually fall behind.
3, Even if you manage to contest a harvest site and repel the counter-attack, the AI will just harvest from the next best site forcing you to leave and try and stop them.

(So you need a good mix, but the AI just has more ants and overwhelms)

I believe that this is the hardest level to date, probably harder than most formicarium challenges, and am tired of failing horrifically!
 

Rayalot72

Maximum difficulty
Beta Tester
Extremely Helpful Person
Beaten it in hard.

For now I'd treat your colony development like this:

Minor: Build them for nest jobs, and in order to get additional minims. Use excess of them to help harvest leaves to some extent.

Media: Build them to collect more leaves, they move faster with them and can cut off more than minors. Good for combat against weak enemies (jumping spider, M harvestman, M praying mantis, S bush cricket, rove beetle larvae, S whip spider).

Major: Build them if you anticipate combat. They're much better than Media in that regard, and have taunts and stuns (depending on your choice) to help them fight. Most threatening enemies, particularly L creatures, shouldn't be approached without a fair few majors.

I'd build up a fair bit before attacking the other colony's harvesting sites. If you do attack them, you also want to try to steal the leaves they've grabbed, and then quickly get what you can from the site before regrouping at a different site. You only want to take the initial engagements where they're harvesting in a spread out line, unless you know you can beat their majors, as your goal should be to delay them and cause them to lose food on deaths. The total leaves harvested isn't nearly as important as it is to have a larger colony than they do.
 
What ive found is that leafcutters thrive on workers. Getting 30 of them at the start is a big advantage as the minims can work faster making the harvesting more efficient. Media are quite expensive for a harvester so wait until you have gotten rid of the surrounding plants before you make any. As they are more efficient doing long runs and also protecting the minors. Majors are late-mid game or late game, as they are only useful for their combat. This is how i win with 3k-4k difference on 3.1. Also attacking is short term try going for the plants the other colony arent or getting plants far enough away so you dont agro.
Once you get the hang of it its easier
 

MikeSlugDisco

Community Manager
Staff member
Community Manager
The times I've really excelled at this level I've got my starting build down quick. Get to the surface quickly but don't forget to put down leaf tiles first. Get your economy up an running as fast as is possible and keep it efficient.
 
The times I've really excelled at this level I've got my starting build down quick. Get to the surface quickly but don't forget to put down leaf tiles first. Get your economy up an running as fast as is possible and keep it efficient.

This update is really quite something, absolutely LOVING the fungus system. Simple yet complex enough to be difficult.
 

Rayalot72

Maximum difficulty
Beta Tester
Extremely Helpful Person
This update is really quite something, absolutely LOVING the fungus system. Simple yet complex enough to be difficult.
First time the nest layout has really mattered, as well. It was a factor before obviously, but it wasn't nearly as important as it is now.
 

Talon

Queen
Beat it on Medium yesterday.
Never tried on Easy, Hard or Insane. I've lost 12 times before. Sometimes I got close, but still lost.
As the others said. First fous on workers. I build three new at the start and used the rest of the food for leaf stores. Then go out and harvest at east or west. If a spider is near one harvest location go to the other side.
Send out all workers at the start. For Nest work switch the smaler group back to the nest. Focus on Workers. After you got 12-14 Workers lest the orginial Nest-Workers in the Nest. After you got 30 Workers make your first Medias, but keep making more Workers. After 4-5 Medias its time for your first Major.
With the first Medias go north (let the Rest of the eastern Harvest Ground untouched as good as possible). While you harvest the north take leafs direct under the Blue-Nest. After that i focused on North-West while 6-8 Medias and 2-3 Majors attack the Blue Nest. This is only to interrupt the blues harvesting. You can not take out their Queen. While a massive blue Army protects the nest and the (empty) harvesting ground in the north, send your Soliders to the north-west. Go West after north-west.
When the Blue attack it, send one Worker Group to the east near your nest. When the blue send everything to the west send your greater forces to north east and one pure worker group to the south west. Try an other Interuption-Attack if you think you need to.

At the End my Army was up to 20-30 Medias 8-9 Majors and 70-90 Workers.
 

Mr_Ced

Colony
I get 19 workers then start working on a group of 19 media, then 19 majors. Then with the combat group, I invade the nest and bottle them up while my minors harvest leaves. It is slow in the beginning, and it is a close game every time.
 
I have lost time and time again to the enemy colony, on medium, and yes, even easy (I'm not that great at games, I just like ants). So I was wondering if anyone has defeated the enemy on hard or insane? Is it even possible? If so please share your ways.

What I know so far,
1, If you don't start out with enough workers, the enemy colony reaches 10,000 before you can attempt to stop them.
2, If you don't have enough soldier, you will never be able to contest a harvest site for long, and will eventually fall behind.
3, Even if you manage to contest a harvest site and repel the counter-attack, the AI will just harvest from the next best site forcing you to leave and try and stop them.

(So you need a good mix, but the AI just has more ants and overwhelms)

I believe that this is the hardest level to date, probably harder than most formicarium challenges, and am tired of failing horrifically!
Yes, that level is actually in a way harder than the 3:2 level but I have devised a way to beat the level. First you go to the surface at the same time as building leaf storage area. Next, head straight up to the surface and collect your first leaves. After that, construct a refuse chamber and continue lead collecting. After a while you'll have a good enough force to go and challange the enemy leaffcutters.
 

Snootz tv

Worker
Great! I don't know if putting all of the workers around the queen but ok:cool:

lol that's just a quasi-ocd thing of mine. The queen is the heart of the colony and workers are the bones, so it makes sense to me to keep them close to each other. also, they die quickly and having them close makes respawn time much quicker when your colony is invaded
 
lol that's just a quasi-ocd thing of mine. The queen is the heart of the colony and workers are the bones, so it makes sense to me to keep them close to each other. also, they die quickly and having them close makes respawn time much quicker when your colony is invaded
Just to let you know you're strategy for the level 3:1 is great! It got me the closest to beating the level!:D
 
If you're really struggling on insane on 3.1; balanite has a great video released on youtube of their runthrough which is really good. I now have a video on my youtube channel as well. We have slightly different base layouts and composition builds so between both of our videos you'll get a good idea of balancing a build that works for you eg; Balanite's video has stun majors and mine will have taunt majors. Balanite builds workers early, I build medea ants early. Balanite's video shows a much cleaner run; they keep up with the enemy colony really well. My video will show how to play the catch up game for anyone struggling to keep up on insane.
 
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