3.X Insane Strategy Development

Snootz tv

Worker
Congratulations balanite on the insane 3.1 challenge run. I'm a little sad that you got it before I did. That being said I've been trying to get 3.2 done on insane mode done for my video today. 12 attempts in and I keep getting pushed back into my own nest. One thing that I have definitely noticed that starting on night 2 that really big crab spider camps by your Southern border and will not move. This is leading me to believe that you have to rush at the South and clean out all the food there 1st and leave your northeast open for night two. I have also noted that the soldier ant mediums require about 3 of your mediums to take on effectively. This is by far the most difficult mission I've ever played.
 

Dionaea

Larva
Congratulations balanite on the insane 3.1 challenge run. I'm a little sad that you got it before I did. That being said I've been trying to get 3.2 done on insane mode done for my video today. 12 attempts in and I keep getting pushed back into my own nest. One thing that I have definitely noticed that starting on night 2 that really big crab spider camps by your Southern border and will not move. This is leading me to believe that you have to rush at the South and clean out all the food there 1st and leave your northeast open for night two. I have also noted that the soldier ant mediums require about 3 of your mediums to take on effectively. This is by far the most difficult mission I've ever played.

Failed numerous times on medium, but succeeded fairly well on easy. Then I tried the formicarum challenge.... big mistake
 
Congratulations balanite on the insane 3.1 challenge run. I'm a little sad that you got it before I did. That being said I've been trying to get 3.2 done on insane mode done for my video today. 12 attempts in and I keep getting pushed back into my own nest. One thing that I have definitely noticed that starting on night 2 that really big crab spider camps by your Southern border and will not move. This is leading me to believe that you have to rush at the South and clean out all the food there 1st and leave your northeast open for night two. I have also noted that the soldier ant mediums require about 3 of your mediums to take on effectively. This is by far the most difficult mission I've ever played.
Charge him head on. He's closer to your base so if you time the charge no other creature gets involved. There's also 1200+food at the log he moves away from in the centre so once he's down push forward for it. Not easy but worth it. I aim for 30 medea and 10 major ants minimum by that night to counter him with 400+ food reserve. I also push in to the top middle leaf area after that so definitely don't waste the night avoiding the big whip spider. Cuz he will come back the night after if you leave him :)
 

Snootz tv

Worker
Charge him head on. He's closer to your base so if you time the charge no other creature gets involved. There's also 1200+food at the log he moves away from in the centre so once he's down push forward for it. Not easy but worth it. I aim for 30 medea and 10 major ants minimum by that night to counter him with 400+ food reserve. I also push in to the top middle leaf area after that so definitely don't waste the night avoiding the big whip spider. Cuz he will come back the night after if you leave him :)


This is really good advice, My let's play of this mission on medium should be coming out in about 30 (processing time sucks) I'll try this when I'm going for the Insane mode video
 
This is really good advice, My let's play of this mission on medium should be coming out in about 30 (processing time sucks) I'll try this when I'm going for the Insane mode video
I'd love to be first to beat this but I also want this level down so the more the merrier can know what I've discovered. I almost passed this level last last night but fell short with less then a quarter of their ant army bar left. It gutted me. You need to have pushed them back to the far left column by the end of day 2 to win based on my gameplay. Then day 3, build max ants prioritise majors don't keep any reserve food and throw all of your ants in to their end lane to take them all out and cross your fingers :D reserves are useless day 3 the mantis' pick off all the newbies.
 

Rayalot72

Maximum difficulty
Beta Tester
Extremely Helpful Person
Pretty cool to see so many new faces going at this. Tbh I can't help but hope it's one of you guys that manages it first.
 

Balanite

Worker
Adult mantises are the most infuriating enemy in this game. I couldn't beat 3.2 Insane even with 20 workers, 40+ warriors, 30+ majors and 1600 food in reserve. The best I could do was to push the army ants to the easternmost route by Day 5-6, when they stopped spawning and SIX adult mantises came out of the "islands" closest to the nest to camp my entrance and kill all my reinforcements. And venturing out at night even after killing the adult whip spider is basically throwing food away.

I'm guessing you'll have to finish this level by Day 3-4 or something, which means intentionally leaving army ant scouts alive and attacking them from Day 2 at the latest.

Another frustrating element of this level is that army ants killed by other predators does not decrease the bar, and there's only a limited amount of them that spawns every day. This means you must both rescue the army ants from the multiple roaming adult mantises and spiky crickets as soon as possible before you kill them yourself. I think I've killed like 2 dozen of those leafy horrible things in total in my latest run.

Have anyone beaten this level on hard?
 

Mr_Ced

Colony
I have beat 3.2 on hard mode. I started to notice the amount of bugs by day 3 or 4 starting to get nuts and I knew time was running out, so I tried my best to rush to the last line and almost ran out of food. Still won.
 

Snootz tv

Worker
I'm beginning to think 3.2 isn't possible on insane until the devs reel back in some of the mantis and other insects. I get that the mission is supposed to be fast, but after night 2 it just doesn't seem possible. I spent 5 hours this morning just reloading and replaying the mission over and over. Normally you can kinda feel out the path the dev's want you to take but not in this level, every way you go you just get curb stomped either due to pathing into insane bugs or starvation because you can't gather at night(because of all the nocturnal bugs), and you can't gather during the day after day 2 due to the big mantis's.
 

Rayalot72

Maximum difficulty
Beta Tester
Extremely Helpful Person
Adult mantises are the most infuriating enemy in this game. I couldn't beat 3.2 Insane even with 20 workers, 40+ warriors, 30+ majors and 1600 food in reserve. The best I could do was to push the army ants to the easternmost route by Day 5-6, when they stopped spawning and SIX adult mantises came out of the "islands" closest to the nest to camp my entrance and kill all my reinforcements. And venturing out at night even after killing the adult whip spider is basically throwing food away.

I'm guessing you'll have to finish this level by Day 3-4 or something, which means intentionally leaving army ant scouts alive and attacking them from Day 2 at the latest.

Another frustrating element of this level is that army ants killed by other predators does not decrease the bar, and there's only a limited amount of them that spawns every day. This means you must both rescue the army ants from the multiple roaming adult mantises and spiky crickets as soon as possible before you kill them yourself. I think I've killed like 2 dozen of those leafy horrible things in total in my latest run.

Have anyone beaten this level on hard?

I beat it on hard back in the beta, and I don't think the S major and T major changes before release (the stun used to be AoE and the taunt didn't heal) have changed much. I beat it over the course of about 6 days I think, building my route around the whip spider's movements and killing it after it approached the nest.

L creatures are the biggest pain, as they're all stun immune and can do some serious damage. L mantises at least aren't too big a deal if you can kill them quickly, but the bush crickets always seem to get their AoE bleed off which can totally wipe your food out if you're not careful about baiting it with only a few ants to start with.

Based on some success I've had in lower difficulties, I think it may be possible to rush the level with the right collection order. I also have some ideas for dealing with L creatures a little more easily on the third night that I need to try out.
 

Rayalot72

Maximum difficulty
Beta Tester
Extremely Helpful Person
View attachment 117
I don't remember what day of the level i saw this but is a bit exaggerated.
I think this level (3.2) spawn too many bugs, mainly mantis.
(this is on insane dificulty)

While I do lean towards the view that the rate of increase is too linear (should probably be more logarithmic, since leafcutters suffer so much more than other colonies with even minor increases in enemy quantities), I don't think it makes the level impossible. All it really does is place some significant restrictions on how you beat it, since you cannot possibly hope to win after a certain amount of time.
 

Rayalot72

Maximum difficulty
Beta Tester
Extremely Helpful Person
A video will be uploaded on my channel of me beating 3.2 in hard, quite comfortably as well.

I will post it here when I get back home from an outing.
 
I will vouch this level is passable even though I haven't yet. I got the bar down to 1cm on my screen but due to what I consider a missplay I stuffed my run up before cracking it and shutting my computer down. So hopefully in the next 2 days I'll have something up I'm pretty confident now but I'm not even going to start to write the list out of the path I take to get there, it needs a 40 minute video to explain.
 

Snootz tv

Worker
My friday is completely dedicated to getting this level done and a video on it out. I missed being able to record one for today due to testing from 6 am to 11:30 am, and then I had class and helping a roommate move in
 
My friday is completely dedicated to getting this level done and a video on it out. I missed being able to record one for today due to testing from 6 am to 11:30 am, and then I had class and helping a roommate move in
Well I wish you the best of luck. Looking forward to seeing how you do. And it is doable, I firmly believe that from my gameplay so don't give up.
 

Rayalot72

Maximum difficulty
Beta Tester
Extremely Helpful Person

This might give peoples struggling with the level an idea of how it can be played effectively. Not sure how to route insane, but I think I've got the general strategy down.

Build order is getting up to ~15 Media in the original chamber, then getting 19 workers in the other original chamber, and then starting out your majors. Alternate between media and majors from there.

Get up to 14 workers for the nest, using the 7 from the queen's group and a second chamber of 7 placed near the leaf stores to speed up fungal production.

Place refuse chambers behind your brood chambers so they're out of the way, and close to the areas where refuse is produced. This further improves fungal production.
 

This might give peoples struggling with the level an idea of how it can be played effectively. Not sure how to route insane, but I think I've got the general strategy down.

Build order is getting up to ~15 Media in the original chamber, then getting 19 workers in the other original chamber, and then starting out your majors. Alternate between media and majors from there.

Get up to 14 workers for the nest, using the 7 from the queen's group and a second chamber of 7 placed near the leaf stores to speed up fungal production.

Place refuse chambers behind your brood chambers so they're out of the way, and close to the areas where refuse is produced. This further improves fungal production.
To be honest I just skip/started your first fifteen minutes and you're start is much slower and isn't aggressive enough toward the enemy ants compared to my insane progress if that helps you try a few more aggressive manoeuvres.
 

Balanite

Worker
After playing around with the force composition again last night and watching Rayalot72's video, a few things comes to mind regarding what's necessary for a successful 3.2 Insane run:

1. Composition: A ratio of 1:1:1 worker warrior major works surprisingly well, however as TerrificTimmeh said might be too slow to win with. Still, a sizable investment in early taunt majors would most likely be best for killing the army ants, as well as dealing with adult mantis/cricket ambushes with minimal loss of food. I think getting an early couple of majors, about 20 workers (including nest groups), 30 warriors and the rest in majors should work the best right now.
2. An alternative harvesting route might involve getting the big plants from islands further away on the first couple of days before the day/night spawn rate gets too much, then harvesting the ones easier to get on the right side of the map (i.e. the uncontested bottom right corner one) on later nights. Haven't tried this yet to see how effective it can be.
3. Army ants must be attacked starting from Day 2 onwards to push them decisively back to the middle lane, finishing them by Day 3-4 on the leftmost lane close to the bottom side of the map.
4. Should the adult whip spider be killed on Night 3? I couldn't really capitalise on the space created until Day 4, since I gobbled up all the leaves on the right side first in my last few runs, and there's too many whip spiders etc. patrolling along the middle.
5. Selling warrior ants to get 1000+ more leaves on Day 4 for the final push. Feasible?
 
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