Is Insane Mode Possible?

Rayalot72

Maximum difficulty
Beta Tester
Extremely Helpful Person
Spiders are much more intimidating when you have arachnaphobe mode on. Normally it's just "wow, spiders are rushing into the nest, better kill em," but when you have that mode on they're like "G'day m8 *tips hat*," paralyzing your ants with fear.

If the slow shooting is against spiders, it's probably because they move too rapidly to hit. If they're firing slow on a foe that's held in place though, that's a weird bug.
 

Balanite

Worker
Axelay, thanks for watching my video! It's interesting how similar our starting strategies are. :)

You mentioned that you had more ants than I did by night 2 3rd wave. Note that I was also cutting it a bit short there in the video, and had lost plenty of times there before. The key is to get about 45+ spitters (to kill spiders quickly enough) and ~70 workers to replace eggs between waves, then center them all around the queen when the wave hits. My reinforcements hit the spiders at the queen just as they tore through all my workers.

You may also note my eggs are around the queen for faster reinforcements. I only placed a few worker spawns deep inside the nest to distract spiders, main spawning area is still centered around the queen.

As for the bug, can't help you much there. Can you repeat that bug in other maps or just 2.1?
 

Balanite

Worker
Rayalot, it took me 5+ tries to beat 1.2 before I got a good strategy. I usually lose because I got too greedy and used up too much food at a critical moment. Where do you find most difficult with the map?

Know that I use both my workers and soldiers to defend against waves at the bottleneck I talked about, enough to plug the neck so I can kill the egg thieves on the return trip. I usually get 50 workers quickly while steadily building up my soldier count, which allows me to gather food faster and finish the map before I get overwhelmed. Having enough workers is key.

Race sounds good to me! :) Figuring out how to beat these levels with you guys was the most fun part of this game for me.
 

Axelay

Larva
Balanite, I had 80 workers and 50 spitters. The spitters would stand there doing nothing, only spitting at about the rate that a mortar ant shoots.

When I turned off arachnophobia mode and tried again, they shot normally, and I destroyed the spiders without any drama. This whole time I've had the game I've had that mode on. This also explains why it was SOOOOOO hard to beat 2.1 on hard mode. I had to get over 150 melee/shooter ants to beat it on hard.

arachnophobia mode needs a tooltip/warning... I wasted so many hours not realizing they were paralyzing my ants...
 

Rayalot72

Maximum difficulty
Beta Tester
Extremely Helpful Person
I was kidding about the paralyzing. That's actually a pretty serious bug.

Are you certain that you had combat on? That would cause the spitters to only attack when they get attacked, and it's possible that you had it on the time you turned arachnophobe mode off.

I'll do a test and record.
 

Rayalot72

Maximum difficulty
Beta Tester
Extremely Helpful Person
Balanite said:
Huh. Well, did you managed to beat it now, Axelay?

Does this affect mortars as well?

Assuming that mortars use the same LoS determination (which they almost certainly do, otherwise they'd try to arc over solid walls), yes. Their attack speed should actually make it impossible for them to do anything, though.
 

Axelay

Larva
THANK YOU all.

Yes, it was super painful, and I really started getting down on myself for being so terrible.

BUT, the upshot is that I pretty much destroy 1.1/1.2+challenge. And so I'm thinking I must be pretty good now. Forged in fire.

No, I didn't beat it, but I got to the third spider wave on the last night. A bit to under-populated for it, was a bit too slow on food collection, and never quite caught up.
 
I beat 2.1 by surrounding the first row of tiles around the queen with 14 workers or so than built nothing but rapid fire ants all around them, To get past the first night of crab i had roughly 15 rapid ants and 21 workers, I sent 14 workers + the rapid ant pharamone right on top of the door as soon as the crabs started coming in to ensure all of the rapid ants target the same target. after the crabs are all dead i went up and killed many more on the surface before the day came for extra food

the 2nd day i used all my units to only kill the tiger beatles and get the close food to the hole going no further than the 2nd level i also had my food storage literally right in front of the door

and ended up on the third spiderwave on night 2 with about 75 rapid ants i than set the pharamon marker on the queen than i set marker 2 with the 14 workers on NO ATTACK option also on top of the queen. the spiders tend to go for the workers so they gravitated toward the center and got wiped out pretty fast. After that night the challenge was gone and i could have literally sat there and won.

the reason i built all around the queen in a circle fashion was because it allowed my ants to spawn instantly and get right back into the action when killed. Worked like a charm after many many hours of trial and error. the only upgrade i used was for the food nest by the door
 

Rayalot72

Maximum difficulty
Beta Tester
Extremely Helpful Person
You can also bait the spiders into walking near the queen by making as many brood chambers as possible. To do this, simply make a checkerboard ring of speed, food, speed, food, etc.

I haven't tried it yet myself, as I typically end up with spiders nearby enough to fight anyway, but it might be quite useful to some people (just be careful not to do this too much, or your army could end up dying too fast).
 

Rayalot72

Maximum difficulty
Beta Tester
Extremely Helpful Person
I FINALLY got 1.2 Insane Challenge done. It turns out the way Balanite succeeded was by having workers forward, soldiers behind, which kills the thieves far more efficiently.

I also put a lot more focus into soldiers over workers, which allowed some easier handling of the larger waves that otherwise seemed to lock me down.
 

Soccer51x

Worker
Guys if tiger beetle's larva were in the game I would cry and hide. Just saying, these things are demonic. LOOK ----> https://bugguide.net/node/view/269802/bgimage
 

Balanite

Worker
Congrats Rayalot. It's quite interesting that focusing on soldiers over workers went better for you. I always managed to beat 1.2 by doing the opposite.

The important thing is getting enough numbers to overwhelm the invaders and gather food quick enough, I think.
 

Soccer51x

Worker
The way I survived is I put speed up pads to chase down any invaders up in the front, it's costly but I won with only soldiers, it seems more effective because I can have 2 groups of soldiers, as mentioned 1 back, 1 forward. But speed pads make it way easier.
 

Rayalot72

Maximum difficulty
Beta Tester
Extremely Helpful Person
Balanite said:
Congrats Rayalot. It's quite interesting that focusing on soldiers over workers went better for you. I always managed to beat 1.2 by doing the opposite.

The important thing is getting enough numbers to overwhelm the invaders and gather food quick enough, I think.

The balance I've struck seems to work.

Workers: You want enough so that they can respawn as they die so that they can hold off the slavemaker soldiers for enough time that your soldiers can kill all of the thieves. You also want enough workers on egg duty to ensure that the respawn rate is kept constant. You also want to be sure that you can replace stolen larvae very quickly after the respective thief dies on the way out.

Soldiers: You want enough of these to ensure the thieves steal as few larvae as possible, and they should not be fighting the slavemaker soldiers until later. Some soldiers will move forward and help the workers hold the line, while doing some additional damage, making an effective meatbag+DPS combo that can soften up the enemy while dealing with thieves.

Lategame, the soldiers and workers should move separately, with soldiers going for the spiders on their own and workers harvesting various undefended food.

Soldiers should take on mole crickets on their own, while workers should harvest food.
 
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