Hello there,
I thought I should also give a sugguestion which would make the game a bit more interesting.
The leaf cutters could be made like this.
3 Types of workers.
1st: The foodgrower & caretakes: Takes care of the fungus to grow bigger and bigger and takes care of the brood.
2nd: The foodcollector & soldier: Takes care of collecting leafs and oats to grow the fungus
3nd: The flydefender: They mainly ride on the back of the 2nd units to defend them against those egg laying flies. They secondly transport the cutted leafs back to the fugus chambers.
The colony size would be determined by how big the fungus has grown. There would be special food plots which would act like a second type of food stockpile. It would take it's time to grow but they could be upgraded just like all the other plots with the 6 points per upgrade tactic. The more fungus slots you have the more fungus they can grow to increase their population. The population would of course have a max capazity but it would still be good to have it like this. The leafes would also be transported to the colonies stock piles and then taken from the 1st type of workers.
The colony should of course start with some of everything so they can actually survive and I think 3-5 of each should actually do. For the upgrades it could be like.
1st: Level 1-3 increases working speed and effectivness of their natural anti biotics they use to keep the fungus healthy. Level 3 Ability: Increase the fungus effectivness by 1-5% so you need less plots per Ant.
2nd: Level 1-3 Increases the cutting speed, defense (except for those flies) and damage. Level 3 Ability: 1-3 Seconds of total immunity or 30-50% less damage taken.
3rd: Level 1-3 increases the walking speed and their effectivness of carrying the leafs. Level 3 Ability: Can jump onto those flies and know them out or something like that.
General Leveling: Increases the HP, the defense, strenghth and walking speed a bit. Of course adjusted to the current situation.
Btw it's normal that a queens first workers are very weak at the beginning and later on as the colonie grows they just die out and are replaced by much stronger sisters. The nanitics are always the weakest workers since the queen just needs a first bunch of ants very quickly and then she can lay eggs for the next generation of workers.
I hope this would give you some ideas to improve the leaf cutter colonies. I never had them myself since I'm not able to find them over here and I'm not going to buy one of those but they are still very facinating and I have a general basic knowledge about those because they are so awesome.
Well I hope you get some ideas out of this.