Hello fellow ant fans,
I am a long time player of this game, reaching almost 400 hours played. I want to share with you my frustrations with this game as I think I have clocked enough hours to say I understand this game. Let me say up front that I only play levels on Insane difficulty and only try hard when I can't beat insane. So far this has only happened on 3.2 Frontline pre-patch. It has taken me over 200 hours to try and beat that level pre-patch. There was even someone on Youtube who beat it (fucking lucky I tell you that) who also claimed it was a 'perfectly balanced level'. I have copied his build for over 20 hours, improving it even and gotten wildly different results each run, to the point where I beat down the army ants all day but the meter just went over what I just killed at the end of the day or to the point where I had to kill 18 adult mantises on a single day next to trying to beat down the army ants. (The night before that 18 mantisses I had killed over 8 adult grasshoppers and the 3 small whip spiders and 30+ other strong insects). My build, speed and strategy reached the point where I could take that on and still have food surplus. That level was fucking rng and that guy who beat it was fucking lucky.
After the patch the level was a joke with the optimizations I had in place for trying to beat the impossible level it was before. 200 hours wasted over something I beat in 50 mins now easily. I had given Slug Disco the benefit of the doubt with the design of 3.2 Frontline before, where I thought that on insane difficulty, the army ants are too weak to fight an emerging Atta colony and the insects shout 'VIVA LA RESISTANCE' and ironically murder the army ants, who actually murder these insects on industrial scale in real life. Now you have released Aggrandize. I like the concept of this map. However, this map design + the design of Frontline 3.2 (pre-patch) tells me that the developer doesn't tests his levels on Insane, or atleast has tested + beaten it. Now I have reached the lovely trio of whip spiders over 10 times the last couple of days (hail corona), testing different builds, optimizing the food path. It has gotten to the point where the two small whip spiders (which I kill before the boss + 2 adds), I can take down in 1 go, without losing too many ants.
So I just ended my best insane run in total loss again last night. This is my setup before I attacked the big boss + 2 whip spiders last night:
-2x 7 unit of trap jaws lvl 1
-1x 4 unit of trap jaws lvl 1
-1x 7 wood ants lvl 3
-1x7 wood ants lvl 1
-1x2 wood ants lvl 1
-2x7 black ants lvl 1
-2x2 black ants lvl 1
-1x7 + 1x1 worker lvl1 on top of that i had 3 workers on nest duty all the time.
I started the engagement with 410 food and had about 2 engagement chances. I used the soldiers, split into left and right flank groups, to pin down the adds and have the workers come from behind the spiders to throw their attacks into the opposite direction. My dps team of trapjaws and mortars tried to focus on the main target. However, with the 3 whip spiders moving into random directions and shoving my ants, I could never get proper damage on the proper targets, resulting in the boss spider at 50% hp, one small spider at 40% hp and one small whip spider on 60%hp. Mind you, it takes about 60-70 minutes to get to this point, as the rest of the level has to be properly managed and baited in order to reach an optimal path where every room/kill is profit. In this run I was able to kill all but the funnel web spiders, the 3 large wolfspiders and 5 medium wolfspiders in one engagement. I was not able to pull out singular wolfspiders with my bait worker and 2 of them did go to town on my army but on the second try I was able to pull them 1 by 1. However, in the end both the funnel web spiders and the wolfspiders were a profit nonetheless.
Before I start spending another hour getting to this point (the process is not fun anymore, it's fucking tedious) to test whether or not I should've made more food storage and trade in all those extra units of 2x2 black ants, 1x2 wood ants and 1x4 trap jaws into 500 food and just ram into the spiders another 2 times will actually make the change (this is also less dps and targets to hit so the trade-off will most likely be somewhat equal). So can anyone confirm this level is doable on Insane and I am just a bad player? (prefer hearing from the developer, who has surely tested and beaten his own game before releasing it to the public)
Because getting to this point there is some problems that shows when you make units. When you make a group of 2, both will go to the pheromone marker. Once you make a group of 3, there is always one of them in the base. Untill you reach a groupsize of 7, there is always 1 in base. Raising that group size to 8 will cause 2 of them to stay in base, effectively making a group size of 3 and 8 a negative investment on aggrandize. However, starting a new group instead of raising it to 8 will restart this cycle, rendering your 3rd soldier useless yet again. So I tend to open 2/2 groups in the start so I have effective combat troops (the 3rd is useless), then only make up to 4, so atleast there is +1 in my combat group.
Next to that, soldiers will stay at their first ordered pheromone marker, despite their sisters fighting and dying 3 tiles next to them. I have had situations where in the start (which is the most important part) of Aggrandise where I had soldiers in base and waiting on the pheromone marker before the actual fight, effectively halving my actual and paid for, combat strength. Right now I just use my Baitboy worker (I know they are females) to pull enemies into my army where possible, so atleast fighting strength is optimal despite these mechanics.
For example this happened several times:
Let's say I open with 3 trap jaws, 5 soldiers and 5 wood ants and together with the 7 starting workers I charge into a room. But before I click into that room I want to gather my forces, so I can move as one. Out of these troops, 1 trap jaw, 1 soldier, 1 wood ant and 1 worker will stay in base and not join the move to the pheromone marker. Then when the troops gather at this pheromone marker, 1 soldier and 1 worker start walking back to base for some reason immediatly (patrolling?! I didnt order that). I make the call to move forward and gather at a spot where I can engage and the 3rd trapjaw joined. At this point, only 3 trapjaws, 2 soldiers, 2 wood ants and 4 workers engage the actual fight. During the click of moving forward, one wood ant decided to move back to base and one decided to stay on the previous pheromone marker, together with a black ant. How do you expect me to beat this level when this kind of BS occurs? It means I have just made 3 soldiers and 2 wood ant that are useless. Then when the first ants die, these other ants will slowly trickle into your battle. And I have tried to make only groups of 2/2 to beat this mechanic, but some still stay in base and some will still stay at the pheromone marker, just watching their sisters fall in combat and not giving a flying f.
I tried uploading screenshots, but they are too large.
PS: What's up with the healing, at this point it takes almost 10 minutes to heal a badly injured trapjaw so what's the point. Add badly injured units into the mix with the healthy ones staying in base, you risk losing your entire wood ant back line because your soldiers +trapjaws just fought battles and they die rapidly and there is no way to quickly heal them (no special tiles, no aura around queen, no added regeneration if you are high on food, no nursery task healing injured ants). But I also can't select the wounded and order them to be sacrificed without sacrificing the entire unit that is added to them. Because I'd rather sacrifice them than risk losing more units than necessary for a particular engagement.
I am a long time player of this game, reaching almost 400 hours played. I want to share with you my frustrations with this game as I think I have clocked enough hours to say I understand this game. Let me say up front that I only play levels on Insane difficulty and only try hard when I can't beat insane. So far this has only happened on 3.2 Frontline pre-patch. It has taken me over 200 hours to try and beat that level pre-patch. There was even someone on Youtube who beat it (fucking lucky I tell you that) who also claimed it was a 'perfectly balanced level'. I have copied his build for over 20 hours, improving it even and gotten wildly different results each run, to the point where I beat down the army ants all day but the meter just went over what I just killed at the end of the day or to the point where I had to kill 18 adult mantises on a single day next to trying to beat down the army ants. (The night before that 18 mantisses I had killed over 8 adult grasshoppers and the 3 small whip spiders and 30+ other strong insects). My build, speed and strategy reached the point where I could take that on and still have food surplus. That level was fucking rng and that guy who beat it was fucking lucky.
After the patch the level was a joke with the optimizations I had in place for trying to beat the impossible level it was before. 200 hours wasted over something I beat in 50 mins now easily. I had given Slug Disco the benefit of the doubt with the design of 3.2 Frontline before, where I thought that on insane difficulty, the army ants are too weak to fight an emerging Atta colony and the insects shout 'VIVA LA RESISTANCE' and ironically murder the army ants, who actually murder these insects on industrial scale in real life. Now you have released Aggrandize. I like the concept of this map. However, this map design + the design of Frontline 3.2 (pre-patch) tells me that the developer doesn't tests his levels on Insane, or atleast has tested + beaten it. Now I have reached the lovely trio of whip spiders over 10 times the last couple of days (hail corona), testing different builds, optimizing the food path. It has gotten to the point where the two small whip spiders (which I kill before the boss + 2 adds), I can take down in 1 go, without losing too many ants.
So I just ended my best insane run in total loss again last night. This is my setup before I attacked the big boss + 2 whip spiders last night:
-2x 7 unit of trap jaws lvl 1
-1x 4 unit of trap jaws lvl 1
-1x 7 wood ants lvl 3
-1x7 wood ants lvl 1
-1x2 wood ants lvl 1
-2x7 black ants lvl 1
-2x2 black ants lvl 1
-1x7 + 1x1 worker lvl1 on top of that i had 3 workers on nest duty all the time.
I started the engagement with 410 food and had about 2 engagement chances. I used the soldiers, split into left and right flank groups, to pin down the adds and have the workers come from behind the spiders to throw their attacks into the opposite direction. My dps team of trapjaws and mortars tried to focus on the main target. However, with the 3 whip spiders moving into random directions and shoving my ants, I could never get proper damage on the proper targets, resulting in the boss spider at 50% hp, one small spider at 40% hp and one small whip spider on 60%hp. Mind you, it takes about 60-70 minutes to get to this point, as the rest of the level has to be properly managed and baited in order to reach an optimal path where every room/kill is profit. In this run I was able to kill all but the funnel web spiders, the 3 large wolfspiders and 5 medium wolfspiders in one engagement. I was not able to pull out singular wolfspiders with my bait worker and 2 of them did go to town on my army but on the second try I was able to pull them 1 by 1. However, in the end both the funnel web spiders and the wolfspiders were a profit nonetheless.
Before I start spending another hour getting to this point (the process is not fun anymore, it's fucking tedious) to test whether or not I should've made more food storage and trade in all those extra units of 2x2 black ants, 1x2 wood ants and 1x4 trap jaws into 500 food and just ram into the spiders another 2 times will actually make the change (this is also less dps and targets to hit so the trade-off will most likely be somewhat equal). So can anyone confirm this level is doable on Insane and I am just a bad player? (prefer hearing from the developer, who has surely tested and beaten his own game before releasing it to the public)
Because getting to this point there is some problems that shows when you make units. When you make a group of 2, both will go to the pheromone marker. Once you make a group of 3, there is always one of them in the base. Untill you reach a groupsize of 7, there is always 1 in base. Raising that group size to 8 will cause 2 of them to stay in base, effectively making a group size of 3 and 8 a negative investment on aggrandize. However, starting a new group instead of raising it to 8 will restart this cycle, rendering your 3rd soldier useless yet again. So I tend to open 2/2 groups in the start so I have effective combat troops (the 3rd is useless), then only make up to 4, so atleast there is +1 in my combat group.
Next to that, soldiers will stay at their first ordered pheromone marker, despite their sisters fighting and dying 3 tiles next to them. I have had situations where in the start (which is the most important part) of Aggrandise where I had soldiers in base and waiting on the pheromone marker before the actual fight, effectively halving my actual and paid for, combat strength. Right now I just use my Baitboy worker (I know they are females) to pull enemies into my army where possible, so atleast fighting strength is optimal despite these mechanics.
For example this happened several times:
Let's say I open with 3 trap jaws, 5 soldiers and 5 wood ants and together with the 7 starting workers I charge into a room. But before I click into that room I want to gather my forces, so I can move as one. Out of these troops, 1 trap jaw, 1 soldier, 1 wood ant and 1 worker will stay in base and not join the move to the pheromone marker. Then when the troops gather at this pheromone marker, 1 soldier and 1 worker start walking back to base for some reason immediatly (patrolling?! I didnt order that). I make the call to move forward and gather at a spot where I can engage and the 3rd trapjaw joined. At this point, only 3 trapjaws, 2 soldiers, 2 wood ants and 4 workers engage the actual fight. During the click of moving forward, one wood ant decided to move back to base and one decided to stay on the previous pheromone marker, together with a black ant. How do you expect me to beat this level when this kind of BS occurs? It means I have just made 3 soldiers and 2 wood ant that are useless. Then when the first ants die, these other ants will slowly trickle into your battle. And I have tried to make only groups of 2/2 to beat this mechanic, but some still stay in base and some will still stay at the pheromone marker, just watching their sisters fall in combat and not giving a flying f.
I tried uploading screenshots, but they are too large.
PS: What's up with the healing, at this point it takes almost 10 minutes to heal a badly injured trapjaw so what's the point. Add badly injured units into the mix with the healthy ones staying in base, you risk losing your entire wood ant back line because your soldiers +trapjaws just fought battles and they die rapidly and there is no way to quickly heal them (no special tiles, no aura around queen, no added regeneration if you are high on food, no nursery task healing injured ants). But I also can't select the wounded and order them to be sacrificed without sacrificing the entire unit that is added to them. Because I'd rather sacrifice them than risk losing more units than necessary for a particular engagement.