Anyone managed to beat this on insane or got pretty far?
I've gotten up to the army ant wave. The problem is that after the molecrickets, there isn't enough time to go kill the harvestmen, and then the leaf cutters, and then the rove beetles. This makes the waves stack a little bit, up until the army ant wave, which is the killer, even with massive food stores and a queen ability. The only effective way I've found to beat this army ant wave is to split the army ants up using worker groups as a distraction. This is possible on hard, but not insane, because there isn't enough time to kill the last remaining harvestmen, leaf cutter majors, and rove beetles that are dropped, so they end up getting in the way of swarming and splitting up the army ants. On insane, I would suggest that the time between the harvestmen to leaf cutters, leaf cutters to rove beetles, rove beetles to jumping spiders, and lastly jumping spiders to rove beetles be increased to what it is on hard.
If not this, maybe just give a significant amount of extra time on all difficulties before the army ant wave spawns to give the player time to set up (and forget my previous suggestion).
If not that, here's another possibility to make all of the difficulties in my opinion a bit more balanced or seem more fair: give the queen her second ability, which would probably be the one where it stuns all of the enemies in the underground. This would at least give the royal guard some time to do damage without getting instantly slaughtered by army ants (or wood ant mortars in earlier waves). The royal guard alone can be useful against weaker waves, like the first round of enemies the scientist drops (devil's coach horse, tiger beetles, and wolf spiders), but from that point on, it becomes pretty much useless.
On the army ant media respawn cost reduction: I did find that the buff given to army ant medias in reducing their cost was very useful. I actually prefer to build a massive swarm of them now rather than build any slavemakers, and it works quite well. They're a good combination with upgraded trap jaws. I think I end up being able to profit more food with them rather than slave makers.
I've gotten up to the army ant wave. The problem is that after the molecrickets, there isn't enough time to go kill the harvestmen, and then the leaf cutters, and then the rove beetles. This makes the waves stack a little bit, up until the army ant wave, which is the killer, even with massive food stores and a queen ability. The only effective way I've found to beat this army ant wave is to split the army ants up using worker groups as a distraction. This is possible on hard, but not insane, because there isn't enough time to kill the last remaining harvestmen, leaf cutter majors, and rove beetles that are dropped, so they end up getting in the way of swarming and splitting up the army ants. On insane, I would suggest that the time between the harvestmen to leaf cutters, leaf cutters to rove beetles, rove beetles to jumping spiders, and lastly jumping spiders to rove beetles be increased to what it is on hard.
If not this, maybe just give a significant amount of extra time on all difficulties before the army ant wave spawns to give the player time to set up (and forget my previous suggestion).
If not that, here's another possibility to make all of the difficulties in my opinion a bit more balanced or seem more fair: give the queen her second ability, which would probably be the one where it stuns all of the enemies in the underground. This would at least give the royal guard some time to do damage without getting instantly slaughtered by army ants (or wood ant mortars in earlier waves). The royal guard alone can be useful against weaker waves, like the first round of enemies the scientist drops (devil's coach horse, tiger beetles, and wolf spiders), but from that point on, it becomes pretty much useless.
On the army ant media respawn cost reduction: I did find that the buff given to army ant medias in reducing their cost was very useful. I actually prefer to build a massive swarm of them now rather than build any slavemakers, and it works quite well. They're a good combination with upgraded trap jaws. I think I end up being able to profit more food with them rather than slave makers.