A Short Guide on Upgrading Ants

WaffleGuy

Colony
This article is mainly for new people who are not sure of whether to upgrade ants, or create new ants. From the base of it, it seems logical to just make more ants. I mean, upgraded ants only get a slight boost in stats, while a whole new ant is twice the boost in stats, technically. However, there are a few things to consider here. Firstly, ants dying costs food. The more ants you have, the greater chance that those ants will die, costing you tons upon tons of food, especially for those stupid dumb bush crickets. And there is another thing, respawn time. It generally takes an eternity for an ant to walk all the way from the queen to a brood chamber, hatch the egg, then for that ant to walk all the way back to the pheromone. And since, by making more ants, you are causing more ants to die, more ants will be respawning, taking more time to unleash the potential of your force in time. And there is one final thing to consider here: Jobs. Ants may also need to do stuff like gather food or relocated aphids, or for a worker, build stuff. If they need to gather a lot of food, for instance, then quantity will be the better option here. But if they can keep control and gather this food in time before a threat comes, then you should focus on the three other things to consider above.

Here I'll run you through a few examples:
  • Nest Workers: Quantity, because they will almost never be dying
  • Fighting Workers in Rising Tide: Quantity, because wolf spiders will one shot them anyway
  • Wood Ant Spitters: Quantity, because unless you forgot to use workers or melee wood ants, they will almost never physically engage with the enemy.
  • Your Army in The Other Foot: Quality, because they will be dying a lot, especially on harder difficulties.
  • Your Army in Excavators (Except for Spitters): Quality, because they will also be dying a lot, also especially on harder difficulties.
  • Your Army in the Formicarium: Quality if they struggle with fighting, quantity if they do not.
  • Your Army in The Harvest: Quantity, because this allows you to harvest the most leaves at once, which is the main objective.
  • Black Ants in New Home: Quality, because they will be dying a lot.
  • Your Army in Subjugation: Quantity, because this is how you kill funnel web spiders.
If the situation your in does call for quantity, here's a little tip. If most of your ants keep trying to repath because they can't target an enemy, you can place your pheromone markers directly on the enemy/enemies, disable attack, wait two seconds, then reenable it. This allows ants blocking other ants to spread out into the enemies, allowing mroe ants to deal damage at once. This is especially useful for fighting praying mantises with only workers.
 
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