Any tips on "Before the Storm"?

[Recalcitrant]

Not to be confused with "Calm before the storm" (the mission names could use some work). This is the mission where you fight two black ant colonies at once.

Struggling on this mission because of the enemy composition. Hordes of Warrior black ants but Gunners aren't fast enough to respond to the attacks on the massive map and using anything else gets outnumbered. I have gotten close several times but one of the colonies always kills me with a counterattack when the other one dies... two super predators against one is rough. Anyone beat this mission yet? What was your composition/powers like?

[Inmanis]

nope, it's busted and needs rebalancing. letting the enemy have TWO super predators, that attack from BOTH SIDES OF THE MAP is just busted. on top of that, you're absolutely starved of resources, which ofc the AI isn't and has infinite of. the AI can field double the units you can (double headquarters) and starts with tier 2 upgrades. it's just a busted map, point blank period.

[Recalcitrant]

Beat it, finally, after 13 or 14 tries. I had to use fear pheremones and snail with shield power to melee-lock the red super-predator, then it was a matter of camping on my HQ and letting enemies wear themselves down into my defenses until I could do the exact same thing again. I do not know if the achievement is possible, it definitely isn't with this strategy.

[Evocracy ツ]

I'm having a little bit of a hard time with this one too. Had some success rushing the enemy nests so that they can't have the tier 3s so fast, but ultimately can't speed through on both AI factions to keep it up. Them having tier 3 when I'm still getting my armies to tier 2 is rough. Also have to use the blue beetles as the green ones are garbage. At least on this mission.

[Recalcitrant]

My advice is that you can never take a fair fight against the enemy superpredator because the other AI will just kill you with theirs before you can recover. Here's what I did:
https://imgur.com/a/obAI2SC

1. Start with warriors, send them in the direction of SE nest
   
2. Wood farm in HQ and S nest
   
3. Go to SE nest and make sure Warriors are attacking it
   
4. Make gunners, Cartography, and Shield pheremones from S nest
   
5. Speed up gunners and send them to SSW nest
   
6. After warriors capture SE nest, make food farm and workers from the nest
   
7. Wait for warriors to be at 60% health and send them to SSE nest
   
8. After gunners capture SSW nest, make food farm from the nest
   
9. Wait for gunners to be at 60% health and send them to SW nest
   
10. When both gunners and warriors are fighting, speed up workers and send them to SE foraging.
    
11. Wait for gunners to be at 60% health and send them to SW foraging
    
12. Send warriors back to SE nest to defend from the first wave, which is usually 1 Warrior. Give them shields with the pheremones.
    
13. Collect SE forage and build T2.
    
14. Make snail and wood farm from SSW, super predator from SSE after T2 is finished.
    
15. Build food farm on SW nest and collect SW forage.
    
16. Build T2 Damage pheremones
    
17. Move all unitts to HQ, wait for attack (Red AI sending super predator and several other units, which are damaged from fighting neutrals in the middle)
    
18. After the attack, counterattack Red AI's HQ and kill them with Damage pheremones. Orange AI will be attacking far right nest again, but you will only lose one nest and then Orange will counterattack your HQ later if you've done everything correctly. When Red's superpredator is rebuilt, block it with a snail (preemptively) and finish killing their HQ.
    
19. Immediately return to HQ to fight off Orange AI counterattack, then do the same strategy to them after you kill their armies.

You can also use fear pheremones in place of snail, but remember that any enemy legion that is scared outside of the bounds of the map by fear pheremones immediately loses the debuff. Economy is extremely important in this mission but you can build a few defenses too so that your HQ doesn't die.

Hope that helps.

[Loial]

Been struggling on this mission as well. I tried a couple of strategies unsuccessfully:

- Rushing one enemy as fast as possible. This has mitigated results in the short term since as I'm clearing up their last remaining nest I'll get hit by T2 / super predators while I'm still on 3-4 legions of T1.
- Focusing on economy and getting a super predator as soon as possible. This meant capturing the 3 nests that are the closest to the 2 starting ones and building woodfarms / mushroom farms, and then getting the Super Pred. Super Pred helps holding off enemy attacks while I got T2. Started pushing out with 2 T2 + Super Predator while keeping the other 2 T2 at home to defend on one side. It worked somewhat but as soon as the enemies' T3 started coming out, my Rage + Heal + Dash powers didn't manage to overpowered and I gradually got eroded.
- Tried getting the food in the middle, but that requires time to build up enough strength to clear out the neutral legions and then you do get attacked in the middle AND the sides while trying to defend. This had me too spread out and still quite weak.

Overall the balance seems compleeeeeeeeeeeeetely off on this one.

[Loial]

So after beating the rest of the campaign I decided to come back to this mission to see if my "mastery" of the game would now allow me to beat "Before the Storm".

I *did* manage to beat it, but I basically bull rushed my way through enemy nests as quickly as possible, and when I was fighting the 2nd enemy HQ with 6 legions (1 super pred, 1 tier 2 warrior and 4 tier 1 legions), I was being attacked by a T3 warrior legion, a Super Predator and a T2 worker legion.... the HQ died before my troops died.

Units/Power:
Starter: Worker
Predator: Blue beetles
Powers: Shield, Dash, Rage, Heal

Strat was roughly:
- Every time you capture a nest, construct a woodyard first and then a mushroom farm on the next. (always build what's cheapest, except for the first nest where you build a Wood yard).
- As soon as you can build a legion on a nest, build a level 1. The only legion I used food to fast build was the first legion, so I could start capturing Nests 2 at a time.
- Continue capturing nests and the forage points until you have 5 nests and 5 legions.
- Attack the enemy nests on the left hand side. I attacked the smaller nest first and then rushed the HQ nest afterwards. Shield and Rage helped take down the HQ and survive. Some enemy legions tried to attack me through the center while I was attacking the HQ but the T2 red neutral legions attacked and killed them, thus protecting me.
- Get T2 building
- Build 6th legion (Blue beetle)
- Start getting the nests on the right hand side... this part was tricky because at that point in time the enemy had their own super predator + t3 warriors and attacked my HQ. I had to build a wood barrier + nest defenses + biring all my units back to survive.
- Healed up + upgraded one of my legions that died to T2
- Went back on the right hand side, captured the small nest first, then the HQ nest.
- While attacking the HQ nest, multiple legions attacked me but I just ignored them with Shield + Rage and the HQ fell before my units died.

Hope this helps!

[Red Luck]

as long as you get your nests up, build economy buildings, and get early beetles then you should be able to walk all over them. If youre going for the achievement then you need to play it slow and control every nest on the map besides the two headquarters so it takes a while.

Shield and Rage are insanely strong and if you have gunner starters then you'll be fine from any early attacks which is rare