Buff LeafCutter plz

[B]

LC very soft

[AdmiralMoszi]

They are actually the most busted ants in the game along with wood ants

[nordstern]

i a questioning for month when they wanr to balance it. Every time they said another date. So ka... im campaign it works... in custom game you have the problem:

- slower than all other ants
- same declay of food during the game
-> harvest lower amounts because of the delay cames from the slower developlemt

- much lesser food ressources, because they can only have leafs. No seeds, no insects, no plunder of enemy nests, no supers and no aphids.

And they are much more expansive to build up and upkeep loses.

So they have no chance in single game if you play higher than normal or maybe (if lucky and AI ignores you) hard. But not very hard and higher. Imposible.

On the other hand fireants are evil as hell. They are the oposite. Fast development, cheap upkeep (no upkeep over time, 2 ants per field), high damage and great fighters. So you can get more food than the AI and develop even faster. They are so massively op. Woodants are op if you have tiny roads, because their range ability is op too.

So range ability nerf (maybe increase resistance of other ants), increase food (more leafs, plunder nests, can harvest seeds) for leaf cutters and make them cheaper in upkeep. Also maybe the smallest get a combat bonus in the own nest. And fireants can not gather seeds anymore. If they kill a queen, the nest will spawn puppets for them.

[Raldavar]

Yeah the major problem with leaf cutters is that their resources goes through many more steps compared to every other ant species yet the amount of food they get is 1:1 of what they pick up.

Ant species that aren't leaf cutters:
1. Pick up resource.
2. Deliver resource onto a collection tile.

Leaf Cutters:
1. Cut up leaves.
2. Deliver resource onto a collection tile.
3. Minions cut up leaves on collection tile.
4. Minions deliver resource onto ant tile.
5. Resource needs to be broken down on ant tile over time to produce food.

On top of this, they only have 1 actual combat unit in the Major which has way more weaknesses than strengths. There are a number of ways to rebalance leaf cutters without going overboard and making them broken like fire ants. I'm sure the devs have something planned.

[AdmiralMoszi]

Originally posted by Raldavar:

Yeah the major problem with leaf cutters is that their resources goes through many more steps compared to every other ant species yet the amount of food they get is 1:1 of what they pick up.

Ant species that aren't leaf cutters:
1. Pick up resource.
2. Deliver resource onto a collection tile.

Leaf Cutters:
1. Cut up leaves.
2. Deliver resource onto a collection tile.
3. Minions cut up leaves on collection tile.
4. Minions deliver resource onto ant tile.
5. Resource needs to be broken down on ant tile over time to produce food.

On top of this, they only have 1 actual combat unit in the Major which has way more weaknesses than strengths. There are a number of ways to rebalance leaf cutters without going overboard and making them broken like fire ants. I'm sure the devs have something planned.

Make sure you are using taunt majors. Stun majors are nearly useless. Leafcutter majors have extremely high health and resistance and moderate DPS. By the way, fire ants aren't broken, they have major weaknesses like splash damage due to their low resistance and other high DPS units (Army ant major, big headed ant supermajor) In my testing I found leafcutter majors to have no weaknesses, as long as you are using taunt majors, Keep in mind taunt majors perform a lot better at LVL 3.

The reason leafcutters have such a complex food system is possibly to balance them. Early game get a lot of workers and skip mediae entirely. Get 7-19 majors to defend your nest and have them at LVL 3. Each ant spawns 1 minim (Small guys) that carry food and refuse. Plant your workers next to the food chamber near the entrance so the distance travelled by the minims is minimized. Using this strategy, you can beat 3.1 and 3.2 on insane difficulty.

Leafcutter majors have little to no weaknesses. They are the best all around majors in the game. They have high resistance and health, so wood ants splash damage effect is less effective. They have enough damage to kill enemy units quick. They are also great against bosses (Ubers) since they are one of the only units that cannot be killed in a single swipe.

[AdmiralMoszi]

Originally posted by nordstern:

i a questioning for month when they wanr to balance it. Every time they said another date. So ka... im campaign it works... in custom game you have the problem:

- slower than all other ants
- same declay of food during the game
-> harvest lower amounts because of the delay cames from the slower developlemt

- much lesser food ressources, because they can only have leafs. No seeds, no insects, no plunder of enemy nests, no supers and no aphids.

And they are much more expansive to build up and upkeep loses.

So they have no chance in single game if you play higher than normal or maybe (if lucky and AI ignores you) hard. But not very hard and higher. Imposible.

On the other hand fireants are evil as hell. They are the oposite. Fast development, cheap upkeep (no upkeep over time, 2 ants per field), high damage and great fighters. So you can get more food than the AI and develop even faster. They are so massively op. Woodants are op if you have tiny roads, because their range ability is op too.

So range ability nerf (maybe increase resistance of other ants), increase food (more leafs, plunder nests, can harvest seeds) for leaf cutters and make them cheaper in upkeep. Also maybe the smallest get a combat bonus in the own nest. And fireants can not gather seeds anymore. If they kill a queen, the nest will spawn puppets for them.

Actually they aren't any slower than the black ant, and wood ants are a lot slower.

[Raldavar]

Originally posted by AdmiralMoszi:

Originally posted by Raldavar:

Yeah the major problem with leaf cutters is that their resources goes through many more steps compared to every other ant species yet the amount of food they get is 1:1 of what they pick up.

Ant species that aren't leaf cutters:
1. Pick up resource.
2. Deliver resource onto a collection tile.

Leaf Cutters:
1. Cut up leaves.
2. Deliver resource onto a collection tile.
3. Minions cut up leaves on collection tile.
4. Minions deliver resource onto ant tile.
5. Resource needs to be broken down on ant tile over time to produce food.

On top of this, they only have 1 actual combat unit in the Major which has way more weaknesses than strengths. There are a number of ways to rebalance leaf cutters without going overboard and making them broken like fire ants. I'm sure the devs have something planned.

Make sure you are using taunt majors. Stun majors are nearly useless. Leafcutter majors have extremely high health and resistance and moderate DPS. By the way, fire ants aren't broken, they have major weaknesses like splash damage due to their low resistance and other high DPS units (Army ant major, big headed ant supermajor) In my testing I found leafcutter majors to have no weaknesses, as long as you are using taunt majors, Keep in mind taunt majors perform a lot better at LVL 3.

The reason leafcutters have such a complex food system is possibly to balance them. Early game get a lot of workers and skip mediae entirely. Get 7-19 majors to defend your nest and have them at LVL 3. Each ant spawns 1 minim (Small guys) that carry food and refuse. Plant your workers next to the food chamber near the entrance so the distance travelled by the minims is minimized. Using this strategy, you can beat 3.1 and 3.2 on insane difficulty.

Leafcutter majors have little to no weaknesses. They are the best all around majors in the game. They have high resistance and health, so wood ants splash damage effect is less effective. They have enough damage to kill enemy units quick. They are also great against bosses (Ubers) since they are one of the only units that cannot be killed in a single swipe.

Speaking as someone who has beaten every leaf cutter story level on insane + challenge and spend loads of time as them in free play, Leaf cutter ants are among the weakest ant species in the game. I haven't even spoken about the refuse system yet, which further slows down their economy. Everything about the leaf cutter species is clunky, so the rewards should've been great, yet their majors are severally lacking.

Nearly every other playable species beat them in terms of economy and efficiency. They are weak to the basic dps + meat shield combo from wood ants, zerg rushing from fire ants, out-classed by big-headed ants, and lose in economy to little confusion ants. The only ants that are absolutely worse than leaf cutters are base black ants.

This of course runs contrary to real life versions of leaf cutters as they number in the millions and outnumber other ant species easily.

[AdmiralMoszi]

Wood ants counter every ant. Leafcutters are actually one of the better ants against them due to their high hp. And no, they are NOT weak to fire ants. In battle arena, 50 lvl 3 (taunt) majors always beat 200 fire ants (Vigorous) And its not even close. If you lost to them in freeplay its because you were vastly outnumbered or you didn't upgrade your ants. They are definitely not outclassed by big headed ants. (The stun leafcutters are) And lvl 3 majors shouldn't have any problem with little black ants.

Yeah, they are the largest non-super colony ant species in real life. I wish you could build your colony as big as you wanted it, as long as your pc can handle it.

[Raldavar]

Originally posted by AdmiralMoszi:

Wood ants counter every ant. Leafcutters are actually one of the better ants against them due to their high hp. And no, they are NOT weak to fire ants. In battle arena, 50 lvl 3 (taunt) majors always beat 200 fire ants (Vigorous) And its not even close. If you lost to them in freeplay its because you were vastly outnumbered or you didn't upgrade your ants. They are definitely not outclassed by big headed ants. (The stun leafcutters are) And lvl 3 majors shouldn't have any problem with little black ants.

Yeah, they are the largest non-super colony ant species in real life. I wish you could build your colony as big as you wanted it, as long as your pc can handle it.

If you had 50 leaf cutter majors, that is 7500 food, which is equal to 375 level 3 fire ants, not 200. Your test was wrong.

[AdmiralMoszi]

You are correct! The fire ants are more efficient than leafcutters.

[Maine]

Originally posted by AdmiralMoszi:

Originally posted by Raldavar:

Yeah the major problem with leaf cutters is that their resources goes through many more steps compared to every other ant species yet the amount of food they get is 1:1 of what they pick up.

Ant species that aren't leaf cutters:
1. Pick up resource.
2. Deliver resource onto a collection tile.

Leaf Cutters:
1. Cut up leaves.
2. Deliver resource onto a collection tile.
3. Minions cut up leaves on collection tile.
4. Minions deliver resource onto ant tile.
5. Resource needs to be broken down on ant tile over time to produce food.

On top of this, they only have 1 actual combat unit in the Major which has way more weaknesses than strengths. There are a number of ways to rebalance leaf cutters without going overboard and making them broken like fire ants. I'm sure the devs have something planned.

Make sure you are using taunt majors. Stun majors are nearly useless. Leafcutter majors have extremely high health and resistance and moderate DPS. By the way, fire ants aren't broken, they have major weaknesses like splash damage due to their low resistance and other high DPS units (Army ant major, big headed ant supermajor) In my testing I found leafcutter majors to have no weaknesses, as long as you are using taunt majors, Keep in mind taunt majors perform a lot better at LVL 3.

The reason leafcutters have such a complex food system is possibly to balance them. Early game get a lot of workers and skip mediae entirely. Get 7-19 majors to defend your nest and have them at LVL 3. Each ant spawns 1 minim (Small guys) that carry food and refuse. Plant your workers next to the food chamber near the entrance so the distance travelled by the minims is minimized. Using this strategy, you can beat 3.1 and 3.2 on insane difficulty.

Leafcutter majors have little to no weaknesses. They are the best all around majors in the game. They have high resistance and health, so wood ants splash damage effect is less effective. They have enough damage to kill enemy units quick. They are also great against bosses (Ubers) since they are one of the only units that cannot be killed in a single swipe.

i'd like to tell you, that their weaknesses are null, when you get an entire free army, it kinda removes the issue of having losses, turning all losses into acceptable losses, so long as you disrupt their supply lines, they could lose 20 and fire ants 100, that's a costly loss for the enemy, but for the fire ants? not so much.

meaning even if you lose 100, you'll have a 100 more for free, by the time the next wave of your horde arrives, the larvae will be free again, meaning if you send a good amount to raid supply lines, you can easily set up your own supply lines while still expanding your numbers without worrying about losing food.

you can disrupt multiple enemy supply lines and at the same time create new ones for yourself and still expand.

if you play fire ants correctly which is pretty easy and respond to all threats at a moderate distance from your nest, in my experiences you can control the map quite easily and it's way easier with fire ants than any other ant colony.

pervasive is an extremely busted ability, needs a bit of a look at such as making the larvae take longer to become free.

right now you can easily clear the nest faster than any of the other ants due to not having to worry so much about cost at all really, plus they're cheap.

statistically in terms of stats, they're fine, just that one thing needs to be looked at and nerfed, i wouldn't recommend anyone pick vigorous though, it's kinda meh.

the fact that they get 2 ants per tile at lvl3, yikes.

[AdmiralMoszi]

Originally posted by The flame, will set us free.:

Originally posted by AdmiralMoszi:

Make sure you are using taunt majors. Stun majors are nearly useless. Leafcutter majors have extremely high health and resistance and moderate DPS. By the way, fire ants aren't broken, they have major weaknesses like splash damage due to their low resistance and other high DPS units (Army ant major, big headed ant supermajor) In my testing I found leafcutter majors to have no weaknesses, as long as you are using taunt majors, Keep in mind taunt majors perform a lot better at LVL 3.

The reason leafcutters have such a complex food system is possibly to balance them. Early game get a lot of workers and skip mediae entirely. Get 7-19 majors to defend your nest and have them at LVL 3. Each ant spawns 1 minim (Small guys) that carry food and refuse. Plant your workers next to the food chamber near the entrance so the distance travelled by the minims is minimized. Using this strategy, you can beat 3.1 and 3.2 on insane difficulty.

Leafcutter majors have little to no weaknesses. They are the best all around majors in the game. They have high resistance and health, so wood ants splash damage effect is less effective. They have enough damage to kill enemy units quick. They are also great against bosses (Ubers) since they are one of the only units that cannot be killed in a single swipe.

i'd like to tell you, that their weaknesses are null, when you get an entire free army, it kinda removes the issue of having losses, turning all losses into acceptable losses, so long as you disrupt their supply lines, they could lose 20 and fire ants 100, that's a costly loss for the enemy, but for the fire ants? not so much.

meaning even if you lose 100, you'll have a 100 more for free, by the time the next wave of your horde arrives, the larvae will be free again, meaning if you send a good amount to raid supply lines, you can easily set up your own supply lines while still expanding your numbers without worrying about losing food.

you can disrupt multiple enemy supply lines and at the same time create new ones for yourself and still expand.

if you play fire ants correctly which is pretty easy and respond to all threats at a moderate distance from your nest, in my experiences you can control the map quite easily and it's way easier with fire ants than any other ant colony.

pervasive is an extremely busted ability, needs a bit of a look at such as making the larvae take longer to become free.

right now you can easily clear the nest faster than any of the other ants due to not having to worry so much about cost at all really, plus they're cheap.

statistically in terms of stats, they're fine, just that one thing needs to be looked at and nerfed, i wouldn't recommend anyone pick vigorous though, it's kinda meh.

the fact that they get 2 ants per tile at lvl3, yikes.

Ask any player who beat 4.1 and 4.2 on insane pervasive is a lot worse than vigorous.

[AdmiralMoszi]

Originally posted by The flame, will set us free.:

Originally posted by AdmiralMoszi:

Make sure you are using taunt majors. Stun majors are nearly useless. Leafcutter majors have extremely high health and resistance and moderate DPS. By the way, fire ants aren't broken, they have major weaknesses like splash damage due to their low resistance and other high DPS units (Army ant major, big headed ant supermajor) In my testing I found leafcutter majors to have no weaknesses, as long as you are using taunt majors, Keep in mind taunt majors perform a lot better at LVL 3.

The reason leafcutters have such a complex food system is possibly to balance them. Early game get a lot of workers and skip mediae entirely. Get 7-19 majors to defend your nest and have them at LVL 3. Each ant spawns 1 minim (Small guys) that carry food and refuse. Plant your workers next to the food chamber near the entrance so the distance travelled by the minims is minimized. Using this strategy, you can beat 3.1 and 3.2 on insane difficulty.

Leafcutter majors have little to no weaknesses. They are the best all around majors in the game. They have high resistance and health, so wood ants splash damage effect is less effective. They have enough damage to kill enemy units quick. They are also great against bosses (Ubers) since they are one of the only units that cannot be killed in a single swipe.

i'd like to tell you, that their weaknesses are null, when you get an entire free army, it kinda removes the issue of having losses, turning all losses into acceptable losses, so long as you disrupt their supply lines, they could lose 20 and fire ants 100, that's a costly loss for the enemy, but for the fire ants? not so much.

meaning even if you lose 100, you'll have a 100 more for free, by the time the next wave of your horde arrives, the larvae will be free again, meaning if you send a good amount to raid supply lines, you can easily set up your own supply lines while still expanding your numbers without worrying about losing food.

you can disrupt multiple enemy supply lines and at the same time create new ones for yourself and still expand.

if you play fire ants correctly which is pretty easy and respond to all threats at a moderate distance from your nest, in my experiences you can control the map quite easily and it's way easier with fire ants than any other ant colony.

pervasive is an extremely busted ability, needs a bit of a look at such as making the larvae take longer to become free.

right now you can easily clear the nest faster than any of the other ants due to not having to worry so much about cost at all really, plus they're cheap.

statistically in terms of stats, they're fine, just that one thing needs to be looked at and nerfed, i wouldn't recommend anyone pick vigorous though, it's kinda meh.

the fact that they get 2 ants per tile at lvl3, yikes.

Kinda meh? Look at the Eotu wiki and see the increase in stats for yourself.

[Maine]

Originally posted by AdmiralMoszi:

Originally posted by The flame, will set us free.:

i'd like to tell you, that their weaknesses are null, when you get an entire free army, it kinda removes the issue of having losses, turning all losses into acceptable losses, so long as you disrupt their supply lines, they could lose 20 and fire ants 100, that's a costly loss for the enemy, but for the fire ants? not so much.

meaning even if you lose 100, you'll have a 100 more for free, by the time the next wave of your horde arrives, the larvae will be free again, meaning if you send a good amount to raid supply lines, you can easily set up your own supply lines while still expanding your numbers without worrying about losing food.

you can disrupt multiple enemy supply lines and at the same time create new ones for yourself and still expand.

if you play fire ants correctly which is pretty easy and respond to all threats at a moderate distance from your nest, in my experiences you can control the map quite easily and it's way easier with fire ants than any other ant colony.

pervasive is an extremely busted ability, needs a bit of a look at such as making the larvae take longer to become free.

right now you can easily clear the nest faster than any of the other ants due to not having to worry so much about cost at all really, plus they're cheap.

statistically in terms of stats, they're fine, just that one thing needs to be looked at and nerfed, i wouldn't recommend anyone pick vigorous though, it's kinda meh.

the fact that they get 2 ants per tile at lvl3, yikes.

Kinda meh? Look at the Eotu wiki and see the increase in stats for yourself.

i'm not saying the stats are bad, i'm saying that pervasive makes vigorous meh, because pervasive allows you to expand at almost double the rate which any other colony including vigorous fire ants.

pervasive fire ants are able to dominate early game become large much much quicker and establish multiple supply lines while at the same time disrupting multiple enemy supply lines very early in the game when most ant colonies need that bit of peace time to gather up resources.

[AdmiralMoszi]

Originally posted by The flame, will set us free.:

Originally posted by AdmiralMoszi:

Kinda meh? Look at the Eotu wiki and see the increase in stats for yourself.

i'm not saying the stats are bad, i'm saying that pervasive makes vigorous meh, because pervasive allows you to expand at almost double the rate which any other colony including vigorous fire ants.

pervasive fire ants are able to dominate early game become large much much quicker and establish multiple supply lines while at the same time disrupting multiple enemy supply lines very early in the game when most ant colonies need that bit of peace time to gather up resources.

To me, I don't find saving 4 food that big of a deal. The vigorous fire ants receive 50% damage and health buffs, which in my opinion, is totally worth the small expense. Maybe pervasive works for you, but its not for me.

[Maine]

Originally posted by AdmiralMoszi:

Originally posted by The flame, will set us free.:

i'm not saying the stats are bad, i'm saying that pervasive makes vigorous meh, because pervasive allows you to expand at almost double the rate which any other colony including vigorous fire ants.

pervasive fire ants are able to dominate early game become large much much quicker and establish multiple supply lines while at the same time disrupting multiple enemy supply lines very early in the game when most ant colonies need that bit of peace time to gather up resources.

To me, I don't find saving 4 food that big of a deal. The vigorous fire ants receive 50% damage and health buffs, which in my opinion, is totally worth the small expense. Maybe pervasive works for you, but its not for me.

that's a minimalistic view and an intentional one, because you know it's never about 4 food.

100 ants turns to 400 food for each birthing cycle, thats 400 food spent on just respawning ants, you now instead have 400 food to make even more ants, this is no small expense, you now have 110 ants and you can keep repeating this cycle over and over if you play your cards right, you can end up having 200 ants without ever having spent a single food point in respawn, minus the occasional environmental creature wandering into your path.

like i said, the vigorous ants aren't statistically bad, just the pervasive buff being statistically better too good imo, especially early game which can be a big victory decider.