Difficulty on "Possibly the final experiment" level

[kowkogab]

So, I spent like 6 hours replaying levels prior to "Possibly the final experiment" just to farm food. My colony is maxed out, bit still I can't beat "Possibly the final experiment" even on Easy difficulty. I think this level is terribly broken. I don't think I am that bad at the game, because all levels prior to "Possibly the final experiment" are so much easier and weren't a big challenge to me.
So, fix your game plz.

[Mike]

Sorry to hear that.

What's the specific bits you're having problems with? It certainly needs a bit more tactical thinking than the first two formicarium levels, but it shouldn't be a grindy one.

[kowkogab]

Originally posted by antbzk64:

Originally posted by kowkogab:

So, I spent like 6 hours replaying levels prior to "Possibly the final experiment" just to farm food. My colony is maxed out, bit still I can't beat "Possibly the final experiment" even on Easy difficulty. I think this level is terribly broken. I don't think I am that bad at the game, because all levels prior to "Possibly the final experiment" are so much easier and weren't a big challenge to me.
So, fix your game plz.

How many ants of each type and which adaptation do you choose for them?
To beat this mission, you need to understand game mechanics, not just mindlessly grind food.
Army ant majors can only buff allies when they are within a certain range from each other. Use a few workers to actively lure the enemy ants into your formicarium in a thin trail and cut them off in the middle, splitting up the majors. AI brain is very bad so you can keep doing it again and again until it runs out of food. (about 2500).
Don't fight in the enemy formicarium to avoid the scientist's interference. Rush the enemy nest once it runs out of food.

I have:

21 workers
73 normal melee ants (black ants)
36 major melee ants (leafcutters)
20 shooters

After reading your comment I tried a few things, I tried to be more defensive, but I got my ass kicked by Easy AI anyway. Here's the thing:

If I leave some of my warriors inside my colony, then the Scientist just spams me with spiders and knocks on the glass, both of which slowly but steadily kills my ants, so eventually I just run out of food.

If I keep my warriors outside of my colony, then eventually the enemy just zergrushes me, even if I don't send warriors to their side. They just outnumber me, and they're killing my major ants like it's nothing.

So, in both ways I can't see how I can lure someone into something.
I've reached the limit of population and can't build more warriors tiles. Most of my black ants and shooting ants are 2 level, my major ants are 1/2 levels. I have 2300 spare food, which is obviously not enough to upgrade all of my ants to the level 3. Of course I could have grid even more, I guess I need to replay some level 5-6 times more to upgrade all of my ants and to save enough food to outlast the enemy. But... really? it is damn Easy difficulty, mate. I'm not supposed to do all this, the game was easy on Medium difficulty until this level, which I can't beat on Easy difficulty.

[kowkogab]

Originally posted by Mike:

Sorry to hear that.

What's the specific bits you're having problems with? It certainly needs a bit more tactical thinking than the first two formicarium levels, but it shouldn't be a grindy one.

I guess the balance is very poor in this level, because my enemy's colony is still much stronger than mine, even though I try to beat it on Easy difficulty, even though I replayed previous levels several times just to grind food. I'm not sure about tactical thinking, I have tried a few tactics but none of them really made things better. This level just feels like impossibly hard and unfair. And again, I think that this particular level is broken, because I finished 3.1 and 3.2 (Harvest and Frontline) on Medium without any serious struggles.

[Mike]

Just to check - have you unlocked any queen abilities to help you out?

[kowkogab]

Originally posted by Mike:

Just to check - have you unlocked any queen abilities to help you out?

My Queen has Royal Guard + Fierce Mother.
My Black Ants have Meat Wall + Self Repair.
My Wood Ants have High Pressure + Crippling.
My Leafcutter Major have Durable + Resilient.

My ants don't have any "minor improvements", because I noticed them only now. But from the look of them, I don't think they will be the gamechanger.

[Mike]

No, minor improvements weren't ever neccesary.

It is possible there's been something missed in the recent update making this unusually hard, but I'd have thought we'd have gotten more than one report on it if that was the case (the beta was in operation for a long time before it came out).

I'll talk to the other guys after the break and they might want to see your save files.

[kowkogab]

Originally posted by Mike:

No, minor improvements weren't ever neccesary.

It is possible there's been something missed in the recent update making this unusually hard, but I'd have thought we'd have gotten more than one report on it if that was the case (the beta was in operation for a long time before it came out).

I'll talk to the other guys after the break and they might want to see your save files.

Sure, I'll share my files if you think you need them

[Exit Light]

I have:

21 workers
73 normal melee ants (black ants)
36 major melee ants (leafcutters)
20 shooters

After reading your comment I tried a few things, I tried to be more defensive, but I got my ass kicked by Easy AI anyway. Here's the thing:

If I leave some of my warriors inside my colony, then the Scientist just spams me with spiders and knocks on the glass, both of which slowly but steadily kills my ants, so eventually I just run out of food.

If I keep my warriors outside of my colony, then eventually the enemy just zergrushes me, even if I don't send warriors to their side. They just outnumber me, and they're killing my major ants like it's nothing.

So, in both ways I can't see how I can lure someone into something.
I've reached the limit of population and can't build more warriors tiles. Most of my black ants and shooting ants are 2 level, my major ants are 1/2 levels. I have 2300 spare food, which is obviously not enough to upgrade all of my ants to the level 3. Of course I could have grid even more, I guess I need to replay some level 5-6 times more to upgrade all of my ants and to save enough food to outlast the enemy. But... really? it is damn Easy difficulty, mate. I'm not supposed to do all this, the game was easy on Medium difficulty until this level, which I can't beat on Easy difficulty. [/quote]

I'm sorry to say this, but this is a poor army composition. You need far less black ants, many more (probaly 38 level 3 wood ants) and only about 19 level 3 leaf cutter majors. Fire ants and black ants you don't need to many of although Black ants are excellent mini/tanks with Meat wall at level 3. Your Leafcutter's should have Sharp and SHOCKPROOF. Key word there. Those big white ants (army ant majors) the enemy have will rage and deal MASSIVE amounts of damage. The only way to not get your major ants (leafcutter's) killed by them near instantly, is for them to have shockproof. Both rapid fire and mortar ants will do very well although Mortars are better against ants. But your ranged ants must be level 3. Mortars splash damage will near instantly kill the enemy ants and rapid fire will slow down the enemys attacks to a snails pace. Which are now much weaker due to your leafcutters having shockproof.

[kowkogab]

Originally posted by Exit Light:

I have:

21 workers
73 normal melee ants (black ants)
36 major melee ants (leafcutters)
20 shooters

After reading your comment I tried a few things, I tried to be more defensive, but I got my ass kicked by Easy AI anyway. Here's the thing:

If I leave some of my warriors inside my colony, then the Scientist just spams me with spiders and knocks on the glass, both of which slowly but steadily kills my ants, so eventually I just run out of food.

If I keep my warriors outside of my colony, then eventually the enemy just zergrushes me, even if I don't send warriors to their side. They just outnumber me, and they're killing my major ants like it's nothing.

So, in both ways I can't see how I can lure someone into something.
I've reached the limit of population and can't build more warriors tiles. Most of my black ants and shooting ants are 2 level, my major ants are 1/2 levels. I have 2300 spare food, which is obviously not enough to upgrade all of my ants to the level 3. Of course I could have grid even more, I guess I need to replay some level 5-6 times more to upgrade all of my ants and to save enough food to outlast the enemy. But... really? it is damn Easy difficulty, mate. I'm not supposed to do all this, the game was easy on Medium difficulty until this level, which I can't beat on Easy difficulty.

I'm sorry to say this, but this is a poor army composition. You need far less black ants, many more (probaly 38 level 3 wood ants) and only about 19 level 3 leaf cutter majors. Fire ants and black ants you don't need to many of although Black ants are excellent mini/tanks with Meat wall at level 3. Your Leafcutter's should have Sharp and SHOCKPROOF. Key word there. Those big white ants (army ant majors) the enemy have will rage and deal MASSIVE amounts of damage. The only way to not get your major ants (leafcutter's) killed by them near instantly, is for them to have shockproof. Both rapid fire and mortar ants will do very well although Mortars are better against ants. But your ranged ants must be level 3. Mortars splash damage will near instantly kill the enemy ants and rapid fire will slow down the enemys attacks to a snails pace. Which are now much weaker due to your leafcutters having shockproof.

So, now if I want to rearrange my army, I will have to grind food and jelly on older levels, right? Or maybe there is a better way to achieve this?
I mean, I know I can disassemble existing tiles, but they don't seem to drop enough resources

[Mike]

You don't need to choose different upgrade paths (you can absolutely beat the game with any configuration, I tend to choose randomly every time I do a run) but if you want to move your army composition around a bit you can sell some tiles for some of their cost back.

[kowkogab]

Well, I managed to beat the level, thanks everybody for you help. I had to grind some more food to have 96 rapid shooters 2/3 lvl and 36 major ants 1/2 lvl with shock proof and resilient abilities + 2500 spare food. With this setup, the level is easily beaten on both Easy and Medium difficulties. Tactics doesn't seem to change a lot, the only rules I figured out - don't rush the enemy colony while they still have food and don't place markers inside your own colony because the Scientist will spam you with things. So, from my experience, I would say it IS about grinding food after all.

[Exit Light]

Originally posted by kowkogab:

Well, I managed to beat the level, thanks everybody for you help. I had to grind some more food to have 96 rapid shooters 2/3 lvl and 36 major ants 1/2 lvl with shock proof and resilient abilities + 2500 spare food. With this setup, the level is easily beaten on both Easy and Medium difficulties. Tactics doesn't seem to change a lot, the only rules I figured out - don't rush the enemy colony while they still have food and don't place markers inside your own colony because the Scientist will spam you with things. So, from my experience, I would say it IS about grinding food after all.

Again, I would reccomend going for not to many majors and tons of rapid/mortar shooters. (Like you did) Altough there is no reason to choose resilient over sharp aside from the looks.

[Exit Light]

Originally posted by Mike:

You don't need to choose different upgrade paths (you can absolutely beat the game with any configuration, I tend to choose randomly every time I do a run) but if you want to move your army composition around a bit you can sell some tiles for some of their cost back.

Question. Why does the resilient ability exist? Its worse in every way compared to the sharp ability unless i'm dumb. Aside from looks imo ,why would you want to make 30% of the enemy's damage "disapear", when you could throw it right back at them?

[Lady Neravin]

Originally posted by Exit Light:

Originally posted by Mike:

You don't need to choose different upgrade paths (you can absolutely beat the game with any configuration, I tend to choose randomly every time I do a run) but if you want to move your army composition around a bit you can sell some tiles for some of their cost back.

Question. Why does the resilient ability exist? Its worse in every way compared to the sharp ability unless i'm dumb. Aside from looks imo ,why would you want to make 30% of the enemy's damage "disapear", when you could throw it right back at them?

Afaik you still take the damage, the enemy just also takes a portion of it

[Solstitium]

Originally posted by Exit Light:

Originally posted by Mike:

You don't need to choose different upgrade paths (you can absolutely beat the game with any configuration, I tend to choose randomly every time I do a run) but if you want to move your army composition around a bit you can sell some tiles for some of their cost back.

Question. Why does the resilient ability exist? Its worse in every way compared to the sharp ability unless i'm dumb. Aside from looks imo ,why would you want to make 30% of the enemy's damage "disapear", when you could throw it right back at them?

At <=40% hp taunt majors gain 80% resistance for 4s with a cooldown of 15s. With the 30% resistance on top of that your main tanks, ignoring the fact that minimum taken damage is 0.5, essentially become invulnerable.

A second use is as defence against damage over time effects. Sharp will only reflect physical damage. Most DOT is venom damage.

This said, I fully believe sharp is overall the better option.