Cold Blood AI?

[jacksonloless]

I am on the edge of total uninstall and never coming back to this idiotic garbage. Cold blood on medium is destroying me with the stupid toad invasions. I can easily take out both enemy nests, sack their food, and the bullfrog itself was ezpz the one time I've fought it. The level design to make the bullfrog not even the final challenege is dumb AF. No warning or heads up that 2 dozen toads were about to hit me IMMEDIATELY afterwards. Okay okay, so first time I learned, but now I can't even get to the point where I am attacking the frog on subsequent tries because night 3 about a dozen toads come in ALL AT ONCE with no staggering whatsoever, just aoe foot stomps taking out tons of ants instantaneously... what the actual ♥♥♥♥??

I've lost to this ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ with over 200 tier 3 ants, which is less than I had the one time I did actually beat the stupid frog. Do the toads multiply if you've taken out the other two nests?? My first try when I beat the frog I didn't attack the other colonies, but aside from that difference I can't figure out why this is happening, and it's really pissing me off. Does anyone have any insight at all as to why on MEDIUM i get rushed by over a dozen toads on just the third night?

[RealDeathClawProductions]

If you have over 200 Level 3s you should be more than able to deal with the Night 3 and 4 Toads on Medium, so either it's a later day than what you say it is (which causes more toads to spawn for each day) or your nest has a lot of chokepoints which the Toads are really good in thanks to their abilities.
Perhaps its a combination of both.

[Wahhpah]

Hey there, 200 tier 3 ants is enough to beat the level on the highest difficulty, so numbers isn't your problem. I can think of 4 possible reasons why you might be losing.

1. You don't have enough food in reserve. I like to keep around 1.5x my army cost in reserve. So if you have around 200 ants that would be around 1200 food.
2. You don't have enough nest workers to lay eggs on tiles. For around 200 fire ants I think around 30-40 workers in the nest group would be a good amount. The fewer nest workers there are the slower respawns are.
3. You are letting the toads clump up too much. Toads can stack on top of each other and in narrow 1 tile wide areas this can lead to all of your ants getting hit by their AOE attacks. To avoid this you will want to excavate a large area to fight the toads so your ants can properly surround the toads.
4. All your soldiers are in 1 pheromone group. It's better to split your army into 2 groups in order to defend multiple areas at once.

Of course not all of these may apply but these are the most common mistakes I've seen people make. Hope it helps.

[The Destroyer]

Wahhpah, numbers 1 and 2 were my mistakes until I found a good balance. Having enough workers and food to replace fallen soldiers fast enough makes a big difference.

jacksonloless, another tip I found for this was choosing the Vigorous ability. The temporary extra speed, attack damage and resistance after hatching is very helpful. Keep battles close to your hatcheries or draw them closer to maximize on the Vigorous option. Fast movement tiles wouldn't hurt. Instead of walls I use fast movement tiles to border my hatcheries, they also help with upgrades too. And don't forget to move your ants back into the nest after you kill the American Bullfrog. Disable a pheromone marker to make an ant group return to the nest. At higher difficulty levels you'll also need to disable fighting and food collection to get a group to return to the nest quicker. Ants that die outside the nest will hatch and be ready inside. Essentially you would want to gather as many ants in your nest as you could before the amphibian invasion.

[nordstern]

Yea... the endgame is challanging. But do not try to split your ants. Attack iun great stacks and let them come. Have huge amounts of food in reserve. The food from the bullfrog is not enough. LET them come.. you need space to attack them. In tiny tunnels they massacre you.

Make sure their are enough workers and that they do not fight. They must replace eggs to replace the casulties.

I am a tall builder.. so i attack the bullfrog having 600-800 t3 fireants and 60-80 workers. I am building the whole possible ground i can. I know many play in time and as fast as possible. But i not... its not my style.
So i used 600 ants to fight them and 200 ants (i had 200er groups) to harvest the bodys to get new food.
But at thend its maybe easier, if you unlock the priceless replacement ability before doing the level. If you want to choose this ability for our fireants. Many say no, vigorous is better... but i am unsure. Because in the T4 formicarium on max difficulty they fight stronger, but the casulties are eating my food really fast (i had arround 15k food). So i think it is (for me) better to use priceless replacements instead of combat bonuses.

[Lycrus]

I just did this level on medium difficulty. 100-150 tier 3 ants, with 19 tier 3 workers was enough to beat the level. i left the enemy ant-hills alive.

The final invasion afterwards was really kinda super easy to be honest, i kept around 1k food in storage from the huge bullfrog, then just defended inside the base.

Just make sure to fight when priceless replacement is active

[Raldavar]

A group of 19 (Which means 38) fully upgraded tier 3 ants can kill the bull frog on Insane/impossible in half a night or day cycle. That same group with about 15 semi upgraded ants can defend the nest from the invading amphibians after. The colony on the south can be taken out quickly with a group of about 12 ants, resulting in a nice surplus of food early so you only need to worry about defending against big head ants on the left.

The goal is to have enough units defending while the group of 19 tier 3 ants kill the bull frog, then quickly gather the corpse in the 1 minute count down for enough food to finish upgrades with a lot of stock remaining. Do not be afraid of the countdown since there's still about 15 seconds once it's up before the amphibians will reach the queen, so there's some time to gather some of the food from the bull frog after it's killed.

[Ekimmak]

You can actually see the entrances to the nest on the overground during the final siege. Rather than let the burrowing toads get into my nest and start creating shortcuts I'm not ready for, I just create three pheremone soldier groups, and hold them at all the entrances. Don't recall if this was easy or medium, though.

[TheFancierWendigo]

Originally posted by jacksonloless:

I am on the edge of total uninstall and never coming back to this idiotic garbage. Cold blood on medium is destroying me with the stupid toad invasions. I can easily take out both enemy nests, sack their food, and the bullfrog itself was ezpz the one time I've fought it. The level design to make the bullfrog not even the final challenege is dumb AF. No warning or heads up that 2 dozen toads were about to hit me IMMEDIATELY afterwards. Okay okay, so first time I learned, but now I can't even get to the point where I am attacking the frog on subsequent tries because night 3 about a dozen toads come in ALL AT ONCE with no staggering whatsoever, just aoe foot stomps taking out tons of ants instantaneously... what the actual ♥♥♥♥??

I've lost to this ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ with over 200 tier 3 ants, which is less than I had the one time I did actually beat the stupid frog. Do the toads multiply if you've taken out the other two nests?? My first try when I beat the frog I didn't attack the other colonies, but aside from that difference I can't figure out why this is happening, and it's really pissing me off. Does anyone have any insight at all as to why on MEDIUM i get rushed by over a dozen toads on just the third night?

bro just play easy if your this mad at the level being to hard

[Mack]

Originally posted by Ekimmak:

You can actually see the entrances to the nest on the overground during the final siege. Rather than let the burrowing toads get into my nest and start creating shortcuts I'm not ready for, I just create three pheremone soldier groups, and hold them at all the entrances. Don't recall if this was easy or medium, though.

Thats cheesing the level though, it's way more fun letting them in the nest.

[Xamurai]

The only thing u have to do is to keep your army compact, and attack the frogs in a more or less open area...

[mgperkow]

Originally posted by jacksonloless:

I am on the edge of total uninstall and never coming back to this idiotic garbage. Cold blood on medium is destroying me with the stupid toad invasions. I can easily take out both enemy nests, sack their food, and the bullfrog itself was ezpz the one time I've fought it. The level design to make the bullfrog not even the final challenege is dumb AF. No warning or heads up that 2 dozen toads were about to hit me IMMEDIATELY afterwards. Okay okay, so first time I learned, but now I can't even get to the point where I am attacking the frog on subsequent tries because night 3 about a dozen toads come in ALL AT ONCE with no staggering whatsoever, just aoe foot stomps taking out tons of ants instantaneously... what the actual ♥♥♥♥??

I've lost to this ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ with over 200 tier 3 ants, which is less than I had the one time I did actually beat the stupid frog. Do the toads multiply if you've taken out the other two nests?? My first try when I beat the frog I didn't attack the other colonies, but aside from that difference I can't figure out why this is happening, and it's really pissing me off. Does anyone have any insight at all as to why on MEDIUM i get rushed by over a dozen toads on just the third night?

I've been struggling like crazy with this level, too. I played all of the past levels defensively since that tends to be my go-to strategy in games like this, and that served me very well until I got to the fire ants. On most runs of this level, I do OK until the third night, and then I get annihilated by the burrowing toads. So I finally went looking for tips and strategies.

Some recommend not digging out the nest anymore than you absolutely must to make it harder for the toads to emerge into your tunnels, but that cuts me off from my primary source of food. Others recommend heavily farming the aphids as the primary food source since prey is almost worthless as a food source at this point (in fact, I found posts from one of the developers back when they were beta testing that suggest they were thinking just that). But I can't raise a sufficient force to take the aphids from the other colonies without spending most of two days digging underground (and, thus, letting in the toads) and also survive the trip across the landscape to and from the milkweed plants. If I tell my ants not to bother fighting, virtually none of them make it back with any aphids because they all get killed by spiders and beetles.

A lot of people who have successfully completed the level on various difficulties talk about having anywhere from 100-500 level 3 ants by the end, but I just cannot seem to gather enough food to produce that many, much less upgrade them.

Anyway, after about 10 unsuccessful attempts, I think maybe I've just hit the wall with this game, and I don't have the kind of skill or strategic insight to play the fire ants. I'll probably just put the game aside for now, or maybe I'll just start enjoying some of the custom play instead. If I really feel inclined, maybe I'll hack a save file or something to push past the fire ant levels just to experience the rest of the storyline, but I'm feeling like my chances of legit beating this level are pretty slim at this point.

Good luck to you as well.

[RealDeathClawProductions]

Originally posted by mgperkow:

Originally posted by jacksonloless:

I am on the edge of total uninstall and never coming back to this idiotic garbage. Cold blood on medium is destroying me with the stupid toad invasions. I can easily take out both enemy nests, sack their food, and the bullfrog itself was ezpz the one time I've fought it. The level design to make the bullfrog not even the final challenege is dumb AF. No warning or heads up that 2 dozen toads were about to hit me IMMEDIATELY afterwards. Okay okay, so first time I learned, but now I can't even get to the point where I am attacking the frog on subsequent tries because night 3 about a dozen toads come in ALL AT ONCE with no staggering whatsoever, just aoe foot stomps taking out tons of ants instantaneously... what the actual ♥♥♥♥??

I've lost to this ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ with over 200 tier 3 ants, which is less than I had the one time I did actually beat the stupid frog. Do the toads multiply if you've taken out the other two nests?? My first try when I beat the frog I didn't attack the other colonies, but aside from that difference I can't figure out why this is happening, and it's really pissing me off. Does anyone have any insight at all as to why on MEDIUM i get rushed by over a dozen toads on just the third night?

I've been struggling like crazy with this level, too. I played all of the past levels defensively since that tends to be my go-to strategy in games like this, and that served me very well until I got to the fire ants. On most runs of this level, I do OK until the third night, and then I get annihilated by the burrowing toads. So I finally went looking for tips and strategies.

Some recommend not digging out the nest anymore than you absolutely must to make it harder for the toads to emerge into your tunnels, but that cuts me off from my primary source of food. Others recommend heavily farming the aphids as the primary food source since prey is almost worthless as a food source at this point (in fact, I found posts from one of the developers back when they were beta testing that suggest they were thinking just that). But I can't raise a sufficient force to take the aphids from the other colonies without spending most of two days digging underground (and, thus, letting in the toads) and also survive the trip across the landscape to and from the milkweed plants. If I tell my ants not to bother fighting, virtually none of them make it back with any aphids because they all get killed by spiders and beetles.

A lot of people who have successfully completed the level on various difficulties talk about having anywhere from 100-500 level 3 ants by the end, but I just cannot seem to gather enough food to produce that many, much less upgrade them.

Anyway, after about 10 unsuccessful attempts, I think maybe I've just hit the wall with this game, and I don't have the kind of skill or strategic insight to play the fire ants. I'll probably just put the game aside for now, or maybe I'll just start enjoying some of the custom play instead. If I really feel inclined, maybe I'll hack a save file or something to push past the fire ant levels just to experience the rest of the storyline, but I'm feeling like my chances of legit beating this level are pretty slim at this point.

Good luck to you as well.

The biggest mistake people seem to make on Cold Blood is thinking the Bullfrog is stronger than it really is. It's not. It's fairly easy to kill so long as you have enough food for the ants that will get eaten, literally just did it with 60 so ants on Day 3 and then proceeded to survive the final wave.

[suFist2K8d]

I beat it on Extreme with <120 fire ants, and probably 30 workers. Destroyed the other two hives for the achievement. Bullfrog is a bit easy, but he takes 50ish fire ants in a stream. It's kinda like the beetles guarding the food - it's there as a gate to the actual final event to be sure you have enough. on Hard I beat the toad-wave with 50ish fire ants 1k food and maybe 20 workers, but I was probably on an earlier day as I was doing the achievement where you leave the other hives alive. (Very obnoxious because I basically couldn't have aphids.)

On extreme, I had mine split into 3 groups of 30-40 with 2-3k food sitting around. Pervasive for free spawns, still had 2k or so food by the end of the toad/salamander wave.

IMO, you're probably fighting in narrow areas. let the toads exit their tunnels and clear loads of dirt before the final wave so you can just swarm them. With the three groups I sometimes double teamed if they were stacking up. I had 30ish workers replacing eggs.

That said, my run on extreme yesterday I did lose 3-4 times 15-40 minutes in. It's a hard map for sure and some of the early game is RNG dependent - how many spiders you can hunt, if you can get aphids, if the green beetles double team you when you start a fight, etc.

---
An aside, it's a bit cheap that you don't get any warning about the incoming toads (1-2 minutes is very short) and I did lose multiple times on Hard/Extreme to various things (including the final toads the first time I beat the bullfrog.) It's a hard mission, but IMO the early game is the worst of it because until you have 11-15 soldiers it's a total crap shoot of RNG what happens to you.

[StaticWolf]

Medium setting, killed bullfrog, 2 ant colonies had 700 about 400 lvl 3 and they sent me about 70+ toads and salamanders endless spawns........beat this crud on easy and dont waste your time.

[RealDeathClawProductions]

Originally posted by StaticWolf:

Medium setting, killed bullfrog, 2 ant colonies had 700 about 400 lvl 3 and they sent me about 70+ toads and salamanders endless spawns........beat this crud on easy and dont waste your time.

How many days did it take you to build up that army? As others have stated above you don't need that many ants to kill the Bullfrog with each passing day making the final wave stronger and stronger.