The Matabele ants and termites need to be reworked

[jdog820208]

Every time I play the campaign missions with them the most ironic thing about it is that I need to pick which lvl 3 ability I want to "play," knowing that it does not matter since none of them will ever reach lvl 3.

Those missions have always been the hardest but between their high cost and very risky food collecting--I cannot remember how many times I would be raiding a termite mound and on the way back a lizard or collection of other very beefy predators--too beefy, personally--would be waiting for my ants to stream to their waiting maws and wipe out my entire army one or two at a time and losing me the game--they need some reworking.

The termites could use some assignable abilities like the other ants too.

Any other thoughts?

[Imperatordavius]

As other guy said, the level's difficulty is not that you have to spend more then previous levels on these ants to upgrade them, its learning how to micromanage them more then the previous ant species

With the black ants you learned the basics, gather food, make soldiers, balance your worker to soldier ratio and ensure you have a food surplus

With Wood ants you learned risk v reward for food and to balance your soldiers so that you have just enough melee meat shields to defend your more powerful/expensive ranged forces

with the Leafcutters you learned how to prioritize upgrades for 'some' specific forces while amassing cheaper workers and letting them do the harvesting so you have a steady and continuous supply of food

with the Fire ants you learned that you needed to make high risk plays and gather tons of food quickly and amass a huge army until you snowball into an unstoppable force, while maintaining the previous 3 ant colony skills you leraned

and matabale requires you to know where to fight, when to fight, what to fight, and 'slowly' amass the numbers during early/mid game until you are able to acquire tons of food for upgrades for late game.

its a hard learning curve but the matabele aren't a colony you can just throw all your ants into 1 pheromone group and just caveman charge an enemy like the fire ants could, and they can't waste food fighting scorpions when they pay '14' food to replace a soldier and only get '4' in return, and a scorpion will 'always' kill bare minimum 1 soldier and more if it crosses the line at the worst time.

[Soul]

I think their working just fine....

I mean it is a bit of a learning curve.... and you have to change priorities a bit.... just like I have to do with other ant colonies....

but basically the method that worked for me.... and I mean still able to put my ants in one pheremone group and "caveman charge"... :P

is to just focus on building a bunch of medics first.... the soldiers cost a lot... 150 food.... but medics are cheaper and cost only 75 food..... meaning you can have more numbers with medics faster not to mention the revive thing that increases the size of your army....

for first matabele mission I basically build like 15 medics soon as I can.... THEN I upgrade them all to tier 3 before building more soldiers.... first mission you start off with like 2 groups of soldiers 1 of em are like 10 and other are above 5 but below 10 from what I recall.... but still... with medics in play you can essentially double that number of soldiers for free...

not to mention their poison is pretty effective against the bosses in the first matabele mission... and I always take fast responder too not the poison specific one....

as for the termites mission 5.3.... I love it how it works.... ive done that mission so many times even with the challenge mode.... I kill the scorpion before it reaches boss levels... playing on medium difficulty.... I can kill it by like night 2 or 3... on new game plus mode

which new game plus mode adds a whole new way to play a lot of the missions.... allowing your jelly choices to play in the missions.... ended up redoing my tactics for missions thanks to that.... leafcutter map for instance 3.1.... on normal game i'd have to build workers first then soldiers to defend and cause soldiers can gather more than workers.... but new game plus mode with my worker upgrades of like extra 100 speed and the skill that gives them an extra 40 speed and 10 harvest ability.... I just end up building like 200 workers and no soldiers at all.... my workers just zoom across the map and harvest like crazy able to beat that mission like that within like 19 min... dont even have to worry about the other colony sending majors when my ants harvest faster than they can get to my queen...

[RealDeathClawProductions]

As others have mentioned, the Matabele Ants are all about micromanagement knowing where to go, disabling/enabling attack and/or gather, and repeat. They're a bit tricky to get used to that I will say but once you get the general feel of things it's not too hard to set and repeat their general gameplan.

Another big things is the Matabeles generally not worth upgrading in the levels, numbers are your friend here. It is worth upgrading the Termites to at least level 2 for the (major) workers since they collect a lot more.
The challenge of these levels come from gathering enough food to keep growing and still retaining enough for new ants as well as the many powerful enemies found in the levels.

[Soul]

Originally posted by RealDeathClawProductions:

As others have mentioned, the Matabele Ants are all about micromanagement knowing where to go, disabling/enabling attack and/or gather, and repeat. They're a bit tricky to get used to that I will say but once you get the general feel of things it's not too hard to set and repeat their general gameplan.

Another big things is the Matabeles generally not worth upgrading in the levels, numbers are your friend here. It is worth upgrading the Termites to at least level 2 for the (major) workers since they collect a lot more.
The challenge of these levels come from gathering enough food to keep growing and still retaining enough for new ants as well as the many powerful enemies found in the levels.

I upgrade the matabele medics to 3..... only after I have the amount of medics I want down first though.... they seem to help keep the army big and strong at level 3 for me....

as for the termites.... next time I start a new game ima change up my jelly choice a bit for my workers.... see in new game plus the worker jelly upgrades affect the termites as well.... I mean termites have 2 separate worker types and they both get the worker upgrades....

so that means with me focusing only on speed but having the upgrade for workers to collect 10 more food and move 40 faster..... that means in new game plus my base termites that harvest would normally only harvest 15..... one upgrade makes them harvest 30.... final upgrade makes them harvest 45.... BUT... with the worker upgrade I had by itself that increased it by 10.... my harvest termites were harvesting 15 + 10... leaving 5 food behind from a 30 food amount harvest spot.... so next game ima upgrade my harvest by 5 instead of going too heavy in speed.... that way my termites would be essentially collecting 30 food as a tier 1 worker....

[LAG]

You need to kill the defenders as well, not just raid the workers. At the beginning you raid the worker lines and run away but on day 2 you clear the ENTIRE nest and only stop because you run out of ants to carry food. Eventually you dump a bunch of workers to carry all the termites and kill until termites stop coming out of the nest. Then you clear out the nests before the final night.

[jdog820208]

Originally posted by AntBZK:

Quantity triumphs over quality. The level 1 medics are so good that you don't need to upgrade them until very late game when you have 2000 - 3000 food to spare. You should disable reviving while using anesthetists in combat and only revive later after battle is done.

The lizards are prevented from attacking for 5-10 seconds after spawning so that you can swarm over them immediately. Cull them when they are near your path before you raid.

The Matabele levels are closer to traditional RTS. You need to click more than one button most of the time. Disable gather -> place marker -> disable attack and enable gather -> remove marker. The few casualties are your resources.

The difficulty in these levels is actually from the balancing of the bosses' abilities and the number of roaming enemies. Food isn't an issue.

Noted.

So I just need to swarm them within 5 seconds of them spawning, huh? 0.o Mind if my ants borrow some of the speed/crack combo you are smoking so they can swarm them within 5 seconds?

So I just need to micromanage then? I HATE micromanaging!

Food IS an issue when a trio of adult lizards ambush my army on the way back from a raid and wipe them out with me being completely helpless to do anything and then the lizards bask in the sun on top of my food until it spoils (that just happened to me 15 minutes ago).

Originally posted by Imperatordavius:

As other guy said, the level's difficulty is not that you have to spend more then previous levels on these ants to upgrade them, its learning how to micromanage them more then the previous ant species

With the black ants you learned the basics, gather food, make soldiers, balance your worker to soldier ratio and ensure you have a food surplus

With Wood ants you learned risk v reward for food and to balance your soldiers so that you have just enough melee meat shields to defend your more powerful/expensive ranged forces

with the Leafcutters you learned how to prioritize upgrades for 'some' specific forces while amassing cheaper workers and letting them do the harvesting so you have a steady and continuous supply of food

with the Fire ants you learned that you needed to make high risk plays and gather tons of food quickly and amass a huge army until you snowball into an unstoppable force, while maintaining the previous 3 ant colony skills you leraned

and matabale requires you to know where to fight, when to fight, what to fight, and 'slowly' amass the numbers during early/mid game until you are able to acquire tons of food for upgrades for late game.

its a hard learning curve but the matabele aren't a colony you can just throw all your ants into 1 pheromone group and just caveman charge an enemy like the fire ants could, and they can't waste food fighting scorpions when they pay '14' food to replace a soldier and only get '4' in return, and a scorpion will 'always' kill bare minimum 1 soldier and more if it crosses the line at the worst time.

Again, I HATE micromanaging.

True.

All about balance.

It is certainly different, yes.

"High risk"? Hardly. They are cheap to make and free to replace. How is that "high risk"?

And predict exactly when and where enemy predators will appear? Mind lending your crystal ball sometime? Mine broke.

Originally posted by Soul:

I think their working just fine....

I mean it is a bit of a learning curve.... and you have to change priorities a bit.... just like I have to do with other ant colonies....

but basically the method that worked for me.... and I mean still able to put my ants in one pheremone group and "caveman charge"... :P

is to just focus on building a bunch of medics first.... the soldiers cost a lot... 150 food.... but medics are cheaper and cost only 75 food..... meaning you can have more numbers with medics faster not to mention the revive thing that increases the size of your army....

for first matabele mission I basically build like 15 medics soon as I can.... THEN I upgrade them all to tier 3 before building more soldiers.... first mission you start off with like 2 groups of soldiers 1 of em are like 10 and other are above 5 but below 10 from what I recall.... but still... with medics in play you can essentially double that number of soldiers for free...

not to mention their poison is pretty effective against the bosses in the first matabele mission... and I always take fast responder too not the poison specific one....

as for the termites mission 5.3.... I love it how it works.... ive done that mission so many times even with the challenge mode.... I kill the scorpion before it reaches boss levels... playing on medium difficulty.... I can kill it by like night 2 or 3... on new game plus mode

which new game plus mode adds a whole new way to play a lot of the missions.... allowing your jelly choices to play in the missions.... ended up redoing my tactics for missions thanks to that.... leafcutter map for instance 3.1.... on normal game i'd have to build workers first then soldiers to defend and cause soldiers can gather more than workers.... but new game plus mode with my worker upgrades of like extra 100 speed and the skill that gives them an extra 40 speed and 10 harvest ability.... I just end up building like 200 workers and no soldiers at all.... my workers just zoom across the map and harvest like crazy able to beat that mission like that within like 19 min... dont even have to worry about the other colony sending majors when my ants harvest faster than they can get to my queen...

Everyone is entitled to their opinions.

Priorities are the same. Gather food, kill enemies, survive.

?

Interesting, though risky due to the reduced firepower.

Interesting.

I do.

It is different and enjoyable, yes.

Interesting, I put jelly into speed and harvesting as well.

Thanks for your interesting points.

Originally posted by RealDeathClawProductions:

As others have mentioned, the Matabele Ants are all about micromanagement knowing where to go, disabling/enabling attack and/or gather, and repeat. They're a bit tricky to get used to that I will say but once you get the general feel of things it's not too hard to set and repeat their general gameplan.

Another big things is the Matabeles generally not worth upgrading in the levels, numbers are your friend here. It is worth upgrading the Termites to at least level 2 for the (major) workers since they collect a lot more.
The challenge of these levels come from gathering enough food to keep growing and still retaining enough for new ants as well as the many powerful enemies found in the levels.

I still HATE micromanagement.

Noted.

Originally posted by LAG:

You need to kill the defenders as well, not just raid the workers. At the beginning you raid the worker lines and run away but on day 2 you clear the ENTIRE nest and only stop because you run out of ants to carry food. Eventually you dump a bunch of workers to carry all the termites and kill until termites stop coming out of the nest. Then you clear out the nests before the final night.

Tried that. It requires a lot of luck because you need a constant stream of reinforcements to maintain the battle line which a single predator randomly wandering into your reinforcement stream can sabotage and then you lose everything.

I guess more than anything having the portals randomly spitting out creatures right next to my bottlenecked lines of ants is what makes it so FUBAR.

[Imperatordavius]

Jdog, the reason why i said 'its high risk/high reward with the fire ants is because 'until' your ball of fire ant soldiers is big enough, you really 'do' make high risk plays, all of day 1 unless you know how to prioritize where to collect foods, you really stretch your soldiers thin, especially since the little black ants have an early lead and if you trigger the big headed ants too soon, their super soldiers can 'easily' decimate your soldier lines, on top of the toads invading at night.

while they may be cheap to produce, and 'free' per say, that's if you pick pervasive instead of aggressive, if your going aggressive you 'have' to be aggressive, you can't play passive, but then again i play on extreme/impossible difficulties so for me they are riskier plays at those difficulties. But as the narrator said, you have to amass soldiers and LOTS of them very fast, especially in the second fire ant level, time isn't on your side, and the first mission will only grow the number of toads thrown at you at night the longer you take, until eventually even the 'free' soldiers aren't enough to stem the tide.

as for the matabele comment about 'lending you my crystal ball', its something called 'learning micromanaging skills'.

when your going to target the termites, slowly inch your matabele soldiers forward, stopping at the ramps when enemies are moving along it, and knowing 'when' to retreat and fight. ignore picking up food until your at the termite mounds, and when retreating disable fighting so your soldiers don't stop and pick fights.

as said, you 'can't' trade efficiently vs the predators of the night, even a lone medium sized earwig will register a negative loss in terms of food if it kills even '1' soldier or even a worker, since it only offers 2 food or maybe 3 if lucky. if your forced to fight them en route to the termites, ensure everyone's fighting together, and if a random critter walks along the reinforcement route, just grit your teeth, bare the loss, and try to minimize the damage by telling the reinforcements to stay in the nest, and hope the forward line can get enough food to mitigate the loss.

you should be focusing and occasionally watching the minimap to keep tabs on the overland enemies, you have the minimap for a reason.

i can tell you hate having to work a little harder, but the matabele are supposed to test your skills in a 'RTS' game, which all RTS games require you to have micromanagment skills of some kind.

[76561199445531702]

Originally posted by AntBZK:

Quantity triumphs over quality. The level 1 medics are so good that you don't need to upgrade them until very late game when you have 2000 - 3000 food to spare. You should disable reviving while using anesthetists in combat and only revive later after battle is done.

The lizards are prevented from attacking for 5-10 seconds after spawning so that you can swarm over them immediately. Cull them when they are near your path before you raid.

The Matabele levels are closer to traditional RTS. You need to click more than one button most of the time. Disable gather -> place marker -> disable attack and enable gather -> remove marker. The few casualties are your resources.

The difficulty in these levels is actually from the balancing of the bosses' abilities and the number of roaming enemies. Food isn't an issue.

you again