Worker ants gathering

[The Overlord]

Are worker ants any have any advantage in gathering (speed) over soldiers and etc?
Or are they only good for nest work/cheap labor force?
Second question, does upgrading their tiles makes them faster or just stronger and with more health?

[Soul]

upgraded workers..... well....

if you wanna see for yourself there is an option in game.... in settings somewhere I believe where you can hover over the ant selection and see the details of their harvest, movement attack speeds and the like.... like turn the setting on and go to the part of your UI where you can choose to place an ant tile... hovering over the options will display it....

but worker wise they are stronger and faster and can gather more quantity usually.... I mean some maps with different variations of ants has other units that can be more effective at gathering... like leafcutter soldiers medium ants can gather more than the worker counterpart....

but still upgrading workers in general is good even for just keeping them in base as a nest group.... they are way faster and level 3 basically dont get slowed down by ant tiles... making them able to quickly replenish eggs and do nest work like lightning fast...

[Soul]

Originally posted by AntBZK:

Level 3 workers have faster movement speed than soldiers in most species. Gathering speed is the same between workers and soldiers. Workers are cheaper, so they are more efficient gatherers.

Some example where workers are better than soldiers: Leafcutter ant minors are 30% more efficient than mediae if they don't need to battle. Bigheaded ant minors are as strong as majors so they are your main combat units before you get supersoldiers.

Upgrading gives different benefits depending on the respective units. You can enable stat sheets in menu settings or use the inspect tool to see.

I dont agree with you about the leafcutter workers....

like workers are cheaper than the medium ones.... but still workers only harvest like 7 / 8 / 9 in regards to levels 1 / 2 / 3..... pretty sure that was the number... still they can move faster without carrying but are still somewhat slowed while carrying....

medium workers on the other hand are something like 17 / 19 / 21 when it comes to harvesting at levels 1 / 2 / 3.... and are not slowed when harvesting at any level...

and the major leafcutters only can pick 16 / 16 / 16 regardless of level of upgrade....

basically I notice a visible difference when I play that first leafcutter mission depending on what ants I focus on first.... like in that mission I build like 47 workers before building soldiers.... and ive tried upgrading them to tier 3 before soldiers and not upgrading them at all and moving straight to soldiers.... I noticed a huge difference in my harvesting speed focusing on building solders soon as I plop my workers down....

afterall buidling a worker ant costs 20 food.... upgrading it twice costs 40 extra food.... all so you can gather an extra 2 food from the 2 other tiers... so total of 60 food is used....

meanwhile you could just take 80 food and build a soldier.... and be collecting like 10 more food than a base worker... and all it costs is 20 extra food over what you would have spent on a tier 3 worker...

in fact in order for you to make up for that extra 10 you'd get from just making a basic soldier vs a normal worker.... you'd need to upgrade 5 worker ants to level 3.... cause each one only provides 2 extra food per harvest at tier 3.... which would actually cost you 300 food to upgrade 5 workers to tier 3....

or at 300 you could wait for an extra 20 food and at 320 food be able to make 4 soldier ants... which would be able to collectively gather 68 food compared to 5 tier 3 workers who could only gather collectively 45....

[RealDeathClawProductions]

Originally posted by Soul:

Originally posted by AntBZK:

Level 3 workers have faster movement speed than soldiers in most species. Gathering speed is the same between workers and soldiers. Workers are cheaper, so they are more efficient gatherers.

Some example where workers are better than soldiers: Leafcutter ant minors are 30% more efficient than mediae if they don't need to battle. Bigheaded ant minors are as strong as majors so they are your main combat units before you get supersoldiers.

Upgrading gives different benefits depending on the respective units. You can enable stat sheets in menu settings or use the inspect tool to see.

I dont agree with you about the leafcutter workers....

like workers are cheaper than the medium ones.... but still workers only harvest like 7 / 8 / 9 in regards to levels 1 / 2 / 3..... pretty sure that was the number... still they can move faster without carrying but are still somewhat slowed while carrying....

medium workers on the other hand are something like 17 / 19 / 21 when it comes to harvesting at levels 1 / 2 / 3.... and are not slowed when harvesting at any level...

and the major leafcutters only can pick 16 / 16 / 16 regardless of level of upgrade....

basically I notice a visible difference when I play that first leafcutter mission depending on what ants I focus on first.... like in that mission I build like 47 workers before building soldiers.... and ive tried upgrading them to tier 3 before soldiers and not upgrading them at all and moving straight to soldiers.... I noticed a huge difference in my harvesting speed focusing on building solders soon as I plop my workers down....

afterall buidling a worker ant costs 20 food.... upgrading it twice costs 40 extra food.... all so you can gather an extra 2 food from the 2 other tiers... so total of 60 food is used....

meanwhile you could just take 80 food and build a soldier.... and be collecting like 10 more food than a base worker... and all it costs is 20 extra food over what you would have spent on a tier 3 worker...

in fact in order for you to make up for that extra 10 you'd get from just making a basic soldier vs a normal worker.... you'd need to upgrade 5 worker ants to level 3.... cause each one only provides 2 extra food per harvest at tier 3.... which would actually cost you 300 food to upgrade 5 workers to tier 3....

or at 300 you could wait for an extra 20 food and at 320 food be able to make 4 soldier ants... which would be able to collectively gather 68 food compared to 5 tier 3 workers who could only gather collectively 45....

It's worth noting that you need 80 food to build ONE media, you can get FOUR workers for the same price and with that mindset they are much more efficient in terms of gathering (four Level 1s gather up to 28 leaves, one Media at level 1 only gets 17 and even if you upgrade it to Level 3 it only collects 22).

[Soul]

Originally posted by RealDeathClawProductions:

Originally posted by Soul:

I dont agree with you about the leafcutter workers....

like workers are cheaper than the medium ones.... but still workers only harvest like 7 / 8 / 9 in regards to levels 1 / 2 / 3..... pretty sure that was the number... still they can move faster without carrying but are still somewhat slowed while carrying....

medium workers on the other hand are something like 17 / 19 / 21 when it comes to harvesting at levels 1 / 2 / 3.... and are not slowed when harvesting at any level...

and the major leafcutters only can pick 16 / 16 / 16 regardless of level of upgrade....

basically I notice a visible difference when I play that first leafcutter mission depending on what ants I focus on first.... like in that mission I build like 47 workers before building soldiers.... and ive tried upgrading them to tier 3 before soldiers and not upgrading them at all and moving straight to soldiers.... I noticed a huge difference in my harvesting speed focusing on building solders soon as I plop my workers down....

afterall buidling a worker ant costs 20 food.... upgrading it twice costs 40 extra food.... all so you can gather an extra 2 food from the 2 other tiers... so total of 60 food is used....

meanwhile you could just take 80 food and build a soldier.... and be collecting like 10 more food than a base worker... and all it costs is 20 extra food over what you would have spent on a tier 3 worker...

in fact in order for you to make up for that extra 10 you'd get from just making a basic soldier vs a normal worker.... you'd need to upgrade 5 worker ants to level 3.... cause each one only provides 2 extra food per harvest at tier 3.... which would actually cost you 300 food to upgrade 5 workers to tier 3....

or at 300 you could wait for an extra 20 food and at 320 food be able to make 4 soldier ants... which would be able to collectively gather 68 food compared to 5 tier 3 workers who could only gather collectively 45....

It's worth noting that you need 80 food to build ONE media, you can get FOUR workers for the same price and with that mindset they are much more efficient in terms of gathering (four Level 1s gather up to 28 leaves, one Media at level 1 only gets 17 and even if you upgrade it to Level 3 it only collects 22).

which is why I build workers first before building soldiers in those missions..... I build 47 for inside base area due to fact my layout is blocked by an enemy near worker nest I have to dig through.... but I build soldiers after building workers.... and use a couple of soldiers to clear inside my nest.... and finish off the last 3 to make it 50 workers...

ultimately after tons of runs of that first leafcutter map.... it always seems to me to be more effective building workers first.... and not worry about upgrading the workers and just go straight to soldiers instead...

like I tested it both ways... building workers and upgrading them to tier 3 before building a single soldier.... vs building workers and focus on soldiers without upgrading workers... mission is a lot faster with the latter option...

[Soul]

Originally posted by AntBZK:

Originally posted by Soul:

I dont agree with you about the leafcutter workers....

like workers are cheaper than the medium ones.... but still workers only harvest like 7 / 8 / 9 in regards to levels 1 / 2 / 3..... pretty sure that was the number... still they can move faster without carrying but are still somewhat slowed while carrying....

medium workers on the other hand are something like 17 / 19 / 21 when it comes to harvesting at levels 1 / 2 / 3.... and are not slowed when harvesting at any level...

and the major leafcutters only can pick 16 / 16 / 16 regardless of level of upgrade....

basically I notice a visible difference when I play that first leafcutter mission depending on what ants I focus on first.... like in that mission I build like 47 workers before building soldiers.... and ive tried upgrading them to tier 3 before soldiers and not upgrading them at all and moving straight to soldiers.... I noticed a huge difference in my harvesting speed focusing on building solders soon as I plop my workers down....

afterall buidling a worker ant costs 20 food.... upgrading it twice costs 40 extra food.... all so you can gather an extra 2 food from the 2 other tiers... so total of 60 food is used....

meanwhile you could just take 80 food and build a soldier.... and be collecting like 10 more food than a base worker... and all it costs is 20 extra food over what you would have spent on a tier 3 worker...

in fact in order for you to make up for that extra 10 you'd get from just making a basic soldier vs a normal worker.... you'd need to upgrade 5 worker ants to level 3.... cause each one only provides 2 extra food per harvest at tier 3.... which would actually cost you 300 food to upgrade 5 workers to tier 3....

or at 300 you could wait for an extra 20 food and at 320 food be able to make 4 soldier ants... which would be able to collectively gather 68 food compared to 5 tier 3 workers who could only gather collectively 45....

I wasn't talking about whether upgrading workers is better. I was talking about whether using workers is better than using soldiers in some situations.

Here is the math:
"Minors have 300 speed normally and 195 speed while carrying, or 247.5 speed on average for a full trip. 4 minors can gather 28 food.
Mediae have 310 speed. 1 media can gather 17 food.
4 minors can go on 20% less trip but gather 65% more food than a media. The final result: 4 minors should gather 30% more than 1 media."

It used to be way worse, like 40% more efficient before the media buff. This is why amassing 200 minors is the easier way to beat 3.1 below impossible. You can also use some level 3 minors to make the attacking waves run in circle for a while (380 speed compared to 300 speed).

I wasnt looking at the movement speed math.....

I mean the math is good and all of course if there were no other variables.... but having roaming enemies around its a lot harder to defend supply lines when you have less soldiers.... like you might be able to make 4 workers to 1 soldier... but their movement and all means nothing if they are torn down by enemies so quickly....

and like I said before.... just cause I think the soldiers are superior in gathering.... doesnt mean I only focus on them at start... workers are important to get the economy rolling afterall.... but once I got my workers down.... going all in on soldiers helps with ramping things up even more...

of course way I play I only use 1 marker.... both workers and soldiers all in same group for gathering...

[SapphireSage]

From what I could tell playing through 3.1 twice, once focusing on workers as I had learned from previous maps, and then another time this time focusing on both media and minors and never upgrading any of the ants either time, the media performed a bit better than the minors due to a few factors.

1) Media could defend themselves and the ant line en route. The more media ants your line had, the safer the conga line of food was from lone predators. Therefore, the more resistant your supply chain is from interruption.

2) Media didn't lose speed while carrying leaves. Early in the level its not such a big deal, but once you eat up the early close-by leaves, travel time becomes a bigger deal and while minors were faster without the leaves, the slowdown from carrying more than caught up with them on the way back.

3) With enough media ants, you can simply throw them into an independent combat group, go bully the enemy ant colony out of their feeding grounds and then quickly harvest all the easy pickings and head home before the majors come knocking.

4) You still need an ample amount of minors for the minim to keep up with leaf supply and refuse buildup. Minim don't get upgraded.