Loving the game but 5.1, 5.2, and 5.3 suck

[Sparky]

Been playing the entire game on hard up until now but there's literally no way to do any of these missions on the first try. There's no meaningful planning that you can put in place until the doomsday events happen, kill you, and then let you restart the mission and play it for another half hour until the next doomsday event happens and you start again.

I get that (for example) giant centipedes are a huge scary monster, but 40 ants and then another 20 resurrected, followed by another 20 from food reserves and then a few more resurrected, 1 night after getting decimated by a sun-spider that also takes over 20 ants to kill, is dumb.

There's so much stockpiling that needs to be done to survive this but very little time to do it. Unless you know this is coming, the spider will probably reset your game to 20 minutes ago and then the centipede will drop you another 30. And then another 30 for the next doomsday event.

[A-Z]

You can play them on easy and then try and challenge yourself

[Sparky]

Originally posted by A-Z:

You can play them on easy and then try and challenge yourself

I know, that's not the problem. Like I said above, unlike the rest of the missions there's no way to plan for what's coming until you've already played through them. Not nearly as fun or well designed as the rest of the missions.

[Lilli]

i've just had my first try on 5.1 and it seems that even if you know what's coming you have to be very lucky with the lizards, every time i wanted to get my injured raiders back the lizards had to get in my way, often 3 at once, i couldn't prepare at all XD and the centepide was impossible to beat at that point. This was on medium btw.

[Sparky]

Originally posted by Kukuri:

i've just had my first try on 5.1 and it seems that even if you know what's coming you have to be very lucky with the lizards, every time i wanted to get my injured raiders back the lizards had to get in my way, often 3 at once, i couldn't prepare at all XD and the centepide was impossible to beat at that point. This was on medium btw.

I eventually gave up and just played all 3 on easy

[Inmanis]

Originally posted by Kukuri:

i've just had my first try on 5.1 and it seems that even if you know what's coming you have to be very lucky with the lizards, every time i wanted to get my injured raiders back the lizards had to get in my way, often 3 at once, i couldn't prepare at all XD and the centepide was impossible to beat at that point. This was on medium btw.

the lizards are the ♥♥♥♥♥♥ WORST MAN. they turn 5.1 into such an RNG level. even if you know what to do, how to do it, and are DOING it, if one lizard (or god forbid TWO) crosses paths with your raid trail, your whole day is basically over. you make net zero food. and since 5.1 is a boss gauntlet, losing 1 days worth of food is an instant gg.

[Daliena]

5.1 spitting out that "Survive X nights" objective was a pretty huge red flag that something bad was coming.. Though I admit I expected a final night big boss, not three of them over three nights.

[RealDeathClawProductions]

Originally posted by Daliena:

5.1 spitting out that "Survive X nights" objective was a pretty huge red flag that something bad was coming.. Though I admit I expected a final night big boss, not three of them over three nights.

Yeah, when I saw the objective in the trailer I immediately knew SOMETHING was going to happen during the nights given what happened in 2.1 (a level with the same objective). Did not expect it being all three titans in the same level through.

[BadAssMilkDaddy]

Yeah the lack of time 5.1 gives you is really brutal. It takes so much trial and error and the matabele ants take so much micro to use efficiently. Plus they can get confused and run down the termite paths when you're trying to escape because the game doesn't let you shift-queue waypoints to path your ants through like a normal rts. I guess minimalism was more important, but that begs the question; why make such a micro intensive ant species if you're not going to give the player proper micro tools?

Also the counter at the top doesn't change to "survive 1 night" until just before the Emperor Scorpion spawns so I thought I still had a full day to build myself up because it said "survive 2 nights", even though there was like 1 minute left in the game. So I upgraded a bunch of ants thinking I had time, had no food left to fight big boi because you need minimum 600 food for respawns, and it just murdered me outright. Misleading as ♥♥♥♥.

Finally, the narrator tells you not to overfeed on a specific termite mound because they might not replenish, but this never actually happens. All it did was give me the impression that I could kill one of the mounds towards the last night for a huge influx of food to fight the scorpion with, but you literally can't do this. The termites will kill you even if you bring 100 soldier ants. And then you will be forced to restart. Again...

So much misleading/annoying ♥♥♥♥ packed into one level and it totally ruined the flow of the game for me. I love the idea of the matabele ants and their cool raiding style but the game just doesn't give you the tools to play them in a way that doesn't feel frustrating and clunky. They needed to add waypoints and a way to force disengage that doesn't involve toggling "fight mode" on and off constantly. I don't get why including them is a problem, it only hurts your game leaving them out. They also need to make the narrator and tooltips lie to you less and this level wouldn't suck so much. Thanks for coming to my TEDtalk.

[Coal_Brew]

I have been playing this game every since the wood ants were new. and i can admit that these mission ARE VERY HARD (I still have not beaten 5.1 on hard or really beaten it at all) now maybe they wanted to give the player a final challenge before the end of the game. but i feel like it was done in a bad way. difficulty should come from a lack of skill not RNG and that were i feel like this mission fall apart and why it is so hard to beat. i have tried so many times and i have gotten better but the lizards get way out of hand after the 2nd night. i can deal with them through night 1 and 2 but when they spawn 3 BIG LIZARDS its.....just.......the 2ed night it drains your food trying to fight that boss but than you need food and so you try to get food but guess what THERE ARE DUMB LIZARDS OUT SIDE THAT WONT MOVE. i feel your pain.

[Hexaton]

Once again, the big advice for 5.1 is to choose one Colony and focus on it.

Don't try to not over kill or anything. Just attack, retreat nearby and wait till the big horde of termites leave the area (there will still be some soldiers left but they are free food) and repeat the cycle.

Don't listen to the Narrator's dumb advice of not overkilling a single colony.

[Trent]

It isn't so much that the maps are hard; they aren't so bad once you know what to do. Its that you have no idea what you need to do going into the maps.

I had to restart 5.2 several times because I engaged the driver ants too early. When I finally tried just letting three of the mounds die and intercept the drivers after they attack the fourth, I won without much difficulty.

On top of that there are major threats like the scorpions and lizards that can end a play through if they happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. I'm not sure how to fix everything but having some way to track or see the movements of the major predators earlier would help.

[RhySin]

lol i've reset 4.2 over 6 times on normal and still can't do it, i completely avoid upgrades but i still get screwed regardless

[BadAssMilkDaddy]

Originally posted by RhySin:

lol i've reset 4.2 over 6 times on normal and still can't do it, i completely avoid upgrades but i still get screwed regardless

Don't avoid upgrades for fire ants. Some ants aren't worth upgrading (looking at you matabele) but the fire ants have the best upgrades of any ant species. The first upgrade gives you a decent amount of stats, but the second upgrade gives you a second ant on that tile, essentially allowing you to double dip on the first upgrade making it twice as good. 2 upgraded ants for 120 food is better than 3 un-upgraded ants for 120 food.

As for the level, it's really important to go above ground early. Grab the pine cone to your right immediately so you can build some soldiers before the first wave of critters. Don't use workers when playing as fire ants except to replenish egg tiles. Their soldiers are so cheap and plentiful that you can use them for everything foraging related. I made an extra 7 workers on 4.2 and just left them on nest duty. The rest were soldiers. I beat this on hard btw.

Some tips:

-Don't be afraid to wait till your ants are grouped up to fight something big like a toad. The fire ants have a lot of burst damage in their stingers and can take out most things with almost zero losses if they have the numbers. And you'll want few losses even though the fire ants replenish for free. More losses means fewer ants for foraging till the respawned ants make the trek back out. Very inefficient.

-Don't worry about aphids on this map. The water rises too quickly. Focus on killing in large groups, it's what the fire ants are best at.

-After you get your initial soldiers focus on lower ground food first and work your way up. (Lower ground meaning nearest to the water, not underground in your nest)

-Try to time clearing out nest pockets so that they open right when your soldiers return with food from above ground, that way there's no downtime.

-Attack the rival ant hill as soon as the water rises enough to give you access. You have little time but the nest has a billion food and can win you the level on it's own. I lost ~80 ants to the rising water trying to get as much food as I could but they all respawned for free so don't be afraid to get greedy here.

[Buffy]

Originally posted by RhySin:

lol i've reset 4.2 over 6 times on normal and still can't do it, i completely avoid upgrades but i still get screwed regardless

You're doing the right thing since upgrades aren't cost effective for reaching the population objective. basically to win get make two groups of 40 soldiers each to defend yourself, then spam hundreds of worker tiles to reach the objective (they are the most cost effective way of reaching it). aphids are good if you can get them. make sure to kill the little black ants and clear the underground for a lot of food.

[Halfshell]

5.1 seems ppl play it wrong. You start off with 2 warrior pods, out in 2 ctrl groups. Send to west and north. Make sure to ball 1st. Hit when the small termites are returning. You have about 15 seconds or when you kill 10. Micro by disabling harvesting before attacking then to return reenable, disable fighting, and clear waypoint. Then ball up both to hit the east base. Rinse repeat. Add medics to the lesser pod 1st. Later get both to 10 warriors each then stop they're bad vs monsters. Massing medics will clear the mission on medium or hard easily, about 6-10 each then upgrade. When lizards show up just ball and kill, yes they die and give roughly the same food spent on replacements (not food efficient but saves you the trouble later). Same with scorpions. Same with bosses, yes they just melt. I got lazy with the centipede but a large stockpile killed it anyway.

Micro medic collection aswell not necessary for medium or hard though but same idea with food collection, you don't want your fighting force to petre out. Optimally you'd mass up some workers with fighting disabled and use them to collect big termites but again not necessary on medium or hard. P.S. I used the stinger medics.

5.2 shoulda been 5.1. Everything in 5.1 just forget besides how to micro these ants. The termites send out less smalls for some reason and just aren't set up to raid the small termites. 2 raiding forces is also bad here and since less monster fights/ longer distances medics are better used as support. You can hit two early timings to kill alot of smalls on the south west and north east, mass workers to carry them back. Then gear up to fight large termites with workers collecting as noted above/ others noted.

Theres a day 2 timing to cheese the enemy ants, easily doable on normal/ hard. Trying to keep termites alive without just winning is tough otherwise.

5.3 no idea haven't played it much, I guess in theory you need to mass workers early just to process food but at something like 20 a pop its a ridiculous number, with 2 resource storage areas ontop of that.

Edit: Since ppl talking about 4.2, whats the deal with bridges? Whats most food efficient way to cross gaps? Even beating that map I could barely handle the early gaps.