I remember the one time I played a Fire Ant freeplay where a Big-Headed Ant colony fought me to a stand-still again, and again, and again. I had at least 100 lvl 3 vigarious ants, I would also win most of the time, but I could never really claim a solid victory.
Oh jeez yeah, in freeplay depending on what the enemy colonies have you may just never be able to finish them off, especially when theyre a string colony like bha. I did the same thing with bha against pervasive fire ants
@@mikewil7571 huh, this is interesting, I’ve run this test many times as well and at Lv 1 bha majors win handily, so I wonder if something got changed that I’m not aware of…I should look in to this, thanks so much for sharing your experiment findings, I appreciate it a lot!
@@BovineTerror and I appreciate you along with the swift response. I am in total agreeance with you btw. Since you are 1 of the most experienced players of this game, I do have questions regarding what upgrade options are best to choose for every ant. For example; I'm aware of Rapid Fire being more effective than Mortar in most circumstances. But what about the 2 upgrade options? Left side: Corrosive or High Pressure? Right side: Crippling or Weakening? Same for the other ants, like the Gene Thief Queen, the Gene Thief Worker, Leaf Cutter Major? NOTE: I did select Taunt. Still, I'm curious on which upgrade options would be best. So yeah, pretty much for every ant. It's probably a lot to ask, but I really need you. I'm trying to be as OP as I can; playing through this game.
@@BovineTerror sorry i did edit that comment a tiny bit in regards to the leaf cutter ant major. if you are writing a response to it i'd copy what you already wrote, reload the comment and paste lol.
@@mikewil7571 wow jeez the most experienced is very high praise and idk if I deserve that, but thanks! And ok so I’ll give you the really short version, but I am currently working on a full video that goes in depth with all the fc upgrades and which ones are best backed up with math and game theory, so for the full answers, watch that when it’s done! But for now from my initial calculations, experience, and discussion from other players, I think corrosive and weakening are better because they do more damage and up the damage of higher damage ants in the fc (chiefly wood and fire ants). The leafcutters are probably best with sharp and shockproof since sharp does absurd damage for fc challenges and shockproof is great against the high damage enemies in fc challenges. Fire ants wise, the choices a bit harder because all their choices are amazing and I should mention that some of the fire ant abilities may be bugged atm and so may not be working as intended. If they’re working correctly and/or as written, surefooted synergizes best with the other ants and so is best for fc challenges and last stand is nearly exclusively better than last laugh, so take last stand. Then for Matabele, this one’s the hardest, and I still need to experiment more, but I think (and I forgot the names, sorry) the one where they can revive ants near the front line instead of by the queen and the flashheal one. Oh and for the queen, there legit isn’t a bad option, they’re all good so choose your favorites! And the workers, efficient brood is way better unless you’re doing workers only, and nimble is probably a bit better but defensive is good as well. And if for some reason you’re actually using black ants past fc challenge 2, then they’re best with meat wall and probably self repair, though self preservation is also decent, neither of these are amazing so either is fine. And those are all of them! If you have any more questions about any of those, let me know!
@@BovineTerror This helped tremendously, I appreciate the amount of detail you gave me knowing you are soon to drop a big video on it, and I'm really looking forward to watching it! I can't wait!
Formica Fusca secretly has a very high venom resist, so they are very useful against Formica Rufa and Invictas. This is why they can beat Invictas in combat, as their damage is primarily venom based
The Problem with this tierlist in my opinion is, that you ignore the costs. What does it give you if the for example major army ants are the strongest with buffs, but they will lose against other armies which cost the same. For example the fireants can take 8 looses for one major army ant. With priceless eggs up to 16 fire ants per major. The win simply because they are cheap, high numbers per tile and prizeless eggs. And also the combatpower per tile matters if you want to build really great. Fireants will kill everything which costs the same prize to build up. Only one ant can sometimes win.. the major big head ant. All other will lose. And when you fight majors against major the leaf cutters before the bha will win. The majors will lose.. every time. And i mean not 1:1.. i mean 50:50 or figher depending on their costs. I my opinion against other ants the stun mechanic is great, if you have greater numbers of them. Otherwise the spott to prevent the normal ants from damage. But at the end all majors are not worth their money if the enemy is a wood ant. The mortar-aoe-attack kills every ant. In my opinion majors should have a greater resistance against that. But the strongest ant colony at the end is the colony which can gather fast huge amounts of food and field a strong ant. To gather food you need cheap ants which can fight good, so you need no majors to secure them. And there the bha are weak as hell and suddenly the army ants are getting interesting and also the small black ants. But the fireants are the kings. You can not defeat them. They are absolute broken. They can build up really fast. And they can make every food to build up because they do not have to pay for eggs so they can fight for everything. Or they are really fast and strong. I played a game against the highest difficulty. fireants, small black ants and black ants (if i add bha they will crush the ai really fast). I played as the conter colony with army ants only. At the end i had 240 food ants, 71 workers and 211 major ants. Because of time, the majors were half t1, half t2. The food ants t3, the worker too. But i could nothing do against the fire ants. They killed every other ant and i gathered food and build up in peace nearly for 2 hours. I wanted to see how strong the fire ant-ai can be. And they curshed me. The first time i could recover. The secound time i made a counter attack. But they killed my majors faster, i could replace them and food gets rare. And the 3rd major attack was my end. I could do nothing. And thats the problem with them. They are strong in earlygame, so they build up much faster and when the others gets stronger, food gets less and less (you can not deactivate this) and when they killed all others (not the bha), they will attack you and they will build up faster then you because food does not matter for them. So the fireants are great in numbers, cheap/priceless and really fast and strong in every phase of the game. I play always on the highest difficulty and i win really easy. But choosing the enemies so the fireants will survive and let them... you have no chance. On the other side fire ants as player is a no brainer. You can simply overrun the enemy ants with the food you get in the cave. Looses do not matter, because they cost nothing and the enemy can not defeat 200 fireants. (100 armies, 100 priceless replaces minimum). Thats why i think the leaf cutters needs a buff. The fire ants a nerf, the black ants a great buff and the army ants a few tweaks for their majors.
If you’re comparing them to the other units in their colony then yeah that’s really fair, they’re the weakest in their colony. If you compare them to all the other ant units though, they have the 4th/4th/6th best food cost per dps at lvs 1/2/3 respectively, have decent survivability for their cost, and have a very fast food harvest rate. So depending on how you look at it they’re either a great ant unit or a useless one, and I was comparing all these ants against each other, so that’s why I ranked them so highly. If you want a further explanation of the math I did to find these numbers let me know.
@@jepthetirene1226 well yeah a black ant costs 50 food while a bha major is 25 so of course a black ant will win in a 1v1. In fact a black ant will beat fire ants in a 1v1 and fire ants are one of the strongest units in the game if not the strongest. If you make the food cost fair and do 2 bha majors against 1 black ant so the food cost is 50 on both sides the bha majors win by a huge margin
@@jepthetirene1226 oh yeah I can see that, black ants are going to have a better time pushing against an enemy colony than bha majors cause each ant will live longer which means the time it takes to replenish lost soldiers is less, so that makes total sense. So I get where your thinking is coming from, I came from a different direction so I see why we have differing opinions
I remember the one time I played a Fire Ant freeplay where a Big-Headed Ant colony fought me to a stand-still again, and again, and again. I had at least 100 lvl 3 vigarious ants, I would also win most of the time, but I could never really claim a solid victory.
Oh jeez yeah, in freeplay depending on what the enemy colonies have you may just never be able to finish them off, especially when theyre a string colony like bha. I did the same thing with bha against pervasive fire ants
Just ran an up-to-date test regarding the black ant vs the big headed ant major.
Lvl 1 - 1 black ant >| 2 bha majors
Lvl 2 - 1 black ant
@@mikewil7571 huh, this is interesting, I’ve run this test many times as well and at Lv 1 bha majors win handily, so I wonder if something got changed that I’m not aware of…I should look in to this, thanks so much for sharing your experiment findings, I appreciate it a lot!
@@BovineTerror and I appreciate you along with the swift response. I am in total agreeance with you btw.
Since you are 1 of the most experienced players of this game, I do have questions regarding what upgrade options are best to choose for every ant.
For example; I'm aware of Rapid Fire being more effective than Mortar in most circumstances. But what about the 2 upgrade options?
Left side: Corrosive or High Pressure?
Right side: Crippling or Weakening?
Same for the other ants, like the Gene Thief Queen, the Gene Thief Worker, Leaf Cutter Major?
NOTE: I did select Taunt. Still, I'm curious on which upgrade options would be best.
So yeah, pretty much for every ant.
It's probably a lot to ask, but I really need you. I'm trying to be as OP as I can; playing through this game.
@@BovineTerror sorry i did edit that comment a tiny bit in regards to the leaf cutter ant major.
if you are writing a response to it i'd copy what you already wrote, reload the comment and paste lol.
@@mikewil7571 wow jeez the most experienced is very high praise and idk if I deserve that, but thanks! And ok so I’ll give you the really short version, but I am currently working on a full video that goes in depth with all the fc upgrades and which ones are best backed up with math and game theory, so for the full answers, watch that when it’s done! But for now from my initial calculations, experience, and discussion from other players, I think corrosive and weakening are better because they do more damage and up the damage of higher damage ants in the fc (chiefly wood and fire ants). The leafcutters are probably best with sharp and shockproof since sharp does absurd damage for fc challenges and shockproof is great against the high damage enemies in fc challenges. Fire ants wise, the choices a bit harder because all their choices are amazing and I should mention that some of the fire ant abilities may be bugged atm and so may not be working as intended. If they’re working correctly and/or as written, surefooted synergizes best with the other ants and so is best for fc challenges and last stand is nearly exclusively better than last laugh, so take last stand. Then for Matabele, this one’s the hardest, and I still need to experiment more, but I think (and I forgot the names, sorry) the one where they can revive ants near the front line instead of by the queen and the flashheal one. Oh and for the queen, there legit isn’t a bad option, they’re all good so choose your favorites! And the workers, efficient brood is way better unless you’re doing workers only, and nimble is probably a bit better but defensive is good as well. And if for some reason you’re actually using black ants past fc challenge 2, then they’re best with meat wall and probably self repair, though self preservation is also decent, neither of these are amazing so either is fine. And those are all of them! If you have any more questions about any of those, let me know!
@@BovineTerror This helped tremendously, I appreciate the amount of detail you gave me knowing you are soon to drop a big video on it, and I'm really looking forward to watching it! I can't wait!
this dude caculleted the whole game
Just wait till the big math video I’m currently script writing for lol
I still stand with black ants
That’s fair stand with them! Don’t back down to what others say!
True, underestimate them for a second, and they can send you packing.
Formica Fusca secretly has a very high venom resist, so they are very useful against Formica Rufa and Invictas. This is why they can beat Invictas in combat, as their damage is primarily venom based
we can all be happy that tie 5 will be or termites if you dont know
Yeah I’m so excited for the termites, they’ll be such a cool addition to the game!
The Problem with this tierlist in my opinion is, that you ignore the costs. What does it give you if the for example major army ants are the strongest with buffs, but they will lose against other armies which cost the same. For example the fireants can take 8 looses for one major army ant. With priceless eggs up to 16 fire ants per major. The win simply because they are cheap, high numbers per tile and prizeless eggs. And also the combatpower per tile matters if you want to build really great.
Fireants will kill everything which costs the same prize to build up. Only one ant can sometimes win.. the major big head ant. All other will lose. And when you fight majors against major the leaf cutters before the bha will win. The majors will lose.. every time. And i mean not 1:1.. i mean 50:50 or figher depending on their costs. I my opinion against other ants the stun mechanic is great, if you have greater numbers of them. Otherwise the spott to prevent the normal ants from damage.
But at the end all majors are not worth their money if the enemy is a wood ant. The mortar-aoe-attack kills every ant. In my opinion majors should have a greater resistance against that.
But the strongest ant colony at the end is the colony which can gather fast huge amounts of food and field a strong ant. To gather food you need cheap ants which can fight good, so you need no majors to secure them. And there the bha are weak as hell and suddenly the army ants are getting interesting and also the small black ants. But the fireants are the kings. You can not defeat them. They are absolute broken. They can build up really fast. And they can make every food to build up because they do not have to pay for eggs so they can fight for everything. Or they are really fast and strong.
I played a game against the highest difficulty. fireants, small black ants and black ants (if i add bha they will crush the ai really fast). I played as the conter colony with army ants only. At the end i had 240 food ants, 71 workers and 211 major ants. Because of time, the majors were half t1, half t2. The food ants t3, the worker too. But i could nothing do against the fire ants. They killed every other ant and i gathered food and build up in peace nearly for 2 hours. I wanted to see how strong the fire ant-ai can be. And they curshed me. The first time i could recover. The secound time i made a counter attack. But they killed my majors faster, i could replace them and food gets rare. And the 3rd major attack was my end. I could do nothing.
And thats the problem with them. They are strong in earlygame, so they build up much faster and when the others gets stronger, food gets less and less (you can not deactivate this) and when they killed all others (not the bha), they will attack you and they will build up faster then you because food does not matter for them. So the fireants are great in numbers, cheap/priceless and really fast and strong in every phase of the game.
I play always on the highest difficulty and i win really easy. But choosing the enemies so the fireants will survive and let them... you have no chance. On the other side fire ants as player is a no brainer. You can simply overrun the enemy ants with the food you get in the cave. Looses do not matter, because they cost nothing and the enemy can not defeat 200 fireants. (100 armies, 100 priceless replaces minimum).
Thats why i think the leaf cutters needs a buff. The fire ants a nerf, the black ants a great buff and the army ants a few tweaks for their majors.
The big headed major is trash bro
If you’re comparing them to the other units in their colony then yeah that’s really fair, they’re the weakest in their colony. If you compare them to all the other ant units though, they have the 4th/4th/6th best food cost per dps at lvs 1/2/3 respectively, have decent survivability for their cost, and have a very fast food harvest rate. So depending on how you look at it they’re either a great ant unit or a useless one, and I was comparing all these ants against each other, so that’s why I ranked them so highly. If you want a further explanation of the math I did to find these numbers let me know.
Only just comparing with black ant in a 1v1 the black ant win
@@jepthetirene1226 well yeah a black ant costs 50 food while a bha major is 25 so of course a black ant will win in a 1v1. In fact a black ant will beat fire ants in a 1v1 and fire ants are one of the strongest units in the game if not the strongest. If you make the food cost fair and do 2 bha majors against 1 black ant so the food cost is 50 on both sides the bha majors win by a huge margin
Look in colonies the black ants can beat the big headed majors lf they only make big headed majors lf you disagree that is okay it just my opinion.
@@jepthetirene1226 oh yeah I can see that, black ants are going to have a better time pushing against an enemy colony than bha majors cause each ant will live longer which means the time it takes to replenish lost soldiers is less, so that makes total sense. So I get where your thinking is coming from, I came from a different direction so I see why we have differing opinions