Basic Mechanics

This page shows the basic game mechanics. These mechanics may be applied differently in specific missions to provide more variety in gameplay.

Units

You usually start with a queen and 3 active workers. The queen chamber usually has 7 tiles. Queen tiles act as both brood tiles and storage tiles. You can't build, delete or upgrade queen tiles.

Your queen can only lay eggs. It is immune to disrupting effects and repositioning effects. The screen flashes red when the queen has below 25% of its health. You lose when the queen is dead.

Nest jobs will be done in this paticular order: digging, building and spawning. Workers in nest group will do it automatically while workers in other pheromone groups can only do nearby jobs. They will ignore resources and enemies when they are tasked with nest jobs. Nest jobs can only be done by a single worker each time, except for digging.

The nanitic workers can do anything that other workers can do. You get a free nanitic worker to help revive the colony if you don't have any workers and food left.

Soldiers can't do nest jobs. They are divided into 4 groups: melee, range, tank and medic.

You have a single king if you play as termites. It remains underground and is invulnerable until the queen is dead. It is uncontrollable and can only attack enemies.

Digging

You can only dig in the black area in your nest.

You must click on a tile in the black area to mark it for excavation. Workers will do it as long as the marked tiles are reachable. You can click again to cancel the task. Up to 2 workers can excavate a tile at once.

The nest entrance is a diggable tile. Up to 7 workers can excavate it at once. Nest entrance excavating is the least prioritized nest job.

You can encounter caverns in your nest. Every tile in each cavern will be excavated at once when you dig into it and the hidden creatures are released in your nest.

You can guess the contents of each cavern through underground marks. White silhouettes represent small food. Red exclamation marks represent enemies. Green question marks represent everything else.

Building

You can only build in in the excavated area in your nest. You must choose an option in the building tabs then click on any parts of the excavated area to mark it for building. You can click again to cancel the task.

Similar tiles can be built adjacent to each other and form a chamber. Active units from the same chamber form a control group.

Units move 10%/ 20%/ 25% more quickly on highway tiles and move 35% more slowly other tiles in the nest. Highway tiles cost 5 food to build.

Upgrading

You must choose the upgrading tool in the building tabs then click on the chosen tile to mark it for upgrading. You can only upgrade up to level 3. Upgrading cost is the same as building cost.

You can only upgrade tiles with enough upgrading points. Tiles give 1/ 2/ 3 upgrading point to same-type tiles and highway tiles around it. Walls give 1 upgrading point and highway tiles give 1/ 2/ 3 upgrading points to any adjacent tiles. You need 6 points for level 2 and 12 points for level 3.

The most cost-efficient shape that allows you to upgrade all tiles to level 3 is a nineteen-tiled hexagon.

Upgraded tiles have higher capacity and effects. Upgraded units are immediately healed, have better stats and may gain extra abilities.

You can enable tile information to see level and upgrading points.

Deleting

You must choose the deleting tool in the building tabs then click on the chosen tile to mark it for deleting. The chosen tile will be downgraded before it can be deleted completly. Downgraded units are immediately healed.

You receive 66.67% of the building cost as seeds after deleting tiles. Food are left on the ground along with the refund and the corresponding active units will be dead.

Spawning

Workers bring eggs from the queen to empty brood tiles. Eggs gradually turn into active units, as long as there are enough food. New eggs will be placed afterward but the larvae stops growing midway if the respective units are still alive. Brood tiles can only incubate one ant at a time but can hold multiple active units at once.

The population is represented by a pair of numbers. The left one means active units. The right one means the maximum population you can have based on the number of brood tiles. Worker population is separated from soldier population. The queen isn't counted.

Moving

Active units from the same chamber form a control group. Control groups are represented by the respective ant icons in the control panel. You must split a brood chamber by deleting the inbetween tiles if you want to split the respective control group. You can't choose individual units.

New control groups are automatically put in nest group. You can control up to 5 pheromone groups, which are assigned with roman numbers from I to V. You can move any control groups between different pheromone groups.

You can only control one pheromone group at a time. You can right-click anywhere on the map or the minimap to place a pheromone marker. Your units will move along the shortest path toward the pheromone marker. Some units always stop midway and go back to the nest entrance or to the queen to form a trail. Units become dead if they can't find the way back to the queen.

Your units will retreat back to the queen when pheromone markers are removed. Units in unassigned pheromone groups are treated the same as when they are in nest group.

Control groups in the same pheromone group respond in order from top to bottom and left to right. The number below a pheromone marker shows the number of responding units. Responding speed is always 10 units per second regardless of group size. You can make your units respond more quickly to your commands by spliting the same number of units across multiple pheromone groups.

You can prevent your units from gathering, attacking or mounting by clicking on the respective icons on the right of the control panel.

You can place pheromone markers on top of a nest entrance to make your units enter the respective underground area. Nest entrances work the same as spawners.

Gathering

Your units automatically bring any food in sight back to storage. Some units move more slowly while carrying food. Food are dropped on the ground if storage is suddenly full. Food disappear from storage when they are used.

Small food can be directly carried away. Large food can be harvested by multiple units at once. Attack must be used 6 times to cut out a certain amount of food each time. The process must be started over if it is interrupted.

Ants are inedible while termite are edible for most species. Inedible dead creatures disappear over time.

You can enable resource information to see food amount and harvest capacity.

You can disable gathering to prevent your units from picking up food. They still have to bring carried food back to the storage. Gathering food is the least prioritized job.

Food storage tiles cost 5 food to build and can hold 10/ 40/ 100 food.

The similar mechanics are applied to leaves and lignocellulose when you play as leafcutter ants and termites.

Attacking

Your units automatically follow and attack enemies in sight. Most workers and some soldiers can ignore enemies while carrying food.

You can enable creature information to see health and level of creatures.

You can disable attacking to prevent your units from initiating combat. They still retaliate after taking damage and have to finish the ongoing battles. Attacking enemies is the most prioritized job.

Camera

You can move the camera around by pushing your cursor against the edge of the screen. You can zoom in or out by turning the wheel on your mouse.

You can click anywhere on the minimaps to move your camera there.

You can press a specific hotkey (F9 by default) to enter basic photo mode, or press it together with Shift to enter free photo mode. The game is paused and camera can only be controlled by hotkeys. User interface is removed to let you take better screenshots. You can look at unintended places on the maps or go out of bound in free photo mode.

You can unpause and continue playing the game by using hotkeys while in photo mode.

Trivia

• Placing different pheromone markers makes different chirping sounds, which indicates that pheromone is a form of ant communication.

• In real life, the first few workers are nurtured using the queen's own body fluid. These nanitic workers are weak and have to take care of the queen for their entire life. They soon die after the stronger workers are ready to venture outside. This explains why you can't build, delete or upgrade the queen chamber in the game.

• In real life, nests are naturally designed with intricate chambers and pathways. In the game, upgrading points and speed penalty motivate players to strategically build tiles within chambers and establish pathways between them to facilitate efficient ant movement.