Custom Game Difficulty

This page shows difficulty settings in custom games.

Victory conditions

You can only choose a single victory condition for a freeplay game. You can modify the threshold of the chosen victory condition in a predetermined range. The respective freeplay game becomes endless if your settings don't match the requirements for a victory condition.

• Conquest: Defeat all enemy colonies.

• Domination: Reach a specific score through eliminating enemies (5000 - 30000).

• Survival: Survive for a specific amount of time (30 minutes - 6 hours).

• Besieged: Survive a number of increasingly difficult attacking waves (5 - 30).

• Hunter: Eliminate the most uber creatures (1 - 20).

• Biomass: Reach a specific biomass score through building and upgrading brood tiles (2500 - 15000).

• Creative: Expand your colony however you like. Building and spawning is free. Enemies can't invade your nest. You can't win or gain any score using this condition.

Environmental difficulty

Environmental dificulty affects number and form of swarm enemies, preparing time, nest invasion frequency and difficulty increasing speed. You can set the overall difficulty of a freeplay game from easy to impossible. Overall score increases by 0%/ 40%/ 100%/ 140%/ 200%.

You can hover your cursor over the Menu button in the top right corner of the screen to see the current difficulty.

Environmental difficulty is a combination of starting difficulty, progression difficulty, spike difficulty and victory difficulty.

• You can set starting difficulty from 0% up to 60%/ 90%/ 120%/ 150%/ 250%.

• Progression difficulty increases along with either your playtime (ramp) or your biomass score (scale with colony).

• Spike difficulty only has 10% chance to be added to environmental difficulty every 60 seconds. Its value is randomly set from 0% up to 60%/ ?/ ?/ ?/ 200%. It randomly lasts for 60 to 180 seconds.

• Victory difficulty can be disabled in freeplay setting menu. It increases along with your objective completion up to 70%/ 110%/ 150%/ 190%/ 250%. It is removed from difficulty calculation after victory.

You can control the change in environmental difficulty.

• Constant: It remains at the starting difficulty.

• Spike: Spike difficulty is added.

• Ramp: You can only set starting difficulty up to 100%. Progression difficulty is calculated based on your playtime.

• Ramp with spike: You can only set starting difficulty up to 100%. Progression difficulty is calculated based on your playtime. Spike difficulty is also added.

• Scale with colony: Progression difficulty is calculated based on your biomass score.

• Random: It is randomized occasionally and remains for a random amount of time.

Powerscaled enemies appear on the map after environmental difficulty has reached 100%. Star-level of new enemies changes by 1 for every 25% increase or decrease in environmental difficulty. Powerscaling doesn't affect underground enemies, wave enemies and landmark enemies.

Upkeep

Upkeep is applied separately for workers and soldiers. Workers give 1 point while soldiers give 1% of their original building cost.

Building cost of the respective group increases exponentially along with its population after you reach 100 population points. Upgrading cost and refund isn't affected.

Overall score decreases by 60% if upkeep is disabled.

Attacking waves

Attacking waves can be enabled together with any victory conditions. You can only save after wave enemies are all dead.

You have 13 minutes free of invasion to build up your colony. Attacking waves come from nearby spawners and invade your nest every 6 minutes afterward. If you choose to remain inside, attacking waves will appear consecutively after you dig to the surface.

Wave enemies are randomly generated based on your choices, with uber creatures and without harmless enemies. Number and form of wave enemies increases over time and is affected by environmental difficulty.

Wave enemies can only attack colonies. They aren't edible.

Overall score increases by 10% if attacking waves are enabled.

Nest invasion

You can control whether surface enemies can enter the underground areas. You have a certain amount of time free of invasion to build up your colony, depending on starting difficulty.

If your nest entrance has already been connected to the queen, it will be automatically excavated when surface enemies are about to invade. Attacking waves can invade your nest even if nest invasion is disable.

Overall score increases by 50% if nest invasion is enabled.

Dead creatures

Dead creatures disappear after 3 minutes. You can set the food amount that dead creatures give from 0% to 300%. Overall score changes by 1% for every 5% increase or decrease in food amount. Dead creatures give progressively less food after environmental difficulty has reached 200%.

Dead termites only give 10% of their original food amount and other omnivorous ants only retain 10% of their original harvest amount while harvesting termites.

Dead swarm termites don't disappear over time. Dead colony termites aren't affected by your food amount settings and disappear after 10 seconds.

Other settings

You can control whether enemies fight each other. The infighting chance and duration increases along with difficulty. Overall score increases by 150% if enemy infighting is disabled.

Enemies that are too far from your line of sight will be hidden if fog of war is enabled. You can still see landmarks beneath the fog. Overall score increases by 150% if fog of war is enabled.

Trivia

(none)