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 respective victory condition.

• Conquest: Defeat all enemy colonies.

• Domination: Reach a specific combat score (5000 - 30000).

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

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

• Hunter: Eliminate a number of uber creatures (1 - 20).

• Biomass: Reach a specific brood-tile construction score (2500 - 15000).

• Score: Reach a specific overall score (10000 - 60000).

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

You can set the overall difficulty of a freeplay game from easy to impossible. Overall score increases by 0%/ 40%/ 100%/ 140%/ 200%.

Environmental difficulty is a combination of multiple difficulty values.

• Starting difficulty: You always start a custom game at this difficulty. It can be set up to 60%/ 90%/ 120%/ 150%/ 250%.

• Ramp difficulty: It starts at 0% and increases by 1% for every 144/ 90/ 65/ 55/ 30 seconds you play.

• Spike dificulty: It has 10% chance to be included every 60 seconds. It is randomly set between 0% and 60%/ ?/ ?/ ?/ 200% and lasts for 60 to 180 seconds.

• Colony difficulty: It starts at 0% and increases by 1% for every 60/ 45/ 36/ 30/ 16 colony points you have. You gain colony points equal to your brood-tile construction score, but different units have their own multipliers and the second upgrade isn't counted.

• Victory difficulty: It can be enabled in freeplay setting menu. It starts at 0% and increases exponentially along with your progress, up to 70%/ 110%/ 150%/ 190%/ 250%. It is permanently reset if you choose to continue after victory.

You can control the changing pattern of environmental difficulty.

• Constant: Only starting difficulty is included.

• Ramp: Ramp difficulty is included. You can only set starting difficulty up to 100%.

• Spike: Spike difficulty is included.

• Ramp with spike: Ramp difficulty and spike difficulty is included. You can only set starting difficulty up to 100%.

• Scale with colony: Colony difficulty is included.

• Random: Random options are chosen for random amount of time throughout the game.

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 all wave enemies are 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 even 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.

Some enemies are unable to invade your nest. They include woodworms, woodlice, nymph earwigs, medium hermit crabs and large African mantises.

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

Dead creatures

Dead creatures disappear after 3 minutes on the surface but not underground.

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 colony termites aren't affected by food amount settings.

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)