Custom Game Colony Setting

This page shows the colony settings in custom games.

Settings

You can play with or without other colonies in custom games. You must choose a color and a team for each colony before you start a custom game. You can only have up to 4 colonies and 4 teams in a custom game.

Some colonies may have different headstart from story missions and extra missions.

Leafcutter ant colonies have nineteen-tiled queen chambers and start with 200 food.

Matabele ant colonies must start with some soldier brood tiles.

Termite colonies have nineteen-tiled queen chambers and must start with some lignocellulose storage tiles and some fungus storage tiles.

You can control temperament of non-player colonies: Docile, Timid, Balanced and Aggressive. It affects their aggressiveness and unit composition.

You can also control how quickly non-player colonies make decision.

You can also control their cheat setting. Non-player colonies can have headstart, spend less resources to build tiles, receive food over time, spawn units without requiring food or workers and take less damage from swarm enemies. Cheat is disabled when nest invasion is happening.

None: Small starting nest, small starting food amount, extremely rare free spawning

Headstart: Small starting nest, small starting food amount, rare free spawning

Underhanded: Small starting nest, medium starting food amount, slightly reduced building cost, rare free spawning

Cheater: Medium starting nest, large starting food amount, moderately reduced building cost, occasional free spawning and food receipt

Crooked: Large starting nest, large starting food amount, greatly reduced building cost, occasional free spawning and food receipt

Corrupt: Large starting nest, large starting food amount, greatly reduced building cost, frequent free spawning and food receipt

Non-player colonies aren't affected by upkeep and randomized caverns. You can control whether colonies can enter other nests.

Colony customizations

You can customize any colonies in custom games with this setting.

You must choose the base species at first. Queen, workers and food processing mechanics will follow your choice.

You can add soldiers to your custom colonies however you want from the 21 options. You can add formicarium adaptations to the suitable units but not minor improvements. You can't add Matabele ant medics to custom leafcutter ant colonies.

Behaviors

Non-player colonies will send all units outside to gather food. Nanitic workers will stay inside after you have played for 10 minutes and are only deployed when non-player colonies don't have any other units.

Non-player colonies can only control up to 3 pheromone groups. They can be assigned with gathering food, taking aphids or attacking enemy colonies.

Gathering groups attack any enemies on the way when they are gathering food. Food gathering and attacking is disabled when they are taking aphids.

Gathering groups are kept inside if they can't find any food.

Non-player colonies will choose the weakest colonies in biomass as their targets after they have enough food. Attacking groups either follow their most recently placed pheromone markers or invade their nests. Food and aphid gathering is disabled in the process.

Attacking groups will be tasked with gathering food and retreat after they have taken enough casualties.

Attack frequency is affected by temperament setting.

Non-player colonies will retreat inside when nest invasion occurs or when water level is about to change.

Non-player colonies can actively hunt uber creatures when the victory condition requires.

Nest designs

Non-player colonies always start with the same predug nest and some resources. They usually work on 2 chambers at once. They prioritize upgrading storage and soldiers first and only upgrade workers after other building jobs have been finished.

Playable units are categorized into 3 groups based on tile color on the minimaps: worker (green), small soldier (purple or orange) and large soldier (blue).

Non-player colonies can decide building order on their own. They can only build hexagon chambers and can't build highway. Nest design and unit composition are affected by species choice and temperament setting.

Gene-thief ant/ Custom

Non-player colonies will randomly choose among the available units in the same group and attempt to build a chamber for each unit. Large soldiers are replaced with small soldiers if they aren't available. Small soldiers are replaced with workers if they aren't available.

Non-player colonies treat Matabele ant soldiers as large soldiers and can't use bullet ant soldiers.

Custom leafcutter ant colonies use the base leafcutter ant nest designs. Small soldiers replace leafcutter ant mediae while large soldiers replace leacutter ant majors.

Custom termite colonies use the base termite nest designs. Small soldiers replace termite minor soldiers while large soldiers replace termite major soldiers.

Other custom colonies have to use the base gene-thief ant nest designs.