Ant Legion: For The Swarm is a strategy game for Android and iOS that gives you command over your own colony of ants. Starting with just a single queen, amass your swarm and climb your way up the food chain.
The game can be very confusing for beginners (especially since the gameplay is completely different from the promotional images), which is probably what brought you here. After reading this Ant Legion guide, you should have a better grasp of its various game modes and upgrade systems.
Ant Legion For The Swarm Gameplay – Ant Warfare
The main gameplay of Ant Legion involves you expanding your ant colony. It’s basically a base-building game not unlike Project Entropy. Different structures serve different purposes, such as resource gathering, upgrades, unit training, and giving you access to other game modes.
When expanding your base, you must dig around to unlock areas suitable for new structures. But when you do find one, it will have predators in it. Defeat the predators using your trained ants before you are allowed to build in that area. To do that, simply tap on them, and if your army scale is enough, attack them.
Most structures can be upgraded for the cost of leaves, though in rare instances, you’d need other resources. Some building upgrades also have prerequisites. For example, to upgrade the Rally Ground from level 2 to 3, you must first have your Alliance Hall leveled up to 3. It also requires 2 Rally Twigs, apart from leaves.
Structure upgrades will eat up most of your time with Ant Legion since the higher-tier upgrades last for hours. The game does provide you with tons of speedup items though, so feel free to use them liberally.
Ant Types In Ant Legion For The Swarm
There are four ant types that make up the bulk of your swarm: Melee, Ranged, Haste, and Mover Soldiers. Three of these types have a rock-paper-scissors system where one type is strong against the other. Here’s how it works:
Melee>Ranged>Haste>Melee
Mover Soldiers are weak against all other types but have a high carrying capacity, making them useful for collection missions in the World Map.
Apart from the normal ants, there are also Specialized Ants, which you can get as rewards or by hatching eggs and collecting ten shards of a specific Specialized Ant.
Specialized Ants are classed as either War Specialized Ants or Civil Specialized Ants. War Specialized Ants provide buffs to your soldiers during combat, like increasing your army scale, health, and defense. Civil Specialized Ants give you base building-related buffs such as quicker build times, increased training capacity, and Healing Pool capacity.
Ant Legion For The Swarm Game Modes Guide
Like a lot of mobile games these days, Ant Legion has several game modes to keep you occupied while your structures are being upgraded. These game modes reward you with tons of useful goodies too!
World Map Guide
Ant Legion’s World Map is a feature similar to something from Project Entropy. You can view your nest on a massive map filled with other players’ nests. Here you can hunt and loot predators, predator nests, food, and leaves.
For hunts involving combat, you must select which Specialized Ants and troops you want to send. Only War Specialized Ants can be sent on hunts in the World Map.
Repel Invaders Strategy
Repel Invaders is a tower defense game mode where you place your ants in strategic positions to repel predators coming for your colony.
You level up your towers in the section at the bottom of the screen. Here, you can train new towers. Then, simply drag one tower and drop it on top of another tower of the same type and level to create a tower that’s one level higher.
As you progress, you will unlock more slots to place towers at as well as new types of towers. There are four types of towers in Repel Invaders. Learn their roles and how to use them properly.
- Yellow Soldier – The basic tower. It fires a projectile that hits and deals damage to a single target. The Yellow Soldier is weaker than the other towers, so consider replacing it as you approach higher levels.
- Red Soldier – The AOE (Area Of Effect) tower. It hurls a fireball at a target and deals splash damage on impact.
- Blue Soldier – A tower that slows down the target it hits. Best placed next to Red Ants since slowing down the enemies will cause them to clump up.
- Green Soldier – The DOT (Damage Over Time) tower. Targets that get hit by this tower will be poisoned and receive continual damage. Best placed near the start to make sure the poison lasts as long as it can.
Arena Strategy
The Arena is where you pit your Specialized Ants and armies against other armies made by the AI or other players. Each of these challenges requires attempt charges to play. But don’t worry, attempt charges slowly recharge on their own.
You can also purchase or earn Arena Tickets as rewards. Arena Tickets will allow you to participate in challenges even when you’re out of attempt charges.
There are three challenge types in the arena. Here’s the basic info you need on them.
- Queen-Legion War – Uses five War Specialized Ants and normal ants to fight the AI’s custom-built army.
- Specialized Duel – Uses up to ten Specialized Ants (Civil Specialized Ants can be included this time) to fight other specialized ants from other players. CP is all that matters here. Having a higher CP than your opponent means you’ll win.
- Queen-Legion Combat – Similar to Queen Legion War except the enemies you’ll be facing are now formations made by other players.
Adventure Strategy
With Adventure, you must select five Specialized Ants to battle other Specialized Ants with increasing difficulty.
This is very similar to the Specialized Duels in the Arena except this time you’ll only be facing AI-made formations. Once again, just check your CP. A larger CP will always beat a smaller CP. Once you’re matched up against an opponent with a higher CP, stop and return after upgrading your Specialized Ants.
Ant Legion For The Swarm Upgrade Systems Guide
There are so many ways of strengthening your ants and structures in Ant Legion. It’ll take some time to understand them all, but here are the basics.
Evolution Cave
As you upgrade your Evolution Cave, you will unlock more and more upgrade systems. Each of these systems acts like an inventory where you can equip your ants with various parts that have beneficial effects. Here are all the upgrade paths in the Evolution Cave.
- Gear
- Gene
- Cell
- Legacy
- Totem
Commander Talents
As you increase your commander level through quests and rewards, you will gain talent points that you can spend on even more upgrades. These upgrades give you passive abilities that can benefit your economy, combat prowess, or hunting skills.
Alliance Tech
Head over to the Alliance Menu and tap on Alliance Tech. Here, you can see three upgrade trees: Civil, War, and Alliance Skill.
Getting these upgrades will take some time though. They cost food or diamond donations, but each alliance member is only limited to a certain number of donations at a time. You then have to wait for the donation counter to slowly regenerate. It’ll all depend on how active the members of your alliance are.
The Snail
Unlocked when your queen reaches level 10, the Snail will give you additional War of Civil buffs for the cost of Snail Points. Snail Points are gained by taking care of your Snail, participating in events, and through shops.
Ant Legion For The Swarm Tips And Tricks
Only Hatch 10x Eggs At A Time
As tempting as it is to hatch an egg as soon as you get it, it’s best to wait until you have nine of that type of egg. Then, you can hatch a tenth egg for free.
Be patient. It’s not like you instantly get a Specialized Ant once you hatch an egg. You still have to collect ten shards of a particular Specialized Ant to actually acquire it. Also, there’s a chance that you just get resources instead of Specialized Ant Shards
Keep Your Build And Research Queues Active As Much As Possible
Keep a constant eye on the left side of your screen where your build and research queues are.
The four-leaf clover icon right below those will tell you which habitats are currently training new units and which are idle. Try to keep them active at all times as well.
The four-leaf clover will also point you toward rewards you can now collect.
Promote Lower Tier Ants Before Training Higher Tier Ants
Once your Habitats reach a certain level, you can train higher-tier ants from them. But don’t do that just yet. Promote your lower-tier ants into your new tier first. Promotion is cheaper and faster than training new ants.
