A Bridge Too Far - Insane Strategy

Strategy developed by Heolx from the ICS.

**Note this requires practice and knowledge of the level. I recommend the Vigorous fire ants. I also recommend never upgrading ants on this mission.**

Once the level begins, dig directly down from your queen to the free nuts. Collect those nuts and while you do so, build a group of 7 workers.
After the 7 workers are done and the queen brood tiles are full of food, dig up and make a food chamber. Ideally, build 16 food store tiles and upgrade 4 of them to level 2.
Proceed to tunnel out of the nest. Send 7 of the workers to the eastern pinecone, and have the other seven dig out a chamber for the soldiers on the left. Dig as far as you can without opening up the bombardier beetles.

Wait until you have 4 soldiers, and then send the indoor workers and the soldiers to the bottom right woodworm. Harvest them, and wait for the checkered beetle to come, kill that as well.
Repeat this process with the woodworm on the bottom left. You should be adding soldiers on this entire time.

At this time, bring your outside workers back onto nest duty. You’ll want to dig out the entire area up top, and kill the false Bb larvae. Harvest ALL the food up top. If there is time before the attack wave, dig out and kill the 6 False Bb larvae to the right, and get the free woodworm just above them.
If there is NOT time, ignore them for now.

Defend from the spiders inside the nest. Once they are dead, send the soldiers outside with food gathering off. Send them to kill the attackers.
Once all the attackers are dead, put all the soldiers on the far northern aphids, with attacking and food off. (You should have over 30 soldiers)
While they make their journey, have the workers harvest all the leftover food to the right of the nest.
Once the soldiers collect the aphids, pull them to the caterpillar plant to the right, with food on. Once they harvest all of it, pull back to the nest.

If you did not get the 6 False bb larvae, do so when your workers arrive home. If you DID get it, make sure you have about nearly 50 soldiers, and go left, then down south. Kill all 4 pine frogs on the way with food gathering off. Collect the southernmost aphids first, then the aphids just above them.

Once the aphids are collected return home with food collection ON.
Upon arriving home, immediately send all the soldiers down south to the aphids. Around this time, put a group of 14 or so workers on the aphid plant with attacking OFF.
Once your soldiers collect the aphids, kill the single creature to the right, and collect all the caterpillars.
Rush home to defend from the checkered beetle larvae.

After the checkered beetles stop coming, send all the soldiers to the north and clear the creatures there. Proceed to collect the pinecone they guard.
After this, pull back to the nest and wait inside for the attack wave.
Defend, and send your soldiers to the northern pinecone. (600 food) it may be tricky to spot, as it’s sometimes concealed. Collect the pinecone, and then redirect the soldiers to the eastern pinecones. Collect it all, and pull back to the nest.

You should have more than 20 workers on nest duty, and at least 15 on the aphid plant by now. You should ALSO have minimum 80 soldiers, ideally 100.
Clear underground food until the skimmer lands. Be mindful to hold on to a couple hundred food for respawns in case the skimmer lands.
Kill the skimmer, harvest it, and book it to the north. Once the water rises, collect the aphids, and return home to defend from the toads.

Once the toads cease their attacks, head south and collect the many nuts behind the bridge, along with clearing the enemies there.
Once you reach 100 soldiers, cut soldier production and make nothing but workers. They are more cost efficient for the objective.
After nut collection, proceed to clear enemies from the attack waves, ie lynx spiders, bombardier beetles, etc.

Defend, and bring the soldiers and all spare workers to the west.
Bridge the gap with fire ants, and have workers follow behind. Raid the monomorium colony, they should be an easy cleanup.
Once they fall, try and collect all the food from the colony. Don’t forget the aphids!
After you make it home with this food, you’ve gotten far enough to win. Just harvest food available to you. Most importantly, keep farming those aphids!

Adventure - Insane Strategy

Strategy developed by Solstitium from the ICS.


Doing Adventure on insane needs speed and efficiency in the early game, then careful planning in the later game. For the most part, completing the level only requires a good amount of in-game knowledge. However, there are some important points I shall detail below.
 
1)    When fighting the whip spiderling next to the nest entrance, try and surround it to limit losses to the AOE.
2)    Starving out the opposing leafcutters is a must. Do so by interrupting their harvesting lines. Maintain a large reserve (200+) while doing so, but try to have at least a few taunt majors fighting. Do not select stun.
3)    Once you’ve eliminated the leafcutters, leave your majors inside the nest while the media and workers gather from the leafcutter nest. Use the food to build more majors. You’ll want 19 if possible.
4)    While you are harvesting, there’s a good chance the trap-jaws will attack you. Eliminate them once they do. Their nest will provide a massive amount of food.
5)    Once you have 19 lvl 1 majors, expand the media chambers so you have 50 of them. This allows their flashheal to have a greater effect. After this, start upgrading the majors. Note you’ll want some more nest workers too. 
6)    When fighting enemies such as the Uber leaf-mimic, send the workers to fight as well. This Uber has a damage cap of six, meaning the quantity of units dealing damage is more important than the quality of those units.
7)    When fighting enemies such as the Uber Velvet Worm and Uber Whip Spider, only send in your majors to fight (you should have 24 lvl 3s at least). This is because of their enormous resistance to damage (80% from being under 40% HP and the additional 20% from reaching a certain colony level), shockproof as it will prevent them from being instantaneously killed, and finally sharp. Because of the enormous damage dealt by the AOE and base attacks of both these creatures, they will do more damage to themselves through the 65% reflected by the majors than the majors themselves. Between them, these two Ubers should only cost you 600 food to kill.

Cold Blood - Insane Strategy

Strategy developed by Solstitium from the ICS.


Initially, dig out two chambers of seven and open up the cavern by the entrance. Kill the woodworm and use the food to create a chamber of seven food tiles. Make three soldiers and one additional worker. Then, dig out the single checkered beetle larvae to the right of your queen.
While the soldiers gather the food, use the workers to dig out a new chamber of 19 and expand the soldier chamber too. Build one more worker tile and two more soldier tiles. Keep the two new workers in the nest group.

Next, using the queen’s workers and the five soldiers, head south, making sure that food gathering and combat are off for the former and food gathering is off for the latter.
Use the soldiers to bully the LBA into retreating. Send the workers to gather the seven aphids while the soldiers collect the five aphids. With luck this will go smoothly. If a magnolia or tiger beetle kills an ant, restart.

With those aphids collected, leave the soldiers on gathering duty and the workers on standby. When ready, send them into the smaller of the two canyons by your nest. This will keep enemies from seeing them until you are ready to gather the seven aphids north of the BHA. Make sure you keep an eye on the LBA so that they don’t steal your aphids.
Once the penultimate seven aphids are gathered, get the workers ready again to get the last seven. If at any point the BHA meet them in combat, restart. The supermajors are lethal on later days. By this point you should have two more workers in the nest group too. They will help with the construction of new tiles and digging out of enemies.

Having collected 26 aphids to have a total of 29, prepare to harvest the pine cone with your soldiers, leaving the queen’s workers to harvest from the aphids. There is a golden moment in which the northern part of the map is clear of enemies. Use that time to gather some of the pine cone taking care to avoid fighting the bombardiers.
When the toads start spawning, head back inside and clear out some of the underground. There are four chambers you’ll want to excavate. Leave the checkered beetle and it’s larvae alone for now. Use the food to build more soldiers and expand the food store. I recommend having two groups: one of ten soldiers and a larger one. Fight the two toads which enter your nest then send your soldiers out to finish gathering the pine cone. You’ll need to toggle attack a lot to effectively deal with the bombardiers. The pine cone should be harvested upon daybreak.

Maintain a reserve of 250 food. When the BHA come for you, push them all the way back to their nest and camp outside it until they are weak. Finish them off afterwards. Gather from their nest and build up your army. In the meanwhile, use the group of 10 to fend off the LBA attacks and aphid raids. Night closes in about now. Use this time to get seven more aphids from the plant north east of your nest and clear out as much of the underground as possible.

On the following day, kill the LBA and harvest from their nest, then collect the 14 remaining aphids. Having done this, have enough nest workers to supply eggs and enough workers to gather from the aphids before sending your army at the bullfrog. Make sure to retreat to deal with the night wave of toads. Lastly, survive the final wave of amphibians with a reserve of 1,500 food.

Formicarium Builds

Developed by the ICS.

 ‎
 ‎› **Physical build type 1** – Intermediate
Black ants: meat wall and self-repair.
Mortars: corrosive and crippling.
Taunt majors: shockproof and sharp.
Vigorous: surefooted and last stand.

 ‎› **Physical build type 2** – Offensive
Black ants: dangerous and self-preservation.
Mortars: corrosive and crippling.
Taunt majors: shockproof and sharp.
Vigorous: surefooted and last stand.

 ‎› **Physical build type 3** – Defensive
Black ants: meat wall and self-repair.
Mortars: corrosive and crippling.
Taunt majors: shockproof and defensive.
Vigorous: surefooted and last stand.

 ‎› **Venom build type 1** – Specialists
Black ants meat wall and self-repair.
Rapid fire: corrosive and weakening.
Stun majors: durable and resilient.
Pervasive: evasive and last laugh (you could take either pervasive if you want to reduce food costs or vigorous with surefooted and last stand if you want to maximize damage).

 ‎› **Venom build type 2** – Generalists
Black ants meat wall and self-repair.
Rapid fire: corrosive and weakening.
Stun majors: shockproof and sharp.
Pervasive: surefooted and last laugh (you could take either pervasive if you want to reduce food costs or vigorous with surefooted and last stand if you want to maximize damage).

 ‎› **Anti-titan**
Black ants: meat wall and self-repair.
Rapid fire: corrosive and crippling.
Taunt majors: shockproof and sharp.
Pervasive: surefooted and last laugh.

 ‎› **Anti-ant**
Black ants: meat wall and self-repair.
Mortars: corrosive and weakening.
Stun majors: durable and resilient.
Vigorous: evasive and last stand.

Grinding Resources - Sol's Rush

Developed by Solstitium from the ICS.

Select Front Line, setting the difficulty to easy with the challenge active. Move all workers into the nest group, send out the media to gather leaves from the area directly north of your nest. The additional workers will speed up early groundwork inside the nest – they’ll need to build a leaf storage chamber by the entrance of capacity 110 to 130, make space to add seven more tiles to the existing worker chamber near the nest entrance, and dig out a small area for refuse. The refuse chambers should have a capacity of 160 to 180. After these tasks are complete, send the fourteen workers outside to harvest with the media. Do not harvest on any plateaus.

Using your current nest workers, dig out the media chamber to open up into the main tunnel, then build more media until you get exactly 14 of them. From there, build a single (taunt) major. By this time the army ants aren’t long off arriving so the moment you build the major tile you need to be bringing your media outside the nest with gathering off.
Put the major in a separate group to prevent it from turning back, then send your army to the bottom of the map by the first army ant spawn point. Optimally, you should arrive just after the first wave of army ant majors passes by. Avoid confronting them to save yourself from the flashbuff. After they have moved on, camp the spawnpoint and you should successfully beat the level in under or around seven minutes.

A practiced user of this strategy may complete the level up to nine times an hour, attaining more than 18,000 food in that time (assuming you select food as the bonus option, otherwise you’ll get about 10,800 food an hour).

Nest Design

Nest chambers have several optimal shapes of varying sizes. A typical nest chamber is compact as possible, allowing for the maximum number of upgrades. The ones listed below are the most effective that are commonly used:

Hexagonal chamber of seven.
Diamond chamber of fourteen with two speed tiles at the ends.
Hexagonal chamber of nineteen.
Hexagonal chamber of thirty-seven.

The above nest chambers can also be extended where necessary by adding tiles in a methodical manner which allows for further upgrades. In some cases the addition of speed tiles may be necessary.

- In all instances where the map has a surface, food storage should be placed to the left or right of the nest entrance.
- Refuse chambers should be fairly centralized.
- Heating chambers should be at the nest entrance so ants leaving and entering the nest are warmed, or placed in a hexagon chamber with ant groups directed in it regularly to warm up.
- Brood tiles should be placed methodically alongside an appropriate tunnel system with tactically placed bottlenecks.
- The queen should be as deep in the nest as reasonable. Too far from the nest entrance and your workers will take a long time to move eggs around. Too close and you run a higher risk of her being assassinated.

**Keep in mind some levels may not allow for optimal chambers like these due to lack of space, and that neat nest design is not always the best option in a level or speedrun, especially when upgrading your tiles isn't important.**

The ICS Discord Server

The ICS is a group of people known for their impressive challenge achievements and speedrun times, but their discord server is also open to people not part of the ICS and of all skill levels; Their server is the current main place of discussing EotU tactics and strategies, so if you are interested in speedrunning this game you might find it quite useful. Many of the runs listed on the leaderboard are from ICS members.

If you are interested in joining the discord server, or even going through the challenge requierements to join the ICS as a member, just click on the discord invite linked to this leaderboard.

Tug of War - Strategy

Strategy created by SirTanku from the ICS discord.

Initially, build army ant media and wood ant melee in a 3:1 ratio. The melee can tank damage whilst the media deal it out.

Once your income reaches 80, save until you reach about 150 food, then place a media. After that, wait until your food reaches about 190, and place an army ant major. The objective is to get five of them fighting as soon as possible to initiate the flashbuff.

Note this strategy isn't about winning at first. It's about delaying the enemy until you can get the army ant majors out.

A_corn

Empires of the Undergrowth 

New Home

The Harvest - Firebrake

dannybeans

Challenge mode ON

Challenge mode OFF

Collect%

Kill Enemy Queen

0.31

0.32 0.2331

0.2325

0.2022

0.2324

Version

Challenge mode - 1.1

Challenge mode - 1.2

Challenge mode - 3.1

Challenge mode - 3.2

Challenge mode - 4.1

Challenge mode - 4.2

Winning Condition - 3.1

The full version number, including patches, visible in the left lower corner in the main menu

Name	Author
A Bridge Too Far - Insane Strategy	A_corn 2 years ago
Adventure - Insane Strategy	A_corn 2 years ago
Cold Blood - Insane Strategy	A_corn 2 years ago
Formicarium Builds	A_corn 2 years ago
Grinding Resources - Sol's Rush	A_corn 2 years ago
Nest Design	A_corn 2 years ago
The ICS Discord Server	A_corn 2 years ago
Tug of War - Strategy	A_corn 2 years ago