Ant Legion: For the Swarm - Economy Guide
The first thing you need to learn when you play Ant Legion: For the Swarm is to make sure that you understand how economics work. The economy is the central part of your playthrough in this game because every action you do will require you to spend resources in the game. As a beginner, there is an illusion that makes you think that there is no need to gather resources early on because of the countless rewards that you get from missions but the game will quickly make you realize how important it is to manage your resources.
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Resource management is the most important part of building a stable economy. However, it is a bad practice to limit the number of actions that you do for the sake of “budgeting” your low amount of resources. A good standard to set is to have your economy be able to keep up with the rapid growth of your colony. We already mentioned this in our Beginner’s Guide so make sure to take note of the different ways you can improve your colony’s economy using this guide.
Production Structures
Your colony’s production structures will be your main source of supplies. This includes the Food Depot and Leaf Piles which are only a few examples of the resources that you’ll need as you play the game. These can be upgraded and increased as your Queen levels up so the number of resources that you acquire will increase as the game progresses. Their value lies in the fact that they produce resources even while you’re offline so you won’t get left behind while you log off.
Production structures may seem like they are providing very little help during the early game but they’ll eventually be your colony’s main source of income as you progress. While rewards may seem like they’ll provide you with all the resources that you need, you’ll soon realize that it’s simply not enough in terms of providing your needs at a higher level. Upgrading your production structures and increasing their number will eventually be the major contributing factor to your economy’s stabilization.
Bulk Resources
Bulk resources are a great way to supplement your economy during the early stages of your progression. Bulk resources are items that you get whenever you complete missions and defeat enemies in the overworld. These can be used to acquire a certain amount of a specific resource, which is important during the early stages of your playthrough where you’ll certainly run out of supplies while trying to complete the various missions and tasks that are needed to level up.
During the early stages of playing Ant Legion, bulk resources can practically pay for everything that you need to upgrade. However, the game upgrade costs for your structures and research as well as the costs of training new soldiers will begin to skyrocket as you progress. This means that bulk resources are mostly great during the early stages of the game but won’t be enough once you level up so don’t be dependent solely on bulk resources or else your economy will crumble under its own weight.
Researching Upgrades
Researching economic upgrades in the Research Lab is one of the best ways to boost your economy. This structure provides a branch solely to allow players to improve the different ways to gather and acquire resources for their colony. However, a lot of people don’t like using the Research Lab because it takes a long time to upgrade a single tech and there are multiple branches that you need to upgrade at the same time. This can seem like a daunting task for most people who want to upgrade their colony efficiently.
The general rule is that the economy tree is the most impactful branch out of all the research paths so players are encouraged to fully upgrade that first. Remember, even though the upgrades seem like they only give small bonuses, they will actually stack up significantly once you max them out. You always want your research lab to be researching new tech because it’ll allow your colony to stabilize its economy a lot quicker as compared to the other methods.
Node Gathering
Node gathering is the first way to actively supplement your economy using your army of ants. This method is done by having your army go to a resource node on the overworld and gathering a specific resource type that you need. This usually requires very minimal combat since it is more of an economic expedition rather than a military skirmish. The amount and speed of resource gathering depend on the quality and quantity of soldier ants that you have in the army.
A good tip to give players is to include a large number of mover ants in the army when node gathering to increase the capacity of resources you can take home. They are extremely weak at fighting enemies since they are specifically designed to take home the loot. Whenever your soldier ants aren’t doing anything, try to send them out to collect resource types that you are currently low on so that you can supplement your economy by using your army.
Pillaging and Raiding
Military skirmishes are the next way of supplementing your economy using your soldier ants. Unlike node gathering, pillaging and raiding other players will offer more risk and is usually not worth it especially if you aren’t experienced with real-time strategy games. This method involves sending your entire army to attack another player to steal all of their resources for yourself. Unless you are positive that you can overwhelm the enemy’s army with a less than 20% loss, you shouldn’t use this method to get resources.
Remember that the purpose of supplementing your economy is to gain more resources. Losing soldiers mean that you have to replace them by training new batches of ants which would prove to be counterintuitive if your main purpose of attacking another player is to get their loot. Try to scout out the enemy first if they have a decent army or not before you attempt to raid and pillage their colony. The best targets for this method are inactive players which have been attacked by stronger players already since they’ll most likely have no army to defend their base.
