Part 5: Anteater

Chapter 5 - Anteater



So today we're going to make some (small) progress.



You see, this is what I should've done long, long ago. The game itself tells you to do this. After you have a good number of ants, max the shit out of breeders so you can spread far. If you do this early, you can quickly snag tons of areas before the red ants get there, creating a much stronger opposition and letting you gain the upper hand against the red ants.

Now it's too late for this strategy to be effective, and now I'm locked in a stalemate. Of course, there are ways around this. It's just that the way I chose is Game Genie.



But first, let's get rid of these red pests.



It started out with ~300 blacks and ~120 reds. The game is fucking sluggish with that many ants, and it takes forever to-





OH GOD DAMMIT



Right, let's do this.



First, have to make room for my sisters.





Why fight the queen instead of letting the other ants do it? Why, because I'm cheating, of course!

Yellow Ant Always Wins:
DDA7-6402

Keep Maximum Energy:
DD88-0D0A

These two codes give me a chance in new colonies where the red menace is firmly planted. Note that this doesn't make you immortal from stuff like spiders and the manchild, but this means you'll never lose fights, and that tends to be the thing that kills you most often. Max energy comes in pretty handy as well, even if starving isn't usually an issue. You'll see what I mean shortly, though.



For now, let's go to a new location. Normally, this place would be wiped within a couple "turns."



The odds certainly aren't in our favor. But hey, that's what the cheats are for.





First thing I do is block all entrances. This way, the red ants can't invade and kill my queen.



Next, I march to their base.



Generally, the red ants will leave you alone. They're only aggressive in certain instances, like if you're near their kids.



Or if you're invading their nest.







Alright, so the queen's dead. That's our number one priority, as we want there to be no more new red ants. It also significantly cut the number of ants, since I don't think I murdered eighty of them to get there.

The thing is, we're still at a huge numbers disadvantage. Their queen being dead means shit if they can kill or starve my queen. Thus, we have only one option.



MURDER THEM ALL



The max energy cheat generally keeps your energy at max, though fighting reduces it a tiny bit. That's why we need the cheat, as we'll be so busy fighting that we won't have time to eat. It's possible to die of starvation simply because you're too busy murdering to remember to eat.















So I end up murdering, oh... 150 or so red ants. I find a nice chokehold that tunnels the reds to me, eager to take down the bitch who murdered their queen. Eventually, the survivors lose interest and go on trying to salvage their doomed nest.



Meanwhile, I take their children to the surface to die of exposure. Nature is fucking sadistic.



I then bring black ants to gather food, since a few were born and the queen's getting hungry.



Then more murder.



Eventually, I get the area to a position where our colony has the upper hand.



Now back to stoop land to curb red ant growth there. It'd be a bigger pain to lose it and have to gain it back.



OK, that's done.



Sweet, we're expanding! Soon we can overtake the yard!



Same strategy here. Block the black nest, murder the red queen, murder the entire fucking red colony.







I stick here for awhile, as this tunnel is a great way to get reds to fight me.



Then I murder more children.



These guys actually have quite the nest here. A shame they all have to die.

Wait, there's no shame in killing red ants.



...AHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHA

Ten minutes later...



It's so beautiful...





Unfortunately, my rampage is stopped short by the lardass messy enough to live in an ant-infested house.



Anyway, we've got new sisters, and the red ants are thinning out. Let's get some food and finish off the colony!





You know, after we admire our destruction. Anyway, the black colony has the upper hand here as well, so we're set.

Of course, this is actually pretty damn time-consuming. You have to stand there watching the red ants murder you over and over. Couple hundred red ants, with each battle taking a couple seconds, and it can take awhile. But hey, that's what frameskip is for. Still, eventually you have to hunt down red ants yourself by right-clicking/pressing B on them.

Speaking of which, I really don't like the controls. The mouse is too finicky, and it's hard as hell to get any sort of precision with it. This makes hunting red ants a pain. Also, the pathfinding for the yellow ant is stupid sometimes, as it'll just stop in the dirt because it tries to take the shortest possible path rather than the shortest available path. Meh.

Next time, I'll conquer the rest of the yard and destroy the original red ant colony. Expect me to gloss over a lot of the necessary murder to pull it off.