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Ants

From the manual:

"Many of the smaller Bugs that existed were corrupted into these creepy nuisances. Individually the Ants are dumb and weak, but when placed together with hundreds of their kin they can be a serious threat due to their Hive intelligence. The Ants will attack anything in range of their Nest, and will carry Souls back for replication into more Ants."

Appearance:

Ants look very much like real red ants - small, segmented bodies, and hard to see without looking very closely sometimes.

Manouverability:

Ants tend to travel in groups. Many ants will head in the same direction to complete a task - collecting souls, scouting for player units, and attacking player units en masse. Ants have two distinct speeds - a slow speed, which they use when scouting out areas and collecting souls to bring back to the Anthill, and a faster speed used when they are heading to strike a player unit.

Attack Patterns:

When Ants plan on striking a target, they will usually walk past the target slowly at an angle, then double back at the faster speed in an attempt to swarm the unit. If a unit is attacking their Anthill, they will start to swarm the unit at the faster speed straight from the Anthill. Squads, Armours, and Engineers will be swarmed until they are destroyed, and Darwinians with either be destroyed, or carried in the Ant's mouth back to the Anthill, resulting in new Ants.

Attack Strategies:

• Ants: Squads equipped with Lasers can take out a few ants, but large swarms calls for heavy artillery, such as Lasers with Grenades or a few well-aimed Rockets. Battle Cannons are also effective, as long as the Darwinians manning them aren't carried away by the Ants.
• Anthills: Anthills are immune to Lasers. Air Strikes are the best way to take care of them, or a few rounds of well-placed Grenades. Battle Cannons are also effective, as long as the Darwinians manning them aren't carried away by the Ants.
• When souls are anywhere nearby, ants will (almost) exclusively harvest them, in a straight back-and-forth pattern from their 'home' anthill. You can exploit their greed by killing a few creatures, and watching for a line of ants to come for the souls. Simply face them down with a single squad, burning them down with laser fire as you advance on the anthill. You can "fight" the stream of ants all the way back to the anthill, and a volley or two of grenades should take care of the nest.
• Reverse Psychology: A hoard of Darwinians can easily hold off several Ant streams if they have acquired lasers. If they have also acquired grenades, the results are not as good. Engineers can steal the ant souls to reinforce the DG hoard. The Ants always lose.

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