Empires of the Undergrowth is an ant colony management game, in a fast-paced real-time strategy style. The player excavates their nest underground, constructing tunnels and chambers to store food and raise brood. On the surface, the ants claim territory, gather resources, overwhelm fearsome arachnids and clash with other colonies. Nest design, army size, composition and attack timing are key to securing victory.
- Carve out and construct your underground nest to suit your strategy
- Engage in fast-paced colony versus colony combat above ground
- Play as different ant species and explore their unique traits and weaknesses
- Encounter and overpower dangerous beetles, arachnids and other awesome arthropods
- Grow your pet formicarium over time by completing missions
This optional beta is testing some fairly large changes to custom games, particularly AI colonies - as well as experimenting with more bold changes to ant stats specifically in that game mode. These changes are being tested in some extra levels, too, where we feel its appropriate.
For the first time we are separating stats between the story and custom games, to allow for better balancing (they have slightly different needs) and some more experimentation outside of the more rigid structure of the story. Most stats are staying the same for now, but there are some notable changes.
PLEASE NOTE: Were taking some broad strokes with experimental changes to ant stats and abilities in custom games! As such they might seem a bit extreme, which is why wed like to hear your feedback in the optional beta. Well be refining as we go on! Please post your feedback in the Steam community forum or on our Discord .
You'll notice a new tab on the main menu titled DLC - there is nothing there for now, but in the future this is where DLCs like the Myrmecia ereptor Kickstarter reward skin will live.
The version of Unreal Engine 4 the game runs on has been updated - please keep an eye our for any weirdness. There are also several balance changes, particularly to the newer story levels (5.x). Weve be very keen to hear your thoughts on those, too.
The optional beta is only available on Windows 64 bit systems, and only on Steam. As well as the featured changes there are a large number of fixes and other balances. Recent changes to in-game text are currently lacking localisation and will display in English.
Code: balanceandchanges
If you would like to join the beta, the code is balanceandchanges. If you dont know how to join a beta and would like to, follow the instructions below:
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Patch Notes
Changes - Custom Games ONLY
Changes - Story & General
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Other Changes
- Achievements can now be completed on New Game Plus!
- Hovering over achievement in the achievements menu will show the highest difficulty it was achieved on
- The Nian Beast and Festive Spider levels can now be accessed at the appropriate times of year
- Festive Spider now uses the same music as Hibernation
- Festive Spider now uses the updated rotten log textures (WIP - will look overly contrasty for now)
- It will now snow in the Festive Spider level!
- Extra levels The Culling, The Culling 2, Tug Of War (1, 2 and 3) and Cramped will now use custom game stats rather than story stats
- Environmental textures will now be more detailed (WIP - some levels may look dark due to the deeper recessing the extra ambient occlusion pass is causing, please report if you see this, particularly in extra levels and custom game maps)
- Tile hover window now displays a message when tiles have been locked out
- Graphical updates to Tug of War 3
- Game engine updated to Unreal Engine 4.27 - please keep an eye out for any weirdness here
- DLC menu added to the main menu in preparation for future content such as the Kickstarter reward (Myrmecia ereptor worker skin)
Fixes & Optimisations
- Fixed a bug where AI was sometimes unaware of underground invaders in freeplay
- Bullet ant attack damage increases from minor improvements should now work against targets that are not executed by their attack
- Fixed an issue that could cause Matabele ant medics to get stuck at the queen (happened a lot in Tug of War 3)
- Fixed an issue in The Culling 2 where floating seeds were not falling in a small section of the map
- Fixed an issue that could cause resources to not count towards score in some levels
- Fixed an issue with Imprisoned where termites sometimes could not path to where the water would be
- Narrator in custom games should talk about termites more when they are fighting, rather than calling them ants
- Assassin bugs will now despawn after 10s like other creatures in 5.1 and 5.2
- Tug of War 3 name now in keeping with the other ToW levels
- Final objective in 1.2 Subjugation now marks as finished on victory
- Fixed an issue where two voice lines were showing as the wrong scientist
- Fixes for UI scaling
- Minor optimisations to large creatures and queens
- Memory use reduction (more things should only load into memory as needed)
Known Issues
- Some extra levels will appear dark or overly contrasty due to rendering changes - please report them if you see them
Minimum Setup
- OS: Any reasonable new Linux distro (Ubuntu 16.04)
- Processor: Intel Core i3-4340 / AMD FX-6300Memory: 4 GB RAM
- Memory: 4 GB RAM
- Graphics: nVidia GeForce GTX 660 2GB / AMD Radeon HD 7850 2GB
- Storage: 2 GB available space
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