All Legions & Upgrades in Empire of the Ants

If you want to achieve victory against the warring termites in Empire of the Ants, understanding the Legions at your disposal and knowing how to use them is crucial. If you're wondering how they work, here's our handy guide to all Legions in Empire of the Ants and their upgrades.

How to upgrade all Legions in Empire of the Ants

While each nest can only have one legion assigned to it, remember that you can have more than one of that type of legion overall if you wish. In other words, you can have two or three Warrior or Gunner legions on the map at a time.

Workers

• Upgrade Costs:
  • Tier 1: 20 x Food | 2 Chambers
  • Tier 2: 40 x Food | 2 Chambers
  • Tier 3: 60 x Food | 2 Chambers

Worker legions are primarily responsible for transporting Wood and Food back to their respective nest, but as a versatile melee-type legion they can provide significant attack power as well when needed. That said, they are strong against Gunner legions but weak against Warrior legions, so if you're not having them transport resources, your best move is to have them flank an enemy Gunner legion.

Warriors

• Upgrade Costs:
  • Tier 1: 20 x Food
  • Tier 2: 40 x Food
  • Tier 3: 60 x Food

Warrior legions are solely responsible for attacking enemy nests and any advancing legions, and they should always be on the frontlines alongside any Super Predator legion. They are strong against Worker legions but weak against Gunner legions, so make sure to try and keep them out of range of enemy Gunners. However, if you can manage to upgrade them to the Elite Warrior tier, they're virtually unstoppable against almost any legion.

Gunners

• Upgrade Costs:
  • Tier 1: 20 x Food | 2 Chambers
  • Tier 2: 40 x Food | 2 Chambers
  • Tier 3: 60 x Food | 2 Chambers

Gunner legions are your quintessential ranged legion that provides long-ranged offensive support behind Warriors, Super Predators, and Workers. They're not recommended for melee attacks and should always keep a sufficient distance from the enemy. Technically, they're strong against Warriors and weak against Workers. While legions like Warriors are a traditional red color, Gunner legions are more of a gold color with green abdomens, signifying the acid they fire at their foes.

Support

• Upgrade Costs:
  • Tier 1: 20 x Food | 1 Chamber

Support-type legions are singular as their only purpose is to provide regenerative support to legions within close proximity. They have no offensive capabilities whatsoever and are weak against all legion types, so sending them to battle can be risky and you need to position them carefully so they don't get swarmed by any type of enemy legion.

Unlike most other legion types, you can only build one support legion per map, and they cannot be upgraded. If they're taken out in battle, however, you can still recover them in the same manner as any other legion. Depending on the mission, support legions can include Aphids (most common), a Snail, or a Rhino Beetle.

Super Predators

• Upgrade Costs:
  • Tier 1: 50 x Food | 3 Chambers

The Super Predator legion is a unique one in that it's used solely for attacking enemy legions, and is universally strong against all types. These mini-tank critters are a force to be reckoned with, and can even contend with Elite-tier legions, provided they still have some support. Only one of these legions can be built per map, and depending on the mission they can either by Dor Beetles (seen above) or Rose Chafers (metallic green beetles). Having one of these legions is an absolute must when possible.

Empire of the Ants Legions Guide - Upgrades & Unlocks

When embarking on strategy missions in Empire of the Ants, you'll often find yourself surrounded by allied nests that each need their own upgrades and respective Legion to help you achieve victory. Legions are specialized ant factions that serve various purposes for either taking down enemy nests or defending their own.

Legions themselves are one of the five different categories of nest upgrades (seen above), and when you select that category at a particular nest there will be five legion options to choose from:

• Workers
• Warriors
• Gunners
• Aphids
• Super Predators

These options are further subdivided into three different tiers, and their availability is contingent on the tier that your nests are currently at. Remember to help increase the tier of your allied nests, you need to least unlock the 'Chemical Laboratory' (Tier 1) upgrade under the Economy category. Unlocking the 'Chemical Library' (Tier 2) upgrade in that same category will give you access to all possible upgrades, including the 'Elite' versions of all legions.

The higher tier your legion is, the higher their stats, and it's crucial to have powerful legions to contend with enemy ones that are equally powerful. If you send a legion that's too weak against a more powerful enemy, yours will likely lose and disband. You can discern a legion's tier by the circles on top of that legion's health bar. If it has one circle, that is a Tier 1 legion. However, if it has three circles it is an Elite, Tier 3 legion.

To create a legion for your nest, they all have a Food cost (the higher the tier, the higher the cost) and most of them require that the nest have at least two chambers available. Once you've picked one, it will take a few minutes for that legion to fully develop and become available for you to use.

If you want or need to speed up the process, select the legion at the bottom of your screen, and press and hold the appropriate button to use more Food to do so. This can deplete your resources quickly, however, so use it wisely.

A nest can only house one legion at a time (as seen above), and if you're looking to command as many as possible, you'll need to create one at each nest. Also, make sure you have at least the 'Multitude' (Tier 2) nest upgrade unlocked, which increases the maximum number of legions you can command by one. The 'Swarm' (Tier 3) upgrade will further increase that amount as well.

Remember that your legions are represented by circle symbols on the field, while the enemy's legions are represented by diamond symbols.

If a Legion is defeated in battle, it will temporarily "disband" and take a few minutes to reform. Similar to when you first make a legion, you can use Food to expedite the reformation process and get them back into battle. The 'Nursery' (Tier 2) upgrade will decrease the recovery food cost by 30%, so unlocking that at one of your nests (will apply to all legions) is highly recommended when doing more challenging missions.

Be aware that if you're doing a mission on a map where your allied nests are split by a deadly body of water, even if you can find a safe way across yourself, legions assigned to nests on one side of the map will not cross the water to the other side. Instead, you will need to build another legion on the other side to contend with necessary threats there.

Finally, if you want to change the assigned legion at a nest, you can opt to 'Destroy' that legion (press and hold the appropriate button either in the upgrade menu or when aiming at the nest from afar) and make a new one.

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