Ants Empire Beginner’s Guide: First Colony

Hatch workers before anything else — aim for 12–16 gatherers in your first session, before your first guard — and keep roughly 70/30 of your colony on food versus defense through day two. Food income compounds and defense does not, so every guard you hatch instead of a worker in hour one is food you don’t have when the first enemy wave timer appears. The upgrade order that keeps you from stalling is: hatching speed first, food storage cap second, gather rate third, your first defensive structure fourth — combat tech last, not first.

One caveat before the numbers below: ant-colony builders are patched constantly, so treat every figure here as a planning benchmark rather than an official stat. Confirm your own values in the in-game tooltip for each unit and building, because the ratios matter more than the exact integers.

What to hatch in your first 48 hours

Your colony has one resource that gates everything — food — and one that gates survival — bodies in the right place. The opening hatch order is designed to solve the first problem fast and the second problem cheaply.

Which ant type does what

The order to follow is the table read top to bottom. Workers first and continuously, a couple of scouts once your map edge is close, guards the moment your food surplus stops growing faster than your hatch queue, and ranged units only after you have a frontline that can stand in front of them. Skipping straight to ranged or elite units is the single most common reason a new colony loses its first wave — you spend four times the food for a unit that dies in the same fight a guard would have survived.

The worker split: how many gatherers versus guards

Think of your colony as a ratio, not a headcount. Early on, every point of defense you buy comes directly out of the income that funds next week’s army, so the correct split is the minimum defense that survives the next scheduled threat.

The split matters more than the totals. If you have 18 workers and you’re running 70/30, that’s roughly 13 gathering and 5 defending — enough to hold a single chokepoint against a standard first wave, and not enough to fight in the open. If your map has two entrances, either wall one or accept that you’ll lose gatherers there and budget the replacement cost into your food plan.

Worked example: is 13 gatherers enough on day 3?

Suppose your workers average 120 food per hour each (check your own gather stat — the method is what transfers, not the number). Thirteen gatherers produce about 1,560 food per hour. Five guards with an upkeep of roughly 30 food per hour each consume 150. Net income is about 1,410 food per hour.

Now price the two options. A sixth guard costs roughly four worker-equivalents to hatch and adds 30 food per hour of drain — it raises your defense by one body. Four more workers cost the same food and add about 480 food per hour of income, which pays for that guard in under ten minutes of idle time. That is the whole argument for a gathering-heavy opening, and it’s why the ratio only tilts toward defense when you actually have a wave on the timer.

Upgrade order that stops the first-wave stall

The stall happens when a player spends their first week’s food on combat tech, loses the wave anyway because they have no economy, and then can’t rebuild. Follow this sequence instead.

1. Hatching speed / queen chamber. Every later upgrade is limited by how fast you can produce units. This is the only upgrade that makes all your other upgrades arrive sooner, which is why it goes first.
2. Food storage cap. Overflow is the most common silent loss in week one. If your cap fills while you sleep, all the gather rate you bought overnight is discarded — a bigger tank is worth more than a faster tap until your cap comfortably covers eight hours of idle production.
3. Gather rate and worker capacity. Percentage-based, applies to every worker you own, and compounds with the worker count you’re already growing. This is your main economic upgrade for days 2–4.
4. Food production buildings (farms, fungus beds, whatever your version calls them). Flat base income that doesn’t depend on map control or worker survival — the part of your economy that keeps running while you’re being attacked.
5. Barracks / guard tier. A tier-2 guard typically beats two tier-1 guards while eating less than twice the upkeep. Tier gaps win fights more reliably than body count does.
6. Wall or defensive structure. This is what converts a losing open-field fight into a winnable chokepoint fight, and it’s usually cheaper than the extra guards you’d need to win in the open.
7. Combat tech (attack, HP, speed). Percentage buffs applied to a small army produce small absolute gains. Delay this until your economy can rebuild a wiped army inside a day.
8. Second resource and speedups. Save speedups for tier-2 upgrades with long timers, not for early buildings that finish while you’re reading the tooltip.

Common week-one mistakes and what they cost

• Hatching guards before 12 workers. Costs you the compounding income that funds the entire rest of the week — usually a two-day delay by day five.
• Ignoring the storage cap. Silently throws away a night’s gathering, which is often the equivalent of an entire upgrade’s cost.
• Spreading upgrades across five buildings. Many builders give a flat bonus per level, so a level-4 gather upgrade plus a level-1 everything-else beats four level-2s.
• Attacking neighbors in week one. Offensive pushes cost units you can’t replace yet; the first week’s job is income, not territory.
• Massing ranged units without a frontline. They die to the same wave your guards would have held, at four times the cost.
• Spending early on premium packs. If you do buy, the general market range for starter bundles in this genre runs from a couple of dollars to about twenty; none of them replace the upgrade order above, and a free-to-play colony that follows the sequence reaches the same tier-2 state roughly one to two days later.

Frequently Asked Questions

How many workers should I hatch before my first guard?

Twelve is the practical floor, and 16 is a better target if your map is quiet. Below twelve you don’t generate enough food per hour to replace losses, which means a single bad fight sets you back two days instead of one. Once you’re past 16 and your storage cap covers a night’s production, start hatching guards.

What happens if I miss the first enemy wave timer?

The wave still arrives; you just fight it with whatever is standing at your chokepoint instead of a prepared formation. If you notice the timer too late, pull gatherers back behind your wall, spend all banked food on guards rather than upgrades, and accept losing map resources instead of losing your colony. Recovering from a lost wave costs about a day of income.

Should I upgrade defense before attacking other players?

Yes, and by a wide margin. Defense upgrades protect everything you already own, while offense only pays off if you can hold what you take. Most players should not launch a serious attack until their economy can rebuild a wiped army within a day, which in practice is late in week two, not week one.

My version has different ant types — how do I apply this?

Sort your available units by cost and by whether they absorb damage or deal it, then apply the same logic: cheapest income unit first and continuously, damage-absorbing unit second, damage-dealing unit last. The names change between patches and titles; the cost-to-role ordering is what drives the first-week roadmap.

Can I recover if I lose my whole army in week one?

Usually yes, if your food production buildings and worker count survived. Those are the assets that regenerate an army, so protect them by keeping gatherers behind your defensive line whenever a timer is running. If both your army and your gatherers are gone, restarting is often faster than rebuilding from an empty colony.

Do I need to spend money to get past the first wave?

No. The first wave is a formation and timing check, not a spending check — a defended chokepoint with 6–8 guards holds it in most builds. Premium currency is best saved for hatching speed and long tier-2 timers, where it buys time rather than power.