You are one anthill on a small square world. So is everybody else. The ground between you is the whole argument.
Everything above says right-click and wheel, because that is what a mouse does. Under a finger it is:
Ants are not units you drive. You give an order to a chunk and a squad forms, walks there and deals with what it finds. You are a colony, not a cursor.
Losing a mound is not losing a fight. Mounds are how far you can reach and how many ants you may hold. Taking one off somebody hurts them for the rest of the game.
Everything in more detail is in the FAQ.
A room uses the seed and map settings under CUSTOM GAME. A private room is invisible — the only way in is the code, so share it with the people you want and nobody else.
The dash is only there to make the code easier to read — typing it without one joins the same room. O and I are read as 0 and 1, because a code never contains the letters O, I or L.
What are the three castes for? A worker is cheap (2 larvae), quick and carries things. A flyer (5) is the fastest thing on the map and crosses water and mountain, but it is fragile and will not walk a step out of its way to pick anything up. A soldier (10) is an armoured worker: 175 hit points against a worker's 100, and barely slower.
Why do ants appear without me buying them? They do not. Every ant is bought with larvae. What looks automatic is the garrison: each spawn point holds a standing population — twenty at the anthill, ten at every mound — and that is a ceiling on what you may buy there rather than ants arriving free.
How do I buy a lot at once? Hold the caste down rather than clicking it. It buys one, then keeps going and speeds up as it does, stopping on its own when the larvae run out or the spawn is full — under a finger and under a mouse alike. The ×N above the rows is how many a single press buys.
Why did my ant stop to carry a corpse? Bodies are larvae. An ant that finds one hauls it home, and that is most of your income in a fight.
Do ants heal? In the field, slowly. At a spawn, in four seconds — unless enemies are at the door, in which case the spawn is besieged and everyone inside has to come out and fight.
What is a chunk? One square of ground. Everything — ownership, orders, mounds, the fog — happens per chunk.
Why can I not go there? Water and mountain are impassable to everything without wings. Flyers cross both.
What are the dark patches? Scars where a mound was pulled down. The next mound built on one costs half.
Does the seed matter? More than it used to. It fixes the terrain exactly — same seed, same world, down to the order the fog clears in — and it fixes the colonies too: the same seed gives every AI the same mind, the same opening, the same first thoughts. This used to say it fixed nothing else, and that stopped being true when the simulation moved onto one seeded stream, which is what lets everybody in a room run the same war without the world ever crossing the wire.
What it does not fix is the game, because that is made of what the players did. Same seed, different orders, different war.
How do I take ground? Stand on it. Claiming takes time and an enemy standing there slows it; a chunk a fifth of the way through changing hands already counts as under attack.
Why did my mound stop sending larvae? A mound only runs its trail while it is joined to the anthill through ground you hold. Cut the road and the mound piles its larvae up until the road is back.
What does the anthill's level do? Larvae income, and how many mounds you may raise. Levels are bought — you must be holding enough ants, and it costs larvae — so it is a decision rather than something that happens to you.
ATTACK, DEFEND, PATROL — what is the difference? ATTACK sends a squad to take a chunk. DEFEND posts ants to hold one. PATROL walks them over it repeatedly. Only ATTACK is about ground you do not own.
Why is an order greyed out? The menu tells you: no ants to spare, a cooldown still running, the chunk unreachable, or an order of that kind already on it.
How many ants does an order send? ANTS PER ORDER, along the bottom. It starts at 1, so your first order is not your whole colony by accident. Its top is however many of your ants are idle right now — an ant already on an order, or hurt and walking home to be tended, is not yours to send — so the slider shrinks and grows with what you actually have. Forty is the most any single order will field, however big you get.
Is there a quicker way than the menu? On a phone, double-tap the chunk. It gives the order that chunk is already about — ATTACK on ground that is not yours, DEFEND on ground that is, UPGRADE on your anthill or a mound — and it refuses for the same reasons the menu does, saying what is missing rather than going quiet.
Does moving the map select things by accident? No. A gesture that travels anywhere is a pan, whether or not it ends up where it started; only a finger that stays put counts as a tap.
How do I call ants back? Click the order's chip along the bottom of the screen, or right-click the chunk again.
Can I use a radial menu instead? Yes — SETTINGS, RIGHT-CLICK MENU, RADIAL. Hold the right button and flick at a wedge to give an order in one gesture.
What is the comet in the sky? A trophy. Three hundred kills, levelling an enemy mound or taking an anthill earns one, and it burns in that colony's colours for two minutes.
What does it do? It boosts either damage or health for the whole colony, and several at once stack. The badges along the top of the screen show whose they are, and the glow around each badge is a clock running down.
Does weather matter? Yes. Rain puts out fires and leaves puddles; lightning starts them. A fire kills larvae outright — one lying on burning ground is simply gone.
Does night change anything? Flyers see less, the sky turns over and the moon comes up. The day is about eleven minutes long.
Can I change the time? On the title screen, yes — take hold of the sun or the moon and drag it along its arc. Hold it against the edge of the screen and the sky keeps winding that way, so the sun sets on one side and the moon rises on the other. Inside a game the sky is weather you live with; the slider in the rail is there if you want it. The sky on the title screen runs faster than it does in a game — gently while the sun or moon is up, and quickly across the empty stretch between them — so you can watch a whole day and night go by while you read this.
How do I win? Be the last colony with an anthill.
What happens when I lose? Your mounds fall, your ants go and the ground returns to the map rather than to whoever took you. You are offered your run's statistics and the chance to watch the rest of the war.
Can I give up? Right-click your own anthill and choose SURRENDER. It asks twice. That gives the colony away — it is losing on purpose, not leaving; you stay in the same match with nothing left to play. If what you want is out, you want EXIT.
How do I leave a game? EXIT, in the rail under PAUSE. It takes you back to the front door with your colony still standing, and from there you can start another game or join a room. It asks twice while you still have a colony — there is no save, so the map and the war go when you go — and once on a single press if you have already been knocked out or are only watching.
How do I get the menu out of the way? The ☰ at the top left, or Esc. On a narrow screen the menu is a drawer over the map and the button rides its edge; on a wide one it is a panel beside the map and folding it hands that width to the game. Both do the same thing.
Why does nothing tell me what just happened? Both running commentaries are off to begin with — MESSAGES and COLONY REPORTS in SETTINGS, under HUD. With eight colonies on the board they are several lines deep within seconds, and they cover the map they are reporting on. The threat line above the brood panel is always on, and a refused order always says why, so nothing you actually need is behind that switch.
Do my settings survive? Yes — key bindings, the menu style and everything else are kept in your browser, and only the things you have changed are stored.
Is there multiplayer? Yes. JOIN A ROOM makes one and gives you an eight-character key to share; a room can be public, so it shows in the list, or private, so the key is the only way in. Everyone in a room plays the same battlefield rather than their own copy of it.
What if someone drops out? Their colony holds rather than falling over. It defends its ground and keeps buying ants to replace what it loses, spending the larvae they had banked to do it — an absence is not a pause, and a colony that sat on its savings while its ground was taken would be handed back rich and beaten. What it will NOT do is spend on anything else: no levels, no new mounds, no attacks, because those are decisions about where the colony is going and they are yours to come back to. Their seat is kept for ten minutes, and rejoining puts them back on the same map in the same match.
And if someone leaves on purpose? The same thing happens to their colony — it holds, and the war carries on around it. The difference is that they are not coming back: EXIT gives up the seat, so it is not kept for them and the ten minutes do not apply. Nobody wins or loses by somebody else walking away.
Found a bug, or want something different? This goes straight to whoever maintains the game. Nothing is sent until you press SEND.
Your anthill has been taken.
STATS is how the run went, read off the colony the moment it ended. REGENERATE is in the rail — close this to reach it.