defeating those nasty ants

Anybody got some tips for the Yard? As far as I'm concerned, the armor is useless. I set up 3 battle cannons at the entrance to the ant area, all three were taken out by the ants. The only thing that seems to work at all is to make an end run around with an engineer to grab a building, then to build squad after squad there in an attempt to get close to an anthill and airstrike it. However, I only managed to do that with a single anthill before Darwinia crashed (grrrrrr!) and I decided to go to bed. It seems to me that there should be a better way, though, presumably involving the armor.

Also, how is it that the ants started with 159, I sent 2 loaded armors in there, both got taken out, and the ants ended up with over 200 once they were done collecting souls? I only sent 20 souls in there, how did that translate to over 40 new ants?

Yeah, that's not a great place to put them. I'd suggest getting them inside that area with the anthills. Put them close to the entrance and they'll get butchered. Naturally, this can be difficult.

It seems to me that the armour cannons don't kill the ants? I tried setting one up right near a nest, and it loads up and fires like crazy, but the ants just chew through the darwinians anyway.

The problem is that the cannons aren't terribly accurate. They hit larger bugs easily, and very effectly. With smaller targets, they don't work quite as well. Lots of ants are going to quickly overwhelm the tanks if they aren't placed well with proper support (other tanks or squadies). Of course, you can always take over control of the cannons if you so choose. The Darwinians aren't perfect aimers, you know. They lack strategic military experience. Anyway, lay down enough of the cannons in an area, and you'll hold off the ants fine. The key to victory is to airstrike the ant hills, I've found. Take those out and there won't be much trouble after that.

I found a save method, but it's time intensive.

1. Take control of the three towers within the ant-infested area. Move your engineers over the sea, the ants can't go there.
2. Create four squads near a tower. The ants will be likely to attack them.
3. Take one of your squads and approach a hive. Note that ants will come out of it once you get too near. Shoot them if possible.
4. Once you're close enough, shoot grenades at the hives.
5. Repeat this until the hives are destroyed.
   Note that ants are attracted to souls, they carry them away, probably to eat them or something.
   It'll take several grenade hits to destroy the hives and some of them are difficult to reach.
   If you try to destroy a hive that is on a steep position, you'll probably need to sacrifice your squad, as they can't throw grenades very far on a steep ground.
   This took me about 20 minutes, but it worked.
   These cannons don't really work. Ants are weak, but their numbers are incredible. They steal the darwinians from the cannons and render them useless.

I went for the squad method you suggested when I first played Yard since I placed my cannons far too close to the ant nests. The trick is to have them set back a ways, then you can make some headway.

Yeah, the cannons are pretty useless against ants, though they're good for defense later on. I used a similar strategy to Arion. (One thing to note about ants: They will not attack something unless they're right on top of it, or other ants are attacking it.) I snuch an engineer around to gain control of a tower in that area, then summoned squads and did air-strikes on the anthills. After that, it was just a quick mop-up, and I was done.

I found it pretty easy to do it with a combination of rockets and airstrikes.

Rockets fired constantly towards each hive as you approch keep the ants from leaving, then run up the last couple of yards to point blank, throw all your airstrike beacons on the hive and run for it.

Using rockets rather than grenades means they don't bounce back as you get close.

Pah! All you need is one squad on the hillside, wreaking havoc on the valley below. Once nearly all the ants are attracted to all those souls, you can bring in more squads directly to grenade the hives. Airstriking on a hillside is innacurate and not nearly as devastating on small area targets as constant grenades.

The problem is that the cannons don't have a long range. I had an ant road near the yard and a cannon in front of it. The cannon fired but the shots expired before they reached the ants.

Just a note, you can upgrade the armor program for longer range...

Hamster - I tried grenades on an ant hill once, it wasn't very effective. The most effective thing was to bring my 5-man squad right next to the hill, drop 5 level 1.0 airstrikes, and run. That's 10 bombs and it's usually destroyed before even half have been dropped.

I prefer airstrike, but whatever floats your boat.