Build An Ant Empire Upgrades Guide — Best Order

Why Upgrades Decide Every Match

If you have ever lost a nest you spent ten minutes building, you already know the truth: in Build An Ant Empire, the player with the smarter upgrade order wins, not the player with the biggest army. This Build An Ant Empire upgrades guide breaks down exactly which structures, units, and powers to invest in first — and which ones to skip until late game.

Upgrades touch everything: how fast your colony earns resources, how many legions you can field, how hard your Nest Gunners hit, and whether your rivals can even see your armies coming. Get the order right and your empire snowballs. Get it wrong and you stall out with an empty treasury and a nest full of enemies.

Check out complete codes list for more details.

This guide covers the full upgrade tree — economy, information, defense, legion, and powers — with tables, priority rankings, and the early-game picks that community reports consistently flag as the strongest. Whether you are brand new or stuck in a losing streak, the sections below will give you a clear plan.

Understanding the Upgrade System

Upgrades in Build An Ant Empire come from two main sources: nest structures you build after capturing a nest, and unit upgrades applied to individual ants. Nest structures fall into five categories, and each one serves a different role in your colony's growth.

The Five Upgrade Categories

Unit upgrades work differently. Each soldier type — warriors, workers, and gunners — has its own skill tree, and you can upgrade skills individually rather than leveling an entire class at once. That flexibility means you can tailor a legion to counter whatever your opponent is fielding.

One important note from player experience: the game does not explain the upgrade system especially well. A common community complaint is that ant upgrades feel "not at all very well explained or intuitive." That is exactly why following a structured upgrade order matters so much — you are not going to stumble into the optimal build by accident.

Early Game Upgrade Priorities

Your first few minutes set the tempo for the whole match. The goal in the early game is simple: get resources flowing, then convert that income into map control.

Build Economy First

Two structures carry the early game:

Without a Woodyard and Mushroom Farm down early, every later upgrade gets delayed. Community reports consistently recommend these two as the first economic investments because their payoff compounds over the entire match.

Best Early Unit Skills to Upgrade

Not all ant skills are worth early investment. According to player experience, the standout early upgrades are skills with universal compatibility — ones that work with any of the three soldier types:

• Gold Armor — defensive value that fits any legion composition
• Giant Tooth — reliable damage boost for early skirmishes
• Jack Jumper — mobility that helps you contest nests faster
• Slim Arched — flexible stat boost with low investment cost

These skills are easy to obtain and stay useful all game, which makes them far better early picks than niche abilities tied to a single unit type.

Mid Game: Information and Tech Tiers

Once your economy is running, the mid game is about seeing more and unlocking more. Information structures and tier upgrades are where most players fall behind.

Information Structures Ranked

Cartographers is the single most valuable information pick — knowing where nests and enemy legions sit changes every decision you make afterward. Scout Training pairs with it by making your scouting ants far harder to kill.

Unlocking Tier 2 and Tier 3

Tech progression runs through two key structures:

• Chemical Laboratory — unlocks tier 2 upgrades
• Chemical Library — unlocks tier 3 upgrades

You cannot reach the strongest upgrades in the game without both. If you notice your opponents fielding units you have never seen, it usually means they finished their Chemical Library while you were still fighting over resources. Treat these as mandatory mid-game checkpoints, not optional luxuries.

Defense Upgrades That Actually Save Nests

Defense is the most commonly neglected category, and it is the reason most players lose games they were winning. A nest without defenses is a free capture for any opponent who scouts it.

Core Defensive Structures

The Wood Barrier buys time; Nest Gunners and Nest Guards convert that time into kills. Slime Reserves stacks a flat 20% shield bonus on top, which community reports flag as one of the most cost-efficient defensive upgrades available.

Defense Priority Order

1. Wood Barrier — first line, cheapest, stops early harassment
2. Nest Guards — melee defense for when the barrier breaks
3. Nest Gunners — ranged damage that punishes clustered attackers
4. Slime Reserves — percentage shield boost once the basics are up

If you can only afford one defensive upgrade, take the barrier. It delays every attack long enough for reinforcements to arrive.

Powers and Pheromones: The Tide-Turners

Powers are activated abilities that can flip a losing fight instantly. They sit outside the normal upgrade tree, but upgrading them — especially through Pheromone Reserves, which reduces power cooldowns — is one of the highest-value investments in the game.

Best Powers to Unlock

Community reports consistently recommend prioritizing movement speed and damage output powers first. Dash Pheromones in particular is underrated — being able to shift your legions between nests faster than your opponent can react wins more games than raw damage ever will.

The Cooldown Multiplier

Pheromone Reserves does not add raw power, but it lets you use your powers more often. A player with three power uses per fight beats a player with one, even if that one is stronger. If you find yourself winning fights but losing wars, your cooldowns are the problem.

Best Upgrade Order: Full Priority List

Here is the condensed priority list that ties everything together. This ordering reflects both the structure effects and community-reported best practices.

A few extra rules from player experience that do not fit neatly in the table:

• Nursery reduces the food cost of legion recovery — grab it once your army starts taking real losses
• Legion upgrades that raise your maximum legion count are worth more than raw stat boosts once you are fighting on multiple fronts
• Diversify your legions — a mix of warriors, workers, and gunners beats a mono-army every time, because the counter system is rock-paper-scissors: warriors beat workers, workers beat gunners, and gunners beat warriors

Counter Chart Cheat Sheet

Use this when deciding which unit skills to upgrade next. If your opponent is massing gunners, upgrade your workers, not your warriors.

Common Upgrade Mistakes to Avoid

Even players who understand the system make the same errors repeatedly. Watch for these:

• Upgrading units before economy. A strong army with no income collapses in five minutes.
• Ignoring information structures. You cannot counter what you cannot see.
• Over-investing in one unit type. The counter system punishes mono-armies hard.
• Skipping defenses entirely. One undefended nest can cost you the whole match.
• Hoarding resources. Unspent wood and food are wasted upgrades — spend down regularly.

For players who want to see the official game in action, the Empire of the Ants official site is the best place to check patch notes and developer updates that can shift upgrade priorities between versions.

Frequently Asked Questions