Insects MOD (Discussion & unit preview)

[The Last Conformist]

I need unit ideas for the Bee civ. Beside the unit you saw and the Queen, I've got nothing.

Well, being inconsiderate bastards, bees only have queens, drones, and workers (except for the non-eusocial species, who lack workers). Apart from arbitrary divisions, about the only way I see is using multiple species for various functions.


Considered a Wasp civ, BTW? I see some potential for humour here ...

 

[Supa]

Well, I don't know how I can get the drones in the mod as they are the male bees and don't do anything in the hive. Live, have sex, die. Workers assumes differents roles but it's determined by the age thus they don't have different bodies. Perhaps I may add almost eusocial species like bumblebees. Scout unit ? Killer Bee. Mmmh. African genepool tech. =)

About Wasps > I considered it but I put it aside. If I can get a functionnal bee civ, then I would consider it again.

About the resources, terrains and food : I think I'll gave 0 food value to most terrains. All food will come from resources. Resources will be harmless insect (or other little things) with a really high dissappearance probability and specific to some terrains. It is possible that only Ants will get these resources, Bees having flowers, Termites plants and wood. Some resources are already made (of which one beetle, the lady beetle).

 

[Gojira54]

they are the male bees and don't do anything in the hive. Live, have sex, die.

Ahhh... to be a Drone Bee.....

 

[Sword_Of_Geddon]

SoG > I've planned to release some of them periodically when the MOD will be finished, like R8FXT did for Anno Domini. Why, do you need them for a specific project ?

ShiroKobbure > I've currently no use for a beetle but thanks for the proposition. For the LHs, if you've got some good models, I'd be happy to see the result. If not, no sweat, I could probably do some myself.

I need unit ideas for the Bee civ. Beside the unit you saw and the Queen, I've got nothing.

Well I've been promising I'd add some geneticly engineered stuff for my future age, one for each government type. The Communist one I want to have giant ants..

 

[DJ Bonebraker]

Okay, here's some Ideas for the Bees: Bumblebees ARE social (they're just bigger than their Honeybee counterparts and live underground/in hollow logs on the ground), so they could be a separate Bee civ, but with some species of the "solitary" bees as common units for the two.

Sweat bees (the smallest bees, about the size of a small housefly, that are mostly metallic black with thin gold stripes on their abdomens) = lightly "armed" scout units

Flower bees (a small metallic green bee that's the size of a honey bee) could be an eventual upgrade to the first (i.e. have similar stats to the basic honeybee units, but move somewhat faster)

Leafcutter Bee: a black honeybee sized bee that makes nests out of chewed up plant leaves. Bites as well as stings... COuld be an artillery unit or some such.

Dogger Bee: Midway between Leafcutter and Carpenter bees in size, but looks similar. Upgrade from leafcutter possibly

Carpenter Bee: A wood-boring bee that is the same size as a bumblebee. Upgrade from the digger, maybe.

Wasps (if you're interested):

Yellow Jackets and Hornets are the two types of social wasps, and they look somewhat similary, but hornets have a thicker torax than yellowjackets, are more black than yellow, and build paper nests in trees, while yellowjackets build their nest in the ground (like bumblebees) they'd have these units: Drones, WOrkers and Queens (like the bees)

Other Wasp units:

Velvet Ants: Flightless wasp with a nasty sting that looks like a brown, hairy ant.. Basic wasp ground unit

Cow Killer: Larger and nastier version of the above. They have a red body with a black stripe on their abdomen... Up to 1" long

Mason wasps: Small (.5 in) wasps that build nests out of mud. black bodies with yellow markings

Potter wasps: slightly longer than the above, and with a narrower thorax, but otherwise similar looking.

Mud dauber: fast, narrow abdomened wasp that builds nests out of mud, could be a good scout unit. they are purply-blue in color.

Paper Wasp: Builds nests out of paper and is the same length as the above, but with a heavier body.

Cicada Killer: The grandaddy of all wasps... Up to TWO inches in length, and one of the most powerful insect stings.... Which the females use to paralyze adult cicadas which are then dragged into the burrow they dig and used to feed their larvae. Cicada killers look like a giant yellow jacket.

 

[Sword_Of_Geddon]

Don't forget about the Giant Japanese Wasp.......

 

[Supa]

Aah, thanks, both lists will help!

Bumblebees are social but queen can survive alone thus the category almost eusocial. They won't be a separate bee civ as I'm making a generic civ for each "species" (don't take species in the litterate sense ).

 

[Supa]

The Termite Soldier, now renamed Mandibulate, has been redone. New palette, civ-colors, recentered and pedia icons.

 

[Onza]

My God, what an astouding idea! - Supa you are a genius!
Playing a game as a social insect - it does rock!

Really interesting and so informative discussion - I do like it I never new much about arthropoda, nor their English names - it's great to learn new things

Now I can't wait for the MOD to be released!!! - Any coservative date? ))

As for the idea - I'd say that the concept of four generic types of social insects would do the best as each type civ could include multiple species with their respective units having specific features. Otherwise a single-species Civ would be way too-limited in terms of units and tech-tree.

The bees seem to be most restricted in this reguard and wasps do need to be included if one wants the Bee-civ to have any warrior unit at all (working bees do have modest defensive abilities but that about all...). And wasps are much more varied in size, life-strategies and apeearance - the wasp species array could make excellent source of various specialied and really deadly war-units in game (unlike mostly working-type bees).

And some wasp species are about the only insects that are naturally capable of surpressing the ever menacing unplayble Civ of the Arachnida...

The termites would make an excellent fortress-type defensive culture with units diffirentiated enough for any kind of needed tasks even within a single species - is that correct?

The Ants are a great kindom... absolutely shocking with their real agricultural traditions like fungi-crop growing and aphis-herding.

- In my view, the ants should be the only creatures in the MOD to be allowed to have agriculture techs and irrigation abilities wich turns otherwise food-less terrain into fertile fungi plantations and boost the colony growth. It would be cool!

On the other hand, the Ants could be devided into two majour Civ-types:

1) "The Farmers" - at first relatively "cedementary" hunter-gather type of society like Formica rufus etc. with hunting\war units capably of long runs - and then this society gradually turns into a "hi-tech" Civ of agricultural ants (like those from the Bolivian rain-forests I forgot the name :-( ) -

2) "The Horde" - carnivorous all-devouring killing machine of nomadic Amazonian ants with billions of worker\warriors to crash everything in sight...

The Hord would need to be devoid of any food-providing resource (feature based on Tech-tree) except just some prey of VERY high appearance-disappearance ratio and - I'd say - provided with cheap settlers (no to let the Hord to die-off quickly when resource is suddenly gone).

WOW - I'd LOVE to play the mode!!! Especially if the overal graphic standards will remain as exceptionally high as in the units you've already presented, Supa!

What about tech-trees here - are there any formalized ideas?

 

[Supa]

It's nice to see that this mod is not exciting only for me.

Release date : No, nobody can caught me saying the blurest date of all. It will be released when it will be done.

As for the idea - I'd say that the concept of four generic types of social insects would do the best as each type civ could include multiple species with their respective units having specific features. Otherwise a single-species Civ would be way too-limited in terms of units and tech-tree.

Well, yes, that's the idea from Day 1.

Wasps and hornets included in Bee Civ : This is really the last things I'd wish to do. I'd like to keep hornets and bees separated, as they're not close enough in my taste to fuse them. But it's true, it's harder to come up with units for the Bees, but I don't think we won't find enough. Hikaro already gave some good ideas. And if Bees finally have a lower number of units, I'd compensate with resources and buildings.

Beside Hornet Civ become more appealing day after day ;-)

Ants & Irrigation : I haven't decided anything mining and irrigating. But I don't know if any Civ should be able to terraform that much its surroundings. Currently, Aphids herding and fungis room are buildings necessiting resources.

Different Ant Civs : Mh. Mh. Mh. Mh. It could interesting. But it would split the number of units for each Civ. They will be multiple Civ of each "species" (Bee, Termite, Ant) but they are currently all the same. Maybe will they have different UU and civ strategies.

The bolivian ants you're speaking are perhaps the leafcutting Atta (I don't know their full extent) ?

What about tech-trees here - are there any formalized ideas?

No, I'm still gathering ideas, units, buildings and resources. Tech threes will be problably be completly or almost completly distinct. I don't know if I'll allow tech sharing. It depends of the total number of tech for each civs.

 

[Sword_Of_Geddon]

Don't forget about the Giant Japanese Wasp.......

need I say more?

 

[Supa]

I saw it and I didn't forget it. I saw a video of these critters attacking an imported European honeybee nest (man-made too). A real carnage because European bees tactics don't work with these giants. While the stingless Japanese honeybee kill them efficiently by overheat by letting them enter in the hive and raising local temperature by beating wings. Jap bees can survive higher temperature than the jap wasp.. Only a few degrees but it's sufficient to kill the waspes and not the bees. Very interesting fact.

 

[Sword_Of_Geddon]

How would the Giant Japanese Wasps fare against Africanized Killer Bees?

(sounds like some kind of wrestling match pairing..in this corner...blah blah blah..)

 

[DJ Bonebraker]

The Giant Japanese Wasps are a large variety of Hornets that are about 1.5x the size of American Hornets... Unless you know of some other kind of large wasp from Japan.... Some of those Japanese hornet nests can get really huge, too... I've seen one (that was vacated of the original occupants, of course) hanging in a Yakitori place in Yokosuka that was 1 M in diameter

Here's another Idea: Have the Honeybee units (worker, drone and Queen) upgrade to bumblebees (which have barbless stingers and can sting more than once, not to mention that they deliver more venom per sting than honeybees.... I've found that out from personal experience when I ran the lawnmower over a bumblebee nest....)

And I also forgot about the various tarantula/spider killer wasps (similar in habits to the Cicada killer, but they hunt spiders)... Could give them a stealth attack against arachnid units....

 

[Sword_Of_Geddon]

How would the Giant Japanese Wasps fare against Africanized Killer Bees?

(sounds like some kind of wrestling match pairing..in this corner...blah blah blah..)

Hikaro I've heard that they actually have a fatal sting to humans..

I also thought they were about half the size of a human hand...

Check this site out Stormrage: http://www.hornissenschutz.de/manda.htm

 

[Stormrage]

... 1 M like 1 (one) meter!?!?

 

[DJ Bonebraker]

... 1 M like 1 (one) meter!?!?

Yes, a hornet's nest that was 1 Meter in diameter.... the owner of the shop said he found it in a forest in Nagano Prefecture (About 70% of Japan, due to the ruggedness of its terrain is forested)....

Sword: it seems that you're talking about a different kind of wasp, and I think I may have heard of them before, but I don't recall ever seeing one when I was in Japan.... A wasp that size would fit in with the oversized Japanese hornets and the Gechigechi (a centipede that can get over a foot long and looks like the typical "hairy" house centipedes).

 

[Sword_Of_Geddon]

Maybe I just overestimated their size. But I thought we were both talking about Vespa mandarinia aka Asian Giant Hornet.

Could Africanized Honey Bees(Killer Bees) handle that monster? Or would even they end up like their european cousins?

 

[woodelf]

Without reading the entire thread do you have plans for barbarians that would include frogs, anteaters, birds, bats, and bug-eating plants? I can see any of these things in your mod causing havoc.

 

[DJ Bonebraker]

Yeah, I checked out that link... That's them alright... They didn't look that big when I saw one of their nests on the Navy base in Yokosuka (but then again, I was observing from a safe distance....).

It appears that the workers are slightly smaller than a cicada killer (which we have in PA), and the queens are 2.5 in long (slightly larger)....