Interesing new information every time I check this thread - great discussion!
John Deree, am I correct in assuming that the carnivorous army ants from Amazonian selva with their huge and strong mandibles are also the species with highly poisonous stinger and poisonous bite, too?
Or is that some other species? (I recall watching a BBC movie about Australian fire ants - are they those with highly poisonous bite and also agressive and very huge by ant standards?)
Supa, do not you think that fungi farms and aphid herds should be acually a "technology" rather than a natural resource like prey insects or flowers and allow volutarily terraforming for the Atta ants to make a great increase in food inflow to the colony from any ant-defined spot? - In fact agriculture means that a given society regardless of human or arthropodian origine becomes capabale of control and volitional increase of food production and greatly increase their numbers.
To reduce the Atta ants ability to overpolulate the world of otherwise hunting-gathering cultures of other colonial insects, the opportunity of making fungi farms and breeding aphid herds ("irrigation" - with a certain distinct graphics) should be restricted to, say, one type of terrain. -
For instance, only two types of terrains should be made irrigatable: the leaf-forest-floor terrain can be irrigated to produce the the fungi farm with an appropriate graphic and the grass-terrain can be "irrigated" to produce aphid herd with another appropriate graphic. - Maybe this would be interesting and realistic...
Natural resources needed for certain agriculture-related buildings could be maded out of images of "wild" fungi or wild aphid. But the Atta ants should be allowed to make their "irrigation" where tey want on appropriate terrains and their worker units should have to invest time and efforts into increasing the colony's food inflow just as it is in reality.
And another idea - with regard to the "technological tree".
We humans and the social insects are different in many aspects but one is the most important -
humans have the same "hardware" to employe any type of "software" and make any required changes - i.e.
Homo sapiens's brains and cultural models respectively. That's actually why our type of society develops by means of "technology" or changes in cultural and behavorioal patterns.
The arthropoda societies are largely "fixed" and have almost unchangeable social and behavorial models for every single species. Thus, they need to change|upraged their "hardware" every time they need to make changes in "software".
That's why the social insect societies have to develop by means of evolution of new and new species with more and more sophisticated behavour and society structures and not by means of just technological/cultural progress. Abd evolution is
slow...
THus, I would suggest to call the "tech-tree" an "Evolution-tree" with possible defferent paths passing through several subsequent "points of no-return"... THis would definately add an interesting twist to the gameplay in this great MOD and a palyer taking-on an ant civilization would start as a puny unspecialized poorly developed primitive species with vast horizons of development into any direction. But then, once a Queen (a player actually
decides to turn her small colony into a future killing machine of nomadic ants, and her colony passes through a certain evolutionary point (i.e. discovers technology) - there will be not way back. From then on this culture will develop more and more dangerous and expensive units and other features still to be defined, but it will never become peaceful farmers with weak solders but high "culture, population dencities and stable food supply. And vise versa.
Do you think it is technically possible in Civ3 ?
And another hint. - Since the arthropoda are behavourily and morphologically "fixed", almost every new unit would need involvement of yet another new speceis into the colony. Thus, the "tech-tree" could also include twists to be call in biological terms like "cooperation", "symbiosis", "consumation" or even "parasytism".
For example, the relatively defenceless basic bee species (forming you colony on earlier stage of a game) along their technological developent discover "symbiosis" with an african killing bees to get able to produce terrifying flying solders with strong attacks. Afterwards, the combined culture together eventually gets into, say, consummation relations with the Giant hornets for the nest to become able to produce ultimate flying killing unit of the game - the Giant Wasp of the East Asia. (they are lethal to humans, it is true - several deaths during a decade after a single stinging into victims' carotids or even simply in necks).
Well, hope this can be of interest.
Cheers.