Stormrage
Ever Present Taskmaster
Geez, those things are huge! I love this thread! 
Insects MOD (Discussion & unit preview)
- Thread starter Supa
- Start date
Woodelf : Currently, only the Antlion possibility (still unmade, I haven't looked for an appropriate model yet) has been approached. Anteaters and cats (cats ? poor beast 
) are too big for this scale. Bug-eating plant could be a good candidate to replace the antlion if it can't be made (and it probably makes more sense for the flying bees).
Another almost barbarians are the Spider Civ.
The Nasus has been completed. The Termites are going to war.
) are too big for this scale. Bug-eating plant could be a good candidate to replace the antlion if it can't be made (and it probably makes more sense for the flying bees).Another almost barbarians are the Spider Civ.
The Nasus has been completed. The Termites are going to war.
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John_Deere
Nothing Runs Like A Deere
- Joined
- May 23, 2005
- Messages
- 170
Just some helpful information as I have pretty extensive knowledge of ants.
" The Horde" that people have referred to is better known as the army ants. You would probably want the eciton burchelli species. They are the "classic" army ant. Type in army ants on Google image and you'll see them. They had huge mandibles, which could leave significant cuts. The army ant units should be the highest powered unit both offensively and defensively. They are superior to every other type of insect. They are the real kings of the jungle. The Atta is a type of ant that cuts leaves, which they bring back to their colony, and grow fungus. When the ants are carrying back the leaves, they are completely defenseless from predators, unless they drop their precious booty. Therefore, you would probably want the worker to be represented by the leafcutting workers. Their large manbibles mean they you would want to give their major workers low offensive values, but high defense, since they were a relatively peacful species, unless a predator came into their territory. For a bombardment unit, you would have a acid spraying ant, much like the "gunner" from the Empire of the Ants game.
Just some suggestions. Hope they help.
" The Horde" that people have referred to is better known as the army ants. You would probably want the eciton burchelli species. They are the "classic" army ant. Type in army ants on Google image and you'll see them. They had huge mandibles, which could leave significant cuts. The army ant units should be the highest powered unit both offensively and defensively. They are superior to every other type of insect. They are the real kings of the jungle. The Atta is a type of ant that cuts leaves, which they bring back to their colony, and grow fungus. When the ants are carrying back the leaves, they are completely defenseless from predators, unless they drop their precious booty. Therefore, you would probably want the worker to be represented by the leafcutting workers. Their large manbibles mean they you would want to give their major workers low offensive values, but high defense, since they were a relatively peacful species, unless a predator came into their territory. For a bombardment unit, you would have a acid spraying ant, much like the "gunner" from the Empire of the Ants game.
Just some suggestions. Hope they help.
Sword_Of_Geddon
Arbiter of the Sword
Giant Japanese Wasps versus. Africanized Killer Bees....who wins?
Anyway..check this out Supa: http://www.3dcommune.com/3d/store/display.mv?vs_bt_pmod2
Anyway..check this out Supa: http://www.3dcommune.com/3d/store/display.mv?vs_bt_pmod2
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.
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.
Fungi & Aphids irrigations :
Fungi shouldn't be made as an irrigation job. Attas don't cultivate their fungus out of their nest, but inside. As I see it, it will be a building requiring Leafs. Its effects : Maybe Double City Growth Rate and/or Allows City Size Level 2 + Happy Face.
For the Aphids, I like more the irrigation solution. Making it requires a primal source of Aphids first and limited to some terrains (Tree, Bush, Grass).
Tech Tree and the point of no-return :
Unfortunatly, it's impossible in Civ-3 :-/
And yes, it is probable that each species will begin as an early eusocial or quasi-eusocial state. One unit, no tech. I don't see how else I could reflect that.
SoG > Thanks ! Even if I don't buy them, some of them are nice enough to be easily converted in resources.
Fungi shouldn't be made as an irrigation job. Attas don't cultivate their fungus out of their nest, but inside. As I see it, it will be a building requiring Leafs. Its effects : Maybe Double City Growth Rate and/or Allows City Size Level 2 + Happy Face.
For the Aphids, I like more the irrigation solution. Making it requires a primal source of Aphids first and limited to some terrains (Tree, Bush, Grass).
Tech Tree and the point of no-return :
Unfortunatly, it's impossible in Civ-3 :-/
And yes, it is probable that each species will begin as an early eusocial or quasi-eusocial state. One unit, no tech. I don't see how else I could reflect that.
SoG > Thanks ! Even if I don't buy them, some of them are nice enough to be easily converted in resources.
>Fungi shouldn't be made as an irrigation job. Attas don't cultivate their >fungus out of their nest, but inside.
Yes I know but...
>As I see it, it will be a building requiring Leafs. Its effects : Maybe Double >City Growth Rate and/or Allows City Size Level 2 + Happy Face.
In Civ3 any building can only produce extra shields and other effects you've mentioned but notextra food supply, which is the primary function of fungi plantations... Even if it allows double city grouth where a colony will get the food for this growth?? (or maybe just appearing of appropriate bonus leaf resource for fungi cultivation with huge food-output, an analogus of human "wheat resource"?)
Yes I know but...
>As I see it, it will be a building requiring Leafs. Its effects : Maybe Double >City Growth Rate and/or Allows City Size Level 2 + Happy Face.
In Civ3 any building can only produce extra shields and other effects you've mentioned but notextra food supply, which is the primary function of fungi plantations... Even if it allows double city grouth where a colony will get the food for this growth?? (or maybe just appearing of appropriate bonus leaf resource for fungi cultivation with huge food-output, an analogus of human "wheat resource"?)
Plus we can't get two sort of irrigation. Or it will just be a graphical difference. And Aphids fit better than Fungi for a "terraforming" job. Thus fungi cultivation can't be a worker job thus they must be something else thus a building.
Afaik, no. Mh. A solution would be the Fungi Room to produce a "Food unit" every 15 turns. Food unit being : 1 pop. cost, 0 move, no action but join. But I think the AI wouldn't know how to use it. I think I tried this in the AvPvT mod and I had to use another solution (that can't be done here). And I don't think a human only solution would be a good one.
About the every disappearing/reappearing resources, I've bumped into a wall. The resources will disappear only if they're connected with a road. Meaning that food resource connected to the nest will quickly disappear but none resource from outside the frontier will replace them until most of the space is colonized.
Termites will be reliant to woodish resources, they won't have a high disapp/reapp ratio.
Bees will be mostly reliant to flowers. Them too won't have a high d/r ratio.
Only the Ants will be in a dangerous situation. To counter this, I'll lower the d/r ratio, but not as much as flowers and woods; some terrains will get back 1 or 2 points of food production; Ants will get Aphids "irrigation" tech lately; and perhaps they won't be so reliant on foods to produce their settler. I'm explaining : Perhaps I could make their palace produces 3 queens every X (long) turns. Simulating by the same way the swarming.
What do you think of it ?
Termites will be reliant to woodish resources, they won't have a high disapp/reapp ratio.
Bees will be mostly reliant to flowers. Them too won't have a high d/r ratio.
Only the Ants will be in a dangerous situation. To counter this, I'll lower the d/r ratio, but not as much as flowers and woods; some terrains will get back 1 or 2 points of food production; Ants will get Aphids "irrigation" tech lately; and perhaps they won't be so reliant on foods to produce their settler. I'm explaining : Perhaps I could make their palace produces 3 queens every X (long) turns. Simulating by the same way the swarming.
What do you think of it ?
Those changes sound good Supa. Makes me want to go outside and collect some specimens...when Spring comes. 
And off-topic slightly...one of the coolest things I've seen with bugs was when our mini rose bush was covered in aphids and we brought some lady bugs inside for a quick meal. Who'd have thought something so cute would have such an appetite! Cured the problem in no time.
And off-topic slightly...one of the coolest things I've seen with bugs was when our mini rose bush was covered in aphids and we brought some lady bugs inside for a quick meal. Who'd have thought something so cute would have such an appetite! Cured the problem in no time.
Lady beetle are way better solution to aphids than any pesticids (cheaper, safer, better for the ecology). One lady beetle can clean any plant in a record time.
Varwnos > Why would it be mass regicide ? Queens are just settler units.
Varwnos > Why would it be mass regicide ? Queens are just settler units.
Raw is War?
Soul Reaper
I'm really interested in this, and the more i read the more i want to play!
I'm going to assume you'll use the army and driver ant soldiers to represent the more poweful units for the ant civ? http://www.projects.ex.ac.uk/bugclub/raiders.html
I'm going to assume you'll use the army and driver ant soldiers to represent the more poweful units for the ant civ? http://www.projects.ex.ac.uk/bugclub/raiders.html
John_Deere
Nothing Runs Like A Deere
- Joined
- May 23, 2005
- Messages
- 170
Well, you could have a "no return" tech tree, simply be making it uneconomical to try any other way. For example, say you have two ant trees, nomadic, and agriculture. You could have a series of techs, that would allow for improvements, that would allow for the improvement of the next tech, and the next tech, and so forth until the player finally reached the tech with tangible benefits of units, and "actual" improvements. You could design the game so that the player would not have enough time to do both ant trees at a time, or go back and do the other tree after finishing one. It would be complicated, but it could be done.
Raw is War?
Soul Reaper
Only problem with that is the player with limited patience may get rather bored with the same units and improvements over long periods of time.
Unfortunalty, this solution would be quite heavy for the player, annoying for the modder and perhaps unusable by the AI. :-/
But we still have the Governments and their abilities. It should be easy to have at least 2 gov. for the ants, one Farmer and one Nomadic Army.
Farmer : Low or High War Weariness; Nuisance Corruption.
Nomadic Army : No War Weariness; Rampant Corruption (force fewer cities); 5 free units per town, 2 per cities, 0 per metropolis.
The Termites gained a new WIP unit, the Phragmotic Guard (based on Cryptotermes brevis) :
I'm also considering giving the Swarming concept to both Ants and Termites. Bees (and Hornets if they make it to the game) would still have to build their settlers (cost 2 or 3). Swarm buildings would require the Palace (or rather a building requiring the Palace as the palace is the same for all) or Forbidden Palace-type building and would spawn a Settler unit every X turn. I don't like the fact that it can only create one unit at the time.. Perhaps should I add two additionnals buildings requiring the first and virtually identical and hoping that players and AI would build them one after the other. Feedback ?
But we still have the Governments and their abilities. It should be easy to have at least 2 gov. for the ants, one Farmer and one Nomadic Army.
Farmer : Low or High War Weariness; Nuisance Corruption.
Nomadic Army : No War Weariness; Rampant Corruption (force fewer cities); 5 free units per town, 2 per cities, 0 per metropolis.
The Termites gained a new WIP unit, the Phragmotic Guard (based on Cryptotermes brevis) :
I'm also considering giving the Swarming concept to both Ants and Termites. Bees (and Hornets if they make it to the game) would still have to build their settlers (cost 2 or 3). Swarm buildings would require the Palace (or rather a building requiring the Palace as the palace is the same for all) or Forbidden Palace-type building and would spawn a Settler unit every X turn. I don't like the fact that it can only create one unit at the time.. Perhaps should I add two additionnals buildings requiring the first and virtually identical and hoping that players and AI would build them one after the other. Feedback ?
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