great mod, but it's incomplete, would play it in a long game though

I think mostly been commented on, but this mod is not particularly complete. I'll just point out gaps I think. The ant hills don't do anything and thus are straight downgrades from fungal forests. You can "port" to the elemental plane, but there isn't any reason to, as none of the primal rituals work there, and you can't get back. I could never find anywhere to use the primal growth ritual. All the rituals are missing descriptions as well.

I'm probably not going to use this mod (sorry) but I'm favorite-ing and thumbs-upping it anyway solely because of the cover art. I had forgotten all about SimAnt, but the memories all came flooding back as soon as I saw that picture and for just a second it was 1990-something again and I was young and excited and glad to be alive. Then the moment was past and I felt more ancient and bitter than ever, but the nostalgia trip was worth it. Thanks for that.

(I'm in my 30's, so I'll be dropping dead of old age any day now.)

The anthills dont have a citadel tag. So I dont think they can act as the base. Luckily I spawned on a dark citadel. can you add the scourge feature into them? so they can spawn their own ants that fight for you?

I hope you add troop producing effects to the ant hills like the druid that would be so awesome especially if the queen is required

I love the stupid ants taking over the world. Seems like the mod is a bit overpowered though.
What does "a new nest" do? Seems like its making a new ant hill that does nothing.

Are you still working on this mod? Seems like the ant hills aren't spawning ants.

This is awesome. CoE is a sandbox for all sorts of creative and engaging stuff. Great job and hope you keep making cool stuff. :D

If the flying princess transformed into the new immobile queens to form new colonies its name would fit, and you then could leave the yellow ant to focus on leading antkind to victory.

I really like the idea that different kinds of ants would come from having queens in different places, with rarer places creating the more powerful ants you would want in the late-game.

Yeah it's hard to come up with another tier above Queen. Matriarch is about the only thing I can think of off the top of my head besides maybe Empress.

Good luck to you in working on this mod, though. I've been enjoying it quite a bit so far.

Well both aren't really entirely fitting. Princess is actually going to be named something else, but not sure what.

@Neferata Sounds more like an Ant Matriarch than a princess if she'll be the one spawning the queens, but to each their own.

Not sure how it'll work out, and it'll still be ants. Maybe the undead ants can be like argentine ants :P Kinda fitting

Doing just that actually. Testing out a game with immobile queens, but a far bigger focus on one single princess (meant to resemble "yellow ant" from sim ant the magical ant in that game)

I can do a bit more creativity than "ants" being a fantasy game. I was actually planning on doing something involving hades in particular will be next content update. but I want to test all these changes and do a bigger update before updating again. All that would actually involve the princess who will be immortal+unique. Then the princess can make more queens whose job will be more to just produce ants a ton. The princess herself won't be making ants however, except workers, otherwise the queen makes soldiers+guards of the various types depending what type of ant she is.

From there, the princess being the magical yellow ant can produce other types of species of queens who then produce other types of ants...like undead ants, or fire ants and what not.

Yep; the sprite has wings, but it seems like the queens themselves should quite possibly be immobile. Something to fix in the next version, once you've figures out the logic you want for it?

I note that the ants don't have much of a lategame as-is; they just do more of the same thing they're already doing. Actual lategame stuff could be related to Princess promotions. Under that system, flying Princesses could have the ability to build Anthills, and could promote to (standard, flightless) Queens in an Anthill... or promote to more *interesting* alternative breeds in appropriate locations, each of which produces their own novel breeds of ants, with abilities related to the type of terrain that sparked the promotion. Carpenter Ants from Ancient Forests? Fire Ants from Volcanoes? Crazy Ants from the Void?

I just realized I gave queens the flying trait and queens shouldn't...fly...

200 seemed fine. You buy more Queens because you want to spend more Fungus, so requiring a solid investment to get there seems appropriate.

I don't think the 200 cost is all reasonable for Anthills, but that has more to do with them not seeming to do anything (and costing a more-productive Fungus Farm) than anything else. Maybe make it possible to build Anthills on the surface, using "must be at least one tile from the nearest Anthill" logic, like that in the Dwarf mod? If nothing else, 100-cost surface Anthills would make it easier to tell if they do anything or not.

You are right, was a bit on the overboard side now that have had a longer go at it. I'll lower both to 100 for tonights hotfix. The princess update and anything else will come later simply because it would break saves, where as changing the cost of forests won't effect anyones games.

What do you make of the queen's new price? I wanted it harder to get queens, but it might be a bit much too.

Non-freespawn mode is kinda disappointing. Yes, freespawning units that can freespawn *other* units was always going to be OP. Even so, I feel like it'd be reasonable for paid-for queens to freespawn *small* amounts of stupid workers.

Aside from that, if you're looking for a niche for Princesses that doesn't involve nonsense like freespawning Queens, consider making them a fast flying unit that promotes to Queen via ritual (with no other spawning powers), and removing flight and the Queen-spawning ritual from Queens altogether. That'd give the ants a little bit of extra mobility at a notable cost, and a little more ability to get into hard-to-reach areas... but would encourage Queens to actually settle down once they're in a good place.

350 cost forests seem *too* expensive. Yes, it's probably worth discouraging the ant player from doing nothing but spamming fungal forests. Nerfing it down to a 117 turn ROI is a bit much, though. Given that the Primal version doesn't seem to be any more advantageous than the Agartha version, but with an even more terrible 167 turn ROI, that seems like too unreasonable a nerf.

Consider reducing the costs on these to 100 fungus each? If you're in a position where you can invest your fungus for three years in the future, and you can defend that investment for those three years, you deserve the reward, IMO.

Along with the changes below. You can now kinda spam workers/soldiers, guards are a little cheaper, but still the more "elite" ant. This was to make up for the fact you pretty much only have one queen for a while. In my half hour test game (before got defeated), this has made the mod a ton better (at least in my playthrough actually was enjoying it as much as sim ant). While I did kinda base these off leafcutter ants, its more supposed to play like sim ant where you go out exploring and getting food (fungus) than staying in the nest spamming fungus forests.

Also you do start with a dark citadel now, which for me is fine tbh. You don't recruit units from it still anyway. I'll later put it back to an ant hill that I had it before, but thats a small thing really since the ant hill citadel start didn't actually do anything besides cosmetic.

hm, sometimes you don't start with a fungus forest and sometimes you do. I did a small map 20 times before my half hour game, and 8 times no fungus forest around. I don't think the start terrain of a fungus forest actually works, so I might been lucky starting by default by near one so many times

Update coming today (likely). It will almost certainly need a new save. The changes are by far worth it.

Changelog:
-You'll start in argatha
-You'll start in argatha
-You'll start in argatha
-You'll start in argatha
-Did I say you'll start in argatha ?????
-fungus forests won't be spammable anymore early on, like a leafcutter ant nest, losing a fungus garden will not be a pleasant experience due to many mechanics working around them, but you'll be able to start a new one eventually. It takes a LOT of fungus to get a new fungus forest growing.
-fungus forests can only be built on flat terrain (not EVERYWHERE)
-Princesses...are pretty useless yeah. For now they will be commented out until they have a better use, so this alone will break your save.
-In the future will add a stupid unit to recruit who makes other stupid units. For now, the big focus is on argatha and balancing economy

Oh! I also noticed that we start with the ability to summon new ant queens on every queen (Making the princess summon kinda pointless at the moment).

Yeah, I'll go that route next update (not any time soon) I'll add an ant that does just that.

It also has come to my attention, and I noticed as well to be honest...resource generation is too much. There isn't amount of cost to ants that would solve that with it so being so easy to solve the fungus forest problem. So...fungus forests are going to be extremely limited next update for gameplay reasons. A fungus "forest" would actually more resemble ONE fungus garden in an ant colony...not a spam it all ability. Its main use in the future will be to get to primal planes, meaning it'll be harder to get to primal planes as well. Will make better gameplay.

So next update, be prepared for that :) But again, won't be any time soon (and I'd like to preferably wait for startplane to be fixed)

Ya the free spawn for commanders are fine to get rid of they just ended up getting stuck on the commanders that spawned them anyways and it was tedious to manually go to each spawning commander to detach the scouting ants yourself. With that said not having a way to get auto spawning stupid units is going to be sad for me since my favorite thing to do in this game is to over run the map with stupid units when the late game comes around (Main reason why troll king and voice of el are my favorite factions). I say a dream come true would be able to find out how to make one of the units be like the scourge ants where they make new ant hills for you and in return auto produce new units and stupid units for you. If nothing else works though you could do what the matriarch mod did in COE4 (Spider Mod) where you could recruit stupid units at your bases. Still a little tedious but that would be better than having to go to each commander and make the stupid unites that way.

Its a huge change in gameplay, but no longer will support free spawns. its too OP and broken, and I haven't been able to fix it. The battles will be smaller, but its far better this way. I think mostly it'll be liked more without a ton of OP freespawns everywhere. Even if it was just normal ants, it would still be too much. No longer going to mess with this feature of the mod, so no freespawns is a permanent change.

I think the 'infertile' queens are actually not infertile at all.

I also noticed in the primal plane, you can create primal fungal forests over the water

724 units in total actually by then

I noticed that uhh... Princess Ants can spawn a LOT of queen ants, which in turn lead to an ungodly amount of scouting worker ants. By year 3 winter, I had 35 queen ants (none commander), and hundreds of scouting ones, on top of 1 princess.

Ah, and the commander is in the "middle" row instead of the back. I find more effective that way in what I tested.

I tested the changes for half an hour and it seems a lot better. I'd have waited to upload to do a proper test, but the princess thing ruined it all tbh. That had to be fixed.

Here is the changelog

-Put back freespawn of queens and princesses (they spawn infertile "queens" (or...hmm...that is the idea...no matter what spawnmon I use they just spawn queens on me), more in description on infertile queens)
-Removed the stupid trait of princesses, made them worthless
-Substantial nerf to queens, but they can still hold their own a bit. Because freespawn was a bit OP, this in my test game allows a focus on defending queens still
-Slight nerf to princesses HP
-Substantial buff to commander, to roughly what the queen originally was before

Yeah; I feel like the main point of the ant faction is having lots of random ants bumbling around making a mess of things. Even if they aren't terribly strong, freespawn workers still do quite a bit to help flag territory and harass invaders.

Hm, yeah the ant hills (the ones created outside the starting citadel) should produce ants. They do in Argatha anyway, or did. Sometimes I think this is broken because I never see any at all appearing in an entire test playthrough, but then sometimes the anthill becomes ant spam...seems very random. Either way, I can't change or fix anthills for what I have available as they are based off vanilla anthills.

As for freespawn, actually is a good point. I am going to add that back in and make it NOT be freespawn queens because that made no sense and was really OP. Thinking about it now that you brought it up, queens+princesses should get freespawn workers. They'd still be pretty weak being workers, but make more sense.

And yeah, the next update is putting them back to semi-stupid as my test game found out the nerf was a bit much.

Expect an update later with the changes, probably tonight PST time at some point

Did you intend to remove strategic monster spawning from Princesses and Queens altogether? There used to be a lot of freespawn every round, and now there's none, only manual production. Which is... kind of a big change, lol.

You mentioned something about anthills spawning ants, and I notice a bunch of event triggers every round, but I haven't seen *any* freespawn after a couple of years, so something might be broken there.

Also, note that making Princesses Stupid (instead of Semi-Stupid) means that they can't use their rituals ever, since they aren't controllable... which makes them pretty useless. They don't need to be absurdly OP like they were before, but it'd be nice if you could point them in at least approximately the right direction.

Small update

Removed the change to Princesses making queens - Wasn't very realistic really and took away from the actual queen ants

Princesses now are fully controlled by the AI with the "stupid" trait. Princesses would be less controlled by the queen as they are more independent

Princesses main use is them randomly making ant hills which can produce ants (at random)

As a heads up. Princesses should sometimes randomly "makecolony" giant ant hill and they'll disappear after that. Their ability to make queens I may remove in the future, but added it to see how it goes for now. The other thing for princesses for the next update, I'll probably give them the "stupid" trait so its up to the AI to do what they want with them. To me for most ants, its a bit more realistic that way as princesses are more independent than other ants.

As for makecolony command that they should have (won't see it in-game, its a trait). I saw the princesses make an ant hill twice and didn't see it again during my follow up test, but the ability should work as I didn't change anything that should effect it.

Thanks for the feedback, makes the ants more realistic. Now queens and princesses can die pretty easily actually despite their armor/health since they no longer get magical spawning "queen" units :P Now like an actual ant colony, got to actually protect them or make sure they don't go into combat :) Plus more melee (or at least up close) is more realistic in general

Here is the changelog

Most ants are now more willing to go into melee (ants are almost always in wrestling matches)
Fixed queens and princesses spawning queens (in combat)
Commander can attack now, but has no melee ability
Gave Princess level two powers so she can spawn new queens
Be sure to heavily protect queens and princesses

Well you're making tweaks... it seems a little weird that the commander ant is totally helpless. Even if they prefer to stay back and let their soldiers do the fighting, it seems that they should have some ability to defend themselves.

Actually they should have a melee ability already, I'll prioritize that a bit more next update and mess around with it. Maybe I can give them a short ranged ability instead for an "easy" fix.

Yeah, tunneling is restricted to certain terrain, it does actually work though.

Thanks for heads up about the princess. I'll add a melee ability next time the mod is updated (which will be when they fix the startplane command).

Because the whole mod doesn't do what is intended after I finished up a game because the AI themselves don't actually go underground/tunnel except extremely rarely, and the time I saw them come into my tunnels, they DID function as they should. So if the startplane command worked and they started underground, it be a lot better.

As for the princesses+queens, that will be (well maybe, think see the problem with it) fixed next update as well, but it is kinda fun if a bit unrealistic.

Well...that all assumes we'll be able to use the startplane command one day...the update will come out then if it ever does :P

I note that if the Queen Ants had one more range on their attack, or if they were willing to get one space closer to their enemies, this wouldn't be an issue at all.

Tried this briefly. Tunnelling didn't seem to work (or, at least, I wasn't able to find any spots where I'd be allowed to tunnel during testing, which might have something to do with spawning in the southern desert?)

At one point I spawned a Princess, who produced a non-commander-type Queen Ant every turn. This was awesome, except for the fact that Queen Ants seem to use the ranged AI, and prefer to stay at a range outside that of their short-ranged acid spit attack. This means that in certain situations, they'll sit and stare at a handful of archers that are slowly killing them at range, without bothering to actually move up and engage.

Unless there is a game breaking bug, this will likely be the last update for a while and if it does get updated again (probably will with new content, like maybe stuff related to ant hills you control) it'll be a bigger update so I don't break saves with smaller stuff.

Uh...well you now start with an ant hill as a citadel. I did this before uploading originally and it was an instant game over. I did add a couple rituals after but not sure why that would magically fix it. I uh...just tried it again on a whim and it works? Well thats a great bonus :D The ant hill doesn't actually do anything as far as I can tell in my last test game, but its far better than a mountain with unrelated troops

As a note, other ants can still wander around randomly if they spawn and they aren't under a commander ant or queen ant. Princesses aimlessly wander around until they create a new ant hill, which I am pretty sure doesn't really have an effect (that I've seen in my test game since uploading the mod) but there it is

Sorry if this update breaks peoples saves, I try not to update too much since don't want to ruin people's games. However, I thought the change was worthwhile. The big one is the commander is fully controllable (instead of being considered "semi-stupid") otherwise battles wouldn't happen really and kinda defeats the purpose of an ant simulator. The queen in this mod is more meant to be more underground, while the commander's do their thing on the surface (or primal) and this wasn't possible before.

The other is a hotfix to the return to elysium. It could have been used anywhere (well anywhere with a fungus forest), but it was meant to only be used in the primal area. Small change considering it was limited in use, but now its more what its intended to be.