Weaver ants for the next tier maybe?

I have seen on youtube just how big their empires get, they build homes and outposts out of leaves in rain forests. Here's a link for the episode about Weaver ants made by Kurzgesact who's videos have been posted before on a few thread some time ago.

I think having weaver ants added to the game would add some very interesting game play mechanics, kind of like the Fire ants with their 'bridges'.

EDIT: Oh wait, @pakitane16 already posted the latest episode about ants from the series made by Kurzgesact, Sorry.
 
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HofNerd

Colony
Beta Tester
Extremely Helpful Person
The 5th tier of ants has already been decided on by the developers. The 5th tier is driver ants, I think. (It was mentioned a few times in dev streams.)
 
This would work for a game called Stellaris, though. with the outposts and starbases etc being replaced by Weaver ant nests. and the systems (since this is a space game), would be replaced by trees, and the hyperspace lines connecting each system would be replaced by vines.

Here's a trailer for the vannila game:
 

A cool guy

Worker
I have seen on youtube just how big their empires get, they build homes and outposts out of leaves in rain forests. Here's a link for the episode about Weaver ants made by Kurzgesact who's videos have been posted before on a few thread some time ago.

I think having weaver ants added to the game would add some very interesting game play mechanics, kind of like the Fire ants with their 'bridges'.

EDIT: Oh wait, @pakitane16 already posted the latest episode about ants from the series made by Kurzgesact, Sorry.
Interesting idea, but that would mean a lot more work for the devs, so even if it could be implemented, we would have a long wait ahead of us
 

MikeSlugDisco

Community Manager
Staff member
Community Manager
EotU's systems preclude weaver ants. Sounds like a good idea for a game by themselves though!
 
EotU's systems preclude weaver ants. Sounds like a good idea for a game by themselves though!
Well, technically, you'd need to change visuals, to change the digging to placing leaves, and the dirt that isn't dug yet to the void (or some kind of blurry view of the outside part of the formicarium to show that it's on top of it)
 

MikeSlugDisco

Community Manager
Staff member
Community Manager
Well, technically, you'd need to change visuals, to change the digging to placing leaves, and the dirt that isn't dug yet to the void (or some kind of blurry view of the outside part of the formicarium to show that it's on top of it)

To make a satisfying experience with arboreal ants you'd want all sorts of things like climbing trees and branches, battles along those branches, a more 3D world with a lot of elevation between areas, multiple nests with an entirely new internal nest system, would you not?

I'm not saying it's impossible but it seems a bit outside the remit of a game like ours that has a fairly traditional RTS setup.
 

MedinB

Colony
To make a satisfying experience with arboreal ants you'd want all sorts of things like climbing trees and branches, battles along those branches, a more 3D world with a lot of elevation between areas, multiple nests with an entirely new internal nest system, would you not?

I'm not saying it's impossible, but it seems a bit outside the remit of a game like ours that has a fairly traditional RTS setup.
By titan climbing, it is surely possible. But they aren't super special. (in terms of what has been used before) Probably when the game leaves early access. Wood ants cover what they are special for, acid. Besides from tree, yes.

They do have a unique climbing system, but must be a pain to implement properly. It would break a lot of the games rules.
 
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MikeSlugDisco

Community Manager
Staff member
Community Manager
By titan climbing, it is surely possible. But they aren't super special. Probably when the game leaves early access. Wood ants cover what they are special for, acid. Besides from tree, yes.

... and living in large territories made of many separate spheroid nests. Titan climbing would be a pretty unsatisfactory way to do it - in that system ants cannot interact with anything else at all when they're in their imaginary "cart", they just get transported from one end to the other.
 

Durburz

Worker
I absolutely love weaver ants but I also don't see how this is a feasible project within the game. It would take so much extensive changing of game mechanics, designing new and intricate maps that have nothing to do with the base game and on top of it all, your only enemy would be other weaver ants. I am also looking forward to playing as army ants so Driver ants would have my preference either way.
Edit: one type of badass ant that could be added, because Driver ants attack termite mounds just the same as these sisters: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megaponera
Also known as Matabele ants, these ants are dedicated termite hunters and will engage in warfare to get their resources. These ants are also known for saving wounded sisters and healing them. They heal so fast that a wounded soldier is able to fight again in another raid the very next day.
YT link of Drivers ants vs termites:
YT link of Matabele ants vs termites:

Come to think of, it might be interesting to have termites as enemies as they would be able to repair walls underground rapidly, allowing for interesting underground sieges. Also note how huge some of the termite soldiers are in comparison, pretty badass in my opinion.
 
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VarmintLP

Queen
Backer
Ever since my eyes fell upon this thread my gears have been turning and thinking on how I would implement the weaver ants. At least their nest. ^^

As many of you know it is a very uncommon way to have an antnest in the trees unless you live in an area that hosts weaver ants. The thing about weaver ants is, I wouldn't know how the queens start their initial nest as I cannot imagine the queen making her nest on the leaves of a tree.
I would need to do some research on this to be honest.
So if we leave out the exact details of the founding stage and we would jump straight into the game with the queen and having let's say a few extra workers than in other missions and a small nest in the crown of a mango tree, next we would need to get started with how the nest expanding would work. What I could imagine is that you would need to use resources to produce silk for the weaving and construction. I could imagine the nest having multiple levels in itself as the weaver ants will pull the leaves together and then start building levels and floors inside of those leaves.

So this could be where it gets interesting now. I imagine you would have to have construction tiles in case you want to get more branches for the nest. This would be important as those tiles would be upgradeable by 3 as the normal ants would be. Each level would add another floor with a maximum of 3-4 floors. The floors will not be different in sizes as the floors will not have any buffs etc once reached. Now how should we proceed once this branch was used to the max?

We could start with a new leave nest by making it that the construction site is one till at the very beginning of the branch. The amount of available workers would determine how fast it would be expandable and each expansion would require more minimum workers to start construction and pull the leaves together. This would be how to grow the nest bigger. This would also mean that the nest does not need to be super massiv in lenght and width but it would be like it was stacked on top of each other.

I guess that at some point the mission would just end because the goal was reached and it would not be necessary to have more than 3-5 possible expansions.
Of course this would require some work and programming now to have the leaves bend etc. ^^

For the climbing it could be that there is only one tree to climb while there are other antcolonies nearby. For example a rivaling weaver ant colony on a tree far away who tries to invade and that tree doesn't have to be reachable by the player. It could also be something similar to the leaf cutter colony where they have to prevent a colony of army ants from invading their nest. :)

The enemies could be praying mantis as those climb in trees and might be a good threat and food source for the colony. Maybe also add some spiders that try to inhabit the tree and want to build their nest on your tree branch or make those the enemies that are sitting on some of the to be build nests.

As a bonus fact, weaver ants that are kept by antkeepers may actually build their nest straight onto the glass of their setup.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kC0XUkY1n4I&list=PL5vZEY2A9f_gNv_WTOpsfzS6WgCuyzLqN&index=6
When I was at the antstore in Berlin I remember that the ants had build their nest against the glass panels too and that they had made triangular floors in the corners which is basically what they would have done inside of their leave nest.

Video of the start of the colony with extra info.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kwz27psu3MY

Anyway I would love to know what you guys think of this and if wanted / needed I can try to explain it better to you and what I mean. :)
And yes I would LOVE to see weaver ants make it into the game. One way or another. :D
 

Scyobi_Empire

Colony
Extremely Helpful Person
Ecosystem Beta Tester
This would work for a game called Stellaris, though. with the outposts and starbases etc being replaced by Weaver ant nests. and the systems (since this is a space game), would be replaced by trees, and the hyperspace lines connecting each system would be replaced by vines.

Here's a trailer for the vannila game:
I play stellaris alot, but I personally don't see the correlation to Weaver Ants. You have to remember that the levels have to be small enough to be played in one go, due to no saves.

I'd say one level would be defending a small part of territory with you not building ants but getting reinforcements from a score system by killing enemies, then starting as a small colony having to clear out your nest area then invade a nearby colony (the reverse) as the second level.
 
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