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Game Idea - SimAnt

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Fri, 02/11/2005 - 22:53
DSfan
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Joined: 12/31/1969

Thanks To Sedjtroll for this idea.

I have decided to try and work on this Ant Civilization game, relating some-what to the classic game SimAnt. All the stuff that Seth mentioned has been summed up here.

Player Boards - There are 4 boards representing different ant hills. Each player can expand on there ant hill, and make it bigger. This is balanced though because if you choose to expand, you are choosing to make all of the new tunnels public. This means that any player can go into it, and will usually cross-paths with another player. One part of your own player board is an exit, this exit leads to the main board.

Main Board - The main board is made up of land, and some of it can later be turned into tunnels, when a player expands. Out on the main land is food. Food is used to pay for different things like getting more ants, and expanding your hill.

Building Ants - When food is returned back to hill, you can choose to build units. Stronger units cost more money.

Worker - Workers are used to collect food, they are the cheapest ant in the bunch.
Soldiers - Soldiers are used to fight. There are 2 different types of soldiers. One is the regular fighting ant, and the other is the flying ant; flying ants cost a lot but can only be attack by the queen or other flying ants.
Queen - There is only one queen per ant hill. Once the queen dies, you are out of the game. The Queen can only stay in her chamber.

There is a rough sketch of the game for ya'all. Please tell me what you think, and what you want to see added or taken away.

Help Wanted!
I was wondering if anybody would be willing to maybe help to make the main board or the player boards on a computer, as I am not that making computer generated maps. I give credit!

Thanks in Advance,
-Justin

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Sat, 02/12/2005 - 02:31
#1
zobmie
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Joined: 12/31/1969
Game Idea - SimAnt

This sounds like a really fun idea. The main board is really big with randomly placed food tiles. Different food causes the queen to produce at different rates. Its all about protecting the queen.

some food replenishes itself, and some food is a one time thing. The one time pieces of food are special power ups that give your queen more abilities. For example, when you find half a twinky and bring it back to the queen, all units made while she eats the twinkie are +1 speed.

for example, a sandwich is 20 food points. The sandwich stays in place until the points are depleated. That way there can be big battles over giant pieces of food.

You have to have a majority of the food points from a piece of food to get the bonus. So, if a sandwich provides +1 speed to tunneling, you have to collect 11 food points from the sandwich to get the bonus.

You can also choose to feed troops with the food and replenish and power them up.

your ants should be very plentiful. Do a battle system sort of like risk. You can have lots and lots of troops, and you can move them as a group or as individuals. Only generals can organize groups.

and only groups can move entire pieces of food. A group of half the size of a piece of food can pick it up and move the whole thing instead of picking it piece by piece back to the lair.

There should also be random events during the game. Draw a card and see what happens. It might be a marauding praying mantis eating all the troops in its path. It might be a human dropping an entire submarine sandwich. It might be a flood! (erase all tunnels on the main board, destroy all troops on the main board, you only have whats left in your lair.)

sorry the ideas are so random, but i just wrote this as i thought of it.

andy

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Sat, 02/12/2005 - 11:03
#2
DSfan
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Joined: 12/31/1969
Game Idea - SimAnt

zobmie wrote:
For example, when you find half a twinky and bring it back to the queen, all units made while she eats the twinkie are +1 speed.

This may be fun, and bring little more challenge to the game, but may be hard to implement, as this is a board game not a computer game, and it would be hard to keep track of this kind of stuff.

zobmie wrote:
your ants should be very plentiful. Do a battle system sort of like risk.

Both of my worst fears in a board game were stated here. Huge groups of ants, I knew that it was coming to this. Don't get me wrong it's not a bad thing, it's just all the money, and time put into it.

Secondly, I hate the risk battle system, because it mostly uses luck. My 2 games I am making now (Storm Front, and Rotating Wonders) use different forms of card battling, but I want to try out something else. Any ideas?

zobmie wrote:
Only generals can organize groups.

I really don't think generals would be needed though, as they don't give anything special (You could just have a group of ants).

Everything else would work in the game, such as the random events. Sorry if I sounded so disaproving to your ideas.

Anyways, thanks Andy.
-Justin

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Sat, 02/12/2005 - 11:34
#3
Anonymous
Game Idea - SimAnt

How about the Wallenstein combat system? A big, 3D ant hill you toss all your ants into, and whoever gets the most to fall through is the winner!

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Sat, 02/12/2005 - 11:40
#4
DSfan
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Joined: 12/31/1969
Game Idea - SimAnt

DrZippy wrote:
How about the Wallenstein combat system? A big, 3D ant hill you toss all your ants into, and whoever gets the most to fall through is the winner!

Nice Idea, but any idea on how to make it? Guess I could just use paper, and paint it.

-Justin

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Sat, 02/12/2005 - 11:59
#5
Anonymous
Game Idea - SimAnt

Yes, paper mache` and paint would make it. The problem I would have is making the ledges inside proper to catch the little ants so they don't all just fall right through the hill :wink:

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Sat, 02/12/2005 - 12:42
#6
Hamumu
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Joined: 12/31/1969
Game Idea - SimAnt

First, you need nice cute plastic ants (I'm sure there are 500-packs of such things available somewhere), in N different colors of course. Then, you need a cracker box, from one of those fancy cracker brands - they're fairly long and skinny (sorta like a saran wrap box, come to think of it... but not as skinny or long). Then here's the simple ledge plan: buy a box of wooden skewers (available at all grocery stores, for shishkabobs), and start jabbing them into the sides of the box (and out the opposite side)! Cut out two sides of the bottom, and voila. Ants get tossed in, some make it out the bottom, some don't. Their little limbs make them extra prone to getting locked together and onto the skewers. You could also trim the skewers so your tower doesn't look like a pincushion.

That's a truly great system. I would play that.

Edit: OOH, I just had an even better idea that would look much nicer. Legos! Build a lego tower with various crossbeams inside (not too many or you'll never see your ants again). Another wacky lego idea of a different sort is the Egg Tower: a tower made of those legos with holes in them (Technic bricks), then you jam those black rods through the holes, lots of them, to make a pretty much solid web, then pour your ants inside, so that hundreds of them are trapped in there by the rods (toss out the ones that escape). Then, when your queen gives birth, that gives you the right to pull out one rod. However many ants of your color come tumbling out are her new troops. Other colored ants are tossed. Okay, it's turning into a kid's game now. But legos are cool. You could actually use a copy of a certain kid's game for the egg tower - is it Kerplunk? There's one that works that way.

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Sat, 02/12/2005 - 12:45
#7
DSfan
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Joined: 12/31/1969
Game Idea - SimAnt

Edit: Thanks for the ideas Hamumu, I like the legos one better, but another way instead of lego's could be to use Kne'x, as I have boxes of those.

Thanks Again
-Justin

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Sat, 02/12/2005 - 17:33
#8
Anonymous
Game Idea - SimAnt

Hamumu:
That pull the rod when the queen gives birth is Brilliant ! Nice thinking there

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Thu, 02/17/2005 - 17:52
#9
Anonymous
a sim ant twist

i had a really cool idea for your ant game. why just have earth ants? i say liven it up with some alien ants from another planet. you could even say you brought some of them to earth to make hybred alien/earth ants!! i think the alien ants should be diffrent bright colors.
i also think it would be neat to have special abilities for these ants. lets say mind controll. a roll of the dice could determine how many ants posess this ability. or how many ants have been mind controlled to the other side. both colonies could protect their individual queens and war with each other. i like the dice systemof a six sided die to show:

1 KIB - killed in battle
2 MIA - missing in action
3 POW - prisoner of war
4 EDB - eaten durring battle
5 WIA - wounded in battle
6 M-CON - mind controlled to other side
to top it all off you could pack it all in a nifty spaceship just for fun!

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Thu, 02/17/2005 - 20:38
#10
comport9
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Joined: 12/31/1969
Game Idea - SimAnt

Those are some of the funniest acronyms I've even soon. lol.

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Thu, 02/24/2005 - 18:24
#11
Anonymous
Game Idea - SimAnt

Quote:
Huge groups of ants, I knew that it was coming to this. Don't get me wrong it's not a bad thing, it's just all the money, and time put into it.

It doesn't have to be huge groups of ants though. You could just as easily make it an exploration-type game. Or, have it evolve as the game goes from a couple ants exploring into massive ant populations battling for the scraps.

One of the things I thought was really neat from the original SimAnt was the mechanic of scent trails. Basically, the scent trail laid down by one ant would help the other ants in the colony find the same pieces of food. You could have a similar mechanic where your ants moved randomly, unless they were on a scent trail. An ant could choose to lay down a scent trail, but would have to move at half speed while doing so. Ants moving along a scent trail might move at double speed.

This would also make it more interesting for you to include hazards on the board (such as in the original, your ants could wander into a light socket and die!). And, it's something different than the old "revealed tiles" mechanic

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Fri, 02/25/2005 - 03:34
#12
GROGnads
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Joined: 12/31/1969
Here is another idea

Hello all, I am not aware if anyone ELSE is even aware of this little 'nugget' of info, but SOME 'Ants' even SPRAY a 'defensive mist' of some sort and it is like 'GAS Warfare'! I have personally encountered this before and in its entirety, so I know of what I speak! Just another 'idea' to keep in mind then and Best regards on this as it 'shapes up', so have FUN!

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