Garden of Ants (GoA) - DEMO

You can change the speed of the game by buttons on left-bottom panel.

The life cycle of the ant consists of four stages: egg, larva, pupa, and adult. Fertilized eggs produce female ants (queens, workers, or soldiers); unfertilized eggs produce male ants.
Egg: Ant eggs are oval shaped and tiny (they are on the order of 1 mm long, but the queen's egg is many times larger).
Larva: The worm-like larvae have no eyes and no legs; they eat food regurgitated by adult ants. The larvae molt (shed their skin) many times as they increase in size.
Pupa: After reaching a certain size, the larva spins a silk-like cocoon around itself (against a solid object, like the wall of the chamber) and pupates. During this time the body metamorphoses (changes) into its adult form.
Adult: The pupa emerges as an adult.

Queen cast is the most important in the colony. She could establish new fungal garden. When the garden is established she lays eggs depends on sum of gardens sizes. Garden without queen became abandoned and could be colonized by another queen. When all queens are dead colony will die out.

Eggs are produced by queen and larvae are born from them.

Larvae can be transformed into different castes depends of reached colony progress and size of fungal garden.

Pupae represents last stage of ant development. Time of pupa maturation differs for each cast.

Workers are the fundamental units of the colony. They are digging the ground and harvesting nourishing grains from the soil or from the aphid grasslands. Grains serve as food for the fungus and allow the fungal garden to expand. In some cases they can attack the enemy ants but they are quite weak fighters.

Soldiers are basic assault units. They can attack enemy ants or patrol at some place to defend a part of the nest. They are fast but not so strong as major-soldiers.

Major-soldiers are strong and resistant warriors but they are quite slow. They can also attack enemy ants or patrol at some place to defend a part of the nest.

Acid-spitters are quick as solders but little weaker. They can squirt drops of formic acid and thus they can attack on longer distances. For that ability they are especially suitable for defending a part of the nest by patrolling there.

Thieves are the fastest ants. They are not able to attack enemy ants but they can steal foreign pupae and bring them back to their maternal colony. Ants from stolen pupae belongs to ant colony where the pupa maturation is finished.

Most important parts of the colony are the fungal gardens. Fungus is inoculated by ant queen and is fed by grains collected by workers. Fungus serves as food for the ants, regenerates them and the total area of the gardens determines size and progress of the colony. Queen remains on the garden and starts to lay egg depends on actual garden total size. Every queen can established several fungal gardens but colony garden became the garden where is at least one queen. When the queen move to another garden or die garden became abandoned and there is no more contribution to total colony progress of such a garden. Abandoned fungal gardens being slowly decomposed since another queen occupy them.
When new larva is ready cast buttons on left panel became active depending on the progress of your colony. Clicking on them by the left mouse you should convert one larva to desired cast or by the right click you can permanently select the cast to be produced. This permanent selection will be discarded when dependencies as colony size of progress drops under the limit required for desired cast.
Selected fungal garden is brighter and highlited on minimap by "lime" green.
When ant is selected his parental fungal garden is marked by green grid.

Aphid grassland is an area where aphids live and secrete sweet grains. You can harvest these grains by workers skill carry.

Allow to select place where fungal garden will be established.
Usage: Left click to icon and then left click on desired place where fungal garden should be established (excavated areas only).

Allow to attack specific living object.
Usage: Left click to icon and then left click to living organism which should be attacked.

You can specify the area where selected workers will dig preferably.
Usage: Left click to icon and then left click (or multiple clicks) to desired place where soil should be excavated.

You can set aphid grassland where aphids make the sweet grains. Workers will harvest these grains automatically.
Usage: Left click to icon and then left click on aphid grassland area.

Disable harvesting grains from selected aphid grassland.
Usage: Left click to icon will disable the task.

Allow ants to patrol at some position. It is good for guarding the access path to your colony or queen pupae especially with acid-spitters.
Usage: Left click to icon and then left click to place where selected ants should patrol (excavated areas only). When you holding "Ctrl" you can select multiple points and ants will circulate from one to another.

You can set the source of enemy pupae (enemy garden) for the thief/thieves. Thieves are going to steal automatically until garden belongs to enemy ants.
Usage: Left click to icon and then left click on enemy ant fungal garden.

Disables stealing for selected thief/thieves.
Usage: Left click to icon will disable the task.