Ants start with a blank map

[Energy99]

A new idea: Ants but starting with a completely blank map.

1. Ants sacrifice themselves to build walls converting into fixed blocks.
2. The walls that one ant makes ocupies more than 1 square to balance against rushing, maybe 2 or 3 squares.
3. I would recommend using a hex map.
4, Ants can also be sacrificed to destroy adjacent walls by "exploding", An ant intent on exploding would have to not move for several turns.

[amstan]

I did want something like that with editable terrain a while ago. Never had any good idea though.

[Stocha]

The ant grid with several agent was a very nice and fun environment.
Although the first ant game idea was in the end rejected, and i quite disliked the combat rule, i think i would love to see another grid based multiagent game.

Here are some random ideas :

- Different ant types (although it was hard enough to visualize the different player colors, so you would need to limit the max number of player drastically)

- More complex food gathering : How about a push game. Ants can now make a directional push. They can also make a directed destroy action (in order to destroy food stuck in corners). Food is earned whenever it falls onto an hill (or whatever)

- full map information, with the current position of every agent friendly or unfriendly ? (this would simplify things while allowing for more complex strategies)

- Combat with the push principle, make ant dies whenever they fall into water. If several ant on a line push in the (same) direction of the line, then it adds up at the end of the line.
Example of a push principle :
WXXXYYW
Where W stand for wall/water
X are ant of the X color all pushing on the right (adding up to 3 push force)
Y are ant of the Y color all pushing on the right (adding up to 2 push force)
(there is a game named Abalone that kind of use a similar principle)
(Exemple of pushing effect : if the push force si > to number of ant in contact with the push force, then then move one step in the push direction)

- Ant digging (kind of the same idea as ant building)

- More type of ground (exemple : Digable ground, Undigable ground, open ground)

- More dynamic maps (exemple : water can now flood through open ground - you would need to have a way of building a block in order to close a hole / a way to clean up water )

- turned based moves (each player move sequentially rather than all at the same time)

[Stocha]

Here is a sample specification to illustrate the random idea i gave :

The game feature an underground ant colony war.
The games play up on a grid where each square can have only one value at the begining of a turn.

The values for the square are as follow :

Well : spawn water.
Breakable ground : can be digged through. It cannot be pushed
Empty ground : this will let pass everything.
Food ground : can be pushed and digged through.
water ground : can be cleaned up, will spawn water if connected to a well

PlayerQueen : Each player can have ants that act as queen (turn food into eggs).
PlayerDigger : Each player can have ants that act as a digger (can through wall and food).
PlayerPusher : Each player can have ants that act as pushers (can push other ants and food).
PlayerEgg : Each player can have ants that act as Egg (can turn into any type of ant or die-become-a-wall).


The game start with mostly BreakableGround, a few Well and a PlayerQueen for each player surrounded by a few empty ground squares.

Each player will know the whole map state at the begining of each turn.
For each ant he own (egg,queen,digger,pushers), the player can emmit one of 5 actions each turn (Each action represent one of the five adjacent direction North/east/south/west/doNothing).

- a PlayerQueen will transform a food ground into an egg ground in the direction of its action.
- a Playerdigger ant will gain one momentum in the direction of its action. Or if doing nothing it will clean all water (except Well) in a taxi radius of 2 around it. (cleaned water becomes empty ground)
- a Playerpusher will gain one momentum in the direction of its action, and will add its current momentum add any further momentum it gains during this turn to any ant positionned in the direction of its action. If it does nothing then it's moment will always be 0 in all direction.
- a PlayerEgg will transform into a PlayerQueen if it moves North. into a PlayerDigger if it moves east. Into a PlayerPusher if it turn south. it will transform into a player egg if it moves west. Finally it will turn into BreakableWall if it does nothing.


At the end of each turn, each ant momentum is calculated : west and east momentum cancel each other. South and north momentum cancel each other.

If an ant or food has momentum >0 in only one direction, then it will move one step in this direction. if it has momentum in more than one direction (both north and east for example) then it will be eaten (disapears)
If any food or ant other than a digger end up at the same place where already stand a BreakableWall then the wall stays and the ant or food disapear. if a digger ant end up at the same place where already stand a BreakableWall or a food then the BreakableWall or food disapear and the digger ant take its place.
each ant is moved before each food is moved.

water is cleand if in a taxi radius of two around a digger that does nothing. (it drinks the water)

any empty ground that stand next to a water ground will become water if there exist a chain of water (north/west/south/east) that connects it to a well.

If then a square has more than one ant or food then this square turn into a empty ground square.
If a square contains water it turns into water.
Any square that still have an ant on it is considered a empty ground with an ant on it.
each empty ground with no ant on it will have 5/100 chance of turning into a food square.

(this is only a sample specification and will most probably need tuning/clarification before it can actually be turned into an unambiguous game)