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[Sanctume]

Well, with 1 year child to adult maturation, the Queen needs to live a bit longer. 

I don't see anything wrong with the same dwarf years longevity.  I see plenty of monarch turn overs in legends within a 125 to 250 year history.

Idea: Make males permanently cave adapted so they are useless in surface fight, but will defend if need be underground. 

I can see it now, queen in corner of the tavern on her nest box.  A large dance area where all the males are socializing, dancing a reciting poetry. 

Hardly any hauling is done, and the female workers are stocking up on booze, laying eggs, or training 6-arm wrestling.

[KittyTac]

Wait, I thought workers didn't lay eggs, only the queen did.

[MottledPetrel]

Only queens lay eggs if we're following normal ant rules, at this point I think we're more speculating as to what would make the most sense gameplay wise.

[KittyTac]

Only queens lay eggs if we're following normal ant rules, at this point I think we're more speculating as to what would make the most sense gameplay wise.

I'll give my two cents: We start with a limited number of workers that must dig to adamantine to make the queening item.

[MottledPetrel]

That would definitely make it interesting, but in practice I have no idea how accomplishable such a feat would be with only 7 workers and no migrants.

[KittyTac]

Just dig as quickly down as possible. It should be doable.

[IndigoFenix]

Sanctume, unless you're planning on creating a new DFhack script (and DFhack doesn't even work in the new version AFAIK) most of your suggestions aren't possible.  You can't restrict the castes a caste can produce, or adjust hatching times, or make babies mature in under a year.

Here's my suggestion (I can even make the creature file if you like.)

Only queens and males are fertile.  All queens and males are heterosexual and interested in marriage, ensuring that you don't wind up with a non-breeding queen.

Aside from the queen, ants have short lifespans.  They are also small and tend to die easily in combat.  This makes it important to keep producing new ants.

One in 20 ants is a queen.  This makes the chances of having at least one queen after the first few migrant waves pretty high.  You might have more than one, but taking care of them is still important.

Ants are babies (renamed "larvae") for one year.  They then mature directly into adults.

It is also worth noting that egg-laying civs have a bit of extra micromanagement, since they will collect and cook their own eggs if you don't forbid them.

[Spriggans]

Yay.

Easiest implementation is to make Queens only lay eggs. Not the workers.

Because in DF, you must be married for eggs to hatch.
So if every worker is female, we'd need a ton of male to fertilize the eggs. And it turns into a normal game.

----

For embark, I thought embarking with 7 workers, and dfhack in 1 adamantine.
The queening item could be called "Royal dwarven jelly", maybe.. And be made from royal jelly and  adamantine.
So you'd have to make royal jelly. Which isn't too hard for 7 dwarves.
Or I could dfhack in the ingredients, so we have a queening item right off the bat.

----

I'm ok with new borns beings larvaes for 3-4 months. Then adults. The queen will have maaaany babies in her arms.

----

The last little trick I must figure out before launching the game is the way to make multi-generations work.
See in DF, you can't marry a sibling. You can marry cousins though.

Let's consider that :
Queen A makes 100 babies.
Queen A dies of old age.
babie B is turned into queen.
babie C is a drone.
Well... B and C can't marry... Because they are bros and sis.. (same mother : A)

=> I have to find a way to create an INTERACTION that removes the family from a creature then.

If I can do that, we'll probably start playing soon then !
I believe people are interested enough

[speciesunkn0wn]

People are absolutely interested. You have Sanctume himself in the comments.

[MottledPetrel]

I think the answer to the inbreeding problem would be to have two queens at the start, so we can have to major blood lines going. After those two bloodlines start interacting things should be fine. And I think dfhacking in the initial queen item at the start would be fine and actually preferable.

[Sanctume]

Questions:

Will these ants need to be married still to make babies?

Will queen ants require nestboxes to lay eggs?

Will non-fertile female ants lay eggs also? 

Given 1 Turkey Gobbler can fertilizer multiple nest boxes, won't it be somewhat feasable to have multiple nest boxes for 1 Queen laying 1 egg each; and having multiple males have a chance to fertilize each? 

Wasn't there science that once egg is fertilized in the next box, the hen / queen can move and the egg still hatch?

I'm thinking that if multiple fathers fertilize the eggs, then there will be no issue with males fertilizing eggs.

[MottledPetrel]

Egg laying citizens work much differently than egg laying animals. The egg layer has to be married to a suitable male, and that male has to be in the general area when the egg layer lays the eggs in the next box for them to be fertilized.

[KittyTac]

Wait, here's a problem: I can't "read" tilesets. Can we play in ASCII?

[MottledPetrel]

You can easily remove the tileset when you take the save.

[Spriggans]

1  Will these ants need to be married still to make babies?

2  Will queen ants require nestboxes to lay eggs?

3  Will non-fertile female ants lay eggs also? 

4  Given 1 Turkey Gobbler can fertilizer multiple nest boxes, won't it be somewhat feasable to have multiple nest boxes for 1 Queen laying 1 egg each; and having multiple males have a chance to fertilize each? 

5  Wasn't there science that once egg is fertilized in the next box, the hen / queen can move and the egg still hatch?

1 /2  Yes

3 Still. Lay eggs yes. But these will never hatch. Nor be eatable (probably because some ethics things). In my test, I had all the unhatched eggs dumped because they are worthless.

4 That's not how it works. Males don't fertilize nests. They fertilize the female. And you can't really control what nest box the queen claims.

5 Yes. Queen doesn't have to stand in the nest box. I had eggs hatching after the mother was dead before. So eggs can hatch without any care.
BTW, it makes me think : dwarves will gather eggs and put these in food stockpile. IDK if food stockpile eggs will hatch. I would say no. But you must be careufull and disable "dwarven eggs" in your stockpile for babies to hatch then.


*Starting modding*