The ant colony means the ants living together but here the word colony is normally also used to refer to the physical nest built underground too.

The different owner status of colonies

Orders

The player may set the orders of colonies from anywhere in the world.

Ratio on what workers should do: Get food, expand the nest's capacity or help breeding to increase population.
(From level 5) Ratio on how many Worker and Warrior ants. The colony strives towards that ratio and workers can be turned into warriors and vice versa. (Every minute a small shift is done)
(From level 8) Ratio on the expanding: Normal or Secret. Secret chambers can not be destroyed by humans but are slow to build.

The orders last for a time depending on your experience level and then the ratio will move towards just having workers getting food. You will have to look after your colonies from time to time. The time it lasts depends on you experience level: Level 1 - 45 minutes, 2: 1.5 hour, 3: 3 hours, 4: 6 hours, 5: 12 hours, 6: 1 day, 7: 2 days, 8: 4 days, etc. Purpose of this feature: Unattended colonies shall become weak in defence and population shall decrease in the long run.

Properties

The colony has

Population (the number of ants living there). This population is directly related to the zone of control (zoc) that may interfere with other colonies. The area of the zoc in propotional to the polulation, i.e. the radius is propotional to the square root of the population.
- Worker count
- Warrior count

Inherited from the nest:

Capacity (max ants and max food)
- Experienced players may build secret chambers too. Those can not be destroyed by players themselves, only by ants.
Food (how much food is stored)

Founding

See Build Nest and Colonize

Over time

Ordered to expand, the colony expands the nest's capacity.
Ordered to breed the colony do so if there is enough capacity.
If the food level (r_workers * r_food) is above 40% the food increases. If lower it decreases and when out of food, ants start dying. NOTE: This is one way to kill your colony.
If the number of ants in the colony is bigger than the nest capacity limit, the number of ant is slowly decreased
Slowly migrating actual Worker and Warrior amount towards the setting (ants are given new tasks)
Sometimes cave ins and other accidents occur (decreasing capacity and killing ants)

Calculations done

For now calculations take place every other minute. r_nnn below is the ratio on that order setting. Using a linear model. This makes one colony "slow to turn" but by using many colonies it gets done faster. Use ar_worker=worker/(worker+warrior) in some formulas instead of r_worker to reflect the actual population.

capacity += r_expand * ar_worker * const
secret capacity += r_expand * ar_worker * r_secret * const (NOTE: secret is a part of the capacity)
workers += if (worker+warrior < capacity) r_breed * r_worker * const
warriors += if (worker+warrior < capacity) r_breed * r_warrior * const
food += min(capacity, (r_food * ar_worker - level) * (workers+warriors) * const), Gathering and eating, if r_food*ar_worker kept at level or above the food increase, else it decreases. Testing with level = 0.4. NOTE: Food can be negative, to affect how many dies in steps below.

Transform workers to warriors and vice versa

if (to many warriors compared to workers) warriors -= const, worker +=const , i.e. if ar_worker > r_worker + 0.01
if (to many workers compared to warriors) warriors += const, worker -=const , i.e. if ar_worker < r_worker - 0.01

Starving:

if (food < 0) workers += food*ar_workers, warriors += food*(1-ar_workers)
if (workers + warriors < 2) colony is dead

Decaying.

food turn bad, slowly decreases? -= const similar to setting 1%?

Decaying both inhabited and not inhabited

if (capacity > 10 or not inhabited) capacity slowly decreases -= const similar to setting 1%?
if (capacity < 2 and not inhabited) nest is broken and destroyed

TODO Sligtly different values for different species? If one is better at breeding, one at exanding and the other at fighting?

== Every N minutes

Animal attacks (or moves)