S I M A N T -- T H E U N O F F I C I A L G U I D E By STEVE NOVICKI 'The Electronic Ant Colony' Contents 1 – Introduction 2 – The Ants 3 – The Enemies 4 – How To Invade and Attack Red Ants 5 – Legal Information 6 – Contacting Me 7 – Credits As To Where I Got My Information 8 - Farewell 1 – Introduction Hello! My name is Steve Novicki; I will be your guide throughout this FAQ for the computer game SimAnt. SimAnt is a simulation game where you are the "boss" ant of a colony. You must single-handedly take over the house and yard by eliminating the red ants from the property and driving the humans out of the house. Sounds pretty boring, huh? NOT! It is very interesting, and if you actually play the game enough to understand how to play, what to do, and what the objective is it's a very fascinating game. 2 – The Ants In SimAnt, there are many different kinds of ants, like in the real world. They all have specific jobs they must do for the good welfare of the rest of the colony. They also live in many colonies. Listed below are the kinds of ants in SimAnt. Yellow Ant – who you are controlling. You can be any ant in SimAnt, a Soldier, a Worker, a Queen, a female; you can even be the Spider! Every ant, at your command, will follow you wherever you take them, even into battle with the red ants. Workers – just what they sound like, they work. Workers are the primary source of labor in the colony. They mainly forage for food in the outside world, and help around inside the colony. Workers are the same things as Soldiers, only smaller, therefore not requiring as much food to keep healthy. Soldiers – Soldier ants are worker ants, only larger. This helps when in ant combat with red ants or the Spider, but it is also a hindrance. Soldiers require the most food of all ants, therefore increasing the amount of food you must have at any given time. But they more than earn their keep for it, because they fight the red ants, battle the Spider, tangle with the Ant Lions, and just about fight anything and everything that comes along. Cool. Queens – queen ants are the prized possession in SimAnt. If a queen dies one way or another, the game is lost. You must then transfer to another patch, if you have one. If not, you have lost the game. But you can prevent this, by manipulating the game and its features so that the queen goes deeper and deeper into the ground so that it is impossible for the red ants to find her. Queens are very expensive to feed and care for, and all they do is lay eggs, so do not create queens unless you have to. New Queens – all new queens are are fertile females. Their sole purpose in life is to found new ant colonies in and around other patches of the Yard and House. Since they are very expensive to care for and feed, you should not have that many until you are rich with food in your colony to feed and care for them. Males – males are kind of like new queens; their sole purpose in life is to fertilize new queens. Males are big and lazy, and don't do anything except fertilize new queens, so don't make any unless you have to or are rich in food. All ants are created via the Caste Control menu, a button on the toolbar that allows you to set the amount of all ants produced to be certain types. Pretty simple, once you get to know it. 3 – The Enemies Like everything in real life, ants have enemies. These enemies are mostly deadly and vicious, sparing not a single soul that they might encounter. That is why I have written this section, to tell you about the different enemies in SimAnt and how to fight and defeat them. Red Ants – these are your main competition and enemies in SimAnt. They eat the same food you eat, live in the same grounds you live on, and are trying to take over the same land you are trying to take over. Your main goal in SimAnt is to try and defeat the Red Ants by attacking and killing them. Just make sure you do so quickly, because as soon as the Red Ants outnumber your ants (the Black Ants) by a safe margin, they will launch a complete, all-out attack on your colony, so you better have enough Soldier ants on hand at all times. Just like your colony, there is a Red Initiator ant. This ant is the red equivalent of the Yellow Ant in your colony. If the Red Initiator ant dies one way or another, another Red Ant is picked at random to be the Red Initiator ant. All it does is wander around the outskirts of the Red Nest. If it spies trouble on the horizon, it sends out s call for help to its fellow Red Ants, and reinforcements will soon be on the way. They then meet you (or whoever the challenger is) as far away from the Red Nest as possible to avoid having you invading their nest. Spiders – these are not real trouble, only a big nuisance. The only times that they are a serious problem is early in the game when you have very few ants in your colony. But the Spider can also be a big help to you, by eating lots of Red Ants. It doesn't really matter if it eats you, the Yellow Ant, because you are just reborn. The Spider can be killed, but it is difficult. Only when you have about thirty or forty ants should you consider attacking the Spider, because he a formidable foe who should be approached with caution. If at all possible, try to lure him around the Red Ants' Nest, because he will find a lot of Red Ants there, making very good meals for him. Ant Lions – these are neither lions nor ants, but rather half- inch long insects who dig slanted pits in the ground. When an unsuspecting insect or other piece of prey wanders inside, it will tumble down, into the jaws of the Ant Lion. Case closed. These can be killed, and are not as hard to kill as the Spider, but do not turn into little green food balls. Your ants eat them immediately. You can try, if at all possible, to lure Red Ants into the pits of Ant Lions. Humans – we are as much of an annoyance to ants as ants are an annoyance to us. Our feet and lawnmowers kill ant instantly, with nary a trace. We also use pesticides, but only inside the house. All of this is true of SimAnt, and if you can hear the sound of the lawnmower coming or the pesticide being sprayed, you should go to the Behavior Control window and tell all of your ants to either dig or nurse while the Human is around outside. Humans cannot be killed (at least in SimAnt!) Rain – when it rains, bring your ants up to dry ground from the lower part of your nest. While it rains, the lower part of your nest floods, so if all your ants do not evacuate immediately, they will drown. Rain, obviously, cannot be killed nor prevented. Lot of predators and enemies, huh? Welcome to the world of an ant's life, where almost anything can be an enemy. Hope this section helped you with the enemies. 4 – How To Invade and Attack Red Ants As mentioned before, one of your ultimate goals in SimAnt is to attack and invade the Red Ant Colony, and then defeat the Red Ants. This section is going to tell you exactly how to do this so that you won't get killed while attacking. If you are going to attack, you must first have enough Black Ants to be able to overpower the Red Ants. You can see this is the Info Bar at the top of the screen, and a breakdown of all of the different kinds of ants each colony has. If you do not have enough ants, set the speed to the max. You should then, in about ten to thirty seconds, have enough ants to launch an attack, just make sure that you do no run out of food while waiting. Okay, so now you're got enough ants to attack the Red Ant Colony. Now you must attack. To do this, click on the Yellow Ant (your ant). Now click on 'Recruit 10'. This button recruits ten Soldier ants (assuming you have enough of them) to follow your lead and attack whatever you and they come in contact with. Repeat this enough times until you have recruited enough ants as to overpower the Red Ant colony once you reach it. Now you have to make your way towards the red Ant Colony, on the way, be sure not to be captured and/or eaten by the Spider/Ant Lions. You can also attack and eat the Spider and/or Ant Lions you may encounter on your way. Once around the Red Ant Colony's Nest, approach with extreme caution. The Red Initiator ant will most likely have spotted you and is probably calling reinforcements, so you must move quickly. Invade the nest by going into the closest hole. Go in a pretty long way, so that your fellow ants following you will have enough room to move around. Make your way to the Red Queen. She is the main point of this attack, you are to attack and kill her, or if you do not feel like risking yourself, bring your fellow ants to the Queen, they will attack her and, if there is a lack of Red Ants around, your Black Ants will kill her. Now you must do the same in all of the patches of the Yard and House, or conquer at least seventy percent of all the land in the Yard and all the land in the House. Congratulations, once you've accomplished this, you have won the Full Game! 5 – Legal Information This document is a FAQ (frequently asked question) that took me about one hour to write. (I type fast.) It is Copyright © February 19, 2000 by Steve Novicki, the author of this FAQ. All rights reserved. Remember, if you rip off of this FAQ without personal consent from me, I can and will sue you, and will easily win. This document is subject to change and manipulation from the author/owner with notice from the author/owner. But, if you do want to use this FAQ for almost anything except commercial purposes, feel free to send me an e-mail or two at any time asking permission to do so, I will almost always say yes. Just make sure that I know about you using this document or pieces of it in or on anything, and everything will be just A-OK. 6 – Contacting Me If you would like to contact me for any reason at all, you can send me an e-mail or two at Aristotle47@aol.com, I check my e-mail two or three times daily and would love to reply to you. If you have any questions, comments, complaints, updates, etc. for me, send them to the above mentioned e-mail address. 7 - Credits As To Where I Got My Information I would like to thank the SimAnt User's Manuel for giving me the information I condensed and put into this FAQ. Without it, I do not know where I would have gotten my information. I also played the game myself for a very long time, and I learned as I made mistakes. 8 – Farewell I loved writing this FAQ for a game that I love, it was fun. I hope that you enjoyed reading it as much as I did writing it. Farewell, my gaming friends.