Where to watch
Watch mode is a live stream. It is not something you start yourself: one copy runs on our side, around the clock, and everyone watches the same six colonies.
Want to run a colony yourself? Play Antholm 2: War in your browser. The Google Play version is coming soon.
What you are watching
Six colonies of real ant species share one piece of land. Nobody is playing. Each colony forages, digs, raises brood and defends its trails by itself, using the same rules as the game. Seasons turn, food comes and goes, and predators hunt.
| Rule | What it means |
|---|---|
| Nobody wins | The larger a colony grows against the others, the slower its queen lays and the more birds and skinks it draws. |
| Few raids | Colonies compete for food far more than they fight. Raids are rare and aimed at trails and food, never at a nest. |
| Spider hunts | Now and then a strong colony marches most of its soldiers out to clear a nearby spider ground. |
| Colonies fail | A colony that shrinks to a handful of ants dies out. |
| New queens | About a season later a queen lands on the empty nest and founds a new colony. Her species is random, so one species can end up holding several nests. |
Reading the screen
| Part of the screen | What it shows |
|---|---|
| Colonies (top left) | Every colony by size: its number, name, species, age, number of ants and share of the land. |
| News (under the colonies) | What just happened: a predator brought down, a bird strike, a raid, a colony lost, a new queen. |
| Caption (bottom centre) | What the camera is looking at, in that colony's colour. |
| Map (bottom right) | The whole land. Coloured ground is territory, each dot is one ant, dark dots are predators, and the white frame is the camera. |
| Colony card (right) | Appears when someone asks for a colony's numbers. |
Chat commands
Commands are typed in the stream chat. A colony can be named by its number on the board or by the start of its name, so !stats 2 and !stats moss both work.
| Command | What it does | Status |
|---|---|---|
!colonies | Lists all six colonies with species and size. | Free. Opens with the chat bot. |
!stats 2 | Shows that colony's card on the stream: ants, workers, soldiers, brood, sugar, protein, food per minute, land, chambers, age, losses. | Free. Opens with the chat bot. |
!help | Lists the commands. | Free. Opens with the chat bot. |
!food 2 · !prey 2 · !ants 2 | Drops food, a dead insect or 15 workers beside that colony. | Planned for later. |
!bird 2 · !skink 2 · !spider 2 | Sends a predator at that colony. | Planned for later. |
The chat bot is not connected yet, so commands do nothing on the first streams.
The species
Any of these can turn up when a new queen lands.
| Species | Scientific name | Known for |
|---|---|---|
| Black garden ant | Lasius niger | The all-rounder. Tends aphid herds for honeydew and takes whatever else it finds. |
| Harvester ant | Messor barbarus | Seed collectors with a granary that does not spoil. Slow on the trail, steady through winter. |
| Meat ant | Iridomyrmex purpureus | Fast, numerous and quarrelsome. Strips carcasses quickly and picks fights over ground. |
| Leafcutter ant | Atta cephalotes | Vegetarian fungus farmers. Individually weak, but the queen lays fast and the colony grows huge. |
| Red wood ant | Formica rufa | Sprays formic acid from a short distance, so a line of them hurts before the enemy can bite. |
| Red bull ant | Myrmecia gulosa | Very large, sharp-eyed hunters with a sting. Few in number and slow to breed. Adults drink nectar; the brood needs meat. |
The full numbers for every species, food and predator are in the guide.