THE STORY SO FAR:

This is almost completely accurate, but a few things aren't quiiiite in sequence. Corrections appreciated.

We gained access to an oasis, and with it in our grasp began to learn and prosper. After learning more about cultivating food and creating a few useful castes like Curious Ones (the start caste) and Nomads (tough desert-travellers), we ate some giant worm creatures and were able to create a cast of burrowers. We sent out some exploratory parties, one of which never returned; others lost members. We slowly learned how to smelt metal.

A dying god of the desert and strength made itself known to us, but was weak so we ate him. The hive queen achieved the status of a tiny god and became the only hive member to be able to work magic, and calmed a sandstorm as her first magical act. She also sensed that one of our diplomatic emissaries was held captive in a neighboring town. We were visited by some humanoid cultists or acolytes who said they sensed a new corporeal god nearby that they wanted to worship moreso than distant etheral gods. We told them they had to prove their trustworthiness by getting back our imprisoned diplomat, which they went off to attempt, but a disloyal member of the group instead used news of our freakish nature to direct the town to attack us. The other acolytes came back and threw themselves on the hive's mercy, and we put them under lock and key for a while so as to have no distractions while we dealt with the other humanoids now on the attack.

Continued below.

When the attack came, we acted like the angry primitives we were and killed about a hundred people between the initial battle (which included calling down a sandstorm), the people we killed after the enemy's line was broken, the prisoners we ate, and the people we slew during a counterattack that included seizing their leader. Then we figured out we could have used them to assist in securing the area from a bunch of desert marauders and making trade goods, but oh well, lesson learned. We took the town population captive and installed our acolyte/cultist as the new leader on the condition that the guy in charge (who had betrayed us before) step aside. The townsfolk were relieved to see we didn't murder him.

We sent them home, the ordeal being over, and started rebuilding and scouting. We used the queen's power of mental domination to put a large female sandworm matriarch under our control, and had her dig herself a lair. We eventually used her to dig a tunnel to the town now under our hegemony. We also managed to get the egg of the hive princess to hatch, and had an heir poised to take over should the queen die; on top of this, the queen managed to evolve organs that allowed her to mutate herself and the tribe to take on the qualities of living things she ate. Finally, we managed to worship the queen en masse, and discovered that she gained strength and sustenance from this worship. We also completed a spire, which serves as a watchtower, and recruited an apparently blind elven mage who was wandering around the desert to help us out with magic in exchange for letting him have first crack at books we found.

Continued below.

We discovered some desert marauders, and noted that some of them wore our chitin as light armor. They attacked us, and with our warriors, our tunnelers, and the sandworm queen we defeated them, took prisoners, and ate all of them except the leader - him we pumped for information, learning of a port he visited where he sold off our chitin because it made for good armor. We dominated his mind and turned him into a trainer for our warrior caste in an unheralded act of viciousness, having eaten all his surviving comrades before his very eyes.

Some scouts we sent out discovered green lands, 'like the oasis but everywhere,' on the edge of the desert.

That about brings us up to speed.

Before I forget, means of contact and scheduling:

Twitter is https://twitter.com/InsCivQuest
Steam Group is http://steamcommunity.com/groups/Rozoolliim/

Next thread will be Sunday at: 19:30 EST which should be 19:30 board time.

Relevant locations:


-The Hive - our home. We have access to an underground river, a metal-reinforced gate, and various chambers like an arena for warrior training and the queen's chamber; the hive also includes a tunnel to a nearby town we dominated through sheer brute strength.

-Oasis - our source of water and food, near the hive if not over it.

-Kaalun - the humanoid town we're in control of now. Features a severely underpopulated and vulnerable state since we killed all the fucking guards, a tunnel to the hive, a library, probably some kind of temple or magician's workshop, and lots of things like blacksmith's shops we could learn from. A few days' walk away.

-Eastcave - a dangerous place our scouts found with treasure inside.

- Northrock - something else we found, though I can't find the details yet. Does someone else know?

- Distant port - two weeks' travel away, I think to the south. Is a trade port on a river or sea.

>>26144855
Oh, I forgot the fact that we created a caste of bugs that could speak like humanoids that we named Harbingers. We gained the ability to create them by eating people. They now serve as diplomats.

>>26144814
Its mostly accurate.

>>26145010
Good to know. Do you know what Northrock is? I can't recall.

Suggested mutations, in no particular order:

Castes:

-Matrons. This would be a strain of insects that fulfilled several functions, including that of lieutenants, which the questgiver mentioned previously, enabling them to increase the efficiency of an action passively; if we had one constantly on duty with the scavengers or the warriors or the workers, the actions they undertook would be likelier to succeed and bring in better results - nothing gamebreaking, just effective. Matrons would also add a small per-insectbonus to every clutch of eggs, as they would breed when the queen would provided they were cloe to the hive, adding one or two eggs to the clutch. They would function as replacements for the princess should something bad happen, creating further security, and potentially share the queen's ability to lay eggs that had the genetic qualities of creatures they ate, making them mini-bioreactors that let us try out various qualities; the queen would have to eat the resultant offspring for traits a matron created to be more widely adopted. They could also help us in recouping evolution points, which are rare and hard to get as it is, and manage well enough in combat to lead warrior packs without weighing them down.

To keep them from being overpowered, we would be required to maintain one of them for every ten or twenty adult insects or drastically lose hive efficiency, and could not have more than one of them for every five adult insects, creating a matron 'limit' - further upgrades might change these numbers, allowing them to become more effective. They'd also probably require a heap of food, due to the high metabolic requirements of their complex anatomy, and the death of a matron might send nearby bugs into a bad state, be a blow to morale, cause frenzy, or worse.

More below.

>>26145181
-Scouts - A hybrid between nomad durability and warrior power, in essence light combat units rather than just insects that could better withstand the desert. Might help us stop losing so many exploratory parties.

-Huge flying bugs that would carry a decent amount of other bugs or cargo, functioning well for trade or to assist warriors in attacking (instant air cavalry).

General mutations:

-Cocoon transformations. This would allow any insect of any caste to metamorphose into an insect of another cast except for royalty, and require a lot of food, but not require the queen to lay a clutch. It would go from start to finish faster than egg-laying and maturation of larva, but require significantly more food as a trade-off. Useful to reassign labor quickly, or in the event of a loss of the queen. Good in emergencies.

-Aquatic adaptations. Right now we don't know if we can even swim without drowning. Extended ability to remain submerged, or something gill-like, would be a boon. Flotation might be useful also.

-Flight and gliding. Our warriors are huge, and may be unable to truly fly, but gliding down from a larger flying insect to attack targets on the ground is pretty badass as it is. Would add to food consumption.

-Camouflage. Body shape and coloration to blend into various environments, maybe even chameleon chitin. Would probably require a mineral-rich diet, or one rich in natural dyes.

-Sonic attack, through buzzing like cicadas. Something to disorient or express alarm would be good, but get a few loud warriors on a battlefield and you might drown out the enemy when they're trying to give orders or communicate.

More below.

>>26145293
-Regeneration of limbs and even organs. Probably we'd have to be able to produce royal jelly or something like it to encase the wounded or crippled insect in.

-Genetic instinct or memory, though more like migratory patterns in butterflies than overpowered stuff. Investing new warriors with rudimentary knowledge of fighting would be good, etc.

-Extended lifespans. We are like mayflies right now, insects die of old age at something like a month old.

-Seals all over the body to protect against sand and the elements, to make us even hardier in the desert. Clear, retractable 'eyelids' and so forth. This might allow us to fight during standstorms.

Let me know if you want to see some more.

>>26145020
No i have no idea what North rock is.

Also font forget about Super Spider Silk evo as well and the Omniskeleton!

>>26145389
Thanks, I guess we'll figure out northrock eventually. I'll wait for someone else to express interest before just making a huge infodump.

>>26145415
I invited a friend.

>>26145415
moar, op
also let's not forget to explore those ruins

>>26145583

Alright then.

Production mutations:

-Spinerette organs for silk. Some spider silk is tougher than kevlar. This requires more food but generates constant supply of silk, and when even more silk is generated by using an action we burn through way more food. The applications for weaving it into luxury goods, especially after dying it, are probably obvious. Very decent trade good, and a source of armor.

-Bee-like production mutations. Honey, wax, resin (lacquer), and royal jelly production. Honey is an energy-rich food and speaks for itself, wax and resin have no end of industrial uses including wax tablets for writing on and jewelry like amber made from resin, lost-wax metal casting for production of trade goods and some weapons, etc (though resin is more collected from wood and processed than it is created). Royal jelly is hugely useful stuff, and could be used to feed larvae to speed up maturation, trigger cocoon transformations (for one unit) and matron transformations (for more than one unit, 'cause matrons need to be expensive to balance out their being very useful), and limb/organ regeneration in the crippled and wounded (royal jelly is very nutrient rich).

Skeleton/torso mutations:

-Reinforced and larger frames/skeletons: workers and warriors alike could benefit from being bigger and stronger, though food consumption would probably increase.

-More flexible joints - having eaten creatures with different joint structures, we might adopt this and get rid of some of the inflexibility our warriors and especially our harbingers have been mentioned to have.

-Omniskeleton - We've eaten humans, which have internal skeletons (endoskeletons). Put this together with the typical insect exoskeleton and you have internal and external reinforcement, making it more difficult to disable an insect. Marrow structures are also good for creating more blood cells. Requires more food.

>>26145751
Also i spoke to farezz/buff he said this about Northrock

cibervader: Whats northrock?
Buff Baby: Wassup! Northrock is a large rock formation discovered in the 'early days' hasn't been explored since.
Buff Baby: Basically a small mountain in the northern desert. ~3 days from the hive.


Also what about a Evolution to reinforce walls/burrows?

>>26145751
-Wall climbing, like a spider - largely, this speaks for itself.

-Ability to roll into a ball, roly-poly style, both as defense and as offense. Roll down a hill into your enemies like Samus, see how they like it.

-Strength multiplier mutations, like that of ants or rhino beetles. Probably to keep this from becoming ridiculous we'd cap it at five times normal strength for most insects and maybe less for warriors, who are already hugestrong.

Legs/feet:

-More legs for warriors; quadrupedal arrangements of limbs mean more speed, but more food.

-Leaping, like grasshoppers or fleas. Jump fifty feet in the air, glide down onto your target at speed. Or jump off a big flying bug carrying you into battle.

-Compound leg structures - needed to combine the above, so as not to be overpowered.

Arms/hands:

-Multiple arms, probably four at most.

-Standardization of retractable burrower digging appendages for most bugs. Warriors without tools can now dig mine tunnels under walls, workers without tools can do the same. Of course, tools are more effective.

-Pincer structures in the hands, like scorpions. Who needs to worry about being disarmed? Not us.

-Compound arm structures.

Digestive mutations:

-Pollination and nectar feeding, like bees or other pollinators. Allows cross-breeding of plants, possibly.

-Termite qualities, used to create structures and fertilizer from deadwood and dying plants.

-Lithotroph mutation/symbiosis: eat bacteria that gain energy from minerals and dirt, then eat mineral-rich things or dirt; drinking mineral-rich water might deposit a lot more metal into our chitin. Helps keep pace with our voracious hunger.

-Autothorph mutation/symbiosis: integrate plant cell structures into the body of the insect, allowing it to gain energy from sunlight and photosynthesis. Helps keep pace with ravenous hunger.

>>26145877
Cool, thanks. And that seems like it's covered by resin and silk production, to be honest. If we want to make metal appear out of nowhere or something, that seems iffy, but resin that hardens into something like brick would be pretty good without being completely insane.

>>26145925
Last batch of mutations, thank fuck.

Mandible mutations:

-Standardized harbinger mandible - everyone should be able to talk to civilized peoples, really. If a warrior is stranded somewhere and needs to negotiate, it'd help for him to be able to do so without resorting to writing his thoughts on the nearest flat surface.

-Hollow channel in mandible - like antlions and a host of other insects have. This allows fluids to be injected, or drained (for example into a chamber that can hold a DNA or blood sample for a royal or matron to absorb.

-Knockout secretions. Pretty self-evident. Helps to take prisoners. Can be sold to apothecaries as sleep aids.

-Anesthetic secretions. Say you need to play battlefield medic and alleviate pain? Also a good thing to sell to apothecaries.

-Paralytic secretions. Prisoners struggling? Stop that shit. A potentially useful weapon or poison, if stockpiled. Useful for capturing animals or livestock, as well.

-Termite mandible. Now we can chew wood, and holy shit is biting going to hurt.

-Fluid collection chamber, for DNA collection.

-Compound mandible. Got to put it all together.

Caste breeding control, increased control of genetic assimilation and acid flingers have also been on the table before. Also, expanding the chemical communication system to make it more data/time efficient (that type of system can get absurdly efficient) could be good, at it could alow an old insect to teach a new one in a day or two. A telepathic hive network would also be good

>>26144814
This is looking pretty good. Later on we should archive it under the Rozoolliim tag for anyone whose interested

>>26146094
Yeah, pheremone communications would be good. And I've been considering a clade system for matrons to do caste breeding control, because it lets the QM throw a wrench into our shit if he kills a matron rather than just giving us more power, and yet is still a good thing because it's not all centralized in the queen.

Right now if we lose the queen we are going to be crippled for a long time.

Telepathy might be a bit much until we get magic, but certainly the queen acting as a communications center with magical telepathy to monitor the hive insects and give orders in emergencies would be a start.

>>26146056
I dunno farezz/buff is actually quite open it seems but perhaps Concrete would be better then steel.

>>26146123
Glad that the thread isn't useless. Anything to make it easier for new players to join.

>>26146140
Some kind of building material, yeah.

>>26146136
We could get an Evolution to make us more Magic Sensitive.

How about matrons and a life extension?

I was thinking a queen specific evo that superpowers her telepathy to always active. Also, lithotrope+termite mandibles=metal eater bugs? Because that would be way cooler and few things would be more terrifying on the battlefield than your enemy eating your sword

I have to minor evolution ideas.

Carapace reinforcement allows us to deal with nasty weather without harm. No longer shall the insect get chafed due to sand caught in the joints.

Weather proofed senses the eyes will no longer be blinded/damaged by sand, snow blindness, can see fine under water ect.

>>26146276
Matrons are my suggested first priority. After that, probably strength, and then cocoons and royal jelly, and then spider silk. Gives us a good all-around approach.

>>26146168
Could always do that, though for now I'd save our evo points for the really badly needed stuff and use human casters as a workaround.

>>26146363
Rust monster powers are cool and all, but generally eating a piece of metal is a little much. Having them be able to break one in their jaws is scary enough, but I was mostly thinking that eating mineral-rich diets would make them a lot tougher. We do have an underground river, and those are usually very mineral rich.

If OP lets us have it, I'm okay with it. It's just that there are much more useful things we could do with metal than eating it.

>>26146470
Glad to see someone else was thinking along similar lines to me! Your ideas are like my idea in >>26145351 so I will support your idea when it comes time to vote on it.

Probably not right away though, because matrons are something we need so much.

Postan other plans:

Queen's study of magic:

-Develop better weather control. Making it rain in a desert is pretty serious. Legitimizes her as a goddess of good harvest, too.

-Develop telepathic monitoring of all hive members within a certain distance. This way, we'll know sooner rather than later if there's an attack and be able to respond.

-Develop resurrection rituals, in case we lose a few dozen warriors at once or something and badly need them. Or in case we accidentally another town and decide maybe that was the wrong move afterward. Resurrection also has the benefit of legitimizing her as a goddess; if you can go to a Temple to the Hivequeen to raise your friend Bob that got run over by a cart, suddenly it doesn't seem like such a fucking alien and horrible religion.

Standard tasks - this is passive stuff we should have the castes be doing every turn:

-Patrols. How long have we put this off now? Let's stop having bugs just disappear right on our doorstep and get some area control going.

More below.

>>26146522
-Division of fertilization duties, allowing for broader genetic diversity. If we have three eggs to fertilize and select only the best warrior, that's fine, but we'd probably do better if we picked the best three warriors instead so any flaws one had would not be passed down to the entirety of the next generation. This translates into some kind of minor bonus, to make OP's life easier.

-Standardized fertilization rota: If we lose caste members a few at a time to old age and other stuff, why aren't we replacing them in proportion to that? Right now we badly need warriors, but once we level off their numbers we can make it standard procedure to fertilize every clutch as 1/3rd warriors, and 1/6th each workers, scavengers, tunnelers, and the remainder to be determined as needed, or whatever. That way, caste expansion isn't all a bunch of one caste or half and half, and we don't waste time bickering about how fertilization should go unless there is a huge need for members of one caste in an emergency, which should make for a pretty straightforward decision anyway.

-Hive expansion, tunneling, etc - If we can settle on a floorplan or blueprint, we can just have whatever workers aren't assigned to something else work on it every turn, and the QM can tell us how many turns this will take to complete totally or to reach the next milestone. Mathrian has some maps drawn that are pretty alright, we can discuss them if he wants to post.

-Warrior training and sparring. This caste should get a bonus in battle and to various tasks if we keep them sparring. Costs more food because it is energy intensive, but if they were sparring last round, this round they should be more battle-ready.

-Curious One research, copying books, knowledge transfer, etc. That town we control has a library in it, these guys should be slowly but surely going through it and writing shit down.

>>26146470
Bah also forgot to mention that carapace reinforcement would also help covering up weak spots in the chitin and other stuff like that in general. Wont make the chitin harder to say but would make it more effective.

>>26146531
hm engineers and mapmaking in general would be amazing to have. As it would allows to properly plan a good hive set up and we can properly check map out the desert by inch by inch.

>>26146588
Yeah, curious ones badly need to lrn2math. Insect geometry best geometry.

Our tech bonus would go well with engineering capacity, and surveying isn't too hard if you can do geometry.

I've been working on an Idea for a Defense network. What do you guys think?
http://imgur.com/hHZJ2Pl
http://pastebin.com/X7VjcHiG

>>26146638
It would take a while to do it, and we would want to complete one part of it at a time, but at completion it would allow us to gather accurate information at least 90 miles from our hive

>>26146531
>This translates into some kind of minor bonus, to make OP's life easier.
Some kind of minor roll bonus on general actions, that is. Like, +10 on most rolls.

Projects/research requiring actions to undertake:

-Heredity tracking - get the curious ones the means to track who fertilized which eggs, and they may be able to assist in maintaining genetic diversity and hive health, not to mention better understand trait inheritance when an insect is eaten by the queen. Matrons, when implemented, could synergize well with this.

-Bathing chamber. Maybe this is silly, but it might improve health and lower infection rates, assuming they can swim. Creating a filtration system might also allow us to save up the waste and use it as fertilizer or whatever else we manage to use it for.

-Underground agriculture. Hoo boy do we need to expand this.

-Queen's/magician's workshop - she needs somewhere to create magical artifacts, meet with mages, etc. Probably just a work area in the queen's chamber for now.

-Weather control device - the queen can make this after she masters weather magic. This will lower the cost of her magic in food or energy, or just make it free, and generally get us more rain when and where we want it.

-Telepathic monitoring device. Same as the weather control thing, just used for keeping an eye on hive members and broadcasting emergency alerts.

-Boats. We have underground rivers and an oasis, soon we will have access to a port. Shipbuilding might be a good thing to learn.

-Tapping the underground river, possibly in a separate cave system. Well shafts are useful, as is water pressure for hydropower (water wheels) or firefighting.

-Fish farm/fish hatchery in the oasis. More food is important.

>>26146928
-Oasis-centric agriculture; when farmers in the Middle East and elsewhere grow plants at an oasis, they develop a layered system where taller, hardier plants provide shade for less hardy ones. Usually date palms are the top layer, with other trees and shrubs below that can't take as much desert heat.

-Floating gardens, mesoamerican style, for plant cultivation on the oasis. This is super-fertile for desert agriculture. Needs something shaded overhead, so somewhat cloudy weather would help a bit.

-Irrigation systems. Simple enough. More complex for underground irrigation, but we could drain it all back down into the river.

-'Sandcrete' - mostly resin-based instead of actual concrete, but we could make structures over time.

-Underground tree-farm. Good source of raw resin.

-Rainwater reservoir. It's a desert, let's recover as much as we can.

-Spire expansion. Right now, the single spire we have can hold two warriors and that's it. We need more spires, and for spires to have a lot more room for troops to stand on so they can use ranged weapons on enemies below them. Improved spires, I guess.

-Heavier-than-normal training weapons for warriors, to increase their strength. Gives another bonus to attack rolls.

-Have the acolytes guide the insects in all rituals to increase effectiveness of worship, etc, and have them teach us how to better organize our rituals. This is more of a REGULAR TASK, but whatever, I forgot to post it there. Durr.

>>26146939

Last note before I stop spamming.

-Clade and embassy system; possibly including matrons. A standard division of the hive, giving each matron x bugs to lead in various tasks. With the cocoon mutation and a matron able to experiment in adapting her clade to specific tasks and sharing the queen's ability to tailor mutations to whatever she's eaten, these are a bit like mini-hives, but don't need to be tracked in obsessive detail even if they leave the hive; a matron can even bring their numbers back up, so if a clade takes losses, the QM just appends a [REDUCED] tag in the tracking system or something and we are told how long the clade is operating below full effectiveness. Over time, clade size can increase as matrons become able to coordinate more bugs at once, but all clades must be the same size. Not all bugs need be part of the same clade, though, and plenty are in the queen's clade/unassigned. The 'embassy' element is just what we call it when we send a clade to act as a hive liasion with a community somewhere, as a combination embassy, trading post, temple, and lightly fortified strongpoint. Not quite a colony, because it isn't supposed to increase in size, but an extension of the hive (if only to make the QM's life easier).

>>26146638
>>26146657
We might tweak the scale, but then given the queen worm's ability to tunnel huge distances it's not that crazy. About the size of a decent-sized modern city, and certainly of a small kingdom.

I'd say we break it down into areas that give a certain roll bonus to detection and defense, eg the first ring and its spires are +10, etc, and then make it a standard task so the tunnelers and workers and queen worm are plugging away at it every turn (barring the ones we send to do other things).

A list of hive improvements might also be a good thing to have along with this.

>>26146996
Yeah, I agree. And while it is rather large this would give us a good defense network, and we would probably want to fully completely the first circle and towers before we started anymore of an expansion

>>26147061
We'd need a lot of gates and so forth to secure the tunnel network. I'm not entirely sure they should be big enough for the queen, but then, who knows.

We will need a lot more sandworms for it, for sure. If the worm queen can excavate ten miles a day, which is generous, that means the whole thing will take up to 147 days and that's without delays of any kind.

>>26147124
Yeah, but you gotta start somewhere. Lol

>>26147149
I suspect we'll be looking for more sandworms while the worm queen and our tunnelers deal with creating the smallest circle.

how about we make curious ones learn some geometry, astronomy and we incorporate that into the Queen's magics because who doesn't want Mathemagics?

Nearly forgot this mutation idea.

- Continuous chitin production - chitin constantly regrows and flakes off, like dead human skin, and can be gathered and fashioned into trade goods. No more killing an insect for chitin, and no more bloody conflicts because someone decided to harvest our kin.

>>26147179
Lol I suspect your right.

>>26147204
THE DARK SORCERY OF AL-JEBRA

Yeah, sure. Probably the QM will be okay with giving bonuses to our magic rolls or something.

>>26147238
Planets go around in elliptical paths
The world is round
a spearpoint is a triangle
There is obviously magics in jommetry

File: 1374394778865.png-(16 KB, 450x561, hHZJ2Pl.png)

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>>26147219
Postan your proposed map and plans in thread to get everything in one place.

15ft by 15ft tunnels

3 rings of tunnels with 8 connecting tunnels at cardinal and diagonal points.

1st circle 75miles/120.7km diameter
2nd circle 48miles/77.25km diameter
3rd circle 24miles/38.63km diameter

1st 235.619449 miles circumference
2nd 150.796447 miles circumference
3rd 75.3982236 miles circumference

tunnels
250*4 miles

1000 miles 1609.34km

Total miles of tunnels 1461.56 miles/2352.15km

Is the basics.

>>26147487
It occurs to me that we'd need to disconnect them from each other a bit actually. If an enemy managed to get forces into the network coming from several miles around we'd probably have a rough time keeping the hive defended because of the many different entrances.

Until we come up with a better means to seal enemies inside, like maybe being able to collapse tunnels, we should rethink the connecting ones between the rings.

Aside from that - these would be a good place to create exploratory mine shafts and maybe a plumbing system if one was handy. And underground canals might be good for trade, though flying caravans might be better, if more energy-costly.

quick question: Whats our obsession? Ruling people or eating people?

>>26147540
We have an obsession? If we have a core value, it's probably strength.

Wow...the amount of discussion that's gone on really blows me away. This is some really rad stuff!

>>26147553
Not strength of the individual though, is it. Power would probably be a more apropriate word

>>26147629
We didn't really specify. Having the curious ones develop a philosophy strength so we can have more than a one-track mind would be good, honestly.

>>26147666
Personally I really, really, really hope that we will stay as alien as possible, having a strictly non-human mindset as we started of with. Of course we are currently moving towards a very human ideal of Imperialism and superiority, but that can change, or so I hope.

>>26147691
Ultimately it would probably be more interesting to arrive at human values through alien means, because there needs to be a way for our alien nature to continuously befuddle people when we invariably come into contact with other societies, humanoids among them.

"The Temple of the Hivequeen welcomes you, soft-bodied creature unmarked with the grace of the exoskeleton! How are your glands today? We honor your city, and would eat of its children to show our esteem, but understand that your bizzare values find this troubling so we will instead offer you this honey freshly excreted from our own flesh."

>>26147752
>hives
>honey
>bees

"We have been offered a new trade arrangement? A dance is required. We must wait until after it is complete to further the negotiations, lest we deviate from hive tradition. The swarmprince will begin the preparations."

Im in favor of bee style dancing as our special method of hive worship. As for our 'philosophy' i think it is growth/ power, as a species. Consume the storng, let our food condume the weak.

File: 1374396594212.gif-(316 KB, 500x360, fsX97.gif)

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>>26147868
As long as the dance has a beat

>>26147752
That sounds bloody hilarious. XD

>>26147868
If we're all about brute strength and consumption, things like trade will be difficult, etc. And we;re well-positioned to be a life-giving goddess, which gets you more power and worship than just being a devouring terror.

>>26147908
See, this is why I want to make a church of INCREDIBLY ALIEN life-giving stuff that every city would want to have a temple to but kind of look sideways at. "Them bugs make the harvest easier, but GODDAMN they weird." "I had to go to the temple for burn treatment again, they smeared me in weird slime and flew around in circles while buzzing and clicking, I'm so glad I was drunk the whole time."

Personal priority lists:

Evolution:
Caste breeding control
Lithotrophy
Secreted materials
Royal jelly

Tech
Animal taming
Mathematics
Ceremonial procedures
Arcitechture

Construction:
Templeishness in the hatchery
Temple under the city
More spires
Irrigation for our fungi and other underground stuff

>>26147954
I dunno what 'caste breeding control' means. If it means 'matrons' I'll go for it, but I'm kinda confused.

>>26147942
>If we're all about brute strength and consumption, things like trade will be difficult, etc. And we;re well-positioned to be a life-giving goddess, which gets you more power and worship than just being a devouring terror.

Its impossible to get it anything but the (presumed) most efficient way on /tg/.

>>26147989
It is quite possible to change what is perceived to be most efficient, though.

btw talked to Farezz, Our spire is like 20-30 feet tall, it was damaged in the fight. It was about 40-50 feet originally

Hey, Farezz, how about you sort through these mutations and make us pick from these? It'd be much more efficient than our ramblings about growing wings or dragon dildos.

>ysemoke college
Yup, we're making a science of running this civ, which is awesome

>>26148030
We should l2architecture from some books and level up our spires.

>>26148046
He's read the thread, though I won't repost his comments from steamchat. I'm not sure asking the QM to dump this into his own thread would make it more accessible to newbies, though. We can sort that out ourselves.

Matrons for +popgrowth are kind of a big deal for the first mutation, though.

>>26148049
That was my thoughts exactly. It takes around a day to go 20 miles, so the higher spires we have (we also need telescopes) the less unprepared we will be

I meant he would present us a choice of mutations depending on what we ate, three or four max. He need not make it any more complicated. Then we'd need a separate website with polls to run this thing.

>>26148104
Surveymonkey is useful for that kind of shit, but only for slower threads.

Hive improvements, confirmed some things with QM:

-Expanded quarters; capacity of 200 insects.

-Underground river access.

-Arena for warrior training.

-Expanded Queen's chamber, room for worship.

-Mushroom farm

Suggested expansions:

-Temple adjacent to queen's chamber

-Workshops for queen, curious ones, and specific guests like cultusts and the elf.

-Private quarters for visitors built in the style to which they're accustomed, so they can feel vaguely normal in the hive. +bonus to diplomacy and relations, not to mention rolls involving guests and permanent residents.

-A library and a scriptorium where we can copy books.

-Possibly schools.

-Workshops for creating trade goods, traps, weapons.

-A dedicated smelter.

-Wells, docks, or whatever we need to create for the underground river.

-Locking doors to protect a good few of these places.

-A hatchery.

Clarifications, what i mean by strength as a species is more or less the same as what d
Is meant by fit in the phrase 'survival of the fittest'. Diplomacy can easily fit into that,as can insectile desert fertility. As for the breeding control, i mean something to allow us real control of what caste comes out of which egg, instead of the semirandom were working with now. It sounds like matrons would be helpful in that regard so im in favor of those

>>26148198
Oh damn... I think we should do pretty much... Well almost all of those first. And have the worm just get to digging the preliminary tunnels

>>26148229
>control over what caste comes out of which egg

This is why dividing up how many eggs are fertilized by which caste is useful.

>>26148260
Remember, we only have two actions per turn. We should set up passive actions like patrols and food gathering and focus on setting up a curious one workshop to do things like study architecture, evolve matrons, and get some tunnelers right now. Then we can set the worm and tunnelers digging on the next turn, and send for the books/spend time with experts in our humanoid town to start learning things.

>>26148317
Agreed

>>26148340
After that, we can work from the baron's list some here >>26147954

and repair the spire, maybe even expand it, maybe build a temple - assuming the queen won't be able to lay eggs by then. If she can, we need to restore warrior numbers badly.

>>26148262
Its still mostly random, with whatever caste fertilizing the egg just being more likely but far from guaranteed. At least CivMastah said so at some point and i missed it if that changed

>>26148373
This is true. We need warriors and tunnelers badly, especially now that tunnelers can do shit sandshark style

>>26148389
It'd be a useful adaptation, yeah. I'd say we can wait a little bit to focus on it because we're so desperate to improve security and just have more eggs period, but we shouldn't wait too long.

>>26148408
Well last time we had a warrior fertilize a bunch of eggs, roughly a third of the rwsult was warriors if memory serves. So getting caste control would allow us to replenish our warrior ranks thrice as fast. This is actually the main reason i want it, targeted growth is good, but with our breeding rates being able to replenish our warriors rapidly like that, nothing will ever be able to even dream of winning a war pf attrition. Ever

>>26148434
Honestly, if our food sources were ever threatened we'd be crippled so wars of attrition are a terrible idea, but yeah, I wanted the heredity project and improved reproductive systems and royal jelly for these reasons. Dunno if OP will give it to us as one upgrade, but probably multiple ones would reduce food consumption for it.

>>26148442
Yes and no on the food soyrces poinr, there is a reason undergroundbfungifarms are the best thing ever. That and being omnivores. If we get good overland movement like flight, we can go locust if they fuck our farms. Then well see who is starving

>>26148493
I dunno if that's more 'peace through superior firepower' or 'holy fuck, I hope we never lose control of our insects, maybe we should make them all smart enough to have morals so they don't accidentally the whole continent.' But yeah.

>>26145181
There was talk of a Priest/Herald caste as well. They'd be linked to the Queen via a telepathic link and would this be able to give out orders and use a portion of her magical might. By incorporating elements of the Harbingers, they'd also act as our cultist leaders and diplomats in foreign courts.

They are basically Harbinger 2.0, as the current Harbingers we have are kinda worthless.

>>26148801
I dunno if this would be different from matrons only because they had magic, which would be fine, or if there'd be different reasons to do both.

Really, a mutation allowing magic affinity would be nice, but limiting it to a caste might ultimately be less productive. Something to think about, though.

>>26148801
And current harbingers are fine for communication, but if we standardize the harbinger jaw that'll go away. As such we should improve their abilities until they give us a bonus to diplomacy at the very least.

>>26148801
We could let it be a mutation of the Harbingers, perhaps?

Thread is archived here http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive.html
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>>26148922
Our lack of magic affinity is one of the biggest weaknesses of our race, and I'm pretty sure that the QM said that there was no way for everyone to get around it. Therefore, it'd make sense that magical affinity is seen as something precious and therefore, limited to a single caste.

>>26148801
Qm said that such a mutation has like a 15% chance of success and a failed try is a wasted point.

As for the matrons, how about making them hermaphrodites that are matrons of X caste and always breed true to their caste. So we can have a warrior matron fertilize eggs if we need lots of warriors and so forth

>>26150617
That limits them, we can find other ways to make a caste breed true (royal jelly probably).

>>26150680
True story. Caste flavored jello is prolly the way to go, with the matrons able to make it for when theyre replenishing their teams while out of the hive

>>26150795
Royal jelly should be something royalty, matrons, and workers can all make. Like real bees.

I get the sense that the QM would probably feel less like we were twisting his arm and micromanaging it best if we combined multiple means like heredity, genetic diversity, caste jello, and standard rotas. Only sayan that because I've run a quest or two myself.

>>26150818
True, its just particularly important that the matrons can because they operate outside the hive for extended periods

>>26148317
this a hundred times over

da-bump

I've been using the wrong time zone.

Insect Civ will actually be at 22:30 EST.
My bad!