Scientists use Age of Empires 2 to investigate how ants wage war

rockpapershotgun.com:

We often hear that videogames can have a positive impact upon the world, but this is the first time I've seen somebody use one - an antique strategy sim, no less - to advocate for appropriately balancing the level design of your front lawn so as to stop indigenous insects being overrun by smaller invading species. The scientific research paper in question - uploaded in August this year, and brought to my attention by RPS contributor and apparent ant enthusiast Matt Cox - sees researchers Samuel J. Lymbery, Bruce L. Webber and Raphael K. Didham use Age of Empires 2 to study how human shaping of the environment affects the balance of power between the indigenous Australian "meat ant", or Iridomyrmex purpureus, and the Argentine ant, or Linepithema humile, who are one of the world's more invasive ant species.

The paper takes inspiration from Lanchester's Laws, which I'm going to crudely summarise in the hope that no passing maths professor throws chalk at my head. Devised by M. Osipov and Frederick Lanchester before the First World War, these Laws set out to distil the likely tactical advantages and bodycount represented by new military technology down to a set of equations. Lanchester's Linear Law describes scenarios from the ambiguously defined ancient world, whereby soldiers with handheld weapons like spears can only fight one other soldier at once. Lanchester's Square Law, meanwhile, describes the effect of soldiers with modern weapons such as guns, showing that a slight superiority of starting numbers will snowball into an extremely one-sided victory. Or to put that another way, modern weapons allow for focus-firing.

The paper shows how the advantage possessed by the larger, stronger Australian meat ants (who are