Australia’s national science agency CSIRO and the University of Western Australia have used Age of Empires to simulate ant warfare, to figure out how to help native ant species fight their invasive counterparts.

“Ants are one of the few groups of animal species in which warfare resembles human warfare, in terms of scale and mortality,” researcher Samuel Lymbery said.

Using the game, the research team built armies and battlegrounds of different sizes and shapes and watched them fight, then mapped the results.