Very cool game spec. One thought: your ants are basically telepathic, so they are able to share information instantly--e.g., the squares they see flow back to your "master bot" which can instantly use this information in the current turn for every other ant. I wonder how much more challenging it would be if you had to build not a "master bot" that controls all ants, but a "bot" that runs for each ant, and they have their own individual inputs and state and can perhaps transmit messages to other ants within a 3 block radius. Maybe they can even lay down pheromones to mark territory... (too much SimAnt as a kid, can you tell?)
Certainly it would be more realistic, and I think even more fun--but maybe a little taxing on the server. But this is run by Google, right? Maybe next year.