Tynan's book is one of my favourites for gamedev. I'll have to re-read some of it through the lens of Rimworld to see if it might be useful to someone who wants to develop a simulation game (e.g. the Balance chapter), as I'm keen to start a colony sim / base building game next year.

As FragrantRiver also already said, start small. Think of the smallest scope possible, then reduce it even more. Perhaps consider a game engine, so your programming efforts are focused on the economy side, then the ants can be event driven, and graphics are easier to handle/implement. (I started a Universal Paperclip clone a while back, using cljs, and had bags of fun making the tech tree and economy logic, but then got bored when I had to build a UI finally.)