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Originally Posted by StainlessSteelCynic
While I haven't read the books, I have looked into the series and I vaguely recall that the posleen did have some trouble with jungle insects (ant swarms if I remember right) so I reckon you wouldn't have to dial it down too much. It could even lead to other avenues for the PCs to fight back e.g. locating and catching certain insect species for mass breeding and then releasing in posleen controlled areas.
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The Posleen are genetically engineered to survive even biological or chemical warfare.
In the book "Yellow Eyes" you refer to, it is seen that the Posleen can survive jungle. It is only when a totally dumb Normal Posleen uses his monomolecular boma-blade or his railgun / plasmagun to wipe out one ant and forgets that these weapons kill not only the impact point but also the surrounding area that they can wipe each other out. This happens when a colony of soldier ants attacks a Posleen column.
One of the intelligent God-kings makes clear he hates the animals that hide in his skin like leeches or mosquitos. It just forces them to use sticks against leeches to remove them or eat more.
When the point of view shows the humans side the area known as Darien is mentioned that is a jungles jungel, e.g. a 1000-times wetter / mosquitoe infested etc. But the Posleen survive this with only small problems.
No, why the Posleen have to be dialed down is the following point:
The Posleen land with their army and then conquer nearly the entire territory south of the Panama-canal. Then after one or two years max there are not only millions of more Posleen, no, those are also equipped with weapons. Their space ships are only for transporting Posleen. No factory equipment.
In the case of Normals we are talking of at least shotguns, but God-kings have an antimatter powered antigravity tenar (a disc shaped object big enough for one or two Posleen to fly with) that has either a railgun / plasmagun and a sensory package to locate and shoot down even a Mach 3 jet with ease. (This means if a Posleen tenar is in the middle of the ocean with no obstructions, as soon as a jetplane crosses the horizon it is detected and can be shot down.)
The Posleen have their entire knowledge in their DNA. So they build the technology base from sticks and stones to antimatter production in less then two years and also a production capacity to equip millions of them.
So with these capabilities they have to be dialed down because once they have a few tenar no air force can touch them and if they can procreate freely earth is doomed.