Environmental destruction - Concept

Animalia is here and back with yet another concept.

Environmental Destruction

Environmental Destruction is a percentage number that ranges between 0-200% throughout the late awakening - space stage.

When you first begin creating social groups, you will harvest the local environment and shape it to your needs. This will have a cost however, as the stages go on your ED will increase as you research and deploy new technology and nations rise and fall.

Pre-Industrial

Ranging from when you first create tribes and to the middle ages, you will clear forests and divert rivers. Clearing an entire forest from a patch constitutes about 25% Environmental Destruction. Pre-Industrial effects on the environment will be minimal, although during these stages you will likely drive a lot of wildlife to extinction. Getting rid of half of the species within an area gives you about 50% environmental destruction. Pre-Industrial effects to the overall global health of your planet will generally be minimal. The highest environmental destruction you would realistically achieve within these stages would be anywhere from 75-115%.

Industrial

During the industrial stage(s), the health of your planet will be a crucial task to keep an eye on. Pollution to large bodies of water can raise the environmental destruction indefinitely. Smog and industrial waste will be the first time since the microbial stage where the atmospheric composition will be so easily modified. Industrial environmental destruction will affect a global percentage rather than regional patch percentages.

Levels and what they mean (local patches)

0-10% = Minimal destruction, generally very hard to achieve in post tribal societies
10-30% = General destruction, is achieved when large swathes of habitats for animals are cleared.
50% = Extreme disruption, is achieved when you collapse ecosystems.
50-100% = Total collapse, the ecosystem has been mostly exterminated but the land is still habitable for your species and their domestic animals to live on. This percentage will likely be common during the late industrial.
200% = The land is not habitable for anyone to live on, this is the end of this local area.

Levels and what they mean (global)

0-10% = Completely natural, this is usually your level during the society stage.
10-30% = Some disruption, this is when you unlock steam power and begin clearing out entire areas.
30-40% = General destruction, this will be your environmental destruction level most of the time up until the mid industrial era
50% = Biosphere collapse, this is what will be the most common in thrive playthroughs. It will take some effort and serious mismanagement to get it above 60%.
100% = Total Extinction, the general disappearance of the majority of wild species. If you value efficiency you will likely sacrifice the ecosystems that don’t have any use for your species.
150% = Crippled Planet, the planet is slowly becoming uninhabitable for biological life. You should probably work on fixing this or relocate. At this stage you will have to go through extreme modifications in society to keep it working.
200% = Tomb World, the final stage which earns you the achievement β€œI speak for the trees”. Life on this planet has become totally impossible without extreme technological modification.

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Question, how will this work for when β€œnatural” patches turn into β€œartificial” patches for which this reduced amount of species would be considered β€œnormal”?

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Artificial patches don’t have an environmental destruction percentage. Although their existence does effect the global environmental destruction percentage.

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For biomes like a Rainforest, the water cycle is already negatively affected when deforestation reaches 30%. This is one of the major reasons the Mayan civilization collapsed (30% deforestation). Perhaps there should be modifiers on the effects and different possible effects based on what biome is being partially destroyed?

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By the way would a desert biome start with a high destruction stat to begin with?

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Wouldn’t it depend on if it is naturally occuring desert or not, since natural deserts have wildlife and an ecosystem?

Also, here are some scientific papers on impact of deforestation on Rainforests.

Critical transitions in the Amazon forest system

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I said deserts since according to the thing animalia made a feature of the heavily destroyed biomes is that they’re uninhabitable and for a forest dwelling sapient for example I don’t think deserts would exactly be habitable

Would deserts be habitable to a sapient desert-adapted species?

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Indeed. Pretty sure there do exist some rather β€œuninhabitable” natural places irl though

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Most environmental destruction wouldn’t really affect the main player species up until the really bad scores. The main issue the player would be concerned about is pollution and smog.

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If alien colonizes and terraforms an alien form with a biosphere already on it would that be decreasing the destruction for the player but increasing it for the local biota?

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If you’re only decreasing the biota without adding anything the destruction goes up. If I replace the biota it simply cancels out.

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I wonder if some players would try to β€œThanos” things in order to try and save the environment?

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That would require them to probably have removed some population removers first. And pretty sure we’re sort of already doing that lol

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I think it would be better to have an ecological suitability parameter that reflects the area’s suitability for life:

0% - Completely unsuitable for life; even microbes wouldn’t survive here for long.

100% - Extremely habitable.

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Would bioreactors for example have the % be over 100?

A bioreactor is not a biome.

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Is it a feature (like really small biome) for a microbe (not man) though?

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Bioreactors would only exist if there’s an advanced species and the player will not be able to be surpassed.

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For the microbes living within the reactors though…

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