How do you be top in a niche?

Current Game Microbe Stage
1

When I’m playing Thrive sometimes I will look into the food chain and find myself in a niche but in the next turn another microbe that evolves from me just takes my spot. Does anyone have any tips to be number 1 in your niche?

Also say for example hydrogen sulfide medium rock consumption.

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2

This happens because the player doesnt (usually) fit neatly into the miche tree so a new species is created to fit their role better

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3

I wonder if other people play with trying to occupy specific niches from the beginning?

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4

Eh I don’t bother doing that, my population is usually good enough for me to begin with

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5

There’s almost always some way to make a change to score slightly better in a niche. And if there is one, auto-evo will find it. Since the score also depends on all sorts of conditions, what’s β€œoptimal” is also constantly changing.

That makes it very difficult to actually occupy a niche as a player, since auto-evo actually happens at a slightly different point in relation to where the niche occupants get set compared to the player.

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6

It’s good then that the player’s population doesn’t necessarily tie completely into the miche system

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7

Auto-evo hasn’t ever played nice with the player species. Hence, player species population is mainly based on player performance (as far as I’m aware).

I once had good auto-evo success by making a plant build and living on every surface patch. Surface patches are numerous and have similar pressure conditions, so with broad tolerances your species can live everywhere.

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8

I feel like eventually this disliking of autoevo towards the player will need to be fixed as to create more accurate population numbers when that matters more

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9

It’s actually the opposite right now. Player population is mostly auto-evo, with some smaller effects from player performance. The biggest difference though is that player population does not get deleted even if it does not occupy a miche.

So, auto-evo does not actually actively dislike the player. It’s just that relative to when populations get calculated, the AI auto-evo runs after the player’s editing. The changing of world conditions also happens in between when the player edits their species and the new population calculation.

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10

So would a superior order of action here be worth it to make it better for the player, or would it mess things up for the autoevo of other species?

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11

Isn’t it in nature, there seems to be more than one species in a particular niche? I know it has been brought up before, but maybe having two slots per niche in Auto-Evo could be an option to be used later on. That, or having a 3D miche tree. We also need a more complex food web eventually, too.

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12

That’s true. But I recall someone saying that the game would get heavier in terms of performance with more than one species per miche.

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13

Perhaps the player could have a say about those tradeoffs?

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14

Essentially, having more species alive in the game requires more calculations. And having more β€œspecies slots”, whether via more miches or more species able to survive per miche, results in having more species alive in the game.

The most observed pattern in nature is for there to eventually be only one species occupying a niche. But:

  • Divided niches can be more specific than we have in Thrive right now. For example, night hunting versus daytime hunting.
  • There are some cases where several species are so similar that ecologically, they act like the same species.
  • Just because a species is in occupying a niche, does not mean it can’t be overlapping in food sources with other species. (Thrive does also do this)

Multiple slots in one miche would be using the same score calculations and probably result in two very similar species. I don’t think that’s the wisest use of computing time. I am note entirely sure what you mean by β€œa 3D miche tree”, but I would definitely instead move in the direction of adding more miches, different variants that use the same basic food source.

As an aside additional slots would also do nothing for the problem in this thread unless they are reserved for the player only.

I think we already have an effective tool for auto-evo performance tweaking in world size determining the number of patches.

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15

I meant more like a say on the complexity of the miche tree itself

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16

Like having the option to choose bewteen having Simple Miches (smaller number) or Complex Miches (more diverse/numerous)?

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17

I suppose so, and any other complexities that the developers might want to try out in the future

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18

I was thinking of this. For the sake of resources usage, let us say that now the miche tree is doubled; there will be a Large and Small sized organism based miche tree for each food source. The predator of small organism size niche would be the top of its size miche tree, while the large organism size predator niche would b the tope of its size miche tree. One of these new size-based miche slots (not just predation) could be reserved for the player organism.

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19

Wouldn’t this DOUBLE autoevo times assuming all the extra slots get filled?

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20

Not initially, since all organisms would start small. This would mean the small sized organism miche tree would be filled first. Later on, as organisms become larger after a certain size (maybe 8-10 hex?), the larger sized organism miche tree would be filled. Plus, as extinctions go on, not every niche would be necessarily filled. Maybe it could also be a toggle, as Poodelicus suggested.

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