Multicellular and Macroscopic and Trophic Lineages

Future Game Multicellular Stage
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I meant like, when you push the “Become Multicellular” button, AutoEvo is programmed to, for that generations evolutions, try the Binding Agent on most/all species and roll with it if they are deemed survivable. And then there would be a more limited selection when you hit the “Become Macroscopic” button, ensuring a few, but not to many, Macroscopic Lineages evolve.

For the transition Multicellular, that actually sounds much simpler than what I previously suggested. For Macroscopic though, I think there would need to be conditions to determine what was eligible to try. That one will likely require some specifics debating/refining.

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I suppose for aware only the player would be allowed to develop a brain and everything else with a brain would branch out of them?

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That would likely depend on the AI setting, if that became a thing.

@hhyyrylainen, would a feature where, in the generation that first evolves Multicellular creatures, AutoEvo is programmed to try evolving as many different single celled organisms as possible to Multicellular, be reasonable? The game could even tell the player that they must evolve a binding agent that turn or lose, for those that favor the AI race for dominance. At least for the first half of my suggestion, does that sound like a reasonable/easyish way to scientifically accurately represent the shear number of times Multicellular separately evolved on Earth, while keeping the existing timescale/mutation speed difference between Microscopic and Multicellular intact?

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Isn’t the player already multicellular by that point?

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That sounds like quite a lot of effort to make that and then make sure it is understandable to all the players. So I personally don’t think such a complex solution is worth the effort to implement.

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So instead we’d just want there to be a high general chance of an eukaryote species developing a binding agent and becoming multicellular in an amount of time by which the player should’ve already become ready to get multicellular themself?

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What, the part where people keep saying they want to declared extinct because the AI reached the next stage before them? I think being told “Evolve a binding agent this turn or be declared to have been left behind by evolution” is self explanatory, particularly if they had to choose a setting at start to make the AI reaching Multicellular first possible. Otherwise, the player hits the “Become Multicellular” button, enters the editor, and, as usual, sees a list of how species are evolving, only AutoEvo game many of them evolved a binding agent that turn. Now, I don’t know how hard it would be to make AutoEvo strongly lean one way on the turn the player hit the “Become Multicellular” button (or the AI reached it if that setting becomes a thing), but, other than the player chose to have the option for the AI to pass them, what is there to confuse the player? Won’t going to Macroscopic end up needing to fill a bunch of Macroscopic niches that very turn be necessary anyway? How would filling a bunch of Multicellular niches the very turn the player goes Multicellular be different?

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It seems to me that Thrive style “multicellular with cell differentiation, but small number of cells” is just not a stable state of being. Especially for animals it’s very hard to come up with extant examples at all. Microscopic multicellular animals that people think about are things like tardigrades or rotifers, which are in complexity much closer to Thrive’s macroscopic stage (tissues, not individual cells).

So it seems like it was at best a transitional stage on the way to macroscopic animals.

I guess people might just be confused/concerned and can’t find another way to have multiple multicellular lineages? Because with the “being in the next stage means previous stage species do not evolve much” there seems to be a limited number of options here (I think this goes for both uni to multi and multi to macro transitions).

For the potential scenario of another competing lineage transitioning before you do:

  1. They are banned from doing so.
  2. You game over when it happens.
  3. You can still continue playing and transition after they do. But this would require them to not develop ahead too much. If the next stage can evolve much faster, this does not work.

Of course, if some “plant” stage transitions before you do, this would be fine.

For the potential scenario of you being the first to transition, for the stage transition of later lineages:

  1. They can somehow happen anyway, even though they don’t evolve fast from your perspective.
  2. They don’t happen. This runs the risk of you becoming a macroscopic animal in a world devoid of plants (in fact, unless lineages are allowed to transitionbefore you, this seems guaranteed?), and this would present… gameplay challenges.

So clearly, there does need to be some design to take this into account specifically.

P.S. Upon further thought, a world without a macroscopic “plant” lineage would still work, and actually be interesting, if Thrive macroscopic gets the option of symbiosis with microbes, like lichen with green algae and giant tube worms with chemosynthetic bacteria.

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The larger problem is that in Thrive the bodyplan you develop in multicellular is supposed to form the base of the bodyplan for your macroscopic+ species. While irl it’s thought that animals first evolved when proto-animal cells formed sphere formations hollow inside, which seems different from what we see here.

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With only 20 cells, I am not sure how much later stage bodies can really “conform” to them. I have certainly not seen any design plans that would encourage that. For now, I expect the basic structure to originate in Macroscopic, using tissues initially derived from the celltypes in multicellular.

You’re right about the blastocysts (as far as I understand) but I am not sure how that could really work in Thrive to begin with. And I think this is a strong example of where the way it went on Earth is not the only conceivable way.

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31

Perhaps there could be a bonus to having hollow areas within your multicell organism?

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I think the fundamental problem here is the way Thrive Multicellular works: One cell grown at a time added into a pre-determined grid. IRL animal tissues are flexible, and cells can change their relative position to each other. That hollow ball literally folds in on itself during development to produce more complex shapes. I don’t think there’s any reasonable way to implement that in Thrive.

Just as an example, that hollow internal IRL is fully enclosed by cells, but with the way Thrive Multicellular species grow, that would only happen at the final growth stage.

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I recall proposals for making cell movement possible for different “life stages” during multicellular were made some months ago…

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Yeah pretty much. Ediacaran style organisms like comb jellies and sponges are about as complex as thrive multicell, but they get quite large. I think an important example is baby sponges. They are a sphere of cells with two tissues, an eating one and a movement one. This is very thrive. These babies quickly grow quite large though. Perhaps unlockinh an adult form with the macroscopic editor could be very easy, and the form edited with single cells could be an early life stage?

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Another thought, what would happen if Players managed to somehow get to Macroscopic and higher stages before Snowball Earth occurs? Would Snowball Earth still occur and basically make Players extinct?

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You mean this?

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37

I think there were concepts for that even earlier than that dev thread…

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Players really complained when their growth some versions ago didn’t fully conform to what they had designed in the editor (and instead placed cells in approximately right selected locations)…

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Is it really the same thing as (speculatively) havings cells move to new spots as specified by the player in the editor as the organism ages in-game?

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yeahh, i think that’s a really hard to work around problem. Maybe getting to tissue editors and stuff quicker where it looks more like metaballs changing fluidly than “oh no my cell is in the wronbelgium”, but honestly that feels like changing the multicell stage a lot.

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