I am not sure if this is intended behavior, or if I am just bad at the game, which is why I am posting this here. I have noticed in my most recent playthrough that organisms picked to be endosymbionts always go extinct before the picked organelle is unlocked via endosymbiosis.
Within the same patch, the moment I engulf an organism, the population of that picked species drops precipitously. The drop in population is so dramatic that if the species in question does not go extinct immediately, it does the following turn. Oddly enough, the same observed behavior occurs for all other species, even though I did not engulf those other species.
This is very frustrating, as I am attempting to eventually unlock all of the Eukaryotic organelles, one per playthrough, in different playthroughs as a Prokaryote. Of course, being a Prokaryote means this will take several playthroughs. Unless unlocking Eukaryotic
organelles as a Prokaryote is no longer a viable option in the current game.
I have yet to try to do Endosymbiosis as a Eukaryote, so I will see if this issue persists. Maybe this might be an issue for the Prokaryotic side, or even a weird artefact just for me since I have over 10-year-old hardware. It could also be a skill issue, since I always play with non-standard settings to make games easier.
In any case, I hope this post also helps someone else, either by engaging with the community, or getting a laugh at a poor noob who needs to quote-unquote “get gud”.