Part 2: The Flow of Evolution

Overview

IMPORTANT!!!!!!Over the past week or so I have played much more of the game and along the way my understanding of the games dynamics have drastically changed. Some time in the future I plan on rewriting this guide to better portray the way I understand the game now. The contents of this guide are now far different from the way I believe the game really works and as a result I’ve for the most part abandoned these concepts entirely. The way I now believe the game works is far more complex the ideas encapsulated in this guide so I will likely come back to this guide after completing other guides that I believe will lay the groundwork for the future overhaul of this guide.If you can still derive some insight from this guide, great! I’ll keep it up the way it is until I can get around to redoing it.

What is Game Flow, What Influences it, and Why is it Important?

Game flow is the way that traits and strategies become more and less effective over the course of the game. There are two primary branches of game flow which do overlap in some places. These two branches are the availability of , and the arms race between predatory species and prey species.

The driving factor for the first branch is the amount of available in the watering hole, the demand for that , and how much players are gathering from outside of the watering hole. The second branch is dependent upon what defenses players are setting up and how/if carnivores are getting through them.

It’s very important to understand the game flow so that you can more accurately predict ahead of time how a round is going to play out and in turn the types of species that will thrive and those that won’t even survive. Being able to predict how a turn will play out with a fair amount of accuracy will give you a huge advantage over players who are simply doing what would have been good last round.

The Early Game

I define the early game as all of the rounds before the first round where there is either no left over in the watering hole from the previous round, or before a carnivore needs a specialized trait in order to feed. Once either of these occur the mid game begins. This is because I believe the defining trait of the early game is a surplus of in the watering hole and a lack of specialized predators. This occurs because the average amount of each player has the option to add to the watering hole doesn’t change over the course of the game (though on a meta level what they actually put in certainly does) however the amount of each player requires from the watering hole goes up until the game hits a shortage or the predators begin to get too advanced for prey species to really specialize into taking huge amounts of from the watering hole.

This means that over the course of the early game population counts will go up and up and as a result availability will go down and down until it runs dry. A lot of players make the mistake of seeing the large amount of left over during this stage of the game and assuming they can get away with investing in a large amount of population sustained by just the watering hole.

Due to this surplus traits that generate out of thin air and traits that allow faster collection of from the watering hole tend to be mediocre and carnivores tend to be created solely to disrupt other players who are ahead, and punish players for attempting to go too wide. However the early game is also the phase where carnivores will have the easiest time finding targets.

So how do we play this stage of the game? There are 3 key things that you need to be attempting to do here. The first is going as wide as possible while not leaving your species unprotected. Going wide is the fastest way to pull ahead of other players however it tends to draw a lot of aggression from your opponents because if they just leave you alone the sheer volume of extra cards you get will quickly shut them out of the game. However wide line ups are also much harder to protect because they make defensive traits and body sizes less potent.

Next is making a good prediction of when the mid game will hit and ensuring your species take minimal loss from this occurrence while simultaneously ensuring you take as much from the watering hole as possible. This is a fine line to tread because each pop lost is probably a trait you could still have in hand right now but instead you just lost that card, sometimes for nothing. Sadly this is not the kind of skill I can teach you in a written guide. You need to learn this on your own through experience so it’s very important you be aware that this shift in the game state exists and will occur in the vast majority of games. I can only think of one game I’ve had where there was always a surplus of in the watering hole.

Finally comes using carnivores to keep other players in check. As was mentioned in point 1 if someone goes 4 species on round 1 then everyone just lets them do whatever they want that player will quickly amass on overwhelming advantage. Sure building a carnivore at this stage kinda sucks but somebody needs to deal with players who get too greedy. Sometimes that player has to be you. Maybe no one else has a carnivore card available to them. Either way unless you’ve also been very greedy your opponent who went super wide as soon as possible will likely overwhelm you once the mid game hits.

I will not specifically cover round 1 in this guide. I believe the actions on round 1 are so important that I will write them their own guide in the future. Until then just understand that learning the ins and outs of round 1 is very important because its the round that every other round is built off of. At the end of a lot of games I can think back and see something like “if that carnivore player had gone after my 4 species play round 1, I probably wouldn’t have won. By the time he realized he needed to go after me it was far too late.”

The Mid Game

I define the mid game as the period of the game where players are busy attempting to set up their engines and preventing their opponents from doing the same. The end of the mid game isn’t as clear cut as the early game, however I have decided that the mid game ends when has, for the most part, developed a meta strategy that isn’t just “we take from the watering hole” or “hopefully this carnivore doesn’t starve”. Once the mid game hits there are two paths that the game tends to go down depending on how the mid game began.

The first of these occurs when the mid game began due to a shortage of in the watering hole. When this starts normally players divide into 3 primary camps. The first is the players who attempt to stock as much into the watering hole as possible. The second is players who decide to build a carnivore and attempt to starve out herbivore players in the mean time. The last is the players who attempt to empty the watering hole but rather than building a carnivore they use traits that provide passively. The first camp tends to be strongest towards the start of the mid game, the third strongest towards the end of the mid game and the carnivore camp on average tends to retain the same effectiveness throughout.

The second of these occurs when the mid game began due to pressure from carnivores. In this type of mid game species tend to be built very tall investing large amounts of resources into defensive and offensive power. Players will be hesitant to go wide and if there are enough carnivores the watering hole may never go dry due to the strong emphasis on defensive herbivores rather than herbivores that can take large amounts of . Below is a great example of this type of mid game.

So how do we play the mid game? Well, it’s important to understand the path that the game as a whole is going down and the route that each of your opponents is taking. Build engines that will be effective in the game state that you predict will occur in the future. For example, if everyone else is attempting to keep the watering hole empty it’s probably not a great idea to have that be your primary food source and you need to start looking elsewhere. If everyone else is continuing to stockpile the watering hole maybe you should consider taking advantage of that. The big point here is to evolve according to the environment. Oh and if anyone is starting to look like they have the pieces needed to create an unstoppable combo try to disrupt them before it’s too late.

The End Game

The end game begins when players are, for the most part, locked into a strategy and overhauling it would be a herculean task. This is the stage of the game where engines begin to really shine and predators usually have the tools needed to reliably find (looking at you, intelligence). The end game is characterized by a struggle to squeeze out as many points as possible on the last couple rounds and trying to inch yourself above whoever you assume is in first place. For example taking a lower point play is correct if it gets you more points relative to the first place player.

During the end game it’s very apparent what niches each player is occupying. If a player hasn’t developed a long term strategy and fallen into a niche by this point they are likely in deep trouble. Normally at this stage of the game is scarce and carnivores have the capacity to attack just about anything, though usually at a price. This is also the point in the game where it becomes important to account for trait and pop points at the end of the game.

So how do you play the end game? Well, it really depends on what happened leading up to this point. In general it’s pretty similar to the mid game but with more complete engines, and more defined roles. This also tends to be the stage where you need to stop worrying about how large your point total is and instead worry about how large it is compared to your opponents.