Not that it was especially surprising, but the population actually went up and started to threaten the population cap when it floated over 800. Toying with the ecology helped take their numbers down to about 350, though. I slowly raised the water level to give most of the creatures time to reach shore and I increased the fertility to compensate for smaller available land. Eventually, the area was split up into islands and the total population dipped to a meager 150. I boosted the land’s fertility.

When I was finished, the Water level reached 0.6, and the fertility of the land was 0.8 but the limited land prevented huge populations – despite the increased fertility of the land, creatures were still competing for food and bald, eaten patches of earth started to show through. With three separate islands, however, I had a new environmental influence in my world. The population’s rise and fall was starting to become cyclic as food came and went.

Finally, the islands were mostly separated and the creatures were starting to look more and more interesting. My favorite of the four above is probably the brown pig-like creature. They’re cute in a way.

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Slowly but surely, it was getting drier and less green inland.

This left wetter, more fertile areas more densely populated. It might have increased populations but with the number of species sitting around 30 and the number of individuals over 700, it seemed like competition wasn’t enough. I do like to think that my rovers had a hand in these large numbers, though.

To get numbers back down and more sustainable, I decided to decrease the water level again. While I waited for levels to go down, I took these.

I toyed around with more ways to make life more difficult for the creatures, including putting up fences, adding and removing climate control machines, etc. The number of species increased as the total population decreased, though. I decided to add a rover to feed creatures with high Energy Capacity – creatures that can store more food and energy in their bodies.

As numbers continued to decrease, I took some time to enjoy the watering hole. It was quickly becoming my favorite area to explore

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It was probably because of the water that the creatures were able to survive – water meant the plants would be plentiful. The greenery itself also kept things visually interesting, but that’s not to say the coast wasn’t interesting in its own right.

Coastal creatures were just as varied and seemed to have no qualms about exploring inland. As for the large desert areas, there were no large herds. It seemed the animals were most interested in lush areas with food, which makes sense. I did start to wonder whether there would soon be carnivores, though.

A quick search through all the species showed that no, there were no carnivores or herbivores, all the species were still Omnivorous. I thought it would be time for another change, though. I lowered the water level to 0.1 and increased the fertility by 0.1. Less water was bad news but extra fertility might be enough to make up for the loss.

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It was starting to look like the number of species I had on my hands was increasing but it’s important to note that early species often only reach a population of 2 before dying off in this game.

More interesting is that the dominant species, Primum specium has more variety in its members than in the world as a whole at the time of taking these pictures.

  These animals are all Primum specium.

I didn’t stop at observing the native species, however. I also took some time to toy with the environment. The first two pictures above show a machine I used to increase the fertility of the land around it to 0.75, just enough to gradually increase the fertility and maintain a reasonable level of food and on the right is a picture of a lake I flooded by increasing the water level by 0.1.

 

I took to sight seeing for a while and took some screenshots of some interesting animals I’d spotted. The bottom right picture is of the fertile patch I’d created with that machine from earlier. With 28 resident species and a population easily over 600, I decided to reduce the land’s average fertility by 0.1.

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