10 lines
4.3 KiB
JSON
10 lines
4.3 KiB
JSON
{
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"id": "ecology",
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"name": "Ecology",
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"category": "world",
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"summary": "A living ecosystem where flora and fauna evolve through trait-driven competition, building tier 1 through tier 10 biomes via emergent feedback loops.",
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"body": "Ecological complexity in Magic Civilization is not assigned by designers or spawned by triggers. It emerges from physics. Every species of flora and fauna starts at tier 1 and earns its way upward through sustained survival, stable population, healthy food web participation, and endurance of ecological disruptions over geological time. The tier system runs from T1 (pioneer weeds and opportunistic scavengers) through T10 (ancient old-growth ecosystems with deep soil, towering canopy, complex fungal networks, and apex predators that have survived millennia of catastrophe). Nothing is seeded at high tiers. Everything earns its place.\n\nThe engine that drives ecological emergence is a set of positive feedback loops that compound over time. Soil accumulates as dead plant matter decomposes, allowing taller and more diverse vegetation. Taller canopy creates more deadwood habitat. Deadwood supports richer fungal networks that share nutrients through mycorrhizal connections. Richer fungi increase the carrying capacity of the soil. Higher carrying capacity supports deeper root systems and taller canopy. Each loop feeds the next, creating a compounding maturity that accelerates as it builds. This is why a T8 ecosystem represents thousands of years of accumulated growth that cannot be rebuilt on gameplay timescales once destroyed.\n\nSpecies are defined by a trait system spanning seven categories: size (tiny through huge), diet (producer, herbivore, omnivore, carnivore, detritivore, filter feeder), habitat (aquatic, terrestrial, amphibious, aerial, subterranean, arboreal), locomotion (sessile, walking, swimming, flying, burrowing, climbing, slithering), reproduction (r-strategy or k-strategy), thermal regulation (cold-blooded or warm-blooded), and social behavior (solitary, pack, herd, swarm, colony). Subterranean species gain additional visual traits like blindness, echolocation, or bioluminescence. These traits determine competitive interactions, predation hierarchies, migration patterns, and biome eligibility.\n\nTier advancement requires accumulating stability ticks at increasing thresholds: 50 ticks for T2, 100 for T3, 200 for T4, doubling each time up to 20,000 ticks for T10. A population crash below 10% of carrying capacity costs 2 tiers instantly, and instability erodes progress at a rate of 3 ticks per unstable turn. This means reaching T10 requires not just time but consistent environmental stability. Species that endure catastrophic events during pre-game evolution receive survival bonuses that accelerate tier advancement, but most die trying. The result on ancient and mythic worlds is a small number of battle-hardened T10 survivors amid the graves of countless failed lineages.\n\nDisruption is irreversible on meaningful timescales. Clear-cutting a T9 forest destroys centuries of soil accumulation, fungal network development, and canopy stratification. The terrain reverts to plains or grassland and begins ecological succession from scratch, but reaching the former tier would take tens of thousands of evolution ticks that gameplay simply does not provide. This makes old-growth ecosystems a non-renewable resource. Cultural perception of high-tier biomes varies by race: Dwarves see a T9 forest as haunted and foreboding, while Elves see the same forest as enchanted and sacred. The physics are identical; only the labels change through the vocabulary system.",
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"design_notes": "The ecology system rejects the common 4X pattern where the map is a static resource to be consumed. High-tier ecosystems are the product of geological time and represent accumulated wealth that predates every civilization on the map. Destroying them for short-term production is a real choice with real consequences, not a cost-free optimization. The compounding feedback loops ensure that a logistic-growth-to-fixed-climax model cannot reach high tiers, requiring genuine emergent complexity.",
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"related": ["terrain", "climate", "world_generation", "natural_wonders"],
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"tags": ["ecology", "flora", "fauna", "biome", "tier", "traits", "succession", "feedback", "maturity"]
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}
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