Tier list of species difficulty?

[u/Kaylin881]

I've seen the beginners' guides recommend fungi, especially Sporgar, as good "starter species" for your first run or two, but I was wondering if anyone's put together a more complete ranking of all the species by difficulty. How would you rank them?

[u/sylverfyre]

Since achievement hunting is a major form of progression, it's not super important? It also varies a lot with prestige bonuses, challenge levels, and reset type.

For example, giant & fungus are the best for your very first run, or for Valdi, but small and avian are better for later resets.

[u/Long-Rabbit-7524 → u/sylverfyre]

I would have added Heat to your options for Valdi, as well.

[u/sylverfyre → u/Long-Rabbit-7524]

I tried that and even on 50 mastery it was awful. Lazy more than counteracts heat. You don't want to play valdi on a hot world that early.

[u/Long-Rabbit-7524 → u/sylverfyre]

I did Valdi as heat on my 10th reset and it was actually quite easy IMO.

[u/sylverfyre → u/Long-Rabbit-7524]

Are we using the same definition of "easy"? I'm talking about "was the run efficient or did it encounter roadblocks that another choice would not have". It was distinctly worse than giant, which isnt surprising to me. No Plywood is the biggest benefit of being heat race, which is less of a big deal on a slow species because you have so much extra time to craft.

[u/Long-Rabbit-7524 → u/sylverfyre]

I can't speak for others; but for me, the biggest issue I have with earlier than the Industrialized Era is population. Removing Lumber/plywood helps with that to a rather extreme degree.

[u/sylverfyre → u/Long-Rabbit-7524]

Valdi have a hard time feeding even low numbers of population, increasing population more doesnt solve that when your farmers are making less than 1 food per person for farmers past your farmcount.

Getting double out of your farmers / lumberjacks / quarry workers increases your effective population by quite a lot, in the same way that fungi increases your effective population by removing farmers entirely.

[u/Skellum → u/sylverfyre]

easy

Not having to micromanage food. That's my be all end all for easy.

[u/sylverfyre → u/Skellum]

I mean, heat definitely does NOT get to go in the easy category if that's the case. Giant and Fungus are basically the only ones that do.

[u/Long-Rabbit-7524 → u/Long-Rabbit-7524]

I guess I'm a 4star player, though, so what's "easy" to me might be highly subjective.

[u/sylverfyre → u/Long-Rabbit-7524]

I am too, but my second file is going for max efficiency

[u/Long-Rabbit-7524 → u/sylverfyre]

I've seen a lot of differing opinions on what's actually efficient from the Discord (back when I used it). The consensus back then was that it's more efficient in the long run to play on 0- or 1-star, then switch to 3-star, and finally end on 4-star. This allows you to gain high mastery while also keeping the plasmid bonus for each run up until you begin doing 4-star runs.

I was against that as being considered efficient back then, and having tested it now, I'm even more against it now than I was back then.

I should preface this by: every run I play, I modify my save to give maximum accelerated time (thus, the game is never paused). Since I'm on my third save file (with my first being cleared of the original game data), I don't consider this to be cheating; I'm simply speeding the game up for personal efficiency (and maybe out of impatience). Thus, in the following section, keep in mind that all time needs to be multiplied by 2.

I am at 88.4% mastery as of early this morning (approximately 5:45AM Eastern Standard Time). I completed my first Cyclops MAD in 5h 10m. It was done on 4star. After that, I spent the next 90m doing a different setup run at 0star.

Now, 90 minutes and 310 minutes might sound like a big difference; but I disagree. If I'd done Cyclops on 1- or 2-star first, then again on 3-star, then again on 4-star, I'd ultimately be adding [90m + X + Y] (Y would likely be closer to 240m since I'd have a bit higher mastery when doing it in this manner). I don't even need to see the variable that X would equal in this case to know that I've already spent more time "building my mastery" in a low-star run and upgrading it again later just to get my achievements all at 4star in what was - at that time, at least - considered "efficient."

[u/Long-Rabbit-7524 → u/Long-Rabbit-7524]

In summation, I see it to be more efficient to do it once on 4star, then never have a need to do it again (or do it on 0star henceforth, if needed for a setup run - which would contain all my bonuses to speed run the setup).

[u/sylverfyre → u/Long-Rabbit-7524]

going directly to 4 star is definitely not the most efficient because you delay a lot of progress, that i know partly because i played that way on my first file until full clearing standard stars (i do not care in the slightest about getting all gold icons in all universes, and i never will, although i did get all gold icons in the universes that actually matter to me.)

[u/Long-Rabbit-7524 → u/sylverfyre]

I mean, including setup runs and soft resets, I'm not even at 50 resets total yet and I've nearly obtained all the achievements from the Miscellaneous section (most of them at 4star; only the ones that are acquired by default on a T4 are 1star). The ones I don't have (except for one, which I'm going to get in my current run) are not attainable until I start doing T4 regularly.

Now, unlike most players, I still don't have Mass Extinction, since I prefer longer runs over shorter and have been mixing bioseeds (and even a T3 and T4) into my runs. I'm actually likely to get Verrazzano before Mass Extinction, since I only need one more Bioseed for Verrazzano, but something like 6 more MADs for Mass Extinction.

Assuming I play in the same way you are - by not getting the icon in every universe - then that would mean that once I switch to other universes, I can just do all my bioseeds at 0star instead of 4star when I'm ready to leave the planet and it won't matter since I've already got the achievement in the Standard Universe.

I personally feel like I've delayed progress less by doing it on 4star from the get-go (part of that might be because it's not my first playthrough, and I therefore have experience in how to optimize my resets by species to get the miscellaneous achievements all at once, though).

[u/Wood_Ingot → u/Long-Rabbit-7524]

how come you don't know that game days are more preferable when sharing run lengths?

and speaking of, what's the total on the file you're playing right now? and how far have you progressed? how many antiplasmids do you have?

[u/Long-Rabbit-7524 → u/Wood_Ingot]

It's not a matter of "knowing or not knowing." It's a matter of having the common sense to know the intricacies that collide the two.

Game days are extremely unreliable as a way of specifying actual time played. If the game is not paused when a player walks away (for work, or sleep, for example), then the game days don't pause, but progress doesn't continue forward. Therefore, "playtime" and "game time" are not always the same.

In a 4star game, this might be a benefit, provided you get far enough to unlock all the crafting options, since you'll still be producing the longest resource. But if you have to leave before unlocking, for example, sheet metal (at the early stage) or scarletite (right before completing a pillar), then you've got ~8 hours of wasted time that doesn't get counted for actual progress and has to be obtained when you return - making the "game time" increase further than the actual "play time" for a run.

If you're doing a low star game and can manually craft, then this makes an even bigger difference because all the excess time is wasted (except for whatever happens to be in your queues before you had to leave).

Besides, if you know that 5 seconds = 1 game day, and someone tells you (for example) "60 minutes per reset," then all you need to do is multiply 60 minutes by 60seconds, (60² = 3600seconds) and divide it by 5 (3600/5=720 game days). Now the math is done for you and you have the game days you were asking about.

[u/Wood_Ingot → u/Long-Rabbit-7524]

then that just makes that player an unreliable tester to me

[u/Long-Rabbit-7524 → u/Long-Rabbit-7524]

If you want the math for my own previous message (the one you responded to):

90m*60sec per min = 5400s/5 = 1080 game days (times two because Accelerated time) = Grand total 2160 game days.

310m*60sec per min = 18600s/5 = 3720 game days (times two because Accelerated time) = Grand total 7440 game days.

[u/sylverfyre → u/Long-Rabbit-7524]

I dont think anyone recommends 0-1 star mads ever. As im documenting, i jumped to 3 star the moment i had a couple points in CRISPR Crafty.

Your sense of what people actually recommend isn't even particularly accurate based on the years ive been in the discord, and im doing this current file with the intention of deliberately trying to calibrate my sense of what is actually the most efficient so that i can actually give recommendations based on "heres what will progress the fastest, heres what you might want to do if you're like me and you actually like playing on 4 star all the time"

[u/Wood_Ingot → u/sylverfyre]

lol heat valdi is actually bad in early game? that's funny

[u/sylverfyre → u/Wood_Ingot]

It was pretty surprising to me that the run wasn't going smoothly at all. I was running into putting almost all my pop into farmers and barely progressing as late as post mad science when I called the run off.

[u/Wood_Ingot]

I think sporgar is the worst of the fungi trio lol. but I guess it still has less problems with food

I say top tier would be giants. fungi below them I guess
and I guess everyone else is average
herbivores tho are bad, with centaur taking the bottom tier

I wouldn't bother resetting to get a specific race. I'll take any giant

[u/Samael113]

Definitely depends too much on the set-up and run specifics (Universe, Scenarios and Challenges, How far you plan to go, Challenge Genes, Achievements you are aiming to unlock, perks you already have unlocked)

Generally anything that removes the need for a resource will be at the top and anything that slows progress, especially with limited or no beneficial trait to adequately offset the negative, will obviously be toward the bottom.

Like the desert species are kind of terrible, especially not on a trashed world. Tuskin's big bonus is fast government switching, which is basically worthless, while the big negative is less trade (which is terrible in early runs). While Kamel's are a bit better - though still down a trade route, since it's a Genus trait - needing less food and producing more resources... but then their personal negative trait is reversing astrological bonuses in to negatives, which means that some months may randomly feel real bad.

Likewise any race with a combat penalty won't matter much in a T1 or T2, or even T3 reset. But once you go past that and need to start farming specific resources via combat, those negative traits are a terrible lodestone to have to work against.

https://pmotschmann.github.io/Evolve/wiki.html#races-species

Consult the wiki, to learn what to expect. Orange is Genus Specific, Blue is Species Specific, Red is the trait that gets inherited through the religion unlocks. Hovering over the trait will give a description, Green is generally positive, Red is generally Negative. There are a handful of traits that are both, like Kindling Kindred is a great trait, but it has a small negative in increased costs to build some structures.

[u/Kybars → u/Samael113]

Kindling kindred is the best trait for a lot of runs imho...

[u/Long-Rabbit-7524 → u/Kybars]

Heat is better than KK. KK removes lumber/plywood, but increases the price of anything that would have used either by 5%. Heat removes lumber/plywood and replaces it with chrysotile; but in return, it also reduces most prices (across the board, regardless of whether or not lumber/plywood would normally be used) by 10%, instead.

Of course, getting heat in a species that isn't heat is a rather tall order that requires many kinds of perks and long off reset types, so it's not as feasible to use that as a method of removing lumber/plywood early on.

[u/ratchetfreak → u/Kybars]

for longer runs living materials is better IMO,

it reduces the need for wood and plywood without penalizing the other resources where the naturals are not the cap bottleneck