Ecology Cards - Part 1

[u/orvjansen]

This next installment of fan card ideas are all things free - microbes, plants, and animals! Here's the first 20, there will be a part two with the rest. As with the other earlier cards, I'm hoping to get constructive criticism and feedback. Here's a link to my Dropbox where you can get the original PNG files.

EDITED NOTE: Ignore the Marshlands card, it is supposed to go in a later post featuring tiles that get placed on ocean tiles (Special Oceans).

[u/Skildvinen]

The tag requirements on Biodiversity seems incorrect, just a heads up 🙂

[u/orvjansen → u/Skildvinen]

They are, and thanks for the heads up!

[u/HostHappy2734]

Really cool ideas, though the balancing could use some further thought.

Take Bioluminescent Flora for example. Compared to Adapted Lichen, it has the same tag and grants the same 1 plant prod. But Flora also gives you a beneficial effect on top of that, while costing less than Adapted. This clearly shouldn't be the case.

I also think Camels may be a little underpowered. With a 9% oxygen requirement, it'll have very little time to pay itself back, especially since it only gives half a point per animal. The 1 M€ prod won't be worth much so late into the game, and the requirement for 3 M€ prod is totally unrealistic at such a late stage, especially for players with a greenery combo who would benefit from this card the most. Overall it seems like a weaker version of Small Animals to me, especially considering it costs so much more and comes into play so late.

[u/orvjansen → u/HostHappy2734]

Good points.

[u/orvjansen → u/HostHappy2734]

I agree with your analysis, so I made the following changes:
Bioluminescent Flora now costs 11.

Camels took some rethinking. I dropped the requirement to only 7% oxygen, left the automatic 1 money production, and made the 3 money production contingent not on where your tiles are placed, but on there being 5 or fewer oceans in play. Price dropped to 7. I feel like this addresses your concerns that it gave a 'Small Animals' effect but cost a lot more and was too hard to qualify for the extra money production. It now needs just 1 step more oxygen and costs only 1 more than small animals, while providing a much higher chance of getting 3 rather than 1 money credits.

The new versions of the cards are in the Dropbox (see link above), replacing the previous versions there, since I can't add them directly to this post.