How to stop swarming

[magmacube_tr]

In all of my saves a low diversity, dominant species develop and squeeze out anything on its path until it rules the world. At first, a cambrian explosion happens, P.Specium quickly speciates into like 60-90 (sometimes over 100) species of all shapes and sizes this worm has so many surprises, seemingly in a equilibrium and speciating like wildfire as soon as they hit 30-50 crearures. Diversity is huge, like every clade has a ton of variants and even ice plains (with those weird big grass of course) and the borders of lava zones have frequent creatures taking permanent residence there. Vast herbivore clades, considerable amounth of giant omnivores and even a few specialised carnivores.

Then a species grows out of control and becomes a giant, homogenous swarm that out-competes everything else. And doesn't speciates, never. I paused the game to see if speciation algorithm got left behind again. A lot of species divide when algorithm catches up like normal, but not them.

I play on parthenogenic reproduction (since sexual reproduction is broken and asexual reproduction is stale), 2 mutaton rate and 10 breeding range to try to prevent these swarms from forming. But it doesn't work.

Any advice

[Guineapig004]

Perhaps you could create a greater variety of biomes? I use latitude and longitude for my fertility and temp settings. The breeding range will do nothing if there is no reason to change.

Warning: Scattered thoughts ahead.

Perhaps create an archipelago? Change the temp or fertility over time? Use climate change devices to alter specific points of interest? Try out fences (if they work)? Every once in a while murder off the links keeping the species together? If everything is stable feel free to mix things up (raise temp, lower temp, increase water level, ect.)

[magmacube_tr]

Perhaps create an archipelago?

I tried, it actually works for some time. Until swarm manages to evolve a breed that can survive or at least pass through seas.

Change the temp or fertility over time?

They just don't care tempature so thats out, fertility only decreases theiğr numbers but doesn't separates them.

Use climate change devices to alter specific points of interest?

Too little and ineffective. They just pass through

Try out fences (if they work)?

I am pretty sure they can still breed across it, since they technically touch each other.

Every once in a while murder off the links keeping the species together?

Micro-management, ugh. Also I tried this before. They don't split even though I killed all intermediate populations. Like coastal populations that connect marine and terrestrial populations.

If everything is stable feel free to mix things up (raise temp, lower temp, increase water level, ect.)

Tempature doesn't mean anything to them, and they can easily surpass low fertility by being efficent and spurting ouy many babies to compensate loses and increase chance. Water also doesn't work. There is a tendency among species to be amphibic, and swarm always has amphibic individuals

Some isolated pockets can live without getting killed off for a long time though, like an isolated coral reef that had alot of diversity from the decendants of an ancient clade that had gone extinct in the mainland coasts a long time ago. And it took the swarm a long time until they managed to send a predatory colonisation probe (I think they have a caste system as an emergent behavior but I am not sure, they are an ecosystem in themselves), whose decendants hunted the ancient fish to extinction.

[Tiberius]

I vaguely remember someone having success using high-temperature gradients

[Hallenbeck]

Were they having success recently or back in the day?

[magmacube_tr]

Success is limited. A swarm evolving and outcompeting everything else is inevitable it seems. But there are ways to postpone it.

If you see a species with a population over 200, cause a mass extinction. Doing this after their takeover is useless, as they do not diversify.

Have a very diverse map, with many small biomes with sharp transitions. This will hinder their growth.

Make the ocean completly unhabitatable.