I killed a few people and ate them because I crashed into some snowy mountains. But after that I also started to create offspring. Why am I still unhappy about having murdered those people? - "Having" to do something does not adequate to someone liking it and for a lot of people you can't just pay off your consciousness afterwards.
Being unhappy about something does not mean that you do not see it as unnecessary. Freezing while having lots of frostbite, while starving or having food poisoning because uncooked food while also being surrounded by 0 trees will give you more mood problems than having cut down those trees and cooking food and warming yourself. Planting trees is to make sure you are surrounded by trees, because that is what those people like. The precept is not about "give what you take". The precept is about "Trees are holy and we should do everything to not disturb them".
If you think that is dumb, don't play with that. If you do want to play with that, try to accommodate for it instead of ignoring the downside mechanic completely and then complain that your own actions lead to imbalance. Ideology adds fibercorn and wood dryads and a setting to not cut plants on growing zones. You can also dig into mountains to keep warm and leave nature alone. You might still want to cut down some trees to get your cooking going as a tribe, but getting to -20 means you just massively destroyed a part of a forest. Even with -20 at the very start, you can still push through it because of the mood bonus you get from having tress nearby, the fresh colony start buff and wooden sculptures, fine meals and nice dining/recreation room combined. You people will just remember it as a bad time in their history for a while, even if they felt it was necessary (which is usually was not).
Many memes and precepts require you to diverge from default gameplay. If you stay on default gameplay and just expect boni, they can indeed feel unbalanced. If you integrate them into your playstyle, they can indeed give great boni. I wouldn't say the tree meme is one of the strongest for the meditation bonus, but the hidden seed spawn can accelerate early game dryad build up until you feel you've got enough. Some precepts are also just a boost or to create interesting problems. In this case though, you can just change your playstyle unless you are starting in a very problematic biome.
Nudism is probably one of the least impactful memes/precepts there is, giving a tiny mood debuff for wearing clothes and automatically rolling social roles without clothing requirements. What does count as clothing does not even line up with the Nudist trait and you can have a nudist in a nudism ideology that is at the same time happy that they are naked, but also annoyed that they are wearing clothes. The precept/meme is just not well made, but it has very little impact still.
Being unhappy about something does not mean that you do not see it as unnecessary. Freezing while having lots of frostbite, while starving or having food poisoning because uncooked food while also being surrounded by 0 trees will give you more mood problems than having cut down those trees and cooking food and warming yourself. Planting trees is to make sure you are surrounded by trees, because that is what those people like. The precept is not about "give what you take". The precept is about "Trees are holy and we should do everything to not disturb them".
If you think that is dumb, don't play with that. If you do want to play with that, try to accommodate for it instead of ignoring the downside mechanic completely and then complain that your own actions lead to imbalance. Ideology adds fibercorn and wood dryads and a setting to not cut plants on growing zones. You can also dig into mountains to keep warm and leave nature alone. You might still want to cut down some trees to get your cooking going as a tribe, but getting to -20 means you just massively destroyed a part of a forest. Even with -20 at the very start, you can still push through it because of the mood bonus you get from having tress nearby, the fresh colony start buff and wooden sculptures, fine meals and nice dining/recreation room combined. You people will just remember it as a bad time in their history for a while, even if they felt it was necessary (which is usually was not).
Many memes and precepts require you to diverge from default gameplay. If you stay on default gameplay and just expect boni, they can indeed feel unbalanced. If you integrate them into your playstyle, they can indeed give great boni. I wouldn't say the tree meme is one of the strongest for the meditation bonus, but the hidden seed spawn can accelerate early game dryad build up until you feel you've got enough. Some precepts are also just a boost or to create interesting problems. In this case though, you can just change your playstyle unless you are starting in a very problematic biome.
Nudism is probably one of the least impactful memes/precepts there is, giving a tiny mood debuff for wearing clothes and automatically rolling social roles without clothing requirements. What does count as clothing does not even line up with the Nudist trait and you can have a nudist in a nudism ideology that is at the same time happy that they are naked, but also annoyed that they are wearing clothes. The precept/meme is just not well made, but it has very little impact still.