Good point, completely slipped my mind. I agree with sticking with realism; we obviously take deviations for gameplay purposes in some areas, but that would be a fundamental inaccuracy to the stage which would really screw with a lot.
Considering that, I think stat-focused gameplay would focus a lot on optimization, such as through adjacency and features like that, as opposed to a holistic energy bar or something like that. We would need to probably display stats focused on overall body plan productivity if we incorporate colonial stat bonuses, but only in specific contexts.
While I do agree with you on the presence of unicellular organisms, I was particularly focused on multicellular-on-multicellular interactions. I agree that multicellular organisms should be less common than unicellular organisms, but I still do think other multicellular organisms should present to a point that a solid amount of the stage involves competing with other weird colonial entities.
I think a unique aspect of the multicellular stage and its combat is that killing one entity doesn’t necessarily mean that the organism as a whole is gone (unless you target it’s “heart”). Even with the macroscopic, killing the organism gets rid of it - in the multicellular, killing a few cells won’t necessarily mean the organism as a whole isn’t a threat anymore.