[urav]

should be starting with 30... if you're seeing 2 that might be an older default that I tried out (an adam and eve experiment). You can change it in the config too.

On the dying immediately thing - offspring get a fraction of the parent's energy when they fork. If the parent forks too early (low energy), the kid spawns with barely anything and can't cover its tick cost + brain metabolic cost.

That's working as intended — reproducing too early is a bad strategy and selection should punish it. But if everything dies instantly, something else might be off.