Dominion has a fair amount of depth, but it seems common for individual player groups to get hung up on a particular play style and decide that they've found the ultimate strategy.
You're probably thinking "one cell = one pixel." In fact "one cell = one 8x8 block of pixels"; the specific pattern of colors in each 8x8 block represents the opcodes of that cell's 64-opcode program. So when the replicator takes over the map, it's changing the image to a repeating pattern of 8x8 blocks.
Now, don't quote me on this part, but I think the first replicator to take over is this (minus all the "junk DNA" between the instructions):
[}<,]}],<}[
and the second, more efficient, one is:
{[}<,]],<}[{
The latter means roughly:
--head1;
while (*head0) { *--head0 = *++head1; }
*head0-- = *head1++;
while (*head0) { --head1;
// CUT HERE
which gets pasted together with whatever cell it's breeding with at the time.
https://youtu.be/A-2XQQDD6QQ
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