Another underwater civ thread showed up. Ironically despite thinking they proposed a new idea, ‘floating forges’, or just generally ‘do it out of the water’ has been proposed before… What was the main issue with those? Just general difficulty working in another medium and against gravity making experimentation too difficult/not worthwhile? Fine control being too tough for useful tools?
I guess you could work around that by having an extended ‘lung’ capacity and leaving like a mudskipper, but then that would be vetoed as an amphibious civ wouldn’t it.