Let's talk about: Amphibious civs

Future Game
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If you are aware, or readed, the N threads about underwater civs, you know that is imposible for these to reach late society, industrial, and space stage, so, that leave us with amphibious civs being the only way to have almost an aquatic civ.
We can classify these civs as “true amphibious”, and “fake amphibious”.

True Amphibious.
These civs are composed by creatures that can live in water and land at the same time. We can classify these acording to their origins,

Water first.
The creatures of this civ evolved from the first creatures that ventured into land. Instead of abandoning water completely, these creatures didn’t cut all their ties with this element.

Land first.
These civs are composed of creatures that evolved on land, but “decided” to return to the water. Like the “water first”, these creatures didn’t cut their ties with their home enviroment , in this case, “land”

Fake Amphibious.

These civs are composed of creatures that are well adapted, and live entirely in one enviroment, but can visit the other one. They can be classify acording to their home enviroment:

100% Water.
These are full-aquatic creatures, that have to go to dry land to get resources that can’t be get underwater, like metals.

100% Land.
These are full-terrestrial creatures, that have to go to water to get food, or other materials found underwater.

each of this civs will have their own problems, and challenges, but they are more plausible that full-underwater civs. If you don’t believe it, just publish in reddit a scientific paper with proof that underwater civs are plausible (and maybe we can have waterworlds, or hycean planets as home of our creatures)

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What does this have to do with Amphibian civs… also, the “Only water” are just underwater civs so they aren’t possible.

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It was a disclaimer, to avoid people to post here about how underwater civs are plausible…by stating solutions that can be summarized as “the saddle before the horse”,
“Only Water” couldn’t be considered underwater civs if they have to go to land to extract resources to help them reach industrial and space stage (as far as i know, underwater civs has to reach those stages without making landfall)

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I really like the idea of being able to have an amphibian civ in the game. Clearly a lot of people here are inspired by the idea of building cities and such underwater, and having a civilization which is primarily water-dwelling. I think people just go over the top with thinking about that in a pure fantasy sense.

Anyway, I’ve been coming up with the evolution of a species with the idea of them being an amphibious civilization. I’ve been making models in Womp, and have posted some of the early stages on here already. I wanted to have them develop as far as possible underwater, before then going onto land. I guess that would mean being able to survive well on land or underwater before developing tool use and getting to the awakening stage. I’ve been revising the idea to come up with something more realistic, including consideration of what evolutionary pressures would lead to developments in the species.

I think it should be entirely possible to develop tool use underwater - after all, rocks go smash, wherever you are. However, if that meant entering the Awakening stage, then evolving lungs, etc. would take a very long time afterwards.

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That could be a path to go amphibian, another path could be evolving an octopus-like creature, that stores water in their gills to use it to “breathe” above water. In that way, you can have a “fully aquatic” creature, and a civ that can reach the space stage without problems.

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another different way would be to have external gills that you need to equip a harmless bag like organism(most commonly known as jellyfish on earth) that you may or may not have domesticated for the sole purpose of wearing on your gills to keep them hydrated and full of oxygen on land and being an axolotl

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That water could run out of oxygen and constantly need to be replaced with new water from the sea.

Except there is drag underwater. Spears can appear but not arrows.

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Or They could do this

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Well, that’s a given, considering their situation. Maybe they will create some “outposts” to replace the water, so, they don’t lose time returning to the sea.

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or domesticate harmless jellyfish into muscular bags of water that can survive on land as long as they have no spillage and get enough oxygen for an animal with internal gills by way of external gill like structures and a thin endoskeleton both achieved by way of selective breeding

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Please no. Tool breeders is another very bad idea. Which was already thoroughly debunked in the under water thread and made fun of here:

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my suggestion is more clothes breeder route which is far more feasible than breeding an animal into a pickaxe for example

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It’s still the very, very similar concept and causes me to violently roll my eyes.

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What’s going to stop the jellyfish from drying in contact with air?

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1: the water inside it and 2: whatever trait the player decides to select for to make it stay hydrated more easily (ex: actively taking water from the air and letting water transfer between its cells and its inner surface so its cells don’t pop, if you remove the inner surface part(mainly because the inner surface of land plants and animals is still part of the plant/animal) there is a desert insect that does this and aloe vera also does this)

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Does a 100% water creature deciding to make a platform by accident and then making a forge there but still needing to go back to water to breathe (or just have someone splash water on their gills) count as amphibian?

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if it can only use the oxygen already in the water in its gills while in air no if it can get oxygen from water while being in air yes

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All gills can absorb oxygen from air, the problem is that they loose moisture too quickly.

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i meant more due to diffusion surface(which would just be the gill openings if they are filled with water) limits than actual biological limitations stopping them from getting oxygen from the air

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Amphibian seems a pretty Earth-centric term, but quickly scanning wikipedia seems to suggest that to count as an amphibian a species needs to have some adaptations for surviving on land, at least being able to kind of breathe on land seems to be the first amphibian mentioned.

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