Realistically I’d say 30 years on the good end. Although that’s mainly because of predation and illness.
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Please do not doublepost. You can edit your later post into the former one and then remove the later one.
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Got it… anyways, what’s the plan for gravity? If the gravity is too high then you won’t be able to feasibly leave your planet. Other than this I don’t really see any other soft locks in terms of stages other than:
1- Aquatic intelligence
2- Non Grasper intelligence
3 - High Gravity intelligence
I suppose you could make a case for the planet lacking enough metals to progress past the Neolithic, but I’m not sure that would even be a setting. Could be wrong though.
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4- Blind Intelligence
5- Subterranean Oxygen Intolerant Intelligence
Also, the argument for Aquatics is not dead yet. Grant it, it has not been solved yet, but people are still trying. Ferrus_coloni had an interesting one here. Too bad it was posted half finished and without citations.
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6 - small organism (insect-sized, not cells) intelligence (see: microcivilizations topic)
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7 - Largest organism intelligence (?)
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There was also a thread for that (Megafaunal Civilization iirc)
Neither of these options will work because millions of years pass in one editor cycle, while the enemy species will ascend from the societal stage to the ascension stage in less than 100,000 years. This means that if your species needs one editor cycle to awaken, and the other species is already at the societal stage, then you will lose by entering the editor because the other species will have already ascended.
All events that lead to the disappearance of another intelligent species from the planet will either destroy you, or it will still remain alive (which is why the problem is renewed that by the time you evolve into an intelligent species, they will have already ascended).
How do you imagine that a species with the intelligence level of h. habilis could create a conspiracy to destroy industrial civilization?
In fact, there are quite a few aggressive species in nature, the crow “Corvus brachyrhynchos caurinus” regularly attacks ravens in flocks, the chimpanzee is one of the most aggressive primates, attacking each other in gangs during “chimpanzee wars”, ants and termites are generally some of the most warlike organisms on earth, and even bacterial colonies poison other colonies with toxins.
Although this does not mean that there cannot be peaceful intelligent species, for example, chimpanzee relatives - bonobos are very peaceful.
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It’s probably the best to either not allow other species to enter awakening proper, or having an automatic condition where after an another species enters society while yours is not there yet you face a game over.
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It has already been decided that the AI will not be able to reach the Galactic stage before you, therefore it is impossible for the AI to Ascend before you manage to leave your solar system, there for your arguments to the first three points are null and void.
If my suggestion for having a difficulty setting in which the AI surpassing you means death the next turn, then by all means, play the way you want to play, but according to the Official Wiki (What is Thrive) going auto extinct because the AI surpassed you will NOT be a thing, Hhyyrylainen has acknowledged this, and even if my suggestion to meet in the middle with difficulty setting gets accepted, in 2 of 3, your statement remains completely invalidated.
Though I agree with your statements about 4 and 5.
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The reason why that was decided is exactly as @domin2ktr said, you’d lose the race to ascension in a single editor cycle. So the reason why it has been decided the game is like that is due to the changing time scales.
Theoretically if this would make good gameplay, it could be added. But similarly to how people want meteor impact events that cause mass extinction, that might also just be an immediate game over for the player, we shouldn’t have just a randomly triggering game over condition. So for this to be a proper feature we would need to give the player like a heads up and a countdown how many generations they have to “catch up” before the game would be over.
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By that you mean a player would still be able to catch up for a few turns after a species entered the next stage or would the game predict roughly when a species will enter the next stage a few turns before that happens?
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No, I mean a literal countdown on screen like how there’s for the glaciation event. That’s a pretty game-like feature but, like I’ve said before, I think it is absolutely terrible game design to be able to get a random game game over.
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I don’t think it’s worth delaying getting to macroscopic for, but similar to my AI and Time Limit Difficulty Setting suggestion, it might be worth, at a later date, putting an option for Mass Extinction Events as a Difficulty Setting Option. So individuals could choose whether or not they wish to use it. Or perhaps it could just be a Hard Mode thing.
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Are we sure limiting mass extinctions to harder difficulties over the “standard” normal difficulty wouldn’t be a push too far towards “difficulty = realism”?
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Maybe, a Mass Extinction that kills your species could move you to your closet living relative? Although that could be a very distant relative. Should there be a limit on how many generations away it can be?
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You mean away from the closest relative splitting?
Note that there’s no guarantee these relatives survive the extinction.
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Life has survived several mass extinctions. Since you start as LUCA, if your Social Stage creature is wiped out by a cataclysmic natural disaster, and a single celled organism survives, then, technically, you are related to it. The question is, is that too distant, an if so, how many generations back is too far back?
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I think 10 myrs per aware turn timestep should probably be the maximum.
I am not sure I am understanding that correctly, wouldn’t that grow longer with each passing turn? And even more so in later stages?
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