no, only because it is a “technology” it doesn’t mean breeding traits means advancing technologically.
Also now that I think of it bioengineering is more of a technique than a technology.
So like very a polymorphic caste system?
The thread may now turn into Aqutiants…
The way I see this, no one has found a way to get out of the stone age. However, there may be a way the possibility of Underwater Civs would be if the Players Species evolved in the shadow of a collapsed civilisation with malleable minerals that can easily be turned into precious metal without the need of high heat.
What is even the chance of that happening?
What is technology to you? Do you subscribe to the dictionary definition of technology? Or is it somethibg else to you.
Thats a good point. But you could get a species with hands, blade-bone - hands and some electric gland too lol. Like,it sounds like you could skip stone age with this.Except the metal smelting thing ?Or maybe even that if you would include it in the designs.I mean,this is LAWK ,and some organisms produce electricity and smelt metal.But letting the player to evolve all of this is like skipping the stone age and even bronze age maybe.
Okay so I’d like to point out, somehow, dispite reeling from jet lag, that one can most definitely breed an animal for a “practical” purpose with low classical tech, after all you don’t need to know about mendelian (eek spelling) inheritance, evolution, or whatever to breed an animal (or plant, fungus is a little tricky though) for a purpose. All you need to know is the general principle that children resemble their parents, or, on ocation, the milkman. With this you could take, say, scaly foot gastropods, and breed them for better quality and quantity of scales for harvesting. All a farmer has to do is breed the critters with the most economically productive phenotype (I.e. their scales will bring in cash) before killing and harvesting them. Over time the bred gastropods will be relatively defenseless and have multitudes of huge, rock hard scales. Why, using the simple model (that was used on earth) of breeding the critters that are best at the task they are used for, one could breed biological radar analogues in several ways! The best start would be to domesticated a medium sized predator like a small toothed whale or a hammerhead shark. The thing both of these critters have in common is a rare and powerful sense. (Echolocation and electroreception respectively.) If they were breed like earthly dogs then their equivalent of a bloodhound could be further breed for use in combat or just crazy hunters and could wind up being more accurate than sonar for certain tasks!
One more point: stone age does not mean, dumb, unspecialized, preagrarian, or primitive. As the natives of America have never developed metal on their own, all of their achievements were gained in the stone age. And they had giant agrarian empires with protowriting, domestication, and giant wonders all as impressive as those of the ancient medeteranian. And never forget, they were good enough at astronomy to predict that the world would end in 2012. (For clarification they didn’t print and dates past 2012 for the same reason physical date recording things don’t tend go be prepared for the next century. It’s tedious, resource inefficient and pointless to prepare any more.)
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MY POINT EXACTLY.They did it in the 19th century…Domestication has been around for only 10.000 years.
Fires has been around for 1 million.In the same span it could prove to be VERY usefull.
People also forget the aztecs and other american indians were stone age people.Their civilization was pretty “thriving” to say so lol.
I think the reason why people don’t like being stuck in the stone age is not because stone age dumb monke brain but because of the fact that the rest of the game is locked behind you because you can’t get into space at least in a conventional way
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Yea youre right,I was just saying that stone age age isnt that boring as people think.And i too wouldnt like to have a civ thats stuck at the stone age.
Right now i think you either accept primitive biengineering or lava vent smelting for a underwater civ.
Hehehe. You underestimate how stupid of a disign can work. So you can’t get into space without advanced smelting? Why not? Gimme a second. I’ll find a way to get into space in the stone age. Industrial stage, you are no longer needed. (And yeah society stage is totally doable in the stone age, most earthly civs got their before they got metal, if they got there in the first place.)
What if there simultaneously exists a terrestrial species which is sapient and it could conduct trade with the underwater civs trading metal tools for whatever is under the sea
They didn’t have a secret space program, right?
Exactly. This is the entire point of the thread as people want to prove that they can in fact reach the rest of the game.
Please go ahead so that this topic can get back on track.
Not an underwater civilization.
This thread is for 100% purely in water species trying to reach high tech required to access the rest of the game.
All kind of random events like space aliens giving the underwater species high tech, has been suggested to death and it won’t be a thing in the game, as then Thrive would be just a RNG waiting simulator.
And this is why underwater civilizations is a meme.
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Okay but the stuff i suggested is plausible right?Cuz it would make an interesting scenario
I mean probably, but it will be perhaps a bit unlikely, because you need to have 2 species develop into sapients at the same time, which to me seems a bit unlikely, because the sapient phase lasts for a few hundred thousand years (during which the species will probably make any species close to sapience extinct due to tribalism). But not entirely impossible to imagine the timescales working out.
Found these links (which need to be also argued if the domestication approach to high tech is to be taken seriously):
And maybe:
and:
I dont think a stone age civilization limited to the ocean could really affect an ecosystem on land.Plus there are lots of near sapient species on earth like whales,dolphins,octopuses and chimpanzees
Hmm, yeah. I was thinking that the land based civ formed first. They would then industrialize and pollute the oceans / hunt the aquatic species into extinction before they can become sapients, if the time scales don’t line up just right.
You dont need a purely biotech approach.Some basic biotech WILL help with discovering metalworking.If you want it mandatory that metalworking to be part of your techweb .
A pure biotech tree will need more thought tho.
Wait, what. I was legit going to say something about domestication a few days ago but didn’t gain the confidence to say it after getting inspired by the book all tomorrows. Did you just beat me to bioengineering species to create an advanced civilisation???
Looms are a stone age technology (probably Neolithic).
Wooden gears work equally well as metal gears, for machinery.
Mechanical looms are a key element of the industrial age, and do not need metal, given other forms of machinery can exist.
Punchcard looms are a key precursor of the information age, and do not need metal for the same reasons (and while they do need machinery, it is different machinery from mechanical looms - you can put a head on a hand loom).
I’d be a little confused about calling a civilization that lacks metal but makes widespread use of machinery and perhaps mechanical data processing to still be in the Neolithic, even if they haven’t made space ships. The pre/proto-historical ‘ages’ ended with historians rather than technological advancements, and historians are easier to implement than smelting.
For deep underwater civilizations in particular I’m pretty sure there’s a lot of technical challenges involved in just reaching and/or colonizing the surface (air, ice or otherwise) that would make that a stage on its own.
We also might lock ourselves out of growing in space through our own space programs, just by filling up orbit with debris … so a civilization being locked out of space growth in particular may not be too uncommon. There’s still plenty of room for innovation without it, I hope.
I just use “stuck in the stone age” as a shorthand for, has no way to progress technologically in the direction (space ships, scifi tech) that are needed to complete the game.