Implementing Underwater Civilizations

I am tired of going over this. It's like beating a dead horse with the disembodied limbs of another dead horse. I'm not locking this in case someone really does have some insane spark of ingenuity, and because I don't want people making new threads. If you're new, and I assume you are if you're foolhardy enough to think that you can figure this out, know that, should you neglect to read the thread and post something we've already gone over, you will be banned for a short period of time.

~scio

So i have been reading throgh the fourms and had a thoght.
If we had underwater civilizations I think I know how they would work.
Say in the cell stage, when you got bigger or however you go up to the next level, depending on a what type of cell you are or what you eat, (Not sure what the current concept is completely) you go up or down, if you go down you are more likely to become a UW Civilisation/Creature, if you go up you are more likely to be a surface dweller.
But if you stay sort of in the middle by eating a mixture of things you could become an amphibian.
Say you become a UW creature, (UW = Underwater) there could be an extra 'Aquatic Stage' after the multi-celluar stage, then the normal stages would follow afterwards, but underwater.
Say you became an amphibian the stages would be the same as Surface Dwellers but you would be able to live underwater or on land, sort of like the way traits work in spore for Herbivore, Omnnivore and Carnivore.

I hope you understand my explination, please give constructive critisism.

Thanks
Hellome

(Is this in the right section?)

I think we should just make it free to choose to the player ,you dont go up you dont go down you just grow until you enter "aquatic stage" then you can start evolving things for moving to earth or you could just evolve into an intelligent water creature

The fact remains that we never found a way around the problem that underwater civilizations can't develop fire, and therefore can't shape metal, and therefore can't do a lot of the stuff we associate with civilization at all.

These 'stages' are all included as one in multicellular, so we don't need to make more stages. If you are a land dweller, you can still go in the sea, and vice versa, you just die quite quickly before you invent diving suits.

As for the civilisation part of it, I think the above post says everything.

Xenopologist wrote:

The fact remains that we never found a way around the problem that underwater civilizations can't develop fire, and therefore can't shape metal, and therefore can't do a lot of the stuff we associate with civilization at all.

I remember one method from the first forum, the very painful way of making organical "water suits" and using these to explore land, eventually finding and researching fire. Not mentioning the terrifying amount of time it would need just to get aware of fire, it's very dependant on availability of materials with suitable physical properties.

Oh, yeah, I saw that. The problem remains that "water suits" would be a heck of a lot heavier than "air suits." We'd need supra-mersibles filled with water like a goldfish bowl on a land rover, most likely.

I think that, short of those, our aqua "civilization" stopped at nomadic family/tribal groups (think whale pods...) until we got to the genetic engineering stage. (On land civ) and were able to create aquatic versions of our own species. Again, oldpost... If I find it, I'll let you know.

Mysterious_Calligrapher wrote:

Oh, yeah, I saw that. The problem remains that "water suits" would be a heck of a lot heavier than "air suits." We'd need supra-mersibles filled with water like a goldfish bowl on a land rover, most likely.

I think that, short of those, our aqua "civilization" stopped at nomadic family/tribal groups (think whale pods...) until we got to the genetic engineering stage. (On land civ) and were able to create aquatic versions of our own species. Again, oldpost... If I find it, I'll let you know.

Very culturally advanced tribes, but tribes none-the-less.

Anything very advanced, technologically, would be impossible underwater.

Xenopologist wrote:

The fact remains that we never found a way around the problem that underwater civilizations can't develop fire, and therefore can't shape metal, and therefore can't do a lot of the stuff we associate with civilization at all.

These "aquatic people" could use heat vents that are on the bottom of the oceanfloor to shape metal

~sciocont wrote:

Anything very advanced, technologically, would be impossible underwater.

How so?

specialk2121 wrote:

Xenopologist wrote:

The fact remains that we never found a way around the problem that underwater civilizations can't develop fire, and therefore can't shape metal, and therefore can't do a lot of the stuff we associate with civilization at all.

These "aquatic people" could use heat vents that are on the bottom of the oceanfloor to shape metal

More heat is required.

But seriously, those vents are nowhere near hot enough to be used for this. There is no fire substitute, much like there is no water substitute. This has been debated millions of times, and the underwater civilisations always lose.

However, there's no reason an intelligent creature like the octopus couldn't have evolved to be less solitary and started to build communities that all hunted together and built cities for their tribes out of rocks they have collected. They could even have religion and wars, but everything would be stone-knapped.

US_of_Alaska wrote:

However, there's no reason an intelligent creature like the octopus couldn't have evolved to be less solitary and started to build communities that all hunted together and built cities for their tribes out of rocks they have collected. They could even have religion and wars, but everything would be stone-knapped.

This reminds me of a concept species I once cooked up for a sci-fi story I was writing. I believe they communicated with some form of primitive language based on bioluminescence and were thusly able to develop quite advanced strategies for hunting prey as a group. However, they were stuck technologically because of the "no-fire" limitation.

Maybe someone should make a "fire is industry" post.
All tools would be stone and such underwater, but it would be entirely possible for octopuses or something similar to "farm" shellfish and sponges, by putting them in places where they will grow, and then tending them.

these "advanced octopuses" could also build large buildings out of rock and mud and other stuff

(im not sure if you need fire to make concrete)

specialk2121 wrote:

(im not sure if you need fire to make concrete)

That'd be pretty hard to work with underwater either way.

No, but you need air to dry it. The same goes with mud, really. The Octopuses might be able to graft coral and create grottoes that way, though.

What if the under-water species were able to produce buildings and other constructs naturally, without the use of fire? Perhaps the creature is capable of creating nests out of a resin, made from chewing up some kind of material (like bees and wasps making a nest). Then when the species reaches a level of intelligence, their nests become more elaborate. What if they had symbiotic relationship with other marine life for a mode of transportation? (like humans and horses) What if the creature itself is large like a whale, eventually evolving the ability to develop a hard outer shell, and naturally progressing to a space-faring state of development. Or could it be possible for them to grow ships, maybe even entirely organic space-faring vessels? We can't dismiss these possibilities just because we have no real-life examples to go on.

I've seen the argument against 'under-water intelligence being able to producing fire' at least twice on these forms now, but I think we can't get stuck on fire being the "be-all end-all" beginning of technology and development as we know it just because that's how we developed.

Or perhaps, they discover fire after being moderately intelligent for some time, and by first creating gas pockets in their habitats in which fire can exist and be harnessed. Or, the creature can cover itself with a reign "environmental suit" which contains it's aquatic habitat temporarily, enabling excursions to dry land where fire may be discovered and utilized (with their travel to land being like humans exploring the moon, simply another hurdle). Perhaps under-water life would take longer to develop technology than land faring organisms, simply because they have more hurdles to overcome, but that wouldn't stop them and I think it shouldn't take them out of Thrive.

My 2 cents

We've never said that they could not build a civilization, it's just that, essentially, their technology could not progress very far without the use of fire. Metallurgy is one of the key steps in progressing foreword, and it's impossible underwater. Certainly, large cities, farming, the wheel - these are all very possible for an aquatic civilization to develop, but they will never get to space without getting onto land for large periods of time, and thus becoming technologically amphibious.

I'd like to point something out out, it's three words: Underwater Volcanic Vents. Now I don't know what would happen IRL for an intelligent species in the open seas, but a recent thought experiment of mine based on Europa and "Europan life" if it exists got me wondering, if life would be suited to only thrive around volcanic vents, then these would be the centerpiece to their societies. They would replace fires that early humans used. Heating metal would be no problem for them if they found some just washing around, thus, casting and smithing might not be impossible, but it would be dangerous and difficult. I say that technological societies underwater are indeed possible, but only if the life is centered on underwater volcanic vents.

GhengopelALPHA wrote:

I'd like to point something out out, it's three words: Underwater Volcanic Vents. Now I don't know what would happen IRL for an intelligent species in the open seas, but a recent thought experiment of mine based on Europa and "Europan life" if it exists got me wondering, if life would be suited to only thrive around volcanic vents, then these would be the centerpiece to their societies. They would replace fires that early humans used. Heating metal would be no problem for them if they found some just washing around, thus, casting and smithing might not be impossible, but it would be dangerous and difficult. I say that technological societies underwater are indeed possible, but only if the life is centered on underwater volcanic vents.

We've gone over this a lot- the vents simply aren't hot enough to melt metals down. Undersea vents on earth reach up to 464 °C, so only very heavy metals (gold, lead) would melt down. These metals really aren't very useful in technology underwater. And even if you do find a metal that's useful, the heat would almost certainly kill your creature, since the water surrounding it would be a supercritical fluid and would denature its enzymes unless it evolved right there- and if it did that, it probably wouldn't evolve intelligence. Every angle of this has been covered.

A (brief) check on wikipedia tells me:
Average hydrothermal vent temperature = below 500℃
Useful-for-metal-reactions fire temperature = above 1000℃ (to about 2000℃)

Also, apparently vents are cooler than the hottest part of cigarettes... Well, you don't see people using cigarettes for metalwork, so that sort of puts it in perspective.

Dang, thought I had something there. Oh well, guess underwater civs are doomed. =\

GhengopelALPHA wrote:

Dang, thought I had something there. Oh well, guess underwater civs are doomed. =\

Yep. We've researched this inside and out on multiple occasions.

~sciocont wrote:

We've never said that they could not build a civilization, it's just that, essentially, their technology could not progress very far without the use of fire. Metallurgy is one of the key steps in progressing foreword, and it's impossible underwater. Certainly, large cities, farming, the wheel - these are all very possible for an aquatic civilization to develop, but they will never get to space without getting onto land for large periods of time, and thus becoming technologically amphibious.

I like this solution, technologically amphibious, excellent.

Shouldn't we leave an open variable in case the player is more creative then us? Just set the "Metal Working Ability" to be usable if the species can repeatedly create temps over 'x' degrees? (who knows how, but this seems more in the spirit of the game to me)