Gaining Intelligence

Inca wrote:

I am in agreement that performing complex actions boosts the path to intelligence. Perhaps we could have a number of progress bars (visible to the player, or not) and once the player fills these they unlock the tech editor. This would encourage people to develop different areas such as hunting/foraging, shelter building, use of tools, communication. I like the idea of behaviour contributing to this, like hunting tactics. Then all we have to do is decide how much each action contributes and to where.  What do you think?

I'm not sure how important diet is to this. It sounds like unnecessary complication and should only really contribute a few points anyway.

That is very similar to what we have laid out. The full concept on the transition from is on this thread, and is also available on the wiki, under the Awakening Stage and Society Stage entries. 

On the topic of action, that will be handled by the Research Web. Once sapience has been achieved, the Research Web will actually be invisibly enabled, and the actions of the player and his species contributes to discovering new Researches and Inventions. These actions will have specifically quantified yields of Research Points that they generate, or they could have specific ranges of RP that they generate. However, I think showing progress bars for this defeats the whole purpose, because this stage of the game is supposed to reflect the primitive degree of advancement of the player's species, and progress bars indicate at least a decent level of civilization. Only upon the discovery of Record Keeping will players be able to actually view the Research Web and allocate RP to fields of research, instead of just discovering them via actions.

However, I don't know how actions will contribute towards advancement during the animal stages. What I do know is how advancement works after Sapience is achieved, but reaching Sapience is a whole other issue. Nonetheless, from what I do know diet is very important, and I don't think we could easily just neglect it. The proteins and nutrients from carnivorous diets are essential in brain development.

Are there any past threads, for reference, discussing how intelligence can be attained?