playing earlier in the Phanerozoic

[civilizationfanatic2000]

Civ assumes you're playing in the Cenozoic. Specifically in the latest period of the Cenozoic.

What if you had an option to play earlier in the Phanerozoic? Now, for a game based on generating worlds that work like Earth but are not laid out like it, this can be strange. To make it gameable, I'll make some definitions and how each era would change gameplay. In all eras, assume animals can be hunted or domesticated. The player would have the ability to select specific time periods with their own fauna and flora.

Pleistocene

Pretty much the same as the Holocene, only megafauna are still extant.

Paleogene

Specifically the PETM thermal maximum. Forests at the poles, no permanent ice anywhere (save maybe the tops of mountains). Terror birds.

Cretaceous

You can be stupid and start in the Instant Game Over mode where the meteor hits after you press start. This wipes out your species. This is just for the cool cinematic. Or you can be smart and play in the normal mode before the meteor hits (say, 12,000 years)

Now things get exciting. Grass isn't as wide spread (so Wheat, Rice, Corn, etc become rarer), and also the elephant in the room: Dinosaurs. Dinosaurs are often bigger than mammals (even Cenozoic mammals, dinosaurs are specifically adapted to get big while mammals are adapted to be 1. nocturnal and 2. small as a response to an oxygen crisis). The earth is hotter (not as hot as the PETM) and there are a lot more weird mounts around.

Jurassic

Grass doesn't exist (so no Wheat, Rice) and neither do angiosperms (Bananas, apples). I don't know what you could farm here.

Triassic

Everything is somewhat drier- and more importantly, the oxygen level is lower (the aforementioned oxygen crisis). The player can choose between toggling air sacs for humans on and off. Keeping them off makes the game much harder as your citizens can't work as hard, turning them on has the benefit of allowing you to work as normal.

Permian

Two options. Instant Game Over mode, where you start in the midst of the Great Dying, and normal mode, where you start near the end of the Permian before the Great Dying.

This is the limit of reasonable gameplay, because realistically all you could farm is like...Potatoes...

Let's go further.

Carboniferous

The first thing you'll notice is that this period is quite cold actually, with icecaps at the poles. The second thing you'll notice is that the death rate increased because higher oxygen level erodes your cells faster.

Also the insects are giant and they are everywhere.

Devonian

There aren't any land animals other than amphibians and insects. Also I'm not sure if tubers existed yet.

You can probably stop here, it's impossible to finish the game without coal.

Silurian

Sparse land plants, almost no land animals. Land is thus unfarmable.

Ordovician

fish and insects and plants and nothing else

Cambrian

all life exists in the ocean

Pre-Cambrian

What can you actually do here other than lose?

 

[Evie]

You know, I kinda like this idea...essentially a young world/old world slider that has humans appear at widely different time periods. Just messing around with availability of resources (no coal / no oil / no horses alone has potential to result in very different games) would already give interesting results.

 

[civilizationfanatic2000]

You know, I kinda like this idea...essentially a young world/old world slider that has humans appear at widely different time periods. Just messing around with availability of resources (no coal / no oil / no horses alone has potential to result in very different games) would already give interesting results.

yeah. gonna get a bit nitpicky on the 'no coal/oil/horses' part- the first would only disappear before the carboniferous, the second would disappear in the precambrian, and the third wouldn't really disappear until it's absolutely certain that every animal is unridable (You would have to get to the Devonian) Horses in the Mesozoic would probably be Hadrosaurs. Hadrosaurs would also be cattle. Dunno what passes for pigs in the Mesozoic.

 

[Evie]

Yes, the thought of ridanle dinos occured to me, but game wise that runs into the difficulty of having to generate a lot of alternate unit art.
, which be too complicated.

 

[civilizationfanatic2000]

Yes, the thought of ridanle dinos occured to me, but game wise that runs into the difficulty of having to generate a lot of alternate unit art.
, which be too complicated.

yup. but if you're going as far as to replicate the flora of the Paleozoic and earlier Mesozoic, you could try your hand at alternate units for every faction.

 

[civilizationfanatic2000]

@Boris Gudenuf I'd like to hear your thoughts on this.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

It's an interesting concept, but first, realize that the graphics complications already noted are bigger than anybody has mentioned: the biomes don't look much like 'modern' earth at any time before about the Paleogene, so units, animals, resources, and the terrain tiles would all have to be redone. And there are a few other considerations:

1. Another limitation is that at any time before the Cretaceous there are no recognizable mammals, so where would modern humans come from? You either assume a single 'strain' of evolution to produce one species of large mammals with no others, or that humans came from Somewhere Else (H. Beam Piper, one of my favorite science fiction writers from the 50s and early 60s, used the idea that humans migrated from Mars as it became uninhabitable, which would actually work as well as anything as a deus ex machina to explain very, very early Humans).

2. As already recognized, human civilizations are the result of exploiting a whole range of other plants animals, and resources. Since most of those are not the same for earlier Eras, alternatives would have to be proposed. I'm not enough of a paleo-botantist/biologist/ industrial scientist to even begin to say how that would look, but it implies (again) that almost everything about the resources, units, Tech Tree, etc. will have to change.

3. And it would all have to change for every proposed earlier starting Era: the Jurassic is NOT the same as the Cretaceous or any other Era, and that goes for all of them. That means an entirely new suite of graphics, terrain, resources and resource alternatives for each and every Era. In other words, by my count, at least 6 times the graphic and design work that has gone into an single Civ game so far.

- Which makes it a fascinating idea, but probably more of an entirely new game or games rather than a Civ variant or 'alternative start'

On the other hand, just to throw this out, the idea of Alternative Resources based on Alternative Starts deserves more consideration in 'regular' Civ. Let's face it: Civ has always assumed that virtually all resources are at least potentially available everywhere that the terrain/climate are adequate, and that just Weren't So when people started building cities.

For the two most obvious examples:
1. Horses were not only absent from the entire American Hemisphere, they were also absent from everywhere else except a relatively high latitude band from Mongolia west to Poland: Civs starting in China, Africa, the Middle East, southern Europe, Southeast Asia - no Horses until well after the nominal 4000 BCE Start Date, and then only if they were spread by Humans (a device that should be in the game already: this would make it almost a Requirement). This is why over much of nprth Africa and the Middle East the donkey was actually domesticated long before the horse - it was the only equine around to haul loads.
2. Cattle weren't much better. There were massive beasts (the Aurochs) in northern Europe, but the genetic source of the modern domestic Cow was in another band, running from northern/northwestern India across the Middle East to north Africa (because before 4000 BCE approximately, the 'Sahara' was a huge savannah grassland with lakes, rivers, and lots of grazing animals, including cattle). That's not so important for food, because almost any grazing animal can be hunted for meat, but oxen were prime draft and plow animals for everybody (like the early Middle eastern Civs) that did not have horses yet. The substitute in this case was the related Water Buffalo, but only in pretty wet biomes like south China, Southeast Asia, parts of India, etc..

So, just as Alternate Start possibilities for 'regular' Civ, you coud propose a suite of animal Resources and their Alternatives:

Horse - Donkey - Hemippe* Hybrid
Cattle - Water Buffalo - Aurochs - the last a great source of meat, hide, sinew, hair, but NOT tamable as a draft animal

The alternatives would each subtly vary how the Civ develops in the early days: all the animals could be hunted for meat (and were) but they have slightly different sets of useful traits when domesticated. The ancestors of the modern Horse and Cattle are the most overall useful, but note what makes this work as a Game Mechanic: NO Start Position gives you access to both: they occupied different Latitude Bands in Eurasia, so you will have to have an alternative for one or both, no matter who you are playing.

Just a thought to consider . . .

*The Hemippe was a small, now-extinct equine that was crossed with donkeys to make a larger animal known as the Kunga in the Middle East, the first draft animal for Sumer's war carts and other folk's sledges and wagons

 

[civilizationfanatic2000]

It's an interesting concept, but first, realize that the graphics complications already noted are bigger than anybody has mentioned: the biomes don't look much like 'modern' earth at any time before about the Paleogene, so units, animals, resources, and the terrain tiles would all have to be redone. And there are a few other considerations:

yeah. If I had to pare it down to make it reasonable for the game, I would just select two periods for prehistoric earth: Latest Cretaceous and PETM.

1. Another limitation is that at any time before the Cretaceous there are no recognizable mammals, so where would modern humans come from? You either assume a single 'strain' of evolution to produce one species of large mammals with no others, or that humans came from Somewhere Else (H. Beam Piper, one of my favorite science fiction writers from the 50s and early 60s, used the idea that humans migrated from Mars as it became uninhabitable, which would actually work as well as anything as a deus ex machina to explain very, very early Humans).

Humans coming from somewhere else is how humans would appear in those times.

2. As already recognized, human civilizations are the result of exploiting a whole range of other plants animals, and resources. Since most of those are not the same for earlier Eras, alternatives would have to be proposed. I'm not enough of a paleo-botantist/biologist/ industrial scientist to even begin to say how that would look, but it implies (again) that almost everything about the resources, units, Tech Tree, etc. will have to change.

Yup. You would have to make two seperate game mods (effectively) for the periods involved. One for the PETM, another for the Maastrichtian.

 

[BuchiTaton]

Cretaceous

You can be stupid and start in the Instant Game Over mode where the meteor hits after you press start. This wipes out your species. This is just for the cool cinematic. Or you can be smart and play in the normal mode before the meteor hits (say, 12,000 years)

Now things get exciting. Grass isn't as wide spread (so Wheat, Rice, Corn, etc become rarer), and also the elephant in the room: Dinosaurs. Dinosaurs are often bigger than mammals (even Cenozoic mammals, dinosaurs are specifically adapted to get big while mammals are adapted to be 1. nocturnal and 2. small as a response to an oxygen crisis). The earth is hotter (not as hot as the PETM) and there are a lot more weird mounts around.

Jurassic

Grass doesn't exist (so no Wheat, Rice) and neither do angiosperms (Bananas, apples). I don't know what you could farm here.

Triassic

Everything is somewhat drier- and more importantly, the oxygen level is lower (the aforementioned oxygen crisis). The player can choose between toggling air sacs for humans on and off. Keeping them off makes the game much harder as your citizens can't work as hard, turning them on has the benefit of allowing you to work as normal.

The oxygen crisis was centered into the Jurassic, started at late Triassic and returned close to present level by middle Cretaceous. By the way oxygen is not directly correlated to mammal size, we must remember that sizable mammals like big felines and artiodactyls live with Jurassic like levels of oxygen in the Andes and Tibet. Even more, the development of endothermy (requiring more oxygen) in mammal's linage was precisely at theT-J transition, in a world still warmer than the Neogene, so if the reduction of oxygen were so relevant for mammals the endothermy would had been negative not positive as it was. Temperature once more is relevant since the current high mountain mammals live in enviroments with low temperatures and rainfall therefore limited food. So, we all know the Tibet is not dominated by giant "terror birds" beyond Golden Eagle that have an obvious secondary advantage (yet mammals feed on Eagles eggs and chicks), Edit: I just noted that Golden Eagles even avoid a great part of the Tibetan plateau there is a hole in their distribution there, that tell us about how there are other things more relevant than bird air sacks and oxygen there.

Even for the Paleogene were there was a tendency to increase of size of mammals as the world turn colder and higher in oxygen but the correlation is not direct, being the gradual increase in size likely a natural rate of mutation for morphological giantism adaptation.

 

[civilizationfanatic2000]

The oxygen crisis was centered into the Jurassic, started at late Triassic and returned close to present level by middle Cretaceous. By the way oxygen is not directly correlated to mammal size, we must remember that sizable mammals like big felines and artiodactyls live with Jurassic like levels of oxygen in the Andes and Tibet. Even more, the development of endothermy (requiring more oxygen) in mammal's linage was precisely at theT-J transition, in a world still warmer than the Neogene, so if the reduction of oxygen were so relevant for mammals the endothermy would had been negative not positive as it was. Temperature once more is relevant since the current high mountain mammals live in enviroments with low temperatures and rainfall therefore limited food. So, we all know the Tibet is not dominated by giant "terror birds" beyond Golden Eagle that have an obvious secondary advantage (yet mammals feed on Eagles eggs and chicks).

Even for the Paleogene were there was a tendency to increase of size of mammals as the world turn colder and higher in oxygen but the correlation is not direct, being the gradual increase in size likely a natural rate of mutation for morphological giantism adaptation.

til! thank you for correcting me