Designing a civilization for my universe

[Maximum77]

My civilization spans from the dawn of man to the era where man becomes so technologically advanced that he is like a god. I haven't worked out the mechanics of how you progress, but each 5 points you achieve, you unlock a new technology, invention or feat of human engineering. The first to reach 100 points wins.


You start out as I said at the dawn of man (Neanderthals), and you automatically unlock the first 5 points.


The first achievement is the discovery of fire, but more simply just fire


+5: Fire


I need 20 more achievements. You can progress as fast as you want, but +100 is the ultimate achievement of man, a technology/invention/discovery in the far distant future. The lower points are +10, +15, +20 and so on until you reach +100. The first lower points will be significant things we have achieved or created throughout history. As we approach the halfway mark, the achievements become more futuristic and sci-fi-esque.


Be as creative as you can. I already have some

Note: This is non for profit. It's just for me

[jqavins]

Since fire is free you need 19 more, not 20.

What goes on in this world, other than advancing? Thus far it sounds more like a homebrew game than world building.

Some say (and I tend to agree) that the fundamental turning point from pre-civilization to civilization is agriculture. I don't know how far along you want that - at 10 points, 20, or what - but it should be pretty early.

Some other important ones, in no particular order include the wheel (actually, the axle) bricks, weaving, fermentation, bronze smelting, iron smelting, antibiotics, electricity, plumbing, the scientific method, gunpowder, horse tack (which is actually several different things invented separately here on Earth) leather tanning... The hard part would be keeping it to only 19, and that's just getting to the present age.

[St.Just]

I'd be tempted to just take a look at the technology list from one of the Civilization games and grab the more important seeming ones for each era, really.

Beyond what jqavins, writing/the alphabet and splitting the atom seem like good ones to have one either side of the scale.

[Zorku]

Well at 100 points you obviously have future football.

[Dromedary]

I agree that 20 achievements sounds like way too little. In civilization V, there are over one hundred sciences to research, and while you could leave out many of them, they are a pretty good rundown of the advancements of humanity, and those barely even get into future and Sci-fi technology or anything before agriculture.

Also, this does seem more like game design than world-building at this point. I do like the idea of it though.

[Thunderfist12]

My ideas for your list: obviously it's your idea though so do what you will.

+5 Fire.
+10 Farming and Domestication.
+15 Bronze and Masonry.
+20 Trade and Writing.
+25 First Cities.
+30 Iron and Basic Vehicles.
+35 Steel and Feudal Society.
+40 Gunpowder and Rennaisance.
+45 Steam Engines and Early Electronics.
+50 Gasoline/Diesel Engines and Modern Electronics.

[Lvl 2 Expert]

The one thing I'd feel adamant about having it in there is stone handaxes/bifaces. Between roughly 1.5 and 0.5 million years ago those where our most important tools. Both our hands and our brains have literally been shaped around using them, freeing the way for our further development.

Fire came out around the same time, sure, and fire was very important as a social tool. It's my conviction that one reason we like watching TV so much and it even feels relaxing when you're too tired to catch anything that's going on is that it's essentially staring into a campfire while hearing someone tell a story, the one other thing people could do at night ones they knew fire aside from crawling into a hole or a tree and hoping nothing ate them while they were asleep. Fire formed society, but stone handaxes birthed technology.

That is, assuming the world is like earth and the people like us. If not all bets are off.

Both fire and bifaces are before Neanderthals though, and Neanderthals aren't direct ancestors of humans (aside from those maybe a few percents in non-African populations).

[jqavins]

Fire came out around the same time, sure, and fire was very important as a social tool.

Fire also radically affected out ancestors' diet, making many foods either digestible where they were not or more readily digestible where they had less value before. I'd be amazed if our digestion has not evolved in the last million years to become more dependent on it.

[Lvl 2 Expert]

I thought of an old bit of research that might help here, so I'll throw it in.

When 2048 was the hippest game in town there was a site where you could enter 11 pictures to create your own version. (There is still at least one of those sites now I think, but it doesn't seem to be the same one.) I made an ancient technologies version which is no longer playable, but I still have the list of inventions I used, and I typed up some explanations on why I picked them for you. The list was made in order of (rough) date of invention:

2 stone tools (comes first because I counted smal scrapers as the beginning, handaxes specifically probably come a tad after fire)
4 fire
8 spear (one tool out of several parts, weapon that will have an immense impact on the world, ranged tool)
16 flute (music, a tool designed for a social function, with no direct benefit on chances of survival)
32 dog (first domesticated animal, by a big lead)
64 writing (the oldest traces are some rock scribblings from China, the oldest known complete texts are cuneiform, also represents language itself)
128 pot (clay, important form of storage for foods and liquids, important building material)
256 grain (I don't remember, but I'm assuming this is the oldest known cultivated plant, also a huge dietary change. Kind of weird that this would appear after pots and writing, let me know what you find if you end up researching this further)
512 wheel (hard to pin down at any one point, but no denying that the concept of rolling stuff around is important)
1024 sail (I researched small early boats for this, but came to the conclusion that sails were the most important boating discovery, unlocking the seas, also I've just watched a video claiming sails are much older then wheels, so the order is questionable)
2048 bronze (copper, metallurgy, it's both important and a very symbolic exit from the late stone age into the bronze age, also represents the concept of money)

I feel like those 11 items form an acceptable overview of humanities journey from the start of the earliest traces of the stone age into the bronze age, all the major beats are represented in some way. Slings and bows and swords and even shovels and hoes and axes and such are all kind of represented by spears, horses and chickens and cows and sheep by dogs etc. I'm not sure how far I'd get with just 8 more entries, not to the far future probably.