Worldbuilding Wednesdays: A Game of Civilization

Welcome to Worldbuilding Wednesdays!  Every Wednesday, we spend what is probably far too much time walking through our worldbuilding process.  This week, we're going to introduce an amusing little cheat:  games.

What We Have So Far

Our culture on The Hill is now at the point where the individual populations of our three species- the nu humans, furries, and scalies- will develop together.  We have a rough idea of which direction the culture will develop in, and we have a grasp of the way magic will develop alongside technology.

While we haven't explicitly discussed the various drivers that will impact the development of a civilization, they've been present for some time.  On Earth, the main reason that population centers began to form was that the consistency of settled life permitted them to do more than simply spend the majority of their time gathering food.  On our world, that is a given (resources are approximately 100 times more plentiful), so farming, for example, is not going to be a priority.

Things that will be an initial priority are food preservation techniques, hunting technology, and the development of shelters that protect from the various large predators of our world.  Once the population gets big enough, logistics- moving resources to where they're needed- will be a primary concern.

The thing about figuring out which technologies are developed first is that there are simply so many to choose from.  How to decide?

That's where games come in.

A Note on Reference Material

Before we proceed, we should mention that it is not our goal to be as accurate as possible in our worldbuilding.  When we first started worldbuilding, some six months back, we likened worldbuilding to building a house.  As evidenced by the fact that we're six months in and haven't even assigned names to our species, we like us some detail... but that isn't the same thing as developing a dissertation on technological development of magical species given set initial conditions.  Building a schematic of our house that is detailed enough to tell you where the individual potted plants sit?  Cool.  Choosing materials for that house based on their physical and chemical properties?  Maybe a bit much.

So it is that, when we talk about technology, we could get down to specific patents and such, but that probably isn't necessary.  Similarly, we could use as our reference materials anthropological studies about the genesis of civilization...  Or we could use the video game series, Civilization.

This post is definitely a Your Mileage May Vary level of discussion.  We at Vagrant Dog Productions are well aware of how "cheap" some folks may consider the idea of using a game to decide which technologies would develop first and how that will impact our civilization.  That said, we'd like to point out that the whole concept behind these games is that it's fun to investigate the different drivers of civilization- war, diplomacy, culture, religion, etc.- and see how they change the way a civilization develops.  If any game would be useful in worldbuilding a civilization, it would be, well, Civilization.

All that said, we aren't trying to play the game.  We're using the technology web they've developed as a reference as we, in turn, decide what our civilization will do as it grows more advanced.  For example, consider The Wheel.

Wheelies Are Mandatory

At least initially, wheels won't be terribly useful to our fledgling civilization on The Hill.  While rolling things is easier than carrying them, our world doesn't have any kind of pressing problem with carrying large weights.  Every intelligent species is similar to the apocryphal ant in that even the children can easily lift and carry several times their own weight.  In fact, without other technologies in place, wheels make it harder to transport goods because the biggest problem when moving things is friction.  Wheels reduce friction as they move weight, but on a world like ours, where friction is already drastically lower than normal, this has an effect similar to greasing ice skates.

People will definitely get the idea for the wheel early on.  Rollstones and similar adaptations will help people realize that round objects move easily with even the slightest push.  They will also figure out relatively quickly that massive objects retain their inertia, even on a world where they weigh ten times less than normal.  A rolling object with any kind of mass to it is going to be difficult, if not impossible, to stop.

Where wheels will be useful is in creating pottery.  Even on our world, geometry still means that round objects are inherently more stable than other shapes, and a potter's wheel is one of the easiest ways to generate that shape.  Similarly, when farming finally does develop, grinding wheels will allow for easy production of milled goods.  Eventually, the wheel will even be used for transportation, but only once reliable counters to drastically lower friction are developed.

Initial Development

We can use similar thinking to work through the other basic technologies.  Going through a list of technologies from the various Civilization games:

  Agriculture.  As mentioned, this won't be a priority for our civilization until it reaches the point where hunting and gathering are no longer sufficient.  Something to consider: the yields involved in hunting and gathering, as opposed to agriculture.  While resources as a whole are 100 times greater on our world, they are approximately equal per unit area.  Plants and animals naturally condense resources, and the plants and animals our species will be living off of are, on average, several times more massive than similar plants and animals on Earth, so it will definitely take longer for hunting and gathering to fall out of favor, but not as long as one might think, considering the size of the planet. 

  Some rough numbers to work with:  hunter-gatherers on Earth could get enough food to sustain one person with about 4 hours of work.  Ancient farmers on Earth worked, on average, twice as hard, but they didn't have to work daily like the hunter-gatherers did (anthropologists figure they worked maybe 150 days per year on average).  Hunter-gatherers on our world, picking up foods that are several times as massive, will be able to produce the same amount of calories in a fraction of the time... but farming will take roughly similar amounts of time, since most of the work involved has little to do with weight.  Basically, until farming reaches the point where it produces roughly triple the yield that ancient farms on Earth did, it won't be replacing hunting and gathering.

Animal Husbandry.  We can expect animal husbandry to look slightly different on our world than it would on Earth, but it will occur at roughly the same time.  The realization that hunting would be much easier if we always knew where our prey was doesn't change much when the world is bigger.  What does change is the way we'll be altering our prey.

  One might think we would want our prey to be smaller and more prolific, since smaller animals are easier to handle.  This is half-correct.  The problem with smaller prey is that, thanks to the lower gravity of our world, they would be able to bound right over "normal" fences.  Even something the size of a cow would be able to reliably clear a ten-foot fence.  As a result, the herd animals our people gather will be bred to reach a sweet spot between size and ease of handling.  Expect sheep the size of cows, chickens that resemble velociraptors, and pigs, which are notoriously difficult to domesticate, due to their intelligence, to be roughly the same as they are on Earth.  The one thing our fledgling civilization doesn't need is a herd of half-tamed pigs the size of houses rummaging about.

  Mining.  Mining is one of those developments that has to happen before most other technologies can occur, and this is still the case on our world.  Other than the fact that hauling away material will be easier, not much changes here; the basic process of finding ways to get at the rocks we want and get rid of the rocks we don't remains unchanged.  Probably the biggest difference is that mining will, for a long time, not need other technologies to remain fruitful.

  Pottery.  As with mining, pottery is a technology that needs to develop for civilization to work long term, and it's a technology that isn't significantly altered by occurring on our world as opposed to Earth.  Being able to store food safely is a necessity, regardless of how easy it is to procure that food, and on a constantly wet, semi-tropical world like ours, storing food safely means keeping it dry.  Baskets don't work for that task nearly as well as pots do. 

  Trapping.  Scalies and, to a lesser extent, furries will have already mastered the basics of trapping before civilization begins in earnest.  As civilization develops, trapping will become more complex, and for the scalies at least, more ritualistic.  Until animal husbandry renders true hunter-gathering obsolete, trapping will eventually become the primary method of hunting, a path that wasn't commonly seen on Earth.

  Archery.  Archery is both easier on our world and less common than on Earth.  Not because of a lack of utility, but because two of our three species aren't as cut out for it as humans are.  Expect archery to rapidly develop to the point where a human with a good gauge of the wind will be able to plant an arrow into any target within sight.  On a still day, it won't be unheard of for an accurate arrow to be planted from more than a mile away.

  No doubt the other species will also develop ranged weapons, but these will be limited by their eyesight and circumstances.  Scalies don't need distance; they need to be able to penetrate the defenses of the tentacled tidal monsters.  Expect the use of heavy throwing spears initially, and mechanical assistance as science advances.  Similarly, furries are mostly going to be attacking one-handed (assuming they don't just drop onto their targets from above), so boomerangs, throwing knives, and similar short-ranged attacks will be preferable to the bows and slings of the nu humans.

  Calendar.  The calendar of our world is going to be dictated by weather more than astrology.  The dance of the moons and the Lantern is complicated, but also much quicker than on Earth; a celestial cycle measures a period of time that we would consider a week, instead of a month.  The annual return of the storm system we called the Blanket would be used to determine longer time periods, like the year.  Regular variations in the Blanket would be the most likely way to calculate anything longer than that.

  Writing.  Writing is one of the most useful technologies ever developed.  Odds are, it was initially developed to keep track of inventory.  Given that our people will need to keep track of inventory just as much on our world as they would on Earth, we can expect writing to develop in a similar process.  One difference is noteworthy- both furries and scalies have short claws, making it easy for them to scratch short lines into a clay surface.  This means that the first written languages will follow from that, rather than the quick stamps that typified ancient writing of, say, Babylonia.  Nu humans will have writing sticks that resemble claws, assuming they don't just procure claws of their own from prey animals.

  Masonry.  This is the technology that will have the largest impact on how our civilization looks.  Until masonry comes along, our species will be living in wooden huts, most likely on different levels of the trees composing the local hyperforest.  And because they'll be in huts, the furries will be metaphorically and literally on top.  For our people, the invention of shaped stone for construction purposes is the invention of equality.  Finally, people will be able to live safely in places besides the trees and the occasional cave.

  This isn't to say that people will universally want to live in such places.  It's also worth noting that, thanks to the lighter gravity of our world, it will be easily possible for small stone dwellings to be built up in the trees as well as on the ground.  Masonry, however, will be the invention that gives all three species a choice in the matter.

  It will also be the beginning of taming the wilderness.  Masonry leads to walls, and high, thick walls are going to be the greatest defense available to our ancient civilization.  They won't need those walls to protect from other civilizations, however.  They'll need those walls to protect them from the largest predators, the most belligerent herbivores, and the creatures intelligent enough to use magic and become monsters.

Conclusion

It may seem kind of silly, but thanks to video games, we can jump from "these three species decided to hang out together full-time" to "this is what an ancient city of this civilization would look like."  That's where we're heading next time... but as an exercise for the reader: we deliberately left out one ancient technology that our people would deliberately not develop.  Think you can figure out which one?