Stage Separations

strange because i looked at the soceity stage and thats apost to be tribal (from my understanding)

actully when you think about it thats pretty unrealistic because it took over 400-500 million years to actully evolve sentientce and another 4 million years to get where we are now
i always thought that aware coverd the carbonerfis peroid (aka a arachnidphobics worst nightmare) and the permain period while the awakening stage was the stage to become what ever you want (dinosaurs/whales/all that jazz) and you chosed to become sentient

Okay so:
tjwhale said that the idea of stage reversion was interesting in the thread by Skyguy98 about post-apocalyptic gameplay.
Longisquama pointed out in the "More stages" thread by robotranicrex the fact that gradual is the general idea.

To clarify, the Awakening Stage starts when your first species passes a certain threshold of intelligence after which they are considered Sapient. It ends when you form your first Society Center, or city. Everything in between is the transition of your species into tool use, complex social structure, communication, etc. The Awakening Stage will see the discovery of stone and other material tools, fire, etc. The building of your first city and beginning of the Society Stage will usually be around the time that you discover agriculture, metalworking, animal husbandry, writing, etc. If you were to compare it to our history, the emergence of the first civilizations in Egypt and Mesopotamia with cities, agriculture, recorded history, etc. are a good example of the beginning of the Society Stage.

I'm pretty confident with these distinctions:

Microbe Stage - Microbes
Multicellular Stage - Think sponges and things
Aware Stage - Creatures with a little bit of intelligence (think Anomalocaris) all the way up to somewhere undecided but around tribal creatures (something like the creation of fire)
Awakening Stage - Sapient, tribal creatures
Society Stage - From first Society Center
Industrial Stage - Steam power
Space Stage - Perhaps when you first leave your solar system?
Ascension - Go through Ascension Gate

I imagined awakening starting with the creation of the first tools, so would be equivalent to Homo habilis, and awakening would last 2 million years. Australopithecines didn't show any sings of an incipient sapience. And, about time span, the game time will slow radically when you reach awakening, and almost with every stage transition. Except with aware and space, all stages last much less than their predecessor. I mean, for human evolution microbe would be from 2.5 billion years ago to 1 billion years ago (1.5 billion years) multicellular from 1 billion years ago to 550 million years ago (450 million years) aware from 550 million years ago to 2 million years ago ( 548 million years) awakening from 2 million years ago to 10000 years ago (2 million years) society from 10000 years ago to 250 years ago (9750 years), industrial from 250 years ago to an undefined future (but surely less than 1000 years, so still less than the previous stage). Space... who knows.

For the space stage, the current transition point is when you first have one of your Tech Objects leave your planet's atmosphere, so for us that would be 1949 AD.

I know all these things have been spoken a long time ago, but... I think the space stage should start after, with interstellar travel.

All the other stage transitions mark a big milestone in human evolution/development, as life would never be the same after it. Not only that, gameplay will probably change a lot between stages, and a big deal of the game is oriented towards reaching the next stage.

The first rockets didn't really change life as we know it. Transistors or the internet would mark bigger historical milestones, as they changed more the way we live. And they didn't really change much the overall duration of the industrial stage. In future developments, the technological singularity will be one that will change the most life as we know it, and it probably will be reach in this century.

But, if we want to maintain the space stage's name, and picking some milestone for it, interstellar travel is the best.

It will mark a big deal in life as we know it, as mankind will be able, for the first time to colonize billions of planets, increasing the species population exponentially, and with that probably technological development also. It will be the time in which mankind would be able for the first time to contact another sapient species.

Gameplay will also change a lot. Although the first change will be when you have to manage not only your planetary nation, but also your colonies in the solar system, interstellar travel changes radically the scope of the game, having to manage potentially billions of systems.( Do we have a way to manage that? I guess they are going to be pretty autonomous systems).

And, my personal favorite: Space stage is the last stage, and a considerable effort should be needed to reach it (well, technically ascension, but that pretty much finishes the game, so I will count it as a victory condition). In many people's mind, their goal will be to reach space stage, and if space stage starts only 200 in game years after industrial begins, with only investing a little technology in rocketry, they will be disappointed with both the industrial stage and the space stage, and will be found themselves will a goal too far away (ascension). Industrial stage should be longer, to be felt like a proper stage, and interstellar travel is a milestone more in the middle between steam power and ascension.

These are my thoughts on things, at least.

The first interplanetary missions are also a good start for the space stage. I only feel interstellar travel would be better because it will make Industrial stage larger and more noticeable. Also, we now pretty much have the technology to go to other planets, but reaching another star is currently impossible. To me, reaching one in the game would felt like a larger achievement.

But, yeah, interplanetary missions are good starting point.