>The world is in a constant cycle of flooding and draining >The ocean floor is composed of both sandy expanses which become inhospitable desserts once they arise from the seas, and rocky contients whcih become inhabitable land >Below the waves, rock-islands are also constantly being swallowed and spit out by the sand-ocean. >Entire continents are formed and destroyed in the course of mere centuries >Kingdoms and empire last for a few generations before being destroyed by the rising tides.
Sounds potentially interesting, I'd play. Fantasy setting? Just how quick is the change, can i expect an island to last a decade?
Henry Morgan
Give me a time and date and we're set.
Andrew Lewis
I think folks living there would've picked up on the flooding. I have a feeling it would turn into a fantasy themed Water World, which I'm all for.
Giant palaces and castles on giant ships.
Christopher Peterson
I'd say that land would last from a few decades to a handful of centuries.
Ayden Reyes
Ok, long enough to do some farming.
Though I'd still expect most civilization to be semi nomadic seafarers. Plant life is going to be trapped as simpler forms that can spread from island to island feasibly. Frequent sinking into the sea is going to kill off so many species as they develop.
Samuel Stewart
>Entire continents are formed and destroyed in the course of mere centuries >Kingdoms and empire last for a few generations before being destroyed by the rising tides. There would be no kingdoms or empires in the first place, just tiny stone age tribes in an intermittent nomadic state.
Sebastian Watson
>Would you play it?
A planet formed by constant transgresions and regresions? Fuck no, that means that only the most stable parts(the highest) will have any resemblance of progress, but probably only mut huts and caves.
If the sea level is rising and going down constantly no civilization can be formed at sea level(aka where civilizations start) since there is no way to settle for a long time. If you are in a transgression era you are constantly pushed back to the mountains, if you are in a regression era you have to move with the sea.
The climate will go constantly crazy, if the transgressions happens because continental crust sinks and the ice melts we would have tropical zones, fuckhuge storms, tsunamis, earthquakes, volcanoes... mountains would become tropical islands while everything else making impossible to create mines and stable empires that can develop an organized society and accumulate richness.
In regressions, either through glaciar periods or because the continental crust rises the people in the mountains will start to migrate as the sea constantly moves, trying to steal as many resources as posible but knowing that they won't be able to make anything permanent, and again, the climate will be constantly changing making it a hard task.
Don't expect many forests to be around too, trees can't live underwater so most would be in the mountains but they would have to hibernate for literal centuries once the temperature drops, so this means that constructing fleets to keep comunication is too hard and risky so no commerce in any significant extent should be expected making civilizations even harder and balkanization easier.
Two options here:
>Add magic, and a lot of it(no limitations in individuals, energy or time), so much that you will probably end up with a transhuman society of demigods. >Make this setting science fiction so people can still communicate and receive resources from space.
Nathaniel Cox
Or... Have it so the tidal movements gradually increased over time, so the most advanced civilizations saw the way things were going and prepared. Hand wavy magic smooths out the rest
Levi Flores
Let's say then, that the tides instead of being gradual, they're spontaneous and random, but preceded by some kind of "omen". So you might have nice coastal settlements and kingdoms going until some day the royal priests start saying that there are bad omens and sea levels would rise or drop, so that these cultures would have enough time to be ready.
Also, to spice things up, these floods/sea recessions may or may not be global, that is, sometimes just a minor island is engulfed , sometimes the sea level raises hundreds of meters.
Some kind of magic could also be used to make plantlife colonise new emerged land faster to solve the forest problem you say.
Civilization can be preserved in this world. Sea-faring civilizations could just build Noah-style arks to house its population or just invade other islands รก la Sea Peoples. A sufficiently advanced civilization could also build some kind of self-sufficient underground fortress to wait until the sea levels recede again and then swiflty take over all the land.
