I see a few problems with that idea.
1st, iirc according to prevailing theory it was not the hunger (plenty of animals aren't that smart yet still sate it) but the social brinkmanship and one-upping, attempting to become a leader, that provided the pressure.
With goblin culture often being about ruling, and having no compunctions about killing and taking over the previous rule or going to war with others (or themselves, sometimes), there is perhaps more pressure towards this than amongst more random humans. In an active world, a small minority of goblins live longer than few hundred years.
Death from old age is hardly what applies pressure towards this - and in DF, with werebeasts, vampires and necromancers, if you're mortal and are determined to not die from old age you have a fair chance, though you'll have to give up on having children. Which means that avoiding that is not particularly selected for, and rather undercuts using lack of this against elves, because...
2nd: less worries from death, starvation and drink means that two successful married goblins breed a lot, giving lot of the mixing you so held supreme.
Dwarves start with 200, and all other civs with 100 members, but the growth rate of goblins vastly outstrips any other cultures. Generally, among those with families goblins have biggest family trees. And entrenching arguments for multiple generation superiority is troubled by the 10 year marriage age limit in game forcing those in newest generation to seek out others their age.
Now, there is a soft cap of around 10k goblins in a dark fortress...But civilizations decrease the savagery of areas near them, with more sites = quicker drop.
This means if goblins and any other civ are both put into equal pockets of low-savagery with high-savagery borders, goblins will break out sooner, which means higher population - even if a fraction of it never dies, large majority of them will, and large majority of vastly larger number means vastly higher turnover overall.
Only an absolute limit on expanding areas could stop this - and leaving aside future boats and larger bridges, even oceans don't work, for goblin performers, mercenaries and scholars will still expand goblins to major sites willing to accept them, and such sites tend towards having majority of goblin population due their massively greater numbers leading to massive immigration. And oh yeah, visitors bring culture, bringing me to
3rd: The reason us humans pride ourselves over amoeba in petri dishes is less about our ability to fuck each other and more about our culture and intelligence. And goblins do have high-order intelligence. Due their numbers, they're likely the first to tame all beasts of the world that they can.
(Culture, not so much - outside of humans, all civs are cookie cutter + ruler influences.)
Furthermore, checking some goblins in 3k year worldgen I have, the 3k old ones are quite active, constantly travelling between sites and writing books. This also allows them to hone their skills in scholarly pursuit - for another example, an elf may be legendary geographer, but non-necromancer human not so much due the lack of time.
In a stagnant population, one would fear the stagnation of ideas - but as established in 2, there isn't a stagnant population.
And with larger population of scholars and more wars comes more technological development.
If there is ever-improving technology, largest body of researchers would benefit the most, establishing goblin supremacy.
If there is technological cap, largest body of researchers would reach it first - still having goblins supreme through sheer numbers alone.
Now, if kobolds could steal ideas....with one civ it'd still leave them playing catch-up, as the reasons they fell behind would still apply. With multiple civs? Whoa, they could get all the technological development of other races.
(Also, it would be awesome. Wars over copyright, anyone?)
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Topic: Evolution Chart (Read 1895 times)