In 1964 the Soviet astronomer Nikolai Kardashev created a system with which we could assess the rough capability of any extraterrestrial civilization we came across. This system was expanded, mostly by Carl Sagan, into the current Kardashev Scale, a scale that can be used to determine how advanced a civilization is. We use this in versus debating to get a rough idea of who would win in a fight between two civilizations by comparing how technologically advanced they are (although this is not always the only factor), and I have long suggested that we use this as a way of assessing a character's intelligence. Specifically we say that with time to prepare a character can reliably create technology indicitave of a civilization of Kardeshev Scale X.
The Scale is based on the wattage of the civilization, or how many joules per second it produces. It is a logarithmnic scale, meaning that every 0.1 higher means the civilization produces 10 times the energy of the previous type. This means a Type 2 civilization produces 10^10 times more joules per second as does a Type 3 civilization over a Type 2 civilization.
I'm going to go over a few civilization levels, and what you might expect from them to give a better intuitive sense of them. This is as far as I know, I'm not a scientist.
Type 0.1 (1e6 Watts, or about 1,000,000 joules produced per second):
When you get very primitive the system starts to struggle because biological creatures naturally produce chemical energy to do things. Generally a Type 0.1 civilization is a civilization with simple tools; things like spears, basically sharpened sticks, or like clothing. Fire is a big thing for one of these civilizations, and if you see a civilization has fire but it still caveman-ish, it's probably somewhere between Type 0.1 and Type 0.2
Type 0.25 (~3.1e7 Watts):
It is estimated that the Roman Empire at it's peak was a Type 0.25 civilization. The Roman Empire was a civilization that dominated most of it's continent, and had techology such as aqueducts, large structures and cities, and advanced weapons of war like ballista. My guess is that earlier metal age civilizations would be type 0.2 civilizations lower in type 0.2 while type 0.3 civilizations would be perhaps later civilizations in the middle ages with the invention of steel. This should be the range of most fantasy civilizations that take place in the pre-gunpowder ages.
Type 0.5 (1e10 Watts):
The Earth seems to have reached Type 0.5 during the Industrial Revolution of the late 1700s to the early 1800s. This had the invention of steam and coal based energy, numerous empires which encompassed sizable portions of the Earth, trains which can transport across cities consistently, telepagrath communications, elecitricity to light up cities and so forth.
Type 0.73 (1.84e13 Watts):
As of 2018, Humanity's energy production was 1.84e13 watts, or Type 0.73, which is the current standard for a Modern civilization. As a side note we apparently reached Type 0.7 (1e13 watts) in the 1970s.
Type 0.75 (3.1e13 Watts):
This is what I generally use for "Near-Future" civilizations where it's basically our level of technology but just a bit more advanced, with a few more gadgets perhaps. Things like going to mars, global internet, genome altering, bigger satelites, and so forth.
Type 1 (1e16 Watts):
A civilization capable of harnessing all the energy of their homeworld. The amount of solar radiation that hits the Earth is somewhere in the range of 1e16 and 1e17 watts. A Type 1 civilization has technology we can understand the dynamics of fine generally but on scale we could not possibly get or involves fields of understanding we currently don't understand but we understand a prototypical form. They would make us look like the Industrial Revolution by comparison, or the Industrial Revolution look like the Roman Empire. Not unrecognizable per se, but clearly far more rudimentary. A Type 1 civilization is generally assumed to have access to technologies like weather manipulation, advanced robots (though not neccesarily AI) to take care of human needs, fusion-based power sources, virtual reality, universal translators for human languages, colonies on nearby moons or worlds, asteroid mining, creation of new species and so forth. Technology that seems feasible, but currently outside our capability. It is estimated we will reach this level of civilization in 100-200 years.
Type 2 (1e26 Watts):
A civilization capable of controlling their local star system. Harnassing a signifigant fraction of a main sequence star would reach this civilization as the sun produces 4e26 Watts. A Type 2 civilization would make a type 1 civilization look like Type 0 proto-humans by comparison with technologies beyond our current understanding, though which do not break our understanding of the physics fundamentally. It is assumed by some this may be the level of civilization at which creating artificial but real "intelligence" or sentience. In other words fully aware androids. By energy production creations like the dyson sphere are possible, though highly difficult, and terraforming planets for hability should be possible. Other technology that is associated with this level generally includes teleportation, conciousness uploading, interstellar exploration and colonization, forcefields, manipulation of antimatter, some level of spatial warping, and often by extension of the last two some degree of ftl technology, if by bending the rule of lightspeed travel rather then breaking it. It is estimated we shall reach this level of civilization in a few thousand years.
Type 3 (1e36 Watts):
A galactic scale civilization. The energy given off by the entire galaxy is estimated at 4e37 watts so this is a civilization using a sizeable portion of the galaxy's energy. Such a civilization can do everything the prior civilizations can do on a much larger scale obviously, like many dyson spheres encompassing much of the galaxy's stars. A civilization like this could literally build planetary sized structures and weapons that could easily destroy planets in single moments (the energy to destroy the Earth for instance is 2e32 joules, while this level of civilization would be able to produce 5,000 times that energy each second). Such a civilization is likely approaching the ability to create and destroy stars themselves. Technology becomes hard to predict for a civilization that could be to the Type 2, what a Type 2 is to a Type 1. Fiction tends to depict civilizations of this type with technology like biologically engineering people to have metahuman abilities, time travel, inter-galactic travel, the ability to manipulate black holes and white holes, manipulation of time on a cosmic scale, and the ability to manipulate consciousness or thoughts via technology. It is estimated that we will reach this level in somewhere between 100,000 to a million years.
Type 4 (1e46 Watts):
Universal Civilization. It is unknown exactly but this seems to be around the power output of the visible universe. A Type 4 civilization is a civilization that has control of over the entire universe. Speculative technology at this level becomes almost entirely unpredictable as they would be like gods to us but in general a civilization of this type is speculated to be able to manipulate the fundamental forces of the universe themselves, so it would be technology like changing the value of gravity or increasing the psychic power of all people.
Type 5 (1e56+ Watts)
A civilization of Type 5 is obviously a multiversal civilization of some degree and is hypothetically the highest you can get. A civilization of such a type would be able to alter possibility of realities instead of just the status of one reality, changing the abstract nature of how things manifest as opposed to just a single reality's laws.
I should note that very often a civilization can do some things of a higher type. A Type 2.9 civilization is closer to Type 3 then a Type 2 and maybe I'll make a much extended version of this detailing the various subtypes. In general you can think of most civilizations in fiction as being between type x and type y based on how much they have colonized and control over; 1 being a planetary system, 2 being a stellar system, 3 being a galactic system, 4 being a universal system, and 5 being a multiversal system. This can be extended backwards, with a Type 0.75 civilization having control of all the landmass of it's planet, a type 0.5 having numerous continental empires, Type 0.25 controlling a small continent sized area, Type 2 controlling a country sized region, type 1.5 controlling a city-sized region, and type 1 controlling a small local territory.
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