Futurist eras

[tetley]

Any word on possible futurist eras? After 6 generations, I always felt this is the enhancement needed the most. Civilization has always been about past history. It's long past due time to employ consultant futurists who extrapolate the future history of mankind--both optimistic and pessimistic. Add some space colonies. War waged by machines, not people. Global warming which is avoidable (as a game mechanic--regardless of where you stand on that for real). Have EU's and NATO's--not just bilateral defensive pacts. Resources later than aluminum and uranium, such as lithium and iridium. And diplomacy for handling "neutral" ground, such as Mars, Antarctica, or maritime law. And change late-game barbarians to something else--maybe upgrade encampments on the North Pole to city-states?

And change diplomatic victory from UN Secretary to leader of a worldwide "EU", and space victory from launching to achieving First Contact (hello SETI project). Would look forward to sending my archaeologists to Mars.

Moderator Action: Moved to Ideas and Suggestion.

 

[DeutschDachs]

You mean Call to Power?

It would be nice to see a modern version of Civilization Call to Power eventually with Civ VI but who knows if they'll ever go that route again. I don't believe they own the license to Call to Power anymore but they could just name it something different

 

[SupremacyKing2]

Future eras are a cool idea. The problem is that they prolong the game too much. After playing 400 turns I want to either win or quit, I don't want to have to play another 100 or 200 turns of "future eras". Civ5 was too long as it is. And players who are super competitive will always win the game long before they even get to the future eras. Plus, future eras require new units, buildings, civics etc which makes balance even more difficult.

Last, keep in mind that the core civ mechanics need to stay the same. So you can't do separate maps for space colonies for example, because that would break the cardinal civ rule that everything needs to happen on 1 map. Other mechanics would have to be implemented using existing game rules.

 

[hugojackson18]

Been waiting for this for too long now, Im really hoping we can go farther than 2100 without keeping discovering "Future techs"...

Beyond Earth was not satisfying my tastes as a stand alone but I really think if you just put it as a "future eras" in Civ VI, it would be amazing

 

[tetley]

I think that through 6 generations, it's time to change some core mechanics. We have re-invented the wheel 5 times now, plus modded it to death. I can totally understand the game being too long, since that's a major reason I don't play Civ more often.

Part of the problem I think is that we have one cookie-cutter game setting: everybody plays from start to finish. Plenty of game settings are there, such as Industrial Age start, but partly that setting is not very good/balanced, and partly people just don't play it. They like apples-to-apples. Empire Earth was really good at this, but it only got like 3.8 Stars out of 5 from GameSpot.

I think space colonies can be implemented on one map. Starcraft did it. By the time you discover space, you discover Satellites, and revealed the whole map. No fog of war. You can extend and reveal more black fog, which is space. Then just send space settlers, like you did before. It's not that different.

 

[hugojackson18]

I think space colonies can be implemented on one map. Starcraft did it. By the time you discover space, you discover Satellites, and revealed the whole map. No fog of war. You can extend and reveal more black fog, which is space. Then just send space settlers, like you did before. It's not that different.

Yes please! Exactly that

 

[tetley]

I thought about this, and the single biggest problem I see with Future eras is, they just don't matter. The game is decided in Classical Era, or even when you first roll your map. A late-game tiebreaker is all youre going to get. All the eras need to really matter. But it's just a fact of the game architecture: your Classical era sets up your Medieval, your Medieval sets up your Renaissance.

I thought of one solution that could make the Future eras the most exciting of them all: make the game score matter, and make the game deal you setbacks. Civilization is supposed to be about the rise and fall of civilizations. In practice, though, it is more about the continuous rise of yours and the fall of others. So bring in Natural disasters, rebellions, political splits and stuff, but your score goes up the more setbacks you have to get. Your civilization rises and falls (as do others), but your score only rises. So if the plague kills 6 pop in your capital, all that food is not all for naught: it netted you 6000 points. You're not set back any more than in basketball when you have to give your opponent the ball whenever you score. Now, by the time you start colonizing the moon, you still have a game; and the game doesn't crawl slow because you've got city spam. Only then do you really start to hone in on a VC, because you don't know what cards you're going to be dealt before that (and you probably will achieve VC, because the game is "fixed" the whole time before that). But the rest of the game is about building a glorious civilization, but also about gaming the system to get a high score (even though you don't know what setbacks everybody is going to get).

Voila. No more Deity cheese, where you start up just ridiculously behind, play catch-up the whole game till about Modern Era, then play mop-up at the end.

 

[wiggawuu]

I always thought the next logical thing was to combine civ and alpha centuri into one game. And then, have the option to play the first half or second half of the game if you dont want to do both combined.

it would be one massive epic game!
Where eventually you launch you space ship and then get to land on the new planet and go from there. Possibly still using the old earth or not.

 

[Xandinho]

I like the idea of future ages, something that might work as follows: Every 12 future technology you enters a new era, future technology 1 you enter the future age 1, you discovered future technology 12 you enter the future age 2, so sucessivament . I know it's an idea that needs to mature, but it is cool.

 

[CivCube]

I thought I read Ed say somewhere that there are at least a few true future techs in Civ 6.