4th Age Civs based on your game playthrough, not IRL history

gdr_willter

Korean Civ Fan
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I posted it at the 20th century leader/civ discussion originally. And now we saw the Modern Age live stream so I think we can really talk about this more effectively. I think the 4th Age expansion DLC will likely be there, but how? We already have America and France for 3rd Age Civs. And some of possible 4th Age Civs candidates are highly contentious as the country in real life.

What I want is the 4th Age Civs not based on the contemporary history IRL, but based on your whole playthrough of the match. It would be hard to deal with this game design, but I consider this idea has extremely high potential to make the game perfect.

Let's start with some examples. At the last stage of the Modern Age, players will face the Modern Crisis and it will push them into the 4th Age and final Civ-switching. But unlike with the previous 2 choices, the options are not given as the whole new Civ list of the new Age. The options will come from the 3 Civs you played. If you played Egypt -> Abbasid -> Mughal, you'll get the Civ name list: Egypt, Arabia, India. If you played Han -> Ming -> Qing, you'll get the Civ name list: China!

And we will have the full 4th Age for them, so these final Civs will contain the modernized old unique features that randomly/manually selected from the all 3 past Civs, instead of their own uniques from the IRL contemporary nation. Your Egypt/Arabia/India may have the uniques like Tjaty Engineering School, Mamluk MBT, and whatever came from Mughal. Your China may have the uniques like Chu-Ko-Nu Self-propelled Artillery, Mandarin trade center, and whatever came from Qing.

It will allow you to feel more connected with all Civs you played through the Ages, and allow FXS to describe the contemporary Civs avoiding a lot of disputatious points of them IRL. How do you think about this 4th Age idea?
 
I don't think the mix and match would work too well for civ abilities... because those abilities do not work well in multiple ages. (some work fine, but others won't)

For civ names, etc. sure... but in that case, just have no civ abilities/uniques for the Fourth Age.... Fourth Age civs could just be generic Name+City List (with suggestions based on your previous 3 civs)
 
I don't think the mix and match would work too well for civ abilities... because those abilities do not work well in multiple ages. (some work fine, but others won't)
I meant those will be reworked for the 4th Age.
 
I posted it at the 20th century leader/civ discussion originally. And now we saw the Modern Age live stream so I think we can really talk about this more effectively. I think the 4th Age expansion DLC will likely be there, but how? We already have America and France for 3rd Age Civs. And some of possible 4th Age Civs candidates are highly contentious as the country in real life.

What I want is the 4th Age Civs not based on the contemporary history IRL, but based on your whole playthrough of the match. It would be hard to deal with this game design, but I consider this idea has extremely high potential to make the game perfect.

Let's start with some examples. At the last stage of the Modern Age, players will face the Modern Crisis and it will push them into the 4th Age and final Civ-switching. But unlike with the previous 2 choices, the options are not given as the whole new Civ list of the new Age. The options will come from the 3 Civs you played. If you played Egypt -> Abbasid -> Mughal, you'll get the Civ name list: Egypt, Arabia, India. If you played Han -> Ming -> Qing, you'll get the Civ name list: China!

And we will have the full 4th Age for them, so these final Civs will contain the modernized old unique features that randomly/manually selected from the all 3 past Civs, instead of their own uniques from the IRL contemporary nation. Your Egypt/Arabia/India may have the uniques like Tjaty Engineering School, Mamluk MBT, and whatever came from Mughal. Your China may have the uniques like Chu-Ko-Nu Self-propelled Artillery, Mandarin trade center, and whatever came from Qing.

It will allow you to feel more connected with all Civs you played through the Ages, and allow FXS to describe the contemporary Civs avoiding a lot of disputatious points of them IRL. How do you think about this 4th Age idea?
I don't know if it's practical to switch to brand new civs for a 4th age, but there could certainly be new mechanics. If the 3rd age ends with some kind of "total war" crisis like WWII, the 4th age could take the shape of asymmetric war, hybrid war, terrorism, transnational cartels (led by various major civs) and perhaps minor civs could become more dangerous and consequential... great empires could be brought down by getting mired in minor civ conflicts (covertly supported by major civ rivals!).
 
I don't know if it's practical to switch to brand new civs for a 4th age, but there could certainly be new mechanics. If the 3rd age ends with some kind of "total war" crisis like WWII, the 4th age could take the shape of asymmetric war, hybrid war, terrorism, transnational cartels (led by various major civs) and perhaps minor civs could become more dangerous and consequential... great empires could be brought down by getting mired in minor civ conflicts (covertly supported by major civ rivals!).
No it should 'simply' evolve based on the the final choice.
For example.
Qing -> China
Siam -> Thailand
Meiji -> Japan
USA -> (What else? NATO?)
Mughal -> India.
 
Tomahawk missiles.
 
Ed Beach: "we might add more content for the late-game later through DLC."
Civ fans: "4th age confirmed."

Nothing against speculation, but it irritates me a bit how people take this assumption as a given already.

I sort-of agree though that if there's any sort of progression from the current modern age civs, it shouldn't be an ordinary civ pick but a different kind of mechanic. I'd like to see some sort of nation-building process where your civ becomes a modern nation by drafting a constitution (kind of like assembling a religion from beliefs) or so. A prompt to rename your civ could appear, and you'd also get an "write in your own name" option but the main thing would be a suggestion list made of modern country names corresponding to all three of your previous civs. This is then how one could become "China" or "India" instead of "Qing" or "Mughals". However, I think all this can happen in the modern age. It doesn't quite feel as fleshed out as the other two ages yet, so I'd hate to see new 20th century content get its own age instead of enriching the modern age.
 
Ed Beach: "we might add more content for the late-game later through DLC."
Civ fans: "4th age confirmed."

Nothing against speculation, but it irritates me a bit how people take this assumption as a given already.
I don't think a fourth age is a given. I'll re-post my own guess:

There won't be a fourth age to fill up 1950-2025, but rather a third crisis. The third crisis will be triggered by some civ completing one of the "total victories" of the Modern Era. At that point, the game will say, "You thought you achieved a victory? by triumphing over other nations? Ha ha ha! Here's a global threat, and the only way it can be faced is by cooperation among nations. So there's a kind of even-more-final victory. It's a kind of diplomatic victory, in that the only way to achieve it is to bring all of the players together despite fragmenting, centrifugal forces like the ideologies, MAD, decolonization, internal polarization of your society, etc.

You collectively hit a global temperature target; or launch a multi-society ship to Alpha Centauri; or build a world culture, so that all the border markers on the map are one color. Something like that.
 
I agree above that the only way to keep a 4th age from happening is to allow the victory conditions to trigger a late game crisis, which to me would be more ideal than having modern India, China, Arabia, Soviets etc.
Operation Ivy causes Nuclear Missile Crisis or Nuclear Fallout.
Science could be about AI/robots taking control.
Economic could be stock market collapse.
The "Counterculture Movement" from the 60s is my only idea for culture. :dunno:
 
Although it's certainly possible that they could add a formal fourth Age, that would mean having to add a lot of new civilizations. What may be more practical would be simply extend the third Age and keep the same Modern civs, perhaps with some new mechanics and bonuses.

In addition to this being a much cheaper option development wise, I think there's an argument to be made that the post-war Modern period really isn't long enough to qualify as a full Age (even extending it into the near future), and that how we live in the present really has much more to do with our civics and ideologies than it does with our ethnicity.
 
Ed Beach: "we might add more content for the late-game later through DLC."
Civ fans: "4th age confirmed."

Nothing against speculation, but it irritates me a bit how people take this assumption as a given already.
This idea was originally the option for both of the last stage of 3rd Age and independent 4th Age. So fundamentally both are fine, the point is how can we get the last contemporary Civ names in reasonable way, without adding a full list of 4th Age Civs like other Ages.
 
I would prefer that if they implemented a 4th Age, that they offer a couple new civs to pick from but also a few options to "level up" and retain your current civ for 1 more age. (This could be implemented backwards in development if desired also) But you retain your previous Civ's identity for 1 more Age but now you have new uniques and such.

I would just really enjoy this feature in the game as a whole though. It could be cool to see modern day Greece also show up in Age 4 but the prereq is that you had to start as Greece. So "double dipping" into your civ is a Age 1&4 thing, not Age 1&2.
 
I've not thought super hard about the mix and match concept, but I've pondered it a bit.

My proposal aims to keep the pool of new assets limited to avoid bloat and use the game mechanics to call back to the legacy civs.

Give each civ a legacy ability that gets lumped into the final civ, adjusted to a simple bonus that doesn't rely on previous age mechanics. Use the previous civ's attribute traits (or more realistically the ones actually selected in the attribute tree) to determine unique infrastructure from a pool of existing models and abilities, then give them names picked from the legacy civs. Mix up the city lists of previous civs.

For unique units, theme an age specific mechanic after the military industrial complex. Use great engineers or whatever to design and build custom war machines - ideally based on real weapons of war but GDRs if we really must - and sell them to other civs. Military victory based around either outpacing or supplying the world's militaries.

A culture victory mechanic would involve the legacy civs, either through artifacts or tourism, or both. Maybe use the game history system to tell what building have been overbuilt for whatever points you're earning, as well as past battles and wonders built.

Science and Economic gameplay can be the logical iterations on the previous eras, with espionage mechanics effecting all victory paths.

Obviously it's all very half baked here but I wanted to throw it out there for discussions sake.
 
I hope the 4th age is just future version of the 3rd age with some GDRs and lasers.
Like leading cyborg Harriet Tubman to the Mars or Proxima Centauri.
Firaxis could just change the graphics a bit to represent that.
I think its time to get rid of the old, boring ways civ games did it and make it fun.
 
I don't think we're getting a fourth age, and there's no indication of such. What I could see however is an extension of the third age, with additional Civics and Technologies, and maybe a revision of the victory conditions to go alongside it.

That what I'm hoping for at least. The Victory Conditions in Civ7 are easily my least favourite part of the gameplay design so far, and anything that prevents it from becoming 4 slightly differently themed scavenger hunts is very welcome.
 
I hope the 4th age is just future version of the 3rd age with some GDRs and lasers.
Like leading cyborg Harriet Tubman to the Mars or Proxima Centauri.
Firaxis could just change the graphics a bit to represent that.
I think its time to get rid of the old, boring ways civ games did it and make it fun.
Grigor Stoyanovich and Grigor II moment
 
Since the 4th age would probably go from the present into a bit of sci-fi, I'd like it if they made the Civs based on prior sci-fi games by Firaxis - like the 12 sponsors from Beyond Earth. No future leaders necessary; just the civ icons and some flavor abilities.
 
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