A neolithic age for Civ VII?

[Arcaian]

I'd be interested in introducing a very short pre-city period as an expansion at some point in Civ 7's lifetime. We have good archaeological evidence for development of cities/proto-cities well before the 4000 BCE start date, it's a very interesting part of history, and I do think there's gameplay value in including it. I enjoyed the concept in Humankind and didn't hate the execution, even if it was limited. I think a design where you have some population concentration occurring in a camp/proto-city, and then some units allowing you to explore the area would fit pretty well into the Civ series' mechanics - you would be able to research basic technologies, explore the surrounding area, and perhaps even start forming some degree of relationship with nearby independent peoples. I think ideally the techs would be cheap by Antiquity standards, but limited primarily by the environment you find yourself in - that way there can be some meaningful differentiation of civs coming out of the neolithic era, with some having agriculture, some fishing, etc. You could choose to keep your camp/proto-city as the site of your new city, or destroy it and get a Founder to settle in a spot you're more interested in. I wouldn't want it to be much longer than 20-30 turns, but I think it could be interesting, historical, and lead to fun gameplay

 

[Uberfrog]

I think a design where you have some population concentration occurring in a camp/proto-city, and then some units allowing you to explore the area would fit pretty well into the Civ series' mechanics - you would be able to research basic technologies, explore the surrounding area, and perhaps even start forming some degree of relationship with nearby independent peoples.

Is this not just a description of the well-established early game in every Civ game?

 

[pokiehl]

Is this not just a description of the well-established early game in every Civ game?

You’re right when you distill it down; most of the ideas for a Neolithic age that I read here are just descriptions of early game (with the removal of the key, interesting tension of when to settle).

So I don’t know what’s missing. Do people want a shiny pop up banner that says Neolithic Age?

 

[Trav'ling Canuck]

You’re right when you distill it down; most of the ideas for a Neolithic age that I read here are just descriptions of early game (with the removal of the key, interesting tension of when to settle).

So I don’t know what’s missing. Do people want a shiny pop up banner that says Neolithic Age?

I can't speak for everyone, but I think the key thing that's missing is a period where there is no pressure to found your capital on the spot where your settler (now Founder, for Civ 7) spawns. You see that as a "key, interesting tension", and that's fine. I see it as a silly hold out from early civ games where there is no real choice, only false ones (settle where you spawn, every other move is suboptimal 90%+ of the time). I'd rather there be a real choice of where you settle your city, i.e. a few turns - not necessarily as long as in Humankind - where you can see your starting area and move to the spot you want to settle. Some people, including you, have provided suggestions in this thread of how that could be handled all on turn 1, and that would be fine, too.

If it isn't all handled on turn 1, there are other things that could be included to make those initial 2 or 3 turns interesting. Research, food gathering, and hammer gathering could all start during these initial turns through interaction with the map. Maybe possible boosts towards founding a pantheon or obtaining an initial Scout or Warrior, too. The point would be to keep the period short (unlike Humankind, which dragged this phase out), provide some fun interaction with the starting map, and allow for more meaningful choice about where to settle your first city.

 

[Krajzen]

You’re right when you distill it down; most of the ideas for a Neolithic age that I read here are just descriptions of early game (with the removal of the key, interesting tension of when to settle).

So I don’t know what’s missing. Do people want a shiny pop up banner that says Neolithic Age?

I also have this vibe, and also it is worth mentioning that... you know...

We already have neolithic age in civ. The first technologies in every civ game are neolithic. And in the year 4000 BC every region of the world was at the neolithic stage at best - 3500-3300 BC is the earliest scope when we can start talking about the bronze age and the civilizations of ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia. Like seriously: the first techs in civ5 are animal husbandry, archery, calendar, mining, pottery. Those are neolithic level technologies straight out of hunter-gatherer prehistory that had been established between 8000 BC and 3000 BC and were perceived as ancient by the point Sumerian adventures started. What exactly could be "researched" prior to that, which could even be "technology"? I wanted to say copper working, but then I realized "mining" covers that.

I also really don't see the point in creating the separate age which in real time lasts literally like three minutes of the game I don't need dopamine thrown at me in literally every turn of the game

If you guys want to travel for 5-10 turns before settling the first city, to know your starting location, then far more economic mechanic would be for the game to simply reveal like 10 tiles in every direction on turn 0, instead of like three. Fine, now we have several settling spots to choose from, we can avoid settling one tiles too far from the ocean, and we get the interesting tradeoff of spending 5-10 turns travelling to a better city spot. But again, I am not super fond of this option either, since I don't really want the big dilemma to be the thing that immediately greets me upon entering the game.

 

[Arcaian]

Is this not just a description of the well-established early game in every Civ game?

You’re right when you distill it down; most of the ideas for a Neolithic age that I read here are just descriptions of early game (with the removal of the key, interesting tension of when to settle).

So I don’t know what’s missing. Do people want a shiny pop up banner that says Neolithic Age?

I mean, if the major criticism of existing implementations of the mechanic is that it "doesn't engage with the core systems of Civ", then most solutions to those criticisms are going to sound more similar to the standard game, yeah. I do think there are key differences - for one, your settlement isn't permanent/the one you're going to stick with yet, so while production, etc, does exist, you're not making decisions with your city's production focused on long-term growth, giving a meaningful distinction from the standard early game. Additionally, your city isn't able to meaningfully specialise yet - you're not building libraries or things like this, which gives space for interesting alternate mechanics. For instance, your culture generation in this (again, very short) first era might be driven primarily by how well you're performing a key aspect of your pantheon's worship - whether that be violence, exploration, inhabiting a type of terrain, etc. Your science generation in this period could be driven primarily by the resources and terrain you've found yourself in - you unlock mining by placing your camp/proto-city in Rough terrain, or by spending 3 turns with a scout choosing to understand that terrain instead of exploring (I'd love more of this in the main eras as well to be honest, but I know it's extremely unlikely to replace standard scientific gameplay). That also puts the early techs you discover in 4000 BCE in a much more reasonable time range - it's weird that you're meant to discover those after you build permanent cities. I also like that it gives you some time to build a relationship with the map and your people's story without the pressure to get cities settled ASAP and rush into the normal set of pressures at the start - I like the idea that I can care about that mountain range because it's where I discovered mining, and so want to build a city there, not just because it's a strategically useful chokepoint. I also do like the way that Humankind made you really care about losses of troops in this age, because each unit you had at the end could be turned into a Pop, which feels very distinct from later eras. It made threats able to be smaller scale - your enemies don't have be an organised enemy civ or independent peoples, if part of your tribe gets killed by wild animals, it hurts you.

Realistically, what I'm looking for is representation of an interesting and unrepresented historical period, an interesting way to have understanding of the surrounding region you spawn in, and a way to represent the way differing climates and resources facilitated very distinct ways of living and organising societies. I think it's entirely possible to do this using the underlying 4x mechanics of the genre, albeit for a significantly reduced amount of time compared to a normal era. I don't think losing on the 'tension' of when to settle is much of a loss to me - I don't think I've ever been in a position where I think it's worth taking more than one (or maybe 2 at a stretch) additional turns to settle, unless I guess I'm replaying a map and know there's a wonderful spot hidden in the fog of war nearby. It's really not a decision to me, and I'd find the decisions outlined above far more engaging, as well as far better at developing a narrative for that particular game that makes me stick with a save. When we look at the cradles of civilization, we see a tremendous variety of ways of living, and I think fun gameplay could emphasise that and create greater replayability as your civ is shaped somewhat by the area you choose to start in.

Edit: to be clear, given the way the game currently starts, I do not think we'd need an actual new age for these mechanics - it'd be at-odds with the rest of Civ 7's design, and I think it'd be perfectly fine to just have this as a ~15-30 turn start to the existing Antiquity age.

 

[Taefin]

What if the founder was a mobile capital, with the ability to do everything a city could, until you placed your first tile improvement, and then it became a city (or could only move to new valid locations based on the improvements placed) until it could no longer move. For more nomadic Neolithic play, you could even start in higher hammer locations to build some units before settling in a higher food location.

 

[Lonecat Nekophrodite]

Then again. the First Age should begin 8000 BC, not 4000 BC as it has always been.

 

[chaosprophet]

The founder unit looked as if it had a move of 3.
Just reveal the terrain within 5 tiles (so all the areas that can be part of your 3 radius capital if you move 2 and then settle…let the founder ignore terrain stops like the scout)

Would be nice if the founder could found a city even after using all it's movement.

 

[Krikkit1]

Would be nice if the founder could found a city even after using all it's movement.

Well then you should reveal 6 tile radius.

 

[Lazy sweeper]

Civ has strayed too much into it's basically just a cities simulation game. The city limit sums it up perfectly.

Neolithic age portrayed as just add 10 more turns for exploring early map is also wrong.

First, we had a massive reset 12.000 years ago, when the entire north american continent was wiped out together with all living things that existed there. Mammoth, etc.
Second, humanity worked in pulses, out of the safe spots on our planet, with Kilimanjaro region being number one candidate.
Third, many myths, starts by telling something like 'in the beginning' it was just a few of us, the one brother headed east, another west, another north, etc. Implying, it was a family, a small tribe, or tribes, and these all lived together, and then spread further and further apart. These pulses then produced new humans. Australasian are one of the earliest pulses around.
Fourth, geometry shaped our world. The centre of Earth mass is exactly on the Great Pyramid location. It's not by chance that also that location was at the crossroads of the migration pulses, and one of the spots were humans first developed early civilization advancements, aka cities. In game, geometry should determine the centre of landmass and put a leyline there, to mark where the Great Pyramid shall be built. It was a single civilization Great wonder? Or was it a communal project involving ALL world civilizations at that point in time? Assuming it was a single civilization Great Wonder, it is a stretch we normalized. In reality, we know pretty much nothing about it.

Neolithic or Megalithic? There's a big difference here... The Ramayana speaks of great civs, highly technologically advanced, that dwelled in the forests. All of east Asia, from India to the Andes, was
basically all forests dwellers, with few cities spread here and there where the kings resided. Think of Machu Picchu as one of them. But let it be a Great wonder to be built by Incas in 1000 AD... complete and utter nonsense...

Any unit, prior to city dwellers, had the capacity to just place a tent, or use caves systems, underground cities, trees like homes. Cities were not built for specific reasons.
In Italy, the Nuragic civilization built thousands of castles like structures, simple single family complexes. This rounded highly defendable type of contruction was very effective and it was replicated in the whole of the African continent, where it probably stemmed from. South Africa has millions of these rounded settlements remains scattered all over the place... these were not cities...
they were more like single family houses... In the Amazon, and far East, people live on trees. Highly defendable positions.
Civilization thrived for thousands and thousands of years in such small dwellings. Constantly expanding.

Fifth. Big animals. Could you imagine having to face a Sabertooth cat or a Werewolf as a 1,50 mt human what was it going to feel? Or a Giant 6 mt tall sloth?

It took men 300 thousands years to develop its first cities like Machu Picchu, and others, where it could defend itself. It was a long time of painfully harsh fighting with nature.
Travelling the land, making use of natural caves, big trees, mountain tops, everywhere humans could defend itself more easily, and then try to spread a little further away...

If you ended up your daylight turn in the open? It was a death sentence.
Humans had to build megalithic walls to defend from such creatures, they didn't build those Magalithic walls just for fancy wonders... all of those remains had a very
specific life saving purpose... and when the Big reset came, and all of those creatures died out... there was no need anymore to build those Megalithic structures...

No man in todays age would build the Great Pyramid. None! It had a purpose! Why building a tume with 500 tons blocks if not necessary? There was a city there, long gone. Where all civs of the world came together to share advancements. It was also home to some king, as there were many other. Hundreds of them. Who survived? The forest dwellers. The underground and caves dwellers.

In short, Humanity is NOT built around cities, quite the contrary...
Humans practiced genetics for those 300 thousands yeas. Domesticating plant and animals. Gathering different species and combined them to develop edible resources.
To implement a Megalithic age (prior to great reset) and Neolithic age (post great reset) means spreading out domestication for those 300 thousand years...
It means perfecting the art of house building, and in general the Art of survival, and spreading it out for 300K years...
It can be very challenging, in game terms.

The concept of great reset also summed up with Age change and 'crisis' is also a stretch, but the change from Mega to Neo is the only great reset we got in recent times.
The collapse of Bronze age civs, and start of Iron age was probably connected to also some very big event. Astronomical, meteoritical, can't say. But it wasn't worldwide
as the great reset of 12.000 years ago. It was a small reset. The beginning of the Hebrew calendar also coincides with the great Mahabarata war. Give or take 4000 BCE.
Coincidence?

 

[Citron]

I want civ 7 not humankind 2

 

[Arcaian]

Civ has strayed too much into it's basically just a cities simulation game. The city limit sums it up perfectly.

Neolithic age portrayed as just add 10 more turns for exploring early map is also wrong.

First, we had a massive reset 12.000 years ago, when the entire north american continent was wiped out together with all living things that existed there. Mammoth, etc.
Second, humanity worked in pulses, out of the safe spots on our planet, with Kilimanjaro region being number one candidate.
Third, many myths, starts by telling something like 'in the beginning' it was just a few of us, the one brother headed east, another west, another north, etc. Implying, it was a family, a small tribe, or tribes, and these all lived together, and then spread further and further apart. These pulses then produced new humans. Australasian are one of the earliest pulses around.
Fourth, geometry shaped our world. The centre of Earth mass is exactly on the Great Pyramid location. It's not by chance that also that location was at the crossroads of the migration pulses, and one of the spots were humans first developed early civilization advancements, aka cities. In game, geometry should determine the centre of landmass and put a leyline there, to mark where the Great Pyramid shall be built. It was a single civilization Great wonder? Or was it a communal project involving ALL world civilizations at that point in time? Assuming it was a single civilization Great Wonder, it is a stretch we normalized. In reality, we know pretty much nothing about it.

Neolithic or Megalithic? There's a big difference here... The Ramayana speaks of great civs, highly technologically advanced, that dwelled in the forests. All of east Asia, from India to the Andes, was
basically all forests dwellers, with few cities spread here and there where the kings resided. Think of Machu Picchu as one of them. But let it be a Great wonder to be built by Incas in 1000 AD... complete and utter nonsense...

Any unit, prior to city dwellers, had the capacity to just place a tent, or use caves systems, underground cities, trees like homes. Cities were not built for specific reasons.
In Italy, the Nuragic civilization built thousands of castles like structures, simple single family complexes. This rounded highly defendable type of contruction was very effective and it was replicated in the whole of the African continent, where it probably stemmed from. South Africa has millions of these rounded settlements remains scattered all over the place... these were not cities...
they were more like single family houses... In the Amazon, and far East, people live on trees. Highly defendable positions.
Civilization thrived for thousands and thousands of years in such small dwellings. Constantly expanding.

Fifth. Big animals. Could you imagine having to face a Sabertooth cat or a Werewolf as a 1,50 mt human what was it going to feel? Or a Giant 6 mt tall sloth?

It took men 300 thousands years to develop its first cities like Machu Picchu, and others, where it could defend itself. It was a long time of painfully harsh fighting with nature.
Travelling the land, making use of natural caves, big trees, mountain tops, everywhere humans could defend itself more easily, and then try to spread a little further away...

If you ended up your daylight turn in the open? It was a death sentence.
Humans had to build megalithic walls to defend from such creatures, they didn't build those Magalithic walls just for fancy wonders... all of those remains had a very
specific life saving purpose... and when the Big reset came, and all of those creatures died out... there was no need anymore to build those Megalithic structures...

No man in todays age would build the Great Pyramid. None! It had a purpose! Why building a tume with 500 tons blocks if not necessary? There was a city there, long gone. Where all civs of the world came together to share advancements. It was also home to some king, as there were many other. Hundreds of them. Who survived? The forest dwellers. The underground and caves dwellers.

In short, Humanity is NOT built around cities, quite the contrary...
Humans practiced genetics for those 300 thousands yeas. Domesticating plant and animals. Gathering different species and combined them to develop edible resources.
To implement a Megalithic age (prior to great reset) and Neolithic age (post great reset) means spreading out domestication for those 300 thousand years...
It means perfecting the art of house building, and in general the Art of survival, and spreading it out for 300K years...
It can be very challenging, in game terms.

The concept of great reset also summed up with Age change and 'crisis' is also a stretch, but the change from Mega to Neo is the only great reset we got in recent times.
The collapse of Bronze age civs, and start of Iron age was probably connected to also some very big event. Astronomical, meteoritical, can't say. But it wasn't worldwide
as the great reset of 12.000 years ago. It was a small reset. The beginning of the Hebrew calendar also coincides with the great Mahabarata war. Give or take 4000 BCE.
Coincidence?

This is just complete nonsense historically - there was no massive reset 12,000 years ago in North America, we have increasing evidence of modern humans having lived there for 20,000+ years. You've wildly misunderstood human migration around the planet. Egypt and its pyramid construction is not because of it being the centre of mass of the Earth; it very obviously is not, as the centre of mass of a nearly-spherical object is obviously close to the core and not anywhere near the surface. It wasn't a whole-world effort to build the Great Pyramid. The Andes are not in East Asia. A huge number of people in East Asia and the Americas lived outside of the forest. Humans were not 1.5m tall when facing sabertooth cats, we have good evidence that hunter-gatherers could grow to ~1.8m tall. Humans never fought werewolves, they never existed. It did not take 300,000 years to build Machu Picchu, which also wasn't one of the first settlements established (go for Caral if you're looking for an Andean settlement that is legitimately one of the first constructed). There are no megalithic walls that were built to protect against fantasy creatures, that's made up, as is your megalithic age. There is no ancient set of civilizations that were hyper advanced, and again the great reset isn't real. Just about the only thing you got vaguely correct is that humans having been domesticating species before the start of permanent settlement. It's impressive how wrong this is, and I have no idea why anyone liked it on these forums.

 

[Lazy sweeper]

This is just complete nonsense historically - there was no massive reset 12,000 years ago in North America, we have increasing evidence of modern humans having lived there for 20,000+ years. You've wildly misunderstood human migration around the planet. Egypt and its pyramid construction is not because of it being the centre of mass of the Earth; it very obviously is not, as the centre of mass of a nearly-spherical object is obviously close to the core and not anywhere near the surface. It wasn't a whole-world effort to build the Great Pyramid. The Andes are not in East Asia. A huge number of people in East Asia and the Americas lived outside of the forest. Humans were not 1.5m tall when facing sabertooth cats, we have good evidence that hunter-gatherers could grow to ~1.8m tall. Humans never fought werewolves, they never existed. It did not take 300,000 years to build Machu Picchu, which also wasn't one of the first settlements established (go for Caral if you're looking for an Andean settlement that is legitimately one of the first constructed). There are no megalithic walls that were built to protect against fantasy creatures, that's made up, as is your megalithic age. There is no ancient set of civilizations that were hyper advanced, and again the great reset isn't real. Just about the only thing you got vaguely correct is that humans having been domesticating species before the start of permanent settlement. It's impressive how wrong this is, and I have no idea why anyone liked it on these forums.

Hyper advanced civilization is your words... not mine... fantasy creatures is your words... Giant sloths, Sabertooth cats are real. Werewolf maybe not as per fantasy novel, but big Wolves yes.
Neanderthals would be generally bigger, as were the Zulus genealogy in Africa, but apart from them, the great majority were shorter, especially the city dwellers, the more agriculture and less hunter kind of humans.

No Megalithic walls to protect against fantasy creatures, so why would they build them up? Were you there? No, neither me, but logic tells me, that if anything is not necessary for my survival,
I wouldn't do it. Simple as that.

The Nuragic civ in Italy was wiped out by a massive tsunami at the end of the Bronze age. It is Hystorical accurate to say that there was a small reset around that time. Archeological diggings confirms
this hypothesis were in the Sardinian plains south of the Island, all Nuragic castles are under metres of sludge of marine origin, and northern Nuragi's, are above ground.
Underwater south of Sardinia there are Megalithic walls of a city long gone. The biggest harbour in the mediterranean. This was above sea level 12.000 years ago.

You want to stick to 1800 view of the world History? Move on man! The great reset was real, the thousands upon thousands of Mammoth carcasses still thawing are real!
Read the Mahabarata, Read the Ramajana, and try to learn something from those Myths. Learn to distinguish from Hyperboles to reality. A chariot with flying horses it is probably a constellation.
A metaphor. And lastly Machu Picchu has been built in an ancient past, way before the Incas. Caracal was built at the times of Jericho? It can be.
But since NO civs has ever built again in Megaliths, and we have thousands of Myths addressing those contructions as the works of CYCLOPS, or Giants... and we do not believe in Aliens,
probably, it was a METAPHOR. Got it? (See Mahabarata war and Santorini explosion, end of bronze age coincidence hypothesis as example).

PS: From a gameplay perspective, having humans 15mt tall or 1.5mt tall makes absolutely NO Difference.
The point was about early exploration. It had to be difficult for our ancestors. Challenging.
I said there were probably few cities before 12.000. But for the majority of our specie, for 300k years, we never settled much. We probably did in small fortresses like
the Nuragi or other circular houses, for maybe one or two family at a time. The vast majority of us lived in caves systems, forests.
And it took 300k years to advance enough to congregate enough people to be able to build cities like Machu Picchu, or Caracal, or the now submerged Dwarka, Sardis, etc.
But I didnt say Machu Picchu was built in 172.000 BCE or 496.000 BCE... I have no clues... It has Megalithic walls, so it is not Neolithic...


Last point about the Great Pyramid. It is at the interception of the bigger continent of Earth. Africa. And other two big continents, Asia, and Europe. All migration routes out of Africa,
followed this route, and intercepted where the Great Pyramid is located. It is also the centre of landmasses, above water.
And it is Megalithic nature. This is the relevant thing. Megalithic nature.

To be historically accurate, we should find these structures, and then restructure them. Great Pyramid, Machu Picchu, Baalbeck.
The reconstruction would be seen as great wonder then. Repurposing an old temple to new life.
The spaniards tried to to repurpose the Mexican Pyramids with a christian church on top and call it a day...
but to them it was a constant re-neweing of the deal by restructuring the old structures, making them bigger at each cycle.

The deal with Megalithic era and Neolithic era is to me, to be able to grow your civ to bigger size, learn various domestication and building techinques,
and when the reset happens, or AGE switch, those population would GAIN how many settlers as 1 for each 10 pops, but wouldn't it be interesting
if all of them would start from the same starting location as a change? Or these would be shuffled around the globe randomly?

*Late edit > The Heroes expansion was an Artistic choice, it can be disabled, the devs liked it... I liked it to some extent...!
Nobody is forcing a narration over another, it's all personal opinions, don't take it personally!
I like fantasy worlds anyway, if it's not presented as alternative history, the Aliens did it!
But if the Devs wants to include some Aliens to explain some lore, hey... I'm not complaining... I know it's a game...

 

[Vitruvian Guar]

I'd like to eventually have antiquity be separated into two ages: ancient and classical. With bronze age collapse crisis inbetween. Would be great to be able to better feel how large this time period really is.

As a bonus it will allow us to have Phoenicia to Carthage transition, which would make @Zaarin happy.

 

[Lazy sweeper]

I'd like to eventually have antiquity be separated into two ages: ancient and classical. With bronze age collapse crisis inbetween. Would be great to be able to better feel how large this time period really is.

As a bonus it will allow us to have Phoenicia to Carthage transition, which would make @Zaarin happy.

Absolutely, and add the Santorini super vulcano explosion as the bronze Age ending 'crisis', would be also great.

 

[ehecatzin]

Personally I'd rather see Antiquity split into Ancient and Classical rather than a neolothic age. Just a few turns to explore and find a good spot wihtout falling behind sounds really good, but it might be unnecesary with the start bias system.

 

[Lazy sweeper]

Personally I'd rather see Antiquity split into Ancient and Classical rather than a neolothic age. Just a few turns to explore and find a good spot wihtout falling behind sounds really good, but it might be unnecesary with the start bias system.

Classical I believe it refers to the Romans Republic period, which started very late in the Iron age.
Ancient makes little sense, but it roughly includes both Bronze and Iron age theoretically, and its span is huge in this case, as Bronze age
started around 4000-3500 BCE in what is now Kazakhstan region, search ancient copper mines for reference.

Prior to Bronze age we have Neolithic age, with things like Stonehenge and other solar calendars, like the Adam calendar in South Africa.
This age is also huge, 12.000 BCE to around 4000 BCE.
A Neolithic Age would not juxtapose with the current Age system, it precedes all of them.

I don't like the limitations for number of cities introduced in Humankind, where the Nomadic Age you can only explore, and settle a few camps.
When you upgrade on of these camps to a city, it ends the Nomadic age and it starts the Ancient age. Now your city cap limit is increased to
three, which is nothing. The game is boring and at this stage is Ok for me to quit. I mean you build four cities and you basically can win the game
without ever expanding again.

What should be done is allow cities from the Nomadic Age as many as you want. No caps. Only there is no such things as culture or techs other than
ropes, sticks, and bronze chisels after you get mining going. So no borders expansions. No roads, no bridges, just basic agriculture and housing.
An Harappan or Egyptian civ with high food yield tiles could maybe expand with 20 -30 cities, before even Bronze Age. Instead in HK and now with city cap in Civ 7,
we will see one giant capital city with the population of 10 - 20 cities inside... This will lead to the same problem of HK eventually. Soft city cap will not solve the problem.
City cap is forcing tall playstyle upon everyone. People will get bored by turn 40 and quit. Not the first time, but second, or third playthrough...
If they don't remove the city cap limit, it will be a hard pass for me. I don't want to experience the same HK forced playstyle a second time.

A neolithic Age similar to the HK nomadic Age is non-sense, and having soft city cap in Neolithic Age to 1 city would not solve the problem but exacerbate it...
Have a few turns where you can roam before settling and call it Neolithic Age is for the same reason utter non-sense.

 

[OzzyKP]

I'd like to eventually have antiquity be separated into two ages: ancient and classical. With bronze age collapse crisis inbetween. Would be great to be able to better feel how large this time period really is.

As a bonus it will allow us to have Phoenicia to Carthage transition, which would make @Zaarin happy.

I'd like that better than a neolithic age. But I'd still prefer they split medieval and exploration age. Neolithic seems like something to explore in a mod or a scenario, but I've got no interest in it being part of the main game. It would be neat to have some mechanic to account for nomadic civilizations. I know Civ4 had that, kinda, in the Mongol scenario.

 

[Voidwalkin]

Sure, I'd like a Neolithic. Pretty eventful happenings in this time. Indo-European language family expanded across half of Eurasia.