[R&F] All that glitters: Importance and strategy of ages

[EditorRex]

Surprised not to see a thread on this yet, so I'm creating one.
I've been playing R&F for a few days now and am surprised by some of the dynamics. I genuinely appreciate some of the new elements but find them confusing. That will sort out with more play, I expect. But aside from an enjoyable game-play experience, what are the best strategic approaches to the new system of historical events and dark, normal, golden and heroic ages?

In the first R&F game I played, as Trajan on continents with small map, and down to Prince level just to get acclimated to the new rules, according to the new scoring system I had a pretty good Ancient period, narrowly missing the golden age. In the Classical era, I blew the doors off, defeating the Germans and Macedon to dominate my continent, building several wonders and achieving a runaway Golden Age for the Medieval period. Helping me during this Classical Era was to select Free Research, which gives historic events scoring for Eurekas. That worked so well that I selected this option again during the Middle Ages. I more narrowly got the Golden Age again for the Renaissance, but -- surprise -- the Free Research option was no longer available. I picked Monumentality, which lets you buy civilians with Faith, but it didn't do much to pump up my events score. Despite a nice head start on points, I missed the cutoff for a normal age for the Industrial Era by about 8 points and plunged into a Dark Age, which is where my game save now. I can see some mistakes I made on this first attempt. But I'm interested in other perspectives.

For one thing, could you mostly ignore this age system and have a good game anyway, especially if you've taken out all of the nearby Civs who would cause you Loyalty problems?
Is it worth playing through the rest of this game and trying for a Heroic Modern Age?

One thing I can clearly see is that if you do plan to take the new system seriously, you have to be careful about falling behind in crucial areas, especially for your map. This isn't entirely new. In fact, a mistake a made in this game is as old as Civ I when playing on a continents map -- be wary of lagging behind on naval technology and ships and going into stagnation while you are isolated after you dominate your home continent. It's one thing to consolidate a bit, but you've got to keep moving forward. There are too many important rewards that you can't achieve without keeping contact (diplomatic, trade or military) with other Civs. In fact in the Trajan R&F game described above, the one thing that kept me going was some apparent changes in how Suzerain CS's reveal the map while also adding to your historical events. Through this process, I actually met all the other civs (Russia, Congo, Persia), despite none of us having much of a navy or exploring outside our own continent. I think I would have avoided my problems in this game if I'd focused on more natural tech tree development and not neglected seafaring techs through the Medieval Era while focusing so much on rapidly counting up cheap Eureka historic event scores.

What are some other folks' perspectives on the age system?

 

[Victoria]

It’s a bit too early amd typically gets better replies in the general forum and once consolidated posted here for additional.
It’s too early for me to make a lot of comment, just 2 games in. The ages are fairly easy for a seasoned player, the question is how to get yourself into a dark classical without lagging behind too much. Darks are strong too although I see little real benefit from a heroic apart from timing it for when you can get a lot of eurekas. To me that means Medieval which means normal - dark - heroic at the start. The issue with this is the classical is when you are seriously beating people up and that’s not a nice thing in a dark age... I guess.

The subtle golden bonuses can be strong amd the fact they change the dedications so you cannot rinse and repeat is good, otherwise England would be super OP.

 

[EditorRex]

Good points, Victoria. From a strategy point of view, it seemed as though I could have sandbagged my Ancient era to go Dark Classical and easily gotten a Heroic Middle Age, and probably Golden Renaissance and beyond. In my game, I captured Aachen right at the end of my Ancient era and still fell just short of a golden age. If I'd save all my early conquests for a Dark Classical, I might have been better off. As you say, it's pretty early and other ideas will become clear with more play. Because of bonuses for UI and UU, as well as achievements that tend towatd different Civ advantages and eras, the strategies for R&F may end up being more distinct from one leader to the next than we've seen in most previous Civ iterations.

From another point of view that I care about, but not everyone does, historic realism, I think this new system requires more eras and the possibility of negative points. Double the eras -- Calcolithic, Bronze, Iron, Classical, Migration, High Medieval, Renaissance, Enlightenment, Steam Industrial, Electrical Industrial, Progressive, Modern, Atomic, Space, Information, Global. Then you get realistic rises and falls: Greek heroic age collapse at the end of the Bronze age led to dark iron age, but golden classical age. Roman achievements in iron age led to golden classical, but stagnation led to dark migration period. Spain had golden Renaissance, but Dark Enlightenment. And so on. Obviously, this is off topic, though.

 

[civictor]

The easy way to get perpetual golden ages:

Become suzerain of Yerevan so you can select any perk for apostles.

Create apostles with the perk to reduce religion 75% when spreading religion to a foreign city.

Get into a war with a civ with a different religion.

Using your apostles, convert their cities while at war and you get +3 era points per converted city.

Golden age, Golden age, Golden age, Golden age!

Obviously, you can do this without Yerevan but it is more work. I discovered this strategy while trying to play a religious game and having my neighbors declare war when I kept converting their cities. I fought defensive wars until they were exhausted and just kept converting their cities to keep my era points in the golden range perpetually.

 

[EditorRex]

No Yerevan on my map.

 

[kb27787]

Just chop out wonders (+4 each) with Magnus whenever you want a golden age...
Other than that, save your UU production/upgrade for when you need a quick +4 points...
Once you get archaeology it's really easy to stay gold throughout the rest of the game because each one is +3 from 3 artefacts... which is basically renaissance/industrial (I have yet to have a game last past industrial world age...)

I do think heroic ages are worth the dark ages they precede... (free meritocracy +1 culture from districts is nice no matter what) you might want to fall into a dark age on purpose if you are not having loyalty issues. Oh I had try conquering in a dark age before... it does work somewhat, but it was quite painful when there was an emergency against me and an occupied city flipping to become a free city counts as a win for the members (even though they had not fired a single shot--to which I say the description should rather be "if the target loses cities" rather than "members must capture cities from the target")... Gandhi just got free 2400 gold for doing nothing.

 

[EditorRex]

... save your UU production/upgrade for when you need a quick +4 points...
Once you get archaeology it's really easy to stay gold throughout the rest of the game because each one is +3 from 3 artefacts... which is basically renaissance/industrial (I have yet to have a game last past industrial world age...)

I do think heroic ages are worth the dark ages they precede... (free meritocracy +1 culture from districts is nice no matter what) you might want to fall into a dark age on purpose if you are not having loyalty issues. Oh I had try conquering in a dark age before... it does work somewhat, but it was quite painful when there was an emergency against me and an occupied city flipping to become a free city counts as a win for the members (even though they had not fired a single shot--to which I say the description should rather be "if the target loses cities" rather than "members must capture cities from the target")... Gandhi just got free 2400 gold for doing nothing.

I this your advice on the UU (and it goes for the UI as well) is basically good, but this is going to result in very different outlooks from one player to the next. In my first R&F game as Trajan, the time period when I didn't need any help was the Classical era, but I wanted to build Baths and Legions for other reasons. My next R&F game, as Robert the Bruce, my UU and UI come much later and I used them in the late Middle Ages and Renaissance. That's also something to remember -- with the way the age system now works, you can tech ahead or behind the age, which appears to advance for all players at once. So in this game I had most of the Industrial techs during the Medieval era and was getting into Modern techs by the early Renaissance. It's not clear when you talk about never having a game go past the Industrial era whether you mean a Vanilla game, an R&F game in reference to age, or an R&F game in reference to your tech level. Also, while I have had plenty of early finishes on Vanilla, not so much as the higher levels. What level are you playing on and what type of victories are you usually pursuing?

 

[EditorRex]

Surprised not to see a thread on this yet, so I'm creating one.
I've been playing R&F for a few days now and am surprised by some of the dynamics. I genuinely appreciate some of the new elements but find them confusing. That will sort out with more play, I expect. But aside from an enjoyable game-play experience, what are the best strategic approaches to the new system of historical events and dark, normal, golden and heroic ages?

In the first R&F game I played, as Trajan on continents with small map, and down to Prince level just to get acclimated to the new rules, according to the new scoring system I had a pretty good Ancient period, narrowly missing the golden age. In the Classical era, I blew the doors off, defeating the Germans and Macedon to dominate my continent, building several wonders and achieving a runaway Golden Age for the Medieval period. Helping me during this Classical Era was to select Free Research, which gives historic events scoring for Eurekas. That worked so well that I selected this option again during the Middle Ages. I more narrowly got the Golden Age again for the Renaissance, but -- surprise -- the Free Research option was no longer available. I picked Monumentality, which lets you buy civilians with Faith, but it didn't do much to pump up my events score. Despite a nice head start on points, I missed the cutoff for a normal age for the Industrial Era by about 8 points and plunged into a Dark Age, which is where my game save now. I can see some mistakes I made on this first attempt. But I'm interested in other perspectives.

For one thing, could you mostly ignore this age system and have a good game anyway, especially if you've taken out all of the nearby Civs who would cause you Loyalty problems?
Is it worth playing through the rest of this game and trying for a Heroic Modern Age?

One thing I can clearly see is that if you do plan to take the new system seriously, you have to be careful about falling behind in crucial areas, especially for your map. This isn't entirely new. In fact, a mistake a made in this game is as old as Civ I when playing on a continents map -- be wary of lagging behind on naval technology and ships and going into stagnation while you are isolated after you dominate your home continent. It's one thing to consolidate a bit, but you've got to keep moving forward. There are too many important rewards that you can't achieve without keeping contact (diplomatic, trade or military) with other Civs. In fact in the Trajan R&F game described above, the one thing that kept me going was some apparent changes in how Suzerain CS's reveal the map while also adding to your historical events. Through this process, I actually met all the other civs (Russia, Congo, Persia), despite none of us having much of a navy or exploring outside our own continent. I think I would have avoided my problems in this game if I'd focused on more natural tech tree development and not neglected seafaring techs through the Medieval Era while focusing so much on rapidly counting up cheap Eureka historic event scores.

What are some other folks' perspectives on the age system?

Answering my own question based on my still limited by more complete experience, now that I finished the game that led to the question. During the Dark Industrial Age, I unleashed my armies and easily defeated Congo and Russia, which were the biggest remaining major Civs. I got a Heroic Modern era, in part through building a lot a left over "old" Wonders during my Industrial Dark age. You get fewer event points, but you use fewer shields when you build these old ones. And the AI doesn't seem to have interest in knocking out these outdated wonders in R&F, although this was a Prince game so that might not hold true on higher levels. In the Heroic Age, I quickly took out Cyrus' capital for the easy Domination Win. I didn't spend enough time in the Heroic Age to find out much.

I also learned something important from a botched game that I quit after realizing I screwed up. Playing as Scotland on a map with Norway as my nearest neighbor but in a difficult to approach and easily defended position, I ended up in a Dark Classical Age after trying and failing to capture his capital in the Ancient Era. I had captured one of Norway's cities and had also built one of my own within his Loyalty influence area. As the age went Dark, both of these cities became ripe for rebellion. Although I moved a governor into one of them, it only delayed the rebellion somewhat. So the Dark Age loyalty issue does matter depending somewhat on the map and what you expect to be doing during the Dark Age. It's not a good time for a more prolonged war. If you are going to conquer during a Dark Age, pick your city sequence carefully, go in with overwhelming force so that you can pick off the next nearby city before the previous one can revolt, have enough extra units to garrison problem cities. This botched game was on King. I played another more successful game as Scotland next (still going) as King next and didn't experience these problems.

 

[EditorRex]

I posted a longer form of this on another thread, but I think it's relevant enough to post here:
The length of the ranges you get or ages is initially dependent only on the Time setting, not on the map nor your level. A Settler on a small map has the same length for the Ancient era as a Deity on a Large map. But you get much longer ranges depending on whether you are playing with an online, quick, standard, epic or marathon setting. This leaves unanswered the question of how the game determines the eventual length of the age, as well as the range and actual length of future ages. However, I agree with some other posters who have suggested that it is a combination of the techs and civics that you and other leaders have discovered. I suspect it is similar to the mechanism used to trigger Ideologies in vanilla Civ VI. I'm guessing it's likely that if you can Tech/Civic a couple of eras ahead, you may force a more rapid end to your current era.