Civ7 seem to leave space for the 4th age?

[stealth_nsk]

Honestly, the late game is the most boring part of Civ - it's just an endless turn-taking with nothing much to do in three gigantic ages to represent a historical period of approximately 120 years. As if it wasn't enough, they added the future age to make the journey even more tiring.

We definitely don't need a fourth age - or rather, we don't need any more age. More ages means less connection with each civ, making it something more like HK.

And America and maybe Mexico as modern age civs makes me pretty convinced that there won't be a fourth one, because if there was, it would make more sense for these civs to be there.

The last part of the game was the most boring before ages were announced. We just don't know how it would work in Civ7

 

[vorlon_mi]

Disclosure: I'm one of the few Civanatics still playing, and posting about, Beyond Earth. I'm a fan of the Future Age, science-fiction-near-future parts of the Civ tech tree.

Having said that, another person here pointed out in response to one of my posts that adding a fourth era would turn a 600 turn game (standard speed) into an 800 turn game. Granted there are ways for each era/age to last fewer than 200 turns, but that's still a dramatic increase over past games in the franchise and slightly counter to Ed Beach's comments about making the game not last tens of hours.

Map Expansion: These are still early days, but we know that the map expands from Antiquity to Exploration. It wouldn't surprise me if the map expands again when going from Exploration to Modern. What would happen in a fourth era? No expansion? Add something like @chaosprophet described, aquatic cities? Which I absolutely love in BERT. Adding an orbital layer would be way too complex; one can't really put cities up there. Colonies/cities on the moon?

Switching Civs Again: I agree with several folks here, that it would be hard to create interesting post-modern Civs to be led by Augustus, Hatshepsut, Franklin, and Confucius. It's hard to "build something you believe in" in a science-fiction / near future era. Doing something like a European Union, an Organization of American States, or ANZAC doesn't inspire me.

 

[humble serf]

Personally, I'm all for a fourth age that does sci-fi emergency/quasi-postapocalyptic fictional variants of modern civilizations. Kind of like the sponsors in Beyond Earth; you're picking from a roster of "American Recovery Corporation", "New France", "Azanian Federation", "Saharan Republic", "Exiled States of America", just weird stuff.

I was thinking recently they could revisit Empires of the Smoky Skies from Civ 5 for a Millennia-style fantasy Modern Era. Would be more fun than any of the wacky game modes from Civ 6, imo.

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

If Civ 7 ever got a 4th age, I'd rather a Neolithic/Prehistoric Age personally. To me it makes more sense than a Future Age.

 

[stealth_nsk]

Disclosure: I'm one of the few Civanatics still playing, and posting about, Beyond Earth. I'm a fan of the Future Age, science-fiction-near-future parts of the Civ tech tree.

Having said that, another person here pointed out in response to one of my posts that adding a fourth era would turn a 600 turn game (standard speed) into an 800 turn game. Granted there are ways for each era/age to last fewer than 200 turns, but that's still a dramatic increase over past games in the franchise and slightly counter to Ed Beach's comments about making the game not last tens of hours.

That's absolutely valid concern! And that's why I don't expect more than one age added.

However, I'm not sure number of turns is that hard restriction, considering the game has different speeds.

Map Expansion: These are still early days, but we know that the map expands from Antiquity to Exploration. It wouldn't surprise me if the map expands again when going from Exploration to Modern. What would happen in a fourth era? No expansion? Add something like @chaosprophet described, aquatic cities? Which I absolutely love in BERT. Adding an orbital layer would be way too complex; one can't really put cities up there. Colonies/cities on the moon?

As I understand, the current idea is what Antiquity age is about expanding on your home continent, Exploration is about expansion to other continents and Modern age is already not about expansion. We haven't seen the actual gameplay, but could guess it may have something to do with colonies. I expect Contemporary to not be about expansion as well - it could be about proxy wars, ideologies and some other modern concepts.

Switching Civs Again: I agree with several folks here, that it would be hard to create interesting post-modern Civs to be led by Augustus, Hatshepsut, Franklin, and Confucius. It's hard to "build something you believe in" in a science-fiction / near future era. Doing something like a European Union, an Organization of American States, or ANZAC doesn't inspire me.

Contemporary is not about just future. It's about starting in the early/middle XX century and go somewhere to the middle/late XXI. So, while it would have some futuristic concepts, it would feature modern post-colonial states as civs.

 

[Krikkit1]

One way to get around this would be to let players create their own custom contemporary/future civ. I know people are already asking for the option to rename civs in historical eras, but my guess is players care most about seeing their present home countries represented. This would allow things like Exploration Spain -> French Empire -> Modern Spain or Mughals -> Pakistan. The city and unit art could be generic, or based on the geography of civs chosen in previous eras.

People should get to choose the name of their civ in all eras (primarily being able to keep the name)

 

[brewgod]

I can totally see future expansions like those with Civ 6 of the likes of Gathering Storm and the New Frontier Pass etc. to be added on to Civ 7. It might be a year out or even two years after adding the upcoming DLC's for next year and fixing bugs the first year while the game is out. The Firaxis team of Ed and Carl can focus on expansions to spice the game up even more. Just love all the negativity about this upcoming game with a new Generation of Civ 7 after waiting for 7-8 years and the game is not even out. The lucky few gamers who got to sample the game in Cologne and or at Firaxis HQ most likely only got to sample 15 turns to get a small taste. That is all we know plus the interviews that are out with Ed and Carl discussing aspects of the game but they are still pretty tight lip. There should be a thread created about the cost and man power it took to create this upcoming game and how the fan base expects to get it for free. Firaxis and all other companies the world would not exist.

Brew God

 

[Gori the Grey]

If Civ 7 ever got a 4th age, I'd rather a Neolithic/Prehistoric Age personally. To me it makes more sense than a Future Age.

Why not both? And at the same time, to boot!

Make the Crisis at the end of the 3rd Age an environmental or nuclear catastrophe that sends humanity back to the neolithic.

In fact, even without a 4th Age, Civ VII could do this, and you could just put the game on an endless loop, start again with a new Antiquity Era civ!

Buwahahahahahahahaha.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

IF 'Moon Race' is the end of gthe current Modern Age, then it dates to about 1970 rather than 1950: the first man to reach the moon was in 1969, the first Heavy Lift rockets as shown in the video were deployed 1963 - 1969.

That makes any potential 'Future/Contemporary Age' pretty thin for Civs: Russian Republic? Ukraine? post-Soviet Belorussia?

Even if you backdate to the 1950s, you don't get a lot of 'iconic' Civs: Israel, UAR, Iranian Theocracy, North and South Korea?

All fraught with controversies and potential Marketing Minefields.

And then the problem that the 'Age' lasts for only about 55 years before it goes Future, and although there are plenty of Under Development new technologies that could be explored, even the so-called 'experts' (Scientists and Science Fiction writers) have a very bad track record at predicting what will be important in even the near future, so the game risks driveling off into Fantasy (looking at You: Giant Dead Target Death Robot!)

 

[RedCourtJester]

Personally, I'm all for a fourth age that does sci-fi emergency/quasi-postapocalyptic fictional variants of modern civilizations. Kind of like the sponsors in Beyond Earth; you're picking from a roster of "American Recovery Corporation", "New France", "Azanian Federation", "Saharan Republic", "Exiled States of America", just weird stuff.

Okay I really want this now. Forget modern polities, let's just skip them and let us progress into Beyond Earth.

 

[AlexByrde]

I would be rather fond of a Future Era that let you generate custom civilizations based on the legacies, attributes, and governments/ideologies you picked throughout the game. I'd resonate with that much more than jumping into Beyond Earth with the sponsors having felt a little history-less. I'd prefer it as an optional mode, but I'd play with it as part of the campaign more often than not I bet.

 

[Bactrian]

I would strongly prefer a Medieval Era between Ancient and Exploration over a Future Era.

 

[BackseatTyrant]

Like I said before, it's likely the clip we saw of a rocket shooting up into space won't show up until the epilogue, i.e. after the game has been won, as if the actual final endgame crisis is going to be World War Two, not global warming or even the space race

 

[Black Gate]

Yeah I don't understand this sudden obsession that the science victory *must* be the Apollo missions. All the other victory conditions are things that have never happened, why would science all of a sudden be something that was accomplished before the series was a sparkle in Sid Meier's eye rather than a mission to Mars? After all, if we're lucky, this may be the last game able to use that as a near-future scientific achievement.

 

[8housesofelixir]

Mughals, Qing, and Meiji Japan all appear in the 3rd Age are more likely due to FXS wanting to avoid portraying potentially controversial modern politics (imagine these are the Republic of India, PRC, and Post-War Japan instead) rather than suggesting that the 3rd Age occupying a much earlier period and would end much earlier.

And Buganda does survive into our age, just not as a soverign country but as an autonomous kingdom within Uganda.

FXS didn't reveal official screenshots of shining skyscrapers does not mean they did not exist in the game. For reference, Humankind did not reveal anything specific about their late-game eras and cultures until about one month before the release, they kept their mouth shut till the very end.



I do agree that in terms of historical progression, it would be better to have a "real" Medieval Period between the Antiquity and the Exploration Ages. The current line-up gap between the 1st and the 2nd Age civs is much more significant (there is a 3000 year gap between Hatshepsut and Shanwees) compared to the 2nd Age and 3rd Age civs (if anything, this might suggest that Civ 7 puts more emphasis on the later Ages rather than trying to end the game earlier IMO).

 

[Bactrian]

Will we see an expansion pack adding a middle era like that? Almost certainly not, because it would require working so many pre-existing Civs, their potential transitions, and even their mechanics to tie in with whatever the unique mechanics of each age is. Not to mention completely reworking the tech tree, and so all buildings and units, to have one of each category per era. I just don't see that happening. It might be within the reach of a very, very ambitious mod though.

The only way I see it working is if they go with the Paradox model of releasing the game mechanic change (adding a Medieval Era and reworking existing civs) for free alongside a paid DLC/expansion that adds some other form of new content. I assume that it would be new civs, leaders, units, etc. I think I read somewhere that they've talked about moving away from doing just one or two big expansions to a more ongoing DLCs things? If so, maybe they're already thinking along those lines. On the other hand, the Paradox model does lead to their games becoming quite bloated, so maybe we should be careful what we wish for.

 

[Nikolai II]

I guess in theory they can do infinite future ages in DLCs.

 

[chaosprophet]

Like I said before, it's likely the clip we saw of a rocket shooting up into space won't show up until the epilogue, i.e. after the game has been won, as if the actual final endgame crisis is going to be World War Two, not global warming or even the space race

I don't think we even know if there is a third age crisis. As crisis are supposed to be a climax to an age, the climax for the last age may just be the race for victory. And as global warming was confirmed, if there is anything like a crisis to last age, that may be with, albeit possibly similar to other civ games where it may be problematic or not on the late game depending of what the players did regarding fuel and the like.

 

[moysturfurmer]

I guess in theory they can do infinite future ages in DLCs.

Post-Singularity Age: All civs merge into one another and you must work as a hivemind to churn out nanobot swarms to devour all plant and animal life and help terraform every single tile into solar arrays to collect enough energy to maintain the Machine PlanetTM

 

[stealth_nsk]

I don't think we even know if there is a third age crisis. As crisis are supposed to be a climax to an age, the climax for the last age may just be the race for victory. And as global warming was confirmed, if there is anything like a crisis to last age, that may be with, albeit possibly similar to other civ games where it may be problematic or not on the late game depending of what the players did regarding fuel and the like.

It's interesting to see. With current modern era timing, I doubt climate change could be a challenge for it. However, if hypothetical 4th era will be announced, it could be part of this era gameplay.