Crazy Modern Age Surprise Twist.

[CivKirk64]

I just had a thought that literally kept me up for hours in bed last night. I think this would be earth shatteringly cool feature as a surprise at launch or idea for an expansion.

At the end of the exploration age, Distant lands break off from some empires to form either a new civilization or city states. To not have a dozen civs that the game can't support now, there would be a few criteria to how this happens

Both: A civ with 3/4(map size/ game speed dependent) Distant Land Settlements
& Top 2 or 3 in legacy points for the age.

For all players that meet that criteria you will be given a choice:
"Your people in the new world long for independence and have a prosperous future ahead of them"
"Will you lead them to their glorious destiny, leaving the old world to their own devices ? Or will stay to guide your homeland through this Modern Age, and let them reap their just rewards:

You will choose to either lead your new colony , moving your capital to one of your distant land cities/towns. OR stay and lead all your homeland settlements.

You will choose your next modern age civ, whichever territory you don't pick, chooses the alternate civ choice, spawns a new leader (Most appropriate remaining matching leader to new civ) this civ becomes a new AI controlled player. This will only happen for 2-3 civs If there were 5 players in Ancient, we are looking at 7 at Exploration left plus 3 bringing in all 10 modern age civs, unless some players don't survive the age.
This would really cut into snowballing and provide a new challenge. Both new civs, your own and the spun off, have the same legacy upgrade choices, the same traditional civic options, all appropriate buildings in place.
As for units, your commanders and anyone attached to them stay loyal to you, the leader, and teleport to your new capital at the transition. Any unattached units migrate to the closest territory, If they are in the distant lands, they stay there , units in the homeland stay there.

All civs that don't meet the criteria, their distant land settlements become city states. The idea being, any civ that wasn't playing the distant land game and was middle of the pack or worse, might only have a few settlements, and likely focused on their home territory anyway.

The modern age challenges would be as a colony, can you unify the settlements around you through force or diplomacy/culture to form a new strong nation. As a homeland civ, can you survive and thrive in world with more nations, will you bring your former colonies back under foot (Expansionist goal) or collaborate with them to prosper (economic)

To tack on, for modern age legacy points: there should be 5 or 6 stages instead of 4, allowing you to catch up if you are behind on legacy points for victory.

Goals should be,
For culture, great works collection. Build upon wonders built previously, plus new buildings and wonders which provide "inspiration" that allow you to generate, or trade for great works.
For economics modify the corporations expansion mod from VI and earn points for manufacturing and selling your goods around the world;
Expansionist score points toward each threshold : 1x conquer a town, 2x conquer or liberate a foreign city, 2x re-conquer a former colony settlement , 3x Conquer or liberate a foreign capital.
Science: build upon previous goal of producing high yield tiles, use high science yields to unlock various projects along the tech tree, use your high production to finish them first, Manhattan project, First Satelite, first person in orbit, moon landing, mars landing. (make up your own)
Game no longer ends as "First to blah", the age ends as the age progression builds among all civs once the age threshold. The leader/empire with the most legacy points wins and is remembered as the great people across history. The Distant land spun off civs start with the same number of legacy points at the end of exploration.

I'm sure there are dozens of other things to think out, but I think this would be just wonderful and a huge surprise way of further expanding in the final age.

 

[HanNorwood]

A lot of what we have seen in the Ancient and Explo Ages has been an evolution of the late-addition game modes from Civ VI, like Barbarian Clans as a precursor to IPs. To some extent, the Heroic Ages gamemode does simulate breakaway colonies in Civ VI. The modern era would make sense as a natural evolution of that element of heroic modes.

With that said, it was mentioned that breakaway colonies will have some kind of loyalty mechanic as part of a potential end-of-age crisis. I think it is more likely that Modern emphasizes the corporation gamemode from VI, refining it and evolving it.

My gut says that the first major expansion could be themed around a more complex colonial system, bringing with it some Civs that interact with that system through establishing colonies, resisting colonies, or maintaining them.

 

[Leucarum]

The main reason I doubt the distant lands would break away is that some civs like Spain are really geared around settling the distant lands. They would lose a lot more progress than say, Mongolia.

That said I wouldn't be surprised to see breakaway empires as a result of revolts be the crisis for exploration/setup for modern. It's not like that time period was short on revolutions, I just doubt they'd be restricted to the distant lands.

But... in turn my main reason to doubt that is that the civ count for modern era starts already looks like it includes distant lands civs, and with only 10 civs at launch, that doesn't leave many options for civs that emerged from revolutions/independence wars other than being independent peoples...

 

[chaosprophet]

I don't think there would be a forced breakaway or revolt mechanic, but one possible exploration crisis would likely be something on those lines, and while should affect all player, if based in similar to a loyalty feature as hinted, then distant lands settlements are more likely to be harder to keep. Weather it would result in a new civ, in turning into independent powers, or just joining a different existing civ, we have no idea.

 

[Aeon221]

The main reason I doubt the distant lands would break away is that some civs like Spain are really geared around settling the distant lands. They would lose a lot more progress than say, Mongolia.

That said I wouldn't be surprised to see breakaway empires as a result of revolts be the crisis for exploration/setup for modern. It's not like that time period was short on revolutions, I just doubt they'd be restricted to the distant lands.

But... in turn my main reason to doubt that is that the civ count for modern era starts already looks like it includes distant lands civs, and with only 10 civs at launch, that doesn't leave many options for civs that emerged from revolutions/independence wars other than being independent peoples...

Independent people from breakaway settlements are a lot likelier than full fledged civs for sure.

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

I don't think there would be a forced breakaway or revolt mechanic, but one possible exploration crisis would likely be something on those lines, and while should affect all player, if based in similar to a loyalty feature as hinted, then distant lands settlements are more likely to be harder to keep. Weather it would result in a new civ, in turning into independent powers, or just joining a different existing civ, we have no idea.

Ed was asked about whether Loyalty would make a return in Civ 7 during the livestream and he mentioned that there was a crisis or something that had a mechanic similar to Loyalty.

So, I do think that it's possible a that civs could be looking at empire fragmentation as a crisis mechanic.

But given how toothless the crises we have seen thus far are, I doubt that it would be so unmanageable that a player would lose their entire Distant Lands possession when playing at a difficulty level they are comfortable with.

I doubt even more that these breakaway cities would become new civs that you meet in the Modern Age.

 

[Trav'ling Canuck]

I don't trust Eagle as much as I used to, but I can't put my finger on exactly why?

 

[AriochIV]

If they go that far with the forced narrative to the point where they take control of cities away from the player, I'll be pretty pissed off. But I'm with Eagle in that I'd be very much surprised if they gave Crises that much power, given what we've seen of them in Antiquity.

The story in Civilization is supposed to be built by the player through gameplay, not forced externally by the hand of the developer.

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

Since we know that you can move your capital when you transition to a new Age, I wonder if America and Mexico will have bonuses for having their capitals (and maybe other settlements) in the Distant Lands.

 

[GeoGeo]

I'd love an optional toggle to make the top 1/2/3 empires forcibly break up as a product of age transitions. Independence movements, geographic schisms, maybe tied to cities' past loyalties or religion, lots of options. Like the crisis has spilled over into a new age and now there's a scramble for newly independent cities, or a whole new Civ if it's technically feasible. Like a refinement of Dramatic Ages, but as more of a comeback mechanic. Not everyone's cup of tea, but worth exploring as a mod idea if nothing else.

 

[chaosprophet]

Ed was asked about whether Loyalty would make a return in Civ 7 during the livestream and he mentioned that there was a crisis or something that had a mechanic similar to Loyalty.

Yeah, that is what I mean, just saying hinted because they haven't said it outright, but likely the case the loyalty similar crisis would be an exploration revolution crisis. But as crisis is the same for everyone, I doubt it would affect only people with DL settlement, but just that those would be harder to keep if loyalty is the similar system to the one in civ 6. But yeah, chances are it is something manageable if you play well.

I doubt even more that these breakaway cities would become new civs that you meet in the Modern Age.

As people discussed before the "new" civs from modern age are likely just the exploration civs in the distant lands. The reason they can't be picked by the players on a multiplayer game on exploration is because they want to keep the exploration age experience the same. Maybe in the future they may make it so people on the DL work like an inverted DL/HL system and so maybe people could play MP with any of the two sides of the ages.

 

[Fummy]

This would be the coolest thing ever. Since the beginning of Civ people have wondered how to incorporate an "America comes out of Britain after revolution" scenario without breaking the game. with the age structure in 7 we are close to it already. The new system adds a way to incorporate modern/colonial civs in the game without them existing from 4000 BC. When they revealed that Spain can turn into Mexico I thought wouldn't it be cool to just take the new world and leave the old world Spain to become "modern Spain" or something. CIV 1 actually did have a rare scenario where a civ would lose its capital and half their empire would break off as one of the unused civs. I saw England lose London and some of their cities (they had taken from France in the beginning before defeating them) broke away as a new French civ resurrected. Sort of like colonial independence.

Unfortunately I think its too hard to balance gameplay-wise. It would punish the leading civs too much and award the 3-4th place civs. The newly independent civs would be in a bad spot also for various reasons. The age transition could smooth over some of these negatives. but they would be lacking any legacy bonuses unless they copy their ancestor civs ones, which would seem kind of unfair for a player whose doing well to create their own worst enemy with the same golden age bonus as them. Maybe a casus belli for reduced war-weariness (more war support) for going to war against a recently independent colony civ, or maybe they start off at war, would help the independence not be so devastating. Although you would see the war coming and plan for it at the end of Exploration to work around it.

Definitely a cool idea though.

 

[CivKirk64]

This would be the coolest thing ever. Since the beginning of Civ people have wondered how to incorporate an "America comes out of Britain after revolution" scenario without breaking the game. with the age structure in 7 we are close to it already. The new system adds a way to incorporate modern/colonial civs in the game without them existing from 4000 BC. When they revealed that Spain can turn into Mexico I thought wouldn't it be cool to just take the new world and leave the old world Spain to become "modern Spain" or something. CIV 1 actually did have a rare scenario where a civ would lose its capital and half their empire would break off as one of the unused civs. I saw England lose London and some of their cities (they had taken from France in the beginning before defeating them) broke away as a new French civ resurrected. Sort of like colonial independence.

Unfortunately I think its too hard to balance gameplay-wise. It would punish the leading civs too much and award the 3-4th place civs. The newly independent civs would be in a bad spot also for various reasons. The age transition could smooth over some of these negatives. but they would be lacking any legacy bonuses unless they copy their ancestor civs ones, which would seem kind of unfair for a player whose doing well to create their own worst enemy with the same golden age bonus as them. Maybe a casus belli for reduced war-weariness (more war support) for going to war against a recently independent colony civ, or maybe they start off at war, would help the independence not be so devastating. Although you would see the war coming and plan for it at the end of Exploration to work around it.

Definitely a cool idea though.

I'm glad someone finally said it was a cool idea.
Definitely something to be balanced, Maybe not all your Distant settlements leave, maybe only ones close nit together and maybe only a few of them. There would need to be some incentive for participating beyond the economic legacy/victory points. Perhaps you get some percentage of gold per turn and resources back, in exchange for mounting grievance that forces a war or diplomatic resolution. Perhaps it can be a legacy bonus to keep a few loyal cities after transition.

 

[UWHabs]

It's just hard figuring out the potential balance, and as mentioned, the slightly small civ roster in the modern era means you can't have too many powers fracture without causing mass duplicates.

I would say, it would be really cool if the "crisis" that comes up at the end of the 2nd age sort of turns into the declaration of independence that happens in the old Colonization game. Basically all of your New World settlements break away into an independent power, and now you play essentially as your Old World to send an expeditionary force to reclaim the lands, if you want.

I do think absent that, one potential age 2 to age 3 transition card that you can pick could almost certainly involve you re-settling your capital to the New World. I could see it along the lines of "Change your capital to the New World. All Old World settlements become a new Independent Power. Gain (a lot) in your New World settlements". ie. evacuate the Old World. Effectively, the transition between the ages will be the equivalent of the War of Independence, and you'd start up as your New World power fresh. I don't know how much they would give you in those new world cities to make up for what you lose in the old world, though.