Dark Ages

[Myomoto]

With the New Frontier Pass having rekindled my interest in Civ VI, I have been putting in a decent chunk of hours into the game recently, playing 4-5 games to completion.

However, in these playthroughs, I have not encountered a single Dark Age at all. It has always been possible for me to get enough era score to at least go to a normal age.

Am I making a tactical mistake? Should I be deliberately going for Dark Ages to use their exclusive policy cards, and to try and hit a heroic age?

Is the era score mechanic properly balanced in your opinion? I always thought the intention of it was to help shift the balance of power in the game a bit up/down during the different game eras (i.e. one civ would be strong for an era, and then maybe balance out in a Normal or even drop down in power from a Dark Age).

However, I am finding in general that it quite easy to snowball several Golden Ages together, back to back. Usually I get the first Golden Age in the Classical or Medieval era, and then I will usually stay in a Golden Age for the rest of the game, maybe with an occasional Normal Age for one era

 

[Starwars]

Generally speaking, I find it very easy to stay in a Golden Age in the later parts of the game.

I find a Heroic Age can be nice sometimes but it really depends on where you're at, development wise, in the game. That goes for just hitting a Golden Age early as well. Sure, it's nice if you have a lot of faith generation for Monumentality, or possibly if you want to get a religion up and running, but otherwise? The loyalty is nice in some situations I suppose.

I can't remember the last time I used a Dark Age policy card.

I'm not a fan of how it's balanced personally and I dislike the idea that it promotes "saving" events that give you era score because you already went over the threshold for whatever Age you're wanting to go into.

 

[Linklite]

If there are any times that I have a dark age, usually it's Classical Era because I haven't had chance to do anything or Future Era, usually because I've burned through all the era points by the Atomic and end up with just a trickle. Tactically though, I don't think the benefits are really worth it. The bonuses aren't game changing, and it normally means slowing down your progress to avoid getting Era Points, and that can do some real damage.
As for the cards, I've never used them. They could be powerful, but the drawbacks are a killer and usually too steep a price.
My aim is always to get just enough to get a Golden Age and no more. Occasionally I screw myself and go over by 100 points like I did a couple of times in my last game, but mostly it sets me up nicely for the next era. Occasionally I'll get a straight Golden Era run.

 

[MrRadar]

Is the era score mechanic properly balanced in your opinion?

It seems much more balanced for the Online speed. Try it out, the swings Dark-Heroic-Dark-Heroic happen almost naturally, with little effort. Standard speed gives too much time, so you can just chain GAs back to back.

 

[Sostratus]

There are a number of Dark age cards that come into play in the industrial and modern era.

Namely what in my opinion is the most OP card in the game- Robber Barons- and one era later you can get Collectivism, which is also very powerful economically.
Robber Barons gives +25% to any city with a factory and a whopping +50% to any city with a stock exchange. Multiplicative modifiers are rare enough, but these are just monstrous. The downside is -2 amenity per city but that’s trivial if you have water parks.

Collectivism is basically just a copy of craftsmen with some extra stuff.

Robber Barons is so strong I will intentionally try to get dark ages so I can slot it. Loyalty is irrelevant at that stage.

 

[Linklite]

Is the era score mechanic properly balanced in your opinion?

I don't know if balanced is the correct term, but it's not right in standard speed.

• For most eras (Renaissance->Information), it's very easy to hit GAs. It rarely feels like I'm pressured.
• For Classical Era, it seems about right.
• For Future Era, due to the fact that you waste any points over the threshold, it can be too difficult to hit the last threshold.
• Due to points being wasted if over the threshold, you end up gaming the system by holding off gaining Era Points so you can still avoid the Dark Age for the Future Era...which stymies your progress and isn't really fun.

Those are my thoughts on the system. I like it, but there are things I'd like to see changed.

 

[Pietato]

Depends on your loyalty issues. I like getting a Renaissance dark age, though.

 

[Melkus]

The lack of dark ages is a side effect of the high tech speed. The eras have the minimum duration of 40 in Standard, so they are artificially dragged out at high levels - at least from Medieval onwards. Space ships should not go up before turn 320 (rough estimation: 8x40) - and 40 turns for every era would still be off in terms of balance.

Alternatively, you could just cut the minimum age length to 35, if you like the existing imbalance.

When you fit the tech costs to get closer to an average era length of 50 turns (Extended Eras is too harsh for me, but a good code base), dark ages reappear in my experience.
Also can confirm that quicker paces help with game rhythm. I'm convinced that Firaxis mostly tests at quick pace.

 

[tedhebert]

There are a number of Dark age cards that come into play in the industrial and modern era.

Namely what in my opinion is the most OP card in the game- Robber Barons- and one era later you can get Collectivism, which is also very powerful economically.
Robber Barons gives +25% to any city with a factory and a whopping +50% to any city with a stock exchange. Multiplicative modifiers are rare enough, but these are just monstrous. The downside is -2 amenity per city but that’s trivial if you have water parks.

Collectivism is basically just a copy of craftsmen with some extra stuff.

Robber Barons is so strong I will intentionally try to get dark ages so I can slot it. Loyalty is irrelevant at that stage.

I guess a lot of it comes out of personal play style and choices. For myself, I barely remember anytime I've built the Stock Exchange. If I play a more coastal map, I will choose Harbor over CH very often. That, plus the fact I also keep IZ to the minimum number of cities to use the 6-tiles bonus to cities,
and that makes this choice unpalatable to me.

the fact of the matter is this. Unless you have a play style that makes most of your cities go over 15 pop, you're very limited in District choices. That's where personal style comes into play. I mostly prioritize Campus, then Harbor/CH, then TS in most cities. That's if I don't play a religious/Faith economy game,
then you have to add HS. So there's usually little room left in a few well selected cities for IZ and sometimes Encampment (one at most usually). That's without taking into account GP and the new Diplo Quarter, but there's only one of each so you can fit them somewhere.

So, for my personal taste and style of play, I,ve never yet come into a Dark Age and been happy about it, because as @Linklite mentioned before, the price is usually too steep for the gain with the cards, plus you get loyalty issues.

 

[reddishrecue]

I like dark ages because you can get heroic ages after you have had 2 consecutive dark ages. I probably have used a dark age policy card once during classical era but that was it. I haven't used a dark age card after that. I liked the bonuses from twilight valor which gives +5 combat strength for melee units. I used this card really well when fighting barbarians since you can only heal inside your borders and not outside. Using it along with discipline gives a total of +10 combat strength against barbarians which is neat because you won't have to build that many units to protect your borders. The only thing you might have to worry about is to have more units in later eras to protect yourself from other civilization AI that cause surprise attacks.

 

[8housesofelixir]

I feel like Dark Age is very easy to avoid, or, in other words, Normal Age is too easy to achieve. If the range of Normal Age is smaller, and left bigger possibilities to Dark and Golden Ages, the pace of the game can become more dynamic in mid- to late-games.

 

[darkace77450]

I used to go out of my way to hit dark ages in the medieval and industrial eras for Isolationism and Robber Barons, respectively. I eventually gave up on this because of how difficult it is to hit dark ages without severely sandbagging my play. The dark age cards aren't the greatest, but they are fun and thematic. It's too bad I don't get to utilize them very often, which is why I'm a proponent of a wonder providing a dark age policy card slot.

Bigger picture, I know a lot of people think dark ages aren't punishing enough. That's by design. IIRC, the developers explicitly said they didn't want a dark age to be something that makes you want to restart your game. As is, the half loyalty during a dark age makes it harder to expand and/or conquer, and that seems fair enough to me. I suppose they could also fold plagues into dark ages if they ever add such a mechanic. But even if they don't, I personally feel they've done a good job balancing the penalty in a spot where players feel it without being crippled by it.

 

[Revanchist]

Dark ages shouldn't be used to chain into something like a heroic age purely because it's convenient. There should be other drawbacks aside from loyalty drop, like a reduction in science and culture. There is a delicate balance between not too crippling and not crippling enough

 

[Myomoto]

Dark ages shouldn't be used to chain into something like a heroic age purely because it's convenient. There should be other drawbacks aside from loyalty drop, like a reduction in science and culture. There is a delicate balance between not too crippling and not crippling enough

Well, you kind of pick your own 'Dark Age' penalty by the cards. Maybe they should change from a card system to a Dark Age dedication - i.e. what went so terribly wrong for your civ at this period of its history.

 

[UWHabs]

Dark ages shouldn't be used to chain into something like a heroic age purely because it's convenient. There should be other drawbacks aside from loyalty drop, like a reduction in science and culture. There is a delicate balance between not too crippling and not crippling enough

Well, you kind of pick your own 'Dark Age' penalty by the cards. Maybe they should change from a card system to a Dark Age dedication - i.e. what went so terribly wrong for your civ at this period of its history.

Yeah, even a simple -1 or -2 amenity per city might at least give a little malus to them, since that is something that you can overcome, but otherwise effectively ends up being about a -5% penalty on yields (either not getting the bonus for being +1 amenity, or pushing you into the negative). Alternately, if they turned a WC slot into a dark age policy slot forcing you to run one of the cards, that might cause you to think. While I might often want to run some of those dark age cards, forcing that on you would alter the strategy a little in cases where you don't really want to.

But otherwise, once you get that tech/culture lead, it's definitely easy to just pile up the points. Especially once you keep popping great people, buy them outright, and then get all the points for largest empire, biggest city, first national park, etc... I think the last game I had about 450 era score for the last era while I only needed like 270 for the golden age.

 

[Atlas627]

I think because of the way the system is named, people forget that the actual penalty for getting a Dark Age is the era *before* the Dark Age. You did so little during that era that you managed to get no Era Score! You're already falling behind! The Dark Age itself is a way for you to catch up, plus a reminder to other civs "hey he has no loyalty this is his moment of weakness if you want to do something about it".

It's pretty clever, though I still wish Normal Ages did something. And also that the era thresholds were increased. It is FAR too easy to get a perma-Golden Age.

 

[Myomoto]

Reddit has been discussing the idea lately of wonders that can only be built during a Dark Age: https://www.reddit.com/r/civ/commen...ages/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share

The main inspiration was a recent post highlighting Kowloon Walled City as a potential wonder (which I personally think would be amazing as a Dark Age wonder).

I think an average game should have 1-2 Dark Ages, and 1-2 Golden Ages. Maybe the era score threshold should expand/contract based on your last era, i.e. if you got a Golden Age, the thresholds for getting a Normal Age/Golden Age go up a lot, while getting a Dark Age resets the thresholds (maybe even lowers them).

With a dynamic era score system, and if Dark Age policies were instead swapped to occupy the dedication bonus (i.e., you MUST suffer 1 of them), it could maybe also help avert snowballing, as scoring several Golden Ages in a row would guarantee you to crash into a Dark Age. Likewise, if you suffered multiple Dark Ages back to back, you would more or less automatically get catapulted into a Heroic Age.

 

[Archon_Wing]

I avoid Normal Ages like the plague, since they don't do anything and just make it harder later on.

If you want a Classical Dark Age; it's actually pretty easy. Just... stop doing anything and build in your little portion of the world.

 

[Myomoto]

I'm just reviving this thread briefly to say in my current game with the recent patch I actually hit an unintentional Dark Age. I'm playing with tech shuffle, and getting Era Score has been a bit more tough, especially also as the AI seems to snatch up a lot more great people in this game.