Did People Overreact to Losing Units Between Ages?

[Siptah]

A good example is broken improvements. What’s the fun they were going for there? The player will feel a sense of accomplishment clicking around until all their improvements are fixed, and then it will happen again in a couple turns so they can get a new round of accomplishment, and really feel like they are in charge of their civ? It’s hard to even imagine the thinking process that would lead to you putting that sort of busywork in a game.

Yeah, the gold for the repair should just be deducted from you turns income (even though that may results in negative funds).

But busywork of this kind without decisions existed in all civ games. Which is no excuse that it still exists, but I think it became less in 7 compared to 6. Yet, the amount of unnecessary clicks in 6 is actually hard to believe. I've always wished for a macro builder in the older civ games, but in 7 where you rarely go over 10 cities, it feels actually fine to manage city to city by hand. Instead, we get other annoyances, like reminders that we can choose a specialization... I also wish there would be a "place-specialist-automatically-in-the-best-tile" option for cities.

 

[Smayo]

Ed likes natural disasters, he puts them in all his civ games, so it was inevitable. At least we have them in base game and integrated much better than in Civ6. Once we have "fix all" button (or right now if you're using a mod), it's not a big problem.

Yeah a fix all button/ the mod to not have go into placement each time (which I made, full disclosure), really makes it not a big deal. It’s also nice monkey brain seeing a tile flooding repeatedly before you expand to it, and having like +8 food on a nav river tile as Egypt feels very nice

 

[protocol7]

I don’t really get how a fix all button is intended to be fun either to be honest.

 

[Krikkit1]

I don’t really get how a fix all button is intended to be fun either to be honest.

The solution is to make it an actual choice…have the repair cost be equal to /slightly less/slightly more than the new build cost.

 

[TheGrayFox]

It's not arbitrary though.There is a crisis, the civilizations of the world are in decline and have to abandon ongoing wars to focus solely on internal problems for a period. The game skips over that period because for most people that wouldn't be fun to play through.

the crisis themselves and how they are designed are arbitrary

No the entire world doesn't undergo crises all at the same exact time and what world wide crisis has caused nations to wholesale abandon all their ongoing wars in real life and for all their troops to go home and upgrade and be randomaly arranged?? The way crisis are designed only exist because that's how Firaxis decided to design their poorly recieved and widely disliked mechanic meant to address gameplay concerns of a player running away with the game (a mechanic which doesn't even achieve its intended goal)

 

[CoconutTank]

Are there other games where you put everything away and set back up a few times during the game, based on some rules for evaluating the previous state before putting things away? I feel like that would be immersion breaking in any case, but I am having a hard time thinking of any example and maybe there are some good ones that show how this can be done well.

Iirc, Brass: Birmingham does this, but there's only 1 transition.

 

[Siptah]

Iirc, Brass: Birmingham does this, but there's only 1 transition.

Uuuh, right, forgot about that one. That's a phenomenal game, one of the best ever made. Yes, there's two eras: canals and railways, with a reset and counting victory points in between.

 

[SDZald]

I don't mind the current system I just wish I had a bit more control over it. At age change let me place the units being carried over into settlements and commanders.

 

[Taefin]

What are you doing consistently in your games that you think is causing this? And wouldn't this then point to the behaviour being deterministic rather than weights to something probabilistic?

The most consistent things I can think of are:
1) Expanding until (and often beyond) having very little happiness.
1b) Lacking happiness infrastructure in most settlements.
2) Maps are usually pretty full between AI and CS, and I am rarely near any larger empty regions that remain (do barbarians spawn in empty regions?)
3) I am usually far behind the AI in at least one yield
4) I usually have at least two commanders and 14 units going into the crisis, but not always.

 

[ColPaladin]

The game gives you a SIXTY turn warning before the era ends. If you can't figure out what to do with your military units and wars in that amount of time, there is always the "Through the Ages" app game . . .

 

[protocol7]

The game gives you a SIXTY turn warning before the era ends. If you can't figure out what to do with your military units and wars in that amount of time, there is always the "Through the Ages" app game . . .

Sixty turns? I've gone from 80 to 100 percent in just a couple turns on Deity at least.

 

[Taefin]

I suspect the biggest difference in experience come down to whether folks are playing long ages (super relaxed, complete both trees, build a bunch of stuff at the end), and standard (eras already over no time for anything!!).

 

[Smayo]

The game gives you a SIXTY turn warning before the era ends. If you can't figure out what to do with your military units and wars in that amount of time, there is always the "Through the Ages" app game . . .

Uh in Exploration with normal age length the first time someone finishes a legacy path it lurches the age forward 20%. So you could reasonably take a foreign continent settlement with Borobodur or Birhadswareer Temple and finish the military path and enlightenment (from the global adjacencies those give), going from 60% to 100% in a single turn

 

[Noble Zarkon]

It has been speculated on here since release. It fits with my experience: I get the same crises in almost all of my games, but most of my games unfold in a similar fashion. I don’t think anyone found evidence that it such a weighting really exists in the code though.

Try being way over your Settlement Limit when the crisis hits, I guarantee you that you will get the Loyalty crisis every single time......

 

[Thormodr]

Yes most people overreacted because they expected the game to play just like te previous games. Units are way more cheaper, die easier and don't have promotions so they aren't as valuable as they were previously. If you built units over the transition limit and put them to good use that means that you conquered some settlements so they have paid off already.

And as far as I'm aware it seems that commanders are always moved to the nearest settlement so if you do wish to continue a war from previous age it's just a short pause to reposition them for a new attack but generally I find that my goals often change after the transition anyway.

"Units are way more cheaper, die easier and don't have promotions so they aren't as valuable as they were previously."

What can we say? Life is cheap in 7.

 

[Krikkit1]

Uh in Exploration with normal age length the first time someone finishes a legacy path it lurches the age forward 20%. So you could reasonably take a foreign continent settlement with Borobodur or Birhadswareer Temple and finish the military path and enlightenment (from the global adjacencies those give), going from 60% to 100% in a single turn

it’s 20 points ie turns on normal speed..so 10%…but the point is correct

 

[y10]

By far my least favorite mechanic of Civ 7 is losing units between ages. My favorite part of any civ game is taking a tiny group of warriors and turning it into a massive modern military. This mechanic seems to break that feeling, unfortunately. Yes, you can produce army commanders to preserve some units, but at least in my games, they get ruinously expensive, quickly (being on par with Wonders). Also, having one commander every four units feels excessive. I wind up having a ton of generals that have no experience whose only purpose is to preserve units between ages. I really hope they get rid this mechanic in its entirety.

 

[Siptah]

By far my least favorite mechanic of Civ 7 is losing units between ages. My favorite part of any civ game is taking a tiny group of warriors and turning it into a massive modern military. This mechanic seems to break that feeling, unfortunately. Yes, you can produce army commanders to preserve some units, but at least in my games, they get ruinously expensive, quickly (being on par with Wonders). Also, having one commander every four units feels excessive. I wind up having a ton of generals that have no experience whose only purpose is to preserve units between ages. I really hope they get rid this mechanic in its entirety.

I'm curious: you say you have a tiny group of warriors and want to turn that into a massive modern military. Hoch much is tiny? If you have 2 commanders in antiquity, you can keep ~15 units. Isn't that more than a tiny force? And if you take the military golden age, you actually gain units on age transition.

 

[protocol7]

Try being way over your Settlement Limit when the crisis hits, I guarantee you that you will get the Loyalty crisis every single time......

I play way over the settlement limit every game, I’m a bit of a warmonger. Deity level and I’ve rarely got the loyalty crisis, it’s always plagues.

 

[UWHabs]

I play way over the settlement limit every game, I’m a bit of a warmonger. Deity level and I’ve rarely got the loyalty crisis, it’s always plagues.

I was over the settlement limit (maybe only by 1), and had just finished wiping out a neighbour, and I got the barbarian crisis. Which frankly wasn't even a crisis. All it was was a bunch of free XP for my generals. Which frankly is the problem with the crisis system when they're not that well balanced. Like I think the worst policy card I slotted was like -10 gold, and I got probably 2 levels each on 2 different generals by just going over a couple camps.

I mean, it could have been a bigger problem - the camps I cleared were all in the north, away from any of my main settlements. There were a few open spots, if the camps were more aggressive at spawning everywhere there was free land, I might have had to fight them off on 4-5 fronts, which might have actually been a challenge. I mean, it wouldn't have been that much of a challenge since my Numidian Cavalry were basically one-shotting the barbarian units, but if every city of mine was threatened, I'd at least have to manage around it.