Does winning in ancient and exploration matter?

[evonannoredars]

I don't really care about how many turns I've potentially shaved off the victory projects as there's no way of really telling at the moment. I do like completing the legacy paths for the golden ages and other options, they can be incredibly useful for getting a headstart in the next era with a little planning.
In my current game I secured the belief that gives yields per wonder in a city following my religion. Made sure to set up a bunch of missionaries around every city with wonders, activated them all the turn before era end, chose the option to keep my religion effect and hit the ground running in the modern era.
Also got as many relics as I physically could to get a nice extra +40 culture with that

 

[aelf]

I still don't believe anything is inherently wrong with Civ's design that requires such a drastic remedy as the Ages system.
I think this concept that games are 'done' by the Renaissance is just underlying issues like game balance, AI intelligence and catch-up mechanic designs.

The ages' soft reset is literally a catch-up mechanic, though.

I think the problem with snowballing is not so easy to solve in a 4x game like this, and I don't think the soft reset solves it entirely either. It does work, but it still depends on how much you snowballed. Conquered an entire wealthy civ in Antiquity? The soft reset won't really hold you back.

What I think the whole age transition concept really does, with civ-switching and new legacy paths, is to introduce new choices at each major phase of the game to help keep the game interesting. You have significant decisions to make in terms of what civ to pick and what legacy paths to pursue. This is what's keeping my interest.

 

[queenpea]

I don't really care about how many turns I've potentially shaved off the victory projects as there's no way of really telling at the moment. I do like completing the legacy paths for the golden ages and other options, they can be incredibly useful for getting a headstart in the next era with a little planning.
In my current game I secured the belief that gives yields per wonder in a city following my religion. Made sure to set up a bunch of missionaries around every city with wonders, activated them all the turn before era end, chose the option to keep my religion effect and hit the ground running in the modern era.
Also got as many relics as I physically could to get a nice extra +40 culture with that

I wish that this bonus, and similar ones like gold for historic trade routes, were buffed. Because 40 culture in Modern is really nothing.

 

[ProMeTheus112]

The ages' soft reset is literally a catch-up mechanic, though.

I think the problem with snowballing is not so easy to solve in a 4x game like this, and I don't think the soft reset solves it entirely either. It does work, but it still depends on how much you snowballed. Conquered an entire wealthy civ in Antiquity? The soft reset won't really hold you back.

What I think the whole age transition concept really does, with civ-switching and new legacy paths, is to introduce new choices at each major phase of the game to help keep the game interesting. You have significant decisions to make in terms of what civ to pick and what legacy paths to pursue. This is what's keeping my interest.

I think it works as anti snowball mostly if you increase the difficulty level, it's hard to get a winning lead before modern, possible sometimes, maybe you can consistently do it but it's a lot harder - though then it depends on how good the AI is at actually playing a win during modern, and I would be interested in some player stats in terms of winrate for immortal or deity difficulties for example. And yeah it's giving you a lot of room for taking options in your strategy all over the course of the game which is great, honestly loving it overall.