Dramatic Age discussion

[Cerilis]

Question: if you are about to fall into a dark age, what should you do to prepare? I'd think you need to move all units out of your far-flung cities, or they get lost, is that right? And have extra military around ready to take it back? Is the strength of the city something standardized like CS or based on your own civ?

For what it's worth I am enjoying this mode so far. I like that it creates more flexibility from a domination perspective (you can pick off weak cities or even clusters of weak cities without war) and made me more picky on which cities to keep (though I'm not sure if that's the right strategy, or to just keep more cities and then potentially lose them)

Would it be reasonable to settle 1 or 2 "throwaway" cities if you can't see avoiding a dark Age, to protect your core cities?

 

[kb27787]

This mode has one game breaking card for me... Mandala state (-2 loyalty to all other cities for each wonder and a whopping 4 culture per wonder) and China is ridiculous. Just play OCC and you suddenly get free cities for nothing! The card works for free cities too! Ridiculous when you can flip a free city in 5 turns!

If Eleanor gets a good start, I can see this being great for her as well.

 

[SammyKhalifa]

This mode has one game breaking card for me... Mandala state (-2 loyalty to all other cities for each wonder and a whopping 4 culture per wonder) and China is ridiculous. Just play OCC and you suddenly get free cities for nothing! The card works for free cities too! Ridiculous when you can flip a free city in 5 turns!

If Eleanor gets a good start, I can see this being great for her as well.

Haven't tried it yet, but the other golden age cards are good too, so . . .

 

[Shadowstrike]

So this mode is a lot of fun, but I think there needs to be some sort of mechanic for clusters of free cities to turn into their own independent civs...

 

[8housesofelixir]

This mode has one game breaking card for me... Mandala state (-2 loyalty to all other cities for each wonder and a whopping 4 culture per wonder) and China is ridiculous. Just play OCC and you suddenly get free cities for nothing! The card works for free cities too! Ridiculous when you can flip a free city in 5 turns!
If Eleanor gets a good start, I can see this being great for her as well.

French Eleanor pumping out wonders + Mandala State can be interesting.

 

[Andrew Johnson [FXS]]

I hate it. Hate it hate it hate it. Having no Normal age is just stupid and it's ridiculous that you can basically losing a game because you're short on one era score between Dark and Golden.

I see how that's frustrating. But I also see how you've been enthusiastically telling a very dramatic story full of dramatic rises and falls (and narrow, hard-fought victories), and said that you've "cracked" the game but this new mode gave you a whole new system to try and figure out, so... I don't feel that bad? It sounds like you kind of, in spite of yourself, had a pretty OK time? Or at least came out with a pretty dramatic story. I have one where in a massive game of <COMPETITOR'S GAME> I ended up changing royal succession laws and saw my empire just fall to pieces in a generation because of some part of the law that I forgot that allowed a distant relative to inherit half the kingdom. It ended the game and I "lost," but I loved the drama in the story.

The main system for advancing Era score here is via technologies and civics. Unlike the Dedications, there's no real difference between how you get score in a Golden age vs a Dark age, but the threshold is way lower in a Dark age (correct me if I'm wrong; I'm not the dev on this). So you can't count on Dedications, although defeating a barbarian camp, adopting a new tier of government, converting a holy city, etc., is always a good bet.

 

[Elhoim]

Perhaps they can tweak THRESHOLD_SHIFT_PER_PAST_DARK_AGE and THRESHOLD_SHIFT_PER_PAST_GOLDEN_AGE so that golden age strings are harder, but also easier to get out of several dark ages.

 

[kotpeter]

I hate it. Hate it hate it hate it. Having no Normal age is just stupid and it's ridiculous that you can basically losing a game because you're short on one era score between Dark and Golden.

I'd pretty much cracked the game on Immortal - but as far as I can see this stupid Dramatic Ages mode has changed the era score mechanics too. The trouble is that I can't find anything to confirm that or explain it. In the game I'm playing now as Byzantium I realised 10 turns or more before the end of the Classical era that I didn't have enough score so I cranked everything up to the max to win era score: completing techs and civics I wanted to leave until I got the boost, rush building a Government Plaza so I could use it to get +3 adjacency for a Campus that's also next to two Mountains.

Everything was nearly upset by the Kongolese declaring a surprise war on me especially as I absolutely had to complete that Campus so couldn't switch the city to unit production. The district was set to complete at the same time the Era finished but it didn't count to my Era Score so I figured it needs to finish a turn earlier - I loaded the autosave from the previous turn, chopped the wood I had a builder waiting on for exactly this purpose - and no era score!!

What's absolutely infuriating is that I was fighting off the Kongolese quite nicely but as soon as I drop into a Dark Age my front line city with Victor in it rebels. I honestly don't think they've given enough thought to this new mechanic, explained properly how the mechanic to earn Era score has changed or tested it properly.

The one thing I do quite like is the policy cards because I can switch between Golden Age benefits as they're needed - for example I can Faith purchase a settler then switch to a card that earns Science, or whatever.

EDIT: So I managed to turn the situation to my advantage - I pulled back my units, allowed Kongo to damage the city, let it rebel, let the independent units and Kongo fight, and came back in to retake the city. Kongo also fell into a Dark Age massively weakening him and allowing me to capture his city.
But then the Medieval Era ended and I still didn't earn enough Era Score and two of my cities rebelled. I think I can recapture them but a Holy Site was about to be completed in one, which means a load of lost production. This is all just losing me too much ground against the leading AIs at a stage when I should be beginning to catch them up. I really need to understand what events now earn Era Score since they've changed it so much.

Man... Just load autosave and levy some troops from any city-state you're suzerain of.

 

[sonicmyst]

I am now playing as Ottoman and trying domination victory with dramatic ages turned on.

Anyone has feedback on pursuing this victory type?

 

[Dimplz]

Question: if you are about to fall into a dark age, what should you do to prepare? I'd think you need to move all units out of your far-flung cities, or they get lost, is that right?

What I have done is to make sure I reallocate tiles a city owns with a close neighboring city so that those tiles aren't lost when the first city flips. Meaning if I have City A and B and there are several tiles that can be shared between the two because of proximity, I will take all of the tiles shared owned by A and give them to B because I have a feeling City A will flip (or I see which cities will flip and reload and reallocate then).

Also move builders and troops out of the way before a city flips. They aren't absorbed by the free city but will be under attack right away. Also be sure to move any Great Works out of theater squares if applicable, if you think you'll have trouble getting the city back.

 

[Builderphile]

So this mode is a lot of fun, but I think there needs to be some sort of mechanic for clusters of free cities to turn into their own independent civs...

The only thing that I like more than this idea is the fact that Andrew Johnson [FXS] also liked it.

Get er done!

 

[8housesofelixir]

The only thing that I like more than this idea is the fact that Andrew Johnson [FXS] also liked it.
Get er done!

Attach an existing leader/civ to Free Cities could mess up the codes, but I assume adding a new leader for all the Free Cities might be feasible.

 

[Oberinspektor Derrick]

I hate save scumming, but this mode really challenges that dislike..

The instaflipping is just dumb and poorly executed imo.
I'd love it if you would face a more severe dark age where you'd face increased loyalty issues everywhere and had to work around that with slotting cards, governors, garrisons everywhere and lay out a grid of closely settled cities with really high population and amenities and/or bread and circuses to counteract it, but this game mode at its essence doesn't really care about that.
Get a golden age and you're golden (pun intended), but fail with 1 point and everything goes to s*** and the game might as well be a restart there and then (classical dark age).
It doesn't help that once you do hit said Classical Dark Age, you are most likely not at Political Philosophy yet, so you can't even slot those Dark Age policy cards to at least partially make up for your drawbacks.

The whole mechanic is so punitive that you either have to:
- Micro manage nearly everything in order to get the needed era score.
- Restart a ton of games.
- Save scum.

None of these options are really any fun for me in the long run, so I see myself not using this mode at all in the future.
Oh, and the AI sucks at this as well, so any Deity win doesn't feel nearly as rewarding if I do micro manage my era score and the AI just collapses by itself in the meantime.

 

[Shadowstrike]

Attach an existing leader/civ to Free Cities could mess up the codes, but I assume adding a new leader for all the Free Cities might be feasible.

The way I see this working is that the game would detect "clusters" of free cities (maybe 3 or more?), either by using contiguous borders or if they form a chain where each one is within a certain distance of the others. The player would receive a message saying that "the Free cities of X, Y and Z are growing closer", and if there are still enough free cities in that group that are independent after say 10-15 turns, they get turned into a random new civ with an unused leader.

 

[AriochIV]

I thought I would hate Dramatic Ages mode, but I'm halfway through my first game with it on and so far I kind of like it. Though that may have more to do with me playing Byzantium and steamrolling everybody.

 

[SammyKhalifa]

Oof. I just lost my city to dark age two turns before completing the Mausoleum. I got the city back fairly quickly, but that production . . .

Is Taj Mahal good in this mode?!?

 

[Virdrago]

Is Taj Mahal good in this mode?!?

I'd say so!

I wonder if you win a DV if you are able to keep your civ going while the AI falls into one large world of Free Cities.

 

[WillowBrook]

So does Eleanor have any real benefits in this mode? Does she instantly take free cities if they have negative loyalty, and she is exerting the most pressure on them?

In the livestream, they said that any cities lost to a dark age would flip directly to her if she is the foreign civ with the highest loyalty pressure on the city. So, yes, the mode is good for her, if she's can use the cities.

 

[Feanor_]

I see how that's frustrating. But I also see how you've been enthusiastically telling a very dramatic story full of dramatic rises and falls (and narrow, hard-fought victories), and said that you've "cracked" the game but this new mode gave you a whole new system to try and figure out, so... I don't feel that bad? It sounds like you kind of, in spite of yourself, had a pretty OK time? Or at least came out with a pretty dramatic story. I have one where in a massive game of <COMPETITOR'S GAME> I ended up changing royal succession laws and saw my empire just fall to pieces in a generation because of some part of the law that I forgot that allowed a distant relative to inherit half the kingdom. It ended the game and I "lost," but I loved the drama in the story.

The main system for advancing Era score here is via technologies and civics. Unlike the Dedications, there's no real difference between how you get score in a Golden age vs a Dark age, but the threshold is way lower in a Dark age (correct me if I'm wrong; I'm not the dev on this). So you can't count on Dedications, although defeating a barbarian camp, adopting a new tier of government, converting a holy city, etc., is always a good bet.

Well I wrote my initial version of that post in a fit of rage, and if this mod didn't go so far or make it so hard to earn era score in the higher difficulty levels I wouldn't mind. But on the higher difficulties the AI often just takes off with their development, making eras incredibly short. I also don't see how I could possibly have earned enough Era Score to avoid a second dark age. Anyway, I've abandoned that game and started another in normal mode which is a shame because had the mechanics been normal on the first game it'd have gone well.

 

[Deggial]

... Though that may have more to do with me playing Byzantium and steamrolling everybody.

Especially Byzantium has a problem with the ‘Dramatic Ages’ mode, though:
The ability to spread its religion by killing enemy units doesn’t work with independent cities’ units!
And with the tendency of AI empires to crumble under the free city loyalty pressure, those are plenty - especially, as the free cities tend to produce more military than actual civs.

Hence - at least in my game - no steamrolling fun against the major opponent left on my home continent (a multitude of independent cities), but rather a frustrating drag without any help of Byzantium’s main strengths.