[NFP] Dramatic Ages Discussion Thread

[acluewithout]

Thoughts? Excited? Anxious? Disappointed?

• There’s some good ideas. Automatically losing Cities in a Dark Age is a pretty blunt tool for making Dark Ages harder. But I could really see that being fun at higher difficulties. I’m interested to see what it means that Free Cities exert Loyalty. I could also see this change essentially just meaning they’re more Barbs on the map, which could be... interesting... Overall, I’m really liking this change. Much more challenging Dark Ages. Awesome.

• Era Score overflow is a nice touch. I hope that makes its way into the base game.

• Losing Dedications is... a thing. I’ll miss having Golden Age Dedications (I was really hoping we might get one more dedication per Era, for a total of Five). But I could see getting Golden Age cards instead as something a lot of players will like. There will be a lot of pressure on Wild Card slots. And you basically don’t get any benefit from Dark or Golden Ages until you have a Tier 1 Government.
  
  
• But no dedications also means you don’t have an alternate source of Era Score any more. I had a lot of games recently where those Dedication Quests were all that got me over the line, particularly the Eurekas / Library Dedications. I’m going to have to lift my Era Hunting game. I see a lot of building Galleys and move Amani in my future.
  
  
• The Georgia Changes are sort of Bizarre. I don’t get why this isn’t a change in the base game. But anyway. I do wonder if some Civs will be much more interesting in this Game Mode. Mapuche could be really interesting.

• I can maybe live with losing Dedications, although I think that’s still a poor design choice, but I really, really dislike losing normal ages. I honestly think this change is what will make this a play once or twice game modes rather than an always on game mode. This plush losing Dedications means there won’t be any reason to shoot for a Dark Age to get a Heroic Age etc., which was a Super fun dynamic previously.

Overall, I honestly just don’t get these Game Modes. So many good ideas, but then these terrible design choices layered on top.

For example, Apocalypse Mode is a great idea, including the Soothsayer, but then the Soothsayer is made so “flat” mechanically and there’s no other way to mess with disasters, so the whole thing just becomes RNG tile repair; Secret Societies has fantastic ideas, including the Vampires, but then there’s no real trade-offs (even just negative Alliance Points or some SS targeted Casus Belli or WC resolutions), so there’s no depth, and then all the free Governor Titles are game breaking; and then Dramatic Ages makes fantastic changes to make Dark Ages tougher, but throws out a bunch of things that actually worked really well with Ages like Dedications.

I think these various Game Modes suffer a bit from being either not thought through enough or FXS trying too hard to “turn them up to 11”. The concepts are really solid, and they all have really great “core mechanics”. But then they either lack some needed depth or have other perverse design choices.

I really hope FXS revisit these Game Modes again with a more critical eye.

 

[Bast]

I'm confused by all of this. Can someone explain in simple English?
Also, in my current game as Poland I went from Dark Age - Heroic Age - Dark Age - and now about to enter into Heroic Age. Is the game mode like this essentially? If so, I'm already playing this mode as Poland haha.

 

[lotrmith]

Does "no dedications" mean no Golden Age Monumentality, etc? If so that's a non-starter for me.

Honestly these alternate game modes have been pretty junk to me. If they were balanced they could go in the main game, but they're not balanced and that's practically the excuse for them existing.. as imbalanced alternative modes. Imbalanced modes don't appeal to me, nor do I expect them to have much longevity amongst the rest of the playerbase.

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

Does "no dedications" mean no Golden Age Monumentality, etc? If so that's a non-starter for me.

Honestly these alternate game modes have been pretty junk to me. If they were balanced they could go in the main game, but they're not balanced and that's practically the excuse for them existing.. as imbalanced alternative modes. Imbalanced modes don't appeal to me, nor do I expect them to have much longevity amongst the rest of the playerbase.

The dedications are social policies in this mode.

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

I'm confused by all of this. Can someone explain in simple English?
Also, in my current game as Poland I went from Dark Age - Heroic Age - Dark Age - and now about to enter into Heroic Age. Is the game mode like this essentially? If so, I'm already playing this mode as Poland haha.

Except there are no Heroic Ages, only Dark and Golden. Plus automatically losing cities in a Dark Age and Free cities exerting pressure is the answer for people that complained that getting a Dark Age wasn't a negative.

 

[AriochIV]

I was hoping for something that wasn't out of the box of discarded ideas that QA made them take out because they weren't fun, but I'll reserve judgment until I've played it.

(Also, it doesn't speak well of your design testing if QA has to be the one to tell you it isn't fun... but that would explain a lot...)

The dedications are social policies in this mode.

The problem is that social policies take up slots, so you're giving up something else to use them.

 

[8housesofelixir]

I was hoping for something that wasn't out of the box of discarded ideas that QA made them take out because they weren't fun, but I'll reserve judgment until I've played it.

IMHO, judging from Anton's words, the QA team didn't think they weren't fun. They think they were too harsh, which not necessarily means not fun.

 

[AriochIV]

They think they were too harsh, which not necessarily means not fun.

Sounds like the same thing to me, but as I said, I won't know until I've played it.

Fortunately for Firaxis, they already have my money.

 

[8housesofelixir]

Sounds like the same thing to me, but as I said, I won't know until I've played it.

That's for sure, we all don't know what it is like before the actual update.

And in terms of this I don't really think we need to have a thread dedicated to the Dramatic Ages this early. We are not able to have a taste of this gamemode yet and many people are still confused about what this gamemode means.

 

[acluewithout]

Plus automatically losing cities in a Dark Age and Free cities exerting pressure is the answer for people that complained that getting a Dark Age wasn't a negative.

I was hoping for something that wasn't out of the box of discarded ideas that QA made them take out because they weren't fun, but I'll reserve judgment until I've played it.

Very droll @AriochIV

I think automatically losing a few cities in a Dark Age, and the trouble it’ll cause, might be quite fun. I also think it being an optional Mechanic really changes things. Endless Disasters and Losing Cities might well be a terrible Mechanic if it’s in the base game and your stuck with it every game. But might be quite fun for some, and for others they might enjoy it if it’s something that can choose to turn on or off.

Indeed, this is sort of my complaint with the Game Modes. I quite like having optional game modes to customise my game. And the core ideas of the modes seem solid. But they seem to also be stuck with other mechanics which make it all to RNG or OP, or just lack depth.

I really feel like all of the game modes would be fantastic save for a few really poor design choices by FXS. It’s quite frustrating.

Firaxis... already have my money.

I don’t feel NFP has been great value for money so far. The Civs are awesome. But after that? Well, the new content is terrific (Maize! More Government Districts!), but it’s very very limited. The patches have been good, but are super conservative (amenities changes were particularly annoying - right idea, but then FXS just really held back from making things harder and or more rewarding). And then I look at the Game Modes, which seem like the Centrepiece, and... yeah. Kinda cool? But kinda underwhelming?

I don’t regret buying NFP. The Civs alone are great. But, yeah, the Game Modes just all feel like they need another pass. Apocalypse Mode needs to make Soothsayers more interesting and have more ways to mess with the environment; Secret Societies needs to reign in the Governor Titles and have a little more trade-off; Shuffle needs to be less buggy; and it seems to me that Dramatic Ages needs to be a bit less binary by bringing back Normal Ages and (maybe) not ditching Dedications entirely.

 

[Casworon]

What I am most excited about dramatic ages is how it works with the difficulty system. I personally find civ vi far too easy even on diety and it's well discussed here how the AI have real difficulty challenging the player.

Introducing a mechanical way of increasing difficulty here I think is very interesting and i cannot wait to boot up a diety game and see how it runs.

I am looking forward too seeing what modders can do with the game modes and I can imagine seeing 'game mode lite mods' in the future. For example bringing back normal ages etc

 

[darkace77450]

I'm going to withhold judgment until I see if the threshold for golden ages is adjusted to account for the lack of era score from dedications. If it remains the same, then the game mode will result in a lot of dark ages, which means chaos. I'm not opposed to chaos, but this has the potential to be bedlam from start to finish.

 

[Haig]

This is what I wanted Dark Ages to be, civil wars and empires fragmenting.

So far looks like my favorite game mode (and DLC).

I think this is really fun fore roleplaying/funhaving type of games.

 

[monikernemo]

Replacing dedication with wild card slots maybe kinda interesting. Yes they will have some pressure on wild card slots but you gain abit of flexibility at the end of the day.

Example would be switching into pen voice and brush whenever you are not using monumentality, so idea is if you need time to accumulate faith to purchase settlers builders, then it is better to switch to pen voice and brush. Or sic hunt dracones and monumentality in renaissance era, to speed up your colony creation.

 

[KyivanRusCivPlease]

Actually, it's the first game mode I'm excited about. I guess I am just not a fan of fantasy game modes. Bravo, Firaxis!

 

[Casworon]

Replacing dedication with wild card slots maybe kinda interesting. Yes they will have some pressure on wild card slots but you gain abit of flexibility at the end of the day.

Example would be switching into pen voice and brush whenever you are not using monumentality, so idea is if you need time to accumulate faith to purchase settlers builders, then it is better to switch to pen voice and brush. Or sic hunt dracones and monumentality in renaissance era, to speed up your colony creation.

Thats a very good point. Colony creation in this mode sounds like it will be very feasible if you are using sic hunt dracones and are in a golden age settling next to somone in a dark. Im very excited to give that a try

 

[Pietato]

If you can lose cities in the Classical Era, the game mode is going to be seriously messed up.

 

[Linklite]

I'm disappointed. Partly because I feel that by calling them game modes, they're falsely advertising. To me a game mode substantially alters the mechanics of the game, like the loyalty mechanic from R&F, but these don't.

• Apocalypse forces your disaster intensity to be put to max and adds a few more types of disasters, so really the only change is that you get a new unit. A new unit isn't a game mode.
• Secret Societies gets the closest, but still. You get an extra governor (which you choose) and maybe an extra unit, depending in your choice. It probably influences the game the most, but it still doesn't rise to a new mode for me.
• Tech/Civic shuffle does change things up and would affect gameplay, but the mechanics are largely the same.
• Dramatic Ages changes medications to policy cards, and forces losses during a Dark Age. Sure, it spices up the Age mechanic, but it doesn't have a massive effect on how you play (apart from forcing you to effectively decide between a dedication and one of your other policy cards).

I think they'd all be far more accurately described as Game Options rather than Game Modes. Maybe all combined they'd warrant being called a rather unfocused Game Mode? I just can't help feeling a bit cheated that I was promised four game Modes so far, and received the equivalent of maybe one.

Dramatic Era itself? I'll try it once. Whether I try it a second time really depends on how they implement it and how the fine details interact. Cities take a lot of effort to estabilish, the prospect of losing them if I get stiffed with how things work doesn't fill me with joy. I already feel the need to stunt my progress so I can use my era points to get a normal/golden age next time, this could force the issue. Of course, I could use an army to retake them, but that means maintaining a strong army even if I'm trying to do a peaceful run...I can see it being another annoyance and just not turning it on.

 

[FinalDoomsday]

I'm interested in having more fighting to do, feels like theres never enough conflict in my games and having free cities spawning every era with units could give your military more to do. I'd still like raging barbarians/barbarian migrations mode where you get a lot more fighting.

 

[japanesesamurai]

I kinda like this mode. Dont care too much for the previous ones, but this one could be interesting. It adds a proper strategic element to the game. You’ll be on your toes all the way through. Min maxing every bit! Sharp timing will be crucial