[NFP] Dramatic Ages Discussion Thread

[Naeshar]

My first thought was I would need to focus military much more. Losing cities straight every seventy turns doesn't quite seem fun, especially when the rules which cities is not clear. But it will create interesting situations, whether we should conquer our or neighbors rebelled cities xD. But any kind of conquest decreases populations, so this will slow the game down. Also any kind of construction will be interrupted, like wonders, which might be painful. Better prepare for the era breaks.

I definitely like not having "normal" ages, thus might be well the case to buy the pack, if the mode is not free, and perhaps the pack is worth it alone...
The golden policies are definitely a good variation. Kind of looks like they are using the one third modified within a title.

 

[Josephias]

That is my impression as well, this game mode will make military and war more needed, without the hassle of grievances as you will be usually fighting to annex/recover self-proclaimed no-mans land. Having an updated standing army may be more necessary than ever.

If this shift of focus slows the game, maybe it would be even welcome. If we can push future age to turn 400 at least, count me in.

Main worries:
regarding gameplay, more impactful dark ages may mean increased snowballing if not balanced carefully (on the other hand, may serve as rubberbanding, too, maybe not fun if too excessive)

regarding aesthetics: hope, really hope, that no normal ages comes with a review of the color saturation/darkness for golden and dark ages. Shifting one to other with no middle ground inbetween will be a pain in the eyes.

 

[AntSou]

All I can say is that the mode sounds like something I'll really enjoy, but I have to wait and see how it plays in practice.

 

[UWHabs]

I do hope with it in that it's at least somewhat balanced so that you don't just steamroll an early lead into all chained golden ages. Part of me would also love the mode to even be a little more variable with how many era points you need - like if you didn't know if it took 50 or 80 era score to get the next golden age, could lead to some interesting decisions on how much you feel you needed to bank.

 

[Myomoto]

I'm deeply disappointed that it seems like yet another gimmicky mode I will maybe switch on for 1-2 games and then never ever touch again.

Getting rid of Normal Ages just makes everything too binary. Either you're steamrolling every one, or the game turns into an utter mess of free cities as everyone gets chained by Dark Ages.

I don't like the currently available game modes (except for the free tech shuffle), precisely because they're too random and poorly balanced. It's like trying to play a game of chess while inviting 20 monkeys to come and try to flip the table during play - it's entertaining for a little while, but the novelty wears off FAST.

Overall I'm happy with the new Civs and the other content of the NFP, but if I had known fully upfront what the game modes would have been, I would probably have waited to buy it. I am definitely weary of forking out my cash upfront if they do another pass down the line. Too many boneheaded design choices for my taste.

 

[Kwami]

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.

I don't know about thresholds, but the video shows that you get era score for each tech and civic researched and for each unit promotion after level 1. So, you'll have ways to get points without the normal & dark age dedications.

 

[cain3456]

This is on my NEVER list along with Apocalypse.

 

[kotpeter]

This is the first game mode I'm personally excited for. I'm not a fan of RNG mess and fantasy elements in Civilization, and I'm a fan of deep strategies. So far it looks like the mode that demands more from the player, adds dynamic to the game and does not feel unfair.

Fingers crossed it won't be filled with RNG.

 

[Kwami]

Fingers crossed it won't be filled with RNG.

According to Carl (Firaxis QA), which cities become Free Cities is apparently not random. There's a method to it. But, no more details for now.

 

[Icicle]

This is the first new game mode I'm excited about. I admit I'm skeptical about no normal ages, but the rest sounds great to me. I may actually buy the DLC now.

 

[Draco84]

I'm excited about this mode.

I'm assuming the cities that revolt will be your cities with the lowest loyalty per turn. I.e you have some cities at +27/turn and some at +20 and 1 at +18. I'm assuming the 18 goes bye bye, so typically border towns.

 

[Tinkerture]

According to Carl (Firaxis QA), which cities become Free Cities is apparently not random. There's a method to it. But, no more details for now.

This right here is a make or break detail for me. I've always wanted dark ages to mean losing cities, but I wanted that to come from stricter loyalty and amenity penalties, not the flip of a coin. If there's a method to the madness that you can prepare for, I'm a lot more likely to be on board.

 

[Timberdoodle]

I'm interested in playing the new game mode, as I like the idea of empires collapsing and reforming over history. I'm not sure whether losing cities in a dark age will be fun or frustrating, but I'll look forward to finding out!

On the game modes in general, I like the idea of different modular modes that you can toggle on and off, and I like the concepts behind the modes for the most part. However, to me the modes so far feel like they could have used just a little longer in the cooker.

The monthly schedule is super fast, so big props to the devs pulling that off during a pandemic. With so many modes in the pipeline, it makes sense that they each would each individually see less development time.

Still, I'm glad they are trying new things and I'm curious to see how this period of experimentation informs whatever come next for Civ.

 

[kaspergm]

As with pretty much everything in NFP, to mee this looks like something that could have had some really good elements if it had been properly implemented in the game instead of as a - more or less wacky - game mode.

Some thoughts:

• Getting rid of heroic ages is one of the best choices that could be made. The fact that you are encouraged to opt for a dark age in order to get a heroic age is one of the worst and most gimmick elements of the current game.
• Making dark ages more penalizing was also greatly needed. I'm not sure automatically loosing cities was the path I'd have chosen, but there's no denying it will achieve the desired goal.
• Trying to reward for score overflow is commendable, although I'm not sure if it's enough - if dark ages will be severely punishing, will we still not want to save overflow once we're over the limit? But that will have to come down to game testing to decide.
• I'm undecided about turning the dedications into cards. On one hand, the dedications needed some reworking, both in terms of balance and as core mechanic to prevent the dull repetition between games. On the other hand, making the cards that can be shifted in and out seems like dumbing down whatever decision making that in spite of mentioned imbalances was (at least in early game, the choice between Monumentality and the religious dedication was not always easy if you had not founded a religion yet and had a low faith income).
• But: Getting rid of normal ages seems like a real deal-breaker to me and turns this mode into another overpumped steroid-mode similar to Apocalypse and Secret Societies. Not at all what the game needed.

Some alternative tweaks I'd have liked to see:

• Dark ages could have been made more penalizing by turning one card slot into a dark age slot that forces you to always have one negative dark-age card active (this is not my idea, but one put forth by someone here on the forum a while ago that I really liked).
• I'd like a more dynamic approach to era limits - a bit like how it works with WC competitions. I.e. top scorer along with anyone who gets more than, say, 75 % of top scorers era score from that era, gets golden age. Anyone scoring between, say, 50 % and 75 % of top scorers score will get a normal age, and anybody scoring below 50 % of top scorers score will get dark age. These limits are obviously just arbitrarily chosen here, but the idea hopefully is clear.
• I'd like more different dedications for each era and some element of randomness or otherwise variation in which becomes available to prevent always having the same dedication in the same era.

 

[kotpeter]

Getting rid of normal ages seems like a real deal-breaker to me and turns this mode into another overpumped steroid-mode similar to Apocalypse and Secret Societies. Not at all what the game needed.

Currently normal age is the most useless age in the game. I highly doubt that rebalancing golden and dark ages could help it, because those at least do something. If normal age is no longer present in the game, you're always onto something and don't need to make awkward moves to stay in dark age in order to avoid normal age. Also, it looks like it will be possible to get golden ages consistently if you play well (normal age dedications seem to be replaced with points per tech/civic researched and unit promoted)

 

[Stringer1313]

I'd also like to incorporate some of this into base game. I would love to lose a city or two during the Dark Ages to make them more impactful. Right now they have zero impact on my gameplay. Frankly there needs to be many more city-loss scenarios to make the game more challenging. Not to get off topic, but I don't why they don't also reduce amenities during a dark age in base games - seems like a no brainer.

And adding Golden Age cards would be great (if appropriately balanced with dedications of course)

 

[8housesofelixir]

Getting rid of normal ages seems like a real deal-breaker to me and turns this mode into another overpumped steroid-mode similar to Apocalypse and Secret Societies. Not at all what the game needed.

Currently normal age is the most useless age in the game. I highly doubt that rebalancing golden and dark ages could help it, because those at least do something. If normal age is no longer present in the game, you're always onto something and don't need to make awkward moves to stay in dark age in order to avoid normal age.

Similarly, my problem with the current Normal Age is that, the only function of it is to help you with your era score for a Golden Age - in other words, NA is only a transfer point for GA and nothing more. All the NA dedications are for generating more era scores without any other bonuses or effects. It also doesn't address any special situations such as the era score overflow, or chaining several NA in a row: I've had games where I didn't care about era scores, and from Renaissance to Future Era all my eras are Normal Ages, which effectively means the (Dark and Golden) Age mechanism didn't exist for me in that particular game.

I understand the argument against the removing of Normal Ages, and if there are special bonuses for Normal Ages that will be great. However I don't mind removing them - this game needs some drama, the Ages system is one of them; and historically speaking all the "normal ages" were fairly short (what is "normal," to be honest?).

 

[kaspergm]

Currently normal age is the most useless age in the game. I highly doubt that rebalancing golden and dark ages could help it, because those at least do something. If normal age is no longer present in the game, you're always onto something and don't need to make awkward moves to stay in dark age in order to avoid normal age. Also, it looks like it will be possible to get golden ages consistently if you play well (normal age dedications seem to be replaced with points per tech/civic researched and unit promoted)

Well I don't agree. Of course normal ages will not be desirable in their own right, but normal ages should be desirable as in being not-dark ages. That's the problem with the current system, because dark ages are not really punishing, and furthermore opens up for heroic ages, and therefore you'll actually rather end in a dark age than in a normal age.

If dark ages are actually punishing and does not "reward" you with potentially powerful dark-age policies and a possible heroic age, there'll be no reason to go for a dark age instead of a normal age. That's how it should be. Basically you should always try to amass as much era score as possible. When you hit a normal age, that should not be a good thing in itself - you'd rather have hit a golden age - but still it's a reward because it means you avoided ending in a dark age.

 

[marius_kaparius]

I think a Golden Age should give you an extra Wildcard Slot that can use for one of the new dedication cards if you want to. (Georgia a Dark Age card even). In a Dark Age one of your wildcard slots should convert to a Dark Age card slot in which you have to place a Dark Age card. If this weakens the Georgia bonus then they should either get yet another wildcard slot (crazy), get to pick dark age cards but without their penalty components, or not be required to pick a dark age card in dark ages.

 

[EthiOPia]

In most of my games were i am not in corner, the diffrence beetwean getting dark age over normal age feels quiet big (i would say bigger than getting golden over normal outside of religious games) and can be devastating. And in Dramatic Ages one era score point will have even bigger impact. Also Ai doesnt handle loyalty presaure well and lose a lot of cities and doesnt try to retake/siege them, although they said that ai will have some bonuses. It is also very important if era point will be granted more snowbally in this mode, if yes rich get richer and snowball the game while one dark age can mean gg even in later stages because conquiering cities take so long. On plus side games hopefully will last longer(more time to use specific units). Idea behind this mode is not bad and for players who plays on maps where is a lot of space to create cities will make loyalty/ages more impactfull but for me loyalty was already annoying/hard part of game so i am not super excited for this game mode. But i will try to see how it plays out in practise.