[GS] Dramatic Ages - Suggestions

civfan_999

Chieftain
Joined
Jun 23, 2020
Messages
99
Golden ages need an extra policy slot

I like how the dramatic ages mode allows you to possibly put more than one of the golden age bonuses to work. I also like how it has been combined into the existing policy card dynamic.

However, I think that when you are in a golden age, you should get an additional policy slot. In that way, this game change would be consistent with the old design. Under the original design you would fill all your policy slots AND also get one golden age selection that applies for the age. Now, you need to sacrifice your wildcard policy to have space for the golden age policy.

This could either be solved by having one "golden age policy slot" added to all governments where you can put one golden age policy card, should you have access to one OR by adding an extra wildcard slot in golden ages such that you could either put in a golden policy card or any other policy card of your choice.

Carry over era score

I got so excited when I watched the developer video regarding the dramatic ages release where he noted that extra era score would no longer be wasted. I had expected that would mean extra would carry over.

The extra loyalty pressure could be beneficial in some situations, but I still consider the extra era score to be mostly wasted. You don't want to get a dark age - especially in dramatic ages - so a better use of extra era score is to apply to the next era rather than have some additional loyalty. I continue to hold off on major accomplishments (like building the first unique unit or building and the first district with a sufficiently high adjacency) until the next era if I am within 8 or so turns and already at golden.

I would much rather see the additional era score carry over into the next era, even if it doesn't carry over one for one. For example, if I am 96/80 instead of carrying over 16, I could get 8 or 12 (50% or 75%). I'd leave it to the devs to find the right percentage, but I would love to see at least some carry over.

I even think a 50% carry over could stack with the new extra loyalty pressure that they have added as a bonus for going over what you needed in one era.

City flips during dark ages

I think it makes more sense for the smallest population cities to flip in the event that all cities are full loyalty. Yes, if some cities are loosing loyalty, they should 100% be the ones to flip, but if I have a huge city with wonders and lots of growth and production and luxury resources, it shouldn't be the one to flip just because its on the edge of my empire. If it's full loyalty and one of my best cities, it shouldn't be flipping.

I'd prefer to see any cities that aren't full loyalty flip when you go into a dark age plus, if 0-1 cities flip using that mechanic, then whatever mechanic the devs currently use to determine the number to flip should apply to the remaining cities and should flip the lowest population cities.
 
I finished my dramatic ages game. I quite like the mode. It was interesting to claw myself back from the dark era where I lost 2/5 cities and another 2/5 cities were declining loyalty. I also liked having the golden era policies as cards so you could have as many or as few as you wanted in place. I also liked how one or two cards changed each era, but most carried over, as opposed to the old version where you had the same four choices for two eras and then a new set of four for the next two eras, ect.

That being said, I stand by my above suggestions. Most importantly, you should get an additional wildcard policy in golden eras. Until you get the 4th tier government, there simply aren't enough slots to really accommodate golden age policy cards.

Having finished my game, I have one more comment:

This mode just gives the AI one more thing to be bad at, making deity games easier

In the game I played, some of the AIs were getting chain dark ages, loosing tons of cities, and never regaining them. By the end of the game, there were massive free city empires (one was 6 cities, the other was over a dozen), where the free cities were not at any risk of flipping back to their original owners due to the magnitude of free cities around each other. Two of the twelve players actually lost the game because they lost cities one by one until they had nothing left. A few more AIs were completely neutered because they lost so much of their empire in the first half of the game and never got any of their lost cities back.

Suggestions:
  1. The AI needs to focus on regaining its cities. If the free city isn't going to naturally flip back to the AI before the end of the era, then the AI should be sending military over to reconquer its city.
  2. If a dark era is expected, the AI should prepare to reconquer its flipped city by ensuring it has some active military units available for the task.
 
I also hate that city states can be conquered by an AI, then flip into a free city, and stay a free city for the entire game. I think when a city that was originally a city state leaves an empire, it should revert to its original city state status, not become a free city.
 
I tried several DE games now and in all of those one thing happense sooner or later. A blob of free cities is created that not only is unflippable by any civ due to the loyalty pressure among the free cities, but also at any point onward any civilization neighboring the blob is unfortunate enough to have a dark age it have a big trouble. I saw civilizations destroyed during a dark age just because they were close to such a blob and even their capitals loyalty flipped to free cities.
Stroy wise, I imagine a free city being pretty much living in an anarchy and as such having a group of free cities that started to separate from their former empires during middle ages becoming the foremost world superpower by modern era without fail in every game seems super weird to me!

My proposal to fix this if following:
Every time a free city creates a military unit, it does so at the expanse of 1 population. This would ensure that after longer period of time being a free city, it's population would shrink and as such it's loyalty pressure drop and make it more likely to join another civilization as well as not keeping another close free cities unflippable. These blobs of free cities would still happen if two neighbouring civs would haev a dark age simultaneously, but sooner or later they would dissolve and get eaten up by regular civilizations.
In order to make the free cities not effectively gift to other empires one followup change is that free cities should periodicaly pillage their improvements and buildings (once every cca 10 turns?). Meaning that a city that was free city for a long time is pretty much a ruin a requires much fixing before it becomes usefull again. It would give an incentive to try and take back your disloyal cities sooner rather than later.
And finally one that was already mentioned but seems super obvious to me: When a city state is conquered by a civilization and later rebels, it shouldn't become a free city, but instead revert to the city state it was before!
 
I saw civilizations destroyed during a dark age just because they were close to such a blob and even their capitals loyalty flipped to free cities.

This happened to me as well. Early in the game I got a notification that one of the civs had been defeated. Then around mid game a second notification. When I finally launched those earth satellites to see what was going on, I could clearly see that two entire civs plus 2/3 of another civ had flipped into this giant free city empire. At that point, I already had my army towards the edge of that free city empire and was starting to conquer it. You could tell it was really old because there were units EVERYWHERE and half of them were scouts.

It would give an incentive to try and take back your disloyal cities sooner rather than later.

I don't know that human players need an incentive. When my cities flipped, I worked to take them back as quickly as possible. AI players need to be programed to value taking back their cities very highly; At least in the cases where they have a military, they should bring the whole military over and attempt to reclaim the free city. Maybe they don't need to go so far as to try to make more military for the effort.

I do like that you are proposing some ideas to prevent the free city empire from having such strong loyalty.
 
I like this new mechanic, but there is definitely room for refinement. If two or more "Free States" share a border they should form a civ. But that border sharing should be limited to "Free States" that revolted from the same civ. So in other words "Free States" that revolted from the same civ that share a border should want to form a civ. A lone "Free State" should stay a free state.
 
Top Bottom