[R&F] Era Progression Speed

[Arent11]

After watching the livestream and paying close attention to the details being released on the expansion, I have some concern that a major dilemma from Civ6's base game remains unresolved. I speak of the speed in which the game progresses through the eras. As of now, tech and civic progression moves so quickly that early eras pass by prematurely, not giving players time to fully "breathe" in the earlier stages of history. Even on Epic/Marathon, eras still go by too quickly and the increased production costs don't help matters (rather, tech/civic progression should be even more higher).

Some of us enjoy playing Ancient/Classical Eras, and are in no rush to progress to the next Era so quickly, but the game mechanics are such that science and culture accumulate faster than production and movement points, so one doesn't have the time to establish your civ AND fully experience the early game as you could in earlier Civ games.

I had hoped the livestream might address the issue, but they didn't seem to touch on the issue. Anton said the whole impetus of R&F was to modify the issues with mid- and late-game ennui by fleshing out the ages a bit more, but all I saw was adding more things to do (i.e. Build Government Plaza, balance loyalty and gain Era Points) in the same limited time window, or face a penalty (read: Dark Age). With the roll-out of the new Ages mechanics, will we still warp speed through the early ages?

This is because of the split into science & culture tech tree. In earlier civs the tech tree was a sort of "guideline" that always dangled the next "carrot" in form of the next tech before your nose. It had 20+ techs per era & told you "you are here right now" in a pretty specific manner. And of course, because you were always developing one tech at a time, you got the feeling: Ok, I'm now in era xy.
Now, you have two trees that naturally have half as many techs. You can potentially go animal husbandry -> archery -> horseback riding -> knights & bamm!, you are in the middle ages. You develop two "techs" in parallel & you can potentially be in different eras in science and culture.

 

[Silverdawn]

I just wish they added in a bit more techs and civics, not as much as G&K did but something. From what I've seen you can skip the medieval era completely by going from shipbuilding to cartography. I've had that option many times especially as Norway. If they don't take care of that it can take a whole era out of the game, presumably screwing up the Rise and Fall mechanics more.

Based on the Civics tree in the livestream yesterday, no new Civics have been added so it does look like they are saving those type of changes for the future.

 

[trev1972]

I respectfully disagree with your assessment that the developers should always make these tweaks. They have made the game with a balance that they prefer. They may come back and make a tweak here and there, but if it doesn't meet with their view of the game they won't make that kind of change.

For whatever reason, they don't agree with your view of the tech/civic progression. They built it a certain way.

The problem the developers face is that there are too many competing desires from their MILLIONS of fans about this balance or that balance. The developers DID build a solution for this - the ability for others to modify the game to meet these many possible preferences that are different from their own.

I just can't understand complaining about something as "a major dilemma... [that] remains unresolved" and doesn't meet your view, but has a very specific and popular publicly available mod that fixes exactly what you are complaining about. The developers made the game modifiable so that someone like you who wants to play the game in just a slightly tweaked way can easily do so. With the developers full support and blessing.

I dont think its the end of the world, like you say there are mods.

I do think its fair to say though that the implementation of marathon mode with production costs scaling with tech suggests the developers completely misunderstand the reason someone would want to play marathon (of course thats just an opinion)

 

[Prima Italia]

I think the tech tree needs to be reworked. Being able to research 4 techs to get to the Renaissance is not good. It is bad for game flow. Also I am not a fan of the leaf tech like Celestial Navigation. Making Archery a requirement was a good move and it should have continued throughout the tech tree. There should be more requirements and the techs should be more inter linking to stop bee-lining quickly through the tech tree. I would also suggest more techs. The tech tree is about 2 techs per era down on Brave New World.

 

[Phoenix1595]

I dont think its the end of the world, like you say there are mods.

I do think its fair to say though that the implementation of marathon mode with production costs scaling with tech suggests the developers completely misunderstand the reason someone would want to play marathon (of course thats just an opinion)

My point exactly. The developers created a function (slower game speed via Epic/Marathon) that doesn't have the effect it should, and it does have a real effect on player enjoyment and replayability. We've discussed the likely culprit to the issue (production rate), which is likely an easy issue to fix. Yes, mods could fix it, or the developers can-- it is there product, after all. As Anton Strenger said in the livestream yesterday, game pacing was a significant factor when designing R&F. The point of this entire thread was to discuss whether R&F achieves a resolution to the pacing issue, and the question I asked was that it is still unclear how R&F will do this. Global Eras seem to slow pacing somewhat, but that may be cancelled out by Era scoring.

The designers have made it clear that they do want to fix the game speed issue, and that they are working to achieve it. Hence, why mod, and why offer mod as a solution to a problem being addressed by the developers? Game speed may not be an issue for you, but there are MANY players who are, and we eagerly anticipate how Firaxis will address it.

 

[Depravo]

I get mostly believable results with a mod that triples tech / civic costs. Epic speed.

Current game I dropped down to x2 and Australian ironclads are roaming the twelfth century seas.

 

[kaspergm]

Couldn't agree more with everything that's being said in this thread. I somehow get the feeling that they balanced the game around the overlapping industrial districts that game was released with, and then didn't change any numbers when that feature was removed. Post industrial age, building cost of everything is abysmally high. I regularly get 15+ turn to build a military unit even in average cities come modern age, and don't get me started on building armies. I've modded the game to cut district and building costs in later eras, but haven't gotten around to units yet, but it's definitely next on my list to do.

 

[Kyro]

It's not that simple. Eureka's and Inspirations do not hurry the game up; failing to account for them when designing science/culture costs, tech interactions, tech numbers, etc does hurry the game up.

The thing is the whole idea of eurekas and inspirations IS to speed things up so it is unlikely the developers failed to account for that. Civ 6's direction caters towards a less patient audience and a lot of the game focuses on action rather than long term planning. This sped up game pace is the result of that.

When you say Eurekas and Inspirations don't speed up the game, you're comparing it to a state where they don't exist, in which case that statement would be false because they essentially halve costs and you cannot halve costs without speeding up the game.

Suppose they do speed up the game and the designers accounted for it by increasing costs, what purpose would Eurekas and Inspirations serve then?

To devalue city yields and all strategies associated therein and make short term "missions" more important.

 

[stealth_nsk]

Couldn't agree more with everything that's being said in this thread. I somehow get the feeling that they balanced the game around the overlapping industrial districts that game was released with, and then didn't change any numbers when that feature was removed. Post industrial age, building cost of everything is abysmally high. I regularly get 15+ turn to build a military unit even in average cities come modern age, and don't get me started on building armies. I've modded the game to cut district and building costs in later eras, but haven't gotten around to units yet, but it's definitely next on my list to do.

You still can have high production in dedicated cities.
Also, the high cost of military units is deliberate. With 1UPT, too many units cause carpet of doom. Armies and support units partially solve the problem, but not completely.

 

[MooFreaky]

I think the tech tree needs to be reworked. Being able to research 4 techs to get to the Renaissance is not good. It is bad for game flow. Also I am not a fan of the leaf tech like Celestial Navigation. Making Archery a requirement was a good move and it should have continued throughout the tech tree. There should be more requirements and the techs should be more inter linking to stop bee-lining quickly through the tech tree. I would also suggest more techs. The tech tree is about 2 techs per era down on Brave New World.

It's a tough balance because there are several conflicting complaints that different players give quite vocally. It's common to hear "I don't want to be forced down a tech path, I want lots of options", as well as "OMG it's too easy to jump ages".
If players are forced to research lots of technologies it's dictating how people play and extremely restrictive, which is very unpopular. If it's open then people beeline specific technologies and jump ages rapidly, which is also unpopular. It's a very tight rope to walk.
Not to say that it cannot be improved (even considerably improved). It's just extremely hard when there is clearly an optimal way to play (and always has been in every Civ game) so there will never be a reason to research many technologies early on. It really requires having more pre-requisite technologies, while making those flexibile enough to have multiple options on how to progress through the tech tree.
I agree that the best solution to that is to expand the tech tree significantly, which would also help address the issue of the massive overscience issue many people have.

You still can have high production in dedicated cities.
Also, the high cost of military units is deliberate. With 1UPT, too many units cause carpet of doom. Armies and support units partially solve the problem, but not completely.

Exactly this. Increasing production (or dropping costs) would cause more issues than it solves. Carpets of doom are just mind numbing and repetitive. The fact you can upgrade units is another reason costs go up, as you will generally have a ready supply of existing units already. If you could pump out cheap units then costs to upgrade units would need to drop to match (or why bother upgrading?), so you just end up pumping out units all game and then being able to upgrade them constantly too.

 

[Josephias]

I think the tech tree needs to be reworked. Being able to research 4 techs to get to the Renaissance is not good. It is bad for game flow. Also I am not a fan of the leaf tech like Celestial Navigation. Making Archery a requirement was a good move and it should have continued throughout the tech tree. There should be more requirements and the techs should be more inter linking to stop bee-lining quickly through the tech tree. I would also suggest more techs. The tech tree is about 2 techs per era down on Brave New World.

Something has to be done, I agree. I'd suggest at least making you need to get an specific era in BOTH trees to be considered at that era: Something like: well, you have developed very strong and high walls, but you are still a chieftain-based society... sorry, you can still not be qualified for medieval... or you society may have in the other hand reached high levels of complexity of court gossips, diplomatic play and people organization, but if you aren't able to figure out how to make water reach your farmland, well, you-re not alloved to leave ancient era.

Also, I'd like to see a bit more interaction between both trees: not only some random eurekas, but actually having full sets of tech costing much more if you have not developed some related civics (maybe leaving it open as "you have to develop at least 2 of these 4 civics to remove the penalty." And the same way around whit techs easing civics.

 

[stealth_nsk]

Something has to be done, I agree. I'd suggest at least making you need to get an specific era in BOTH trees to be considered at that era

1. Usually being in less advanced eras is a benefit. You have less warmonger penalties and have more time to fulfill city-state quests.
2. However. all this have nothing to do with R&F, where eras are global.

 

[empresskiova]

Putting in new techs/civics is probably the best way to improve the tech pacing. And it looks like theyre touching the numbers for later game production, so that does a make a giant difference in all game speeds.

I do wonder if the devs try to min-max this game, or if they just view it as a role playing board game. That alone would explain away most of the criticisms...

 

[trev1972]

Some interesting posts, and i get that there are lots of personal preferences to contend with, personally i hate the extreme beelining that can be done but understand others love it.

However i think the type of player is determined by the speed they choose..a marathon player wants drawn out games with most likely long wars in the classical era etc . I dont believe they want to sit there for 30 turns waiting for their first monument though.

So whilst a rework of the tech tree would be great for me personally i think the simplest adjustment would be to speed up marathon production, since marathon is an optional setting it wouldnt affect people who love quicker games

 

[Josephias]

1. Usually being in less advanced eras is a benefit. You have less warmonger penalties and have more time to fulfill city-state quests.
2. However. all this have nothing to do with R&F, where eras are global.

If they are global, benefit will not be there and we will have a more discrete era pacing... main point here is not to spend the last 150 game turns in "future" era, without use for the "eras" functionality.

Otherwise, altough this would require a more complex system of counters, i would suggest the warmonger points count depending on the era of who is evaluating you.

 

[NegativeZero]

I'm considering the Dark/Golden age mechanic a potential solution to the pacing issues players have experienced.

Racing through the tech/civic paths or bee-lining may be too detrimental to your civ as you may end up in multiple consecutive dark ages with limited declaration choices. Sure the dark age(s) grant the opportunity for heroics ages (+3 declarations), but that appears to be an opportunity only given to civs that intentionally slow down to branch out in the tech/civic trees as to not pop the next era quickly.

Personally, I think eras go by too quickly as players tend to bee-line the important civics/tech and ignore the other half till later. The huge governor bonuses will only serve to accelerate the current pace of the game if nothing is put in to compensate for them.

 

[Equilin]

Otherwise, altough this would require a more complex system of counters, i would suggest the warmonger points count depending on the era of who is evaluating you.

I agree. It sounds stupid to have the classical empire heavily thinks i'm a warmonger just because i'm more advanced than them and declares war once. Do they even know how a civilized world of peace is lul. I like V's system that each leader have different flavors in every area including warmongering.