Eras Expanded instead of new ones

[MACKA0ili]

I've seen a lot of people say that the game needs a new era added to it in order to cover the atomic and information ages of the previous games. Having played through a few games, I disagree completely. Instead, I think it would be much better to have the end of each era expanded to include some more techs and civics that represent eras people feel were skipped over or rushed through. This would also address the issue that people have about ages feeling too short.

Currently, the tech trees the antiquity era ends with iron working and mathematics, the exploration era ends with gunpowder and urban planning, and the modern era ends with rocketry. These feel like techs that most people should have access to before the era ends yet how it plays out is that they are more like "end game" bonuses for those who are far ahead. The current tech trees funnel your civ into these options rather than allowing for specialization, something that the civic tree actually does better with its civ specific, religious, and ideological trees. Rather than being treated as bonuses, expanding the eras would let more civs reach these techs and specialize rather than be funneled into these options.

Basically, I'm saying that Antiquity should feel like it ends when the Roman empire falls rather than its republic, Exploration should feel like it ends with colonial revolution or the Napoleonic wars rather than with the black plague, and Modern should feel like it ends with the fall of the Berlin Wall rather than the fall of the Ottoman Empire.

 

[Ricco02]

I am current making a Modern Age Expanded mod. Any suggestions you have?

 

[Ryansinbela]

That sounds cool what ideas do you have so far

 

[tman2000]

I am current making a Modern Age Expanded mod. Any suggestions you have?

I see the modern age as starting with the American Civil War or the Danish-Prussian War. It therefore has 4-5 phases.

Phase one is riflemen, cavalry and sailing ships. This is a late colonial phase and should have a late colonial element. Put awesome resources wherever no one is settled, and allow multi-city independent power vassals.

The next phase is the Great War, which needs railroads and artillery. This phase is too short currently.

Then there's WWII which has to be won exclusively with superior air power. There also needs to be more that the radio station can to to affect war weariness.

Next is a phase that's missing from real life history. This is the age of nuclear war. This is 1945-1965. Most people don't know this, but the United States had plans to hit the USSR with nukes and defeat them once and for all. In parallel, MacArthur wanted to use nukes in Korea. At the end of WWII the US had B-29 bombers and about 30 nukes and the USSR had 0. Even in 1962, the US had like 2000 missiles and the USSR had about 400 and it was sincerely believed that enough of the 2000 missiles would sufficiently prevent any of the 400 Soviet nukes from ever launching. It may be that Kennedy prevented this war by maneuvering outside the knowledge of the Joint Chiefs. This is an age of television and nuclear war.

Next is peak Cold War, with space power and computing.

You can end it there, saving internet and post-Berlin Wall for another era. But, note the distinct phases: Late colonial, Great War, Air Power World War, Atomic Age, Space Age

 

[The_goggles_do_nothing]

I think the era lengths are based on that it should be difficult to finish legacy paths. If there are more techs and longer time in an age the legacy paths would have to be change. There’s reasons legacy paths/victory paths need to change as well so I expect Fixaxis will expand them eventually..

I am current making a Modern Age Expanded mod. Any suggestions you have?

When I got to the point in the Scientific path that calls for complete ‘transatlantic flight’ i thought it meant build a plane in the homelands and bring it to the distant lands. Turns out it’s just a project but I think that would be an interesting mechanic. You could have a transatlantic flight, a world circumnavigation flight. You could have a world circumnavigation in the exploration age as well. Trade routes that goes round the world? Manufacting that goes around the world? I

 

[Phrozen]

I see the modern age as starting with the American Civil War or the Danish-Prussian War. It therefore has 4-5 phases.

Phase one is riflemen, cavalry and sailing ships. This is a late colonial phase and should have a late colonial element. Put awesome resources wherever no one is settled, and allow multi-city independent power vassals.

The next phase is the Great War, which needs railroads and artillery. This phase is too short currently.

Then there's WWII which has to be won exclusively with superior air power. There also needs to be more that the radio station can to to affect war weariness.

Next is a phase that's missing from real life history. This is the age of nuclear war. This is 1945-1965. Most people don't know this, but the United States had plans to hit the USSR with nukes and defeat them once and for all. In parallel, MacArthur wanted to use nukes in Korea. At the end of WWII the US had B-29 bombers and about 30 nukes and the USSR had 0. Even in 1962, the US had like 2000 missiles and the USSR had about 400 and it was sincerely believed that enough of the 2000 missiles would sufficiently prevent any of the 400 Soviet nukes from ever launching. It may be that Kennedy prevented this war by maneuvering outside the knowledge of the Joint Chiefs. This is an age of television and nuclear war.

Next is peak Cold War, with space power and computing.

You can end it there, saving internet and post-Berlin Wall for another era. But, note the distinct phases: Late colonial, Great War, Air Power World War, Atomic Age, Space Age

You could treat all of ww1 to the end of ww2 as a crisis era as even the period between the wars saw increasing political violence, civil war, and a rise of organized crime.

 

[tman2000]

You could treat all of ww1 to the end of ww2 as a crisis era as even the period between the wars saw increasing political violence, civil war, and a rise of organized crime.

Yeah, the late colonial phase, the opener will be relatively peaceful and your last chance to plop down settlements for resources. I think this phase should last at least 50 turns and the settlement cap needs to be expanded much earlier. There has to be room for that leftover troops from exploration opener wars (Danish-Prussian), and late colonial turf wars with naval ships and far flung units.

The Great War should be the result of railroads being fully built and 50 turns of army production at a much higher rate than exploration age. This will take continental scale production and send it to one or two limited front lines.

I don't know how to trigger a crisis condition, but you could tie it to war weariness. This is why the late-colonial phase has to last longer, so you can really settle and build up and get massive armies. Maybe have an artillery unit that makes invasion really really hard unless you scale. The machine gun also is relevant in this light. Britain defeated massive local armies with small squads because of the machine gun.

Once enough troops are dying, that will trigger a war weariness crisis which will essentially force players to keep fighting until their troops are dead, or sue for peace. It will be impossible to produce many new troops to keep the war going.

The weariness will improve once there's peace, but crisis modifiers will remain to create the unrest and economic problems you describe. This "post-war" malaise will only be curable through ideology, and this his how ideology comes into play. Once the malaise is cured, then you can massively up build forces again.

You need some way to trigger WWII. If you think about when the big fighting began, there are a few ways to look at it. D-Day was when big fighting began in the West. So again this is an issue of scaling up to overcome the inherent benefits of machine guns. Bombing occurred before and after that, so this is just a matter of building up a bomber force and using it. In the East, Germany invaded as soon as it was ready, and the USSR wasn't ready and almost lost but had more than enough room and manpower to catch up in the middle of being invaded.

I think you need to have minimal war weariness, but some advantage to hold off on declaring war. Maybe ideologies will automatically be at war with each other as if they are allied, so you hold off attacking anyone until you're ready.

WWII should have radars to see aircraft and carriers sneaking up on you. Do tier 2 bomber plunder improved tiles in Civ 7? I never actually ended up producing tier 2 bombers and trying to use them that way. That would make sense to me as a mod.

 

[MACKA0ili]

Having played through plenty of games now at various difficulties, I feel even more strongly about the current eras being ripe for expansion. An entirely new era would mess with the flow of the game way too much and not fix the pacing issues in the other eras. On average, my playthroughs would last until:
Antiquity: Turn 120-160
Tech and civic trees hardly ever getting close to finished
Exploration: Turn 100-130
Tech tree final unlocks usually gotten around 80% era completion
Modern: Turn 60-85
Would be mostly finished with everything despite rushing for the victory conditions

This basically screams to me that the modern era should be expanded upon given the vast difference in my average completion times. However, even if I was doing particularly well in the antiquity and exploration eras, the unlocks I recieved would hardly make a difference because of the ensuing era transition.
This meant that the era would largely be defined by its tier 2 units (spearmen and chariots for antiquity; pikemen and knights for exploration) which really makes the eras feel smaller. I think I maybe saw horsemen a single time despite how many games I've played now.
For buildings, the academy was really the only antiquity tier 2 building I would be able to make since I had to rush for it to get the extra codex slots and also the only antiquity tier 2 building I'd see the AI build. Exploration era hospitals, menagerie, pavilions, and banks never come online fast enough to make a difference except if I used them to sneak in an extra Enlightenment legacy point, though universities and blacksmiths would take care of that most of the time. Almost all of the modern era buildings are front loaded into the first two columns with notable exceptions being the factory and the radio tower which kinda makes me think that the radio tower was meant to be a bigger part of the cultural victory condition at one point. Overall, other than the modern era which has it's own pacing issues, the buildings have the same problem that the units do in which the era is largely defined by the lower tier ones which makes the exploration era in particular feel shorter than intended.

It's good to see that everyone in this thread is coming up with ideas for the modern era, but I think the antiquity and exploration eras have room to expand as well.

I think the era lengths are based on that it should be difficult to finish legacy paths. If there are more techs and longer time in an age the legacy paths would have to be change. There’s reasons legacy paths/victory paths need to change as well so I expect Fixaxis will expand them eventually..

I agree that legacy paths should be difficult to finish, but as it is it's much harder to finish the tech/ civic trees than it is to finish all four legacies. This isnt necessarily a bad thing, but there are some era defining unlocks them feel like they come online way too late. Classical warfare without horse mounted cavalry feels as incomplete as Renaissance warfare without the pike and shot.
I dont think we necessarily need to add a ton of techs to the end of the tree, just maybe one more column with branches to specialize in. One good example already in game is the naval line in antiquity where someone who is water based could stick to the top of the tree. As it is now, there are 3 techs at the end of antiquity 2 at the end of exploration and 1 at the end of modern. I think having more branches as well as a final column for specialization would be enough to fill out the end of each era.
That final column of techs could maybe have the starting units of the next era as their masteries while offering bonuses to yields or combat strength/movement in a reversal of the way techs are done normally.

As for your other point, I think having a capstone project for legacy paths would be a good way of extending the era naturally while also giving a better ending for single era games. I also like your idea for how the trans oceanic flight was, would love to see it implemented like that of Firaxis is gonna change the legacy paths at some point.

 

[luca 83]

Having played through plenty of games now at various difficulties, I feel even more strongly about the current eras being ripe for expansion. An entirely new era would mess with the flow of the game way too much and not fix the pacing issues in the other eras. On average, my playthroughs would last until:
Antiquity: Turn 120-160
Tech and civic trees hardly ever getting close to finished
Exploration: Turn 100-130
Tech tree final unlocks usually gotten around 80% era completion
Modern: Turn 60-85
Would be mostly finished with everything despite rushing for the victory conditions

This basically screams to me that the modern era should be expanded upon given the vast difference in my average completion times. However, even if I was doing particularly well in the antiquity and exploration eras, the unlocks I recieved would hardly make a difference because of the ensuing era transition.
This meant that the era would largely be defined by its tier 2 units (spearmen and chariots for antiquity; pikemen and knights for exploration) which really makes the eras feel smaller. I think I maybe saw horsemen a single time despite how many games I've played now.
For buildings, the academy was really the only antiquity tier 2 building I would be able to make since I had to rush for it to get the extra codex slots and also the only antiquity tier 2 building I'd see the AI build. Exploration era hospitals, menagerie, pavilions, and banks never come online fast enough to make a difference except if I used them to sneak in an extra Enlightenment legacy point, though universities and blacksmiths would take care of that most of the time. Almost all of the modern era buildings are front loaded into the first two columns with notable exceptions being the factory and the radio tower which kinda makes me think that the radio tower was meant to be a bigger part of the cultural victory condition at one point. Overall, other than the modern era which has it's own pacing issues, the buildings have the same problem that the units do in which the era is largely defined by the lower tier ones which makes the exploration era in particular feel shorter than intended.

It's good to see that everyone in this thread is coming up with ideas for the modern era, but I think the antiquity and exploration eras have room to expand as well.


I agree that legacy paths should be difficult to finish, but as it is it's much harder to finish the tech/ civic trees than it is to finish all four legacies. This isnt necessarily a bad thing, but there are some era defining unlocks them feel like they come online way too late. Classical warfare without horse mounted cavalry feels as incomplete as Renaissance warfare without the pike and shot.
I dont think we necessarily need to add a ton of techs to the end of the tree, just maybe one more column with branches to specialize in. One good example already in game is the naval line in antiquity where someone who is water based could stick to the top of the tree. As it is now, there are 3 techs at the end of antiquity 2 at the end of exploration and 1 at the end of modern. I think having more branches as well as a final column for specialization would be enough to fill out the end of each era.
That final column of techs could maybe have the starting units of the next era as their masteries while offering bonuses to yields or combat strength/movement in a reversal of the way techs are done normally.

As for your other point, I think having a capstone project for legacy paths would be a good way of extending the era naturally while also giving a better ending for single era games. I also like your idea for how the trans oceanic flight was, would love to see it implemented like that of Firaxis is gonna change the legacy paths at some point.

until they put the ideologies and revulutions to justify and make the change of era realistic it will never improve the game even if they put 100 new leaders and civilizations