Exploration age legacy paths is too thematically narrow

[Zaarin]

The impression I get is that the relics you obtain are relics of the apostles, since you get them from converting cities. And if there's any culture in the history of the world that had a deep obsession with relics, to me that would be medieval western Europe. Relics were central to the flourishing of Gothic art in western Europe; they brought prestige to towns and churches in a way not seen in other cultures; they were one of the central themes of the crusades.

But I won't die on this hill. I know not everyone has the same impression. I guess I look forward to more variety like everyone else, and I'm more disappointed than anything by the bland gameplay that this kind of vision entails.

I interpret relics as generally religious art, including icons, scrolls, etc. But I don't disagree with you about hating the gameplay. I felt like Civ6's religion system had problems, and Civ7's stripped out whatever was good and then intensified the problems. It's very disappointing, and I hope it gets thoroughly top-to-bottom overhauled.

 

[RedCourtJester]

Also, stupas exist. When I hear "relics" in connection with Asia, my mind immediately jumps to Burma. But really any sort of paya/pagoda would/could be very relic-forward.

I do admit the "treasure fleet" mechanic in exploration era seems weird, and I initially wanted a "land-based" alternative. But then I remembered that this is an era-specific evolution of the land-based trade route win-con in antiquity era, which then makes more sense as an era-specific mechanic. Especially when juxtaposed against the fact that the modern win-con is exclusively rail-based despite naval trade still being very relevant in the modern era.

I wouldn't worry too much about these things. The base game civs I think were selected in part to set a "standard" style of gameplay in these eras. I would expect more "exceptions" like Mongolia to pop up as we expand on ways to engage with each era.

(although, I still don't particularly care for the exploration era science win-con not being specifically science-based. Meh.)

 

[Zaarin]

(although, I still don't particularly care for the exploration era science win-con not being specifically science-based. Meh.)

You need strong Science for Culture Victory in Exploration and Modern, and you need strong Culture and to a lesser extent science for the Exploration Science Victory.

 

[Taefin]

While I agree that religion is boring right now, I will play defender of the exploration legacy paths, since I quite like how this period of the game plays, in comparison to Civ6 or any recent civ competitors.

Economic - As I see it, this creates a gameplay mechanism that rewards expanding across an ocean, either peacefully or militaristically. Treasure resources average about 10 gold per turn (factoring that they don’t come online until shipbuilding and you lose the last set of fleets), which is a little better than jade most of the time. And if you do well at it, you get +10% gold in the modern era (via two legacy points in rewards). While pursuing this legacy railroads the player into role playing something that not every real world nation did, it is 1) optional and 2) creates a reward for something that was economically rewarding in the real world, but has generally not been mechanically rewarding in other games (to build up enough military to go conquer cities oversees rather than just doing that locally). And if you opt out of treasure fleets in some games, it is still rewarding to conquer in homelands or invest in building your existing cities instead of using resources to expand to DL and get treasure fleets.

Science - I have found that hitting 40 yields is a surprisingly rewarding expression of advancing in the tech tree (to get multiple buildings you want that have the same adjacencies, and to increase specialist limit) combined with city planning. It certainly helps to have some wonders and policy cards.

Culture - I like that this plays out differently depending on the beliefs you take. Lately I have been spreading religion and earning relics mostly though creating trade routes to DL cities. In another it was about upgrading IP to city states. Feels very achievable in all games, but always requires some investment and the relics don’t seem that worth it for their yields alone. Hopefully great works will come back as an alternative/ addition to relics. I’ve never tried an early capital rush, but converting 4 cities per missionary for being first to convert would be 24 culture/turn per missionary, which is quite a good boost until you need to start defending your hold.

Military - this one feels the most forced, but gameplay-wise, it adds the challenge of capturing and holding oversees territory long that likely ends up with fighting at two sides of a large empire. So it feels consistent with actually rewarding projecting military force around the world. And then throw in a religion element for flavor (and to offset losing the bonus of capturing a city following your religion).

 

[Zaarin]

I like all of them but Culture; I intensely dislike the Culture gameplay for both Exploration and Modern. I hope we see more legacy paths introduced in the future. Of all of them, across all ages, Economic feels the most well-thought-out, followed by Science. I'm not really in a position to judge Military as it's not my playstyle, though I do like that you can invest in it in the early ages without being super aggressive or militant. It's culture that's dissatisfying in every age except Antiquity. However, I think all paths could benefit from some variety for the long term longevity of the game, even the ones that are currently satisfying.

 

[sixty4half]

Trust me, the Military VC is weird too. Rack up X number of conquered cities. Once you get that you just lay down your guns, put your Tanks on Alert and sue for Peace. Then it's just 10 turns till you build a Nuke.

Sure you could continue the war; but what's the point. All that does is drag out the turns with needless management of dozens of units.

 

[pjotroos]

Trust me, the Military VC is weird too. Rack up X number of conquered cities. Once you get that you just lay down your guns, put your Tanks on Alert and sue for Peace. Then it's just 10 turns till you build a Nuke.

Sure you could continue the war; but what's the point. All that does is drag out the turns with needless management of dozens of units.

Since there's already scaling bonuses for other stuff, it feels like a genuine oversight that the military projects don't have absurdly high base cost and something like +300% efficiency for each civilization you're at war with.

As for the original point about eurocentrism, I'm holding out hope that this is just the baseline version, that Mongolia and Songhai are a sample of things to come, and like with the past few Civ games, we'll get some really cool spins on the formula in the expansions. But two things felt incredibly weird about it right now. The first is the fact we only have one of the european powers that the three paths of the exploration era seem to be centered around (and this number won't change in either of the two DLC packs announced). The other is that the objectives in exploration era remain unchanged for the civs like Inca or Shawnee, that were on the receiving end of that exploration in reality.

 

[Zaarin]

Trust me, the Military VC is weird too. Rack up X number of conquered cities. Once you get that you just lay down your guns, put your Tanks on Alert and sue for Peace. Then it's just 10 turns till you build a Nuke.

Sure you could continue the war; but what's the point. All that does is drag out the turns with needless management of dozens of units.

All of the "post-legacy victory conditions" feel counterintuitive to me. Once you've completed the Legacy path...you've won. But then you have to keep doing things to make the game agree with you, and the post-Legacy victory projects are all just busywork to occupy a few turns. That seems like precisely the situation the Age mechanics were supposed to avoid and shake up (and otherwise do a decent job of avoiding and shaking up).

 

[Krikkit1]

Trust me, the Military VC is weird too. Rack up X number of conquered cities. Once you get that you just lay down your guns, put your Tanks on Alert and sue for Peace. Then it's just 10 turns till you build a Nuke.

Sure you could continue the war; but what's the point. All that does is drag out the turns with needless management of dozens of units.

That’s why I think they need to change it so that to unlock Operation Ivy you need to Use a nuke on an enemy Urban District

 

[Kjimmet]

I've never heard that saying. What does it mean?

I think they're referring to Godwin's law.

 

[RedCourtJester]

I like all of them but Culture; I intensely dislike the Culture gameplay for both Exploration and Modern. I hope we see more legacy paths introduced in the future. Of all of them, across all ages, Economic feels the most well-thought-out, followed by Science. I'm not really in a position to judge Military as it's not my playstyle, though I do like that you can invest in it in the early ages without being super aggressive or militant. It's culture that's dissatisfying in every age except Antiquity. However, I think all paths could benefit from some variety for the long term longevity of the game, even the ones that are currently satisfying.

I actually like how culture progresses roughly the same way as economic and military. It's consistent with how architecture and religious mythos were the predominant media for culture in those respective eras.

The only era I think gets too muddled is modern. I grok that great works generate culture toward artifacts as the "win-con" of "understanding your historical cultural picture." But unlike big architecture or relics, artifacts still don't rise to the defining feature of cultural dominance in the modern era: it was, absolutely, the great works which influenced culture post-Gutenberg. The whole paradigm shift represented by The Hunchback of Notre Dame was the replacement of architectural and reliquary edifices as unifying cultural fictions with the printed word. Not to mention that artifacts have practically nothing to do with the World's Fair.

I think an artifact win-con would make much more sense in an atomic or future era, or maybe as an alternate win-con/"great work currency" for all eras. I think it's just not getting at the heart of modernity.

(and yes, I still haven't addressed "art" and "music" in exploration era. I think for base-game, relics got it right as that was a much more universal feature of the era as Civ VII defines it (and, in all honesty, the vast majority of "art" and "music" in those eras were religious in nature). But that we likely want to see a few civs added with alternative progression paths, similar to how Mongolia skips over the military win-con. I think "Italy" is an obvious candidate, possibly this upcoming Iceland civ, and would also throw around Muisca, "Morocco"/Cordoba, or Kamakura/Edo Japan.)