Fall of Civilization - golden and dark ages.

[Abaxial]

Incidentally, there is a mod available that removes the dull Dark Age colours.

I do think the Ages need tweaking. For instance, the religious bonus gives you Great Prophet points, which are useless after you already have a religion.

 

[Arent11]

Incidentally, there is a mod available that removes the dull Dark Age colours.

I do think the Ages need tweaking. For instance, the religious bonus gives you Great Prophet points, which are useless after you already have a religion.

They are just badly implemented. Just scratch all that "dedication" & "loyalty" stuff. Make golden/normal/dark ages give you strong bonuses & penalties to production/science/culture/faith. A dark age should be a serious issue of corruption & sloth, which makes maintaining armies & winning wars so much more difficult, while a golden age should propel you ahead (with the risk of a dark age afterwards).

 

[SupremacyKing2]

They are just badly implemented. Just scratch all that "dedication" & "loyalty" stuff. Make golden/normal/dark ages give you strong bonuses & penalties to production/science/culture/faith. A dark age should be a serious issue of corruption & sloth, which makes maintaining armies & winning wars so much more difficult, while a golden age should propel you ahead (with the risk of a dark age afterwards).

I don't think there is anything wrong with the dedications or loyalty mechanics. I actually kinda like how dedications work. However, I would love to see the ages get standard bonuses and penalties in addition to the dedications and loyalty effects. Dark Ages could give you -20% science, -20% culture and -20% gold. Golden Ages could give you +20% science, +20% culture and +10% production and Heroic Ages would double these bonuses.

 

[Arent11]

I don't think there is anything wrong with the dedications or loyalty mechanics.

Ok, that is of course design philosophy & personal opinion. I personally follow the "have few rules that create a complex game" approach. If you would cut half of the rules & mechanics from civ 6 most people wouldn't even notice.

 

[AlannaT]

If you would cut half of the rules & mechanics from civ 6 most people wouldn't even notice.

Maybe we have a different understanding of what "rules & mechanics" are, but which "rules & mechanics" could you remove without people noticing? And how would it improve the game?
I really struggle to come up with any example but the combination of overflow and production modifiers.

 

[Arent11]

Maybe we have a different understanding of what "rules & mechanics" are, but which "rules & mechanics" could you remove without people noticing? And how would it improve the game?
I really struggle to come up with any example but the combination of overflow and production modifiers.

The combination of overflow & production modifier argueably do change the game quite tremendously. Whether it's a "good" mechanic is another question, but surely almost everyone would immediately notice if they were gone.

Again, I want to point out that this is my personal opinion. So, let's have a short, non comprehensive list of some rules & mechanics that many people would, in my humble opinion, not notice or care about:

(1) Warmonger penalties. Most people just ignore them by now. ​

(2) Agendas. They are supposed to give the AI more character & make them more lifelike. I'm pretty sure most people don't even know what the agendas of their opponents are.

(3) Having great artists, musicians & writers. Honestly? Wouldn't one great artist type be more than enough?
(4) Gossip. Often funny, but most of the time just distracting.
(5) Emergencies. Are supposed to create alliances in desperate situations. I haven't really seen them do that.
(6) Amenities, housing & food. We have 3 limiting mechanics for city growth: Amenities, housing and food. All of them basically do the same.
(7) Loyalty. The effect is that I have to conquer the capital first. That's it.
(8) Golden/normal/dark ages. As long as you have conquered your continent, it doesn't really do anything. There is a nice slingshot with monumentality that some players would miss.

​

 

[NoonePerson]

I'll be honest, Dark Ages aren't a good mechanic, even if we're taking it as an abstraction of history.

Emergencies sound like a very half hearted attempt at copying Paradox. In Stellaris, end game crises' are galaxy spanning events that force the player to come to the aid of other AIs under a staged narrative.

It barely worked under previous patches due to the predominance of one crisis and the AI completely ignoring the threat.

The assumption that Firaxis could properly debug Emergencies to make them interesting and anything but barely functional is a slim one.

 

[roscoepfox]

The combination of overflow & production modifier argueably do change the game quite tremendously. Whether it's a "good" mechanic is another question, but surely almost everyone would immediately notice if they were gone.

Again, I want to point out that this is my personal opinion. So, let's have a short, non comprehensive list of some rules & mechanics that many people would, in my humble opinion, not notice or care about:

(1) Warmonger penalties. Most people just ignore them by now. ​

(2) Agendas. They are supposed to give the AI more character & make them more lifelike. I'm pretty sure most people don't even know what the agendas of their opponents are.

(3) Having great artists, musicians & writers. Honestly? Wouldn't one great artist type be more than enough?
(4) Gossip. Often funny, but most of the time just distracting.
(5) Emergencies. Are supposed to create alliances in desperate situations. I haven't really seen them do that.
(6) Amenities, housing & food. We have 3 limiting mechanics for city growth: Amenities, housing and food. All of them basically do the same.
(7) Loyalty. The effect is that I have to conquer the capital first. That's it.
(8) Golden/normal/dark ages. As long as you have conquered your continent, it doesn't really do anything. There is a nice slingshot with monumentality that some players would miss.

​

(1) Warmonger penalties. Most people just ignore them by now.
I try not to get them, but I always do since I'll grab an enemies city if A.) Think it will hobble them enough that they won't be threat. B.) Have a resource or wonder I want. I rarely Declare War so I wish the penalty for taking a city wasn't so high when I'm not the one that declared war. I posted about that this morning.

(2) Agendas. They are supposed to give the AI more character & make them more lifelike. I'm pretty sure most people don't even know what the agendas of their opponents are.
Agreed. I think they do give the characters a bit of flavor, but I only check them every so often.

(3) Having great artists, musicians & writers. Honestly? Wouldn't one great artist type be more than enough?
I actually like them, but I don't actively try to get them since I have not tried to win a Cultural Victory yet.

(4) Gossip. Often funny, but most of the time just distracting.
I never get a chance to read all of them when they pop up on the screen every turn. They go by too fast and if you're fighting a war they block your view of the action. I wish they were displayed in a different manner.

(5) Emergencies. Are supposed to create alliances in desperate situations. I haven't really seen them do that.
I've only taken part of one. It was close enough for me to get to and easily handled. No other civs helped, though. It would have been cool if they had.

(6) Amenities, housing & food. We have 3 limiting mechanics for city growth: Amenities, housing and food. All of them basically do the same.
Do they? amenities keep the population happy, housing caps the population limit, and food helps the population grow. I have to disagree on that.

(7) Loyalty. The effect is that I have to conquer the capital first. That's it.
Not always. It goes both ways too. I had a city that I didn't want flip to me It didn't have any useful resources and only moved my border closer to a civ I was trying to avoid.

(8) Golden/normal/dark ages. As long as you have conquered your continent, it doesn't really do anything. There is a nice slingshot with monumentality that some players would miss.
Golden ages should be harder to get, especially in the first 3 ages. I've tried to avoid GAs and STILL won them by accident.
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[miaasma]

i love enjoying video games and being stupid