Gameplay Mechanic Discussion: Ages

[thecrazyscot]

 

[pokiehl]

I'm just happy there's no trace of Era Score or the "dark age/golden age" system of Civ 6. That was my least favorite mechanic from Civ 6.

 

[bbbt]

I'm just happy there's no trace of Era Score or the "dark age/golden age" system of Civ 6. That was my least favorite mechanic from Civ 6.

I wouldn't say that: the "legacy tracks" seem like a version of it: Ie pick your goal (culture), hit this random goalpost (build 7 wonders), and you get to chose rewards (and potentially win the game, not clear). It's less random goal posts than the era score, but it still gives me the same vibe.

 

[bbbt]

Interesting:

View attachment 700558

This definitely implies that during an Age Transition by default some of your cities will revert to ... towns, is it?

I'm actually wondering if units remain from age to age. With the promotions moving to the "military leaders" instead of the units, and hints at age transition like this - I'm suspecting maybe not. That potentially they've done away with unit upgrades to future units or severely limited it.

 

[pokiehl]

I wouldn't say that: the "legacy tracks" seem like a version of it: Ie pick your goal (culture), hit this random goalpost (build 7 wonders), and you get to chose rewards (and potentially win the game, not clear). It's less random goal posts than the era score, but it still gives me the same vibe.

yeah that sounds cool — I should’ve specified I just hate the gamey nature of the arbitrary point thresholds and scoring system. Civ 7 seems like it’ll be more immersive.

 

[bbbt]

yeah that sounds cool — I should’ve specified I just hate the gamey nature of the arbitrary point thresholds and scoring system. Civ 7 seems like it’ll be more immersive.

Fair - it's definitely an improvement over the era score. I'm concerned from what they've said that it's the style of the actual victory conditions, ala a score victory/ Humankind's fame victory/ Old World "Ambition" victory. I much prefer the Civ 5/6 cultural victory (as confusing as it could be) over some sort of "first person to 7 wonders" approach, which feels more arbitrary.

It also could be how you win an earlier era (ie ancient/exploration) if you are doing a short game, but winning the modern era/the entire game is more the style of earlier games. Which also seems fine to me.

 

[DSYoungEsq]

I would imagine the numbers they have used so far are based on standard size and speed. I know the Switch has limits on how many players can be in a cross-platform game, but there's no indication that 5/8 is the maximum or only option for other platforms, is there? I would assume, until it's confirmed one way or the other, that you can customize the number of players and added civs (though I do wonder if there would be a minimum number of civs added for each map size).

The number of MP players (or possibly players in SP including the AI; it's not clear) is stated in the information on requirements for MP play, including the 2K account, etc. So it's not something apparently scaled according to size of world.

 

[SammyKhalifa]

So way too early speculation: the change in focus/scale between ages (among other changes) makes one city challenge very possible again.

 

[Gori the Grey]

I worry that "late game interest" is coming only by virtue of, essentially, starting your game in the late game.

Or more precisely:

If you can carry over a significant degree of your lead from the earlier two eras, then that's not terribly different from snowballing.

Or if you can not (the rubberbanding brings all civs nearly equal), then you're really just playing (for victory) the last third of the game.

Feels as though it will have to be essentially one or the other.

 

[Krikkit1]

I worry that "late game interest" is coming only by virtue of, essentially, starting your game in the late game.

Or more precisely:

If you can carry over a significant degree of your lead from the earlier two eras, then that's not terribly different from snowballing.

Or if you can not (the rubberbanding brings all civs nearly equal), then you're really just playing (for victory) the last third of the game.

Feels as though it will have to be essentially one or the other.

There is a medium between that.
If you only carry over a small fraction, your lead is reduced, which means you Could lose your lead. so your snowball last era isn’t a guarantee of this era but it helps a little

 

[Gori the Grey]

Yeah, I got it. Snowballing is "fixed" by subtracting some of my lead.

It's no more satisfying if I'm behind, by the way. Transition brings me closer to equal with the game's leaders then I "win" the third age. How do I feel about that victory?

 

[Krikkit1]

Yeah, I got it. Snowballing is "fixed" by subtracting some of my lead.

It's no more satisfying if I'm behind, by the way. Transition brings me closer to equal with the game's leaders then I "win" the third age. How do I feel about that victory?

So coming back from behind never counts?

If you were behind in the previous age, you start the next age behind….just not as behind as you were before.

 

[bene_legionary]

It's no more satisfying if I'm behind, by the way. Transition brings me closer to equal with the game's leaders then I "win" the third age. How do I feel about that victory?

I imagine that, because Civilization has almost always had a problem with the AI struggling to keep up, this is as much a catch-up mechanic designed with helping the AI as much as any struggling human player as well. Although, it's a more artificial catch-up mechanic than, say, espionage and tech-stealing.

e.g. in Civ 5, the last Yogscast multiplayer game there hinged on one instance of tech-stealing from a player who was quite far behind for most of the game because of a misplay in the early game; if a transition just leveled the playing field for him, I think it would have been less of a victory, although the circumstances are different.

 

[Atlas627]

Yeah, I got it. Snowballing is "fixed" by subtracting some of my lead.

It's no more satisfying if I'm behind, by the way. Transition brings me closer to equal with the game's leaders then I "win" the third age. How do I feel about that victory?

Right, all race games have an inherent problem here. So unless they get rid of the race to victory conditions altogether, this might be the best they can do.

So now you can play Age 1 because you want to have a good Age 2, and try to set yourself up to take advantage of Age 2. You'll play Age 2 so you can set yourself up to take advantage of Age 3. And Age 3 you'll try to win. They're free to make Ages 1 and 2 weird, with mechanics that work well in those ages, because you don't have to weigh them against getting to Age 2 faster. Those mechanics are allowed to only be useful for setting yourself up for the next Age's mechanics, and then they can disappear.

So it isn't just that some of your lead is subtracted, it can be made less important by shifting value to other mechanics that you didn't have access to before, and retiring the ones you were doing well in. And you won't just set yourself up to abuse those new mechanics from the start because that isn't what the game will call a "lead" during the Age switch, and thus you won't get as much stuff in the next Age.

 

[Binkov]

So now that the a big chunk of gsmeplay was shown anew on September 12th, complete with some of age transition between antiquity and exploration age shown - is it possible to answer these questions?

1. If the player has xxx gold at the end of age 1, will they start age 2 with the same amount? If not, how much?

2. We already saw that unique units player had at the end of age become other, regular units at the start of next age.
But do all other units remain the same?
Do their numbers remain the same? If player had 10 spearmen at the end of an age, will they start the next age with exactly 10 spearmen?

 

[Siptah]

So now that the a big chunk of gsmeplay was shown anew on September 12th, complete with some of age transition between antiquity and exploration age shown - is it possible to answer these questions?

1. If the player has xxx gold at the end of age 1, will they start age 2 with the same amount? If not, how much?

Unfortunately, we haven't seen the turn before the transition. There was a jump from turn 69 (~ half of the Antiquity era progression as it seems) to screenshots of the next age. The player started with 2148 gold in the bank and 138 influence. So buckets apparently stay filled. There was also a lot of happiness and some culture and science going. So, it appears that the set back isn't that large. But then again, 36 science per turn after turn ~130 would be very low for any of the former civ games. And the player used the legacy that all cities remain cities, which is probably a boost to science as well.

2. We already saw that unique units player had at the end of age become other, regular units at the start of next age.
But do all other units remain the same?
Do their numbers remain the same? If player had 10 spearmen at the end of an age, will they start the next age with exactly 10 spearmen?

All units are upgraded afaik.

 

[Uberfrog]

Unfortunately, we haven't seen the turn before the transition. There was a jump from turn 69 (~ half of the Antiquity era progression as it seems) to screenshots of the next age. The player started with 2148 gold in the bank and 138 influence. So buckets apparently stay filled. There was also a lot of happiness and some culture and science going. So, it appears that the set back isn't that large. But then again, 36 science per turn after turn ~130 would be very low for any of the former civ games. And the player used the legacy that all cities remain cities, which is probably a boost to science as well.

All units are upgraded afaik.

Yeah - the gold and influence were not set to zero, so we can probably assume you start the era with any gold you had in the last turn of the previous.

However I don’t think any units other than the commanders were visible on turn 1 of the Exploration Era. So it is equally possible that your units from a previous era are lost. It is not clear at this point what those units would upgrade into either as most Exploration Era units would need to be unlocked via the tech tree.

 

[Siptah]

It is not clear at this point what those units would upgrade into either as most Exploration Era units would need to be unlocked via the tech tree.

There may be a type of unit that doesn't need to be researched. The Conquest golden age gives you a free unit in each settlement, for example. And I doubt that it would give you an outdated unit.

 

[Uberfrog]

There may be a type of unit that doesn't need to be researched. The Conquest golden age gives you a free unit in each settlement, for example. And I doubt that it would give you an outdated unit.

Hence I said “most”. I believe there is a base unit available at the start of the era, probably called Infantry or something like that. And presumably the golden age grants you one of those in each settlement.

But at the end of the Antiquity era we will have a whole variety of melee, cavalry, ranged, siege and naval units. I don’t think each will upgrade to its nearest equivalent, as I suspect knights, trebuchets, caravels etc will need to be unlocked. So either they all become a basic melee unit or quite possibly they just vanish. There are certainly no units to be seen in the livestream - whether that’s a gameplay feature or just how the save was edited is unclear.

 

[Krikkit1]

Hence I said “most”. I believe there is a base unit available at the start of the era, probably called Infantry or something like that. And presumably the golden age grants you one of those in each settlement.

But at the end of the Antiquity era we will have a whole variety of melee, cavalry, ranged, siege and naval units. I don’t think each will upgrade to its nearest equivalent, as I suspect knights, trebuchets, caravels etc will need to be unlocked. So either they all become a basic melee unit or quite possibly they just vanish. There are certainly no units to be seen in the livestream - whether that’s a gameplay feature or just how the save was edited is unclear.

There could be a "Basic Exploration Infantry, Basic Exploration Ranged, Basic Exploration Cavalry, Basic Exploration Siege" quite easily
(same with a Basic Exploration Ship)
And there probably Should be because those categories were researched in the last Age so they should be available