golden ages in civ6 ?

[xxhe]

As title suggests. Has anyone seen anything related to golden ages in any gameplays?

 

[zwei833]

No, not yet.

 

[xxhe]

Hope they don't forget it. I like the way they implement it in civ5. It makes happiness more useful.

 

[JimmyBanks]

With no global happiness in Civ6 it will be interesting to see how they implement it. I can't remember the golden ages in earlier games. They were in them right?

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[ftl]

In civ 5, golden ages were triggered by having happiness above your global happiness for a while (or one-time effects from wonders or policies). Clearly that's not the way it's going to work in civ 6.

In civ 4 golden ages could be triggered by great people. That's still a possible mechanic for civ 6; we haven't seen that many great people, it could be an effect of some of them.

In Civ 3, a golden age would happen when a civ's UU won a battle or when a civ built a wonder that corresponded to it's civ-specific strengths. That doesn't seem like a very likely mechanic to me, given that civs don't have consistent numbers of UUs or unique attributes.

In Civs 1 and 2 there were no golden ages.

So yes there were golden ages in previous civ games (but not all), but how to get them has been very inconsistent. They might not be in this time around, or they might be in but be triggered in yet another new way.

 

[stealth_nsk]

It's wrong game design approach to get some real-world concept and think how to fit into game, the right approach is to identify problem, decide which mechanic could solve it and find which real world game mechanic could solve this.

In Civ5 Golden Ages were necessary mechanics to reward positive happiness. In Civ4 they were alternative use for great people (as you'll not necessary need their primal use). In Civ3 they were done for enforcing civilization to be more unique.

The usual Golden Age implementation with boosts to everything is quite big thing and requires significant balance. In Civ5 we even had civilization designed around Golden Ages in vanilla. I don't think it's worth implementing such mechanics for one or two Great People. Most likely the mechanics will not be in Civ6 vanilla.

 

[Atlas627]

It's wrong game design approach to get some real-world concept and think how to fit into game, the right approach is to identify problem, decide which mechanic could solve it and find which real world game mechanic could solve this.

Not true at all.

They are two *different* approaches, and the optimal approach is somewhere between them. Sometimes you use more of one than the other.

The "right" approach is to create something that works, and since games are neither entirely about mechanics nor flavor, either approach can work.

 

[King Jason]

Really, I mean Culture, Religion, Espionage, Great people... pretty much any new addition to the civ franchise ever.. All were added to the game not to solve any previous game's "problems" but to take a real-world concept and turn it into an interesting gameplay element.

That's pretty much the entire idea of game design in the first place - Take an idea and make a game out of it.

 

[Magil]

The original design for golden ages came from an idea to have civilizations have "dark ages" to represent a historical concept of the wax and wane of empires. They discovered that wasn't a fun mechanic so they turned it into golden ages instead. So the idea wasn't borne of a problem, but as a desire to represent a historical concept.

They first appear in III. Unfortunately I don't have enough experience with III to comment on how well I think they were implemented therein (I only played a couple of games of III, as I came to it late in its lifespan).

In IV, you could initiate them with Great People (the first golden age costs 1 great person, the second costs 2 of different types, the third costs 3 of different types, and so on). It should be noted that in IV, during a Golden Age, in addition to the standard commerce/production bonuses you would expect, you could also swap civics without anarchy, which was actually an important strategic factor for higher-level play. It's also something that could be borrowed for VI, if Golden Ages are in the product, as swapping civics is a similar enough concept to swapping policies or government.

Personally, I don't feel like golden ages in V were all that interesting in either execution or design. Just another bucket to fill (granted, I am aware this is about 90% of Civ), and there wasn't all that much you could do with Golden Ages. The Vox Populi mod, however, did some interesting things with Golden Ages, tying them with particular Civ abilities, policies, and religious beliefs.

They could be tied to Great People in VI, but that seems unlikely given GP design. They could also be tied to amenities, but that also seems unlikely unless they're just not currently in the game. If I'm going to be honest here with my opinion how it should be done, I do think it might be a good idea to actually have them associated with Great People much like they were in IV, if just because the Great People now have very specific effects and you might decide a Golden Age is more useful to you than their unique benefit. But that might be too game-y.

As is, there's absolutely no reference to Golden Ages in the game that I'm aware of, nor any indication of how they might implement the system. So I'd either go with "they're not in VI" or "we don't know".

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

One way to handle golden age would be to allow each civilization at any time start a golden age but can only do that once. That way you have the strategic element of then to start your single golden age and it would work well as it don't need any mechanic to support the starting a golden age.

 

[Loaf Warden]

Really, I mean Culture, Religion, Espionage, Great people... pretty much any new addition to the civ franchise ever.. All were added to the game not to solve any previous game's "problems" but to take a real-world concept and turn it into an interesting gameplay element.

That's pretty much the entire idea of game design in the first place - Take an idea and make a game out of it.

Exactly. For all that people love to say that Civ is "a game, not a historical simulator", let's not forget that Civ is a game which is explicitly designed around historical concepts. It's not wrong for them to mine history for interesting concepts to design a game mechanic around. That's the whole point of the series. As long as it can be done in a fun and balanced way, nearly any historical concept is fair game whether it "solves" a preexisting gameplay "problem" or not.

They first appear in III. Unfortunately I don't have enough experience with III to comment on how well I think they were implemented therein

Not very well, in my opinion. You could only get one per game, and I never thought the idea that your Golden Age begins the first time your UU wins a combat made any sense. It could be argued to make sense for Militaristic civs, but then, Germany was Militaristic and their UU was the Panzer. If any German ever tells you that that era was his country's Golden Age, steer well clear of him.

The other way to get one was to build a Wonder associated with your civ's particular traits. That made more sense than the UU thing, but overall I thought the whole mechanic could have been done better.

As to the original question of whether Golden Ages are in VI, the only answer that can be given right now is, "We don't know." They haven't explicitly said they're out, but we also haven't seen any evidence that they're in.

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

I've been wondering about this. Is there any point to the Street Carnival's project other than a temporary amenities boost and the great people point bonus for finishing?

I figure, all the excess amenities do are help growth a little in that city for the duration of the project. It would be nice if it were also throwing points into a Golden Age pool.

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

I think the main point of all projects are the great people points as trading production for a 15% return in another resource is not worth it.

 

[Atlas627]

I think the main point of all projects are the great people points as trading production for a 15% return in another resource is not worth it.

Yeah, but the Brazilian unique project just gives temporary amenities as its unique part? Those must provide some other bonus...unless its a LOT of amenities

 

[King Jason]

I figure, all the excess amenities do are help growth a little in that city for the duration of the project. It would be nice if it were also throwing points into a Golden Age pool.

They also increase yields - at least by 5% if the only states are displeased, content, and happy. Though if excess happiness can increase that bonus further, it may be worth it.

Or you could look at it this way; a Displeased city suffers a 15% growth penalty and a penalty of 5% to all other yields - a Happy city gets a 10% growth bonus and a bonus of 5% to all other yields.

So if you have a city that's -1 amenities - Working on the project would make you go from -15% growth to +10%, and -5% to all yields to +5% to all yields. I still think the main bonus is great people points, but while you're generating great people, the output of your cities is increased. More science/gold/culture/faith.

I think it would be cooler if Golden Ages were something you could actually achieve in the game - requiring more than just building a wonder or filling up a bar. Something that rewards you for actually reaching an era of prosperity and sustaining it for a certain amount of time.

Yeah, but the Brazilian unique project just gives temporary amenities as its unique part? Those must provide some other bonus...unless its a LOT of amenities

The Project itself is the unique bonus, Entertainment complexes don't appear to have a project associated with them. The First Look doesn't have an explanation of the GP points associated with it so I'd need to find a tooltip, but it's entirely possible you can pick which GPs you want.

Edit: Found the tooltip

Spoiler :

So yea, you either earn points toward all of those GPs, or you get to pick when the project is done. Either way it seems really strong.

 

[Acken]

I wouldn't be surprised if it's not in Civ6.

 

[Atlas627]

The Project itself is the unique bonus, Entertainment complexes don't appear to have a project associated with them. The First Look doesn't have an explanation of the GP points associated with it so I'd need to find a tooltip, but it's entirely possible you can pick which GPs you want.

Yes, that's exactly my point. The project is the unique bonus, which is providing temporary amenities. I hadn't seen anything else different about the district/project, but...

Edit: Found the tooltip

Spoiler :

So yea, you either earn points toward all of those GPs, or you get to pick when the project is done. Either way it seems really strong.

This is stronger than I saw when I looked at the tooltip. If it lets you choose or gives you all, then its still more useful than before.

I think the amenities it provides might be based on your production, like the other projects?

 

[Krajzen]

I wouldn't be surprised if it's not in Civ6.

I agree and think golden ages are not in civ6.

And I don't find that necessarily bad - golden ages in civ5 were important because the global happiness model needed some additional incentive to go beyond +1 happiness, to make difference between 20 and 40 happy. As happiness model is extremely different in civ6, golden ages aren't 'necessary' this way.

Personally I wouldn't miss them very much - golden ages didn't really requite any meaningful choices or interesting interaction (you were just trying to maintain high happiness, but personally I don't recall specifically investing in happy point just to get GAs a bit faster - great majority of my happy investitions were due to or as an anticipation of unhappiness growth) and they were basically only a slight bonus to few yields for a bunch of turns. You either had a lot of happy available anyway or didn't bother pursuing GAs that hard because they were very secondary aspect of the game.

I also had 'immersion' problem with golden ages - they were based purely and only on the 'global happiness net gain' of the civilization and nothing else. Your civ could be in the worst, dark, terrible ages, and yet you could get "golden age" bonuses - you could be super backward, just in the middle of horrible war, being conquered, being bankrupt, being insignificant pariah, or even having the lowest happiness on the map (if you had for example happy +5 while neighboring empires +20, 25 etc), and yet you were getting "golden era" bonuses based only and purely on the numerical accumulation of net happy points.
The biggest absurdity was how your golden age meter was filling much faster after sudden population loss due to nukes or conquest - because of less unhappiness and better net balance. Geez I'm so glad global happiness is gone, with its absurdities.
GAs were very abstract feature with disconnection to the actual state of the empire.

I think GAs are either completely gone (seeing how they are secondary and don't fit amenity model at all) or dramatically reworked to be actually reflecting imperial achievements (so they for example require multiple great people, economic prosperity, chain of eurekas, strong international position) - but, regarding the latter option, it'd be weird how we've seen not a single trace of them for 3,5 months of streenshots, videos, articles and gameplays...

 

[Cyon]

Reworked golden age sounds like an interesting idea, something like the Eureka bonus but more difficult and requiring you to meet several criteria.

But that is probably something that will be saved for a expansion.

It also have to be something you strive for, not just a bonus for leading.

Maybe produce X amount of faith and culture and having all your cities happy? And also build wonder and great people.

 

[ehecatzin]

Given that happines is now local and not global as in civ 5, I imagine they won't be around, or if they are, they'll work similar to "we love the king day".