With the Pirates Republic civilization, the ideal use of their abilities creates conditions where the Pirates not only gain an advantage in the economic legacy path, but they also are very strong in suppressing all other civs from progressing in the economic, cultural and military legacy paths. That is, if the distant lands are unsettled.
This combination of abilities and their strategic effect on victory point accumulation made me realize the potential of the legacy path system, but in a context that only works with hard age resets. The Pirates' unique advantages are rendered moot if Antiquity lends too much advantage to existing civs, and too much success (total naval dominance and complete hegemony over distant lands) would make the Modern Age meaningless as well.
I've also realized that the simplicity of legacy point accumulation tends to favor general success and more asymmetrical or particular strategies are less relevant than just doing very well with a large happy productive empire.
I think this idea floated of a more aggressive age reset might favor a more interesting use of unique civ bonuses, but only if legacy path points are altered to be more interesting. The best, shortest pitch I have for victory points is to make them similar to how Vital Lacerda implements victory points in his board games. He tends to make victory points and game currency accumulation very oblique. There's usually an engine, in theory, that produces currency, self-develops, then generates victory points. However, he usually mixes a main system with two or three oblique systems, then makes the currency that drives these systems very hard to get. Usually when you purchase bonus cards or things outside of both the main and peripheral systems. This is genuine strategic depth because no matter what strategy you employ, you're forced to consider the present reality of what bonuses are available to grant marginal currency each and every turn.
That's obviously pretty complex and probably unsuited for Civ. However, something like Civ 6's great person system where there's a menu of specific, present figures to compete for and choose from seems about right. It would be nice if there was a menu of a variety of "nickel and dime" victory point bonuses gained through unique tasks that are related but still oblique to the main system. Civ IV Colonization's great person system was like this. Imagine if treasure fleet points were currency to purchase specific bonuses, but the overall competition for these bonuses plus your strategy meant that treasure fleet points would never be spent the same way twice and could have wildly different final effects depending? An approach like this for almost every victory path, in my opinion, would be preferred.
I would imagine a system that's like "Your civilization's legacy" comprised of - let's say - the "great people" policy/bonus cards (going with the Civ IV Colonization paradigm) you've accumulated via spent legacy points (spent at any point in an age, not during age transition). The present, continuous accumulation of these bonuses means that you do not apply legacy bonuses at all on age transition, effecting a more aggressive age transition.
To make this work, you'd balance the accumulated legacy advantage against a domination style victory premise. What's primarily reset each age is your ability to make war and conquer as a path to victory or advantage in the age.
Your "civilizational legacy" ideally, other than supplying soft permanent bonuses (perhaps as tradition cards), affects how victory points are calculated. That is, certain legacy cards multiply the importance of things in the end.
In the most simple terms:
There should be a system for dividing Empires on age reset where an algorithm splits them into 2-3 factions as needed to get to the right size and you pick which set of settlements you want with some points to spend (perhaps from your crisis success) to grant flexibility in trading settlements back and forth to build out a better set than what the algorithm produces. Then you would select your civ.
The only problem with all this: it's completely incompatible with a classic mode. Classic mode would have to be a mostly uncalibrated mess, a bone thrown to people who desperately want it.
So here are the questions, now that I've provided a context for a hard reset approach:
This combination of abilities and their strategic effect on victory point accumulation made me realize the potential of the legacy path system, but in a context that only works with hard age resets. The Pirates' unique advantages are rendered moot if Antiquity lends too much advantage to existing civs, and too much success (total naval dominance and complete hegemony over distant lands) would make the Modern Age meaningless as well.
I've also realized that the simplicity of legacy point accumulation tends to favor general success and more asymmetrical or particular strategies are less relevant than just doing very well with a large happy productive empire.
I think this idea floated of a more aggressive age reset might favor a more interesting use of unique civ bonuses, but only if legacy path points are altered to be more interesting. The best, shortest pitch I have for victory points is to make them similar to how Vital Lacerda implements victory points in his board games. He tends to make victory points and game currency accumulation very oblique. There's usually an engine, in theory, that produces currency, self-develops, then generates victory points. However, he usually mixes a main system with two or three oblique systems, then makes the currency that drives these systems very hard to get. Usually when you purchase bonus cards or things outside of both the main and peripheral systems. This is genuine strategic depth because no matter what strategy you employ, you're forced to consider the present reality of what bonuses are available to grant marginal currency each and every turn.
That's obviously pretty complex and probably unsuited for Civ. However, something like Civ 6's great person system where there's a menu of specific, present figures to compete for and choose from seems about right. It would be nice if there was a menu of a variety of "nickel and dime" victory point bonuses gained through unique tasks that are related but still oblique to the main system. Civ IV Colonization's great person system was like this. Imagine if treasure fleet points were currency to purchase specific bonuses, but the overall competition for these bonuses plus your strategy meant that treasure fleet points would never be spent the same way twice and could have wildly different final effects depending? An approach like this for almost every victory path, in my opinion, would be preferred.
I would imagine a system that's like "Your civilization's legacy" comprised of - let's say - the "great people" policy/bonus cards (going with the Civ IV Colonization paradigm) you've accumulated via spent legacy points (spent at any point in an age, not during age transition). The present, continuous accumulation of these bonuses means that you do not apply legacy bonuses at all on age transition, effecting a more aggressive age transition.
To make this work, you'd balance the accumulated legacy advantage against a domination style victory premise. What's primarily reset each age is your ability to make war and conquer as a path to victory or advantage in the age.
Your "civilizational legacy" ideally, other than supplying soft permanent bonuses (perhaps as tradition cards), affects how victory points are calculated. That is, certain legacy cards multiply the importance of things in the end.
In the most simple terms:
- Aggregate success on a per age basis (total culture accumulated relative to others, etc). This parallels Civ IV style victory points.
- The aggregate value in a given age, for a given yield category is nerfed or multiplied based on the policy cards.
- The final score, where the weight of each age is flattened although with future ages retaining a slight preference, is how you win.
- Victory conditions in whichever final age is being used trigger the ending rather than selecting the winner per se.
- The old Dan Quayle - Augustus scale is brought back so that you might trigger an ending early even if you don't win in order to at least maximize your ranking.
There should be a system for dividing Empires on age reset where an algorithm splits them into 2-3 factions as needed to get to the right size and you pick which set of settlements you want with some points to spend (perhaps from your crisis success) to grant flexibility in trading settlements back and forth to build out a better set than what the algorithm produces. Then you would select your civ.
The only problem with all this: it's completely incompatible with a classic mode. Classic mode would have to be a mostly uncalibrated mess, a bone thrown to people who desperately want it.
So here are the questions, now that I've provided a context for a hard reset approach:
- If classic mode is implemented, is there any demand for a hard reset mode? Will satisfied classic players be willing to "dabble" in the Age system?
- If hard reset mode is implemented with a complementary classic mode, does this allow for Ages mode to double down into scenario status? This is a rhetorical question, the answer is yes. Modern can be much more calibrated to function as a world wars mode, Exploration can make Distant Lands work much better as a colonization mode (lots of ways to handle that, ideally the three lands mode - each is distant to each other, two are settled, one is empty; map generation with "land sea" steppe-deserts in addition to oceans; larger maps with >3 "lands"). The question here is would a deeper drive into scenarios "ruin" the original premise of Civ 7 which is meant as a hybrid of continuity and change? That is, you could have such hard age resets that there is minimal continuity between ages. You're only playing a contiguous people "in theory" as you accumulate a legacy that covers the breadth of time as whatever leader you choose. Maybe committing to that harder would make the Civ 7 core premise work better?
- Is a "mostly uncalibrated mess" classic mode remotely sufficient? What's required to "repaint" a highly calibrated age-scenario set of factions so they work meaningfully in a classic mode?
- If the community indeed has adjusted to "best of both worlds" classic mode and age-scenario mode coexisting, is there enough appetite for age-scenario play to invest in amazing, asymmetrical factions and victory-legacy bonuses for it to be worth developing them?
- Is there a general rule of thumb that can be derived to coordinate the conversion of civs between age-scenario mode and classic mode? Maybe in classic mode, the civ-specific culture trees will be somehow available in some way for anyone to obtain as part of some sort of super-tree that incorporates diplomatic and trade contacts? This way the texture of the age-scenario calibrated policies is present in classic mode, but once removed from specific civilization control, civs become generalized meaning no need for precise calibration?
- Are the any policies or traditions that, if generalized and made available to any civ potentially to research, break the game? Meaning, if this "rule of thumb" from #5 is implemented, then devs will have to review each and every policy and tradition to see if it needs to be altered for classic mode.
- Re: #2, if age-scenario and classic mode are both implemented and both played and it all works, is there any reason to preserve the vestigial premise of Civ 7 where Age play and direct continuity coexist?
