How to repair the Age transition system -not a civ game- opinions and suggestions

[Civinator]

@Lazy sweeper you are working with wrong info. There is no indication that Ed left. He even made a comment on this week’s patch that seems to confirm he is still leading at least the patches that come out. Whether he‘s leading the upcoming expansion is not clear, but the job they advertised isn‘t Ed’s or about designing the expansions or civ 8.

Thank you very much for clearing this.

 

[Crashdummy]

So, we reached the point that the Head designer Ed has left the house, for better or worst.

Age transition seems unfixable.
It should be reworked at this point.
Revert to "Classical mode" and open up all Civs to choose from antiquity.

Transform "Age transition" into random crisis events, which can be weather and map dynamic events, which would effectively change the shape of the map or.
Other random "crisis" that could bring down your empire, and at the same time, spawn one or more civs per new Age, which automatically starts with all previous Age tech researched, and
arguably Age specific advantages. Likewise USA would spawn in the last Age, with "Marines" for example. NO CIV SWITCHING.
And if some civs are AGE specific, then let you have to start in that AGE and not in Antiquity. This is still better than what here is now, and NO-ONE can play the USA from Antiquity ANYWAY as it stands. This could be an option, to restrict certain CIVS to certains AGE. This would actually make sense and "play the Age mode" instead of "Classical" mode, which should be by default.
Just throw this aberration in the bin and recreate it with the new (or rather old) vision, before the ship sinks completely.

This is one solution.

Please be constructive and try to formulate something that is not a huge cope with the oversimplified cake Civ 7 is now.
Civ Switching will never work. Civ switching =Not civ. There is no going around the rock and pretend its not there.
There is no magical new head director that will make it disappear.
No one who is not playing the game will came back unless Classical mode is reinstated.


No roads is a huge problem
No Workers is a huge problem
No Unit perks is a huge problem
No 1 tile cities is a huge problem
No Stack of Doom is a huge problem
No resource requirement is a huge problem
No end minimap and no Palace and throne room is a minor problem, but a problem.
No real Army all in one tile is a huge problem
No fixed Leaders to each Civ is a huge problem. Random Leaders optional would be a welcomed addition, if it was introduced later and as an option.
No Pangea Map is a huge problem
No Worldbuilder is a huge problem
No Navy transporter is a huge problem
No Settling cities on Mountains is a huge problem
No Units walking on mountains is a huge problem
No scenarios is a huge problem
No console specific ports is huge problem

Age transition is a minor problem all in all, and can be fixed quite easily.

PS: Book of Mormons: Greek Jews travelled to the Americas in 400AD after the Christian Copts massacres, and even if the "establishement" aka the US ARMY keeps deleting the evidences, its' undeniable they were there. The whole "Exploration" and "new continent" discover is just a massive load of XXXXX and should be relegated into oblivion without a second thought.
For the same argument a religious crisis that affects the whole world is massively stupid, that why I advocated for "dynamic weather induced crisis" and other random "crisis" but all related to worldwide possible events, and not some religious stuff or localized rebellions...

We need to be able to start with any Civ in Antiquity, thats a requirement otherwise people wont go back to the game

Well, Roman civilization did evolve. It adopted a religion, expanded beyond what the existing means of administration could support, and adopted a new capital. The original territory was invaded, but Roman civilization didn't fall; it moved and evolved. Unfortunately, there's a natural opposition to progress, and revolutions often occur when attempts are made to reform something, even for the better. Players cry about being penalized, but that's human nature. No one is going to give their life for a leader just because; people are selfish.

Evolution comes from research, cultural advancement or conquest. All three of them were aolready present in previous entries. Penalizing players is a terrible decision, this is a game, and in games doing that too much is a bad recipe

 

[Lazy sweeper]

We need to be able to start with any Civ in Antiquity, thats a requirement otherwise people wont go back to the game

There is a way to evolve the gameplay beyond just plateu-ing back into basically Civ 4/3
Civ rule of 1/3rd new content is what drives innovations and interest from gamers into buying the newest edition.
If you have a "recipe" for not throwing thousands of hours of work from the devs into the dustbin I'm all ears.

Maybe you are not accostumed to cracking down the intricate mechanics and provide alternatives, but
this is what I have been trying to do from a long-while.

Imperatives hardly works in a democratic society.

 

[Lazy sweeper]

@Lazy sweeper you are working with wrong info. There is no indication that Ed left. He even made a comment on this week’s patch that seems to confirm he is still leading at least the patches that come out. Whether he‘s leading the upcoming expansion is not clear, but the job they advertised isn‘t Ed’s or about designing the expansions or civ 8.

Sometime I use wrong phrasing,
and for "lazyness" I forget to use the conditional to subjects I should really be more cautious.
Tnx for the update, I had no clue really.

 

[Monene]

Penalizing players is a terrible decision, this is a game, and in games doing that too much is a bad recipe

Rather than being penalized for playing well, it's more like increasing the difficulty level during the game.

 

[Crashdummy]

There is a way to evolve the gameplay beyond just plateu-ing back into basically Civ 4/3
Civ rule of 1/3rd new content is what drives innovations and interest from gamers into buying the newest edition.
If you have a "recipe" for not throwing thousands of hours of work from the devs into the dustbin I'm all ears.

Maybe you are not accostumed to cracking down the intricate mechanics and provide alternatives, but
this is what I have been trying to do from a long-while.

Imperatives hardly works in a democratic society.

If your foundation is bad, you wont fix it by changing a window. Civ 7 changed a lot more than 1/3 and they changed the foundation of the franchise, to the worst

The problem us huge, you wont solve it with minor changes, i am sorry

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

The problem us huge, you wont solve it with minor changes, i am sorry

Then you will never be happy with Civ VII and should give up on it. You have defined your problem as unsolvable and thrown up your hands and, by your definition, can provide no solution except an entirely new game.

Some of us, though, do not accept your definition or your problem - which is normal in any game, each of us has our own set of game definitions even when playing the same game in the same way.

In my experience with the game and from reading far too many of the same complaints in these Threads:

The game as designed is built around three Ages and nearly complete revamping of the game in each Age, including the playable Civs available in each Age. Changing Civs is a result of that original decision, and so merely allowing you to play the same Civ continuously will not solve the original problem - the reset between Ages, which currently happens almost entirely Out of Sight of the gamer. You finish the Crisis Period, the curtain closes, and when it opens again the set and the actors are all different and the version of Macbeth you thought you were watching turns out to be a version of Bald Soprano - in Sanskrit, done entirely in rhyming couplets by cross-dressing orangutangs.

It might be fascinating, but it's not what you came to see, or expected to play in a Civ game.

Playing the same or different Civs isn't the problem, the hacking of the game into three parts that do not show enough continuity to the player is what messes with too many player's heads. (And yes, it messed with mine and still annoys the %$#^ out of me, but for me, at least, it's playable)

The question is not "I was playing Egypt: why am I now playing Mongols?" it's more "I was playing Egypt, how the H**l did I get to playing Mongols?"

Answer that question to the gamer's satisfaction, and the rest of the game becomes much more acceptable and playable.

 

[Krikkit1]

Then you will never be happy with Civ VII and should give up on it. You have defined your problem as unsolvable and thrown up your hands and, by your definition, can provide no solution except an entirely new game.

Some of us, though, do not accept your definition or your problem - which is normal in any game, each of us has our own set of game definitions even when playing the same game in the same way.

In my experience with the game and from reading far too many of the same complaints in these Threads:

The game as designed is built around three Ages and nearly complete revamping of the game in each Age, including the playable Civs available in each Age. Changing Civs is a result of that original decision, and so merely allowing you to play the same Civ continuously will not solve the original problem - the reset between Ages, which currently happens almost entirely Out of Sight of the gamer. You finish the Crisis Period, the curtain closes, and when it opens again the set and the actors are all different and the version of Macbeth you thought you were watching turns out to be a version of Bald Soprano - in Sanskrit, done entirely in rhyming couplets by cross-dressing orangutangs.

It might be fascinating, but it's not what you came to see, or expected to play in a Civ game.

Playing the same or different Civs isn't the problem, the hacking of the game into three parts that do not show enough continuity to the player is what messes with too many player's heads. (And yes, it messed with mine and still annoys the %$#^ out of me, but for me, at least, it's playable)

The question is not "I was playing Egypt: why am I now playing Mongols?" it's more "I was playing Egypt, how the H**l did I get to playing Mongols?"

Answer that question to the gamer's satisfaction, and the rest of the game becomes much more acceptable and playable.

That’s why I like the idea of age unlock quests

When you unlock a civ, you should get a quest where the reward is culture for that civs unique civics if you choose them in the next age.

The narratives of those quests (as well as narratives presented when you civ switch) could provide a much smoother transition to a new set of bonuses.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

That’s why I like the idea of age unlock quests

When you unlock a civ, you should get a quest where the reward is culture for that civs unique civics if you choose them in the next age.

The narratives of those quests (as well as narratives presented when you civ switch) could provide a much smoother transition to a new set of bonuses.

My personal preference would be to do away with the artificial and Eurocentric Age system completely.

But that ain't going to happen unless someone takes a digital flamethrower to the game code.

My fall back preference, so to speak, is to make the Age Transitions part of the game play, so that Melvin The Average Gamer knows exactly why he is being given the choice of playing Borussia or Burgundy in 'Exploration Age' and not being allowed to keep on playing his beloved Udmurts from Antiquity. And, of course, part of this is that the potential Choice of playing the Udmurts right through to Space Flight should always be there in addition to a varying number of other choices of playable Civs - unlocked by in-game events and gamer decisions that are transparent in that there should be no doubt in Melvin's mind what led him to playing the Burgundian Netherlands in Exploration Age instead of Spain.

The big hurdle to this lies not in making all Civs playable in all ages - that is a lot of detail work giving each Civ in each Age some playability even when outside of their Primary Age - time-consuming for certain, but not requiring any particular brilliance to achieve. The problem is keeping Melvin from gaming the resulting Crisis mechanics now that they are all visible to him and steamrolling the AI civs from start to finish. We've already seen that despite the efforts to avoid this in the Age reset system, that aspect of the game has failed completely in its stated purpose already and will only get worse if steps are not taken to slap Melvin down somehow.

That means the Playable Crisis Period cannot be a set sequence of ascending crises as now , which always hits the AI harder than the human (just yesterday in an Antiquity-Exploration Crisis I observed several of my AI opponents sitting with 0 total Happiness while I had +60: guess Who was losing settlements to flipping and so entering the next Age appreciably weaker than they ended the Crisis?).

I suggest, in fact, that the Crisis period present as a set of Choices (Narrative Events) which, combined with the in–game situation, lead the AI or human gamer into a state where there are NO completely positive outcomes. That would, after all, be a much better definition of Crisis than merely reacting to a set sequence of events that you know can only get so bad before the Age ends. Instead, the Age does not end until you are backed into a corner: choose to keep playing the Udmurts even as many of them are breaking away (and taking their Settlements with them) because a new religion has reduced their loyalty to -100, or choose to play the Burgundians even though they are not Real Udmurts and so, as an example, cannot build the Sauna UI any more.

The Crisis Choices, then, would lead to the official End of Age which coincides with a Requirement to make a choice of what available next-Age Civ you will play - and that choice always includes your current Civ, even if that choice is not optimal.

Allowing both 'continuous Civ' and 'Civ changing' play is, I firmly believe, the path to making Civ VII a far better game than any previous Civ, none of which offered the same choice of play: if you started in 4000 BCE playing Udmurts in Civs I - VI, you were stuck playing Udmurts even if all their Uniques were related to Tundra (they were a Finnish tribe, for those who have been wondering) and you have been playing on a tropical island map: allowing transitional Civs based on in-game events and choices makes a far, far better game.

Makes you wonder why Civ VII didn't offer such a choice in the first place . . .

 

[misesfan]

Then you will never be happy with Civ VII and should give up on it. You have defined your problem as unsolvable and thrown up your hands and, by your definition, can provide no solution except an entirely new game.

Thats not what was said - what was said was that the problem with the game is huge and cannot be solved by minor changes. This is demonstrably correct, given the metrics of concurrent players and/or player satisfaction ratings. The latest changes have not changed the overall reviews of the game - if anything reviews have gone down with latest sales as more people have played it. Further, the concurrent players have been in the 5K range which ranks the game around 150th in the Steam games played listing on SteamDB.

The entire design DNA, with the streamlining, mobile based, deck-building mechanics and lack of depth of the game is the problem. The fact that they didnt want to create an empire building game and instead build whatever this is, thats the problem.

The question the customer wants answered is - "If I play the Mongols, how can I build an empire to stand the test of time?" Pretty simple, if the devs knew their audience, we wouldnt be here.