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

[Lazy sweeper]

In the beginning it was... chaos...

Then the Universe formed... the Great Milky way Galaxy formed and within one spiral arm... Earth...

I guess many of you can relate this words with a particular game...

Can you stand the test of time?


The Age system and Civ transition, or what I'd like to call it, forced bottleneck. Has brought massive instability in the Earth...

Before Civ VII had released, there were some long threads about the transition of small civilizations, tribes and kingdoms, into Nations.
I think we should resurrect that kind of thread. For what I remember, because of the base number of civilizations limitation Vanilla would have started, the thread lost its spin and got lost.

I think each small or big civilization should gain back its ability to stand the test of time, and get back that sense of Nationalism that players used to associate with their game.
That is what it seems to have been lost, and it has affected the most the majority of players around the world. Except China and India.

It was never an easy task, but nonetheless a critically important one.

As Rome, I'd want to be able to transition to either the papal State, Tuscany, Savoy and Piedmont, or the Two Sicily reign, for the Exploration age, and then Italy in modern Age,
As Greece, I'd probably want to transition into Byzantium, or Frankocratia (a kind of Templar state - wikipedia source ) and the Modern Greece.
As the Turks, I'd go Ottoman, and then Turkey or Turkmenistan...
As the Israelites, I'd go for some sort of "Merchant Israelite republic" (which could be Venice...), and then Israel.

The Celts could transition to Anglosaxons or Frankia, then become England, Ireland, France, or the USA... but this would break immersion...
The Celts should remain Celts... there is no Celtic nation today... Ireland and England... simply do not cut it...
Italian Etruscan tribes and Scandinavian tribes had also strong Celtic traditions...
But suppose the Celts could become the Normans and the USA... and also the Saxons and then France... or the Vandals and then Occitania....
What is Occitania many will ask... it is a region spanning from the Italian Alps to the French Alps, then jumps around central France and re-appears near the Spanish-Gascoigne border....
The Celts could transition into Wales, Gascoigne, Occitania, or a remote Scandinavian tribe I forgot the name.... that tiny Island... anyway... even if these are not Nations, the Celts
could retain their sense of UNIQUENESS throughout the game...

The Elephant in the room here is clearly the USA... but most modern nation are a patchup... Brasil... Mexico...
The formula is to find a path of Uniqueness for each major civ introduced in the game from the beginning of time...
It is easier to find a slot for a civ lost to time, like the Celts... so it can leave a slot open
for the Franks, Frankia, then France... and continuity for overlapping civs...
then find an ancient countepart for a patchup Nation...
The Aztec could become a Mechican nation, and then Mexico,
but the Mechican tribe, should also become the Mechican nation, and then Mexico...
Whilst the Aztec, as the Mayan, should be allowed to become something else... and maintain their core culture...

The Mayan, Apaches, Tahitians, all should be allowed to retain their culture and become indipendent Nations.

Whilst it could be Ok for each one of them to decide to become Mexico or even the USA at one point, I think some
proto American-Mycenean or proto American-Scots or proto American-Saxons or proto American-Olmecs, idk, should naturally evolve into the USA, and leave the
Apaches, Iroquis, Missisipians etc. tribes alone with their respective possibility to evolve to a modern Nation...


Would this imply that now instead of 30 basic civs for Vanilla we should have 90 civs instead?
Yes and no... but really I think this is one serious consideration to take into account...

Aftermost modern and ancient major nations has this complete Age transistion fix, then I think it would be ok
to release a new civ pack DLC also...
Who is gonna buy the Apache DLC if they know their civ is just there for one Age????
The total count of civs would skyrocket to 3 times 90... easily...
but it's only my opinion. It might differs from yours...


Also, transitioning from Rome to the Papal state and the Italy but losing all culture from the Jupiter temple... Idk... the religious system need an overhaul as well...
and should probably be completely disconnected from the Age bottleneck system itself...
OLD WORLD nails very nicely the attribution of various people to certain buildings-althars-temples-districts.
Idk how to get rid of the fat greedy pigs at one point when they just consume too much, but I find it interesting.


The Last piece of the puzzle is to
1: RESTRICT every Civ swap to its NATURAL succession.
Leave the option to swap completely a civ to another, and maybe add a middle ground option, like shared borders, cultural exchange, but to ADD only Strict cultural proximity jumping, requires that all civs has a LINEAR optional choice in the first place...
2: RESTRICT Leaders to their Natural civilization. (And leave UNRESTRICTED Leaders as an option (as it was in Civ IV)).
3: Balance out the Age Reset and the tech reset... it is ok IMO if some civs still had to learn Writing in the MODERN AGE but had already unlocked Metallurgy....
but don't just plain the field at every reset as a Tech tree option for every civ should also get in a possible super-patch.


Alternatively, stick with the raw change of Ages... and release a Neolithic age DLC with Sumer, Babylon, the Myceneans, The Ionians, The Olmecs, etc...
the intricacy will grow exponentially but at some points these missing civs shall be introduced back....

 

[Yzman]

I feel like this is basically what we have, except you want to introduce a lots of civs that wouldn't get any time devoted to them and I doubt would fix much criticism. I am not seeing this.

 

[Lazy sweeper]

I feel like this is basically what we have, except you want to introduce a lots of civs that wouldn't get any time devoted to them and I doubt would fix much criticism. I am not seeing this.

Well no... we have France but not the Franks nor Frankia...

It's a bout nationalism, sense of belonging, not just standing the test of time. Devoted or not it's one possible way to retain this core concept.
Kievan Rus > Imperial Russia > CCCP
I didn't vote for this nihilistic Agenda, and this is the general feeling that is surrounding this core aspect of the game...
Players feel desperate they now can't play as England from the times of Sumer... this is what matters...
Give them the Iceni and call it a day... It's a reasonable proposition...?
Stakeholders don't like the idea? Who cares!
Instead of presenting a new single civ DLC now Firaxis has to give players at least three civs, which is still one, but with different costumes appropriate for the Age...
It's still a number, a 1 if you will. Ages has always been in civs games. Every civ had four distinct apparel for each age, so 1=4 in the old formula.
This time 1=3 is valid only for China and India at this point. We need parity.
Devs have an obligation to try this route behind the scenes IMO.

There might be some others solutions other than adjusting the name of some civs, and some graphics, and pretending that Occitania is a completely new civ, when in reality, and that is what it's important to the gamers, it's still the Gauls, or the Celts... a small graphical overhaul and you got a new civ in the bucket!
There might be more options to it, I'm sure of it. For one the religious aspect of the crisis... Rome didn't disappear overnight... The Papal State absorbed it!
For some puzzles civs there is hardly a solution, so it will not fix much criticism, but a good chunk I bet so.

Nationalism also drives conflict. The immersion is lost without it. This is the feeling I got from other players perspectives.
You can't make up stuff like this videos...

@Kim_Jong-un1356​

"Not being in control of the same civ for the entire game is an absolute deal breaker."

​

"I think my main issue with the game wrapped in a tl;dr fashion:I play a civ game to experience my own story. In Civ 7, I feel like I am "on rails", not to mention that I can't even continue to play and wreck havoc on the map after another civ achieves a victory requirement cause in Civ 7, the game ends. In past civ games, I could continue on after another civ won, and I would make the entire world pay for their insolence!"

​

"It's so funny that they stop you from playing Persians because the world has shifted to a new age, so you have choose a new, technologically-advanced civilization, such as ...the Incas. Oh, thank Ōhramazdē -- or Inti -- we outgrew those pesky, backwards concepts of metallurgy and written script."

​

"As soon as my game shifted to the modern era, I lost interest as, once again, I had to spend money to turn my towns back into the cities they were the previous turn. The fact that the player cannot play from beginning to end without interruption prevents this from being a true "Civilization" game. There's no logical reason why every player should advance at the exact same time to to the exact same place in cultural and technological development. In a true Civilization game, the player knows they're doing well when their opponents are using swordsmen to defend their realms from the player's musketeers. And the converse is true. The player knows they've made some bad moves when their trireme is sunk by a ironclad. The eras system crushes that sense of grand accomplishment or grand failure. The eras system is an arrogant move by the designers to dispense with 30+ years of a tried-and-true formula in order to force players to play the game the way the designers think it should be played. To quote Dr. Ian Malcolm, "...they were so preoccupied with whether they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should."

More comments from this video sections...

"FINALLY. A review that encapsulates so much frustration we have with 7’s complete departure from its sandbox core to something that feels like 3 mini games on rails."

"Its also so stupid to start out as a certain civilization like Greece or Egypt, and after being forced to another civ all your city names stay the same. So you have Napoleon of the Spanish with Greece/Egyptian city names. Not to mention how civ's only existing for 1 age is dumb as hell. Civ's like Greece, Egypt, Spanish and Mongolians who just disappear as if the countries don't exist to this day.."

And on and on and on...


other videos, same kind of comments:

"I am in my 50s, and I have played every CIV game from 1-6, and had brought either in day 1 or presale. Mistake no.5 is why I didn’t buy civ7. This is the one thing you should never change. I wanted to play a single country from start to finish. This is one of the very core of what civ is all about. They shouldn’t have changed this."

"I agree with you Husky. If they wanted to change stuff up, I think they should have kept the nation/civ as a constant and used different leaders as time went on. No age ending crisis, no changing civ bs. Your old leader dies every so often and takes some handy (but now dated) attributes along with him and a new leader is installed with new better more modern attributes which fit the new era. Civ 7 just isn't a civ game."

"Yeah. You missed out some stuff. Nationalism. Maybe it was left out in that 33% or cutting in three parts your Nation into smaller pieces was what that meant. You now have to pay 3X if you want to play your Nation through 3 Ages. But there are not 3X civ for each Age. Except China and India. With half the population of the world they thought it was better to not piss them off... this time..."


As a side note, on the opposite spectrum of Nationalism...
The Papal State produced the Templars, They had both the Swiss Pikeman and the Crusaders units, both Infantry and Knights. The Templars quit the papal State untill France didn't conquer the Papal State. The French Templars are now fighting the English and Scot Templars in a puny war in America that disrupted the American tribes and now you got the USA as a consequence. Pretty nice achievement for a devoted civ... it's a lot of civs... but this is what we had in the old days when expansions came out...
not just a single civ DLC... The conquest of the Americas has always been a complete pack... Spanish conquistadors, Maya, Aztecs, Iroquis, Cheyenne, Inca...
Every action bears its consequences... a full game needs depth...

Maybe what Civ need is to make Ages last for 500 turns... Idk... this is an opinion and suggestion thread... not MY opinion only...

 

[Yzman]

Well no... we have France but not the Franks nor Frankia...

It's a bout nationalism, sense of belonging, not just standing the test of time. Devoted or not it's one possible way to retain this core concept.
Kievan Rus > Imperial Russia > CCCP
I didn't vote for this nihilistic Agenda, and this is the general feeling that is surrounding this core aspect of the game...
Players feel desperate they now can't play as England from the times of Sumer... this is what matters...
Give them the Iceni and call it a day... It's a reasonable proposition...?
Stakeholders don't like the idea? Who cares!
Instead of presenting a new single civ DLC now Firaxis has to give players at least three civs, which is still one, but with different costumes appropriate for the Age...
It's still a number, a 1 if you will. Ages has always been in civs games. Every civ had four distinct apparel for each age, so 1=4 in the old formula.
This time 1=3 is valid only for China and India at this point. We need parity.
Devs have an obligation to try this route behind the scenes IMO.

There might be some others solutions other than adjusting the name of some civs, and some graphics, and pretending that Occitania is a completely new civ, when in reality, and that is what it's important to the gamers, it's still the Gauls, or the Celts... a small graphical overhaul and you got a new civ in the bucket!
There might be more options to it, I'm sure of it. For one the religious aspect of the crisis... Rome didn't disappear overnight... The Papal State absorbed it!
For some puzzles civs there is hardly a solution, so it will not fix much criticism, but a good chunk I bet so.

Nationalism also drives conflict. The immersion is lost without it. This is the feeling I got from other players perspectives.
You can't make up stuff like this videos...

@Kim_Jong-un1356​

"Not being in control of the same civ for the entire game is an absolute deal breaker."

​

"I think my main issue with the game wrapped in a tl;dr fashion:I play a civ game to experience my own story. In Civ 7, I feel like I am "on rails", not to mention that I can't even continue to play and wreck havoc on the map after another civ achieves a victory requirement cause in Civ 7, the game ends. In past civ games, I could continue on after another civ won, and I would make the entire world pay for their insolence!"

​

"It's so funny that they stop you from playing Persians because the world has shifted to a new age, so you have choose a new, technologically-advanced civilization, such as ...the Incas. Oh, thank Ōhramazdē -- or Inti -- we outgrew those pesky, backwards concepts of metallurgy and written script."

​

"As soon as my game shifted to the modern era, I lost interest as, once again, I had to spend money to turn my towns back into the cities they were the previous turn. The fact that the player cannot play from beginning to end without interruption prevents this from being a true "Civilization" game. There's no logical reason why every player should advance at the exact same time to to the exact same place in cultural and technological development. In a true Civilization game, the player knows they're doing well when their opponents are using swordsmen to defend their realms from the player's musketeers. And the converse is true. The player knows they've made some bad moves when their trireme is sunk by a ironclad. The eras system crushes that sense of grand accomplishment or grand failure. The eras system is an arrogant move by the designers to dispense with 30+ years of a tried-and-true formula in order to force players to play the game the way the designers think it should be played. To quote Dr. Ian Malcolm, "...they were so preoccupied with whether they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should."

More comments from this video sections...

"FINALLY. A review that encapsulates so much frustration we have with 7’s complete departure from its sandbox core to something that feels like 3 mini games on rails."

"Its also so stupid to start out as a certain civilization like Greece or Egypt, and after being forced to another civ all your city names stay the same. So you have Napoleon of the Spanish with Greece/Egyptian city names. Not to mention how civ's only existing for 1 age is dumb as hell. Civ's like Greece, Egypt, Spanish and Mongolians who just disappear as if the countries don't exist to this day.."

And on and on and on...


As a side note, on the opposite spectrum of Nationalism...
The Papal State produced the Templars, They had both the Swiss Pikeman and the Crusaders units, both Infantry and Knights. The Templars quit the papal State untill France didn't conquer the Papal State. The French Templars are now fighting the English and Scot Templars in a puny war in America that disrupted the American tribes and now you got the USA as a consequence. Pretty nice achievement for a devoted civ... it's a lot of civs... but this is what we had in the old days when expansions came out...
not just a single civ DLC... The conquest of the Americas has always been a complete pack... Spanish conquistadors, Maya, Aztecs, Iroquis, Cheyenne, Inca...
Every action bears its consequences... a full game needs depth...

Maybe what Civ need is to make Ages last for 500 turns... Idk... this is an opinion and suggestion thread... not MY opinion only...

That is my point though. You want to switch civs...but just keep the civs basically the same. Do you really think the average player is going to want to switch between Franks and France? There is no difference to them. It would also be hard to come up with unique bonuses for each.

At that point,scrap civ switching, use France to represent those and call it a day.

 

[Kwami]

The developers have already told us that they considered this idea and decided against it for multiple reasons. And besides that, I'm not sure that encouraging nationalism is the way to go.

 

[Lazy sweeper]

The developers have already told us that they considered this idea and decided against it for multiple reasons. And besides that, I'm not sure that encouraging nationalism is the way to go.

Well, the players have their ideas apparently too...
And besides, we all would love to live in a free borders, no nations society, in theory... in practice, the two most popolous Nations in the world: China and India,
are the only two civs in the game that have been granted a linear continuity for the whole of the game ages. They exist, they are here now, and they will be here 50 years from now. It's the reality. There's nothing of encouraging in granting linearity to all civs. It's called nationalism. Because someone invented this concept that a group of people, united by culture, not race, just culture, and faith perhaps, tradition, have the rights to form a nation. It is in the Commonwealth declaration. If the world resets now, and only 12 guys and one girl survive, they would probably try restart a civilization. We are not one of those guys stranded after a deluge on a mountain surrounded by snakes and giant scorpions... we can choose... CCCP is Kievan Rus people evolved into a nation.

USA can't have a Cheyenne Nation. Fine. That is USA problem. Please understand the rest of the world see things differently from USA....
If instead it's an economic reasoning... or race... ok.... but just saying nation doesn't imply you have to read the Mein Kampf in all its 46 pages and
memorize it as it was the Holy bible...

We either find a solution, or die trying. There is no way out. I can hear multiple good reason to not commit suicide but I need only one wrong to make a fatal mistake.
What kind of reasoning is that? Haven't you seen the cliff???

 

[Krikkit1]

I think what they need to do is let you customize/keep the civ name/city List

So I can pick Egypt and give them the name America ..and their first city is automatically Washington instead of Waset. or I can call them Egypt… and keep calling them Egypt through their “Chola” era and “Prussian” era.

 

[Kwami]

Well, the players have their ideas apparently too...
And besides, we all would love to live in a free borders, no nations society, in theory... in practice, the two most popolous Nations in the world: China and India,
are the only two civs in the game that have been granted a linear continuity for the whole of the game ages. They exist, they are here now, and they will be here 50 years from now. It's the reality. There's nothing of encouraging in granting linearity to all civs. It's called nationalism. Because someone invented this concept that a group of people, united by culture, not race, just culture, and faith perhaps, tradition, have the rights to form a nation. It is in the Commonwealth declaration. If the world resets now, and only 12 guys and one girl survive, they would probably try restart a civilization. We are not one of those guys stranded after a deluge on a mountain surrounded by snakes and giant scorpions... we can choose... CCCP is Kievan Rus people evolved into a nation.

USA can't have a Cheyenne Nation. Fine. That is USA problem. Please understand the rest of the world see things differently from USA....

We either find a solution, or die trying. There is no way out. I can hear multiple good reason to not commit suicide but I need only one wrong to make a fatal mistake.
What kind of reasoning is that? Haven't you seen the cliff???

Moderator Action: *SNIP*

And you're trying to solve a problem that doesn't really exist.

But as I said, the developers have already explicitly rejected this idea and have told us why. For one, it would exclude civilizations that don't have a continuous path from 4000 BC until today. Where would Hawaii be, for example? Or Inca? Or Mississippian? Or USA? Or Mexico?

It just doesn't work. We don't need to appease nationalists.

 

[Lazy sweeper]

I'm sorry, but this reads like an insane rant to me.

And you're trying to solve a problem that doesn't really exist.

The Cheyenne or the Apache nations being censured talk in the USA???
What do not really exist????


Moderator Action: *SNIP*
It's a problem big as a Mountain when you have 1M view yt Videos out in the wild repeating the same mantra over and over...
It is a choice someone has to make...

 

[Kwami]

The Cheyenne or the Apache nations being censured talk in the USA???
What do not really exist????


It's an opinion, you said it look insane, would you grant us an alternative?
It's a problem big as a Mountain when you have 1M view yt Videos out in the wild repeating the same mantra over and over...
It is a choice someone has to make...

I don't know what the first question means.

The second question should be obvious. The system is fine as it is and we don't need a continuous path for every civilization.

The developers already made their choice.

 

[Lazy sweeper]

I think what they need to do is let you customize/keep the civ name/city List

So I can pick Egypt and give them the name America ..and their first city is automatically Washington instead of Waset. or I can call them Egypt… and keep calling them Egypt through their “Chola” era and “Prussian” era.

Yeah, I think it's one right approach to the "mixed bag"... give some freedom of choice to at least give the illusion of linearity (nationalism)...
I wonder what the Ai would name my nation if I named my capital Syracuse....

 

[Lazy sweeper]

The second question should be obvious. The system is fine as it is and we don't need a continuous path for every civilization.

The developers already made their choice.

And the players are rioting.

Not me. I'm just looking around... I just would like my Crusaders back, than I'd be happy even if I had to conquer the Holy Grail relic first for my civ to be able to build them...

Actions. Consequences.
Possible solutions to a problem that do not exist because the devs made their choice.
Devs , at least some, should be given the option to explore some possible alternative at least.
See if an alternative system might work better.
We all like the system if it works better.

 

[Kwami]

And the players are rioting.

I really don't think so. Some players are unhappy with the system and they're going to stay unhappy or else get over it. Everyone else is having fun playing the game.

 

[MutilationWave]

Yeah, I think it's one right approach to the "mixed bag"... give some freedom of choice to at least give the illusion of linearity (nationalism)...
I wonder what the Ai would name my nation if I named my capital Syracuse....

New York, obviously. Just like Memphis of the Tennessee people.

 

[Lazy sweeper]

I really don't think so. Some players are unhappy with the system and they're going to stay unhappy or else get over it. Everyone else is having fun playing the game.

mmmh forget the Reasons why.... it's un-important.... I am having fun discussing possible Alternative Endings....

If they Stakeholders disagree, I don't care. You should not care.
If the Devs disagree, it's the same...
We are free to make fantastic hypothesis on fantasy Antarctic expeditions on a Lunar Baloon...

 

[sixty4half]

I was all on board. 90 Civs! Sounds good to me....


But then you start talking about restrictions. Restrict civ changes to "natural succession"!? What? Why? Restrict leaders to natural civs? Why take options away from players?

Who decides what a civs natural succession is? Because you're going to get some vastly conflicting successions for some civs depending on which historian you talk to.

 

[Kwami]

Who decides what a civs natural succession is? Because you're going to get some vastly conflicting successions for some civs depending on which historian you talk to.

That's another problem. For example, why should Kievan Rus' become Russia instead of Ukraine? Do we have to include both? What about Rome and all of its many successor states? Or the Ottomans and its successor states? What do we do with something like Egypt? Does Egypt become something else and then Egypt again?

It just doesn't work.

 

[protocol7]

I have come to think it would have been a lot better to have bonuses you can evolve into - for example, if you acquire a lot of horses you can evolve your civ in the next age into a horse-focused one. Even call it “spirit of the Mongolians”.

The way it works now where if you find a lot of horses then your Civilization collapses during the age transition and the Mongolians show up out of nowhere to move in is just too weird (for me at least).

 

[sixty4half]

I would rather they get rid of all the restrictions and just let us pick what we want. I kind of understand what they're trying to do, but having to build 3 walls or 3 siege units just to play with a certain civ seems arbitrary. And then there's the more strict ones where if you don't find enough nav rivers or mountains you just don't get to play with those civs.

 

[Civinator]

Lazy Sweeper, many of the points in your posts in this thread are shared by me. I suggest that you should try my Civ 3 mod CCM 3 in combination with the C3X mod for Civ 3. Here it can be seen, that changing leaders and different names for the people, living in a certain era of the world, during the game can work very well. I doubt that the Civ 7 devs have really tested this very seriously, as CCM 3 shows that it can be done.

I wish all civers who love the current Civ 7 much fun in playing it. I am not so lucky to be convinced by the current Civ 7. For me at present there is nothing else left, but to create my own version of playing a civ game - and I (and many other civers -at present nearly 9600 downloads of that mod at CFC) have fun with playing civ this way. As now the 256 building limit for Civ 3 has fallen, I am working on a mod that gives the eraspecific rulers even a limited different personality.