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

[Verified_Confection_Being]

I really don't like that posts like this end up using the word nationalism. Its not political nationalism which I think is being described, but rather a sense of continuous identity as a "nation "/"people"/dare I say - "civilization" that you are playing.

I played the Inca the most in Civ V, and the Kongo the most in Civ VI. I have absolutely 0 desire to play Civ VII because of Civ switching being so unnatural. I am repulsed at the idea of basically having to change character twice during the game for an arbitrary reason I don't choose.

I am not Peruvian, I am not Congolese. None of this is political or in any sense of the word "nationalism", except by virtue of the fact that we don't have a word or a good way to describe what I've laid out above.

 

[Siptah]

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).

That‘s basically the concept of Millennia. I like it but you see a lot of complaints that everybody can get Units and buildings that should be associated with a specific civ. I.e., when Sweden chooses the Khans national spirit in Age 4, they can build Khans and Horse Archers. Or Pyramid Temples and Jaguar Warriors if they go Warrior Priests in age 6. I guess it is hard to please everybody.

 

[Siptah]

I really don't like that posts like this end up using the word nationalism. Its not political nationalism which I think is being described, but rather a sense of continuous identity as a "nation "/"people"/dare I say - "civilization" that you are playing.

I played the Inca the most in Civ V, and the Kongo the most in Civ VI. I have absolutely 0 desire to play Civ VII because of Civ switching being so unnatural. I am repulsed at the idea of basically having to change character twice during the game for an arbitrary reason I don't choose.

I am not Peruvian, I am not Congolese. None of this is political or in any sense of the word "nationalism", except by virtue of the fact that we don't have a word or a good way to describe what I've laid out above.

People and ethnicity would be good words. Civ traditionally went with the political „empire.“ Yet, all of these are rather flexible of you look back a few thousand years. Modern Peruvians can belong to the Inca people or not. Antiquity Andean people were mostly not Incas. It gets especially tough for such empires as the Inca in which multiple ethnicities came together for a short time under a minority people. But even if the empire lasted long, eg, Rome, this is tough. I think instinctively, many players without extended interest in history would prefer modern geography over any other relation. Ie, Modern Spain needs to come from the Bronze Age or celtiberians, because they settled the same lands - regardless of virtually no cultural and hardly ethnical ties between them.

 

[Bootstrapbilly]

I didn't like the civ switching when announced but have come to appreciate it from both a gameplay and immersion perspective, more civs are needed and will allow for more historic evolution paths.

I think to cater to the no civ switching crowd - Maybe there could be a classic mode - that still has the concept of eras but allows for any civ to be picked up at ancient age and unable to be swapped as the ages go on, remove the unique civics tree for each civs and scatters bonuses from the tree, unique buildings, units and traditions across the standard science and culture tech trees and have those bonuses persist through the ages. You will still have this problem of early game civs being better than late game ones, but in some instances you could bring forward some modern and exploration civ bonuses forward - e.g America's gold rush tradition could come quite early in the tree, prospectors granted upon unlocking merchants etc in ancient.

 

[Uberfrog]

I really don't like that posts like this end up using the word nationalism. Its not political nationalism which I think is being described, but rather a sense of continuous identity as a "nation "/"people"/dare I say - "civilization" that you are playing.

I played the Inca the most in Civ V, and the Kongo the most in Civ VI. I have absolutely 0 desire to play Civ VII because of Civ switching being so unnatural. I am repulsed at the idea of basically having to change character twice during the game for an arbitrary reason I don't choose.

I am not Peruvian, I am not Congolese. None of this is political or in any sense of the word "nationalism", except by virtue of the fact that we don't have a word or a good way to describe what I've laid out above.

I’m afraid that there is a word, and it is nationalism.

That isn’t to say that the player is a Nationalist for wanting to play as the same civilisation for the whole game, nor that you have to be a Peruvian nationalist to want to play as the Inca.

But the concept that there is a state organised around “a sense of continuous identity as a nation or people” is pretty good as a broad dictionary definition of nationalism.

It’s a powerful idea, perhaps one of the most powerful ideas in generating the modern world, and it’s one that absolutely shapes the gaming public’s assumptions around what it means to play any given civilisation in a video game. This idea that a people can rise up fully formed out of the Earth and continue their unbroken story to the present day.

Where it comes unstuck, however, is in where the line between who is and is not the same people get drawn according to the historical narrative a nation wishes to tell about itself. We even see this in some players reaction to the “complete” historical progressions in the game, and whether or not the Mughal or Qing dynasties with their foreign origins are acceptable continuations.

 

[Verified_Confection_Being]

I’m afraid that there is a word, and it is nationalism.

That isn’t to say that the player is a Nationalist for wanting to play as the same civilisation for the whole game, nor that you have to be a Peruvian nationalist to want to play as the Inca.

But the concept that there is a state organised around “a sense of continuous identity as a nation or people” is pretty good as a broad dictionary definition of nationalism.

It’s a powerful idea, perhaps one of the most powerful ideas in generating the modern world, and it’s one that absolutely shapes the gaming public’s assumptions around what it means to play any given civilisation in a video game. This idea that a people can rise up fully formed out of the Earth and continue their unbroken story to the present day.

Where it comes unstuck, however, is in where the line between who is and is not the same people get drawn according to the historical narrative a nation wishes to tell about itself. We even see this in some players reaction to the “complete” historical progressions in the game, and whether or not the Mughal or Qing dynasties with their foreign origins are acceptable continuations.

I don't really care what people call it as long as we don't invoke the wrath of political activists pushing against the core way civilization was played for 6 iterations being reapplied in some form.

Like Siptah said, there's no neat line of history through time for each civilization, and everyone with a tiny bit of history knowledge knows that. I don't think anyone who's played civilization before 7 also wouldn't describe it as an accurate representation of history, but rather some kind of thunderdome of the all time greats from history. It's about as nationalist as the Olympics, which may be somewhat, but hardly harmfully.

 

[Arcaian]

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.

People keep saying this, and it really just is not true. Firstly, many people in these nations question whether the Qing and Mughals, being states controlled by a foreign elite, are sufficiently Chinese/Indian to count - not a perspective I find particularly helpful, but it's worth noting that even within these nations, many people don't feel like they have a continuous progression on this basis. On top of that, just because they're a unified state now with a national identity around which they have been created, it doesn't mean that these individual civs we can play as are clearly part of one linear continuity in a way the rest of the world doesn't have. There is considerably more continuity between Rome/Greece, Spain/Normans, and France/Great Britain/Prussia than there is between the Mauryans, Chola, and Mughals. By every meaningful category - linguistically, culturally, geographically, historically - Europe has a more linear continuity available to it than India does. The only reason that the Mauryans, Chola, and Mughals are considered a linear continuity is because of the connection to the nationalist identity of the modern Indian state, whereas there isn't the same nationalist identity including Rome, Spain, and France.

 

[CivKirk64]

Or you can just have fun with it? I like how it works now, trying to see what kooky combos I can unlock.
George Washington didn't build the pyramids in Baltimore in 2070 BCE. (AKA Immersion be damned)

 

[Lazy sweeper]

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).

Yesterday I was saying that no matter what, I would be fine if devs would give me a fast Gallic warrior, that could also steal vines and Oats, build vine bridges, and transplant those resources back home... like to start a winery or a Brewery in your local village far north....

And this is just nothing in respect of the Hate for the Crusaders units, as those involve practically a warring Religious state, such as The Papal State and its proxy war with
the land of Judea for much of the middle Ages... then turned around and stabbed their Crusaders knights in the back with the help of France...

People do bad things. Nations can be good or bad, with due circumstances.
Implying Nationalism is inherently bad is like saying every single human individual on this planet is inherently bad, by nature.
But nature made us all equals, everybody has to eat food, shelter, reproduce, sleep, rinse, repeat.
If I am an Inuit member and have to slain seals for a living that is nature giving you the choice, kill the seal and survive, or starve and go to Heaven because you respected life.

I casually came to this video of Potato where in another game, the Mongols can kidnap people.... wow... that surely must be bad...
I cannot fathom a good Nation of Mongol people if the premises are those...
If Developers, unilaterally decided, that Nationalism is inherently bad, and apply the same rigid evaluation method based on a good or bad scale for each aspect of
society as a whole, there would be no society!!!
The logical flaw is so paradoxical that makes impossible a 99% of gaming mechanics that are a constant core of the 4X genre...
Extermination should be purged next?

I am sorry but these are fundamental questions that needs to be asked, and are fundamental to the thread...
-not a civ game-
I didn't make that up....

 

[Verified_Confection_Being]

Or you can just have fun with it? I like how it works now, trying to see what kooky combos I can unlock.
George Washington didn't build the pyramids in Baltimore in 2070 BCE. (AKA Immersion be damned)

Totally fine perspective, but from my perspective, why would I buy a civilization game for that experience when it's not what I load up civilization for, and wouldn't buy a game like it (skipped humankind completely, not my bag). By all means have fun with it, and no one's saying don't if you can't, but for those of us who just don't like it, and who don't buy the game just because it's a civilization brand game, this is the information we want to get to firaxis to make our purchase happen.

They read these forums, as poor as they are at communicating with us right now I'm reasonably confident they are listening, crying a bit over how on earth they are going to bodge back in the old school experience that they've lost half their playerbase from ditching, and grafting to work it out.

I'm 90% confident they're going to mess it up and still won't get my purchase based on what I've seen of their delivery standard around the product they actually wanted to make though, so I'm not exactly optimistic about a compromised version they force back in 7. So for me this is about influence for 8 when I hope to hop back in the franchise

 

[Lazy sweeper]

. The only reason that the Mauryans, Chola, and Mughals are considered a linear continuity is because of the connection to the nationalist identity of the modern Indian state, whereas there isn't the same nationalist identity including Rome, Spain, and France.

I am speechless.


Greece can transition to The Greece government, or the Athenai alliance, or Frankocratia as wikipedia suggest, and the hoop back into Greece for the Modern Age...
Or Survive within the Ottoman Empire as again, a league of Greek people within the Ottoman Empire.

Germany was split into who knows how many kingdoms, that is why my friends like to play EU...
They got to become the Conquerors of the world with Burgundia... wherever that is...

Identity is subjective, nationalism is subjective!
It doesnt' matter why or how.
I have provided ample evidence for possible paths for each modern Nation for antiquity that didn't have a nation,
and the reverse of that.
Every ancient civilization that didn't become a Nation, didn't just disappear. Nor it merged peacefully.
Italy is divided very much like it was 500 years ago.... it's just being called the nation of Italy...
I don't care for Rome to become Italy. Infact I despise that.
But that is a possible path that doesn't require enlarging the base civs 15X to accomodate
every big civilization for A-nationalist paths...

 

[Xur]

It can't really be fixed unless they add 3 variants for each civ so you can play it to the end - and I doubt they'll do that outside of their predatory DLC plans. Everything they do to units, cities, "independent powers" and playable map area between ages should be scrapped. I want to be able to meet a civ that uses spears while I drive tanks and I want to be able to meet a civ that drives tanks while I use muskets.

If they really wanna make ages great, then they should scrap the current system and introduce major events for each age. One age could be all about religious wars (crusades), another about world war I & II, another about birth of the major religions, another about colonization/conquest of the new world. That would require more than 3 ages though.

 

[Sagax]

Trying to read through OP’s philosophical tangents, I’m not sure what exactly is being proposed here:

1. Adding more historical civs to smooth out civ-switching paths; or

2. Adding made-up hypothetical civs or very minor/obscure entities to achieve the same.

Or maybe both? The former is completely doable in the current setting, and I don’t think a single person is against that. The obvious limitation is the ultimate roster size, and at some point we would run into an inevitable debate of “Do we really need Wales in the game while the Ottomans are still not in?”

The latter, however, is a harder ask. I’m personally not a fan of the idea of civs “made up for me, but not by me”, but I won’t get into it - there are enough practical obstacles to this idea. Some may claim that current civs are only 1/3 of what we used to get, but from a design/technical standpoint that’s not true - in fact, each civ in VII is probably taking more effort to make than a full everlasting civ from previous iterations. If you want these made-up civs to be on an equal footing with the rest of the field, then you’ll need each of them to have:
- unique ability
- unique military unit
- unique civilian unit (or second unique military unit)
- unique building or improvement
- unique wonder
- unique civics tree and traditions

Trying to come up with these for a made-up civ or a less prominent entity is not an easy ask. And if the workaround is for them to not have a full set of uniques and just borrow some of them from other civs - then I’d rather FXS not spend dev effort on this, because at that point it will feel too much like a repeat of personas. Maybe it won’t hurt at the sunset of Civ 7 while we get ready for Civ 8, but definitely not sooner.

 

[Kwami]

Totally fine perspective, but from my perspective, why would I buy a civilization game for that experience when it's not what I load up civilization for, and wouldn't buy a game like it (skipped humankind completely, not my bag). By all means have fun with it, and no one's saying don't if you can't, but for those of us who just don't like it, and who don't buy the game just because it's a civilization brand game, this is the information we want to get to firaxis to make our purchase happen.

I wonder how many of the people here complaining about the current systems haven't even tried to play the game at all...

I maintain that we don't need to appease nationalists at all. The developers should add whichever civilizations are fun and interesting to play. They don't need to make clean paths for everyone, which isn't possible, anyway.

 

[Xur]

I wonder how many of the people here complaining about the current systems haven't even tried to play the game at all...

I maintain that we don't need to appease nationalists at all. The developers should add whichever civilizations are fun and interesting to play. They don't need to make clean paths for everyone, which isn't possible, anyway.

This is the same argument made by other failing game franchises in recent years. "This game isn't for you" and then they go pikachu surprised face when people don't buy the game. And now people say they have to pay before having an opinion. Ehm ok? Do you need to eat dirt before you can say you don't like it, dont wanna try it or don't wanna pay for it?

 

[GeneralZift]

My opinion is quite simple.
They can 'fix' the ages system by adding three dozen new Civs for you to choose from, filling the gaps and happily making You pay for all of them.

But it doesn't really 'fix' the problems that the Ages system comes with, all it does is Polish it to make it more palatable. So in some ways with that fix, and fixes to every other part of Civ7, the game is 'done'.

Although, I just feel like the system exists for no reason, it doesn't fix anything on its own, and everything people purport that it fixes could have been fixed via a multitude of better ways. Presumably more expensive time consuming ways that the developers wouldn't prefer, but nonetheless it's true.

That's in the past and the system is already implemented so they need to now focus on polishing it in every way, including the transitions which is the most problematic part in my opinion.

 

[UWHabs]

Trying to read through OP’s philosophical tangents, I’m not sure what exactly is being proposed here:

1. Adding more historical civs to smooth out civ-switching paths; or

2. Adding made-up hypothetical civs or very minor/obscure entities to achieve the same.

Or maybe both? The former is completely doable in the current setting, and I don’t think a single person is against that. The obvious limitation is the ultimate roster size, and at some point we would run into an inevitable debate of “Do we really need Wales in the game while the Ottomans are still not in?”

The latter, however, is a harder ask. I’m personally not a fan of the idea of civs “made up for me, but not by me”, but I won’t get into it - there are enough practical obstacles to this idea. Some may claim that current civs are only 1/3 of what we used to get, but from a design/technical standpoint that’s not true - in fact, each civ in VII is probably taking more effort to make than a full everlasting civ from previous iterations. If you want these made-up civs to be on an equal footing with the rest of the field, then you’ll need each of them to have:
- unique ability
- unique military unit
- unique civilian unit (or second unique military unit)
- unique building or improvement
- unique wonder
- unique civics tree and traditions

Trying to come up with these for a made-up civ or a less prominent entity is not an easy ask. And if the workaround is for them to not have a full set of uniques and just borrow some of them from other civs - then I’d rather FXS not spend dev effort on this, because at that point it will feel too much like a repeat of personas. Maybe it won’t hurt at the sunset of Civ 7 while we get ready for Civ 8, but definitely not sooner.

I do think you could probably fake a "classic mode", where if you want to play a civ outside of their era, you basically get a generic civ. So no UU, no wonder, and maybe at most you get like a generic civics tree with like some basic/random bonuses. If you skip the UU/UB/UI part of things, the rest can be defined without any additional art components, so you could even slightly tailor the bonuses to the civ, at least to make sure that a modern are Maya is still like a science/jungle civ. Intentionally you'd have a "worse" civ since they're not set up for the era, but maybe some people would like that enough for the "continuity" sake that they could live with that.

 

[Arcaian]

I am speechless.

You can be as speechless as you want, it is objectively the truth. Both Spain and France speak Romance languages, directly descended from the language of Rome. The main languages of the Mauryan empire were both Indo-European, compared to the Chola Empire's Dravidian language - there's more in common between Latin and Magadhi Prakrit than between Magadhi Prakrit and Middle Tamil. The legal systems of Spain and France are directly connected to the legal systems of Rome. The core territory of both Spain and France was core Roman territory for centuries; neither the Mughal nor the Mauryan empires ever even conquered southern india, the core territory of the Chola empire. The cultures of both Spain and France are intimately connected to Roman culture, even still telling Roman stories, and having built Roman history into their own history. It is about 1400km from the capital of Rome to the capital of medieval Spain and 1100km from the capital modern France; the capital of the Mughal sultanate is 2000km from that of the Chola Empire. An argument can be made for similarity between the Mauryan and Mughal empires in some ways, though north-east and north-west India are notably distinct, but I really do not see an argument that there's more continuity in Maurya -> Chola or Chola -> Mughal than in any part of Rome -> Spain -> France, except for a perceived modern nationalist identity being projected backwards in time on the peoples of south asia.

 

[Sagax]

I do think you could probably fake a "classic mode", where if you want to play a civ outside of their era, you basically get a generic civ. So no UU, no wonder, and maybe at most you get like a generic civics tree with like some basic/random bonuses. If you skip the UU/UB/UI part of things, the rest can be defined without any additional art components, so you could even slightly tailor the bonuses to the civ, at least to make sure that a modern are Maya is still like a science/jungle civ. Intentionally you'd have a "worse" civ since they're not set up for the era, but maybe some people would like that enough for the "continuity" sake that they could live with that.

I wouldn’t mind, personally. Every time a “classic mode” or civ-preservation idea comes into play, the reoccurring complaint I see is that it would not be balanced, and such civs would be underpowered. I could never understand this sentiment - okay, so what?

Actually, it would be a good question to directly pose to those who don’t like civ-switching: would you be ok with the ability to keep your civ if that came with penalties to the power level, by the virtue of not having age-relevant uniques?

On that point, I just realized that you don’t necessarily have to sacrifice the civics tree - you could just copy it from the civ’s original age. The non-tradition bonuses would just reset and be achieved/reapplied from scratch. The traditions is where it gets interesting: do you just keep the original traditions without new unlocks, do you enhance their yields upon re-researching, or do you literally get a second copy of the card? I feel like the latter two have more interesting gameplay potential.

 

[moondog385]

I appreciate the move away from nationalism or whatever you want to call it in this entry. And there's definitely no need to create polities or modern "Nations" that never existed just so players can play the same civ for all three ages. It defeats the entire purpose of the game. Every culture or civ or [insert word here] isn't going to have a "complete path" and that's okay.