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How to repair the Age transition system -not a civ game- opinions and suggestions
- Thread starter Lazy sweeper
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Lazy sweeper
Mooooo Cra Chirp Fssss Miaouw is a game of words
About the freezing of time, between age changes, that stem from Thunderbirds thread, I think it would be cool to introduce some infinite worldwide rainstorm, with sea level rising, migrants on boats, fires and other cool god unforgiving stuff to signal an era change... Sorry, your entire army just drowned. You had to build more boats.
For example an empire can break up and create kingdoms at war with each other like after. The death of Alexander the Great, or after th end of zhou Dynasty to simulate it? And much more complex than how it is managed today in civ 7
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Yzman
Deity
I learned that in school. That is pretty basic stuff... I learned that in 5 grade or so.
Yzman
Deity
Same. Greenland, Iceland etc.
Lazy sweeper
Mooooo Cra Chirp Fssss Miaouw is a game of words
that would be too logical, or straightforward (and painful) . It would require renaming (at the very least) same civilization class cities and units to revolt, form an independent civilization, get a "leader"!!! or allow anarchy in the game (never!). Yes, it could work together with a plan B. Plan B like "nah, it's fine".
Lazy sweeper
Mooooo Cra Chirp Fssss Miaouw is a game of words
HK introduced a "pirate" nation civ, sort of the like of some pirate civ V mods.
Everybody could take it and it was just boring, just another meaningless civ switch down the road...
If some revolting cities in distant land could assume a new "pirate" identity and spawn pirate fleet, first they would need a new leader...
then it should be a unique civ that only AI can get, and that would require a new mod in the civ selection screen...
third... if you ain't a pirate you can make an act of piracy but that normally is considered an act of war...
and as far as I know, trespassing has been forbidden since civ IV...
So introduce an option to consider an act of war just a stray dog incident, or an act of piracy as the looting of a treasure ship just a coincidence, it's
a lot of work. Easier could be to spawn pirate indipendent cities that produce pirate ships... and vassalize them could give you the ability to do the same...
together with a true fog of war DLC, I can see some interest...
pirate islands in perpetual fog of war...
that'd be nice...
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aelf
Ashen One
The topic of keeping your civ in the next age has been popping up on Reddit. FWIW, there's some evidence that some players might expect an advantage in doing so:
I think those bonuses are out of whack and would make it often better not to switch civs, which is completely against the game's design philosophy.
And the only way to pass from one civilization to another, Tsarist Russia is not the Soviet Union, today's Spain is not that of Charles of Bourbon, all nations change, lose territories, change sovereign governments, and then it is much more interesting to fight a civil war or a revolution with one faction or another.
SupremacyKing2
Deity
Just my two cents....
I think the Ages in civ7 have 2 fundamental problems:
1) The Age transition feels like too big of a hard reset.
2) The gaps between Ages is too wide
These two issues cause civ7 to feel like you are playing 3 connected scenarios rather than a full game of civ. The gap betwen Ages is especially disconcerting because you basically jump hundreds of years that the player doesn't get to see or do anything about. The game basically just implies "A lot of time has passed and here is the new world that you find yourself in". Imagine a movie where you watch the first 20 mn, skip over 30 mn, watch 30mn in the middle, then skip over 20 mn and then watch the last 30 mn. That is basically what civ7 is. In a game that is about taking a civ from ~3000BC to ~2000AD, you should not skip over hundreds of years of history.
Here is how I would try to fix these two issues.
1) Make the Age transition softer. Units would not disappear. Independent peoples would not disappear. Cities would not revert back to towns. This would make the transition more continous and not feel so abrupt. You would still get to pick legacy bonuses to give you perks in the next Age and the option to move your capital. You would still start a new tech tree for that Age. You would have the option of "upgrading" your civ to a historically accurate civ in the next Age (for ex: Gauls become Franks). But you have the option of keeping your existing civ and getting Age appropriate bonuses added to your civ. So no more forced civ switching to a new civ that is not related historically to your previous civ.
2) Add an Age in between Antiquity and Exploration. Add an Age between Exploration and Modern. And add an Age after Modern. This would reduce the gaps and help the game feel more continuous.
Ages would be:
Antiquity Age
Middle Ages Age
Exploration Age
Rennaisance Age
Modern Age
Atomic Age
I think the Ages in civ7 have 2 fundamental problems:
1) The Age transition feels like too big of a hard reset.
2) The gaps between Ages is too wide
These two issues cause civ7 to feel like you are playing 3 connected scenarios rather than a full game of civ. The gap betwen Ages is especially disconcerting because you basically jump hundreds of years that the player doesn't get to see or do anything about. The game basically just implies "A lot of time has passed and here is the new world that you find yourself in". Imagine a movie where you watch the first 20 mn, skip over 30 mn, watch 30mn in the middle, then skip over 20 mn and then watch the last 30 mn. That is basically what civ7 is. In a game that is about taking a civ from ~3000BC to ~2000AD, you should not skip over hundreds of years of history.
Here is how I would try to fix these two issues.
1) Make the Age transition softer. Units would not disappear. Independent peoples would not disappear. Cities would not revert back to towns. This would make the transition more continous and not feel so abrupt. You would still get to pick legacy bonuses to give you perks in the next Age and the option to move your capital. You would still start a new tech tree for that Age. You would have the option of "upgrading" your civ to a historically accurate civ in the next Age (for ex: Gauls become Franks). But you have the option of keeping your existing civ and getting Age appropriate bonuses added to your civ. So no more forced civ switching to a new civ that is not related historically to your previous civ.
2) Add an Age in between Antiquity and Exploration. Add an Age between Exploration and Modern. And add an Age after Modern. This would reduce the gaps and help the game feel more continuous.
Ages would be:
Antiquity Age
Middle Ages Age
Exploration Age
Rennaisance Age
Modern Age
Atomic Age
introduce politics as I support revolution and revolutions cannot be caused by a player but part of the game mechanics, and then I would abolish leaders and create a tree of ideologies
- Joined
- May 5, 2005
- Messages
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This is one of the experiences of the Civ 3 mod CCM 3:
If the civs are set properly, ages in Civ 7 are not needed at all for civ- and leader switching. You can see this yourself when playing this mod, that, together with its predecessors, has many years of experience with these items on its account.
If you want to set "cuts" in the game with Ages, these "cuts" must have an additional purpose (as for civ- and leader switching they are not needed). One reason for such a "cut" in Civ 7 is to make the game more challenging for the human player. Unfortunately Firaxis here seems to have forgotten the wisdom shown in the Civ 4 manual, when analyzing Civ 3: Taking away achievements from the human player is a very "unfun" element in the game and it is no wonder, that several human players reported problems in their motivation when playing the game especially in the last stages of such an age.
Wouldn´t it be much better to make the AI civs, which are competing with the human player, much stronger after such a cut in a positive way than to weaken the human player by taking away achievments from him ? The human player would be much better motivated in the last stages of an age if he can keep what he has built up in those later stages of that age. This would be how I would introduce such a concept into a civ game, but at present this is not possible with Civ 3 and Civ 7 in my eyes makes this very wrong by going the "unfun" way.
I think a key idea in the ages system is setting up a “cashing out” stage. When you found a settlement or research a tech, that helps you found more settlements and research more techs, which helps you ….etc
This is the exponential snowball.
and near the end of the game it stops and you divert all that to victory.
The idea seems to be that ages put in some of that victory diversion 2 extra times in the game … Which seems like a good idea if done well. I think they carry over a bit too much (to easy to go through most crises with sll your settlements, etc)
But it means they do really need to pay attention to the end of the age (ie make late buildings worth building…maybe obsolete Monument is 1 culture but obsolete Kiln is 4, etc.)
The combo of not only losing most of your civ’s unique game mechanics but also their identity, added to the random troop teleportation is definitely something that could have been smoothed over a lot, while still preserving the cashing out effect.
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198 / 5.000
If you introduce economic choices and political models you create a chain of choices that make the game dynamic with excellent AI of course, causes and effects a simulation of simulated events.
star_border
gimley_gunner
Chieftain
- Joined
- May 23, 2015
- Messages
- 61
Can’t you have the age transition itself a selectable game mode?
SupremacyKing2
Deity
Not sure how you do that without fundamentally changing the game since the age transition is baked into the core game. I guess you could have a game mode that connects the tech and civics trees from each age together so that players can just continue researching into the next "age" tree without an age transition. And of course, you would have to get rid of civ-switching but then the civ bonuses might not work anymore since they are designed for specific ages.
Maybe one way to do it would be a game mode that still keeps age transitions just without any changes. So the game would still say "antiquity age ends" and "exploration age begins" but you don't lose units, cities don't revert back to towns etc... So everything would stay the same from age to age.
And it is necessary to put. Model realistic socioo political, economic, to create credible and consistent timelines of history. , just obscure ethnic leaders. We need historical mechanics , and a strong artificial intelligence
stealth_nsk
Deity
There's a significant part of the game design around overbuilding, so buildings have to lose part of their bonuses. Also, number of policies needs to the reset.
For the rest - I'm pretty sure once modding tools will evolve, we'll see mods like this (I don't think it's possible to significantly tweak unit saving with the current tools).
King Flevance
Deity
I have been thinking about this a lot in my time away from being able to play and this is exactly what I keep coming back to myself. While I actually really like a 3-4 Age system in Civ for each Age to feel more distinct, I think Age transition hurts the flow of the game tremendously. With so many people comparing Civ 7 to a board game, Ed Beach should know that disrupting the "flow" of the game specifically to remove things from the leader is really bad design for a board game or a video game. It's like saying "Ok, pause your game of Catan every 12 rounds and reset everyone's cities to settlements and everyone discard your hand to prevent runaway leaders." It is disruptive and just feel bad from a purely gameplay perspective. At this time is also when you get to pick a new civ which can be exciting but is not enough to overcome that unfun change on the game map. (We could discuss the civ switch mechanic - but I don't see a fundamental problem there)
I have watched the video you posted about "myths" of Civilization and I certainly think that tech disparity is part of the charm of civ. I am not one that enjoys spearman vs tank but I do enjoy Muskets vs longbows or maces vs. swords. Either the shear dread of my opponent bringing newly superior forces at me or the bravado of walking a new unit up to the frontlines of a war that will unequivocally be felt. This just isn't present in civ 7. Upgrading to tier 2 units is just a little boost, but not exciting and actually pretty ignorable if the opponent has a unique version usually or even simply a couple iron deposits on you. A warrior (tier 1) should not be able to *reliably* stand against a spearman (tier 2) even if it is a unique warrior or if they have 3 Iron deposits. Going for the next tier of unit ahead of the competition has always been a viable strategy in civ for military. Now, it feels like only a slight, if not negligible, advantage that requires decent science investment.
Even just this would help out a lot, though I do agree with stealth_nsk on policy reset also. But basically, I think your point is "don't change the map". I personally would even prefer the following age beginning with tier 3 units from the previous age and needing to be upgraded through tech into the new age personally. That massive reset doesn't add anything of real value; it just kicks over your "sandcastle" and shrugs saying that it is in the name of balance. I think that a government revision could add some flavor here as well. Governments should go back to being unlocked by the civics tree and offer unique bonuses or something. Anything other than the current lame "2 yield boost options on celebration". The government should provide benefits and/or drawbacks to running your empire during standard play, not just celebrations. But that feels like another conversation.
I like the idea of the ages being distinct and even think isolating them in the tech/civic trees is interesting in concept but the whole thing feels like a generic idea rather than an interesting strategy design. But I also am severely limited on time to play and have only clocked in just under 200 hours really since launch.
already explained this too governments should have an amount of gold production, food, depending on the type of government, as in call to power. , also the possibility to choose the amount of work and food is a great idea in that game, as for the ages barbarians should evolve from nomads to sedentary and integrate or destroy civilizations. the idea of barbarians as destructive units is old and outdated good for the 90s
