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

Nobody listen to them when they say the world, this "world is really only "6000" years old but they firmly believe it.
Strangely enough it's the year of the Great Ramaya war... yet they attribute it to the flood... but only the new testament...
not even the Christians knows the origin of the Julian calendar, which came before. Not sure which one the French adopted.

You unblocked me some old memories, back at college years I think I read bout this -shift-, there's been some doku series about it
also if I remember right. The Romans used to shift back (or forth?) the Julian calendar after every 4 years or so of 5 days also if I remember.
Christians and anybody else in Rome knew perfectly well the origin of the Julian calendar, which was promulgated under Julius Caesar in 46 BCE, then modified by his successor, Augustus into the form it kept until the Gregorian reform much later. That reform was required because even after Augustus' adjustments, the Julian calendar was off compared to the solar year by .01 days, so that even with days added or subtracted every 3 - 5 years, it got increasingly at odds compared with rthe 'real' year over the centuries.

On the other hand, the Pre-Julian Roman calendar was a bag of worms, supposedly established by Romulus, the legendary Roman First King. That one had only 10 months starting the year in the spring (month Mensius Martius, our March) and left all of the winter season as, basically, uncounted. It was sort of based on a lunar cycle, but even that is fiercely debated by the Scholars, and it didn't match the actual yearly seasons very well and had to be 'adjusted' constantly to avoid, or example, celebrating the harvest at the beginning of summer instead of the end. Despite constant tinkering with it, it was almost constantly 'off' compared to the solar year by 1 - 3 months, and 'years', because of intercalation efforts, could last anywhere from 360 to 446 days. It wasn't until around 304 BCE that they started actually publishing monthly calendars before the month started, so that Festivals and other events were predictable instead of at the whim of a local official or priest.

Oh, and depending on the period, the Roman calendar started the year in our months of March, June, July, January, September or October. Whenever you see dates for anything Roman (Pre-Julian) written in modern form, they had to be calculated by somebody modern and may be entirely approximate.
 
Nobody listen to them when they say the world, this "world is really only "6000" years old but they firmly believe it.
Strangely enough it's the year of the Great Ramaya war... yet they attribute it to the flood... but only the new testament...
not even the Christians knows the origin of the Julian calendar, which came before. Not sure which one the French adopted.

You unblocked me some old memories, back at college years I think I read bout this -shift-, there's been some doku series about it
also if I remember right. The Romans used to shift back (or forth?) the Julian calendar after every 4 years or so of 5 days also if I remember.
Only by introducing realistic historical dynamics that foresee realistic dynamics leading to multiple choices in economy, politics, and religion, creating fictional but realistic historical paths, can we solve the issues of transaction.
 
Dog Knows what criteria ChatGP was using, but when I looked into it some time ago there are at least three different 'systems' of dividing human existence into periods: technological, historiographical, general - and that's leaving out older 'systems' like Greek Mythological.

And before you ask, none of them match. Just about the only thing they all agree on is that 'Neolithic' is the last part of the 'stone age'. After that, you takes your pick.

The game designers took their pick, and they are neither wrong nor right, just one option out of a number of options that the professional historians can't agree on either.

I agree with @Evie, though, that the problem is not with the in-game Ages themselves, but with the transition periods, that hide the equivalent of another Age of time in a Black Hole of events which are presented to the gamer at the beginning of the next Age. The gamer's only input into these events is how he/she ended the last Age: no allowance is made for modifying the future of your Civ by navigating the 'transition' (or Hidden Age) in a different way.

Now, this is a problem, because one of the purposes of the Age transition is to present the gamer with a largely new Civ to play (with only some Obsolete or Ageless buildings in his settlements, some Legacy bonuses carried over from how well the last Age ended, and some units magically 'upgraded' to the new age but also scattered hither and yon in your territory - sometimes infuriatingly so) and the opposition 'reset' so that the proverbial run-away endgame is/should be Impossible.

It isn't, of course: I just started a Modern Age with approximately twice the Science and Culture per turn of any of my AI opponents and twice the settlements, which is close enough to 'run-away' for my book. But any modification to the transitions allowing the gamer more input risks negating the transition effect on game imbalance even more, and puts Civ VII on the same track as previous games when the whole game system was designed to try to avoid that.

Because the one absolutely certain fact is that the AI will not be able to 'game' the transition as well as the human player, so making the transition period a playable sub-Age will inevitably increase the potential imbalance between human and AI as the game progresses - a problem that every long-term game (Civ, EU, etc) faces.

The most enfuriating thing about the Age Transition Board Shuffle - aside from Ed Beach shoe horning yet another board game mechanic into a medium that shouldn’t need it - is that Civ6 alreafy had the begginings of a much better, smoother, more organic anti-snowballing tedium mechanic in the Dark Ages system

You simply make a Dark Age mandatory at each era change, and have it hit bigger Civs that over extended themselves harder.

Any cities you didn’t found rebel and become Free Cities. Any civ capitals you conquored rebel and the Civ they were capital of return to the game; at your current tech level. A somewhat random number of your native cities might rebel, depending on difficulty, loyalty and amenities. Free cities have a chance each turn to become a city state.

There is a much more organic and playable crises age. Someone who runs away with a conquoring spree will learn the historical lesson that all Empires eventually fall to civil strife and rebellion.

You can replicate a lot of that in Civ6 with the proper mods, and it makes the game a hell of a lot more interesting.
 
Doesn't this introduces exactly the same problem of a "forced penalty" that people object to with the Age transition soft resets?
Not if you get sufficient rewards for what you brought into the dark age
and
what you brought through it.
 
Well, if we are going with the idea that forced penalty is a good idea/design, that’s a nicer way to do it.
 
Not if you get sufficient rewards for what you brought into the dark age
and
what you brought through it.
Cities rebelling is rarely a sufficient reward, or offset in any meaningful way. Remember the Loyalty discussions in VI?

I get why some might prefer this, but overall it's still a punitive mechanic. It's just a different kind of one. And also unavoidable in that you're also stuck in a Dark Age. Some people dislike Age transitions because they're mandatory first and foremost. That you can't play your way out of them.

I don't share that opinion, but I can't see how this improves that for that kind of player.
 
You simply make a Dark Age mandatory at each era change, and have it hit bigger Civs that over extended themselves harder.
I don't know about more dark age stuff, but I definitely feel like Civ 7 does not handle the issue of large empires well. It has introduced 'hard' rubber banding, specific crude measures to stop players running away from others.

Previous games have instead played with softer measures, happiness, food and loyalty modifiers for empires that get too big too fast. I don't think any of them worked perfectly, in fact Civ 6 just allowed you to kind of ignore it at times. However, that is the direction I feel the game should have gone in. A player should be able to try and expand quickly if they want to, but there has to be a downside. Getting too big should make you unstable, and require a period of stablisation to settle things down before trying again. There needs to be subtle, but real penalties for getting too far ahead in any shape. If you race ahead in science, then that probably should mean you have fallen behind somewhere else.

Yes it's complex to build those systems, so Firaxis instead found the most blunt way of doing things, by taking away players toys and bringing everyone down to the same level. Basically Socialism as a design concept, no wonder it didn't work!
 
Correct me if I'm wrong, but one of the ways to save this situation is to do this: 1) Introduce a civilization similar to the ancient one for each era, it only seems that China and India have these civilizations in all eras; 2) The age transition must be less drastic and therefore keep more things like units etc; 3) Make the game more sandbox instead of inserting objectives to achieve; 4) The only thing that I see as difficult to change is the choice of the leader, seeing Xerxes leading Japan is not the best, in this sense the solution is difficult, we will see how it can be changed; 5) The great characters must return; 6) Much more still to change but I believe the most important are listed
 
Doesn't this introduces exactly the same problem of a "forced penalty" that people object to with the Age transition soft resets?

If you want a runaway stomp, that should be what settler difficulty is for.

If you want the game to actually challenge and engage you, then yes there needs to be some sort of realistic limits and tradeoffs for various playstyles, otherwise we get an ICS Paint The Map Similator instead of a game.

Cities rebelling is rarely a sufficient reward, or offset in any meaningful way. Remember the Loyalty discussions in VI?

I get why some might prefer this, but overall it's still a punitive mechanic. It's just a different kind of one. And also unavoidable in that you're also stuck in a Dark Age. Some people dislike Age transitions because they're mandatory first and foremost. That you can't play your way out of them.

I don't share that opinion, but I can't see how this improves that for that kind of player.

The problem with loyalty in Civ6 is that it was inplemented in a very simplistic maner with zero nuance. Either a conquored city was perfectly loyal after a token turn or two of reduced yields and it’s citizens Borgified into your empire, or it was impossible to hold.

Cities you didn’t found should always be less productive, and should always have the potential to break away if your empire gets shaky. Frankly the usual case should be somewhat of a net loss in terms of gold for sure.

I play with a house rule in Civ6 that you cannot make peace with another Civ unless you return all their cities. If you want an empire, you pay the price of war weariness and your subject people being in unrest. It’s an excellent brake on Paint The Map. Only City States and Free Cities can be Borgified.

Loyalty DID do an excellent job of preventing forward settling nonsense, it’s absence in Civ7 was immediatly noticeable.

I don't know about more dark age stuff, but I definitely feel like Civ 7 does not handle the issue of large empires well. It has introduced 'hard' rubber banding, specific crude measures to stop players running away from others.

Previous games have instead played with softer measures, happiness, food and loyalty modifiers for empires that get too big too fast. I don't think any of them worked perfectly, in fact Civ 6 just allowed you to kind of ignore it at times. However, that is the direction I feel the game should have gone in. A player should be able to try and expand quickly if they want to, but there has to be a downside. Getting too big should make you unstable, and require a period of stablisation to settle things down before trying again. There needs to be subtle, but real penalties for getting too far ahead in any shape. If you race ahead in science, then that probably should mean you have fallen behind somewhere else.

Yes it's complex to build those systems, so Firaxis instead found the most blunt way of doing things, by taking away players toys and bringing everyone down to the same level. Basically Socialism as a design concept, no wonder it didn't work!

I have a series of mods and house rules for Civ6 that get pretty close to what you are talking about

The hard reset being done in Civ7 is a combo of Fireaxis being too lazy to implement “organic” systems combined with Ed Beach using the Board Game Mechanics Hammer on everything.
 
If you want the game to actually challenge and engage you, then yes there needs to be some sort of realistic limits and tradeoffs for various playstyles, otherwise we get an ICS Paint The Map Similator instead of a game.
I agree, but that doesn't have anything to do with pointing out that people who dislike mechanics where an outcome is mandated regardless of gameplay progression are going to like your idea as much as they like Age transitions.

It also doesn't seem "organic" at all, a forced Dark Age.
 
Christians and anybody else in Rome knew perfectly well the origin of the Julian calendar, which was promulgated under Julius Caesar in 46 BCE

They knew perfectly well the origin???
It was stolen from the Egyptians, renamed after Julius Caesar, I don't think anybody not even Julius Caesar knew the history of that calendar...
 
They knew perfectly well the origin???
It was stolen from the Egyptians, renamed after Julius Caesar, I don't think anybody not even Julius Caesar knew the history of that calendar...
You appear to be conflating the pre-Julian with the Julian.

Pre-Julian Roman calendars apparently started as a purely lunar calendar strictly related to planting and harvesting, and so was totally at odds with the Solar year and had to be tinkered with almost constantly. Julius sponsored a nearly-complete reform (finalized by Augustus) that resulted in the 12 months almost as we know them now, fixed intercalation periods, and a 'year' of 365 and a fraction days - compared to the older Roman years that varied from 250 to 446 days.

The weeks, their lengths and the days of the week still needed some work, which is why our modern days (in English, at least) are largely named after post-Roman Norse gods: Thurs (Thor's) day, Wednes (Wodin's) day, Tues (Tyr's) day, Fri (Frey's) day.

And nobody knows the complete history of the older Roman calendars, because they were constantly modified from before 400 BCE on and only a few Roman writers commented on the calendar at all. By the time Julius took it in hand, it had elements from prehistoric Roman/Etruscan, Greek, Mesopotamian, and Egyptian calendars in it, and there is not much consensus then or now as to which elements came from where, exactly.
 
Latin never adopted the norse gods naming.

Lunes - Luna/Moon
Martes - Mars
Mercole - Mercurius
Giove - Jove
Vener - Venus
Sabat - Saturn
Domes - The Home, the Sun.

Anyway... I lost track of why we were arguing about it...

Oversimplification of all UI stuff, removal of tedious things like workers, and now an ultra smooth experience, eventually needed that kind of "cheat code" to let players think
they won now three races instead of one. because if it was one alone, with this kind of simplification, would be too easy.
Was it because of that? I mean when did we depart from that and arrived here talking about Thor vs Mars... I don't remember.
 
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The game is good and willl be great, with age transitions. Most of the complaining seems to come from people who haven't played the game very much, they complain about everything. This game is already better than civ 6. Go play something else.

Moderator Action: Edited out offensive content. Keep the conversation civil- AH
 
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The devs gave up on legacy paths with the new update, setting a precedent for other core mechanics to become optional as well. Classic mode is coming sooner than we expected.
 
Correct me if I'm wrong, but one of the ways to save this situation is to do this: 1) Introduce a civilization similar to the ancient one for each era, it only seems that China and India have these civilizations in all eras; 2) The age transition must be less drastic and therefore keep more things like units etc; 3) Make the game more sandbox instead of inserting objectives to achieve; 4) The only thing that I see as difficult to change is the choice of the leader, seeing Xerxes leading Japan is not the best, in this sense the solution is difficult, we will see how it can be changed; 5) The great characters must return; 6) Much more still to change but I believe the most important are listed
And technology, the legal system, and events determine the change of era from the fall of the Roman Empire to the collapse of cities, and the birth of feudalism and feudal society, with a feudal economy caused in part by barbarian invasions, the rise of Christianity, and the Holy Roman Empire, the struggle between empire and papacy, and then the Renaissance, and then the Age of Exploration. Political, economic, and events are the foundations for the development of an era, perhaps mixing ideologies and economics, but the phases of the era must certainly be distinguished.
 
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