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

[Lazy sweeper]

allowing you to keep all your units would be a start.

 

[Canadian Bluebeer]

Keep all my units where they were (or the nearest town).
Keep all my MONEY! (You can get stupid amounts on marathon from treasure fleets)
Keep all my Influence.

Oh hey, or just go back to the old style.

 

[Leucarum]

I have to say I was hoping this patch would make me want to play more games past antiquity but it really doesn't. I guess it's good that Antiquity era Civ7 is probably the best that the franchise has been...

Firaxis have their work cut out for them to fix the era system. Out of the goals I've heard them say for eras, the only one I think they scored might have been an own goal in hindsight...
Eras Prevent Snowballs: It's not doing that. Once you learn how to prioritize setting yourself up, you snowball just as hard as ever, if not harder.
Eras break the game into manageable chunks, and get players to finish games: I'm finding I just stop at the first era transition most of the time. It gives me a definitive "I've probably won, do I really want to carry on?" stopping point.
Eras let the player always play a Civ at its height: This is true, but civ switching has been so unpopular it might not have been worth the cost.
Eras let stages of the game have distinct mechanics: A low passing grade, Antiquity has most of the best mechanics, after that things start to feel a little forced/like they're pulling out the lower tier mechanics.

It was good for firaxis to take a swing at these problems, but as it stands, eras are looking like a bit of a miss to me - a hopelessly addicted Civ7 fan (mostly for antiquity era) - and I'm not sure the way you fix them without alienating more potential customers.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

I have to say I was hoping this patch would make me want to play more games past antiquity but it really doesn't. I guess it's good that Antiquity era Civ7 is probably the best that the franchise has been...

Firaxis have their work cut out for them to fix the era system. Out of the goals I've heard them say for eras, the only one I think they scored might have been an own goal in hindsight...
Eras Prevent Snowballs: It's not doing that. Once you learn how to prioritize setting yourself up, you snowball just as hard as ever, if not harder.
Eras break the game into manageable chunks, and get players to finish games: I'm finding I just stop at the first era transition most of the time. It gives me a definitive "I've probably won, do I really want to carry on?" stopping point.
Eras let the player always play a Civ at its height: This is true, but civ switching has been so unpopular it might not have been worth the cost.
Eras let stages of the game have distinct mechanics: A low passing grade, Antiquity has most of the best mechanics, after that things start to feel a little forced/like they're pulling out the lower tier mechanics.

It was good for firaxis to take a swing at these problems, but as it stands, eras are looking like a bit of a miss to me - a hopelessly addicted Civ7 fan (mostly for antiquity era) - and I'm not sure the way you fix them without alienating more potential customers.

The single thing they could do to make the Era changing/Civ changing mechanic (more) acceptable would be to give the gamer Options.

Right now, Civ VII gives me the continuous feeling that they have removed as many of the player decisions as possible from the game: fixed Legacy Paths - and only one path for each Legacy in each Age; All units on a fixed 2 - 3 Upgrades per Age and no option to carry over even Unique units to the next Age - and no option to say where the units that do carry over end up; and so on and on - the game didn't even ship with the option to rename your own cities, which is as basic a player option as there is.

Specifically to the Civ changing, they didn't even allow the option for a player to keep his Civ through the Age change, no matter how bad that decision might be for the gamer. Yes, the Civ might have no effective attributes or Uniques in the succeeding Ages and be extremely Non-Optimal and a candidate for Punching Bag of the Ages, but although many gamers would complain bitterly about that and the 'unfinished nature' of the game, they still would have played their beloved Slobbovia Antiquity Civ (Capital: Rumplestitsvickle) through all the ages, and posted the results of their against-the-odds Modern Age Win on Diety with an Antiquity Civ.

And that would have provided data for expanding the Civs into real Multi-Age Civs later, possibly even with criteria for when your Civ qualifies to maintain into the next Age. That could tie neatly into the "Can you take Antiquity Aksum to the Modern Age?" tagline and the game would have a lot more appeal to both the traditional My Civ Or Nothing crowd and those who are looking for new ways to play.

 

[Leucarum]

The single thing they could do to make the Era changing/Civ changing mechanic (more) acceptable would be to give the gamer Options.

I definitely agree, and think Firaxis are.on the ball with this one. Their audience is very fragmented in terms of what they want and I don't see a way to square this circle without being flexible...

Right now, Civ VII gives me the continuous feeling that they have removed as many of the player decisions as possible from the game: fixed Legacy Paths - and only one path for each Legacy in each Age; All units on a fixed 2 - 3 Upgrades per Age and no option to carry over even Unique units to the next Age - and no option to say where the units that do carry over end up; and so on and on - the game didn't even ship with the option to rename your own cities, which is as basic a player option as there is.

An added benefit for changing how much carries over would be that at some point era changes can be made so mild that it effectively lets people remove eras without actually removing eras...

Legacy paths feel like a mechanic which would have been ideal for a board game - the push your luck element of how quickly do you think players will end it feels like it would be great in that context, and the lower amount of diversity wouldn't matter as much... But I don't know how well they're gomna stand the test of time in Civ... I don't think it's too shocking that tbe best set of legacy paths - Antiquity - are basically vanilla Civ game goals...

Specifically to the Civ changing, they didn't even allow the option for a player to keep his Civ through the Age change, no matter how bad that decision might be for the gamer. Yes, the Civ might have no effective attributes or Uniques in the succeeding Ages and be extremely Non-Optimal and a candidate for Punching Bag of the Ages, but although many gamers would complain bitterly about that and the 'unfinished nature' of the game, they still would have played their beloved Slobbovia Antiquity Civ (Capital: Rumplestitsvickle) through all the ages, and posted the results of their against-the-odds Modern Age Win on Diety with an Antiquity Civ.

And that would have provided data for expanding the Civs into real Multi-Age Civs later, possibly even with criteria for when your Civ qualifies to maintain into the next Age. That could tie neatly into the "Can you take Antiquity Aksum to the Modern Age?" tagline and the game would have a lot more appeal to both the traditional My Civ Or Nothing crowd and those who are looking for new ways to play.

I play mostly antiquity era civs in previous games, so for me a way to stick with a previous civ definitely hurts my desire to finish games of Civ7.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

I play mostly antiquity era civs in previous games, so for me a way to stick with a previous civ definitely hurts my desire to finish games of Civ7.

But the point is that the game gives no gamer any Choice. You play only Antiquity Civs in Antiquity, Exploration Age Civs in Exploration, etc. If your Rome has dodged all the plagues, migrations, invasions, etc in Antiquity, It Does Not Matter: you still cannot play Rome in Exploration, even a Rome with outdated government, army, and politics.

Every time they removed a choice or option for the gamer, they alienated a gamer who really enjoyed exercising that option or choice. As it happens, Mandatory Civ Switching seems to have alienated a whole horde of them.

 

[Leucarum]

But the point is that the game gives no gamer any Choice. You play only Antiquity Civs in Antiquity, Exploration Age Civs in Exploration, etc. If your Rome has dodged all the plagues, migrations, invasions, etc in Antiquity, It Does Not Matter: you still cannot play Rome in Exploration, even a Rome with outdated government, army, and politics.

Every time they removed a choice or option for the gamer, they alienated a gamer who really enjoyed exercising that option or choice. As it happens, Mandatory Civ Switching seems to have alienated a whole horde of them.

I've said before on here I think eliminating it - or making it optional is the lowest hanging fruit in terms of a big game-defining change they could aim for. I enjoy Civ7 in spite of it, but it seems like far more people find it to be too big of a pain point.

 

[0urBall]

Every time they removed a choice or option for the gamer, they alienated a gamer who really enjoyed exercising that option or choice. As it happens, Mandatory Civ Switching seems to have alienated a whole horde of them.

Yeah, I think you're spot on with this. Firaxis' apparent solution to the very broad player base that has been built up over the years over several sequels of the game, and who might want wildly different ways to play the game, was to remove many elements of choice for players. Then expand where players can play the game (consoles/VR etc) in an effort to capture a new audience. And it looks like it backfired, badly

 

[Haig]

I would also like the option for you and ai to start ancient with any civ.

I could start as Russia in ancient age and my neighbours could be France and Japan for example.

 

[Gorbles]

I would also like the option for you and ai to start ancient with any civ.

I could start as Russia in ancient age and my neighbours could be France and Japan for example.

How would you balance this? I really wouldn't like the game to go back to "pick a bland bonus" or "pick a specific bonus that isn't useful until point X".

I get it as a purely flavour thing, but games aren't just flavour.

 

[Verified_Confection_Being]

How would you balance this? I really wouldn't like the game to go back to "pick a bland bonus" or "pick a specific bonus that isn't useful until point X".

I get it as a purely flavour thing, but games aren't just flavour.

You don't need to balance it, and you don't need to pick it if you want balance.

And if you did, you can give it bonuses themed around early and middle russian cultures, not like we're short on themes for Russia from different eras

 

[Gorbles]

You don't need to balance it, and you don't need to pick it if you want balance.

You do need to balance it, because there will be players interested in a well-balanced game that see and / or end up using the option. Either that or it needs a disclaimer, I guess.

I'm a big fan of options. But options that fundamentally change the design or balance of the game need a bit of care.

 

[Leucarum]

How would you balance this? I really wouldn't like the game to go back to "pick a bland bonus" or "pick a specific bonus that isn't useful until point X".

I get it as a purely flavour thing, but games aren't just flavour.

If you want to make a civ playable in any era, to some extent this is a civ-by-civ question but there are some broad trends. It'd definitely be a large task but far smaller than designing the civs from scratch.

Improtantly the majority of civ abilities just add numbers to yields/scores. These need to be scaled down or up depending on era you play a civ in, but they are low hanging fruit as it's just a matter of scaling... If you go through the list, the overwhelming majority of civ abilities would work in any era. It'a almost ironic that 7 shows firaxis can design civs which are good throughout the game in the iteration where they wanted era-specificity.

Ths problematic civ abilities either play off era-spcific things (e.g. giving legacy points), or scale to things acquired over ages (e.g. number of traditions slotted). I think it's fine for some of these to stay age-specific, but they need to be looked at one by one.

Most UIs/UBs can also work fine with just number-scaling. The exception is civs like Prussia who have era-specific UIs... But they're rare so this probably isn't too much work to put in the case by case pile.

Where things get most awkward are UUs. For millitary, you could extend the abilities to units from the same class in different eras, that only fails for civs like Japan whose units are very late game classes. Or just accept that civs get a power spike in their chosen era from their UU... Which I kind of like. 7 doesn't have as many busted UUs as 6, so I think it actually works fine.

Civilian UUs are probably the hardest. There's too many niche missionary/archaeologist replacements.... But you also need to let units like Sherpas and prospectors be built any time for their civs to function well. You'd also run out of GP for those civs quite fast potentially if they could be built whenever. I think these have to vary in terms of some being age-locked (missionaries, great people, archaeologists), and others not (Scouts, Merchants, Commanders). There's no game breaking civilian UUs, so I think it'a fine for that to be a civ-specific thing.

Associated wonders are fine to not have available in every era.

I think the biggest question is around tradition trees. Do you break them up to be split over the ages? Let them unlock slowly? Limit how many nodes a player can do per age? Have upgrades be researchable each age? I think this is rhe other decision point, and would probably need to be tested a lot...

It's clearly a reasonably big task, and there'a choices to be made, but it definitely doesn't feel like an insurmountable task to me?

This is also the "band-aid" solution if you wanted to fix things quick and assumed underlying game systems otherwise stayed the same. There's definitely more satisfying systematic approaches.

 

[Gorbles]

If you want to make a civ playable in any era, to some extent this is a civ-by-civ question but there are some broad trends. It'd definitely be a large task but far smaller than designing the civs from scratch.

Improtantly the majority of civ abilities just add numbers to yields/scores. These need to be scaled down or up depending on era you play a civ in, but they are low hanging fruit as it's just a matter of scaling... If you go through the list, the overwhelming majority of civ abilities would work in any era. It'a almost ironic that 7 shows firaxis can design civs which are good throughout the game in the iteration where they wanted era-specificity.

Ths problematic civ abilities either play off era-spcific things (e.g. giving legacy points), or scale to things acquired over ages (e.g. number of traditions slotted). I think it's fine for some of these to stay age-specific, but they need to be looked at one by one.

Most UIs/UBs can also work fine with just number-scaling. The exception is civs like Prussia who have era-specific UIs... But they're rare so this probably isn't too much work to put in the case by case pile.

Where things get most awkward are UUs. For millitary, you could extend the abilities to units from the same class in different eras, that only fails for civs like Japan whose units are very late game classes. Or just accept that civs get a power spike in their chosen era from their UU... Which I kind of like. 7 doesn't have as many busted UUs as 6, so I think it actually works fine.

Civilian UUs are probably the hardest. There's too many niche missionary/archaeologist replacements.... But you also need to let units like Sherpas and prospectors be built any time for their civs to function well. You'd also run out of GP for those civs quite fast potentially if they could be built whenever. I think these have to vary in terms of some being age-locked (missionaries, great people, archaeologists), and others not (Scouts, Merchants, Commanders). There's no game breaking civilian UUs, so I think it'a fine for that to be a civ-specific thing.

Associated wonders are fine to not have available in every era.

I think the biggest question is around tradition trees. Do you break them up to be split over the ages? Let them unlock slowly? Limit how many nodes a player can do per age? Have upgrades be researchable each age? I think this is rhe other decision point, and would probably need to be tested a lot...

It's clearly a reasonably big task, and there'a choices to be made, but it definitely doesn't feel like an insurmountable task to me?

This is also the "band-aid" solution if you wanted to fix things quick and assumed underlying game systems otherwise stayed the same. There's definitely more satisfying systematic approaches.

I don't think it's insurmountable. But it's a direction to be chosen that commits a certain workload to the devs. Appreciate the breakdown here.

 

[Leucarum]

I don't think it's insurmountable. But it's a direction to be chosen that commits a certain workload to the devs. Appreciate the breakdown here.

When you actually start looking at civs. They really do look like they'd mostly be fine without an era system. I do think dev time would probably be better spent on a more hollistic solution than the band aid, but I don't think it's out of the question for a lot of the above to go into making modded versions of civs that function out of era which is why I'd given it some thought.

 

[Krikkit1]

I think the stages of making civ transitioning better+ more flexible (in terms of increasing dev workload)

Stage 1. Allow players to keep/choose the names/graphics etc. of their civ separate from the ability if they so chose

Stage 2. Allow a "blank" civ for each era (no Graphics/name associated with it and no uniques).. that way if I can choose my civs name with a blank ability (I could even make that a game mode where the AIs choose a civ and have to stick with it)

Stage 2.5 Replace some of the "Blank" civs with "Attribute" civs where they have some uniques based around a pair of attributes... ie If I am using a Modern/Exploration Age civ for my Name, I can choose Economic-Military, Scientific-Expansionist, or Cultural-Diplomatic uniques in Antiquity... probably not worth it unless they don't want to go to Stage 3.

Stage 3: Allow any civ to be in any Age, but some of it's Uniques won't work outside of its normal Age.

 

[Leucarum]

I think the stages of making civ transitioning better+ more flexible (in terms of increasing dev workload)

Stage 1. Allow players to keep/choose the names/graphics etc. of their civ separate from the ability if they so chose

Stage 2. Allow a "blank" civ for each era (no Graphics/name associated with it and no uniques).. that way if I can choose my civs name with a blank ability (I could even make that a game mode where the AIs choose a civ and have to stick with it)

Stage 2.5 Replace some of the "Blank" civs with "Attribute" civs where they have some uniques based around a pair of attributes... ie If I am using a Modern/Exploration Age civ for my Name, I can choose Economic-Military, Scientific-Expansionist, or Cultural-Diplomatic uniques in Antiquity... probably not worth it unless they don't want to go to Stage 3.

Stage 3: Allow any civ to be in any Age, but some of it's Uniques won't work outside of its normal Age.

Honestly I think just Step 1 would be best if you want to minimize dev workload while working on something more all-encompassing

 

[Krikkit1]

Honestly I think just Step 1 would be best if you want to minimize dev workload while working on something more all-encompassing

Yeah, I rally think Stage 1 is the most important and requires relatively little work.

Stage 2 has the advantage of not being too unbalanced and still relatively simple (just add 3 more civs with no art assets of their own)

Stage 3 requires a lot more work and would definitely not be balanced (see Bulgaria and specifically switching the Tradition effect with the UA effect so that the more OP one did not carry on)

 

[Verified_Confection_Being]

Personally, stage 1 isn't enough to get me to buy it. I'm not interested in paying $70 dollars for a second class citizen experience.

But it might draw people back who have already bought and dropped the game, so that might be enough to keep the game going and show it has a future.

 

[Leucarum]

Personally, stage 1 isn't enough to get me to buy it. I'm not interested in paying $70 dollars for a second class citizen experience.

But it might draw people back who have already bought and dropped the game, so that might be enough to keep the game going and show it has a future.

Yeah I think the point of that would be a placeholder for something better. I'd like it to be there, but it really would just be a band aid