How would you like civ7 divided into eras?

[BuchiTaton]

By that standard the renaissance isn't a gunpowder era either. Cannons were probably reasonably widespread by the mid renaissance, but the common use of firearms-equipped troops is more very late 1500s (very end of Renaissance, or past it) to early 1600s (post-Renaissance) than 1400-1500.

Unless you cling to the fiction that is a Renaissance lasting into the Industrial era, in ehich case what you have isn't so much Eurocentrist as a fantasy novel.

Exactly.

The first replay to this thread was mine suggesting a 1500 to 1700 Early Modern Era, so the units would be based around 1600 warfare. In game would not be a Renaissance Era, just some transition of units between Late Classical (yes I neither care about the names Medieval of Post-Classical) and Early Modern.

1.- E. Ancient (4500 to 2500 BCE)
2.- L. Ancient (2500 to 500 BCE)
3.- E. Classical (500 BCE to 500 CE)
4.- L. Classical (500 to 1500 CE)
5.- E. Modern (1500 to 1700 CE)
6.- L. Modern (1700 to 1900 CE)
7.- E. Contemporary (1900 to 1960 CE)
8.- L. Contemporary (1960 to 2020 CE)

Four pairs of eras, same lenght, shared names and esthetic (to save art dev cost/time). A new era for early gameplay stage and less recent eras.

 

[GeneralZift]

Am I only the one who likes the way it is and doesn't want to change it?

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

Am I only the one who likes the way it is and doesn't want to change it?

Not necessarily. I'd only want to change the name of the Renaissance Era to Early Modern Era, but everything else is fine just the way it is.

 

[pecheneg]

Despite this, still would be possible to get techs and units (etc.) labeled* for the next era if you can affort it, this way some civ could still get Bombards in Medieval Era if they invest in it like China did.

Hm…
1. It is by the amount of technology that the Song Dynasty, under which practical powder weapons appeared, very little resembles the European Middle Ages and quite strongly – the European Renaissance. For quite a long time in China, the future came earlier.

At the same time, it is noteworthy that something else was still needed for the bombs in the year 1000.

2. The most important prerequisite for the early appearance of gunpowder in China is saltpeter. And not just any, but the optimal one (potassium nitrate). In other words, we have an example of a sharp decrease in the cost of research due to the availability of a resource. You can look at it from the other side: civilizations that do not have saltpeter under their feet had a huge penalty for the independent development of gunpowder technologies.

3. And yes, in order to extract relatively pure saltpeter from the "saltpeter land", an ancient tradition of alchemy was needed, which had a purely religious connotation – the Taoists were looking for the elixir of life / immortality. In general, here we see a rarely taken into account "ideological" modifier of research.

That is, the non–synchronous development of technologies in different civilizations has quite specific reasons, and they can be taken into account - outside of strict binding to a specific civilization.

By the way, there is one more nuance. The reference tree of gunpowder technologies is just in China. Other users missed a number of links – powder flamethrowers, fire arrows, fire spears of two generations, powder bombs for throwing machines. It is a paradox, but within the framework of historical game mechanics, an independent developer of gunpowder should receive a certain number of "non-historical" units according to the "what if" principle

 

[BuchiTaton]

Hm…
1. It is by the amount of technology that the Song Dynasty, under which practical powder weapons appeared, very little resembles the European Middle Ages and quite strongly – the European Renaissance. For quite a long time in China, the future came earlier.

At the same time, it is noteworthy that something else was still needed for the bombs in the year 1000.

2. The most important prerequisite for the early appearance of gunpowder in China is saltpeter. And not just any, but the optimal one (potassium nitrate). In other words, we have an example of a sharp decrease in the cost of research due to the availability of a resource. You can look at it from the other side: civilizations that do not have saltpeter under their feet had a huge penalty for the independent development of gunpowder technologies.

This is a related point discussed sometimes here, the role of resources and especially "strategic" ones. I think most resources dont need to be 100% indispensable to train units or research techs, but still provide huge discounts when owned. In game Niter and Sulfur could not be needed to train gunpowder units but still gives you great bonus included a Gunpowder tech research time and cost reduction.

The trick is to turn historical conditions a gameplay bonus not a limiting factor.

3. And yes, in order to extract relatively pure saltpeter from the "saltpeter land", an ancient tradition of alchemy was needed, which had a purely religious connotation – the Taoists were looking for the elixir of life / immortality. In general, here we see a rarely taken into account "ideological" modifier of research.

That is, the non–synchronous development of technologies in different civilizations has quite specific reasons, and they can be taken into account - outside of strict binding to a specific civilization.

In game these could be represented with the techs that directs you to Gunpowder tech, or either from government politics, religious tenets or cultural traditions. For example the tenet Esotericism provide "pre-scientific" tech cost discounts.

By the way, there is one more nuance. The reference tree of gunpowder technologies is just in China. Other users missed a number of links – powder flamethrowers, fire arrows, fire spears of two generations, powder bombs for throwing machines. It is a paradox, but within the framework of historical game mechanics, an independent developer of gunpowder should receive a certain number of "non-historical" units according to the "what if" principle

This is interesting but I wonder how much could devs invest in it. Units like these are usually implemented in game as Uniques, in these cases likely medieval chinese UUs.

 

[Joij21]

1.) Prehistoric (300,000 B.C. - 10,000 B.C.) The dawn of Homo Sapiens in Africa to Göbekli Tepe and settlement of Jericho. All the early lithics before the Neolithic!
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2.) Neolithic (10,000 B.C. - 5,000 B.C.) The beginning of simple agriculture, through the Chalcolithic, to the start of the first empires of Sumer.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
3.) Ancient Antiquity (5,000 B.C. - 1,200 B.C.) Begins with the empires of Mesopotamia, through the unification of upper and lower Egypt, sees the Pyramids Built.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
4.) Classical Antiquity (1,200 B.C. - 323 B.C.) Starts after the Bronze Age collapse, ends after Alexander the Great dies and his legacy destroyed. Rome rises.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
5.) Axial Antiquity (323 B.C. - 235 A.D.) The good ol' days! Hannibal, Ceasar, Cleopatra, Augustus, Jesus, Caligula, Nero. Ends when the crisis of the third century begins.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
6.) Late Antiquity (235 A.D. - 476 A.D.) Rome never recovers and begins losing endlessly. Glorious generals keep getting backstabbed by barbs. Rome falls at end.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
7.) Early Medieval (476 A.D. - 1066 A.D.) Islam rises, Byzantium shines in the east, the Chinese invent gunpowder. Europe is in the dark ages getting sacked by Vikings!
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
8.) High Medieval (1066 A.D. - 1337 A.D.) The battle of Hastings ends the Viking age. The crusades, Genghis Khan. Ends at the start of the Hundred Years War.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
9.) Late Medieval (1337 A.D. - 1453 A.D.) Black Death ravages the old world, Hundred Years War sees the rise of gunpowder on the battlefield. Constantinople falls at end, and with it the last remnant of Rome truly falls.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
10.) Post-Medieval (1453 A.D. - 1648 A.D.) Intellectuals fleeing Constantinople trigger the Italian Renaissance, the age of colonization begins. Wars of the Reformation ravage Europe. Millions of natives die from Spanish conquistadors. Millions are enslaved in Africa and brought to toil in the new world as well.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
11.) Neoclassical (1648 A.D. - 1799 A.D.) The end of the 30 Years War establishes the concept of sovereignty within Europe. From now on balance of power and the concept of world order is the main way in which Europeans respond to rivals. Long gone are the wars of religion as intellectualism and rationalism slowly erode the previous ideals. Constitutionalism, modern representation, and the rise of free market capitalism takes place. The enlightenment sweeps the west and with it a wave of rebellious activity takes place. The U.S.A. gains its independence. Ends at the end of the French Revolution.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
12.) Industrial (1799 A.D. - 1893 A.D.) New modes of production due to technological advances change human history forever. Factories, railroads, steamboats, ironclads.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
13.) Progressive (1893 A.D. - 1920 A.D.) Women gain the right to vote in New Zealand. Universal suffrage sweeps the world. Other progressive movements gain traction. Trust busting activity and union strikes dominate to reign in corporate greed. WW1 ends the last of the absolute monarchs of Europe. Communism achieves its first victory by gaining state power within Russia. Women in the U.S.A. gain the vote in 1920. Prohibition a product of the Women's suffrage movement also begins.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
14.) Modern (1920 A.D. -1945 A.D.) The interwar years up until the end of WW2. Afterwords the Bretton Woods agreement sets the global exchange of currency and pegs it to the U.S.A. dollar which in turn is backed by gold. The United Nations too is founded after its predecessor the League of Nations failed to prevent the war.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
15.) Atomic (1945 A.D. - 1969 A.D.) After the Atomic bombings of Japan. Nuclear research and development accelerate as does the cold war. Space exploration is spun off from this research and culminates in 1969 with the first lunar landing.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
16.) Post-Modern (1969 A.D. - 1991 A.D.) 1969 is the summer of love, a sign of rapidly changing social values. Second wave feminism brings women more prominently into the workforce. Neoliberalism rises and uses globalism to decouple companies from accountability toward unions by offshoring jobs overseas. Gold is decoupled from the dollar and the Bretton Woods system is abandoned to more easily facilitate overseas manufacturing.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
17.) Digital (1991 A.D. - 2007 A.D.) The Soviet Union breaks apart and with it the cold war. The rise of the internet and spread in the popularity of the personal computer revolutionizes society. Sid Meier's Civilization 1, 2, 3, and 4 are released!
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
18.) Social (2007 A.D. - 2020 A.D.) Steve Jobs drops the first iPhone. With it the internet becomes even more accessible and accelerates the then rising social media platforms and big tech. The age of Memes begins. Sid Meier's Civilization 5, and 6 are released!
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
19.) Biotech (2020 A.D. - 2077 A.D.) COVID-19 fueled the rise of mRNA vaccine and experimental drug treatments while also significantly disrupting the previous era's interconnectedness, even triggering global decoupling as nation states begin new rivalries and supply shortages create less of a pie for everyone else. Global Warming is further exacerbating the recovery of said supplies, perhaps creating a resource crisis if gone unchecked. Nevertheless, the increasing availability of CRISPR and increased venture capital and speculation (perhaps risen in part by the rise of cryptocurrency) into the biomedical industry will further develop genetic based capabilities. Whether for good or ill, genetic chimeras of all sorts are likely to be produced before the era is out.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
20.) Nanotech (2077 A.D. - 2100 A.D.) The Elon Musk Neuralink and Mark Zuckerberg Metaverse cerebral cortex integrated simulated interface dystopian cyberpunk future. Cyberpunk 2077, dawn of nanotechnology spurred on from experimentation of extreme biosciences from the previous era. Megacorporations run by big tech bros rule the world. Cryptocurrency and NFTs are the only currency. Traditional nation states become increasingly irrelevant as these corporations slowly creep in and pledge to solve all the problems that governments either could not solve, refused to solve, or simply failed for not resolving conflicts in the previous era.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
21.) Transhuman (2100 A.D. - ) Something happens along the way whereby due to technology humanity kinda ceases to exist. Slow conversion into cyborgs then robots, consciousness uploading, self-biogenetic modification into new species, a replacement by hostile AI, or aliens. Hence transhuman, as in going beyond human and or being replaced/exctincted.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------



And no, I don't care if this is slightly Eurocentric. Civ has always been about gamifying history, that premise alone can never be pure. Fun and rule of cool should be sufficient, this is a theoretical civ 7 and if it is to be good it needs to be better than any civ game ever made before. It must be like the second coming of Christ, otherwise future iterations in the franchise simply won't be worth it. The brand will go stale.

 

[pecheneg]

This is a related point discussed sometimes here, the role of resources and especially "strategic" ones. I think most resources dont need to be 100% indispensable to train units or research techs, but still provide huge discounts when owned.

I quite agree about resource-dependent technologies. And, it seems, there is already a mod component on this topic (for Civilization 4)

As for the training of units, the penalty for the lack of "official" access to the resource can be implemented quite realistically. Now there will be a long list of abstract wishes.

The embargo on trade in strategic goods has been commonplace since time immemorial, as has the blockade. And just as long ago, obstacles were successfully bypassed. That is, resource owners were constantly faced with the leakage of a certain share of resources to the conditional black market, where those who wished could buy them – but at huge costs. The most spectacular and at the same time described in detail example is the purchase of iron by the Mongols at the beginning of Genghis Khan's career. The American South and Germany in both World Wars are "textbook" examples.

At the same time, the scale of leaks naturally depended on the economic model and the level of corruption, difficulties and prices progressively increased as the volume that needed to be bought grew, and buyers often did not limit themselves to passively waiting for smugglers.

That is, the minimalist option is to give spies a mission to buy resources, and transport ships - a mission to break the blockade. The average is to add a simple black market model to the "missions" and add specialized blockade–breaking units. Maximum – 1. Build a realistic model of the black market (the volume of the offer depends on how much the buyer is willing to pay for a unit of goods) 2. Take into account the corruption factor. At the same time, he is, in fact, present in the game right now (fines for the number and remoteness of cities lowered by the court are a clear "hint"). In mods, these penalties also depend on the form of government.

In general, corrupt mechanics are not implemented enough in the game – for example, a corrupt quartermaster was often a decisive force on the battlefield and the first weapon of mass destruction Up to the sudden disappearance for the owner of entire divisions that existed only on paper (parchment, papyrus ... rock art (?)).

That is, a penalty to combat strength as the army grows (compensated by special efforts) would be logical, for example. This partially compensates for the snowball effect. Etc.

In game these could be represented with the techs that directs you to Gunpowder tech, or either from government politics, religious tenets or cultural traditions. For example the tenet Esotericism provide "pre-scientific" tech cost discounts.

Yes, especially since the influence of ideology is striking. In the situation with Chinese firearms, for example, Taoist alchemy contributed to the early invention of gunpowder, but at the same time further development encountered resistance from the Confucian bureaucracy with its cult of "classical" samples.

This is interesting but I wonder how much could devs invest in it. Units like these are usually implemented in game as Uniques, in these cases likely medieval chinese UUs.

The nuance is that in the Chinese case, early gunpowder practically did not affect the basic design of the "units". . That is, the catapult with the bomb–throwing option remained a catapult, and the cavalryman with a fiery spear was the most ordinary cavalryman who easily changed fashionable weapons to purely traditional ones. Presumably, to the great joy of the Confucians.

 

[GeneralZift]

I genuinely can't stand early modern. To me it implies (early) modern. Modern as in Modern as in how we know Modern Era (aka 1900s) so Early Modern to me refers to the early part of Modern and not a whole different that is happened to be called Early Modern aka (Renaissance)

Why can't we just stick Renaissance? It makes sense to me? And like someone has already said, Civ is about game-ifying history and it will never be 100% accurate so it's alright if it's a little bit Eurocentric.

I wouldn't even mind another name for it than Renaissance but Early Modern does not make sense to me (or the typical casual, I suppose) as much as it makes sense to you history buffs, no offense.

 

[Joij21]

I genuinely can't stand early modern. To me it implies (early) modern. Modern as in Modern as in how we know Modern Era (aka 1900s) so Early Modern to me refers to the early part of Modern and not a whole different that is happened to be called Early Modern aka (Renaissance)

Why can't we just stick Renaissance? It makes sense to me? And like someone has already said, Civ is about game-ifying history and it will never be 100% accurate so it's alright if it's a little bit Eurocentric.

I wouldn't even mind another name for it than Renaissance but Early Modern does not make sense to me (or the typical casual, I suppose) as much as it makes sense to you history buffs, no offense.

Perhaps Post-Medieval?

 

[Joij21]

China managed to reunite because of its simple geography compared to the monstrosity that was Rome's Asia + Africa + Europe, with mountains splitting up peninsulas, islands, rivers that act like borders, etc

Not true, China has plenty of mountains, lakes, rivers, plateaus, deserts, jungles, forests, etc to divide the terrain.

The difference is that the Han Chinese were far more brutal and ruthless in their sinofication of the continent. They forced people to become ethnically like the Han or else. Romans were far more lenient in allowing local cultures to exist so long as they paid taxes and provided armies. Hell they even entrusted vast swaths of the empire to be guarded by barbarians with questionable ethnic loyalty.

There are absolutely brutal tales in Chinese history of the wicked and often genocidal tactics which their emperors employed. Feeding chopped up enemy remains back to one's enemies, forced castration, ripping people in half by tying rope at two ends of the body and having two horses at both ends run away, salami slicing of flesh, and water torture to name a few. The very Mandate of Heaven is based solely on the principals of might makes right, because through conquest and brutal subjugation anyone can legitimately claim the throne of all China. It became so commonplace it was tradition within Chinese culture for a new dynasty to rise to power via force of arms, and it was totally morally acceptable by the Chinese people or else.

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

I genuinely can't stand early modern. To me it implies (early) modern. Modern as in Modern as in how we know Modern Era (aka 1900s) so Early Modern to me refers to the early part of Modern and not a whole different that is happened to be called Early Modern aka (Renaissance)

Why can't we just stick Renaissance? It makes sense to me? And like someone has already said, Civ is about game-ifying history and it will never be 100% accurate so it's alright if it's a little bit Eurocentric.

I wouldn't even mind another name for it than Renaissance but Early Modern does not make sense to me (or the typical casual, I suppose) as much as it makes sense to you history buffs, no offense.

As I've mentioned before this era is supposed to represent the years between 1450 to 1750. The actual Renaissance would have only went to c. 1600 throughout Europe. That leaves about a 150 year gap which isn't accurately portrayed.

The only other proposition would be to have an Enlightenment Period, between the Renaissance and Industrial, to cover those eras if we don't rename it to Early Modern, in my opinion.

 

[Evie]

Renaissance is a local regional development that covers only a part of the period in only a small part of the area. It's just plain a bad name. We might as well mame that era the Sengoku Jidai; it covers a similar time period and a not much smaller area.

 

[Patine]

Henri - except that those ages are ALSO not universal, and the strict Stone-Bronze-Iron progression is also Euro-and-Middle-Eastern-Centric. The Bronze Age skipped large parts of Africa, China pretty much skipped the Iron Age (they did develop iron tools, but they started being widespread very close to porcelain, and long after the start of the Chinese historical period, so after the Iron Age)., etc, etc.

There is no universal system of eras.

Some degree of abstraction is going to have to be come up and conceded in some form if the age/era/epoch system is going to remain, at the end of the day. Some terminology is going to have to swallowed by all, frankly, even if it means arbitrary and soulless numbered ages/eras/epochs.

 

[BuchiTaton]

I genuinely can't stand early modern. To me it implies (early) modern. Modern as in Modern as in how we know Modern Era (aka 1900s) so Early Modern to me refers to the early part of Modern and not a whole different that is happened to be called Early Modern aka (Renaissance)

Why can't we just stick Renaissance? It makes sense to me? And like someone has already said, Civ is about game-ifying history and it will never be 100% accurate so it's alright if it's a little bit Eurocentric.

I wouldn't even mind another name for it than Renaissance but Early Modern does not make sense to me (or the typical casual, I suppose) as much as it makes sense to you history buffs, no offense.

Yep, the naming inconsistency bothers me too.

Even the name Post-Classical instead of Medieval is wrong for me since the prefix Post implies after so have someting more beyond any "Post-X Era" feels wrong. Also in this thread it has been shown how difficult is to provide a concise basis for Medieval Era beyond "between the falls Roma 1.0 and Rome 2.0". So if there are people talking about "Late Antiquity" as/or after Classical and Post-Classical for Medieval, just use some consistency and name it "Late-Classical" (yes I know there is a proper Late-Classical but it is also Greco-Roman centric and not represented in game as its own thing anyway).

 

[Henri Christophe]

Exactly.

The first replay to this thread was mine suggesting a 1500 to 1700 Early Modern Era, so the units would be based around 1600 warfare. In game would not be a Renaissance Era, just some transition of units between Late Classical (yes I neither care about the names Medieval of Post-Classical) and Early Modern.

1.- E. Ancient (4500 to 2500 BCE)
2.- L. Ancient (2500 to 500 BCE)
3.- E. Classical (500 BCE to 500 CE)
4.- L. Classical (500 to 1500 CE)
5.- E. Modern (1500 to 1700 CE)
6.- L. Modern (1700 to 1900 CE)
7.- E. Contemporary (1900 to 1960 CE)
8.- L. Contemporary (1960 to 2020 CE)

Four pairs of eras, same lenght, shared names and esthetic (to save art dev cost/time). A new era for early gameplay stage and less recent eras.

I think the prefix Late and Early make it confuse, it's better just don't use it in pairs, it can be. Ancient, Classical, Modern and Contemporany.

14.) Modern (1920 A.D. -1945 A.D.) The interwar years up until the end of WW2. Afterwords the Bretton Woods agreement sets the global exchange of currency and pegs it to the U.S.A. dollar which in turn is backed by gold. The United Nations too is founded after its predecessor the League of Nations failed to prevent the war.

The modern age so short? Modern was from the Napoleonic times untill today.

 

[Evie]

That's Late Modern, Henri, and it ended in 1950. The other half of modern is (unsurprisingly) the much-talked-about Early Modern.

As for Classical/Postclassical, I must say, the use of the term "Classical" to refer to a period somewhere in the two milleniums between 1000BCE to 1000CE actually strikes me as one of the more widespread historical periodization, being used for (roughly) 700BCE-500CE in Europe, 200CE-900CE in Mesoamerica, 500-1200 in Japan, and indirectly (via it being the period where classical chinese was the common written language) 500BCE-220CE in China,

There are differences between all these classical eras, and it's far from a *perfect* periodization, but it's imo one of the least regionalized ones before the 1750s.

 

[pecheneg]

Cannons were probably reasonably widespread by the mid renaissance,

The middle of the Renaissance (1420-1620) is, for a minute, the 1520th. So this is the end of the "era of big guns" (1420-1520) due to the spread of the bastion system. That is, the siege artillery brought to mind has been promptly destroying almost any fortress for a hundred years. Okay, in fact, the 80 - collapse of the entire English defense at the end of the Hundred Years' War began twenty years after the beginning of the Renaissance.
"Real" field guns en masse are already the Burgundian Wars (1470s). And the mass use of light semi-pounders and small proto–howitzers by the Germans and Hussites is the 1420s.

but the common use of firearms-equipped troops is more very late 1500s (very end of Renaissance, or past it) to early 1600s (post-Renaissance) than 1400-1500.

By the end of the 16th century, the ratio of arquebusiers / musketeers and pikemen was already about 1 to 1. 25% of arquebusiers (of the total number of infantry) among the Spaniards already at Cerignola (1503). However, this is more than the then average European standard (between 10 and 15%).
At the same time, the role of the branches of the armed forces is very rarely strictly proportional to their number. When calculating the number of infantry is still the main force of the army.
And it is not difficult to understand that the constant growth in the number of shooters is explained by exactly one thing – they are on average more effective than melee fighters. Their share in the losses of opponents is much higher than the share of numbers. As a result, the pikemen turned into auxiliary troops much earlier than follows from the formal calculation.
In short, you will have to post a brief reference on the issue, although painfully lazy.

 

[Joij21]

I think the prefix Late and Early make it confuse, it's better just don't use it in pairs, it can be. Ancient, Classical, Modern and Contemporany.

The modern age so short? Modern was from the Napoleonic times untill today.

I'm making up my own eras according to my personal interpretation of a history which the next civ should emulate. I use modern strictly in the modernist movement sense which was quite popular between the world wars. Personally, I agree with @GeneralZIft that I don't really like the new "woke" nu-history created by contemporary "universalist" intellectuals. Early modern and modern sound stale because modernity is always the present, yet intellectuals now think they can get away with somehow calling the past the present. Modern as an era name therefore only sounds good if explicitly referencing modernism.

Also, it's a game, we don't need woke creeping into a game that's meant for pure fun. Let's not make it currently political, or controversial. We gamers want our products holy and unspoiled from the poop of the culture wars, this is after all what God wants all videogames to be there is no denying it. Let's just have fun and rule of cool, it's a game guys, it doesn't need to be politically correct.

 

[Praetyre]

While I've long since abandoned any serious usage of my Long Chronology, I figured it'd make for interesting discussion fodder, even if it is extremely Eurocentric (Ancient Near East centric prior to classical times):

Spoiler :

Middle Paleolithic (300,000 BC): The dawn of Homo sapiens sapiens.

Upper Paleolithic (50,000 BC): The most recent and, arguably, most significant exodus of Homo sapiens sapiens out of Africa.

Mesolithic (20,000 BC): Pottery develops, the dog is domesticated, and the Last Glacial Maximum draws to a close.

Neolithic (10,000 BC): Agriculture and sedentary lifestyles are developed.

Chalcolithic (5000 BC): The first proto-city states develop, trade networks emerge beyond a subsistence level.

Early Bronze Age (3000 BC): Writing and bronze metallurgy are discovered. Egypt is unified. This is the age of great monument builders, as well as the first conquering empires.

Middle Bronze Age (2000 BC): Civil administration and codes of law are developed further, including Hammurabi.

Late Bronze Age (1200 BC): Trade networks enable a complex web of civilizations to enjoy unheard of prosperity and culture.

Archaic Period (800 BC): The Late Bronze Age collapse occurs, Troy falls, Homer writes, the first Olympiad is held, the rise of the Greek city-states, and Rome is founded.

High Classical Period (500 BC): The kings of Rome and the last Athenian tyrant are overthrown, Persia fails to invade Greece, and Socrates is born. Most ancient Greeks people can name (especially philosophers) date from this era.

Hellenistic Period (300 BC): Alexander dies, leaving in his wake a web of smaller splinter empires whose cultural influence would last millennia. This is the time Rome: Total War and Imperator: Rome are set.

Imperial Period (50 BC): Julius Caesar is assassinated, Augustus rises, and the Roman Republic falls.

Late Antiquity (300 AD): Crisis of the Third Century, Constantine legalizes Christianity, then adopts it as his and the state's religion.

Low Middle Ages (500 AD): The Western Roman Empire falls, Justinian closes the revived Neoplatonic academy.

High Middle Ages (1000 AD): The Normans conquer Britain, the Crusades are called, and the Vikings settle Vinland.

Late Middle Ages (1300 AD): Cannon puts an end to the golden age of castles, and the Black Death sweeps Eurasia.

Renaissance (1500 AD): The Renaissance, the Reformation, the printing press, handheld firearms, and Columbus.

Baroque Period (1600 AD): Spain reaches its apex, while England settles the New World.

Enlightenment (1700 AD): The Enlightenment proper begins.

Romantic Period (1800 AD): The Age of Revolutions kicks off with the French and American Revolutions; this era would include the Napoleonic Wars.

Past that, it's the same as my previous post. I'm not sure how to tackle the far future, but the Kardashev scale would likely be part of it if I did.

 

[Henri Christophe]

That's Late Modern, Henri, and it ended in 1950. The other half of modern is (unsurprisingly) the much-talked-about Early Modern.

I think the ages is a bit of arbitrary. As I understand the modern age starts in French revolution and still our own current age untill today.

I don't really like the new "woke" nu-history

I still don't understand what is "woke". But I need to disagree with you and @GeneralZIft about eurocentric timelines, there is thousand of option of time lines possible to draw in this game, why we should still drawing the same eurocentric time line over and over? I think one solution is each civilization had it's own time line, I would love to play with Japan and discover how they share the time, because untill now I just know a few, as for example they had the Meiji era.
If you are playing as Aztecs you can divided the time as pre classic, classic, pos classic, colonization and republic.