Making Eras More Fun

[Melchizedek]

This is a thread for sharing how you'd like to see developers make eras more fun, with an eye toward incentivizing more interesting strategy instead of micromanagement. I currently find that the game incentivizes me to control what era I will enter next, and provides very boring ways to do this. To time dark and golden ages, I need to manipulate exactly when I build and explore, or when I invest envoys in a city state, things like that. It's tedious. I like a system that incentivizes exploration, building, and achieving new things for my civilization, but I'm not wild about one that incentivizes doing those things on precisely the correct turn.

How could the system be tweaked to make the game more strategically intriguing while eliminating the micromanagement? I have some thoughts but will share them later. I'm creating this thread to gather the community's ideas. (And if you like the way the current system makes you time everything out, feel free to defend that!)

 

[Softly]

There is no easy answer. I don't like the idea of letting excess era score carry over into the next era. Would make early era score way too powerful and I kind of like the idea keeping the eras distinct so each one feels like a "chapter" of your game. Maybe make it so that era score earned in the last 10 turns rolls over, or 25% of excess era score roles over, so you don't have to sit there for a dozen turns with your unique unit one turn from completion.

On a separate but related note they need to make normal eras more, well, normal. They should be 60% of the eras you achieve with dark ages and golden ages being 20% each. I have played 6 games in R&F so far and I've never even been close to a dark age. I would say 60-70% of my ages are golden. I play on immortal with default game speed.

 

[Spartacus73]

On a separate but related note they need to make normal eras more, well, normal. They should be 60% of the eras you achieve with dark ages and golden ages being 20% each. I have played 6 games in R&F so far and I've never even been close to a dark age. I would say 60-70% of my ages are golden. I play on immortal with default game speed.

Similar experience, although I've had a few Dark Ages. However, I typically vault right into a Heroic Age, so Normal Ages have been rare.

 

[Chibisuke]

They need to make golden and heroic ages more consequential. In Civ 5, a golden age gave big boosts to production, culture and science. They should do that and maybe make it different between golden and heroic. Also, they need to reduce the penalty of dark ages. This way dark and golden Ages can impact the game but be more of a bonus (for avoiding dark age and obtaining golden/heroic) rather than totally essential micromanagement.

 

[Spartacus73]

It's a tough call. If a Dark Age is truly a "negative", then it potentially just puts you further behind other civs and almost guarantees you stay there. Likewise, too many bonuses for a Golden/Heroic, and you'll run away with the game.

I think some of the policy cards for Dark Ages maybe point in the right direction in terms of having the Ages affect your game play without arbitrarily helping you or hurting you to the point of determining the game. For example, make some of those policy card affects the actual modifiers in the Dark Age to force your game play strategy. While in a DA, a civ isn't likely to have the enlightened or ambitious world view and is going to be focused more on it's own problems, so maybe military units lose -10 combat strength outside of their borders to discourage/hamper you from expanding and conquest, but conversely maybe have +5 combat strength in your borders to protect from invasion. Maybe there's also a penalty to science, but you get a larger percentage boost from Eureka's, similar too with culture. You're ruling your people with a strong fist so Loyalty generated by each city is stronger, but it's spread is reduced so it doesn't exert pressure outside it's borders very much and allows other civs to settle closer (sort of exists already). So in a nutshell, it has some "internal" benefits that allow you to catch up or at least not fall behind, but also some penalties that will make it difficult to do certain things.

Golden/Heroic ones would then be the opposite, in line with a civilization that is prominent in influencing the world. Stronger military conquest boosts, increased Loyalty pressure (currently exists), science/culture boosts, etc. As I type this, I also realize that some of this may be too strong and do exactly what I said they shouldn't- vault a civ into a runaway status and basically end the game. I like what's currently in the game for Golden/Heroic. They are fun/useful boosts, but not necessarily game breaking.

Just brainstorming here- not claiming that is a fully thought out plan so no hate please.