Missed Opportunity: Inflicting Negative Era Score

[isau]

Just thinking out loud here.

I like the new Era Score system. It's fun and adds a new dynamic.

However, I also feel like a big opportunity was missed with it. There isn't really any way to negatively impact a rival civ's Era Score. As a player, that means that any points I get in the pool are "safe." This is also why it's a bad thing to get too many points in a single era. There's no way to get with a debuff that takes some of those points away.

Some things I wish took era score away were:

• Losing a city (medium hit)
• Losing your capital (big hit)
• Getting beat to a wonder (small hit)
• Losing an emergency
• Spy killed in action (small hit)
• Losing Suzerainship during a war

There could be other things. I just wish there was a little more danger once the bar was filled up that someone could do something to you to knock you back. It would make creating a "buffer" of extra Era Score points handy. And allow for some epic backstabbings by flipping other player's Era Score points negative just as the era closes.

 

[Jackanape]

You never know. This could be part of the next expansion. As much as I dislike the new model of releasing incomplete games, it does create a sense of wondering what is the next "placeholder" etc...

Either way, great observation and idea!

 

[pokiehl]

Cool idea. To add to that I'd say losing a population due to starvation should give negative era score too.

 

[Katakanja]

I remember there was a little discussion about negative era score a few weeks ago when R&F was released and one of the interesting ideas that came out of it was possibly to add a score penalty for capturing enemy settlers (thematically it would be because the capturer is essentially forcing foreign civilians to expand their empire for them, or in other words, resorting to slavery )

Since grabbing unprotected AI settlers is one of the borderline OP ways the player gets an edge over the AIs, turning it into a question of whether you are willing to take an era score hit in exchange for the city could make things more interesting than it is at the moment.

 

[Zenstrive]

I rather they overflow the era points from one age to the next. Silly to see an oversupply of points to get a golden age to have basically little to get on the next age. Like during classical age you would have so many trigger for era points, but by the time you're on medieval you're scrambling for points and turn into dark age next.

 

[Lily_Lancer]

I like them. They make spies more useful since you can sacrifice them to ensure dark age. In Rise and Fall dark age is king and I only consider going to a golden age when I am about to fail to achieve a dark age in medival or Renaissance.

 

[Trav'ling Canuck]

Would feel too much like piling on for most players, I fear. Something bad happened to you, so now something else bad has also happened.

Unless the AI was immune (or maybe given era point bonuses to compensate), it would also give another boost to warmongering.

Thematically I like the idea, but for the reasons above I don't expect to see it outside of a mod.

 

[acluewithout]

I'd also like to see ways to get negative era score, both passive (e.g. you miss out on a wonder, bad peace deals, unhappiness), and that you can inflict on others (e.g. capturing opponents cities).

Relatedly, (1) I'd like players to get one additional dedication to choose between (i.e. for a total of 5 not 4), and for this choice to be determined by what government you're currently in, and (2) I'd like to see more things impact on loyalty negatively, like religion, or changing governments.

(On point (1) above, imagine going into a Dark Age and, because you're in Monarchy, you can Choose 'Star Chamber', or if you're in Democracy, you can choose 'McCarthyism'.)

But... Firaxis in general seem to be very conservative with imposing negatives to any systems... I think because of bad experiences from Civ V - e.g. global happiness.

I don't think conservatism around negatives is necessarily wrong either ... negatives can potentially punish and discourage risk taking, further punish failure creating a downward spiral, and generally just make the game less fun. The AI would also certainly need new ways to cheat.

Ultimately, I think the game will eventually need some way to adjust how hard era score and loyalty are to deal with, the same way you can vary resource levels and other features. That way, people that want to ramp up the difficulty of city / empire management can, and those at risk of rage quitting from city flipping, dark ages etc., can dial down the difficulty of those systems.

 

[blackcatatonic]

I really like this idea. It seems a bit silly that you can secure a Golden Age well in advance and not lose it no matter what happens.

 

[Phoenix1595]

I think this is a great idea. I have played through several R&F games, and so far, I haven't even been able to slip into a dark/heroic age, and it seems too easy to pass into a golden age (sometimes I am not even trying). Firaxis really played up the dark ages during the run-up to release, and I really want to see it in action without actively losing. Negative era score modifiers would be great for that.

 

[Timodelphia]

I like this idea, but I don't see it significantly addressing the route cause of the problem, which is Golden Ages being too easy to acquire. (And this is from my perspective as a player who plays King and considers his skills "average.")

I think normal age should be the occurrence 60-70% of the time, with the remaining percentage split evenly between dark/golden.

 

[Cerilis]

Or how about policies with an era score trade-off? Like, roleplaying as a short-term boost followed by long-term regression. Get x, but lose 1 era score every turn.

 

[SammyKhalifa]

I don't think people would actually like it in practice, even if they think they would now..

Adjust the thresholds for NA/GA and I think we're fine. I do like that the system is pretty open to adding new "moments" in the future.

 

[GoodSarmatian]

Would feel too much like piling on for most players, I fear. Something bad happened to you, so now something else bad has also happened.

Unless the AI was immune (or maybe given era point bonuses to compensate), it would also give another boost to warmongering.

Thematically I like the idea, but for the reasons above I don't expect to see it outside of a mod.

I like it too, but losing era score for things beyond your control could lead to a vicious cycle.

I'd prefer losing era score as a trade off every time you do a Bad Thing:

Attack or conquer a city state.
Declare war without a proper casus belli.
Plunder too many trade routes or pillage too many improvements/districts.
Conduct spy missions against friends or allies.
Clear/harvest too many features/resources.

Or how about policies with an era score trade-off? Like, roleplaying as a short-term boost followed by long-term regression. Get x, but lose 1 era score every turn.

Maybe make dark age policies always available but lose one point for every x turns they're active in a normal or golden age.

 

[katanaD]

I wouldnt mind seeing certain actions count as a negative era score.

Like the other night when i got 2 era points for being the first to start an inquisition.. really? like thats a good thing

LOL

 

[isau]

Since grabbing unprotected AI settlers is one of the borderline OP ways the player gets an edge over the AIs, turning it into a question of whether you are willing to take an era score hit in exchange for the city could make things more interesting than it is at the moment.

Wow I really like that concept.

Declare war without a proper casus belli.
Plunder too many trade routes or pillage too many improvements/districts.
Conduct spy missions against friends or allies.
Clear/harvest too many features/resources.

These are also great. I hadn't thought of it being a penalty for doing stuff that you shouldn't do.

Maybe we could even make Magnus somehow count against era score? He does look pretty shady.

 

[acluewithout]

Firaxis know that some players deliberately try to zig zag from dark ages to heroic ages - they said they saw this during play testing.

At the moment, the only way to get dark ages is to actually hold off doing cool stuff. That's bad gameplay design - players should be incentivised to do cool stuff, not hang around waiting for timers to tick down.

A solution would be giving players some way to actually drive down their era score. Maybe declaring wars drives down your score, or introduce some mechanics where you work your population harder at the cost of happiness (e.g. via cards).

 

[isau]

Using an Inquisitor certainly could be a source of losing era score points, LOL.

An Apostle promotion that preaches the sins of your enemy and lowers their score sounds like a real possibility BTW. A similar spy mission (conducted in the Government Complex district?) could be neat too.

Maybe whoever builds the Great Library knocks down the Era Score of everyone else since they're forgotten?

 

[SaiH]

I like this idea because I had it too. It came to my mind when I was watching a preview let's play video when it was still possible to farm era score points by repetively losing and reconquering a non loyal city.
-1 era score for losing a city and +1 era score for reconquering it would give you +/-0.

 

[Katakanja]

These are also great. I hadn't thought of it being a penalty for doing stuff that you shouldn't do.

I suspect that this might be a niche opinion, but I actually wish that Firaxis had implemented era score as a sort of Bioware-esque pair of morality meters rather than another bucket-filling system. Basically Golden and Dark age points would come from different types of historic moments and be counted separately - if the two meters were roughly balanced in score at the end of an era, you would get a normal age, but if, say, one had a 2/3rds majority then you would get the age that corresponded with the higher score.

I mean, even though they are called "dark" ages, its pretty clear now that we've had time to play with it that despite the name a dark age isn't really intended to be a punishment in gameplay terms. Rather, the emphasis should have been put on the fact that in Golden Ages you do everything you can already do a little bit better than normal, whilst Dark Ages are designed for when you want to adopt a higher risk/reward style with the lower loyalty and Dark Age policies, followed by a powerful Heroic Age. Accordingly, it should be easier for the player to steer their civ towards one age type or another based on the kind of playstyle they enjoy rather than the current setup where it's kinda implied that getting a Dark Age is a "fail" state (since you didn't collect enough era score to exceed a preset threshold).