Modern Age needs to be extended

[aelf]

I have mixed feelings about this because sometimes after a slog of an Exploration Age, I'm ready to just go for victory in the Modern Age. But it does mean that the age is short.

My Modern Ages on standard speed have all been sub-100 turns, and I think that might be on the high side. And it's not just about duration. There's also usually not a whole lot that needs to be done. It's not boring or uninteractive. It's just that there's only a certain number of steps that need to be taken to achieve victory, and that's it. And unless I'm gunning for a military victory, any warring is peripheral and doesn't change anything.

There's been a lot of speculation on the eventual existence of a 4th age, and I think there are good reasons to think so. But some of these reasons also apply to simply extending the Modern Age. I won't go into some of those reasons because they get into speculative territory, but here are why I think the Modern Age needs to be extended:

• Because it's so short, civ choices almost don't matter for gameplay. You're mostly likely cruising on the empire you've built and at best your civ choice will only speed up your victory a little. Again, military victory might be the exception here.
• You pretty much never get to the end of the tech tree unless you're gunning for science victory.
• We need content beyond the early Atomic Age.

So why not have a 4th age instead? I think another round of civ-switching might cause fatigue, especially when the civs in Modern Age already feel like they don't have much impact. Also, it will ruin the pacing of the game if the Modern Age is short and it's followed by presumably another short age.

It's probably possible to introduce some kind of evolution in Modern Age civs, though, through some mechanic that might help make the age more interesting. And since the victory conditions as they are are the main culprit, extending the Modern Age also requires them to be reworked, which might mean introducing more mechanics or mini games that would add interest to the age as well.

If this happens, I'll miss the shorter games somewhat. But I think it would only be worse if a 4th age is introduced instead.

 

[Atlas627]

I absolutely think we need a 4th Age so that Modern has the same balancing act of short-term vs long-term planning that the other Ages have, which will allow us to see Modern through and also use the Modern tools. The final, 4th Age can be explicitly designed as all about finishing out the game, with futuristic themes allowing for wacky, rules-changing, game-ending stuff.

But yes, an extra full Civ swap is too much. But we need different bonuses suited to playing a 4th Age. So I think we'll get something more like this, since Postmodern Civs might be touchy subjects and some of the Modern Civs survived to the current day with the same name/culture:

Each Modern Civ unlocks one of the Postmodern Civs based on region/history (and so you have an option, but you probably picked your Modern Civ because of the gameplay bonuses, which should line up with the Postmodern Civs you'll unlock via Modern play), but otherwise you unlock options based on your Ideology and Legacy paths (over the game, because Ideology is likely the path you're going for in Modern). Postmodern Civs will use the adjectival of the Modern Civ you had, but with the 'Government Form' of the Postmodern Civ. So we'll have things like

United States of _____ (focuses on Cultural and Military, unlocked by Democracy Ideology or completing Cultural + Economic in any single Age)
Republic of _____ (focuses on Scientific and Cultural, unlocked by Democracy Ideology or completing Scientific + Cultural in any single Age)
People's Republic of _____ (focuses on Scientific and Economic, unlocked by Communism Ideology or completing Scientific + Economic in any single Age)
Pan-_____ Bloc (focuses on Cultural and Economic, unlocked by Communism Ideology or completing Cultural + Military in any single Age)
_____ Kingdom (focuses on Economic and Military, unlocked by Fascism Ideology or completing Economic + Military in any single Age)
_____ Empire (focuses on Scientific and Military, unlocked by Fascism Ideology or completing Science + Military in any single Age)

_____ Union (focuses strongly on Economic, unlocked by completing 2+ Economic Paths over the game)
_____ Commonwealth (focuses strongly on Cultural, unlocked by completing 2+ Cultural Paths over the game)
Royal Society of _____ (focuses strongly on Scientific, unlocked by completing 2+ Scientific Paths over the game)
_____ Hegemon (focuses strongly on Military, unlocked by completing 2+ Military Paths over the game)

where _____ is the adjectival of your Modern Civ. This will help with the identity-switch fatigue but allow the 4th Ages bonuses to be geared for focusing on victory. And this allows the Modern Age to play like how it's designed, where the rush for victory is held off until the 4th Age and the tools in Modern are about competing priorities like the other Ages.

 

[Lebo44]

My Modern Ages on standard speed have all been sub-100 turns, and I think that might be on the high side.

Maybe the reason that Modern Age is short is that it will be simply extended to cover next eras.

 

[The_goggles_do_nothing]

where _____ is the adjectival of your Modern Civ. This will help with the identity-switch fatigue but allow the 4th Ages bonuses to be geared for focusing on victory. And this allows the Modern Age to play like how it's designed, where the rush for victory is held off until the 4th Age and the tools in Modern are about competing priorities like the other Ages.

I like these ideas but I think they should just be added to the Modern age. Having to finish two victory conditions seems a natural way to extend games. There's the problem of people nuking to stop people winning and the game becoming a stalemate so there would need to be a counter to that.

 

[UWHabs]

Despite the resets curbing some parts of snowballing, if you've set yourself up beforehand, you can really steamroll in the modern age. I'm curious to see what a game where players were relatively even going in would look like, if there's actually something you can do to help set you up.

You also always have the awkward issue where if you have enough of a science lead to be able to tech to a higher tier of unit faster than someone else, odds are you can just complete the space race faster anyways.

Maybe somehow figuring out a redesign so that unit upgrades are handled more outside the tech tree even somehow. Or even turn the tech tree into like 3 completely separate trees - one econ tree, one pure science tree, and one military tree? Or add some units or unit buffs to the civics tree, so that a more balanced setup gives you some benefits.

The other option would be to like take all the current civ bonuses, but turn them up to 11. Let France pick 2 celebration types, have the industrial park give you +100% production bonus to buildings in the city, etc... Something so that with the right setup, you can actually slingshot your way towards some of the victory types.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

Modern Age is short because it generally ends by 100 Turns instead of being extended by Crisis to about 120 - 150. Onpaper, it has the same number of turns, we are just, as a group, ending the game beore playing 1/3 or more of them.

Adding a 4th Age simply kicks the lack of end-Age planning from the Modern to the Post-Modern Age without solving the problem of a Dull End of Age. Unless you plan to make end-game Victory possible in t he Modern Age, which makes the 4th Age utterly redundant.

What is needed (Personal Opinion Only) is more variety and flexibility of Victory Conditions for the Age so that the Victories are not largely pre-ordained by actions taken prior to the Age. In every single one of the games I've played to the Modern Age, I was leading in Tech, Culture, and Influence going into the Age, so that I could pick which Victory to pursue almost without considering any of the other AI Civs (left) in the game. The 'snowballing' effect is not as bad as it was in Civ VI, where, frankly, everything after the Industrial Era was a snoozing Next Turn clickfest, but it is not the Exciting To The Last Turn they were shooting for.

 

[glaivemaster]

I think the solution I'd like to see, that probably won't happen, is a sort of two-stage victory setup which allows the Modern age to be longer, and introduces a 4th, short, "victory race" age.

So imagine something similar to what we've currently got - you have your 4 paths and you need to get to max on one of them to finish your big, game-ending victory condition. But instead of having a project, finishing a Modern Age path just sets you up for being able to complete an Age 4 victory. Otherwise, Modern age works similar to the other ages - progress through until hitting whatever limit and then pass into the next age.

Then, in the 4th age, you can introduce some really big swings that make it an all-out race between the people in contention. Everyone who didn't get a "Golden Age" doesn't get to take part in the victory race, they're playing by different rules. Everyone who did unlocks extremely powerful bonuses for their specific thing - again, similar to a Golden Age but on steroids. This is a victory lap age. Watch out for the Military Civ who gets insane production and combat bonuses. Or the Science Civ who gets access to techs that no-one else has, to protect themselves while building a space ship. Maybe the Cultural Civ plays with Ideology and Happiness, with ideology- and city-flipping mechanics. The Economic Civ plants Corporations to try and make everyone reliant on them, idk?

Essentially, I think it's good to have a short, final victory age, but at the moment that's the Modern Age, and it does feel too early for it. I do think that the Modern Age is a good time to start _thinking about_ victory, and locking it in even, but a final age transition to an age that is designed specifically to be very short and very focused, where the rules get whacky, could allow a Civ game to end with more of a bang than a whimper (as long as the AI can play along)

 

[Taefin]

In my view, the modern era is short in turn count because the tech/civic costs are relatively low. At modded deity I found the cultural victory can stalemate even when an AI gets a strong head start and the other victories get me through the tech tree around when I finish a legacy path.

Yet the 130 turns of antiquity (with the first 30+ being super short), 100 turns of exploration, and 70 turns of modern feel about the same length to me, with more happening in each turn later on.

Before playing I was 60-40 positive about my thoughts on a 4th age. Now I hope that they don’t add one, at least not in the first expansion. To me the game feels engaging up until 2/3 of the way through modern, when a lot of what works so well in 7 starts to fall apart.

By then, one AI has a comically large amount of science/culture (yet doesnt start the space race projects as soon as they can). The decisions start to feel tedious (add a new pop to every city every few turns and just click any specialist spot I see), the AI even more clearly struggled to engage most game mechanics (eg only 1 civ usually gets any railroad points, AI has aircraft but doesn’t use them). The games usually still end on a high note because this phase of the game is relatively short. I can’t imagine creating a 4th system as iconic as antiquity, exploration’s DL, and modern’s factories in any way where the world felt alive. It would just be playing with new mechanics against AI who still act as if in exploration.

And I really hope we don’t get a repeat of 6 where futuristic tech is added to the end of an extended modern era. The GDR just took away any chance to fight with modern units, and at higher difficulty there would be one AI who gets whatever future tech almost instantly after getting to aircraft.

 

[Disgustipated]

My biggest problem is I have to aim for victory asap, I can't just meander towards victory like I did in Civ 6. Even on King difficulty (equivalent) the AI can and will get victory if you just mess around building up your empire and don't focus on victory. I suppose this is a good thing since King AI in civ6 seemed incapable of victory. I mostly played emperor in Civ 6, but I have reduced my difficulty so I have more time to build stuff and don't have to rush towards victory leaving half the techs unresearched. The 2 victories the AI is good at getting towards are science and economic, they seem incapable of getting the others.

 

[UWHabs]

I think the solution I'd like to see, that probably won't happen, is a sort of two-stage victory setup which allows the Modern age to be longer, and introduces a 4th, short, "victory race" age.

So imagine something similar to what we've currently got - you have your 4 paths and you need to get to max on one of them to finish your big, game-ending victory condition. But instead of having a project, finishing a Modern Age path just sets you up for being able to complete an Age 4 victory. Otherwise, Modern age works similar to the other ages - progress through until hitting whatever limit and then pass into the next age.

Then, in the 4th age, you can introduce some really big swings that make it an all-out race between the people in contention. Everyone who didn't get a "Golden Age" doesn't get to take part in the victory race, they're playing by different rules. Everyone who did unlocks extremely powerful bonuses for their specific thing - again, similar to a Golden Age but on steroids. This is a victory lap age. Watch out for the Military Civ who gets insane production and combat bonuses. Or the Science Civ who gets access to techs that no-one else has, to protect themselves while building a space ship. Maybe the Cultural Civ plays with Ideology and Happiness, with ideology- and city-flipping mechanics. The Economic Civ plants Corporations to try and make everyone reliant on them, idk?

Essentially, I think it's good to have a short, final victory age, but at the moment that's the Modern Age, and it does feel too early for it. I do think that the Modern Age is a good time to start _thinking about_ victory, and locking it in even, but a final age transition to an age that is designed specifically to be very short and very focused, where the rules get whacky, could allow a Civ game to end with more of a bang than a whimper (as long as the AI can play along)

Yeah, initially when they presented the modern age, I was almost expecting something like that. Like once you reach the "Victory" stage, you basically get a "Victory" Crisis. So once you hit the conquest victory, you unlock the "World War" crisis, where everyone opposite your ideology joins together in an alliance, everyone at your ideology joins together, and there's some like final showdown.

It even fits in kind of thematically - basically enough conquest triggers the world war. Whoever gets the first crewed spaceflight triggers a Space Race final push. Would have to think on the other trees, but maybe you could come up with some sort of epic "final push to victory" for each.

 

[uppi]

In my view, the modern era is short in turn count because the tech/civic costs are relatively low. At modded deity I found the cultural victory can stalemate even when an AI gets a strong head start and the other victories get me through the tech tree around when I finish a legacy path.

Yet the 130 turns of antiquity (with the first 30+ being super short), 100 turns of exploration, and 70 turns of modern feel about the same length to me, with more happening in each turn later on.

Before playing I was 60-40 positive about my thoughts on a 4th age. Now I hope that they don’t add one, at least not in the first expansion. To me the game feels engaging up until 2/3 of the way through modern, when a lot of what works so well in 7 starts to fall apart.

By then, one AI has a comically large amount of science/culture (yet doesnt start the space race projects as soon as they can). The decisions start to feel tedious (add a new pop to every city every few turns and just click any specialist spot I see), the AI even more clearly struggled to engage most game mechanics (eg only 1 civ usually gets any railroad points, AI has aircraft but doesn’t use them). The games usually still end on a high note because this phase of the game is relatively short. I can’t imagine creating a 4th system as iconic as antiquity, exploration’s DL, and modern’s factories in any way where the world felt alive. It would just be playing with new mechanics against AI who still act as if in exploration.

And I really hope we don’t get a repeat of 6 where futuristic tech is added to the end of an extended modern era. The GDR just took away any chance to fight with modern units, and at higher difficulty there would be one AI who gets whatever future tech almost instantly after getting to aircraft.

Yeah, I agree that the Modern age may be shorter in turns, but long enough in actual playtime. I usually try to go for all legacy paths in Modern (by refusing the build the Worlds fair as soon as its available) and once I achieve that, I am kinda done with the Modern age. If it got extended, it would kind of overstay its welcome. And it is actually the only age where I reliably reach the 3rd tier of units. I am not sure I researched Iron Working in Antiquity even once...

 

[marius_kaparius]

I have yet to see the year 1900 in game. Whatever they do the Modern Age pacing is off.

 

[Taefin]

Yeah, initially when they presented the modern age, I was almost expecting something like that. Like once you reach the "Victory" stage, you basically get a "Victory" Crisis. So once you hit the conquest victory, you unlock the "World War" crisis, where everyone opposite your ideology joins together in an alliance, everyone at your ideology joins together, and there's some like final showdown.

It even fits in kind of thematically - basically enough conquest triggers the world war. Whoever gets the first crewed spaceflight triggers a Space Race final push. Would have to think on the other trees, but maybe you could come up with some sort of epic "final push to victory" for each.

Me too! I feel like completing a legacy should trigger a short victory competition which the triggering civ has an advantage in. Currently if someone finish their legacy path, either you need to be only 1-4 turns behind on yours or you need to declare war and take out their project. Admittedly, this could devolve into eg stockpiling gold and waiting for someone to trigger the world bank race. But if costs were inversely proportional to factory points, that could still work, where it’s still advantageous to get as many factory points as possible.

 

[TheMarshmallowBear]

If they are going to add a 4th Age, I expect we will say a number of things happen:

1. I believe whole-heartedly they will add new Civs with it, I can see them using nations like Australia, Brazil, Modern America, Soviet Union, etc. I think Humankind actually had a rather good way of handling that Age with cultures anyways, so I don't see it as a impossibility, personally, wouldn't mind switching civ one more time.
2. The game as of now feels like it's "short", Games went from roughly 500 turns to much much lower, so I do think they will eventually extend it.
3. If they are going to add a fourth age, this would defeniately shift the point of the Modern one, I woudl expect the only thing that stays woudl be the Culture and Economic Legacy Paths with 2 new ones added while the Militaristic and Science Path be moved to 4th age. Furthermore, I woudl expect the Culture one in the 4th age to be about National Parks and Tourism and the Economic one to be about possibly Corporations, including the construction of the World Bank, all the Victory conditions would simply be moved to that age.
4. With that, it woudl also mean that they would take out the awkward things like the Manned Space Flight from the Modern Age, not sure what they would replace the Militaristic and Science paths with in the 3rd Age though, can't think of anything historically logical that hasn't already been done in other ages.

Even disregarding the obvious leak, fairly sure Ed Beach has said they want to explore the Cold War, so I expect that that to be the central theme.

 

[moondog385]

I wouldn’t mind the Modern Age being slightly extended. The game already feels like a reasonable length so the smaller the addition the better.

Adding on an entire age (regardless of my feelings on an atomic age) would be a bit much and two instances of civ switching just seems right.

 

[aelf]

But yes, an extra full Civ swap is too much. But we need different bonuses suited to playing a 4th Age. So I think we'll get something more like this, since Postmodern Civs might be touchy subjects and some of the Modern Civs survived to the current day with the same name/culture:

Each Modern Civ unlocks one of the Postmodern Civs based on region/history (and so you have an option, but you probably picked your Modern Civ because of the gameplay bonuses, which should line up with the Postmodern Civs you'll unlock via Modern play), but otherwise you unlock options based on your Ideology and Legacy paths (over the game, because Ideology is likely the path you're going for in Modern). Postmodern Civs will use the adjectival of the Modern Civ you had, but with the 'Government Form' of the Postmodern Civ. So we'll have things like

United States of _____ (focuses on Cultural and Military, unlocked by Democracy Ideology or completing Cultural + Economic in any single Age)
Republic of _____ (focuses on Scientific and Cultural, unlocked by Democracy Ideology or completing Scientific + Cultural in any single Age)
People's Republic of _____ (focuses on Scientific and Economic, unlocked by Communism Ideology or completing Scientific + Economic in any single Age)
Pan-_____ Bloc (focuses on Cultural and Economic, unlocked by Communism Ideology or completing Cultural + Military in any single Age)
_____ Kingdom (focuses on Economic and Military, unlocked by Fascism Ideology or completing Economic + Military in any single Age)
_____ Empire (focuses on Scientific and Military, unlocked by Fascism Ideology or completing Science + Military in any single Age)

_____ Union (focuses strongly on Economic, unlocked by completing 2+ Economic Paths over the game)
_____ Commonwealth (focuses strongly on Cultural, unlocked by completing 2+ Cultural Paths over the game)
Royal Society of _____ (focuses strongly on Scientific, unlocked by completing 2+ Scientific Paths over the game)
_____ Hegemon (focuses strongly on Military, unlocked by completing 2+ Military Paths over the game)

where _____ is the adjectival of your Modern Civ. This will help with the identity-switch fatigue but allow the 4th Ages bonuses to be geared for focusing on victory. And this allows the Modern Age to play like how it's designed, where the rush for victory is held off until the 4th Age and the tools in Modern are about competing priorities like the other Ages.

This sounds like an interesting mechanic. There are still some issues to address, though, like how Prussia can become Germany (it's a little odd to have Prussia persist). Maybe it can be a simple name change for some civs like that.

You also always have the awkward issue where if you have enough of a science lead to be able to tech to a higher tier of unit faster than someone else, odds are you can just complete the space race faster anyways.

You bring up an interesting issue that contributes to the problem, I feel. Science victory comes so fast if you have good science and production. Civ6 (and earlier Civs) mitigated this by having you wait till the spaceship reaches its destination, and boosting its progress has limitations that make it expensive or impractical. Although of course if the other players were nowhere close to winning, this only added a rather meaningless delay.

What is needed (Personal Opinion Only) is more variety and flexibility of Victory Conditions for the Age so that the Victories are not largely pre-ordained by actions taken prior to the Age. In every single one of the games I've played to the Modern Age, I was leading in Tech, Culture, and Influence going into the Age, so that I could pick which Victory to pursue almost without considering any of the other AI Civs (left) in the game. The 'snowballing' effect is not as bad as it was in Civ VI, where, frankly, everything after the Industrial Era was a snoozing Next Turn clickfest, but it is not the Exciting To The Last Turn they were shooting for.

This does make for a more interesting end of game, but it might run into the problem of people complaining that the earlier ages don't matter, though. As it is, there are those who are already saying that.

Yeah, I agree that the Modern age may be shorter in turns, but long enough in actual playtime. I usually try to go for all legacy paths in Modern (by refusing the build the Worlds fair as soon as its available) and once I achieve that, I am kinda done with the Modern age. If it got extended, it would kind of overstay its welcome. And it is actually the only age where I reliably reach the 3rd tier of units. I am not sure I researched Iron Working in Antiquity even once...

Not in my experience. Exploration Age takes the longest to get through (Antiquity has the quick first 30 turns or so), and Modern is probably the fastest for me. Avoiding (active) war probably speeds it up quite a bit.

My biggest problem is I have to aim for victory asap, I can't just meander towards victory like I did in Civ 6. Even on King difficulty (equivalent) the AI can and will get victory if you just mess around building up your empire and don't focus on victory. I suppose this is a good thing since King AI in civ6 seemed incapable of victory. I mostly played emperor in Civ 6, but I have reduced my difficulty so I have more time to build stuff and don't have to rush towards victory leaving half the techs unresearched. The 2 victories the AI is good at getting towards are science and economic, they seem incapable of getting the others.

Really? I think if you have a good science base, you can meander into a science victory. It's the only one that the AI seems to be able to realistically pursue, but it's not quick about it either. I have never seen the AI get a single economic victory point on Immortal and Deity. Maybe it can win by culture, but so far it seems to fall short of the artifact requirement.

 

[Disgustipated]

I was playing on the equivalent of emperor (really wish they hadn't changed the names of these), and they did max out economic path before me. Although they didn't seem to use their great banker, so I escaped with a victory there. But the AI in my games has been adept at slotting in resources to their factories for those economic points. Even in my last game that I won super fast (that I mentioned in my to war or not to war thread) the AI still accumulated some economic points.

As for science, I did actually lose an emperor level game because I was messing around trying to get future techs/civics to get one of the challenges done (to finish out economic tree or whatever) and I lost via space race. So whenever I do something like that, I have my great banker ready to win on the last turn (after reloading the auto save of course). So if you wait around too long, they will win by space race for sure, that is confirmed. I'm just not sure on economic since I never verified if they were actually using their great banker. The other 2 paths seem impossible for the AI. But I do worry that if I don't aggressively pursue artifacts, that I could lose via culture. If I do aggressively pursue them, than the ones I don't get seem to be spread pretty evenly across the other AI's.

As I mentioned in another thread, I felt more freedom in Civ 6. I felt I could concentrate on fun things like getting my production really high and building lots of wonders, and then switch over near the end. Or I could focus on making obscene amounts of money. This game I feel like I have to aggressively pursue the win or I will lose.

 

[stealth_nsk]

If they are going to add a 4th Age, I expect we will say a number of things happen:

1. I believe whole-heartedly they will add new Civs with it, I can see them using nations like Australia, Brazil, Modern America, Soviet Union, etc. I think Humankind actually had a rather good way of handling that Age with cultures anyways, so I don't see it as a impossibility, personally, wouldn't mind switching civ one more time.
2. The game as of now feels like it's "short", Games went from roughly 500 turns to much much lower, so I do think they will eventually extend it.
3. If they are going to add a fourth age, this would defeniately shift the point of the Modern one, I woudl expect the only thing that stays woudl be the Culture and Economic Legacy Paths with 2 new ones added while the Militaristic and Science Path be moved to 4th age. Furthermore, I woudl expect the Culture one in the 4th age to be about National Parks and Tourism and the Economic one to be about possibly Corporations, including the construction of the World Bank, all the Victory conditions would simply be moved to that age.
4. With that, it woudl also mean that they would take out the awkward things like the Manned Space Flight from the Modern Age, not sure what they would replace the Militaristic and Science paths with in the 3rd Age though, can't think of anything historically logical that hasn't already been done in other ages.

Even disregarding the obvious leak, fairly sure Ed Beach has said they want to explore the Cold War, so I expect that that to be the central theme.

I agree with most of this.

Regarding actual mechanics, in the list of planned things Firaxis included the ability to start and end the game in any age. This means each age will have legacy paths and on top of them - separate victory in case of this age is the last. Those things are already separated in modern, so it should work ok. If we'll have 4th age, in modern we'll have scientific legacy path which is fully filled on launching satellite (and revealing the map).

 

[Architect]

I’ve yet to have a full scale ideological world war and I feel like the ideology system is the biggest failure of the modern age. The fact that there is no deterministic path that forces a pick is just wrong. Make political ideology the first culture to get and then have a pop-up which you and the AI pick your ideology. This will totally make the modern age about navigating this and add a bunch more tension to the victory conditions. I’ve finished games where the AI just never picked any.

This will also have the effect of slowing down the start of explorers.

The tech tree also needs to make the second and third tiers of unit upgrades as spread out as possible. It should feel like a significant bump to the military victory to get tanks online and then the next bump at air power. Techs go so fast it just all blurs together.

Increase the cost of everything and I think it would be much more interesting.

 

[Menocchio]

It sure is a little strange that, despite beginning in 1750, the Modern age in-game reaches the real-life "tech level" of the 1910s almost right away.