My fear: that there are screens with text "xxx years later" between ages"

The only change is the displayed date…there maybe “lost years” but no “lost turns”
And lost years only against this-world's history.

As many have pointed out, that's a relatively meaningless marker in this game (though I like having it), b/c gameplay has routinely put game-world achievements at very different dates (e.g. SETI in BC). Even before the Ages system.
 
I think people are fixating more on abstracted dating system and less on the actual complaint which is about how ages split what used to be a self-contained narrative and continious campaign into three seperated game rounds with immersion ruining hard resets between them.
 
What immersion? Immersion is something that is not only 100% subjective, it also does not have any cohesive definition and two people can disagree on if something causes them to experience "immersion" or not. Complaining about immersion is never an actual workable piece of feedback because it is impossible to engineer something to be More Immersive or Less Immersive. Some people may genuinely have their immersion reinforced by this thing.

Furthermore, some people consider feelings of immersion to be a negative!
 
I think people are fixating more on abstracted dating system and less on the actual complaint which is about how ages split what used to be a self-contained narrative and continious campaign into three seperated game rounds with immersion ruining hard resets between them.
YouTubers I've watched have had various thoughts on the age changing from playing through it. Some have said they think it's the weakest aspect so your argument has some validity, but others who dislike it have said it will just take getting used to. That said your opinion sounds super strong on this without having played it yourself, not that you need to play it to have an opinion just not sure you can say "hard reset" as that's definitely not true.

Edit: I'd just like to add I've seen some say they really like it as well as it it offers you a bunch of choices with the points you choose to earn and how to spend them to direct your play style into the next age
 
What immersion? Immersion is something that is not only 100% subjective, it also does not have any cohesive definition and two people can disagree on if something causes them to experience "immersion" or not. Complaining about immersion is never an actual workable piece of feedback because it is impossible to engineer something to be More Immersive or Less Immersive. Some people may genuinely have their immersion reinforced by this thing.

Of course when I say immersion, I'm talking about something subjective.

If having nonsensible mix and match leaders and civs and what used to be a sandboxy and continious campaign split into three game rounds,with hard resets in between doesn't effect how you role play or immerse yourself in a Civilization game, thats great. I wish I could say the same but I cannot and I know there are many who feel exactly the same way as I do. Handwaving away such a large percentage of the fanbase complainting against fundamental change to the formula ruining how they roleplay and immerse themselves in a series which is decades old at this point, by saying "well you can't quantify immersion" just seems odd to me.
 
YouTubers I've watched have had various thoughts on the age changing from playing through it. Some have said they think it's the weakest aspect so your argument has some validity, but others who dislike it have said it will just take getting used to. That said your opinion sounds super strong on this without having played it yourself, not that you need to play it to have an opinion just not sure you can say "hard reset" as that's definitely not true.

Edit: I'd just like to add I've seen some say they really like it as well as it it offers you a bunch of choices with the points you choose to earn and how to spend them to direct your play style into the next age

My opinion has been shaped by just listening to and watching Firaxis promote this games. The complaints about Ages I had when the game was announced are pretty much the same still and after seeing whats been leaked, my exact worries seemed to be confirmed. What used to be a continious campaign has been split into three largely seperated game rounds, where relationships with other civs and citystates, wars, technology, civics, etc are quite literally reset and players are very heavyhandedly rubberbanded back to a relatively close starting line to begin a new round.

Whether you agree with this being a "hard reset" will really just become an argument of semantics. No, the game application is not literally closed and you're not sent back to the main menu but yes the game state is being reset inbetween ages/rounds and this will feel terrible to/disgust many fans of the series .
 
Does it boot you back to the main menu? Does it force close the game?

If not, it sure sounds like a continuous experience to me. :)
It doesn't go back to the main menu, but there is a cut screen, a narrated animation, a civ select screen where you have to choose your new culture, and then a legacy point stage, and the option to choose a new capital city.

You may be totally fine with the new Age system (lots of people are excited for this feature), but I don't think it's helpful to pretend that all of this clicking and navigating through menus, followed by a hard reset on IPs, reset on diplomatic relations including wars, cities reverting to towns, and the loss of some military units (I'm a little fuzzy on this) isn't a disruptive event compared to last iterations of Civ.
 
Units don't delete do they? I remember perfectly well they stayed the same in the first developer livestream
I'm pretty sure it does delete some units. I'm not sure of the exact logic, but I think for example Antiquity siege units disappear in Exploration.

On a side note, in all the streams I've watched thus far, I've never seen a tier 3 unit. The Age never lasts that long.
 
Have you seen a science heavy playthrough? All I’ve seen were not particularly strong in science and focused on masteries nonetheless.

Units: there‘s a maximum of units you can keep, which are teleported back to your cities. It‘s not quite clear how it‘s calculated. Units attached to commanders also stay around. All others are deleted.
 
As someone who very much wants the time gaps in the calendar dates "fixed", I understand it is cosmetic and not mechanical. I don't want to play the game with placeholder graphics either and they don't effect gameplay. Aesthetic choices effect the end result. I find it jarring after to have the game skip a couple hundred years but I am still the leader. (Not to mention delete units and downgrade my cities.)

Now, if we talk actual mechanics I like this idea even worse.
Using age transition to allow every player to catch up in technology and stuff is one thing, using the transitions to delete the player's units and downgrade all his cities is quite another thing. I don't even know how someone can come up with such a bad idea.
This is going to be very jarring to the "narrative experience" they are trying so hard for. Why is there an unexplained time skip where your empire spend hundreds of years disbanding & retreating units, and downgrading cities all without your agency. Even if you go out on a limb and hand wave this by saying "every crisis leads to this same result ultimately" it is still very weak and a horrible attempt at narrative. This is pretty big to remove player agency at such a pivotal moment in the narrative. A pivotal moment that is not explained in the narrative at that.
 
As someone who very much wants the time gaps in the calendar dates "fixed", I understand it is cosmetic and not mechanical. I don't want to play the game with placeholder graphics either and they don't effect gameplay. Aesthetic choices effect the end result. I find it jarring after to have the game skip a couple hundred years but I am still the leader. (Not to mention delete units and downgrade my cities.)

Now, if we talk actual mechanics I like this idea even worse.

This is going to be very jarring to the "narrative experience" they are trying so hard for. Why is there an unexplained time skip where your empire spend hundreds of years disbanding & retreating units, and downgrading cities all without your agency. Even if you go out on a limb and hand wave this by saying "every crisis leads to this same result ultimately" it is still very weak and a horrible attempt at narrative. This is pretty big to remove player agency at such a pivotal moment in the narrative. A pivotal moment that is not explained in the narrative at that.
Well not sure about the units, but there is agency with cities. They can stay cities to the next age if you complete the economic legacy path.
 
Well not sure about the units, but there is agency with cities. They can stay cities to the next age if you complete the economic legacy path.
That is a fair point and I had considered that but I feel like those with criticisms that the game feels broken into these three chapters instead of transitioning had a valid argument. This seems to be a harsher reset than I perceived in the live streams loading saves.

I still need to watch more videos but if units get deleted (not destroyed or disbanded due to the crisis) I feel you should be able to pay gold or something to keep them at a cost. I need to get a better look at town/city relationships to really understand the value of that.

It just feels like a lot happens to your empire "overnight" without a narrative reason. It does not feel like a transition or the dawn of a new era but rather a reset or like you are coming back from a vacation and whoever filled in for you did a terrible job maintaining the empire. However, they have brokered for peace treaties with any enemies.:king:

I suspect this will be smoothed over in future development but it seems like a rocky start. I personally would like Firaxis to focus these last weeks more on the UI though. I am confident many of these polishes will be addressed in time.
 
of the concerns about the level of the reset, I personally feel more sympathetic to the concerns about the units rather than cities reverting to towns, which is a thing I actually like a lot about the transition, especially as one who is almost certainly gonna be using the change capital option in almost every game, it allows me to select which settlements I want as cities and which as towns all over again, which I like. as for the units I'm less positive about that one, maybe have it be only half of your army? idk, regardless is probably the thing of the age transition I like the least.
 
I can sympathise with the complaints about the reset at each era change, especially in terms of units being deleted. It's a bigger reset than I had realised, and quite abrupt. I am intrigued to see how the develop it over the course of the game's life.

That being said, it makes some sense, mechanically. The Age reset is an anti-snowball measure, it would obviously be less effective if all wars and units persisted over the transition.

Will have to see how it feels but in some ways I quite like the idea that my game has 3 such distinct chapters, it will increase the sense of climax at the end of an Age and the feeling of a fresh start at the beginning of the next.
 
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