pre-release info New Civ Guide: French Empire

[Zaarin]

We will certainly see more archeological civilizations, but the vast majority of them are simply too poorly known to form the basis of a civilization. Imagining that just because we know of an arcaheological civilization somewhere at some point we can have a civ is simply a flight from reality.

I agree. I like that the new system opens up the possibility for some lesser known civilizations, but I'd like to see them limited to proto-historical civilizations except where there really is no other option but archaeology may be rich enough to present possibilities (I'm particularly thinking about the Andes and Mesoamerica here).

I take issue with this. Why are Mississippians more unimaginable in civ 6 than in civ 7? They have a leader available - Tuskaloosa - for which the series has done more dubious leaders.

I agree. I've seen this bandied around several times, but there are several Mississippian leaders known, including Tuskaloosa, with a bonus advantage that most Mississippian chieftain names were hereditary--meaning you could back-project them to a time when the Mississippian culture was not crumbling. That being said, I can see a few problems here: first, the Mississippian civ is eclectic but primarily focused on Cahokia, for which we know almost nothing culturally; second, Tuskaloosa would have spoken Choctaw, and the Choctaw are notoriously protective of their language (though they might be open to making exceptions--the Mississippian music was done by a Choctaw team). So I think leaders are a challenge for a Mississippian civ, but not an insurmountable one. (I still wish we knew more about the Lady of Cofitachequi.)

 

[Captain Lime]

I still wish we knew more about the Lady of Cofitachequi.

Thanks for that small Wikipedia rabbit hole. I know who I'm going to mod into 6 next after Hatshepsut (after doing more proper research ofc)!

 

[JaeChunDaeSung]

This is more linked to the Government, which you select at the start of the Age. In this case, Authoritarianism, Bureaucratic Monarchy, or Elective Republic. Each Gov. has one of two Golden Age bonuses you achieve by reaching a quota of Empire-wide Happiness. I remember E.R. lets you choose a 20% boost or so in Science or Culture.

France basically can be ANY Gov. of choice, and choose from ALL Golden Age bonuses even outside their chosen.

Unique Ability:
Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité: You can select the Golden Age effects of any Government in the Modern Age.



Same here... I can't make head or tails about this one... Is it linked to ideology ? I'm confused about this one ! Help anyone ?

 

[queenpea]

Bummed out by all the revolutionary unique units and the military focus. Napoleonic foolishness has always been my least favorite part of French history, and, now, in VII, it's all of French history. Oh well.

Cultural gameplay in VII is looking really weak and bland so far.

 

[Krikkit1]

The entire Old World outside of Europe: “Are we a joke to you?”

I don’t mind if wedging in Medieval results in more granular representation of European mainstays - it’s not really about them specifically, but if they are one of many regions that could benefit from it, then all the merrier.

I don’t see how they could benefit?

With the current 3 ages, all of those civs are possible…Norman doesn’t stop there from being an England, just like Ming doesn’t stop there from being a Tang and a Song.

The separation between ages is based not on civs but on mechanics (see Antiquity Khmer)

Not sure that “Medieval” and Exploration have enough separate mechanics
(especially since Polynesian and Scandanavian civs are perfect for Distant Land exploration in “Medieval”)

 

[Ronaldo_]

new banger just dropped

 

[Zaarin]

To my surprise, it's delightful, "La Marseillaise" jump scare notwithstanding.

 

[stealth_nsk]

Honestly, I wouldn't want a 4th age between antiquity and exploration for some simple reasons:

1. What this age should be about? If civilization still could only use their home continent, what's the difference with antiquity? If they could move to other continents, that's exploration already.
2. Not only theme, but gameplay itself would need to be changed for later ages. Putting additional age in between would cause the world to be much more crowded, for example.

The concept of 4th age being contemporary has its disadvantages, but at least it has clear themes (i.e. space, informational technologies and cold war) and doesn't affect other ages.

 

[Zaarin]

Honestly, I wouldn't want a 4th age between antiquity and exploration for some simple reasons:

1. What this age should be about? If civilization still could only use their home continent, what's the difference with antiquity? If the could move to other continents, that's exploration already.
2. Not only theme, but gameplay itself would need to be changed for later ages. Putting additional age in between would cause the world to be much more crowded, for example.

Instead of a Medieval Age between Antiquity and Exploration, I think it would work better to put a Bronze Age before Antiquity. The major theme? Urbanization and the hunt for resources, including long distance trade--unlike iron, copper and especially tin are hard to come by. (I don't want a fourth age anywhere in the game, but I'd prefer a Bronze Age at the beginning to a Medieval or especially Contemporary Age. Civs would be a challenge outside the Near East and Near East-adjacent regions like Mykenai and BMAC. There's a great civ name: Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex. )

 

[Sagax]

new banger just dropped

The irony of having the French Revolution background art and calling the civ the French Empire is not lost on me.

 

[stealth_nsk]

Instead of a Medieval Age between Antiquity and Exploration, I think it would work better to put a Bronze Age before Antiquity. The major theme? Urbanization and the hunt for resources, including long distance trade--unlike iron, copper and especially tin are hard to come by. (I don't want a fourth age anywhere in the game, but I'd prefer a Bronze Age at the beginning to a Medieval or especially Contemporary Age. Civs would be a challenge outside the Near East and Near East-adjacent regions like Mykenai and BMAC. There's a great civ name: Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex. )

In theory, yes, but it's hard to do it right to make a whole age out of it. Somehow it should limit having too huge empires, otherwise it would make antiquity redundant, for example.

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

Bummed out by all the revolutionary unique units and the military focus. Napoleonic foolishness has always been my least favorite part of French history, and, now, in VII, it's all of French history. Oh well.

Cultural gameplay in VII is looking really weak and bland so far.

The one Napoleonic thing I wish they had was allowing French military units to extract artifacts.

Instead of a Medieval Age between Antiquity and Exploration, I think it would work better to put a Bronze Age before Antiquity. The major theme? Urbanization and the hunt for resources, including long distance trade--unlike iron, copper and especially tin are hard to come by. (I don't want a fourth age anywhere in the game, but I'd prefer a Bronze Age at the beginning to a Medieval or especially Contemporary Age. Civs would be a challenge outside the Near East and Near East-adjacent regions like Mykenai and BMAC. There's a great civ name: Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex. )

I'd take either of these before a 4th Contemporary Age at the end of the game.

 

[ehecatzin]

Instead of a Medieval Age between Antiquity and Exploration, I think it would work better to put a Bronze Age before Antiquity. The major theme? Urbanization and the hunt for resources, including long distance trade

Besides, historically we did have the bronze age collapse with It's multi factorial crisises, so there's plenty to go around for narrative events. I too would prefer a split of Antiquity. Maybe It's just me being a bit paranoid, but I think Firaxis is leaving space for that in the future, in the same way they seem to be doing it for Contemporary era tech and civs.

From all of the Antiquity civs we have, I would argue only Egypt is really Ancient, the rest are more classical leaning. if we were to have an Antiquity split, Egypt could easily be split into old and new kingdom (or even Ptolemaic Egypt), and there we could have Babylon, Sumer, Olmecs, Mycenean, Hittites, Harappans,Zhou etc.

 

[Zaarin]

In theory, yes, but it's hard to do it right to make a whole age out of it. Somehow it should limit having too huge empires, otherwise it would make antiquity redundant, for example.

Like I said, I don't want any fourth age, but I think Bronze Age would be more interesting than the alternatives. And I agree that it should have small empires. The Egyptian Old/Middle Kingdoms and Sargon's empire were about the biggest things going on, and they were basically city-state confederations compared to later empires. Could manage that with a small city limit on top of the settlement limit.

 

[ehecatzin]

Like I said, I don't want any fourth age, but I think Bronze Age would be more interesting than the alternatives. And I agree that it should have small empires. The Egyptian Old/Middle Kingdoms and Sargon's empire were about the biggest things going on, and they were basically city-state confederations compared to later empires. Could manage that with a small city limit on top of the settlement limit.

I think extra ages are coming, just from what the devs commented. My best scenario if that's the case would be Bronze and Contemporary, "mini" ages with very straightforward objectives, Bronze to set up with some extra bonuses and nab resources, and contemporary to add the cold war and finish the game.

 

[untitledjuan]

The irony of having the French Revolution background art and calling the civ the French Empire is not lost on me.

Yet another reason to have the civ just be named "France"

 

[Sagax]

I don’t see how they could benefit?

With the current 3 ages, all of those civs are possible…Norman doesn’t stop there from being an England, just like Ming doesn’t stop there from being a Tang and a Song.

The separation between ages is based not on civs but on mechanics (see Antiquity Khmer)

Not sure that “Medieval” and Exploration have enough separate mechanics
(especially since Polynesian and Scandanavian civs are perfect for Distant Land exploration in “Medieval”)

I agree that coming up with enough distinctive mechanics for an entire age would be the main challenge - but we don’t know what we don’t know. For example, religion is sorely lacking in the current iteration, and it could’ve been something that is more robust in Medieval and then becomes background support in Exploration.

As for the example of Tang and Ming existing in the same plane - you can, but that will certainly be a whiplash when two sequential dynasties 460 years apart are duking it out on an even playing field. On that note, I wouldn’t be a fan of Normans + England in the same age either, that’s just a big rock thrown at their whole “history is built in layers” mantra and the example they kept referring to in the early promo phases.

 

[Zaarin]

I think extra ages are coming, just from what the devs commented. My best scenario if that's the case would be Bronze and Contemporary, "mini" ages with very straightforward objectives, Bronze to set up with some extra bonuses and nab resources, and contemporary to add the cold war and finish the game.

I think their statement about the Cold War could be interpreted as an additional age or as expanding the content of the Modern Age (which I grant currently feels the most lackluster of the three). I hope if more ages are added, two things happen: the precise ages played can be configured, and proper victories are added to every age (defaulting to score victory if you don't play to the end is not exciting).

For example, religion is sorely lacking in the current iteration, and it could’ve been something that is more robust in Medieval and then becomes background support in Exploration.

Religion continued to be a major player in the (historiographic) Exploration Age, though. The Protestant Reformation and Thirty Years' War were both in the heart of the Exploration Age, Spain and France aggressively spread Catholicism around the world while English Protestants did the same for Protestantism, and outside Christianity Islam made big pushes into Sub-Saharan Africa during the period. If anything, the Middle Ages were a major point of organized religions establishing themselves in specific societies (not that that was new; it began in Antiquity), but the Exploration Age was the major period of missionary zeal and globalization of proselytizing religions.

 

[queenpea]

Completely unrelated to the French Civ guide, but I will, again, express my view that receiving first look videos for leaders, but not for civs, is falling very flat for me.

Without having played the civ, I find the guides to be difficult to understand, and a bit of narration or seeing the mechanics in motion would be extremely helpful.

Between the Lafayette drop and the French Empire guide, I don’t feel very excited to play with either. I’m feeling a bit deflated as France is typically my go-to civ.

 

[FORRREST]

Starting Bias: Wine.

What does it mean to have a starting bias for a modern civ? Does it mean anyone is eligible to pick france if they have enough wine in their territory?