Poll: Did you like the new era system overall?

[raider980]

I don't dislike the eras per se, I really dislike the disconnect between the leaders and the Civ; and also changing Civs in a new era. I mean, I meet Pachacuti, and I think, oh The Inca are in the game; but no, its Rome; that just ain't right. Also, I want to build a civilization to stand the test of time - all time, not just the time until the next era; I don't want to change my Civ.

 

[Canadian Bluebeer]

It feels artifical, forced, disjointed and worse.

Mind you, they did say, it's like 3 mini-games. It is.

I prefer the old style.

 

[Hawke9]

I used to extremely dislike the era system, but now actually having played it, I've warmed up to it a lot. I like the new strategic depth it adds, along with decoupling leaders from civs.

Change is hard, but sometimes it's good!

 

[sixty4half]

Feels like the Plague doesn't even hit my cities. ONCE, I was in the middle of conquest and the turn I too a city it got the Plague which caused one of my units that was already damaged to die. That's pretty much all that's happened in the 3 times in got the Plague crisis.

I'm liking Age transition. It's good timing for making a pivot in my empire. Maybe I like early conquest to gimp my opponents but maybe I don't want to win the game that way. This stsyem rewards me for it and then allows me to ignore it for the rest of the game. Same goes for any of the paths.

 

[Canadian Bluebeer]

So far, I have the crisis turned OFF.
Maybe next game I'll turn it on. This is just figured out what's changed, what does what etc.
(and with the UI being such a mess, much figuring out "where the frack did they put xyz??")

 

[Chefofrats]

On paper I hated the new era system and how you would be forced to change your civ. In practice though I quite like it. The soft reset with every era renews my interest in what's going on, and changing my civ does not break immersion as badly as I thought it would. I think the system needs some tweaks but overall it's OK already as it is.

I play with crises switched off BTW. I never liked the idea of negative random events and I'm not prepared to try them, yet.

 

[moondog385]

I think the primary goals of the age system — keeping the game engaging from start to finish and preventing snowballing — were successfully implemented. I love how it feels like three games in one. Getting to decide which civ to evolve into depending on how I played is fun. Modern Age is also not super boring anymore which is a major plus.

A fourth age would really screw with the game’s pacing. I feel it’s just right at the moment on standard speed (Civ VI, I always played quick) so I would need to see how that’s implemented, if at all.

 

[reddishrecue]

On single player the mechanism works fine but on multiplayer however, there's crashes after the first age. I have hardly been able to get past through to the second age and beyond through multiplayer.

 

[James_Champagne]

I just don't like it. Part of the appeal of the series, for me at least, has always been the grand narrative of following your civ through 6,000 years of history. Actually, I would not only just say my civ, but it was also fun to watch what the other civs got up to in that span of time as well. I think one of VI's best features was actually the timeline, because I like how it celebrated momentous occasions in the story of your civilization, like the first time you created a seafaring unit, the first time you circumnavigated the globe, and so on. But I find it very hard to create a coherent mental narrative with VII because (what with the civ-switching) it seems so disconnected, disjointed, and borderline schizophrenic. And this is not even getting into weird things like how the game can just leapfrog over time spans of hundreds of years when you switch from one era to another. It creates these gaping lacunae in the timeline of your civs where (aside from the civ transitions) nothing major seems to happen in the world, and it's like, "Welp, I guess in that 400 year jump not only did my civ switch from Egypt to Abassid, but apparently in that same span of time they neither built nor lost any cities, and no other civ was defeated . . . until now it's a new era and suddenly we can start magically doing all that stuff again." Ugh.

I also don't like how essentially Antiquity is both Antiquity and Classical smushed into one age, Exploration basically Medieval and Renaissance lumped into one, Modern being Industrial and Modern lumped together.

I just see myself getting very bored very quickly with this game because, civ-switching aside, everything is so specifically and inflexibly regimented to the Eras. By which I mean, you can only ever play as, say, Egypt in Antiquity or Mongolia in Exploration (but never vice-versa), the tech trees are very rigid so that you can never go further than the techs or civics for that specific age, you can only ever explore one continent in the first Era but have to wait until the second to begin exploring the rest of the map, pantheons can be opened in the first Era but religions can only ever be started in the second Era, you can literally only end the game in the last Era, every Era ends with a manufactured Crisis . . . it's all so lockstep. Previous Civ games I felt had more spontaneity and flexibility to how you could approach things. Like I had some CIV VI games where sometimes I would get religion in the first age or sometimes in the Classical Era, there were some games where I won in the very final era but other games where I won in an earlier age, and so on. And the way things gradually unfolded felt, to me, more organic, whereas here, they feel very artificial and staged, if you know what I mean. Now, you can say, "Well, CIV VI had the whole "Rise & Fall/Golden or Dark Age" mechanic," but even there there was still a lot of flexibility as to how you could go about getting those Golden Ages. Here, it's always, "You need to build 7 World Wonders in Antiquity," or "You need to get 9 relics in Exploration," or whatever. Thanks but no thanks!

 

[teakbois2112]

While I see the railroading clearly, I think you don't need to follow it just because it's there (similar as in e.g., EU4 and its missions). You'll get some milestones just by playing normally, and so far, dark ages aren't forced on you.

The only railroading is the economic victory.

I get that some people see the checklist with some shiny rewards and think they are supposed to complete these. They are just optional ways to get you a boost in the next era, but going on a homelands conquering spree can accomplish that as well even if you dont get military legacy points for it.

Honestly I felt Civ VI's tech boosts were worse in making games feel samey.

 

[teakbois2112]

I just don't like it. Part of the appeal of the series, for me at least, has always been the grand narrative of following your civ through 6,000 years of history. Actually, I would not only just say my civ, but it was also fun to watch what the other civs got up to in that span of time as well. I think one of VI's best features was actually the timeline, because I like how it celebrated momentous occasions in the story of your civilization, like the first time you created a seafaring unit, the first time you circumnavigated the globe, and so on. But I find it very hard to create a coherent mental narrative with VII because (what with the civ-switching) it seems so disconnected, disjointed, and borderline schizophrenic.

While I think a lot of people's issues with Civ VII's mechanics are things that don't hold true for me during game play, I do feel this part and I can't say I don't miss it.
The leaders are supposed to carry the narrative here, but it just doesnt quite work. Funny enough, for as maligned as the art style was, Civ VI's leaders did a great job of being front and center. I miss my bestest ally Gilgamesh.

 

[Chefofrats]

... you can literally only end the game in the last Era...

That is not correct. I won my first game by conquest in the Exploration era, before it even got going for good. I was close to managing it in Antiquity, but missed the goal by a few cities, playing as Xerxes/Persia.

 

[James_Champagne]

While I think a lot of people's issues with Civ VII's mechanics are things that don't hold true for me during game play, I do feel this part and I can't say I don't miss it.
The leaders are supposed to carry the narrative here, but it just doesnt quite work. Funny enough, for as maligned as the art style was, Civ VI's leaders did a great job of being front and center. I miss my bestest ally Gilgamesh.

Yeah, in my first playthrough, it was really weird because the other civs kind of just ignored me. Ne denunciations, no declarations of war, all I ever really got were a few requests for alliances, and it was always from the same civ. I couldn't help but compare it to VI, where the leaders would frequently get in your face, not just when they wanted something from you but sometimes just to comment on your general actions (I always used to look forward those games where I was going against Mongolia when I would make my first horse unit and Genghis Khan would freak out). The Aftermath review person kind of had the same experience: "Civilization VII has reduced diplomacy to an endless series of transactional nuisances. A new diplomacy system has commoditised everything in the game, while at the same time removing the way Civs would often pop in just to say hi, exclaim at your progress or just threaten you, which makes the entire experience feel so much lonelier than previously. I never felt like I was one part of a wider human race in this game, more like one player tending to their little zen garden while everyone else tended theirs."

 

[JNR13]

I'm slowly settling into it by playing one age per session and that makes it feel much better.

 

[teakbois2112]

Yeah, in my first playthrough, it was really weird because the other civs kind of just ignored me. Ne denunciations, no declarations of war, all I ever really got were a few requests for alliances, and it was always from the same civ. I couldn't help but compare it to VI, where the leaders would frequently get in your face, not just when they wanted something from you but sometimes just to comment on your general actions (I always used to look forward those games where I was going against Mongolia when I would make my first horse unit and Genghis Khan would freak out). The Aftermath review person kind of had the same experience: "Civilization VII has reduced diplomacy to an endless series of transactional nuisances. A new diplomacy system has commoditised everything in the game, while at the same time removing the way Civs would often pop in just to say hi, exclaim at your progress or just threaten you, which makes the entire experience feel so much lonelier than previously. I never felt like I was one part of a wider human race in this game, more like one player tending to their little zen garden while everyone else tended theirs."

There are two sides here. I like the influence system in Civ VII. Diplomacy, espionage, and city states using the same resource makes sense to me. Its not a perfect system, but Civ VI's was not remotely close to perfect either. "Endless series of transactional nuisances" is hyperbolic nonsense however.

The flip side is that there is no reason they couldn't have kept the personality in the game alongside of the changes. I am sure they will make some improvements to this regards, but I dont think we will get things as great as Philip's denouncement sword waving.

 

[evonannoredars]

Love love love ages. It's so nice being able to change up my plans if it looks like I'd be better off going after a different win condition. In civ 6 it was always obvious if I was going to win or not by the halfway point of the game, but that's no longer the case.
My only issues are:
- I think legacy points could do with more alternative ways of acquiring them, for the most part they're things I'd get through normal gameplay anyway so it doesn't feel forced but I'd like more options in some cases, mainly the treasure fleets and relics.
- There needs to be a bit more stuff to do during an era, quite often by the end I've built everything I can so unless I'm in a war, all there is to do is build walls.
- Crises need some fine-tuning to be more impactful (would also help remedy the above) and a few would be better imo if they had a observable, in-game presences/effects like the plague rather than merely a yield decrease.
- I wish changing to a v different culture didn't override the architectural style of my previous era buildings! Was a shame to see my persian architecture turn into maya architecture when I switched to the Inka last game.
But these are all things associated with eras really, the core concept of eras themselves I absolutely love.

 

[ZeroSuitSenpai]

I prefer the old style, but the eras system isn't preventing me from enjoying the game.

 

[evonannoredars]

The flip side is that there is no reason they couldn't have kept the personality in the game alongside of the changes. I am sure they will make some improvements to this regards, but I dont think we will get things as great as Philip's denouncement sword waving.

If there's been a decrease in personality in the leaders, I don't think it's by much. I laughed out loud when I defeated Augustus as Himiko. While he was wailing about his defeat, she had her back turned to him, looking at her reflection in her bronze plate and ignoring him completely - except for a brief side-eye when he turned and slumped off the screen.

 

[Architect]

Best change ever. Can't wait for them to flush it out more and get it even better.

 

[Krajzen]

On paper I hated the new era system and how you would be forced to change your civ. In practice though I quite like it. The soft reset with every era renews my interest in what's going on, and changing my civ does not break immersion as badly as I thought it would. I think the system needs some tweaks but overall it's OK already as it is.

This, I think, is the reason for the optimism regarding civ7 and the main bullet devs have managed to avoid: civ switching and era system actually feeling ok according to the majority of players, despite causing terror and shock upon the first announcement. And I know it does, because yesterday I have skimmed through like a hundred or so negative Steam reviews, and surprisingly few of them complained about civ switching or era system itself; I'd say that at most 10% of all Steam reviews (positive plus negative) disliked that feature? Maybe even closer to 5%? More people complained about leaders combined with incorrect civs, and interestingly enough many more people complained about the specifics of abrupt resets between the eras in particular, not about era system in general. The majority of complaints had to do with the UI or general price/policy vs quality ratio, plus general balance and performance and mechanics complaints, or vague "hurr I feel this game is bad idk how to describe it", not those two fundamental revolutions.

This is very important, because for the entire time since the announcement I have been afraid of civ7 crashing and burning regarding the very fundamentals of civ switching and eras; if this felt terrible there would be no possible salvation at all, sans mods or some optional game mode.
UI can be fixed with patches and mods, DLC policy and pricing is well controversial but doesn't touch the game itself, abrupt era resets can be rebalanced or modded, everything regarding balance or pacing or difficulty can be changed. I even suspect we could get mods creating leader for each civ in the game if the leader graphics shall not be a problem* seing how they'd essentially only require a graphic and a simple ability. But if civ switching and fundamental three-era-division systems hadn't landed at all and had felt awful for the sizeable amount of players, the game would have been unsalvageable. Frankly those two revolutionary changes so far seem more accepted by the playerbase than the earthquake that was civ5 release in my memory, with huge schism and exodus of people unable to go from civ4 to civ5.

There is only one thing worrying me atm: suspiciously low initial peak of players compared with civ7. Either it is caused by the game being split between a lot of platforms this time, or my optimism above is unfounded because tons of players have never even tried the game to begin with, repulsed by the fundamental systems.

*which they may be, however, due to the way diplomacy screen looks this time...