Potential for new ages being added in future DLC

[Zaarin]

I REALLY hope they don't add any new Ages.

1...150-200 turns seems about right to get going and gear up to face a Crisis
2. That seems about the right time to actually appreciate your civ choice
3. Three civs seems about right for a complex endgame where you can actually still have some Identity with each of the civs (Jumping from 1 to more than 1 is already big, We want to avoid Humankinds 6?7)

100% this.

 

[Prester John 2]

I like the limitation to three ages, so that each civ has time to develop and prosper before its returned to ashes.
If they add a further age later on I'd suggest to divide antiquity into the Bronze age (4000 BC - ~1400-1000 BC) and the Classical age (800BC - 500 AD), divided by the Bronze age collapse aka crisis from around 1200 - 1000 BC. That way enough time could be allocated to the Bronze age empires (Sumer, Babylon, Assyria, Old Kingdom in Egypt, Kerma/Nubia, Harappan, all the Megalithic cultures like Stonehenge and megalith builders on Malta etc.).

 

[Vandlys]

,,, or if there is any other idea for possible additional ages to the game later on?

Age Beyond Earth; future DLC possiblity?

Since the release of Civilization Beyond Earth I've longed for a Civ game that let me start in the ancient era and move all the way into the future colonizing a new planet. The way VII is structured I think it would be entirely possible to have a system similar to sponsors (but then linked to...

forums.civfanatics.com

My idea would be this.

 

[ColtSeavers]

An Age 4 and an Age 0 are what I could see happening in expansions. Age 0 would be fantasy Earth occurring before actual history; Atlantis, Conan the Barbarian, that sort of stuff. Adds in magic mechanics that vanish when the Great Disaster happens. And then Age 4 is just the Beyond Earth prequel technofuture nightmare.

Fantasy Earth, Magic Mechanics, Conan the Barbarian... Not sure if I'd call this game Civilization anymore, but i guess Ed Beach and all the board game enthuiasts at FXS could love this. Maybe they can add in some Orks and Aliens, too. Wondering if they do keep the turn based mechanics at the end of the day, or maybe they through that overboard as well? Would that matter anymore anyway?

 

[durfal]

They can solve it easily with a future age that can be played seperate of civ 7.
You then start in the new future (beyond earth 2) age, but if you have civ 7 you can (if you want) go on after winning the game and take your winning civ into the new future age game, with only a few adjustments to to the modern age civs without changing them all again.
Make Buganda into the East African Union or something like that.

 

[chaosprophet]

I think the superstructure of how this is being built could result in some very good modularized ages.

I can see DLC (and/or MODs) that have the following ages (on top of the obvious go from 3 to 4 with a medieval/middle ages)

A pre-Antiquity age
A true dark age/ice age
An exploration or modern age based on steampunk
Several alternative modern ages (based on what-if Central powers won WW1, perpetual cold war and/or Eastern Bloc winning cold war, continued age of empires, etc.)
A reverse age of exploration (where it is not exploration but rather inward focus)
A reverse age of exploration and extreme religious focus
And of course alternative future post-modern ages

The more I see what -could- be here, the more I think this modularized system could really be something very cool.

Of course, it will mean a lot more DLC -- but if modable, we could see some very interesting eras.

Maybe they make a scenario similar to Civilization: Beyond Earth. Or they could make alternative stages type Steampunk or so. It depends on what they want to do.

That is something interesting, and maybe even more viable than adding mid ages, but still quite a lot of work as you're pretty much making a different game/balance for an alternative age like that. I'm guessing you're thinking something like millenia, but that seems to works more because of how short each age is. It may be something more likely for a scenario than the main game.

An Age 4 and an Age 0 are what I could see happening in expansions. Age 0 would be fantasy Earth occurring before actual history; Atlantis, Conan the Barbarian, that sort of stuff. Adds in magic mechanics that vanish when the Great Disaster happens. And then Age 4 is just the Beyond Earth prequel technofuture nightmare.

While it could be cool, the problem of an age 0 like Atlantis, is that it would not or barely connect to the rest of the game different to what likely the current age progression system is, or alternatively would need a complete rework of the rest of the game to make what you do there to effect the game later.

The biggest flaw with a current/future age is it becomes a trickier situation maybe to decide which civs "deserve" to be modern (ie Industrial-WW2) vs atomic era civs. And the way modern countries are thought of, you don't have quite the dynastic periods that let you split the other eras into. Every civ is pretty much going to be "Modern America" vs "Atomic America". "Modern Japan" vs "Atomic Japan", etc... I mean, sure, maybe you arbitrarily stick Canada as a Modern civ, and Australia as an Atomic civ because whatever reason you want. As much as it might be cool to have a focus on the future, it just feels a little clunky to deal with.

They can always make completely fictional civilizations, maybe based on sci-fi stories nations or the like, or even just make it picking something that would be akin to the rest of the game civilizations in amount of unique bonuses it has, but just be like philosophies of how your civilization will want to approach the problems of the future, so you would become "xxxx America". The main problem with this later idea, is that I can see then many players complaining why didn't they just allow you to do the same for the whole game so you could keep the Egipty identity for the whole game for the people who really dislike the switching part.

 

[Professor Phobo]

Fantasy Earth, Magic Mechanics, Conan the Barbarian... Not sure if I'd call this game Civilization anymore, but i guess Ed Beach and all the board game enthuiasts at FXS could love this. Maybe they can add in some Orks and Aliens, too. Wondering if they do keep the turn based mechanics at the end of the day, or maybe they through that overboard as well? Would that matter anymore anyway?

I don't see what the problem would be with an optional Age 0 added in an expansion that had a non-historical theme.

 

[chaosprophet]

I would however be interested in Scenarios with other Ages.... especially with the fact that mechanics can work very differently.

Neolithic->Bronze->Iron->Classical
Global->Solar->Interstellar
Modern->PostApocalyptic
Cambrian->Ordovician->Silurian->Devonian->Carboniferous->Permian->Triassic->Jurassic->Cretaceous->Paleogene->Neogene
Elves->Dwarves->Men

I agree the ages can really make for a lot of very interesting scenarios. But scenarios don't seems to be that popular, so generally there is less work done on them, they tend to be smaller, with shorts tech tree and the like. So may be unlikely for a scenario to even have two ages anywhere near the size of the ages in the main game. Would still love it.

It can be great for full conversion/scenario mods. The main problem being that, the more graphics advance, the harder it is to do those types of mods so we don't get as many of those as we would with earlier civilizations.

 

[TheSpaceCowboy]

I could see a version update (free to all players and released alongside an Expansion) that creates an Age 2.5.

Some of the preexisting civs would stay in Age 2, some would move to Age 2.5, and a number of newly released civs would pad out their numbers to keep historical progression intact.

But notably, the actual mechanics of the the two Ages would stay more or less the same. Perhaps the new Age 2 (Medieval) would focus more on founding Religions and the new Age 2.5 (Exploration) would expand the map and introduce Reformations.

I don’t think we need a Future Era at all. I’m hoping the Modern Age already extends fairly far and has crises such as Lab Leaks, A.I. (rogue death robots and nuclear missiles), and perhaps even Media Bias/ Propaganda leading to extreme social unrest

 

[ColtSeavers]

I don't see what the problem would be with an optional Age 0 added in an expansion that had a non-historical theme.

Frankly, at this point I don't care anymore anyway, so go for it...

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

Adding in a Pre-Antiquity Age would make it even more like Humankind.

 

[Uberfrog]

They were very careful not to rule it out, but at the same time I don’t think they are necessarily planning for it straight away.

It’s hard to see how they would fit another era into the game without splitting an existing one. This will involve substantially rebalancing the civs within it.

What about a new era outside the existing three? It’s possible, but I really hope they don’t. A pre-historic era just doesn’t fit in Civilization – I really dislike Humankind’s nomadic era. It feels like a waste of time, and doesn’t make exploring any more impactful than starting from your first city. And a future era? I’ve never been keen on Giant Death Robots, and who would be the civs? I’d rather the endgame was satisfying in the Modern era than tacking on some sci-fi spin-off.

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

What about a new era outside the existing three? It’s possible, but I really hope they don’t. A pre-historic era just doesn’t fit in Civilization – I really dislike Humankind’s nomadic era.

Well before the big reveal of Civ 7 I would have said civ switching doesn't either. As far as I can tell it's not out of the realm of possibility.

 

[Professor Phobo]

The Age of Exploration feels like it covers a LOT of ground, if we get 4 "core" eras instead, I could see splitting that one into two.

But personally I like three. I'd add a future era as an optional alternative endgame, but that's all.

 

[chaosprophet]

I could see a version update (free to all players and released alongside an Expansion) that creates an Age 2.5.

Some of the preexisting civs would stay in Age 2, some would move to Age 2.5, and a number of newly released civs would pad out their numbers to keep historical progression intact.

But notably, the actual mechanics of the the two Ages would stay more or less the same. Perhaps the new Age 2 (Medieval) would focus more on founding Religions and the new Age 2.5 (Exploration) would expand the map and introduce Reformations.

I don’t think we need a Future Era at all. I’m hoping the Modern Age already extends fairly far and has crises such as Lab Leaks, A.I. (rogue death robots and nuclear missiles), and perhaps even Media Bias/ Propaganda leading to extreme social unrest

While it is early so that information may be wrong, some early reports like this seems to indicate there is only crisis at the end of antiquity and exploration. Which makes sense, they point seems to be both a narrative and gameplay climax to the ages, while on the last one you would instead of fighting for building up for a winning condition which is itself the climax of the last age and of the whole playthrough, where a crisis would be more of a hassle at that stage, where you're would end up winning against the crisis rather than other players. So chances are that a modern age crisis would be a mechanic if an age is added afterwards.

This also makes me wonder, if you decide to do a game session of only one age, like only antiquity, would it still have the crisis or not.

 

[Ornen]

It should be noted that right now we have no evidence that the Modern Age progresses beyond Atomic. Language on website says Modern is Steam Engine to Splitting of Atom. None of the units we’ve seen are post 1950. The space race rocket struck me as quite mid century. Etc.

There’s a chance that a 4th age might cover the last 70 years and near future

Beach has said in multiple interviews that climate change is in the game, so I expect it to go into the near future.

I don't need another age. There's a lot we don't know right now about the era transitions, but it might be cool to develop them even further, so that there's more of a transition period between ages. Maybe not every civ even has to switch eras at once? So you could swap from Romans to Goths in 400, or you could wait until 800 to make the switch.

But really too soon to say they could do more with era transitions. Or with the eras, even, as we know very little about era 2 and next to nothing about era 3.

 

[Josephias]

I do tend to imagine Civ7 ages based on political systems / social structures more than closing them strictly to determinate years. Of course, this still won't work perfectly for everyone, but at least helps me make sense in my head.

Antiquity Age is the age of empires based on a "tribal" entity where a single family or city rules over conquered territory or dominates a league of tribes. Final crisis / collapse is due to unability to handle foreign influence (hunnic/ mongol invasions), impossibility to keep the league of cities toguether (alexander's succesor states, mayan collapse) and emergence of religions as a separate entity from state, challenging god-king status.

The european "middle" ages, as its name implies, is the transition phase (early middle-ages / dark ages being antiquity crisis itself or its aftermath, and low middle ages actually included in exploration age).

Exploration Age empires will be caracterized by the handling of religion as a different "power" to deal with (expect here the full-fledged religion system with missionaries and inquisitions) instead of something given, as well as more complex commerce and society systems (feudal relationships were the strenght of the suzerain matters more than the cultural-familiar alignement later evolved to colonial systems). Nation-state identity is being formed here as a counterbalance to the tensions of feudal system, however in the end will contribute to crisis. In part as religion transition from leader-associated to a separate system may help ending antiquity, the emergence of the "rich" (burgesy) as a power, the challenges to the structure of the world (and to religion) brought by scientific/cultural progress, and the "national" identitiy being moved from the ruling dinasties to the actual people of a region brings in a new crisis in form of revolutionary movements (either independence of colonial elites from metropolis or republican/liberal movements against absolute monarchy).

This leads to the Modern age, fueled by nation-state sentiments and burgesy enterpreneurship, and directed either by the Monarchs that were able to change focus and channel them, or the new Governments / Revolutionaries-turned-DictatorsLeaders that overturned the Old Regime. Enphasis here is in the progress (scientific and economic) of the identified cultural nation (however loose or exact it can be, propaganda takes charge of identifying who is us and who is not) and a second "colonial" wave more based in cultural/commercial dominance than actual ownership of the lands.

Ultimiately this Modern age structure will lead to a crisis with the clash of powers that leads to WWI, WWII and cold war and the menace of mutual assured destruction due to the evolution of weapons and tactics.

This potential crisis is what leads me to consider the current "Globalization Age" is different for the "Modern Age" depicted in the game and may deserve its own separate period in an expansion (extending into the future). Howerver, as @Eagle Pursuit or @UWHabs said, some issues may appear in the risky choice of civilisations in the current scenario or interpretartion of future evoluitons of the world (yet, this may be one of the reasons to save it for a DLC).


The possibility of an initial pre-Antiuity Age is algo possibilty, with the Late Harappan - Aryan Migration - Bronze Age collapse framework as the crisis marking the difference between the "early Antiquity" and the "classical Antiquity" periods. However, this dives into a darker part of history were I do not know if we have enough established knovledge (or trivia) regarding pre-crisis and post-crisis values and societies to be able to differentiate the ages in a sensible way. Of course, you could go as @Professor Phobo said and assing that "Bronze Age" the fantasy elements present in Epics, but I'm not sure that would be the preferred way for most here.

 

[tedhebert]

Only on CFC...

Talking about possible additions and expansions 6 months before the actual base game comes out and only 2 weeks after a reveal that showed us about 15% of the actual game

 

[James_Champagne]

All I have to say is, I miss my Medieval Era.

 

[Thormodr]

Adding more ages could be problematic as there aren't even enough Civs to make the Civ switching not devolve into complete nonsense in some cases. (Egypt into Songhai and Buganda, for example.)

However, a future age where there are made up factions could work. A lot of sci Fi stuff. Perhaps, a pre-historic age where there are the Indo European people and other such people groups. That could be fun if done right.

I do imagine Firaxis wants to eventually have more than 3 ages. Perhaps they are bring cautious at the start, which is wise.