Potential for new ages being added in future DLC

[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.

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

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.

I can see it now:
1st expansion adds in Future Era with sci-fi units.
2nd expansion adds in Prehistoric Age with megafauna and nomadic start.
Then finally a 3rd expansion adding a Medieval Age because so many people have been wanting a third expansion to a game for the longest, and a Medieval Age for this game.

 

[j51]

I agree with everyone on this thread pointing out that adding ages to the base game at either end or in the middle would probably upset the balance too much and certainly water down the immersion/connection felt to the civs played.

But the era system would be great for separate scenarios where the game rules change on a shorter time scale. Like a more detailed Into The Renaissance from Civ V.

 

[acluewithout]

I can see adding a ‘future’ age.

Personally, I’d love an eventual future age, because I really like the idea of going from ancient history all the way to a near future.

The tricky bit about extrapolating forward is just you don’t have Civ’s in built ‘theme’ of ‘historical progress’.

Civ is of course mostly themed around history, but it’s not really ‘history’, because there’s no one way to do or conceptualise ‘history’. Instead, Civ plays with a version of history which is rooted in sort of ‘progress’, ‘(western) enlightenment’, ‘nation states’ and, if we’re being honest, a bit of ‘conquest & colonialism’.

When Civ moves to ‘sci-if’, there needs to be some sort of vision for that. Otherwise it’s all just a hodgepodge. And that’s were Civ has usually struggled.

Like, I think Civ 5 and 6 had some good ideas around ‘future’ tech, government, and society - the problem is FXS have tended to make the future game something of a ‘mish mash’ rather than picking a lane. eg in Civ 6, I’m fine with future GDRs - but are the GDRs ‘anime Mecha & Kaiju’ , ‘Starship Trooper Miltech Future’ or ‘Sky Net Cold War Metaphor’? If it’s mecha anime, where are my flying tanks and fantasy sci-fi and kaiju? If it’s starship troopers, why doesn’t my foot army also level up and where is my fascist dystopia? If it’s skynet, why are the AI techs so look warm?

On a different note, I don’t think Civ needs a medieval or other historical ages to feel ‘complete’. How Ages will ‘feel’ is going to depend a lot on how FXS implement and frame them. But at the moment, it looks like the game still has all the ancient -> classical -> medieval etc age progression, it’s just the game sort of ‘calls out’ specific transitions from one ‘epoch’ to another. Your game still moves through ancient to classical to medieval, it’s just that when you move past medieval etc there is this extra big world shaking ‘jump’.

Honestly, I kinda like that idea. Civs moving from eg classical to medieval is still a big deal, because of the science and culture jump, but then eventually you trigger these even bigger global ‘jumps’.

Thinking about it, Civ 6 already had this - moving into some ages was more significant than others, and with golden / dark ages you already had a crisis mechanic. Civ 7 seems to be just putting those mechanics a bit more ‘on rails’, which I guess might make some things feel less organic or open ended, but I assume also lets them make the mechanics more robust and opens up other mechanical options.

I think another way of thinking about it is a bit like the card / board game ‘7 Wonders’. It also has this really fun ‘turn by turn’ play, but with two distinct ‘resets’ where you draw a new hand of cards. The two things work together to make a really interesting rhythm to the game.