Questions regarding age transition

[Prester John 2]

So after watching most of the available material on the game I have some questions left regarding age transition.
Youtuber Writing Bull mentioned that some of an empire's cities will be destroyed when you transition. Is that correct? I would rather have them turn into independent cities if I have to loose them at all. I'm okay with losing some infrastructure but whole cities? What about losing units?
Will cities retain their name or acquire new names corresponding to the new culture, like Roman-Egyptian Babylon turning into Fustat and then into Cairo?
Will the limitation to my initial continent and restriction for seafaring mean there'll be no Pangaea map in Civ7? Or will there be just a massive mountain range?
Will new land just be generated upon transition or is it already there in the beginning of a game and just not yet discovered?
Will new independent cities spring up after a transition? How much settlable land will be left after the end of the second age. Much of Africa was not colonized (but still inhabited) by big empires until the end of the 19th century, which would equal the beginning of the third age.
Will the AI finally be able to colonize a different continent properly; something it failed to do in most civ iterations?

 

[Krikkit1]

I think they are turned into towns (unless they were actually destroyed in the crisis)

 

[thecrazyscot]

All really good questions. I hope we get to see gameplay that includes an age transition soon!

 

[Gori the Grey]

Yeah, we're all wondering these things.

I wonder particularly how they will handle the psychology of players seeing much of what they worked to build in one age reduced at the start of the next. That could feel really discouraging on two levels: 1) just seeing things you worked to build in some inferior state and 2) feeling like civs you'd been dominating have been artificially caught up to you (rubberbanding, I guess its called).

One hunch I have is that in the post-crisis moment, scouting will again become necessary. It's pretty clear that early in Exploration you'll be able to cross the oceans and discover new lands, new peoples, new luxes. But I wonder if you won't even have to re-scout the territory around you. Your settlements are out of communication with one another, and can't build and coordinate their efforts until you fogbust to them again, and only then do you see what has survived and what hasn't. New resources are available, but don't appear until you scout again. Some new form of goodie-hut, even. Could make the first X of 4x meaningful three times in the game rather than just once. (And exploring is the funnest x. Well, okay, exterminating is the funnest x, but exploration is a close second.)