I have been fiddling around with advanced starts (starting in later eras), and I think this would be an interesting thing to explore in the GotM. These really shake up the meta, and there would be a lot of new strategy to figure out.
One of the biggest problems with Civ VII currently is that Modern content is mostly irrelevant, as player scaling trivializes the game by the time this era is reached. Updates (including continuity mode and the new building economy) seem to have also pushed this issue forward into Exploration – witness many players in recent GotMs mentioning that they didn’t bother touching their civ’s unique features at all in Exploration.
Starting in later eras completely changes things by plopping you in with a much smaller empire and much lower yields. This means longer eras, with more time to build up infrastructure and make civ uniques actually relevant. Want to actually make use of UBs in Modern? In a Modern era start, you can.
After playing around with this mode, some choices in the game’s design start making more sense, and it begins to feel like advanced starts are meant to be an important part of the game’s package, rather than just an alt-mode afterthought. And yet, I am not sure if many people are even aware of how advanced starts work. Summarizing here:
--You’ll start out seeing only your capital on the map. You then have a pool of “advanced start points”, which can be spent on more settlements (that come in already developed) and various other buffs like extra armies, free techs/civics, and wildcard attribute points. Lots of choices to make!
--Additional settlements you place must all be within a certain radius of the capital. You won’t see much of the map on turn 1, but lots more will be revealed after clicking through to turn 2.
--You also start with a base pool of attribute points to spend. This includes a handful of wildcard points and a handful of tree-specific points based on your leader’s attributes.
--You get traditions! These seem to be based on the historic choices of both your leader and your civ, and they won’t necessarily be the same every time for a given leader/civ combo.
~~
Finally, a few leader/civ combinations that I think could be particularly interesting:
Ben Franklin + America
Emperor Napoleon + Prussia
Augustus + Mexico
One of the biggest problems with Civ VII currently is that Modern content is mostly irrelevant, as player scaling trivializes the game by the time this era is reached. Updates (including continuity mode and the new building economy) seem to have also pushed this issue forward into Exploration – witness many players in recent GotMs mentioning that they didn’t bother touching their civ’s unique features at all in Exploration.
Starting in later eras completely changes things by plopping you in with a much smaller empire and much lower yields. This means longer eras, with more time to build up infrastructure and make civ uniques actually relevant. Want to actually make use of UBs in Modern? In a Modern era start, you can.
After playing around with this mode, some choices in the game’s design start making more sense, and it begins to feel like advanced starts are meant to be an important part of the game’s package, rather than just an alt-mode afterthought. And yet, I am not sure if many people are even aware of how advanced starts work. Summarizing here:
--You’ll start out seeing only your capital on the map. You then have a pool of “advanced start points”, which can be spent on more settlements (that come in already developed) and various other buffs like extra armies, free techs/civics, and wildcard attribute points. Lots of choices to make!
--Additional settlements you place must all be within a certain radius of the capital. You won’t see much of the map on turn 1, but lots more will be revealed after clicking through to turn 2.
--You also start with a base pool of attribute points to spend. This includes a handful of wildcard points and a handful of tree-specific points based on your leader’s attributes.
--You get traditions! These seem to be based on the historic choices of both your leader and your civ, and they won’t necessarily be the same every time for a given leader/civ combo.
~~
Finally, a few leader/civ combinations that I think could be particularly interesting:
Ben Franklin + America
Emperor Napoleon + Prussia
Augustus + Mexico
