Small Observations General Thread (things not worth separate threads)

[AriochIV]

Ok I just couldn't recognize the Chola symbol

I thought it was Cookie Monster

 

[Siptah]

In a (civ 5) Live Stream, Marbozir just said that he could not play single-age games in Antiquity or Exploration. He can start in any age, but the ending would always be at the end of Modern. Would be good to know it this option is just missing in the press build, or whether this (often-alluded to) feature was actually cut.

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

In a (civ 5) Live Stream, Marbozir just said that he could not play single-age games in Antiquity or Exploration. He can start in any age, but the ending would always be at the end of Modern. Would be good to know it this option is just missing in the press build, or whether this (often-alluded to) feature was actually cut.

If you start in the Modern Age, it would be a single age game

 

[thecrazyscot]

In a (civ 5) Live Stream, Marbozir just said that he could not play single-age games in Antiquity or Exploration. He can start in any age, but the ending would always be at the end of Modern. Would be good to know it this option is just missing in the press build, or whether this (often-alluded to) feature was actually cut.

Yes, this is an important question for me!

 

[Siptah]

If you start in the Modern Age, it would be a single age game

That is true for the older games as well though. It wouldn't justify how they emphasized the feature, which I would consider to have been misleading if only Exploration or only Antiquity games aren't possible.

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

That is true for the older games as well though. It wouldn't justify how they emphasized the feature, which I would consider to have been misleading if only Exploration or only Antiquity games aren't possible.

I assume you just quit after the Age transition tallies up your score.

 

[Siptah]

I assume you just quit after the Age transition tallies up your score.

And the winner is simply the person with the most achieved milestones, e.g., the longest bar in that screen?

The only real difference to before is then the clear cut, because ages finish at the same time in 7. Previously, it might have been difficult to judge based on score after the player reaches a certain age/turn.

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

And the winner is simply the person with the most achieved milestones, e.g., the longest bar in that screen?

Yeah, pretty informal, I'm guessing.

 

[Siptah]

Yeah, pretty informal, I'm guessing.

That would be disappointing. On the other hand, if there are no projects after finishing a legacy path involved, it could be fun to go all in crises and get some more milestones even while losing cities etc.

 

[thecrazyscot]

I assume you just quit after the Age transition tallies up your score.

This would be dumb. If that's the case why not put buttons for "End Game" or "Continue Game" during the Age transition to make it official?

EDIT: not pointing my ire at you, just at the (realistic) possibility this is the route they chose

 

[8housesofelixir]

I noticed that, in Rosencreutz's video, he opens up the Civilopedia page of Han, which shows the icon of the Shidafu UU:

FYI, this icon is based on the Black Gauze Cap 乌纱帽, a government official's hat that took this exact shape only in the Ming dynasty.

Spoiler A Ming painting showing three officials wearing the black cap :

It is also worth noting that the word Shidafu 士大夫 or "scholar-official" is not a Han dynasty vocabulary. The very concept of scholar-official only developed after the Civil Service Examination became prevalent, which only happened in the Song dynasty, and reached its peak in the Ming dynasty.

Then, in the Han Great Person list, among the many early Chinese scholars and officials, is Wang Yangming (1472-1529 CE), a famous Ming scholar-official known for his philosophical advancements. It is also worth noting that the ability of Wang Yangming is "Activated on an Army Commander to grant it a free Promotion"; historically, Wang Yangming was also an able commander who defeated a contender to the Ming throne. Therefore, this Wang Yangming design is undoubtedly based on the Ming official Wang Yangming, rather than some random Han official who was mistakenly named after a Ming person.



Initially, I thought Wang Yangming was a lone case of anachronism, as everyone else on the Great Person list roughly fits into the Early Imperial China period (ca. 221 BCE - 266 CE), while the wording of Shidafu might be simply an overlooked term.

However, the icon of Shidafu is undoubtedly based on the official cap from the Ming times. With that in mind, the Han Great Person list now has three instances of Ming elements, from naming to art design. And these are carefully designed Ming elements - both the icon design and the Wang Yangming design accurately reflect Ming customs and historical events, indicating that the designers involved as a good understanding of Ming history. But now, these assets have become part of the Han design.

In conclusion, I strongly suspect that the Han Unique Unit, "Shidafu," was initially designed as the Unique Unit for Ming. For reasons unknown, FXS devs eventually decided to shift these unique units to Han, which resulted in the current design. This change was done somewhat hurriedly, in that the name and the icon for these UU remained as a Ming name and a Ming icon, as well as an anachronistic Wang Yangming. The current UU also has a bunch of figures who were clearly not from the Han era (in fact, the majority of them were not from the Han era), suggesting poor research caused by a hurried design change.

---

I don't have any feelings about this design change personally - I would still happily play Han and Ming.

On the other hand, I would like to point out that the three cases of anachronism will be very, very visible to anyone who are relatively familiar with Chinese history, especially to Chinese players (who all learned about the Ming scholar Wang Yangming in their high school textbooks). It would be a very jarring playing experience for the Chinese player community when they see an accurately portrayed Ming figure showing up in the Han civ, and I can certainly imagine Chinese players complaining about how FXS handled it (if not already).

I would suggest that FXS devs at least do something about Wang Yangming, which should fix the most apparent issue (redesigning the icon and the rest of the Great Person would be too much work before release).

• Perhaps renaming Wang Yangming to Ban Chao, who was a scholar and an actual army commander in the Eastern Han dynasty, so only a rename is enough, and his ability won't require a redesign. In addition, he is also related to Ban Zhao (Chao is the big brother of Zhao), who is already a Great Person on the list, so the overall theme of early Chinese scholars and officials is still retained.

(In a perfect world, I might suggest redesigning the entire Han UU list from the ground up, as there were plenty of interesting figures in Han times - I am a historian focusing on early China, and my job is to deal with these interesting figures every day. Of course, this will be plenty of work, and I won't expect such a relatively large redesign on a released product to be realistically on the developing schedule.)

In any case, I hope that such a small rename could patch this issue of unthematic anachronism, and bring about a better playing experience.

 

[Piemaxx]

Do mastery bonuses carry over? (Apologies if this has already been answered on the forum, my search didn’t turn it up.)

 

[sTAPler27]

Do mastery bonuses carry over? (Apologies if this has already been answered on the forum, my search didn’t turn it up.)

I asked a similar question and I think they get unlocked alongside all the techs and civics during the age transitions. You do however keep the codices unlocked by them so there is some bonus to unlocking them beforehand even if you don't get that unique bonus which is a bit of a shame

 

[sTAPler27]

Has anyone cracked the code of how tile happiness works yet? I've seen plenty of tiles that produce 1 happiness but none that have negative happiness and very few that have 2 or more. I can't really see any patterns from my knowlege of 6's appeal system

 

[Evolena]

You do however keep the codices unlocked by them so there is some bonus to unlocking them beforehand even if you don't get that unique bonus which is a bit of a shame

Are you sure of that? There is no codex to be seen in the Great Work UI in following ages.
There is however a Legacy option to get a flat bonus to Science for each codex you had in Antiquity, but my understanding is that those disappear.

 

[AriochIV]

Has anyone cracked the code of how tile happiness works yet? I've seen plenty of tiles that produce 1 happiness but none that have negative happiness and very few that have 2 or more. I can't really see any patterns from my knowlege of 6's appeal system

I think it's a case of various yields and resources supplying Happiness which is consumed by population and various effects, such as war weariness or exceeding the settlement cap. I don't know if or how much Happiness regular population consumes, but I do know that Specialists consume some... it's like 2 or 5 per.

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

Are you sure of that? There is no codex to be seen in the Great Work UI in following ages.
There is however a Legacy option to get a flat bonus to Science for each codex you had in Antiquity, but my understanding is that those disappear.

Thinking about how Libraries hold Codices, but become obsolete in the Exploration and have to be overbuilt with Universities; I don't think Great Works stick around.

As such, Catherine's power band will look like Tecumseh's (who is powered by suzeraining city-states that also disappear in the Age transition). They go up a little bit for every Great Work or Suzerainty, then drop sharply each new Age and have to climb again.

Things that don't disappear are unique improvements, unique buildings and quarters, Traditions, settlements, and your pile of gold.

(And settlements can disappear if you take the military legacy dark age. You lose all your settlements except your capital (disappear or become independent somehow?), and gain several cavalry armies. I'm curious how that might be turned into a strategy. Either to invade the Distant Lands or to sweep your neighbors while they are still weak at the beginning of the Age.

 

[sTAPler27]

I think it's a case of various yields and resources supplying Happiness which is consumed by population and various effects, such as war weariness or exceeding the settlement cap. I don't know if or how much Happiness regular population consumes, but I do know that Specialists consume some... it's like 2 or 5 per.

I'm more focused on the terrain aspect because I cannot pinpoint where most of it is coming from. If I had to guess everyhting that provided appeal in 6 is carried over with the inclusion of marsh, floodplains and rainforests. The main difference I think is that instead of the specific appeal mattering it just matters if its positive or negative. High enough appeal tiles provide one happiness while low appeal ones don't. Which if that is the case I wish they would've implemented happiness penalties for low appeal tiles and increased appeal further scaling with appeal.

 

[sTAPler27]

Thinking about how Libraries hold Codices, but become obsolete in the Exploration and have to be overbuilt with Universities; I don't think Great Works stick around.

I'm already pretty bummed great works aren't what they used to so this is an even bigger blow. I really wish more unique stuff stayed with the transition.

 

[AriochIV]

Happiness also comes from a wide variety of effects, so trying to account for it all from terrain is unlikely to be fruitful.