So are Normal Ages the worst?

[Jackanape]

I wonder if difficulty has as large an effect on ages as it would appear from these posts. I play Emperor mostly, as I enjoy the balance I get from that difficulty level. However, Golden ages are not as easy to get as they appear to be for others...

I wonder what the scale is? While to date, difficulty seemed to only effect AI ability, I have to wonder if they didn't heavily incorporate it I to the ages system. Anyone have any idea?

 

[MrRadar]

it seems like it'd be better to avoid a normal age

What's funny, all this 'avoiding' seems rather easy to do. With such a narrow era score interval for the 'normal age', if you reach it, it does not take very much effort to push for more and get a golden one. In all three games of R&F I've played so far (one Emperor, two Immortal, standard speed), my all three Classical ages were dark (not too many barb camps around), but then all three Medieval ones were heroic, and then usually I got a few golden ages in a row. 'Normal age' in all those games was rather a rarity.

So far, I find Dark Age policies maybe just too good. Twilight Valour with +5 combat for melee units with no heal outside home territory can give you a decisive edge in conquering a few closely grouped cities and there - you have your new home territory where to patch up and move on (you can also earn a promotion in the meanwhile and heal up or pillage some farm, the malus is not so scary as it may sound). Isolation card can be useful for boosting freshly founded cities. You can line up your civic switches to swap this card out or in, do expansion in one or two bursts, thus basically negating its supposed downside. That's all for early dark ages, I haven't had a late one.

I don't know, but Dark ages could be more punishing, perhaps, with slowed pop growth and universal penalties to science, gold, production and combat. Then a dedication maybe could help you to avoid one of those penalties and give some other small boost in the respective area. And to pull oneself from a Dark age right into a Heroic one should require much more effort and maybe lucky alignment of some stars, it should be something to remember if you manage to do that, and this should not necessarily happen every game or even every other game.

As for the normal ages, yeah, they're just... normal, nothing to write home about. Except that they seem to be abnormally rare. But then again, a sample of just three games is far too small to make any big judgements.

 

[Karpius]

You can definitely conquer during a dark age, but you have to be able to take 3 cities within half a dozen turns, and get your governors in place. Especially Amani who, if promoted, puts pressure on your own cities as well as others.

Strategically placing your governors (especially Amani) is the key to holding any conquests in any age.

If you are coming from across the ocean to take that first city on another continent, there are two Admirals you should have handy as well because of the loyalty boost they provide. Couple that with the Halicarnassus wonder and Amani, and you will hold that city against most any pressure.

 

[leandrombraz]

I've played only three R&F games so far, but in all of them it appeared to me that golden ages are too easy to achieve. In the first game when my first two ages were golden, I decided to try and go for the achievement "3 golden ages in a row". In reality, ALL my ages were golden (5 or 6 in row, I don't remember anymore, and often with a huuuuuge overflow).
When I wanted to try the dark age in my second game, I had to actively go for it and then I got heroic and a row of golden ages.

The whole system feels a little bit weird to me. Normal ages are boring and in my experience hard to get, regardless the name "normal" (boring is ok, because "normal" means nothing special, but IMHO you also should get most ages normal and only sometimes a golden one or a dark one). Golden ages are not so good, because you pick one bonus and I mostly had to choose between something I didn't really need (religious boost) and something I didn't feel like getting much out of (a little bit better eurekas or inspirations). And dark ages? They sound nice, but I have so little experience with them (only ONE so far) that I cannot really decide. I, however, HATE the dark color scheme, there really should be a setting to turn it off.

I'm in my third R&F game and I still didn't get a dark age. I'm in an "infinite golden age" in my current game, I been getting golden ages since classical and I'm entering Industrial with a guaranteed golden. I just built the Taj Mahal, so that isn't slowing down any time soon.

I really don't like that you need to handicap yourself to get a dark age. It should happen naturally more often. Golden Ages also are too easy to get, it shouldn't be so easy to get a streak like that. Since I refuse to handicap myself, I doubt I'll ever get a dark age unless Firaxis change the formula, it's just impossible to happen. The penalty for getting a golden age should be more severe, 5 isn't enough.

 

[leandrombraz]

I wonder if difficulty has as large an effect on ages as it would appear from these posts. I play Emperor mostly, as I enjoy the balance I get from that difficulty level. However, Golden ages are not as easy to get as they appear to be for others...

I wonder what the scale is? While to date, difficulty seemed to only effect AI ability, I have to wonder if they didn't heavily incorporate it I to the ages system. Anyone have any idea?

There isn't a difficulty penalty in the era systems and most sources of historical moments aren't affected by difficulty in a meaningful way, only wonders but by the time you start to rely on wonders for points you already catch up with the AI a long time ago and can beat them to any wonder you want.

 

[Scaramanga]

Strategically placing your governors (especially Amani) is the key to holding any conquests in any age.

If you are coming from across the ocean to take that first city on another continent, there are two Admirals you should have handy as well because of the loyalty boost they provide. Couple that with the Halicarnassus wonder and Amani, and you will hold that city against most any pressure.

Why Amani specifically? Holding just one city is possible with any governor's loyalty pressure, unless I'm missing one of her promotions.

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

Why Amani specifically? Holding just one city is possible with any governor's loyalty pressure, unless I'm missing one of her promotions.

She has a promotion that extends her loyalty boost to any of your own cities within 9 tiles (and another that affects foreign cities within 9 tiles).

 

[Jewelrunna]

I love the concept of the dark/normal/golden/heroic ages, and in practice I love it too. It really spices up the monotony of just moving from era to era, and it makes replaying the game all the more interesting. But I, like other people in the thread, would actually like more punishing dark ages. I don’t feel any real deficit when I’m entering one, and I get some unique policies to play with. I’m sure there are some situations where the lessened loyalty can really mess you up, but most of the time I’m unaffected. The issue really isn’t normal ages being bland, because that’s the whole point of a normal age. I just really want dark ages to make things a lot more challenging for you, so there’s actual incentive for avoiding them.

 

[blackcatatonic]

I don't know, but Dark ages could be more punishing, perhaps, with slowed pop growth and universal penalties to science, gold, production and combat. Then a dedication maybe could help you to avoid one of those penalties and give some other small boost in the respective area. And to pull oneself from a Dark age right into a Heroic one should require much more effort and maybe lucky alignment of some stars, it should be something to remember if you manage to do that, and this should not necessarily happen every game or even every other game.

Entirely agree with this.

 

[Karpius]

She has a promotion that extends her loyalty boost to any of your own cities within 9 tiles (and another that affects foreign cities within 9 tiles).

Yep! Tons of loyalty pressure from her in those close quarter situations. More than just defensive.

 

[KayAU]

Unfortunately, so far, I am not too impressed with the Age system. I am currently well into my third R&F game, and so far I've only had 1 Normal Age, the rest have been Golden Ages. That's on King difficulty, Epic speed. I think there needs to be some balancing. Also, I think it doesn't make sense that you should be rewarded for getting a Dark Age (by providing the only opportunity to reach a Heroic Age), or punished for overshooting the Golden Age threshold (punished in the sense that you have wasted the means to generate points for the next era).

 

[Karpius]

I would tend to agree that Dark Ages should be more punishing and Heroic Ages should require near heroic effort to achieve. However, most players don't like when 'game bonuses' come too rarely, or when their work is 'disrupted' by a game mechanic.

Imagine the complaints if Heroic Ages were indeed a rarity. "Whats the sense of putting it in there if you can hardly ever get it!"

Imagine the uproar over genuinely difficult Dark Ages. "Thats ridiculous that my civ should suffer tha much during a Dark Age! They need to nerf that! It breaks the game!"

Yeah, must be fun trying to please the people.

 

[nitedemon]

I play on prince/king too. Gold age is so easy to chain in those difficulty levels and it is so hard to get a dark age even for classical. And I always jus picked the faith buy settler dedication...

I do think they make dark age less punishing because they don’t want people to immediately restart when they hit a dark age ( in one of Sid Meier’s talk on the concept of rise and fall)

So far (only 3 completed games, one Prince, two King - make of that what you will) my impression is that Dark Ages aren't dark or punishing enough, and that Golden Ages are too easy to get. Being in a Dark Age should pose real problems for your Civ beyond loyalty concerns (seems easy enough to offset by expanding carefully and using well-placed governors) and warmongering. Deciding to go Dark-Heroic should be more of a risk, and Normal Ages should be the default state rather than something you have to try to avoid.

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

I agree that Golden Ages should be harder. It should scale with game difficulty and it should scale exponentially for each Golden Age you've managed to achieve in a row.

However, I think the Dark Age is fine. You have a small penalty to loyalty, and rule tweaks in the form of exclusive Dark Age policies that temporarily change up gameplay in interesting ways.

 

[Scaramanga]

Yep! Tons of loyalty pressure from her in those close quarter situations. More than just defensive.

Yeah I figured that, but does the +2 make a difference in close quarters with all the combined pressure between foreign cities? I might rather have governor combat bonuses...

 

[Jackanape]

I dare say that perhaps the reason people WANT to hit the Dark Age is for the potential for an Heroic Age on the other side. Remove that trigger for an HA, and all of a sudden DAs are quite undesirable, but still navigable enough that you can survive them and not necessarily need a restart.

I'd make Heroic Ages reliant on how many era points you get...if you can really blow the top off your GA threshold, you get the Heroic...

Just a thought.

 

[acluewithout]

The score needed to get dark - golden ages needs to either something you can directly adjust when you create a game or something which scales with difficulty.

Some players will want a real struggle to stay out of dark ages or even then get to a golden age. But I can see that equally be horrifically unpopular with a lot of casual players and could hurt sales. The only way to make everyone happy is to have some ability to adjust things, like you do with no. of city states, resources etc.

 

[Karpius]

Yeah I figured that, but does the +2 make a difference in close quarters with all the combined pressure between foreign cities? I might rather have governor combat bonuses...

I suppose that would depend on the situation at the time.

My main concern if I take a city is the loyalty pressure from other cities. If I am on the offensive, I already have enough units in the area to deflect any counter-attack. But thats just the way I role. So for me, countering the loyalty pressure is paramount and it has not yet required me to take other cities if I did not choose to.

 

[kaspergm]

I wonder if difficulty has as large an effect on ages as it would appear from these posts. I play Emperor mostly, as I enjoy the balance I get from that difficulty level. However, Golden ages are not as easy to get as they appear to be for others...

I play emperor (normal speed), and I have to actively aim for a dark age. Most games so far I've been more or less permanent golden age from renaissance and onwards.

 

[leandrombraz]

Yeah I figured that, but does the +2 make a difference in close quarters with all the combined pressure between foreign cities? I might rather have governor combat bonuses...

Any loyalty from sources other than population make a big difference. +2 might see like it's low but it's +2 directly applied to your loyalty on top of your population loyalty. It bypass the whole population tug of war game and just add to your total loyalty. A happy city get merely +3 from amenities but that make a difference because it's +3 directly applied to your total, unaffected by population pressure.