Staggered Obsolescence?

[Graethyenne]

A (potentially crazy) thought that occurred to me.....what if, instead of buildings becoming obsolete immediately on age transition, they gradually obsoleted based on Age progress?

As a very coarse example, split the Prior Age's Tech and Civic Trees into 5 pieces. Every 10% of Age progress obsolete the oldest piece that hasn't already been obsoleted. So at 50% age progress the entire prior age has obsoleted. Does that strengthen the sense of progression (and also give late age buildings a little more longevity)?

Obvious Problems
- more yields for the first 1/2 of Exploration and Modern as buildings obsolesce.
- golden age buildings that last an extra age lose a little value.

Thoughts?

 

[pjotroos]

The clean slate is the point. The eras are hard split, and even then, it takes a while to wrap your head around it to begin with. I hardly overbuilt a thing in my first game. There were lots of posts in the early days advising it and arguing about it. Gradual obsolescence would just muddy the waters even more for a new player. Also, you would lose the chance to plan your cities again as all the plots are usable at the same time, and the impact of early buildings would get even fuzzier, as the yields yo-yo up and down.

If I'd change anything about them, I would make it so at 50% whatever paltry yields carried over also get dragged down to zero, so the old influence buildings stop being a weird edge case and the point of obsolescence and overbuilding is much clearer.

 

[Graethyenne]

Ah shoot, I actually meant to add the clarity issue as a potential problem (I use mods which spell out obsolescence so the fuzziness isn't an issue for me at the moment).

Part of what prompted this is folks complaining about how "pointless" late age buildings are. I think "pointless" overstates the issue, but I can appreciate the aura of mootness to building things as the age end nears.

Suffice to say you aren't a fan of my idea, though it provoked your thematically similar idea of full obsolescence, so effective colab there.

The clean slate is the point. The eras are hard split, and even then, it takes a while to wrap your head around it to begin with. I hardly overbuilt a thing in my first game. There were lots of posts in the early days advising it and arguing about it. Gradual obsolescence would just muddy the waters even more for a new player. Also, you would lose the chance to plan your cities again as all the plots are usable at the same time, and the impact of early buildings would get even fuzzier, as the yields yo-yo up and down.

If I'd change anything about them, I would make it so at 50% whatever paltry yields carried over also get dragged down to zero, so the old influence buildings stop being a weird edge case and the point of obsolescence and overbuilding is much clearer.

 

[King Flevance]

I would prefer that they just keep their stats but gain the obsolete tag to be overbuilt. Then the next age buildings are just much more powerful and the new techs much more expensive and happiness penalties run at a higher metric. So that by modern age ancient building aren't worth keeping even if you tried maximizing specialization in exploration. By modern they shouldn't even be worth the tile when they could be adding much more valuable bonuses.