The Golden Age threshold for the Ancient era is too low

[CaptainPatch]

I'm not sure what it is for other than Marathon games, but 11 Era points in Marathon means EVERYONE will have a Golden Age in the Classical era. I generally have 30+ to 60+ points by the time Classical rolls around. Just wandering around, seeing Natural Wonders, stomping a few barbarian camps, completing research on a few techs and policies... I mean, it's hard to NOT hit 11 points

Now that I'm away from the game, I'm confused. Is 11+ points necessary, just to avoid a Dark Ages in Classical? Any way, it's waaaaaayyyyyy too easy to qualify for a Golden Age in the Classical era.

 

[SxSnts9]

Agreed. The game wasn't meant to be played on anything but Standard speed unfortunately.

 

[Sagax]

It’s not properly attuned to game speed. It’s VERY hard to get Classical Golden on Quick and Online.

 

[Archon_Wing]

I get a Dark Age in like half my games (normal speed)

 

[Kibikus]

Unless my civ has a very early UU/UI, or I'm lucky and clear a bunch of barb camps/discover a bunch of natural wonders/find a lot of goody huts, I rarely get a Classical Golden Age (standard speed).

 

[Onii-chan]

I'd rather say golden ages are too easy, period. Even on standard speed like I play you get golden ages about 65% of the time and normal ages 34% of the time. I've only had a few dark ages ever since the launch of R&F. That's counting every era of every game I've played. I'd like to get more dark ages for variety's sake as I haven't even gotten the chance to see all of the unique cards for them yet, but it just doesn't happen

Does anyone know if there's any mod that increases era score threshholds? I might be interested in that if so

 

[kaspergm]

I'd rather say golden ages are too easy, period. Even on standard speed like I play you get golden ages about 65% of the time and normal ages 34% of the time. I've only had a few dark ages ever since the launch of R&F. That's counting every era of every game I've played. I'd like to get more dark ages for variety's sake as I haven't even gotten the chance to see all of the unique cards for them yet, but it just doesn't happen

Does anyone know if there's any mod that increases era score threshholds? I might be interested in that if so

I agree, particularly once you get past medieval era, the gap between normal age and golden age is way too small.

 

[Victoria]

They could scale up and down, I have no clue why not but suspect they think that because there is the same number of things to get whether fast or slow it should be no different while even 1.25/.75 would make a nice difference.
At least if they did it they would have the modifiers in eras.xml or similar and they could be changed.
A slider would be nice

 

[CaptainPatch]

They could scale up and down, I have no clue why not but suspect they think that because there is the same number of things to get whether fast or slow it should be no different while even 1.25/.75 would make a nice difference.
At least if they did it they would have the modifiers in eras.xml or similar and they could be changed.
A slider would be nice

They probably have to factor in map size, map type, number of opposing civs, whether or not "No barbarians" was checked, number of City States taking up space, etc. There can only be so much score-worthy stuff squeezed into so much space. Once the player starts to add in mods that affect that environment, any calculations they may have made for game balance probably goes right out the window. So I would guess they didn't even try to do any kind of Golden Era scaling. They just went with Vanilla, Standard speed, Normal map size, Average Difficulty (King?), and average everything else. If the players step out of that rigid set of parameters, too bad for them. After all, "it's just a game." Right?

 

[Victoria]

it's just a game." Right?

Sure, but that does not stop us dreaming and just a little scaling would help a lot and put in place the mechanics for modders. The answer to most things in life is in the middle, and a rigid era setting is disruptive to a nice feeling game.
Bottom line is a little too easy and a little too hard so let’s at least try .75/1.25.
To say it is too complicated is a cop out IMO.

And 12+ is what you need to avoid for classic amd 24+ to go golden.
Other eras are the same but modified +/- 5 for each golden/dark and +1 for each city.

Start in the middle of a bunch of civs that are destroying all the camps and finding the huts, then tell me it is easy to avoid a dark age.

 

[Disgustipated]

11 points? The threshold is 24 points on epic speed. If I can't be exploring due to barb problems or an early uu/ui/ub then I won't get it. Actually lack of barbs is how I often miss it, or city state/other Civ clears the camp.

 

[Victoria]

11 points? The threshold is 24 points on epic speed. If I can't be exploring due to barb problems or an early uu/ui/ub then I won't get it. Actually lack of barbs is how I often miss it, or city state/other Civ clears the camp.

That indicates a modifier is in there, nice, willnhave a nose.

 

[Disgustipated]

I just realized he meant 11 over normal age. I agree it's very easy on marathon. On epic I get it maybe 60 or 70% of the time.

 

[Janskey]

I'd rather say golden ages are too easy, period. Even on standard speed like I play you get golden ages about 65% of the time and normal ages 34% of the time. I've only had a few dark ages ever since the launch of R&F. That's counting every era of every game I've played. I'd like to get more dark ages for variety's sake as I haven't even gotten the chance to see all of the unique cards for them yet, but it just doesn't happen

Does anyone know if there's any mod that increases era score thresholds? I might be interested in that if so

Here's a simple mod that increases the base thresholds. Extract to Documents\My Games\Civ VI\Mods. I don't know how much you want to increase them, but they're in the .sql, set to 15 and 30. Just open the file with notepad and change as you see fit. You might also want to change other parameters related to era score. If so, just follow the format in the file and insert values and name from the list here (though it's easier to do a table insert if you want to change a lot of values):

Spoiler :

<Replace Name="THRESHOLD_SHIFT_PER_ANARCHY" Value="0"/>
<Replace Name="THRESHOLD_SHIFT_PER_CITY" Value="1"/>
<Replace Name="THRESHOLD_SHIFT_PER_INCOMPLETE_ERA_CIVIC" Value="0"/>
<Replace Name="THRESHOLD_SHIFT_PER_INCOMPLETE_ERA_TECH" Value="0"/>
<Replace Name="THRESHOLD_SHIFT_PER_INCOMPLETE_OLD_CIVIC" Value="0"/>
<Replace Name="THRESHOLD_SHIFT_PER_INCOMPLETE_OLD_TECH" Value="0"/>
<Replace Name="THRESHOLD_SHIFT_PER_MISSING_AMENITY" Value="0"/>
<Replace Name="THRESHOLD_SHIFT_PER_PAST_DARK_AGE" Value="-5"/>
<Replace Name="THRESHOLD_SHIFT_PER_PAST_GOLDEN_AGE" Value="5"/>

 

[UWHabs]

I only play at normal, and I think it's scaled pretty decently there. Although given that there's a lot of new sources of era score that did not exist before (settling near a floodplain, building a tile improvement over a "damaged" tile, etc...) I definitely feel it's easier to avoid a dark age than it was before. I used to be maybe 25-50% of the time in a classical dark age, and now I don't think I've even once missed the normal threshold early.

My biggest problem is always getting so close to a classical golden age but just not quite making it. Nothing more frustrating than being at 23 points when the counter hits 0...

 

[kaspergm]

I definitely think the per-city threshold needs to go up. It seems proportionally easier to get era score when you have many cities, because they will help you get more great persons, more era score from district adjacancy, more archeologists, more wonders. In this regard, +1 per city seems too low.

 

[WillowBrook]

The base thresholds need to be slightly higher, in my opinion, although if you end up in a barb-free area, and have no ancient uniques, it's difficult to avoid a dark age (hopefully the next patch will fix the barb distribution).

Before GS, I used 8 ages of pace to balance the civic/tech speed with production speed better (IMO), but had to lengthen the era length ranges and increase golden/dark age thresholds quite a bit to avoid perpetual golden ages. I'm waiting to see what the first patch brings before updating it for GS.

 

[Takfloyd]

On Quick, the requirements for normal and golden ages seem well balanced. It's pretty hard to get golden ages without being in a dark age, especially after the first few ages where you can farm barbarian encampments and get a lot of score from exploring.

On Online, it's far too hard to get a golden age, almost impossible, especially on the first era change. On Standard and slower, it's far too easy and I seem to get a golden age every single era.

I hope they keep the balance exactly as it is for Quick, and rebalance the other settings.