Tune in November 7 for an Exploration Age livestream!

[Zaarin]

I think everyone having ability to found a religion is better

For me it's the absolute worst thing they've announced short of agendas returning. I generally don't think of non-flavor mods before a game is even out, but I'm already contemplating how thoroughly I can break the current Exploration Age design because they've taken one of the worst parts of Civ6 and put it on steroids...

I was just going to mention Civ 4. I prefer that implementation, though with one caveat. It got a little silly with the same civ being able to found so many religions (I know there is some real world examples of this, but for gameplay reasons it's not the best). I mainly want religion to be something for flavor, not as a victory condition. And I want it to impact diplomacy a decent amount.

100% this, though I'm also okay with there being minority religions if they do something interesting.

 

[Mr Jon of Cheam]

I was just going to mention Civ 4. I prefer that implementation, though with one caveat. It got a little silly with the same civ being able to found so many religions (I know there is some real world examples of this, but for gameplay reasons it's not the best). I mainly want religion to be something for flavor, not as a victory condition. And I want it to impact diplomacy a decent amount.

We can already see having it as a victory modifier means the AI is quite aggressive at spreading theirs which can get annoying always having to move your own missionaries around to counter it.

Yes, agree with that. Founding more than one religion was strange.

 

[Disgustipated]

So what's the consensus on the civs on the lands on the other continent? Are they competing for victories or not? Or are they just there for flavor/interaction? It seems if they can't get treasures fleets (but maybe they can capture them), then there is no way for them to work towards that victory.

 

[HanNorwood]

So what's the consensus on the civs on the lands on the other continent? Are they competing for victories or not? Or are they just there for flavor/interaction? It seems if they can't get treasures fleets (but maybe they can capture them), then there is no way for them to work towards that victory.

I hope they are the former. I’d much prefer competing entities.

If they are primarily in the game to serve as an obstacle in the colonization of the New World, I hope decolonization is an element introduced into the Modern Age, perhaps beginning as a crisis at the end of the Exploration.

 

[Nikolai II]

@ Civ7 mods, could you please see what other screenshots from https://forums.civfanatics.com/media/categories/civ7-developer-livestream-november-7-2024.87/ need organizing in some way? Please check if any current threads need to be updated (incl. the ones I just created).

Events and crisis could possibly be moved to separate threads for discussion?

EDIT: On it.

 

[The_goggles_do_nothing]

I'm not against asymmetrical gameplay (on the contrary, it's IMO one way to have dynamic difficulty with current AI), but I feel that's a bigger core concept change in the series than civ switching, if this interpretation is correct.

I don't think it's intentional asymmetrical. This might be the reason multiplayer is listed as being limited to 5 players. Everyone must start on the same homeland to make treasure resources work.

 

[chaosprophet]

If Confucius or Amina would be able to gain points for the legacy paths in the exploration age, they would create age progress for the militaristic legacy path - regardless of whether they‘ve been met or not. But the progress was at 0. It can be that they had less cities in the DL than required for the first progress (and no religion yet when the screens where shown). But to me it looks like DL civs don’t work well with the economic and militaristic path and will thus not create progress. Also, if they did „compete“ in generating progress points, the second age would be shorter than the first due to more players gaining points and accelerating the ending. That also doesn‘t sound right, somehow.

But then remember they exist in Antiquity age even if you can't reach them because of the ocean tiles. That mean they would have the same effect on legacies and turn count for exploration as they did for Antiquity.

I still think Ed may have meant / interpreted the question as it being for the players instead of AI's. If not reversed then you either have them not being able to do those legacies at all as distant world not exist for them, or they would have a much easier time as being able to make treasure ships in their homeland and cash on them immediately. But who knows, maybe the distant lands civs are meant to be overall weaker, to be more like a flavor to the region but one the player wouldn't have as much difficulty to conquer / fight against.

Legacies aside, I wonder how the civ/leader abilities interacts for them. For example, if Spain is a civ that appeared in the distant land, would then Siglo de Oro and other distant lands only abilities for them work on their initial land?

 

[thecrazyscot]

Some thoughts after watching the stream.

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There are some really cool ideas for the Exploration Age, but I'm still a bit unsure if they will stick the landing with the Distant vs Homelands distinction. There's a fine line between railroading players down certain play styles when you essentially theme an entire Age around a single primary mechanic.

For me, the question is how flexible is the Exploration Age sandbox? The Antiquity Age looks near-perfect to me as a sandbox without excessive complexity. What if I don't want to go to the Distant Lands? There seems to be a serious opportunity cost in not participating in this mechanic, and thus most players may feel like they have to follow a similar arc in every Exploration Age.

I know some bones are thrown to staying in the Homelands with civs like Mongolia, but Treasure Fleets seem really strong and a lot of items seem to synergize with Distant Land exploitation.

Of course, with a specialized civ like Spain being demoed it might have inflated the benefits and a more generalist civ might have some more balanced choices to make.

I'm already wondering if a pure pirate strategy would be doable to simply steal Treasure Fleets without actually ever having to settle the Distant Lands. I can also see it being very strong to focus on settling as many islands around the Homelands as possible to position yourself for either launching colonists or positioning blockades to loot the returning wealth.

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I was hoping that each Age would have several different Legacy Paths for each category so that they were a bit different each time, but I suspect the AI is being coded to specifically pursue the Legacy Paths and multiple options might be too much effort.

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Religion...ehhh. I found it fun at first in Civ 6 but it rapidly became tedious, so I'm glad it is less complicated. However, it looks like unless you actively pursue it the opportunity cost is abdicating progress on 2? of the Legacy Paths. I suppose you could simply take Relics by force, though...

Overall, it does look like you could choose to essentially ignore it if you want and just focus on different paths.

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Holy yields, Batman. It's too much. I might have to put together a "yield squish" mod to make everything less crazy and make each yield more meaningful.

 

[Krikkit1]

If Confucius or Amina would be able to gain points for the legacy paths in the exploration age, they would create age progress for the militaristic legacy path - regardless of whether they‘ve been met or not. But the progress was at 0. It can be that they had less cities in the DL than required for the first progress (and no religion yet when the screens where shown). But to me it looks like DL civs don’t work well with the economic and militaristic path and will thus not create progress. Also, if they did „compete“ in generating progress points, the second age would be shorter than the first due to more players gaining points and accelerating the ending. That also doesn‘t sound right, somehow.

But Confucius didn’t have settlements in his Distant Lands, he only had cities in his Homelands.

And you wouldn’t see his Legacy progress if you hadn’t met him yet.

Also the Acceleration of the Age is only by the First player to hit a Legacy point, so the number of players doesn’t affect how fast the age ends (except a little bit as more players means more different paths get hit)

 

[Lonecat Nekophrodite]

End of an era title card. The year showing up here is actually Bronze Age Collapse

And Mexico is confirmed

^ Heavy Archer. What made this unit superior to generic archer? better armor? better shot or what? in Civ6 it is 'mod unit' to me.

 

[Gedemon]

I don't think it's intentional asymmetrical. This might be the reason multiplayer is listed as being limited to 5 players. Everyone must start on the same homeland to make treasure resources work.

yes, it's what I said for humans player, and why I think it's "technical".

maybe a late development decision.

They've said twice that they wanted to change that (looking for more players in MP in an interview, looking to allow symmetrical treasure resources in this stream)

That means late or post release coding, I hope they'll take the time to do it properly, in previous versions late development addition were sometime hardcoded (ie not directly moddable)

it's also in relation to modding that I wonder what is requiring a loading screen between ages

 

[HanNorwood]

After watching the stream, I’m really liking the UI. I think moving away from the business of VI’s interface is a good call. This one really highlights the map.

That being said, I wouldn’t mind if there was a little more to the city banners.

 

[Evolena]

No yellow text on white background please, that's an impossible contract!
Also the colors of Isabella and Confucius are too similar. And I've found the color of Hatshepsut's units (bright red) too different from her banner?

 

[Lonecat Nekophrodite]

And Ming Empire emblem is a Phoenix.

^ Exactly the same posture as an emblem of Ministry of Finance of Thailand.

 

[Lonecat Nekophrodite]

Also the first quote by a Thai academic. Spoken by Dr. Thongchai Winichakun (I'm not sure if he's Thammasart Lecturer now. but he's ardent supporter of Orange Movement here. something I was once a proponent of (As an anathema to Far Right Dictatorship). Now with that Ultra Royalist movement diminished, and the return of Thaksin Shinawatra. (with his daughter is firmly his successor) I went against Orange Movements (this due to their political blunders from time to time. especially their failure in a post-election race to form a govenrment and almost permitted Prawit Wongsuwan an office of Prime Ministry.

^ Few More gameplay revealed.
1. Manual unit upgrades. You still needs to pay some gold to upgrade a unit whenever an enabling tech (or civic) is researched. same as before.
2. Default Age 2 basic Tier 1 Infantry is now swordsman (at least an emblem suggested. and Mongolian teaser shows that.)

 

[anemo]

As I understand it, we now have 2 kinds of civ opponents. The civs of your homeland, who compete with you for the win and the civs in distant lands, who are there as a stronger.IP, but can't compete with you for the win. Did I misunderstood something?

 

[Lonecat Nekophrodite]

More..

^ Guildhall.. What's the importants in real life beyond that this place is an office to any guild exists.

^ Fleet Commander. I don't understand why this unit is enabled at Age II. graphic representation is either carrack or galleon. And this fleet consisted of three carracks / naus if you will.

^ Spanish fleet. Packed. with icon of carrack. (so Civ6 'Caravel' is actually 'Carrack')

^ Unit portrait upclose. One tercio (Musketeer is the unit's portrait) and two heavy archers.

^ Mercantilism Quote.

^ Fleet Commander Upgrades.

^ Treasure Ship.

^ Naval battle scene with carracks. done with bows or crossbows, anything before guns came to be.

 

[Civinator]

Greece switching to Spain.

 

[Siptah]

Some observations that I haven't read (enough of) yet:
- great works and great work slots (aside from the palace) are age-specific. In the stream, Ed had some codices in antiquity, but none of them (nor the slots from the library) made it into the exploration age. With religion being a focus of the 2nd age only, it seems likely that the same happens with relics and temple slots.

- we've been told that trade works differently in each age. We haven't seen any trade in the stream, right? I also didn't catch any merchant unit in the production overviews, but I also haven't looked specifically for them.

- the fact that leader and civ traits give you a respective attribute point per age, and the bonuses down the tree seem quite strong, means some synergies might arise simply from having a good trait fit between your leader and all your civs.

- the meta-progress per leader exists as a gameplay feature that results in at least one unique legacy per age. Isabella's exploration legacy didn't seem like a no-brainer OP choice. I really like that: not just cosmetics, but also not something that you absolutely need to have to stay competitive. Curious how hard they are to unlock. Finish all trees with the leader?

- I wonder how many "your legacy goal works different" civs à la Mongols we'll see in the base game and early expansions. This has huge potential for different play styles.

- I hope that FXS manages to find 2-3 legacy goals per age per type to have some more variety at some point (maybe as focus of the first major expansion). It would be "fun" to not know what's waiting for you in the next age in a way.

- events that don't trigger just because the conditions are fulfilled is a godsend.

 

[Disgustipated]

After a re-watch, just noticed at 1:02:29 on the youtube stream the espionage part of the diplomacy window. Have we seen this before in the antiquity stream?

It has Steal technology at 100% success rate which seems quite high, but 50% discovery chance. Steal government secrets whatever that is, maybe civics? And military infiltration which I'm guessing reveals the location of all military units.