Why era change is so much controversial

[Niallism]

Not sure why Romans and Greece weren't "white" anymore than Italians and Irish were also not considered white. it is arbitrary.

We're talking about separate things. Racial hatred and modern classifications within the modern construct of hatred do not make much sense. They are political, primarily.

Unrelatedly, a large amount of Roman citizens were from Africa and Asia Minor, and they did not view race like we do. So many Roman citizens were, to modern eyes, black or brown, but to them this distinction would have seemed minor to absurd.

Similarly, Greece and Turkey have had a lot of immigration and colonization from Asia. The Mongolian Blue Spot, a common genetic marker of migration, is surprisingly common in Anatolia and nearby regions, probably due to Scythian migration. Greeks and Turks are extremely similar, genetically and ethnically, but for political reasons, one has been assigned 'white' and one has been assigned 'brown'.

So yes, race in the USA is absurd and arbitrary. But it's also modern, and there is massive evidence that our modern ideas of the genetics and ethnicity of ancient peoples does not match their thinking whatsoever.

Race is an unscientific invention AND the races that modern people imagine past nations to be are often incorrect.

 

[Barbarian King]

That's fair, but for the ships I believe naval combat is bugged. I will usually take equivalent or even more damage than the enemy when attacking a ship of the line with a battleship.

In my experience it is not the naval combat itself that is bugged, but the tool tip telling you all the different factors going into the relative strength of the combatants is what is bugged. The enemy unit is usually missing many of its bonuses from the overview, so the UI lies to you about the expected combat result.

 

[Verified_Confection_Being]

Unrelatedly, a large amount of Roman citizens were from Africa and Asia Minor, and they did not view race like we do. So many Roman citizens were, to modern eyes, black or brown, but to them this distinction would have seemed minor to absurd.

I always find it so weird when arguments like yours simultaneously rail against western constructs of race, then embrace and subvert it by inserting black and brown in place of white. I don't know what "modern" person is being imagined here, but the only people I ever hear using concepts like black and brown in the way you do are from the 1800s and I'd hardly describe them as modern in the way you are using it to contextualise how a "modern" person might recognise these people.

Africa isnt just "black" and Asia isn't just "brown". Most of the inhabitants of Roman north Africa had a considerable genetic overlap with contemporary Anatolians. And contemporary Anatolians were for the large part descendent from the indo-European migration.

Distinctly and recognisably "black" or "brown" people would have been quite rare given the Roman empire didn't stretch to sub Saharan Africa or the southern Indian subcontinent. Such cases would have been limited to merchants and slaves basically.

The vast majority of people in the empire would have been an ethnically ambiguous indo-European olive, with a good smattering of "white" particularly in the latter years of the empire as more and more northern European influence seeped into Rome. I don't know what modern eyes look at anyone from Syria or Morocco or Italy and go "that person is brown", because most skin tones from those regions are still more white than brown and often described as "olive" or "mediterannean".

It really baffles me when people describe Septimius Severus as a black Roman emperor when he was half ethnically Roman, and the other half was a mix of Punic (Anatolian) and north African (mostly Anatolian descent). So he would have been in all likelihood as olive as the previous and next emperors, and if a modern person were presented a line up of Roman emperor's, it would be very difficult to pick out which he was.

 

[UWHabs]

I completely disagree. 15 turns before transition I'm thinking what can I push out in this time to make me better in the next era? Commanders no doubt. Maybe focus a bunch of your cities on culture or science to get a future tech/civic which give you super valuable wildcard points in the next age. Army devastated by war? Spam units up to commander cap.

Even though it's somewhat randomized, if you've been playing a ranged heavy civ and are going into one with a cavalry UU, you can delete your ranged units and produce cavalry to the cap to influence what you'll get on transition. Or you can just delete useless infantry you have for whatever reason, down to the commander cap, so you'll start with more ranged and cavalry. Exception for this if you're going into Shawnee. Their infantry is absurdly good. I assume other civs have good infantry but I haven't played them yet.

I found out through this scramble that if you are one turn from getting a future tech/civic at age transition, you will still get the bonus next age. I assume this works for commanders, wonders, etc as well but I haven't tested that.

My problem with the "15 turns before the age transition" is that with the spots you get extra bonuses to the age progress by finishing the trees, that shortens up so I don't actually know when my "15 turns" is. Like my current game, I thought I had things slightly planned, but you get one more relic, or cash in the last treasure fleet, and suddenly the 10 turns you had left now shrinks to 5, and you don't have enough to finish that commanded or wonder or future tech or whatever. I definitely feel like the crisis hitting should give you like a "30-40" turn counter, then when you hit the next crisis step, that should shrink it to "20-30", then the last crisis step it gives you a fixed 10-15 turn counter. Maybe it varies game to game depending on how far over the line you hit things, but give me a guaranteed set of turns at the end. I'd had games where the entire crisis is over in less than 10 turns because all the era progress bonuses come in at once.

I don't hate the unit reset and some of that, but I think you could have a few more "era transition" guidelines as you hit those points in the era. Maybe it ends up a little gamey, but even just somewhere that kind of gives me a "units/commander" view of things so that I can sort of plan where I start the next era. Or, frankly, on the age transition, either auto-fill the commanders regardless of what you owned before, or like give me a "transition shop". So like it would melt down every archer, swordsman, etc.. at the end of the last era, and you could basically use those credits along with your gold balance to fill up your commanders in the transition time. Then you could even give each civ another unique bonus setup - maybe Mongolia gets 3 free cavalry units on the age transition, or another civ gets an extra credit for each unit going to the transition, or a discount on the base price of units in that transition step. Something where you're not like balancing the unknown turn counter towards the end of the era, and you can have a little more agency over your new setup.

 

[evonannoredars]

My problem with the "15 turns before the age transition" is that with the spots you get extra bonuses to the age progress by finishing the trees, that shortens up so I don't actually know when my "15 turns" is. Like my current game, I thought I had things slightly planned, but you get one more relic, or cash in the last treasure fleet, and suddenly the 10 turns you had left now shrinks to 5, and you don't have enough to finish that commanded or wonder or future tech or whatever. I definitely feel like the crisis hitting should give you like a "30-40" turn counter, then when you hit the next crisis step, that should shrink it to "20-30", then the last crisis step it gives you a fixed 10-15 turn counter. Maybe it varies game to game depending on how far over the line you hit things, but give me a guaranteed set of turns at the end. I'd had games where the entire crisis is over in less than 10 turns because all the era progress bonuses come in at once.

I don't hate the unit reset and some of that, but I think you could have a few more "era transition" guidelines as you hit those points in the era. Maybe it ends up a little gamey, but even just somewhere that kind of gives me a "units/commander" view of things so that I can sort of plan where I start the next era. Or, frankly, on the age transition, either auto-fill the commanders regardless of what you owned before, or like give me a "transition shop". So like it would melt down every archer, swordsman, etc.. at the end of the last era, and you could basically use those credits along with your gold balance to fill up your commanders in the transition time. Then you could even give each civ another unique bonus setup - maybe Mongolia gets 3 free cavalry units on the age transition, or another civ gets an extra credit for each unit going to the transition, or a discount on the base price of units in that transition step. Something where you're not like balancing the unknown turn counter towards the end of the era, and you can have a little more agency over your new setup.

Agreed, one of my favourite things in Civ VI was to figure out how to most efficiently spend my last ten turns in an era so that I could hit that golden age. I sorta like the slight element of randomness in Civ VII, but on the whole I would prefer a set countdown once you hit 100%.

As for commanders and armies, also agreed. On the whole I love the era system, but how units are handled could do w a lot of improvement imo. My main issues are that I need to hunt around for which of my commanders are where and that I'd rather units come packed into the commanders, rather than being scattered around my settlements.

Another screen after the legacy points screen for picking where your units spawn would be ideal I reckon. They could probably just reuse the framework of the resources screen - all the units on the left, all the settlements on the right with a slot each and commanders act like camels.

 

[MutilationWave]

My problem with the "15 turns before the age transition" is that with the spots you get extra bonuses to the age progress by finishing the trees, that shortens up so I don't actually know when my "15 turns" is. Like my current game, I thought I had things slightly planned, but you get one more relic, or cash in the last treasure fleet, and suddenly the 10 turns you had left now shrinks to 5, and you don't have enough to finish that commanded or wonder or future tech or whatever43289871 I definitely feel like the crisis hitting should give you like a "30-40" turn counter, then when you hit the next crisis step, that should shrink it to "20-30", then theast crisis step it gives you a fixed 10-15 turn counter. Maybe it varies game to game depending on how far over the line you hit things, but give me a guaranteed set of turns at the end. I'd had games where the entire crisis is over in less than 10 turns because all the era progress bonuses come in at once.

I don't hate the unit reset and some of that, but I think you could have a few more "era transition" guidelines as you hit those points in the era. Maybe it ends up a little gamey, but even just somewhere that kind of gives me a "units/commander" view of things so that I can sort of plan where I start the next era. Or, frankly, on the age transition, either auto-fill the commanders regardless of what you owned before, or like give me a "transition shop". So like it would melt down every archer, swordsman, etc.. at the end of the last era, and you could basically use those credits along with your gold balance to fill up your commanders in the transition time. Then you could even give each civ another unique bonus setup - maybe Mongolia gets 3 free cavalry units on the age transition, or another civ gets an extra credit for each unit going to the transition, or a discount on the base price of units in that transition step. Something where you're not like balancing the unknown turn counter towards the end of the era, and you can have a little more agency over your new setup.

You guys have hashed out a good idea together here. I love it.

I also like the definite turn counter idea. At least for the last 10 turns. I play with longer ages as well without changing the overall game speed, which makes the game more fun for me. A lot of us will game the end of the era by not turning in the final treasure fleets(s) until we're at 99 or 100%. You start to get a pretty good feel on what you can accomplish.

For example, I'm going to eliminate Catherine's final city in antiquity in my current game. But I'm trying to get the last two codices and build some academies. Since eliminating an enemy's last city gives 10 era score, I'm not going to take the city until the last turn.

 

[aelf]

The problem with that is that you can replace "commander" with a vast array of bonuses, most of which are easily accessible. Tiers in and of themselves have little influence; you can very often—much more so than VI—find yourself in situations in which a wooden sailing ship stands on equal or greater footing with a modern battleship, for example. And one of the key early power-spikes of VI, the Archer/Swordsman unlock, is completely missing. Archers are barely better than Slingers, another way in which having a tech advantage feels less than impactful for your military.

Hmm this isn't my experience. The archer upgrade almost always marks when my ranged strategy starts to dominate the AI. And the transition from ships-of-the-line to dreadnoughts also seem to mark when my navy completely obliterates.

Maybe commander bonuses and massing/focus fire can explain this, I don't know. Like one archer hitting a unit might not be a huge difference from one slinger doing so, but two or more archers doing the same is significantly stronger than the same number of slingers.

 

[Yzman]

Hmm this isn't my experience. The archer upgrade almost always marks when my ranged strategy starts to dominate the AI. And the transition from ships-of-the-line to dreadnoughts also seem to mark when my navy completely obliterates.

Maybe commander bonuses and massing/focus fire can explain this, I don't know. Like one archer hitting a unit might not be a huge difference from one slinger doing so, but two or more archers doing the same is significantly stronger than the same number of slingers.

I find archers significantly stronger than slingers.

 

[Askia Muhammad]

Era change has kind of always been part of Civ franchise. But the emergent storytelling* was in that that there was no explicit transition between eras. You were hunting dears and suddenly you sent your battleships conquering the world ? Amazing !
There's also a gameplay/feeling part in its failure : you run out of time quickly ; you can't do everything even on difficulty 1 and long ages. And the game is not more fast for as much : without wars, turns follow themselves without much happening. Building times also have increased, if it was not enough.

So yeah, there's a stale feeling and feeling of urgency at the same time that's unpleasant.

There's also the units reset : I had two full of units commanders, result : only one kept its troops if I'm right.

* I call emergent storytelling something the player has to remark himself and make of it kind of a story or rewrite history.

The Civ swapping doesn’t bother me anymore but losing units, yields, progress, resetting relationships etc are complete non-starters to me and go against basic 4x principles

 

[UWHabs]

You guys have hashed out a good idea together here. I love it.

I also like the definite turn counter idea. At least for the last 10 turns. I play with longer ages as well without changing the overall game speed, which makes the game more fun for me. A lot of us will game the end of the era by not turning in the final treasure fleets(s) until we're at 99 or 100%. You start to get a pretty good feel on what you can accomplish.

For example, I'm going to eliminate Catherine's final city in antiquity in my current game. But I'm trying to get the last two codices and build some academies. Since eliminating an enemy's last city gives 10 era score, I'm not going to take the city until the last turn.

Yeah, I've had some cases where I have to set my missionaries up just right, wait on the treasure fleets, and try to time them all at exactly the right time to hit them all together.
It doesn't help that it seems random whether you get one last turn or not when things hit 100%. Like my latest game, I got to 100%, got the notice that the era was coming to an end, and then set up, and then hit end turn, and was surprised to get one more after that. A happy accident, since I could convert one more town into a city, and set up a bit more.

But as for the transition itself, I do think things are a little hard on the rollover. It's like, I go from placing a fantastic Observatory spot giving me like 7 science, multiple adjacencies, and in a perfect spot. And then the age resets, and it's like this thing that drags me down now, it's an empty shell of a building. And like, it doesn't even count anymore as a science building. Just had a transition from Hawaii, where one of my traditions is that culture buildings get food. And on the age transition, none of my earlier era buildings count as culture buildings anymore.

I don't mind yields dropping a little bit, and wanting to overbuild as a strategy. But it's just too aggressive in how much it knocks things back. Going from exploration to modern, I think my culture and science dropped by like 50%, and my gold per turn was like 5x worse on transition.

 

[Pfeffersack]

My problem with the "15 turns before the age transition" is that with the spots you get extra bonuses to the age progress by finishing the trees, that shortens up so I don't actually know when my "15 turns" is. Like my current game, I thought I had things slightly planned, but you get one more relic, or cash in the last treasure fleet, and suddenly the 10 turns you had left now shrinks to 5, and you don't have enough to finish that commanded or wonder or future tech or whatever. I definitely feel like the crisis hitting should give you like a "30-40" turn counter, then when you hit the next crisis step, that should shrink it to "20-30", then the last crisis step it gives you a fixed 10-15 turn counter. Maybe it varies game to game depending on how far over the line you hit things, but give me a guaranteed set of turns at the end. I'd had games where the entire crisis is over in less than 10 turns because all the era progress bonuses come in at once.

I don't hate the unit reset and some of that, but I think you could have a few more "era transition" guidelines as you hit those points in the era. Maybe it ends up a little gamey, but even just somewhere that kind of gives me a "units/commander" view of things so that I can sort of plan where I start the next era. Or, frankly, on the age transition, either auto-fill the commanders regardless of what you owned before, or like give me a "transition shop". So like it would melt down every archer, swordsman, etc.. at the end of the last era, and you could basically use those credits along with your gold balance to fill up your commanders in the transition time. Then you could even give each civ another unique bonus setup - maybe Mongolia gets 3 free cavalry units on the age transition, or another civ gets an extra credit for each unit going to the transition, or a discount on the base price of units in that transition step. Something where you're not like balancing the unknown turn counter towards the end of the era, and you can have a little more agency over your new setup.

My "workaround" here is using Gold both as focus and tool (especially when having more than the 3000 in treasury your are allowed to keep): When transition is a few turns away I start building e.g. commanders with the plan to finish them shortly before end of the age, ideally a few turns (and in those I try to suqeeze in preferably a unit). If I have to fear that time runs out before a "commander build" is finished, I rush buy (the bug with full cost deduction for partly built items seem to have fixed, so this works now). And then in the very last turn I spend excess gold for complete purchases. I concede that it is still chasing a moving target (as e.g. commanders get more expensive the more you have already created), but so far it is the best way I have found to deal with that "dead period" before age end.

 

[MutilationWave]

And like, it doesn't even count anymore as a science building ..... on the age transition, none of my earlier era buildings count as culture buildings anymore.

Hard agreed. It just feels really bad that they become basically worthless or worse than worthless if they drag your happiness and gold down enough. Why even build an academy or university if you aren't going for their associated golden age? Why build any late age building? They aren't going to help that much to get future tech/civic. If you're so far ahead that they do, you should probably raise your difficulty level.

I like the idea to have them keep their building "type" for bonuses from civ, policies, etc. I don't think it would be overpowered. This would make it feel useful to build late age buildings.

 

[MutilationWave]

(the bug with full cost deduction for partly built items seem to have fixed, so this works now)

I had no idea that was fixed, thank you!

 

[UWHabs]

Hard agreed. It just feels really bad that they become basically worthless or worse than worthless if they drag your happiness and gold down enough. Why even build an academy or university if you aren't going for their associated golden age? Why build any late age building? They aren't going to help that much to get future tech/civic. If you're so far ahead that they do, you should probably raise your difficulty level.

I like the idea to have them keep their building "type" for bonuses from civ, policies, etc. I don't think it would be overpowered. This would make it feel useful to build late age buildings.

Maybe if they dropped the base bonus of those buildings down to like 2, but they kept their adjacency/types. You'd almost certainly need to increase the new base values of buildings in the new era. I don't know how much makes sense, but you could have ancient era buildings get like 2-4 base yields, then exploration buildings maybe they are in the like 6-8 base yield range, and then modern buildings maybe 10-12? Or you make sure the new buildings give you extra bonuses - give Universities in the Exploration age a +1 adjacency for Quarters, maybe modern era buildings can give you like a flat +1 or +2 per specialist, or like a +5% science bonus for the city. I don't know what game balance makes sense, I don't mind losing a couple points on each building, but it's definitely jarring in how much it drops right now.

 

[aelf]

I think it makes sense not to build late buildings if your broader goals don't align with them.

I find that when going for the science legacy path, practically beelining for Academy or University is a must. They are what will get you the completion. Maybe in the case of the University, it could be more because it's along the same path as increasing your specialist limit and its high potential yield can help you get to 40+ yield in its tile. If you're not going for the science legacy path, then you wouldn't want to do this and building them would probably be a waste.

Culture and gold buildings require a bit more of a judgement call. Depends on whether you need those yields at that stage of the game. The later you build them, naturally the less valuable they'd be.

 

[Pfeffersack]

I had no idea that was fixed, thank you!

I was surprised as well - I didn't saw it mentioned as a fix anywhere in a changelog. I only stumbled over it, because I tried to reproduce this bug (after a youtuber talked about in an older video) and wasn't able despite trying several times.

 

[Kwami]

Yeah, I've had some cases where I have to set my missionaries up just right, wait on the treasure fleets, and try to time them all at exactly the right time to hit them all together.
It doesn't help that it seems random whether you get one last turn or not when things hit 100%. Like my latest game, I got to 100%, got the notice that the era was coming to an end, and then set up, and then hit end turn, and was surprised to get one more after that. A happy accident, since I could convert one more town into a city, and set up a bit more.

It's not random. The UI rounds up. If you hover over the "100%" in the top left corner, you can see the actual era progress. In a normal game, each era lasts for 200 points. A turn adds one point. The UI shows 199/200 as "100%" and the popup triggers on 199/200 as well. In that case, you'll get one more turn after the popup. If you do something to push that count to 200/200, then you won't get one more turn.

For me, timing my treasure fleets and artifacts and the like is part of what makes the game fun. There's strategy in delaying legacy points in order to stretch out an age or in getting things done as fast as possible to get out of an age more quickly.

 

[Pfeffersack]

(...)

For me, timing my treasure fleets and artifacts and the like is part of what makes the game fun. There's strategy in delaying legacy points in order to stretch out an age or in getting things done as fast as possible to get out of an age more quickly.

Interesting...I never thought of the option to just not cash in my treasure fleets ASAP. It has to be weight against delaying the gold infusion as well, but definitely worth to keep in mind.

 

[Krikkit1]

My problem with the "15 turns before the age transition" is that with the spots you get extra bonuses to the age progress by finishing the trees, that shortens up so I don't actually know when my "15 turns" is. Like my current game, I thought I had things slightly planned, but you get one more relic, or cash in the last treasure fleet, and suddenly the 10 turns you had left now shrinks to 5, and you don't have enough to finish that commanded or wonder or future tech or whatever. I definitely feel like the crisis hitting should give you like a "30-40" turn counter, then when you hit the next crisis step, that should shrink it to "20-30", then the last crisis step it gives you a fixed 10-15 turn counter. Maybe it varies game to game depending on how far over the line you hit things, but give me a guaranteed set of turns at the end. I'd had games where the entire crisis is over in less than 10 turns because all the era progress bonuses come in at once.

I don't hate the unit reset and some of that, but I think you could have a few more "era transition" guidelines as you hit those points in the era. Maybe it ends up a little gamey, but even just somewhere that kind of gives me a "units/commander" view of things so that I can sort of plan where I start the next era. Or, frankly, on the age transition, either auto-fill the commanders regardless of what you owned before, or like give me a "transition shop". So like it would melt down every archer, swordsman, etc.. at the end of the last era, and you could basically use those credits along with your gold balance to fill up your commanders in the transition time. Then you could even give each civ another unique bonus setup - maybe Mongolia gets 3 free cavalry units on the age transition, or another civ gets an extra credit for each unit going to the transition, or a discount on the base price of units in that transition step. Something where you're not like balancing the unknown turn counter towards the end of the era, and you can have a little more agency over your new setup.

I do think the Transition could be made much smoother
ie..
Age Progress from gameplay can't take you past 90%... only turns get the last 10%

Effects that encourage pulling your troops back and being defensive during the Crisis period (effects that ramp up)

instead of teleporting troops and commanders have the troops go "obsolete" (ie upgrading cost the same as building a new unit and must be done at home.. no benefit to /from commander, etc)... with X free unit upgrades for units already at home (or X free infantry units if you don't have units at home)

 

[Naokaukodem]

Has it really? I think they were introduced in Civ6 and there I was ok with them because you could still move freely around them. You were not limited by the official era in regards to what you could research or what you could build. If you were advanced enough you could already do things officially from later eras and if you did poorly you were behind and did not magically catch up at the start of the next era. Before that I think there were no eras and you could just move along as you pleased. For example if you went for religion but missed and early one in Civ4 you could beeline for philosophy to unlock Taoism if I remember correctly. If you missed that as well you could still go for Christianity or Islam and did not have to wait until the game allowed you to do so.

Yeah there is two sorts of era change : explicit and implicit. Even if previous Civs wouldn't have mentioned eras explicitly, you were still playing from caveman to space, with all the transitions between it ; you were discovering new technologies, unlocked new units, new buildings, etc.
And that's precisely the topic of this thread, as I thought I clearly mentioned in the OP : eras are now "mini games" by themselves, they are not continuous anymore. It breaks some feeling of emergent storytelling. I'm not saying one couldn't do something more specific with eras, as they are there and can be a source of ideas, but I would here join up those who say it's badly executed. (honestly before writing this I didn't know what they meant by it, now I know : the idea of playing more specifically with eras is not bad in essence, but what they did to them is kind of counter-productive according to me, but in the same time I have no other idea than making them separated "mini-games" right now)

We can make a parallel with the denomination "4X" and implicit eras, so there could be 4 eras : you start exploring actively, then when there's nothing more to explore at least in your close vicinity you start to expand actively, then when you can't expand anymore you start to exploit actively (whatever it means, I think the exploiting part is permanent from turn 1 to 500 in fact), and then when you can't exploit anymore you start to exterminate actively.
Here, exploiting could be depleting resources and impoverish the land (chopping, polluting, transforming grassland to plains and plains to desert, etc.) and wars could become necessary in order to conquer more sane lands, occupied by hunter-gatherers, city-States, other civs that may have chosen a less destructive path but maybe being less advanced, etc. Note that all of this can happen simultaneously, because there is independent powers from the start, civs that may declare war on you, or your expansion being stuck prematurely (accelerated 4X), etc. It could be interesting to give independent powers more territory, as in nomads needing more space to live and not necessarily having cities just yet.