Why era change is so much controversial

[Naokaukodem]

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.

 

[Noble Zarkon]

I love Civ 7 but you can't ignore that you literally change CIv, abilities, units, unique buildings etc.

I think the concept is great but not well executed which it really needed to be for such a big change.

 

[Chiyo]

Era change has kind of always been part of Civ franchise.

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.

 

[Pfeffersack]

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

Hard to say anything without knowing the particular situation at the end of the ear in your case, but keep in mind that even retaining units almost never means that they stay where they were (both geographically and in regard to the potential case of a commander having them loaded). Commanders just create the "numerical sphere" to be allowed to take over more units and it is not uncommon that after age transition units get shuffled around a lot: Usually each settlement gets a defense and the rest is loaded in commanders (but not necessarily the one units where attached to before). Especially in case of ships, the game does quite "funny" stuff with positioning:

Post in thread '1.1.1 PC New Era respawn locations'

Apr 9, 2025

I'm not sue if this really counts as a bug, but on a couple of occasions I have had an issue with the respawn locations of units when transitioning to a new age, particularly with ships. This was especially frustrating when most of my fleet was packed in to a fleet commander and dropped in to a lake, where the navigable river passed through an enemies' territory, so I had no choice but to declare war. I have also had a packed commander move from distant lands, to my home continent leaving my city and towns with little military support. Do you buy new units, or wait 12-15 turns for the...

• Pfeffersack

 

[protocol7]

I feel like I can’t even tell if era changes are a good idea because they executed them so poorly. I feel like there’s something interesting there? But can’t really tell.

 

[uppi]

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.

Yes, Civ II already had 4 eras: https://civilization.fandom.com/wiki/Era_(Civ2)

And my memory is a bit hazy, but if I remember correctly, Civ I had 2 eras: Ancient and Modern.

The effect was mostly (if not completely?) visual: The style of your cities and the appearance of your advisors would change to match the era.

 

[stealth_nsk]

Yes, Civ II already had 4 eras: https://civilization.fandom.com/wiki/Era_(Civ2)

And my memory is a bit hazy, but if I remember correctly, Civ I had 2 eras: Ancient and Modern.

The effect was mostly (if not completely?) visual: The style of your cities and the appearance of your advisors would change to match the era.

If I remember correctly, in Civ1 palace style was also changing, but I don't remember whether it was from eras or just from adding more pieces to it.

But yes, eras were part of civ games since the beginning.

 

[Verified_Confection_Being]

There is a difference between a visual flavour change and a mechanical gameplay consequence though. The mechanical era is very much an Ed Beach mechanic, and a new introduction to the series.

There's no reason from a player persoective why the pre-Civ VI eras couldn't have been an era per turn, gradually changing the graphics over time. The only limiting factor is art resource. That's not the same since Rise and Fall

 

[Taefin]

I haven’t played for two weeks, though will try the new patch, but what I have found most enjoyable so far is city planning, finding the buildings of VII more fun to place than the districts of VI.

I think the obsolescence with eras is better than an alternative of never overbuilding, given that good adjacency spots are limited, which would lessen the impact of new buildings, and I find the +20 you get from overbuilding a district with several specialists makes new buildings feeling very impactful. An alternative where district capacity increased with era might also work, but I’m not as sure.

The main problem with era transitions in my mind is that late-era buildings feel like inconsequential, unless you play long eras (which makes the end of era drag even worse) or unless you find a way to get few of them early. I would prefer if a buildings special bonuses (e.g., +10% growth) were preserved. This would give a lasting benefit for getting further into the tech tree.

I do like the mechanic where some obsolete buildings (e.g., dual yield with influence) make sense to keep, although the current implementation feels accidental (how dual yield buildings are good, and others aren’t). Instead I would like a game where all/most obsolete buildings have a niche (such as a preserved special ability) that makes an interesting choice between getting the highest adjacency bonus in this era or placing it somewhere you are okay not overbuilding next era, to preserve the obsolete bonuses.

As such, I think era transitions were a novel way to tie multiple mechanics together, and there are ways to turn its unfun mechanics into fun ones.

 

[DocRock]

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.

I'd like to add:

- getting a tech lead and killing crossbows with Infantry was a heck of fun. That's completely prevented now.
- going with OP units like Keshiks was loads of fun. Eliminated from the game.
- every age sets a big stop sign for me personally, where I stop playing my session and have a hard time staring again. No more all-nighters, successfully prevented
- 15 turns before the transition hits you bascially do nothing


Imagine Baldurs Gate 3 optimized for competitive multiplayer. No strong class abilities, no absurd item combinations, no cheesing --> no fun. Thankfully Larian didn't do that as BG3 is not mainly a multiplayer game. Well Civ 7 isn't either but guess what.

 

[Menocchio]

I'd like to add:

- getting a tech lead and killing crossbows with Infantry was a heck of fun. That's completely prevented now.
- going with OP units like Keshiks was loads of fun. Eliminated from the game.

This experience could be replicated in the game right now, but I feel like the problem is less to do with the Ages system and more that the developers were extremely conservative with the combat bonus difference between unit tiers. In Civ VI, a Warrior has 20 CS, and in the next tier up, Swordsman has 35. In VII, a Warrior still has 20 CS, but their upgrade, the Spearman, has... 25. This also leads to funny situations where a fellow on a horse with a gun is only 10 CS weaker than a WW2 tank. In VI, that difference is instead 21. Across the board they tuned down inter-tier CS upgrades by 5, a gap easily bridged by many different CS bonuses that the game is already littered with. Strangely, the game has more than enough room for CS bonuses to scale up without inflating the numbers too much, if at all: VII's aforementioned WW2 Tank unit has 65 CS; the exact same era/tier unit in VI has 85 CS.

Incidentally, this might also contribute to the fact that infantry is universally worse than cavalry: cavalry get a significant CS boost over infantry, so when you fight a previous-tier infantry unit with a more advanced cavalry, you finally feel that power difference.

 

[MutilationWave]

This experience could be replicated in the game right now, but I feel like the problem is less to do with the Ages system and more that the developers were extremely conservative with the combat bonus difference between unit tiers. In Civ VI, a Warrior has 20 CS, and in the next tier up, Swordsman has 35. In VII, a Warrior still has 20 CS, but their upgrade, the Spearman, has... 25. This also leads to funny situations where a fellow on a horse with a gun is only 10 CS weaker than a WW2 tank. In VI, that difference is instead 21. Across the board they tuned down inter-tier CS upgrades by 5, a gap easily bridged by many different CS bonuses that the game is already littered with. Strangely, the game has more than enough room for CS bonuses to scale up without inflating the numbers too much, if at all: VII's aforementioned WW2 Tank unit has 65 CS; the exact same era/tier unit in VI has 85 CS.

Incidentally, this might also contribute to the fact that infantry is universally worse than cavalry: cavalry get a significant CS boost over infantry, so when you fight a previous-tier infantry unit with a more advanced cavalry, you finally feel that power difference.

The absolute numbers are smaller, but they feel more impactful. If you have a tier 2 unit versus a tier one and have it within the range of a commander with +5 CS, you are going to absolutely wreck that unit and take little damage. That +10 is similar to how +20 would be in civ 6.

 

[MutilationWave]

- 15 turns before the transition hits you bascially do nothing

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.

 

[Menocchio]

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.

 

[MutilationWave]

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.

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.

Archers are at least way less squishy than slingers, and I know I still feel fear when I see swordsmen coming when I only have warriors.