Why Even Build?

[AriochIV]

Requiring a certain number of Commanders to keep your military unit from disappearing at Age transition is one of those design decisions that seems arbitrary and poorly thought out. What is the purpose of this mechanism? If you are deleting units as an attempt to rubber-band and reset powerful militaries, then why allow the most powerful militaries (with many Commanders) to avoid this?

It's easy enough to work around, since you want to have lots of Commanders anyway, but it's just another arbitrary hoop the game forces players to jump through for no discernable reason.

 

[NowhereMan80]

This. Not feeling like a Civ game at all.

Yep, and it absolutely should not have been named "Sid Meier's Civilization 7". If they want to make huge changes to satiate the mainstream audience....so be it. But this game is a total reboot situation where it should have just been called "Civilization".

 

[Mr Jon of Cheam]

Requiring a certain number of Commanders to keep your military unit from disappearing at Age transition is one of those design decisions that seems arbitrary and poorly thought out. What is the purpose of this mechanism? If you are deleting units as an attempt to rubber-band and reset powerful militaries, then why allow the most powerful militaries (with many Commanders) to avoid this?

It's easy enough to work around, since you want to have lots of Commanders anyway, but it's just another arbitrary hoop the game forces players to jump through for no discernable reason.

Certainly sounds like they haven't got this quite right. How would you solve it, just have entire armies carry over to the next Age? Or the opposite, delete everything? I'm not sure either of those options works either.

 

[Evolena]

to my knowledge they lose all benefits, but someone please correct me if I’m wrong. it’s not a game mechanic the civilipedia would tell you…

They lose adjacency bonuses (from Resource / Wonders for the Science / Production buildings, for exemple), and thus their specialist bonus (as that mainly enhances adjacencies).
They keep a basic base yield, ie. a Culture building still provides some Culture, but it is only +2 whatever the "tier" of the building (for both the Monument (+2) and the Amphitheater (+4) for exemple).
Also, an obsolete building does not count for making a "Quarter", so the bonus associated to having a Quarter no longer applies.
So they don't lose all, but don't keep a lot either.

 

[Gorbles]

Requiring a certain number of Commanders to keep your military unit from disappearing at Age transition is one of those design decisions that seems arbitrary and poorly thought out. What is the purpose of this mechanism? If you are deleting units as an attempt to rubber-band and reset powerful militaries, then why allow the most powerful militaries (with many Commanders) to avoid this?

It's easy enough to work around, since you want to have lots of Commanders anyway, but it's just another arbitrary hoop the game forces players to jump through for no discernable reason.

Investing in army infrastructure allows you to keep more of your army. This seems fluid and not "arbitrary" in the slightest.

If the problem is "you can keep too many" or "you can keep too few", that's a balancing parameter.

 

[Blueskies1583]

Since you lose the bulk of your military units and buildings when you transition into a new era, why even build many of those buildings and units in the first place? Having lost most of my men and buildings, I had this huge feeling of deflation hit me when the Exploration Age began, like everything I had worked for in the previous age was for nothing.

It was not for nothing because by doing those things your civilization survived and perhaps even thrived, and you propelled into the future. Nothing last forever though as the Roman Empire discovered and so a new age began from anew with new challenges and opportunities.

Clearly I enjoy the different ages and so forth in Civ7. It's the first game that held my attention beyond 100 turns. In fact, I finished my first campaign after 30 hours just now! I lost on score, but I'll go again for attempt #2, this time with another random set of leaders & civs. I love it.

Now, I can understand why more traditional players of the Civ series wants to play it the way it was done in previous versions of the game, and I fully support that for sure. I hope we get that option at some point, either from the devs or the modders.

 

[gunnergoz]

You can't think of Commanders as individual generals as in past game versions. In this game they represent the social and economic investment in developing military theory and practice, mostly through lessons learned the hard way in warfare. The more of these "commanders" you acquire, then get out there and use, and gain experience with and promote, the more your future better your future military establishments will perform and expand their abilities. Think of them as "military spirit or ethos" if you will - their specializations kind of reveal some of that concept. Anyway, that's how I look at them in this version of Civ, and I like the change a lot, even though I'm still learning and getting used to it.

 

[StargazingDog]

Now, I can understand why more traditional players of the Civ series wants to play it the way it was done in previous versions of the game, and I fully support that for sure. I hope we get that option at some point, either from the devs or the modders.

I've played Civ 3-6 each several times over the past few months. They are all still viable. Anyone who wants the old ways can still play these. I could easily see someone playing just Civ 3 for the rest of their lives and it would make perfect sense.

 

[sTAPler27]

The buildings make sense because while you lose the adjacencies you maintain their base yields. So a player who built a lot of libraries and academies will still be ahead of a player who didn't after the age transition

 

[Ornen]

Investing in army infrastructure allows you to keep more of your army. This seems fluid and not "arbitrary" in the slightest.

If the problem is "you can keep too many" or "you can keep too few", that's a balancing parameter.

also works out mechanically because each general is progressively more expensive. towards the end of the era you will want to build more generals, but there is a steep limit in terms of production cost

 

[app]

I'm finding that settlement limit is the one thing that they are not really "pulling back to the center", and is thus quite broken. I think they were simply giving a set number of settlement cap over what you managed to achieve in the previous age? Below is turn 1 of the modern age (my first game still). I had 23/23 settlement at the end of exploration, and looks like I got 6 more caps. The AIs were both at 9 cap, and got 7 more. I also noticed specialist-based or urban-based economy probably suffers a lot more at the start of an age compared to ultra-wide empire that relies more on rural yields like this.

For the army, my 6 army commanders were able to keep I believe all the land units from previous age, maybe only missing a few that I don't even notice. But for some reason, my 1 fleet commander manage to lose 3 out of my only 4 ships. Not sure what the formula is there

I will try to close out this one with good old fashioned domination victory rather than military one

 

[Yzman]

to my knowledge they lose all benefits, but someone please correct me if I’m wrong. it’s not a game mechanic the civilipedia would tell you…

You are wrong. It's just adjacent bonuses. That is why one of the golden age benefits is that certain buildings KEEP the adjacency bonuses.

 

[Aurelesk]

The buildings make sense because while you lose the adjacencies you maintain their base yields. So a player who built a lot of libraries and academies will still be ahead of a player who didn't after the age transition

It doesn't work like that. Some buildings may end up improved in the following era.

As they lose their adjacency bonuses, they do not keep their base yields either. Instead, their yields are replaced by a fixed value: 2 in the Exploration Age, and 3 in the Modern Era. For example: Libraries, Academies & Golden Age Academies, Observatories and Universities are set to 3 Science in the Modern Era. Their maintenance costs differ, though. Antiquity Era buildings require 2 Gold and Happiness, while Exploration Era buildings require 3 Gold and Happiness.

I said some buildings may end up improved. This can happen for buildings that have 2 distinct yields. Especially those which give Influence. For example, a Monument is +1 Influence and +2 Culture (with adjacency), but becomes +3 Influence and +3 Culture at the Modern Era. The same applies to the Villa or the Dungeon.

Spoiler City details in Exploration Age :

Spoiler Now the Modern Era, look at the right side: the value went from +2 to +3 :

 

[AriochIV]

Certainly sounds like they haven't got this quite right. How would you solve it, just have entire armies carry over to the next Age? Or the opposite, delete everything? I'm not sure either of those options works either.

Since you can largely avoid the deletion mechanism, I don't see any purpose in having it at all.

You sometimes see this in game design, where an out-of-place mechanic remains in a game because it's a remnant of an earlier design decision which has since become obsolete. This feels like a situation where earlier in development, the Age reset penalties were harsher, and they gradually scaled them back because they realized that they sucked (and I believe one of the devs said pretty much that in one of the YouTuber Q&A's). Guess what, Firaxis? They still suck... keep scaling.

 

[Big J Money]

I'm okay -- no very happy -- with building fewer buildings in Civ 7, as long as each building has its value within a given strategy. Like, if I'm going for military victory and I decide not to build all or most of the science buildings... awesome! But if I'm going for a science victory and don't see any value in building all the science buildings, then that could be a problem. In older civ games (I want to say Civ III) you actually shouldn't build all the buildings; it costs too much production.

 

[Taefin]

I think it has to do with the Terracotta Army indeed, as I think my mystery new third Commander after transitioning into Exploration age has come from it.
And this new Exploration age Commander probably doesn't count for storing Antiquity age units. Did you have these 4 Commander before the transition, or after?

Had the 3rd and 4th commander from TCA in the antiquity, and I think the empty commanders were these (the ones with lower rank since I got them last).

 

[Evolena]

Had the 3rd and 4th commander from TCA in the antiquity, and I think the empty commanders were these (the ones with lower rank since I got them last).

Strange. I had no problem with the (only) one I got from it, it received the remaining units after the first one was full.
The mystery third one has appeared after the transition.

 

[R3P0]

I think the maximum amount of playtime is 2 hours, so I'm not sure if the refund will succeed.

Just to give everyone an update Civ 7 has been removed from my account on steam and my refund has been accepted just pending the return of my funds. I had 14 hours playtime and requested within 24 hours.

 

[Sagax]

Having finished a full Deity playthrough last night - yes, absolutely build stuff, even if you are at the end of an age:

1. Even without adjacency bonuses, the raw base yield of obsolete buildings will help you get over the initial hump in the tech and civic trees. This is especially true if you want to go for cultural victory - getting to Natural History asap is crucial, and every bit of culture (for civics) and gold (for explorers) counts.
2. If you are swimming in gold, absolutely buy something, because apparently your treasury gets wiped down to a threshold upon age transition. So it’s a use it or lose it situation. If not on buildings, then at least on units (matched by enough commanders to avoid age transition wipes).

The only caveat is Modern, where at some point you indeed don’t want to invest too much into science and culture buildings to avoid the age ending too soon. But that’s separate from what OP is talking about.

 

[tman2000]

When I looked at the detailed yields the old buildings still had the same yield? Eg library at 2 science. I thought it was supposed to decline. Anyway the buildings still provide yields.

But really you have ongoing production so you have to use it somehow. Same question could be asked about science, culture, gold etc.

"Ageless" buildings do +X per age. So they go from +1 per farm to +2 per farm. Meanwhile, aged buildings don't scale. So you have an Inn doing like +3 yield, the Market or whatever doing +7 and the grocer doing +15 or something like that.

However, maintenance costs of aged buildings goes up I think. So your total yields will be relatively the same in an age transition, but with more costs, and the new buildings have much higher yields. I think.