I wish they went a bit more in depth into how and when you transition between eras. I think they mentioned era advancement is independent for each player, so it may not be so weird to have a player pick Rome early, and somebody else going Huns later.
which brings me to this point...do you think certain cultures will be better at catching up or bringing a runaway player down? because then, cultures like say, the Huns or Mongols, might not be your best choice if you are ahead but might be a perfect strategy if you want to wreck havoc and end up on top.
I'm with the others, I just hope eras feel long enough to have this moments of having to restructure your strategy midway because a neighboor just entered your era and picked a horde.
Agreed, they need to give us some more details on the Era/Faction Progression, because it is so far the most innovative and Different aspect of the game design. As far as I can tell:
*it is first come, first choice of Factions, so you may or may not get precisely what you want in any game.
*it is one Faction each per Era, so no matter how many great sites or situations there are for Huns, only one Hun can play.
*You can choose to keep the Faction from the previous Era - and apparently, keep that Faction for several Eras, so you can wind up as Medieval or Modern Myceneans.
*There are 'bonuses' associated with each Affinity which 'carry over' to subsequent Eras and apparently can be applied even when you are playing a different Affinity later - so your Militaristic Modern Faction can still get an Ancient Aesthete bonus of some kind.
*I don't know if that 'carry over' applies to Emblematics. That is, can I keep building the Assyrian Enblematic Unit or Quarter even when I move on to another Faction in the Classical Era or later? While Emblematic Units will presumably be pretty obsolete after an Era or so, this appears a bit much for Emblematic Quarters - and might lead to Modern Cities composed of nothing but Emblematic Quarters from all your previous Factions!
Relative to Emblematic Quarters/Units, we don't, as far as I know, know anything about Promotions or Upgrades for Units - so, is your fantastic Emblematic Unit from the Classical Era going to do you any good by the Early Modern? Is there any mechanism for Upgrading a previous Era's units to better ones? (One presumes so, but what happens to all the special attributes of Emblematic Units?)
My tentative conclusion so far is that in most games and most situations, playing a series of Factions from the same culture (like China or England/Britain) will be much less important than playing the Affinity most useful in the game situation you face. So, I might start Ancient Era as Myceneans, but instead of playing Greeks in Classical Era, if when my time comes to choose I've got half my cities/regions/territories on the coast, playing a 'naval' Faction like Carthage would be a better choice, or if my nearest neighbors are all Militaristic Factions, finding a Faction with a really good Emblematic military unit or Emblematic Fortress Quarter might be my major priority, regardless of any semi-historical 'progression'!