Anybody else worried about the hard cut at the turn of the ages?

[Das_Daw]

According to what I read up about the game, the changing of an age/era/chapter puts a hard cut on ongoing stuff: It ends all wars, it dissolves all city states to randomly create new ones in unsettled areas, etc.

Anybody else worried about that, because when I picture it, I see a lot of reasons, why this can make for a really bad experience. Although I think i can sense what lead the developers to this decision gameplaywise, I really wonder if it ends up being an enjoyable experience for the user, if pretty much everything you are doing is cut off, because a new chapter is beginning.

I read up on a lot of discussions here, but honestly those hard chapter cuts worry me most.

[Varkon]

Honestly, I'm worried about that too. Cities getting downgraded to towns, reduced number of military units, etc. sounds like a bad time. Also, what happens to the unfinished technologies when you progress to the next age? Please don't tell me everyone gets all remaining techs for free and everyone is on the same page beginning a new age....that would be the worst.

[eugenekop]

They can always change the balance if the experience is not good and many people complain. They can make it softer, or they can include such setting so everyone will be able to determine the behavior.

I think that’s a really interesting and novel thing that I didn’t see in any strategy game. Let’s see how it feels. There are lots of benefits to this mechanic.

[JerBeware]

I agree. Will need to see how it plays out.

I do like the idea that you can focus on an age though and still feel like you 'completed' a game.

[katzenkrimis]

Originally posted by Varkon:

Cities getting downgraded to towns.

Reduced number of military units.

Please don't tell me everyone gets all remaining techs for free.

-There is a way of keeping all of your cities.

-The military unit loss isn't as bad as you think. Your most obsolete units are the first to go.

-There is no free tech for unfinished trees at the cutoff.

-Wars end.

-You need to become a suzerain of any neighbours if you want to keep them at the transition.

You'll get used to it. I have only seen one YouTuber complain about Ages after testing the game.

[Bullpup]

I'm no game designer but I would say this is a hugely polarising issue, not close to an even split.

Sim City and Cities Skylines devs spoke about how hard it was to put in random disasters like floods and tornadoes that would wipe a lot of progress arbitrarily. They decided to make it a toggle.

BioWare devs talked about the problem with the RPG trope of losing all your gear and escaping from some captivity - those were among the bits players disliked because they felt they had a right to keep the gear. They made those levels short.

I personally couldn't get invested in a game that reset my progress 'randomly' so I need to see reviewers I trust (all two of them!) say that it was either brilliantly implemented or that the other parts of the game were so outstanding that they offset this offputting mechanic.

[Ambushbob]

Originally posted by katzenkrimis:

Originally posted by Varkon:

Cities getting downgraded to towns.

Reduced number of military units.

Please don't tell me everyone gets all remaining techs for free.

-There is a way of keeping all of your cities.

-The military unit loss isn't as bad as you think. Your most obsolete units are the first to go.

-There is no free tech for unfinished trees at the cutoff.

-Wars end.

-You need to become a suzerain of any neighbours if you want to keep them at the transition.

You'll get used to it. I have only seen one YouTuber complain about Ages after testing the game.

get used to it. Why should i?

[plaguepenguin]

Originally posted by Varkon:

Honestly, I'm worried about that too. Cities getting downgraded to towns, reduced number of military units, etc. sounds like a bad time. Also, what happens to the unfinished technologies when you progress to the next age? Please don't tell me everyone gets all remaining techs for free and everyone is on the same page beginning a new age....that would be the worst.

It's not a case of everyone getting the remaining techs. The techs and civics from the prior age just go away. You can no longer build anything unlocked in those trees. The exception is your traditions, the policies unlocked in your civ's unique civics tree.

You can build stuff right from the start of the new age, but only those few buildings and units that are baseline for every player in the new age. This is like the monument, warrior, scout,builder, settler that all civs get to build even from the first turn in 6. Somehting like this happens at the start of every age. You have to unlock everything else you build or slot in as a policy, by unlocking them in the civics and tech trees.

[plaguepenguin]

You do lose a lot during the age transitions, but:
1) so do your competitors
2) you also get to carry over a lot to the new age during the transition

Put those two together, and the result is that you can plan to get a lot of powerful carryover perks with which to go to town in a new age in which the competition is weaker than you, because they weren't as skilled as you and so didn't get so many and so nice a set of carryovers. Their weakness will be your strength.

Planning for a better transition is going to become the focus of your long-range strategy, because a better transition will be very powerful.

[Aluminum Elite Master]

Originally posted by katzenkrimis:

Originally posted by Varkon:

Cities getting downgraded to towns.

Reduced number of military units.

Please don't tell me everyone gets all remaining techs for free.

-There is a way of keeping all of your cities.

-The military unit loss isn't as bad as you think. Your most obsolete units are the first to go.

-There is no free tech for unfinished trees at the cutoff.

-Wars end.

-You need to become a suzerain of any neighbours if you want to keep them at the transition.

You'll get used to it. I have only seen one YouTuber complain about Ages after testing the game.

If this all is true, this is a very mixed bag.

On another thread, I pointed out that cities aren't 'lost' so much as converted to gold-yielding towns from what I saw. That's actually a good shift, because you can convert towns back to cities if needed OR can just rely on the gold-yield to continue buying units and other stuff. This one is good, as it cuts down on micro.

Any form of unit loss is not great. I typically keep some older units on hand should I need to use them or want to upgrade them. Not great but not terrible I guess.

*Anything* that arbitrarily ends wars is bad, bad, bad. Either it becomes a cheese (start a war for one turn right before you know it will immediately be ended, just to pillage some tiles before the CPU can fight back) or it becomes an annoyance (have to get a casus belli again).

If the new age means a new tech tree opens up, that, too, is rife for problems. Not getting anything for 10+ turns of teching would be pretty bad... at least roll over the beakers towards the first tech in the new tree.

[lmr]

A little worried, mostly about unlocking a late age tech that is only relevant for a few turns before the age change. I'll have to see how it works in practice though, but I could see that being frustrating. Civ 6 had similar issues with golden/heroic/dark ages that could encourage unfun play patterns, it's a hard problem to avoid entirely.

[Whimpy]

What incentive is there to prefer research at the later stage of an age insted of just crushing your enemies with military might? Do you get clever boy points at the start of the next age?

[Larkis]

There is some sort of bigger picture.

They important "ressource" are the legacy points you earn during playing. There are 4 Paths, Science, War, Culture and Economy.

- You need to progress to the paths to get to the next age.
- Every point you achieve, can be changed into a bonus which gives you an andvantage at the start of the next age.
- In the last age you need to create some victoy-element, like nuclear bomb or world bank. If you get a lot legacy points in a path, the final building will be faster and cheaper.


About war:
-You neede to spend Influence to declare a war. So i dont think that such last-turn-war is worth it. The ressouces dont seem to reset.
-Every Age (except the last) ends with a huge crisis like hords of barbarians or black death plague. maybe you have enough todo to handle a war.
-AI remember what happens in the last age. So it could happen that the Ai you attacked declare a war on you at the start of the next age.

[Flavalicious]

I predict it'll be unsettling for a large number of players.

Be sort of like playing a Civ game using a roguelike formula, where each age is a soft reset. Personally would drive me nuts, I'm a control freak in games like this, I wouldn't want sweeping changes happening without my input on them.

[Das_Daw]

I generally agree with the sentiment that we need to see, how it pens out. As I stated in my OP i generally get the game play incentives they want to give here.
However it still seems to be a very disruptive design choice to say the least and that might bother more players than not. Iirc the early CIV VI dark ages mechanic was pretty disruptive as well, and was subsequently changed.

The reason I brought this up is that I just see the biggest potential for an unpleasant surprise here, much more than with way more discussed game mechanics. (Like picking a new nation spirit every age which has been talked about lots, but has lots of positive upside if done right)

[plaguepenguin]

Originally posted by Aluminum Elite Master:

*Anything* that arbitrarily ends wars is bad, bad, bad. Either it becomes a cheese (start a war for one turn right before you know it will immediately be ended, just to pillage some tiles before the CPU can fight back) or it becomes an annoyance (have to get a casus belli again).

If the new age means a new tech tree opens up, that, too, is rife for problems. Not getting anything for 10+ turns of teching would be pretty bad... at least roll over the beakers towards the first tech in the new tree.

You get plenty of warning well before the end of the age. There's an age progression meter in the upper left of the map that breaks it down by what percent of the age has been completed. Then, at 70% completed, you find out what kind of crisis you're going to have to deal with in the remaining 30% of that age. You also get some control over just how many turns are involved in getting from 70% to 100%, by means of completing or holding off from completing milestones, and by helping or hindering other civs as they achieve milestones.

Pillage wars, wars not aimed at conquest, but intended merely to grab some quick yields, are possible at any point in an age progression. You had such wars in 6, and in 7 they are clearly still possible, though we don't know just how profitable because we don't know the numbers involved. As for end-age wars in 7, it is not clear how yields will carry over, so quite possible that a pillage war to grab some yields in the last few turns of an age is not going to be much benefit.

The state of hostility vs friendliness between civs is going to carry over to the new age. It is said that there will be some regression to the midpoint from both full hostility and from full friendship, but the exact degree is unclear.

It's not arbitrary at all. Age transitions aren't some afterthought to this game's design. They are instead the key game mechanic you plan around and get a good transition, or fail to plan and get a bad transition. How good a transition you get, and exactly where it is good, is going to be the focus of long-term planning in 7.

Then, when the new age starts, you don't have anything carry over from the old tech and civics trees, except the traditions you earned in the last age, which can be plugged in right away. You do get to build some units and buildings at the start of a new age, but they do not derive from the old age's tech tree, but are instead a common baseline of some of the new age's first tier units, and some basic buildings. This is like the start of 6, when you have a limited set of units and buildings you can produce before researching any techs, only you get a less dramatic version of that limitation at the start of Exploration and Modern.

If you want to move quickly in the new age to upgrade these common baseline units, you are provided a powerful tool to that end by planning and achieving in the prior age the science golden age perk. For both age transitions, this perk lets your science buildings from the prior age keep their adjacency bonuses into the new age. You will be cut back to lower science output in the early game of the new age much less than your competitors if you devote resources to getting these perks. Your science output will still decline, but theirs will decline even further if they failed to get and then deploy the science golden age, so you get a huge comparative advantage in the race for higher quality units.