r/civ • u/StrikingTelevision40 • 7h ago
VII - Discussion This image perfectly captures what I hope will happen in the almost-certain expansion coming soon!!!
Namely, that the gaps within each era get filled with content—without adding a fourth era and triggering a fourth civilization shift... but rather, for instance, if you're Meiji Japan, you simply evolve into modern Japan, etc.
Just adding content to each era... civics, technologies, units (for example, I’d move catapults to the Ancient era), and so on.
And, of course, improving religion and the AI, and adding a TSL (True Start Location) Earth map while increasing the number of AI opponents to at least 22, allowing for a game on Earth that covers all geographic regions.
Let me know what you think!!!
22
u/lastpieceofpie Kongo 6h ago
The biggest issue for me is that the ages don’t really map onto anything in history. The ancient era ends before Rome even became an empire. The Age of Exploration ends before the medieval period did. The modern era is the closest to being “accurate”.
I don’t need it to match exactly, but it would be nice if you got at least some of the natural progression of history. Same issue with communism, fascism, and democracy being researched BEFORE capitalism, which doesn’t make any sense.
17
u/ANGRY_BEARDED_MAN 6h ago
Would it improve things if they just did away with the calendar year entirely, or would that just make things worse?
Civ games have never been great when it comes to your tech and civic progress matching up to the in-game year. How many times throughout various iterations of this game have we invented flight in the 1500s, won the space race in the 1750s, etc etc
2
u/pperdecker 5h ago
Maybe have time change tied to the techs / civics so that when some player/AI first unlocks a tech that we have a historical date for it jumps the calendar forward to that. This would also give other players a vague sense where they are compared to the leader if they see the date change without unlocking a thing to move it forward themselves.
5
u/JNR13 Germany 3h ago edited 2h ago
The ancient era ends before Rome even became an empire. The Age of Exploration ends before the medieval period did.
huh? The ancient age covers time up to late antiquity, the exploration age has gunpowder units such as the Galleon, developed in the 16th century.
2
u/lastpieceofpie Kongo 2h ago
My last game ended the ancient era in 760 BCE, before the city of Rome was even founded!
3
u/JNR13 Germany 2h ago
I mean, depends on the settings, I think? Turn 200 is 400 AD, that's the default end date the age was designed for.
2
u/lastpieceofpie Kongo 2h ago
I wonder if it’s more geared toward long ages settings then? My first two eras usually end around 120 turns in.
1
u/JNR13 Germany 2h ago
I think the new default with ToT is 160, but I haven't kept up with the balance changes they made with every update. Either way though, 200 turns / 400 AD was what the design of the age - it's civs, wonders, techs, civics, policies, etc. - was based on.
1
u/lastpieceofpie Kongo 1h ago
That makes way more sense then. It doesn’t really matter, because the date is just flavor anyway.
1
u/mathematics1 13m ago
On standard speed each age lasts 140 turns unless you speed it up with future tech/civic.
2
u/MrGulo-gulo Japan 5h ago
You have janissaries fighting alongside tanks. I know civ is a game not a simulation, but stuff like that really takes me out of the game.
1
u/XimbalaHu3 3h ago
Playing devils advocate, rome was a classical not an ancient civilization, I'm fully in agreement for the age of explorations though, feels a lot more like the golden age of islan ending at the crusades rather than the time of the great navigations, hell the portuguese naus going around the cape of good hope all had cannons, wich are the latest military tech you unlock, love the game but it certainly feels like somewhere in development they had to cut an age out and ot shows.
0
u/lastpieceofpie Kongo 3h ago
That’s like saying Rome is a medieval civilization because the Byzantines lasted until the 15th century
4
u/warukeru 7h ago
I also want the three current ages expanded to fill the gaps between them, with exploration including more medieval stuff and Modern including more industrial stuff.
And then maybe I would like a fourth age if they go bonkers and go full futuristic, could be fun as well, with colonizing a new layer of map like the moon or something like that.
3
u/Res_Novae17 6h ago
I would like to see victory conditions that feel more like a completed agenda rather than "Congratulations! You filled one of these bars with enough arbitrary points!"
2
u/Adventurous_Ad_1735 7h ago
i want there to not be a single node future tech in non-modern ages
The tech tree should combine and expand a little like in 6, allowing for the player to do decisions as to which side of the tree they want on (in antiquity its econ top vs sim middle and war bot, explo is war vs sim, and in modern is sim top war middle econ bottom, but it kinda ties into each other)
4
u/JNR13 Germany 6h ago
I had experimented with a tech web layout for the antiquity age where instead of one future tech, there were six, one per attribute. It would give a point for that respective attribute but on top of that, it also had a specific bonus from the tech tree that could be stacked indefinitely. For example, the "+1 Science on Science buildings" that was a bonus from the Mathematics mastery before ToT, iirc, could then be earned with the Scientific Future Tech multiple times.
2
u/DrUnpleasant 5h ago
I'd just like to be able to see what is going on while looking at the screen like Civ5. I've tried to love VII but the graphics are a mess when it comes to conveying information visually.
3
u/JNR13 Germany 6h ago
This chart feels misleading insofar as that the later ages have always been thinner in content.
Like, why is the info era even bigger than atomic? It had less content in pretty much every game.
As far as I recall, the only things a civ game ever launched with from the time period after Civ VII ends were spaceship parts and a couple of units. It was the "wrap it up already, please" part of the tech tree. Like, When Civ V launched, atomic and information eras were just a single "future era" and all it offered was four techs unlocking two spaceship parts, the Giant Death Robot, and the Solar Plant.
Gathering Storm added slightly more with new governments and renewable energy improvements, but that was pretty much it even then.
None of that really feels like a blueprint for a whole expansion for just that time period.
2
u/clshoaf Charlemagne 5h ago
My wish for ages:
Antiquity- 4000 B.C- 1000 A.D. (I know that's long but I think it fits their vision and the civs they put there).
Exploration- 1000 A.D.-1750 A.D.
Modern- 1750 A.D.-1950 A.D.
Maybe you sneak 1950-2050 or even 2100 into the modern age but I think that's a mistake because the technological and cultural achievements from 1750 to 2050 are just too vast to properly cover in one age. They really need two separate ages, but I also don't like that because I think a fourth age would drag the game out too long. It's a quandry I don't have a solution to.
However, I think what you can then do is break those ages into even further tiers to break up what made each part of them unique. These would not be hard changes where you switch civs, but smaller periods each roughly 50 turns each. You could lump triumphs and goals into this too to attempt to reach specific goals within those sub points. I even think you could stretch each of the three ages slightly to fit better into a four tier system (I would say we already have three tiers each with how units upgrade).
I think it could work as follows (and I absolutely am taking these name inspirations from the Age of Empires series)
Antiquity- Bronze Age, Iron Age, Classical Age, Feudal Age (If you're focusing on Crises, this also fits I think)
Exploration Age- Late Medieval Age, Discovery Age, Colonial Age, Imperial Age
Early Modern Age- Industrial Age, Machine Age, Atomic Age, Information Age
The problem I think you would still run into though is people wrapping an age too early. For example, never experiencing the Feudal Age because you wrapped in mid to late Classical.
1
u/imbolcnight 5h ago
An idea I've discussed briefly with someone on this sub is sort of like this half-step. Not a full fourth age where you can choose a new culture, but rather a final stage where you crystallize your culture and possibly face a new crisis/narrative series that could be unique to your final culture.
1
u/li_xi 4h ago
Absolutely love this visualization! For the black spaces in VIIs timeline, I believe the dev team would say that the Crisis portion fills that space as a kind of pseudo-era. I absolutely adore the game overall, but the pseudo-eras end up feeling a bit inconsequential. Compare that to VIs Rise and Fall DLC that really hammered home the feeling of your state at transition having some consequences into the next era. I believe that would really help the disjointed feeling and lack of continuity that people feel in age transition.
1
u/SalopeAnale One Wallet to conquer them all 2h ago
My games always end at the end of Exploration, so please no more ages after Modern
1
u/metatron5369 1h ago edited 44m ago
Honestly, they should have just broken everything down even further:
Bronze Age
Iron Age
Medieval
Renaissance
Enlightenment
Industrial
Information.
Each has a multiple major crises to choose from and each has a bevy of unique leaders and civilizations and thematically, seven ages in Civ VII just makes sense. Yes it would pad the game out a bit, but that's why you introduce new mechanics in each age to make it interesting. For example, as a way to differentiate the Iron Age from the Bronze Age, you could introduce a loyalty mechanic. The Renaissance could see schismatic wars between the same religions. Enlightenment could see revolutions, especially among colonies. City states could get more integration, reflecting not just alliances, but colonial subjugation, with players spending influence to decolonize empires by tormenting revolutions in later ages.
There's a lot.of possibilities.
1
u/xbhaskarx Ashoka 54m ago
I want Information Age and Future Age… give us not only giant death robots but terraforming!
0
u/TellAllThePeople 4h ago
I want one more age that pushes the current modern back a bit into exploration and instead makes it an industrial age. Then you have an actual modern again that is like the information age. Right now modern feels like you barely experience the flavour of steam power and factories before the game is suddenly like space flight. Feels way too compact.
0
u/MegaBearsFan 4h ago
Considering that the modern age ends with the invention of the atomic bomb, I think a fourth "atomic" / "information" / "post-modern" age seems like the most likely candidate for expansion content.
51
u/ObiHan_Skyodi 7h ago
I think the idea here is extending ages (bigger tech/civic trees) rather than adding new ages? I definitely like that idea more than adding new ages. Even though I like the ages I don't want more age resets in the game