How Ages & Eras Work In Civilization 7

Here's a Playlist for All Civ 7 Content

Timecodes
Intro | 0:00
1. Ages Are Longer | 0:36
2. The Three Ages | 0:59
3. Fixed Persistent Leader | 1:43
4. Leaders For Any Civ | 2:26
5. Natural History | 3:27
6. Legacy Traits | 6:10
7. Phases Of Ages | 7:02
8. Age Quests & Mini Victories | 7:42
9. Crisis Policies | 8:56
10. Technologies & Civics | 9:45
11. Overbuilding | 10:05
12. Trade Systems | 10:31
13. Independent Factions | 10:43
14. The Core Idea | 11:49
15. Does This Work For You? | 13:22

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[woodykusaki]

There should have been 4 ages. It feels weird if they're gonna lump up middle ages to either antiquity or exploration.

[oj]

Civilisation always made it so that I could play with any nation from the invention of writing to the development of space travel. The leaders were much more arbitrary than the nations. From one Civ to the next, it was important that the Romans were playable, whether under Caesar or Augustus.
For more immersion and gameplay, it would be better to always play the same nation, even if the characteristics changed from era to era. There would be no difference in terms of game mechanics.

Instead, you have one leader across all ages. So while some nations are prevented from playing in all ages, this does not apply to the leaders. However, their style and clothing do not change. This also does not contribute to the feel of the game.
However, it gets really weird when Firaxis translates the game mechanics as follows. The ancient Egyptians are not trusted to reach modernity, only antiquity. However, they can only reach antiquity with an American leader like Benjamin Franklin. Personally, I think the idea that any nation can pass the Test of Time is very much lost here.

[eenayeah]

You make a really good call back in that in Civ 3 the leaders change costume. If they really are going to go this "leader will lead different civilizations", they better damn AT LEAST make a costume for each leader in each civilization.

[gaelsarmiento]

What's interesting is that in the footage firaxis has released the Abbasid Caliphate was a possible option for Egypt to switch to, which is an extremely natural progression and more so than Songhai. I think that Firaxis is kind of messing up the messaging here because when people think about switching civ's, they have the humankind approach of switching to whoever you want with no reason but it seems like sensible progressions exist. By having sensible progression it will in effect feel like your playing one civilization but with that civilization evolving throughout time.

[mrm]

"There is always a natural more historical accurate option"
No, not really. Egypt did NOT evolve into Songhai and Buganda. Those are different people with different cultures. If this is an example of natural succession, I am not optimistic that the rest is much better. I like a lot of the changes, or I am a least curious how they play out - but I really hate this Civ swapping. I wouldn't mind it so much if there was an actual "historical option", but the examples we have seen are already an epic fail in my eyes.

[johnjohanson]

I think the problem is that Civ7 doesn't add things Civ players have been wanting for a while (throne room, palace, etc), and instead adds a ton of things that Civ players have NEVER asked for, from other games that definitely ARE NOT Civ. I watch this video and see very little about what I liked about Civ2/4/6. it seems like I'm watching a completely different game from a completely different series.

[gaelsarmiento]

What I just realized is that if Firaxis can pull off civ switching then it creates a new dynamic in the community where we try to guess what progressions they will add in the game and which one's should they add.

[marekkos]

CIV7 will have less ages, then Age of empires games 😂😂🤣🤣

[RobertSmith-bzug]

What happened to the word "fun" for Civ games... Throne Rooms, Wonder Movies, Animated Advisors, Hall of Fame Titles, Animated Workers, etc.. That help lead to immersion. Just immediately flopping down a district is suppose to be fun ? Today it's all about the Graphic Style and Complex civ structures. 😒

[lhermite]

What this mechanic makes me feel is that it forces real life history into a game that rewrites history, creating a weird mix. Lets say you are Cree, game is probably going to suggest u evolve into America, but what if you never fought the british? What if british are not even part of the game you customized? It totally breaks the immersion about the universe youre making. I would have liked a system where if I conquer another civilization, or other civ has influence over me, I can evolve with some of their traits.

[dsinsocal]

There is no direct link between Egypt and Songhai, either politically or culturally. The idea would be fine, if Firaxis included enough directly-related civs to accomplish it, but forcing me to play a different civ and telling me it's the same culture is no different than pissing on my leg and telling me it's raining.

It would have made much more sense to change LEADERS (still of the same civ) twice a game instead of changing Civs. But, again, Firaxis would have needed to include at least 60-70 leaders from the start to make it fun and interesting, and we all know they aren't doing that because it would limit their expansion pack cash-cow.

[TheMarcHicks]

For my money, Independent Factions are the thing I am most looking forward to. Barbarian Clans was my favourite Civ6 DLC, and Independent Factions sounds like they've taken that DLC concept out to its most logical conclusion.

[SpmMe]

To me changing Civs in a Civ game is the antithesis of what Civ is about, so yes, I do call that a fundamentally bad idea irrespective of execution. If I had one line to really boil the core of Civ into, it'd be "a civilization to stand the test of time". Well. Now it's ... "three civilizations to stand some tests of some times".

Further, the restrictions to eras and the mechanic that constantly basically is there to track everything you do ... urgh, it's such a typical development for modern games. Gotta take the player by the hand, everything you do must be some sort of progress (bar goes up, good boy!), you cannot anymore just say "here's a settler and a warrior, now go survive for 7000 years", no.
And irrespective of that it's also a feature that can very quickly become very "meta" (do this thing in that crisis or you got a huge disadvantage) and also very repetitive (eveeeery game going through the same motions at the same time).

That it also feels kinda middle-of-the-road for leaders where they don't go so far as to make interesting visuals but then make them generic to everyone and with all that stuff also doesn't hit the spot for me.

For me these ideas should have been explored in something like "Call to Power 2". Keep Civ as Civ. But okay. The newer Civs were all more miss than hit for me; I guess I'll stick with 2/3/4.

[spaceanimai]

Just a thought, would it be better if the leader changed between eras instead of the Civ, or some combination of all 3 (Including abstain) but leave the choice to the player? What if they had some type of dynasty system where you can marry other civ or city state leaders you're at peace with to adopt one of their passives in the next era? Historically and from a gameplay sense, both should be able to work. You could go from France -> New France/Canada, or English -> American/South Africa, but also France + Germany, Germany + Russia, Japan + America etc.

What do you think?

Personally I always wished there was some type of colonization feature where you could found states and they could become semi or fully independent, just for realism. But from a gameplay perspective I can't imagine that being fun especially if you pour resources into some new continent building wonders or something and they just become independent and you lose control over it. My hope is one day that could be achieved, but how could you make that fun or interesting?
Think of historical Rome for example, if there was a gameplay feature that shattered your early-game empire into like 100 different states and countries, a player probably wouldn't find that fun outside of some challenge scenario, even though it'd be historically accurate and interesting.

[Cramblit]

CIV really needs to revoluationize, my biggest gripe is how fast things went, and how fast and easy it was to go through the eras. Even on harder difficulties, it was too easy to spam science, and get so far ahead in tech you were fighting muskets vs tanks.

With things being split up into ages more, slowing it down, etc. I'm optimistic with these changes.

[hassanabdelfattah]

Egypt into mongols or songhai is very absurd. It looks like they have a pool of civilizations, they divided them by era and they want to make connections. They can not trace each antiquity civilization historical development and they need to make matches and the result is this absurdity. If you have no escape from absurd transition of a civilization from era to era why not give the player more choices. Let me choose from the entire pool of next era's civilizations and make each one with certain conditions to unlock. So by the end of an era my gameplay could provide me a variety of choices or i can even plan my next civ.

[Steelairship]

Egypt -> Abbasids -> Ottomans would make more sense then what they have for a Middle East/North African civ chain. I'm not opposed to the new system, but if they are claiming that its the "historical" choice it doesn't look good. It also makes it look like African cultures are simply interchangeable if they are lumping widely different civilizations from different areas together. Something that would make more sense for Africa would be Ghana/Wagadu-> Songhai ->Nigeria as a West African civ chain.

[AM]

I for one am hoping for a revamped diplomatic system, especially with alliances...wouldn't it be cool to form real blocs (especially in modern ages) and have these delved into more with several nations armies defending common territory / even collective nuclear deterrence? Maybe re-work the Suzerainty mechanics too

[iluvatar]

Egypt into Songhai makes as much sense as China into Turkey. Sharing a continent is not enough of a common trait to evolve into. At this moment, it is half-baked at most, and I am not particularly confident about at launch status of the game seeing this.

[Moominyeager]

As civ 7 has changing civ feature, civ transition should be sticked with historical path only like
Egypt -> Fatimid/Ayubbid/Mamluk - Modern Egypt
Maurya -> Gupta -> India
Shang/Zhou/Qin/Han -> Tang/Song/Ming-> Qing/Modern day China
Ancient Germanic nation in modern day germany like Cherusci, Suebi or Saxons -> HRE -> Prussia/Austria

However i still prefer the gameplay features playing only one civ until end game like previous civ games