Fenrir said:
I get that as the gameplay component it is, it just doesn't make sense to me as a narrative device within the game. Presumably you're changing from <civ a> to <civ b> without any real impetus. If there was some sort of narrative force driving that change it at least makes sense. A revolt if you're doing poorly, a marriage alliance with a city state, etc. It just seems like the era changes and you get to call yourself something different. Personally I would like it better if they had different tracks you could go down at each era. Ancient I choose to be expansionistic and that has certain bonuses and drawbacks. Then as a result maybe that changes the options available to me in the future or even changes how the option I make next plays out in terms of bonuses/drawbacks. I'm still <civ a> but the gameplay loop has tons of possibilities.
The way it is now in my mind it feels like it's going to be well they're England but they're actually Ghandi's India so I need to be wary of getting nuked randomly.
Btw I totally get I may be the weirdo on this. This concept looks to be nearly copied from Humankind which is a fairly successful game in its own right (but it's also a reason why I never really could sink into it).
True, I think they're taking some from humankind and changing it so that it's not just random changes, but more curated what if style things.
Quote:
The way it is now in my mind it feels like it's going to be well they're England but they're actually Ghandi's India so I need to be wary of getting nuked randomly.
But that is actually more realistic if you think about it, as an age changes so do the principles and priorities of an empire. I also don't think an Age change is going to be like the old Eras, they made seem like it was going to be more of an event with fundamental changes to the world type of thing (again not for certain as they have time to change all of this).
Overall, when you think of the evolution of civilizations in real life over long periods of time, they have very different political points of view, military power, and philosophical changes during the different time periods. I think that's what they're trying to better represent with this (at least I hope), but I'm guessing I'm close since some of the leaders you can choose are not just political, they mentioned non-political philosophical leaders, religious leaders, and scientific leaders (Ben Franklin was in there).
I think this can be really good if it's done in a way that's natural, and could have happened if events in real history went differently.