I tend to agree. I frequently find myself building the culture specific unit, well after I have advanced a culture or two past that. It's weird to be in the medieval age, and just then getting access to iron and unlocking the Praetorian I got from Rome 40-50 turns ago.

Yes, I think the 7 era stars to advance is far too few. I believe 10 or 12 would be better numbers and 2 in Neolithic makes sense. Also agree that the turn limit is hurting the pace of the game.

Logist wrote:

I recall seeing the similar topic, already. Fully agree, there is such problem - I want to fully taste the era, create cities with the opportunities I am granted, build armies. But no, I am racing from the era to the era, switching cultures before having a proper opportunity of utilize one. Main problem IMHO is that settings of game length is a dumb direct X2/3/etc multiplier to everything, from science to industrial production costs.

I think that choice of game speed should be:

1) expanded to give access to really endless games without arbitrary "end of history" after turn X or at least longer ones

2) more sliders/options to the game speed, with ability to choose "speed" of production/research/population growth so that on longer games you would be able to do/produce more stuff, not the same amount as in shorter game setting but just taking linearly more time.

I recall it too, but I couldn't find it, so I made a catchy thread title.

I agree too. 10-12 stars for an era, or more difficulty for having stars, can slow a bit the rythm.

Yep, seven stars are not enough.

One of the problems with the current calculation for stars is they're based on absolute numbers. What that means is BIGGER is always BETTER. A small nation can never advance - how is it going to save up 20,000 gold or 10,000 influence? Regardless, I find that I almost never get stars in my main affinity (aesthete, expansion, merchant) because it's way to high, but things like population and military kills are achieved very easily.

So, in addition to increasing the number of stars, it would be better to improve the calculation to be relative, rather than absolute.

I would like to interject here that it is entirely possible to stack influence or gold income to ludicrous levels, especially by the start of the Industrial era.  I can't say if that'll work for handicapped civs, and this income stacking is something you have to focus on substantially.

I don't disagree, however, I wouldn't expect much if any change in this regard.

All of Amplitude's games are built around this idea:  you can never have it all.

Honestly, I'm surprised the research tree can actually be completed. In ES2 and Endless Legend, you *need* to strategically ignore big chunks of the tech tree depending on what victory type you're going for.

I too suffer from the desire to build everything useful in every city, but that mentality is just not part Amplitudes design philosophy, not in any of their games.

In that context, I don't think they intended for players to be able to get 2-3 stars in every single late game category.

I feel like I still have so much to learn about this game, case in point, while playing my last game, I finally realized how to build an excellent coastal city without any rivers, and I can now see myself choosing something other than Khmer & Mughals. 

Anyway, I feel where you're coming from OP, but I would also encourage you to give the game a little time. Much like ES2 & EL, there's a lot of great strategic gameplay to enjoy if you can let go of the assumption that everything should be built in every city.

I would also suggest ignoring non-vital infrastructure during the first two eras, because you can create a new outpost with Colony Plan, make a city with *all* of Era 1 & 2 infrastructure for free, and then merge your old city into the new one. This lets you keep all the districts you've built, and save dozens and dozens of turns of production. I didn't grasp this possible strategy until half way into my last game, and it's pretty game changing IMHO.

Anyhow, good luck! =D

Yes, now main problem of the game pace is we need 7 stars and it is too easy to achieve them. And we need stars only — not adequate science.

My last game on slow speed is lead me to Modern Era by the stars, though I was almost in middle ages by science. It seems very strange. Surely, era must be lock until 90% of technologies of previous era are known.

I am about to enter the contemporary stage and I am still in BC.  I managed to keep up with the technology at the start but at the sacrifice of building, gold and influence.  Influence was very bad until the industial age.  It took thousands of years to progress from neolithic to medieval but i spend more time in the short contemporary than I do in the stone age.  

I totally agree.  The game feels rushed.  The result is unrealistic - you are always using units from one era behind.  You almost do not sample the latter techs in the tree, eventhough you spend a lot of time in the last era, compared to the others.

Something that I would suggest is that the second and third stars in a given field could be only "half stars", so that 1 star from each of the seven fields would still be enough to progress, but having 2 stars in a field would be only worth 1.5 stars, and 3 stars would only be worth 2 stars.  

Morgalion wrote:
I expect that a game like this can take anywhere between a day and a week to finish if it is all you do. However, I find myself constantly flooded with an overloading amount of information and possible buildings to be built. I cannot research every technology before advancing to the next era, build every building before advancing, build a worthy military to at least defend myself, and manage the growing populations in the game. Perhaps this is ultimately realistic, though I find it hard to believe that people would advance to the medieval era and still don't know how to make a boat like in my last game.

There are a couple of things that could slow down the pace of the game at each speed and perhaps turning up the turn timer is a good idea for all cases. A normal game goes by about as fast as a quick game of civ, with similar production values. I just got through to the last era and I am still researching medieval techs.

I can only really think of one good option to alleviate this problem I am having: Increase the star requirement to progress through each era.

A change I can surely recommend is that the Neolithic age should require two stars to progress, that way RNG is less of a factor in progression to the ancient era.

Each era should require more stars, but how much? Surely advancing before each tech in the era is researched should be possible, as well as the capacity to build the buildings that come with them.

Or, the stars can be harder to get. With the exception of taking/attaching provinces since they are limited.

I am sure there are other options, but with only 21 hours played, I think the devs and beta players would know more and could contribute other ideas.

try using Babylon + greeks for the first two eras and you are in medieval warfare while the game is still at classical era.

Or tree use Zhou for ancient era and get some juicy mountains for your first two cities.

Scientific civ does have their drawbacks though, as their lack of production and gold makes it difficult to produce/upgrade units. But all these depends on the map generation (especially luxury sources).