I definitely think you've got the potential on much more modern and interesting gameplay that exceeds the board game - as 4x game - feel that civilization double downed on without being as streamlined or balanced as a board game. I think you already saw my post about incorporate a "full employment" concept into the game but I will point out that right now the scaling on two systems seems to be imbalanced.

Money production can still get pretty silly - and - it's still very abstracted. I posted about this in my one completed game review. I think you already have some modeling / math for inflation from Endless Space 2 so I am kind of expecting to see that implemented at some point. But also strangely it's occurred to me that the flip side of my full employment idea is excess population. A way to more indirectly spread excess population - migration events (between friend cities or even allied cities) are probably on the books already. I did explore making units just to disband them in the cities further away from my capital in my last game that's okay but kind of eh.

Perhaps a knew parades - public works - basically art grants and stuff community clean up, etc. Because it also seemed a little strange to me that I had one city with a population that was about 66% employed and 33% excess - which seems like a potential recipe for instability and homelessness. You've already got piles and piles of systems here but that DEFINITELY seems like something that could be affected by a civic. Should those unemployed populations slowly migrate to your outlying cities and-potentially foreign cities, or, should loyalism to cities/counties/states be part of the culture - you might risk instability but you'd be more able to potentially take advantage of a standing population for militarism or that manual migration process of making an army and moving in to cities. It's also a nice idea for macro/micro players to choose an experience they prefer.

Oh! Right. I forgot my two cents. Science being banked is an interesting idea. 

Basically that should be available for if you become a scientific culture. Similarly to the change that should be made for going from agrarian to agrarian - your ability bar shouldn't reset. 

After playing I agree with the point already being made in the past comments. Next to that I feel that the strategic resource mechanic and trade can have some improvement.

Strategic resources

To me the fact that you can build an unlimited amount of units by owning the required amount of resources always felt a bit gamy to me. Personally I would like to see a system comparable to the latest expansion of CIV 6. Where a strategic resource adds a certain amount of that resource per turn. And you need a certain amount of that resource to build units/buildings. Where you can increase the amount per turn by accessing more of the resource. Improving the "mine" by technology and infrastructure. Or trading.

I believe this system prevents the spamming of units. And as a player you have more opportunities and therefore decisions to acquire the resources you need.

Trade

I really like the system where you have to pay to transport a resource. And that you need treaties to trade resources. One thing I find with trade is that I couldn't figure out how to sell resources, but that could be my problem :(. And that you can't negotiate about the price for a resource with the AI. Another thing is that the trade doesn't seem to end after a certain amount of turns.

That are my two cents about the economic system.

Durkie wrote:

After playing I agree with the point already being made in the past comments. Next to that I feel that the strategic resource mechanic and trade can have some improvement.

Strategic resources

To me the fact that you can build an unlimited amount of units by owning the required amount of resources always felt a bit gamy to me. Personally I would like to see a system comparable to the latest expansion of CIV 6. Where a strategic resource adds a certain amount of that resource per turn. And you need a certain amount of that resource to build units/buildings. Where you can increase the amount per turn by accessing more of the resource. Improving the "mine" by technology and infrastructure. Or trading.

I believe this system prevents the spamming of units. And as a player you have more opportunities and therefore decisions to acquire the resources you need.

Trade

I really like the system where you have to pay to transport a resource. And that you need treaties to trade resources. One thing I find with trade is that I couldn't figure out how to sell resources, but that could be my problem :(. And that you can't negotiate about the price for a resource with the AI. Another thing is that the trade doesn't seem to end after a certain amount of turns.

That are my two cents about the economic system.

Strategic Resources:  agree w. your statement

Trade: You're not the only one who's never figured out how to sell a resource, which makes the ability to sell at x1.5 cost (forget which culture) rather pointless.

It does seem reasonable that trade treaties would expire after a certain period of time. Being able to counter w. a different price -- to haggle over trade value -- would be nice.

Era change to same culture type: As @PotatoesAreBland said, if you're changing eras from one culture type to the same culture type, any counters / timers shouldn't be reset.

Wait selling is an active choice? I just figured it was a diplomacy ai feature that wasn't included? 

PotatoesAreBland wrote:
Should those unemployed populations slowly migrate to your outlying cities and-potentially foreign cities

This is something I never considered and would be really cool. It makes sense too, if citizens cannot find housing or work in my city it makes sense they might look elsewhere, either my other cities or, in detriment to myself, the cities of my opponents. Would give me a good reason to try and avoid over population if it might start benefitting my competition.

Some ideas that could help with the pace in a meaningful way, which I believe will actually make the decisions and expansion even more enjoyable.

Currently I think the cost of acquiring new territory is too low. Making an outpost should at least cost population (by costing the unit who initiates it), which sure, you get back later. I think the influence cost should stay as well, managing that early on, is quite interesting.

Also, one thing that could help against super fast exploding, is when the outposts, that you attach to another city, won't work with 100 % efficiency out of the box (50 %?), but perhaps need some tech, or more influence etc. meaning it should be at the same power level by the mid of classical era perhaps but not immediately during the expansion phase.

So I've been playing around with not advancing to the next era until I've collected all the stars, and here are my current observations:
Banking Science
This completely breaks the game. By waiting to get all the stars I have so much science banked that I can research between 85% and 100% of the next era's science in one turn (depending on current era culture). Scientific endeavours did come in fits and spurts for human history, but we certainly didn't go from stone-tipped arrows to crossbows in a single year.
Money and Influence

These things accumulate at unholy rates. I just played a wide-game where every territory was its own city and I could buy every new structure I had just researched on the first turn of the new era.

I really like the pace of the game waiting to get 3 stars on everything, it feels right. But the economy utterly breaks it.

FaeBriona wrote:
One thing I find with trade is that I couldn't figure out how to sell resources, but that could be my problem

FaeBriona wrote:
You're not the only one who's never figured out how to sell a resource

PotatoesAreBland wrote:
Wait selling is an active choice? I just figured it was a diplomacy ai feature that wasn't included? 

You don't sell. The AI buys them from you. A notification appears when they do. It's still pretty obscure, though, but they are working on improving it (by being able to see which resources the AI bought, for example).

I completed my first game now and I Zhou --> Carthaginians --> Khmer and keept Khmer in the early modern era. I completed the techtree around turn 120, I think that the Confucion school give too much science from mountains maybe bring it down to 3 or 4 instead of 5. I found 1 good spot for it and didn't need to think on science until the medieval era and I don't think that is a good thing. On the Carthaginians I think they are fine but I would like a upgrade function from harbor to cothon. 

Now to the Khmer their baray is in my opinion broken, I built them everywhere and I got insane yields of everything and my cities grew like crazy. The baray solved my science problem i hade in the medieval era and i don't think they where intended for that. I suggest that the science from the baray is removed and that som food is removed from them as well like take them from 5 to 3 food from the base amount but keep th +2 from nerby rivers or make baray only able to be built on rivers not nerby.

My cities was at the end of the game at pop 50+ (had 6 of them) and I didn't have jobs for them, I don't know if this is what is whanted by this time in the game but I don't think so. I think that the baray is to blame for this as well and thats why I suggest the food changes to the baray.

On civics, I hade 5 or 4 free civic points to spend but no civics. I don't know why I had so good stability, the UI is bad and hard to understand in the city view when looking at yields and what is applying to the city. The civic regarding secularism needs a warning that you will lose your religion, because it wasent clear.

Another thing I would like is too have more wonders per era and have ther effect be more unique and a bit mor impact full.

Lastly I would like to have a function to transfer pops from cities to other cities, it is already possible by creating unites and moving them to other cities but that is annoying and less micro is better.

The game paces too fast between ages.  There doesn't seem to have enough tech in each age and depending on how far into the future we go it may be too little content.  What's the point of neolithic age if we are just wondering around and hunt animals?  There should be option of doing some thing that generate myth or some such that is reflected in later ages.  Say your little wondering tribe painted this cave or hunted this really big mammoth then in modern age your archeologists discovered it.

I noticed today that not all gold generation seems to count towards merchant stars. In ancient, I was sitting on a stockpile of about 1300 gold, but the stars indicated that I had only generated about 850. I suspect some of this has to do with raiding. I'm not sure if this is intentional or not, but if it is not it would help explain why the merchant stars are extremely difficult to get (alongside the merchant quarter just being absolutely terrible).

some report too fast game pace. Please know that you as a player can currently actively set the pace. If you do not enter the next era the AI won't so you have hold the strings.

This does not mean the AI will be idle. Research will currently stack up if there is nothing to research. Era points not.

AI will advance as long as you properly apply Serious difficulty, (there is a bug with difficulty selector)

My 2 cents after finishing several games. I agree with everyone the game flies too fast. I usually farm fame and still by 100 turn I am in early modern era with all previous tech researched even if I don't focus on science at all.

Some luxuries are too strong, the ones that give +1 to any tile producing a resources (saffron, silk). Silver is actually not as strong since there are just a few tiles actually producing gold it's probably working as intended. 

Food currently is way too easy to get probably due to saffron, trivializing city growth. Some religion tenants are too strong as well, particularly the ones giving bonus per number of believers on a holly site. This can give a ridiculous amount of say science, which makes absolutely no sense. Say you have 4 holy sites with 120 believers, which will result in 500 science. If you have 150 believers and 7 sites this becomes 1000 science per turn for religion focused player. Same goes for other things like influence. 

My proposal is to increase food consumption as eras advance (say 0.5 per era).

The game goes too fast, that is for sure. 

I think tying some of the infrastructures to districts would be interesting, for example, building infrastructure that makes production better should require at least X number of Makers' Quarters, building a food-giving infrastructure should require at least Y number of Farmers' Quarters. This way, no district feels like it is irrelevant, and also makes city planning something that feels more necessary. You can't just spam out 20 Makers' Quarters and then fast-build all the food-producing infrastructure such that you ignore Farmers' Quarters. This could also lead to other pre-requisites. E.g. You need a certain number of Market Quarters to build certain Infrastructures that, thematically, rely on trading even if they give you food/production/science.  This would also make Garrisons more reasonable to build: if you needed a few Garrisons before you could get the Unit Experience or Unit Production decreases. This would also make it so that building a cultures' Emblematic Quarter (EQ) wasn't ALWAYS the correct play, because maybe only some of the EQs (e.g. Harbour replacements) count as pre-requisites, whereas others (e.g. Mughals's EQ) would not. 

This way, you actually have some strategic decisions on which types of districts to build. These pre-requisites could also scale with number of territories in a city, such that having more territory didn't just make building infrastructures much, much easier. 

As many already told, and you might have noticed, the era's are way to fast. You made it 150 turn cap, while era 4 hit with easy before the 100 turn mark. The Balance is still quite off with some special districts being overpowered, and other under powered. 

1 reason this happens is that you have to many districts that can be placed anywhere. The bonus of having 2 of the same districts next to each other does not weigh off in with just getting more tiles. Special districts do often not contribute to this adjacency bonus. And even when they do, an triangle of the same district wil yield more adjacency bonuses that 2 makes quarters and an Egyptian district. And there are enough early game buildings that give yield to terrein (especially rivers), so you want even more exploitation. 

You designers already know you should place as many things on the map, rather than in an menu city screen. So I was pretty confused to find that many important buildings in that screen. You need to put that shit on the map. And your regions are huse (unlike civ), make use of them. 

  I do have an suggestion to not make then not actually place on the map: make that if you level up an district with having 4 adjacent same districts to level 2 and level 3 with 6 , that opens up an building slot. That makes you work way harder for it, and you have more difficult placing dilemma's. Also make that you can buy districts in bulks of 5 and 7, to help players guide towards that thing, and making it less tedious to build them. 

At last, i have an issue that is an issue specific to your game, but to the genre. Your empire doens't need more special resource as you game progresses. You often looking for the minimum needed, and the rest is just... bonus, I guess. 

After the innitial fases there is nothing left to discover.

And the City UI is an mess.

Production Que
How many turns before something is finished is often wrong,
the overflow is not wel communicated,
the second building is always wrongly portrayed,
if you "build" (you just buy them) an colony the turns before completion is completely of wack
The buttons for the first building in the que work different that for the other buildings. I have a few times i had to click frantically to get what was going on. 

Yields:
I discovered in my ethics screens that I gained yields for your cultural tendencies even at the start. i did not notice them in the other screens. 
How much food production is not shown. 
The details dropdown are more confusing then helpful. 
I had to reverse engineer how luxury resources work.
To overly where you can see what the districts exploit is ugly and untrue for neutral districts and the fact that yield is blocked by build districts. (failed yield is an easier overlay)
It is not clear how growth works. 

Other
Religion and culture has to be found in an separate menu
Any terrain looks the same if they are exploited. Forrest are difficult to see if the terrain is exploited. 
All basic districts have the same look and feel. Only the makers districts has some plumes to spot the difference. 
An agricultural district does not feel like it is making food. Definitely if you have like 4 of them clumped together. 

The-Cat-o-Nine-Tales wrote:

Hey all!

One of the most common points players raised in our previous OpenDev events was that they felt the game was simply too fast. We've been working a lot on this, but we're still not quite there et, so we need more feedback from you.

How do you feel about the pace of the game? Is the overall pace enjoyable? Does any aspect move faster or slower than the others? Do you always have interesting decisions to make, or are there periods when you just skip turns?

How do feel about the economy in the game? Are the decisions you make interesting? Are the different basic resources all valuable? Are they easy or difficult to get, compared to how useful they are?

Please let us know what you think in this thread!

The pace felt good but it's the kind of pace I expect from a game set on "fast" rather than "normal". I still find that searching technology is still too easy without investing into science and it makes the pace of the game a bit too fast.

As for the economy I've made a thread that is a bit long so I won't detail it here but trading/economy was the least interesting mechanic of all during this opendev, having money didn't feel great, not having money didn't feel bad. Trading was decided with a right click only and had no depth. Really disapointing imo ! That being said, Merchant culture tended to have fun bonuses