how long will each era last for?

[Gammaray fan]

In Civ1, the ancient age rushed by and a player had knights before they knew it. The Medieval age then lasted for most of the game, with the game then rushing straight through renaissance to modern, and the game ended with a blaze of tanks, bombers, battleships, and of course nukes!
By contrast, CTP (I know its not a Sid game) had next to no medieval age (they combined knights into ancient age) and an extra long renaissance age!
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What will happen in Civ3? From my comparison of the two extremes (Civ1+CTP), I believe that the ages should get progressively shorter (except for the modern age which should be as long as the first age). This makes the game fun because it gives the player a sense that he is being pushed towards the end of the game by something akin to inertia!
However, it also has the side effect of accommodating civ specific units because most of them will be ancient units (because so many civs rose to power in the ancient age), and if the ancient age is the longest, this gives time for different civs to gain power and lose it, and allows the time offsetting of units like the Greek special unit, and the Roman one, so that the Greek one can have its heyday, before the Roman one is buildable!
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Consequently, I believe turns in the ancient age should be a decade or so, medieval age - 15 years, renaissance age - 20 years, modern - 10 years.

[Captain]

I think the era lengths need adjustment too, though not in the same way.
in gneral I agree that the ancient age needs more turns so we don't skip right by it.

ther eras are kindof fuzzy anyways, and there should be transition periods too. these don't need to be specified I don't think.

It should just be that the tech advances have set values, and aren't always increasing. Since your beakers pile up faster, you research faster. I'm in favour of a linear timescale as well. Just let yourself govern your own progress. If you want to advance to another age faster, then research more, build infrastructure and trade, and do all the things to research quicker. If not, then play in that age all you want.

These 'eras' should be dependent on individual civs, not one person gets it and everyone has to tag along. eg. in civ 2 you got industrialization and all your bldg grfx changed, same for automobile, but not everyone was forced along with you.

[Lawrence of Arabia]

In civ2, i never build any units. I'd just have a warrior defending each city which would then be upgraded to a riflemen. I think this strat should be impossible in CivIII because otherwise it leds to quicker AC times.

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Nothing can stop the course of History.

[Gammaray fan]

Lawrence,
How on Earth do you defend your cities if they are invaded, if you only have a warrior to defend!

[Maxxes]

He apparently built Leonardo's Workshop Gammaray fan, the question is did he ever attack?

[Gammaray fan]

Yes I infered as such Maxxis, but does he never get invaded? Maybe he only ever does the AC ending, and not the conquer the world ending? Lawrence, where are you...

[bagdar]

We had a very faint idea of 'eras' in Civ II, so in case I have missed, what's the official word on eras in Civ III? I personally hated the CTP idea.

Yes Lawrence, tell us the trick. I hate building defensive units...

By the way, in CIV III we'll be building more defensive units, considering the colonies, and the vulnerability of the workers...

[Beckdawg]

Originally posted by Gammaray fan
Yes I infered as such Maxxis, but does he never get invaded? Maybe he only ever does the AC ending, and not the conquer the world ending? Lawrence, where are you...

Well i dunno how lawrence did it but what i did was i built two defensive units. 1 to protect and one to seacrh for villages. After a while of doing that you get a decent size army with out building any units. It doesn't always work as well as it sounds because sometimes you do have an aggresive person. What i do then is i try to have enough cities to build all the wonders and still have left over cities. With those i build the military units w/ the other cities. That is how i do it but i might do it different then he did.

[Al'Kimiya]

In some preview, I found a "hidden" picture by changing the URL number (the pictures' URLs ended in a number) and found a pic of the science advisor showing the tech tree. showing the Middle Ages. If someone else found it, please tell which preview it was. (It was the same with a screenshot of the city screen of 'SPICELAND')

Edit:
I tried to upload the picture with "attach file", it obviously didn't go that well. Any ideas?

[Al'Kimiya]

I found the URL for the pic:

http://www.gamespy.com/asp/image.asp?/e3/civ3/image4.jpg

[SerapisIV]

Originally posted by Al'Kimiya
I found the URL for the pic:

http://www.gamespy.com/asp/image.asp...iv3/image4.jpg

Holy bubble gum, Batman, nice catch. I wonder how final the tech tree is right now though.

[SerapisIV]

Originally posted by Al'Kimiya
In some preview, I found a "hidden" picture by changing the URL number (the pictures' URLs ended in a number) and found a pic of the science advisor showing the tech tree. showing the Middle Ages. If someone else found it, please tell which preview it was. (It was the same with a screenshot of the city screen of 'SPICELAND')

Edit:
I tried to upload the picture with "attach file", it obviously didn't go that well. Any ideas?

Hey Snapcase or Imran, get this up on the news soon, this is good stuff.

[Maxxes]

I found the URL for the pic:

http://www.gamespy.com/asp/image.as...civ3/image4.jpg

I've made a thread for that new screenshot Al'Kimiya. If you don't mind.

[Al'Kimiya]

Originally posted by Maxxes


I've made a thread for that new screenshot Al'Kimiya. If you don't mind.

I do mind, please delete it at once

[Lawrence of Arabia]

Ok geez im back

(1) I had Leos Workshop
(2) What i did was a sort of AC like strat. Id get all of the techs as quickyl as possible, so in the 1000s id have tanks. Then, after i had all of the modern equipment, id go and blow the heck out of everyone.
(3) City walls and upgraded units were enough to keep the enemy hordes at bay. Also, since i lead in tech almost always, i get alpin troops and disband the riflemen.