As Frederiksen put it, these measure “how people feel about you and your leadership.” It’s affected by things like amenities and what type of Age you are in.
Loyalty and Free CitiesĪll cities now have Loyalty ratings. While these buffs are nice, they don’t contribute to Era Score, making it difficult to chain together Golden Ages. In a Golden or a Heroic Age, your Dedication grants you an extra buff on top of the Loyalty bonus you’re already getting, such as increased movement or combat ability for units. Frederiksen described this a player-selected goal of, “This is what we are going to be about as a civilization for the next Era.” If you’re going into a Dark Age or a Normal Age, your Dedication will give you a new way to earn Era Score-which should help prevent a Dark Age spiral where you’re stumbling from one disaster to the next. They didn’t want to create a system where you “never want a Dark Age.”Īt the dawn of each new Era, your civilization will get to make a Dedication. The gloomier chapters of the story of your civilization need to be as fun to play as the shining ones, and pursuing a strategy of timing a Dark into Heroic transition for a key moment will be viable. Frederiksen was clear that Dark Ages aren’t meant to just suck.
The whole system is based around these risk/reward trade-offs. They’re basically a Golden Age on steroids, with even more powerful buffs to spur your civ on to victory. These trigger when you emerge from a Dark Age with enough Era Score to qualify for a Golden Age, in spite of everyone and everything. The grand prize for overcoming a Dark Age, however, is a Heroic Age. “ not going do as much with trade or diplomacy or something, but in turn, our internal production-our food, or whatever the case may be-is going to be stronger.” “We might be deciding to tighten up our borders,” Frederiksen gave as an example. Most will come with a powerful buff to help some aspect of your civilization carry on through the hard times, paired with a debuff that will make things even worse for a different aspect. For one, Dark Ages unlock Dark Policies that can be slotted into your government, which offer a trade-off of some kind. Civs that can endure a Dark Age will be rewarded. You’ll instead get penalties to Loyalty across the board. For the entirety of that global Era, they get bonuses to Loyalty (more on that later) in all of their cities. Civs in a Golden Age are living the good life.