In my previous post, I discussed my thoughts regarding the new "Test of Time" update for Civilization VII. In summary, I feel that it does not really address the main problems that I had with the game since its launch. My core complaint with Civilization VII is the arbitrary and jarring nature of age transitions, and how they skip over large periods of the in-game history. I've also previously written about suggestions that I have for improving age transitions, and some of those ideas have been added to the game by Firaxis in its patches over the past year and a half. But now that "Test of Time" has made a major revision to the core design of Civilization VII, in the form of both civ-switching and in the new Triumphs and victory systems, I want to re-visit the idea of improving age transitions.

So what else could Firaxis do to fix these remaining problems, now that the vocal subset of civ-switch-haters have hopefully been appeased? Well, I already proposed one possible solution in my previous video about Ara and Civ VII. I'm not going to repeat all of that again here, even though a lot of this video is already rehashed from that previous script. But basically, I had proposed that perhaps Civ VII (or Civ VIII) could take a page from Ara's playbook, and use the crises as a true "boss fight" at the end of an age that actually culls out civilizations who fail to resolve that crisis.

I don't want to rehash that entire idea, but I do have one idea for expanding on it in a way that utilizes the new Test of Time gameplay. Instead of be eliminated from the game if any civ fails the Age transition crisis, the game could force that civ to change civilizations at the age transition. The idea here being that the failing empire collapses sufficiently such that its old culture and governance did not survive the crisis in-tact, and new culture and governments have taken over. The crisis resolution could even be tiered, such that at the highest tier, your empire survives and you're allowed to keep the same civilization into the next era with all your dedications. The middle tier would require switching civilizations, and you would not be able to select as many dedications. At the bottom tier, your empire collapses entirely, and you are eliminated from the game.

That's one idea which combines the Test of Time concepts with the design philosophy of Ara's act scoring. Floundering civs being forced to transition between ages would add context to the civ-swapping that might make the idea more palatable for some subset of players who disliked the civ-switching mechanic at launch. Further, adding player elimination would expand upon the idea of the crisis itself being a "Test of Time", acting as a sort of "great filter" that decides which civs survive and which civs die out.

How well an empire performs in a crisis could mechanically determine whether they must switch civs.

Player elimination would also have some of the benefits of Ara's design, which would be that it would free up space on the map for the surviving civs to expand in the following ages, without necessarily having to resort to military conquest. It could also tie into other Civ-specific systems, such as providing new open spaces for Independent Civilizations and city states to emerge, and it could be tied into the archaeology systems of the Modern Age.

But that still doesn't necessarily address the fundamental problem of the ages feeling like they end prematurely, and skipping over chunks of history. So to that end, I have more suggestions.

A few weeks ago (or I guess more than a month ago, at this point -- geez I'm slow at writing these), Firaxis released it's "Test of Time" update for Civilization VII. Civ VII players can now finally play as the same civilization throughout the entire game, which addresses one of the player base's biggest criticisms with the game. The internet is now abuzz with the question of whether or not this patch "fixes" or "saves" Civilization VII. From what I've seen so far, it seems to be very well-received, with many internet pundits saying (or implying with their YouTube thumbnails) that Civ VII is "fixed".

Test of Time certainly is a good update. The biggest change is that players now have the choice to play as any civilization in any age, and can choose to play as the same civilization for the entire game, if you choose. To accomplish this, Firaxis gave every civilization an "apex age" in which they are the most powerful. During the apex age, their abilities are the strongest, and they have access to all of their unique units. During non-apex ages, each civ has less powerful versions of their ability, and they are stuck with stock units.

Players can now choose to keep the same civilization when transitioning into a new age.

This approach is similar to Humankind, which also gave players the option to stay as the same culture when progressing to a new era. The big difference is that in Humankind, staying with the same culture would give that culture the same generic bonus every time; whereas in Civ VII, each civ still has a unique ability, it's just a weaker version of their apex unique ability. So Civ VII's approach is a little bit more flavorful in that regard. Basically, Humankind's version of this feature was (as far as I can tell) just a fall-back option if all the good cultures have already been selected by other players. If you don't want any of the available cultures, you can just stay as the same culture, and continue to field their unique units and build their unique infrastructure, and get some small buff. In Civ VII, by contrast, sticking with the same civ is framed as a more assertive decision. You choose that civ because you want their abilities, not simply because you don't want the other civs.

Personally, I still prefer Humankind's method of culture-switching over Civ VII's. I prefer how it is tied to the individual civilization's progress through the eras, and doesn't stop the game at arbitrary points to force everyone to switch. I also like how there's a competitive, first-come-first-serve aspect to switching cultures in Humankind, which lights a fire under the player's butt to make sure to advance fast enough to get a prime pick of the upcoming era's cultures. Humankind's approach feels like a much more organic and natural part of the game that doesn't interrupt the game's pacing at all (but in fact, adds to the pacing). This is in stark contrast to Civ VII's design, which feels forced, arbitrary, and exceedingly "game-ified".

But perhaps a full analysis of Humankind's culture-switching compared to Civ VII should be the subject of another essay, similar to what I did with Civ VII and Ara: History Untold... For now, I want to talk about Civ VII specifically.

In addition to being able to play civs outside of their apex age, Test of Time completely replaces the Legacy paths with new, more granular and more varied "Triumphs". These are smaller goals and milestones that unlock dedication bonuses for the next age. This is intended to add more variety to each age, and make it so that players don't feel like they're following the same rote steps to achieve the same 4 goals every time they play.

Legacy paths were replaced with more varied and granular Triumphs.

Again, this is a good change.

Cities Skylines II had a rocky launch. It was a better launch than some of Paradox's other published games, like Star Trek: infinite, which had its support cancelled and developers laid off within a few months of release. But it was still a rocky launch. Personally, I thought Skylines II was fine. It didn't blow me away like the first game did 10 years ago, but I also didn't get the hate that the fanbase was throwing at it. I thought it had a good mix of features and concepts from most of the original game's expansions, I liked a lot of the design philosophies of its new features, and I wasn't experiencing as many of the performance problems that other players were reporting. So I was mostly having a good time playing it.

Though, to be fair to the critics, I didn't have any cities with 100,000 or 200,000 population. My biggest city was only hovering around 75,000 population around the time of the first mini-DLC. So maybe my cities just hadn't gotten big enough to the point that the simulation really started to break down, or performance really started to become a problem.

I was enjoying CSII before the patch, but none of my cities were big enough to start breaking yet.

I did have my own complaints, of course. Most of those complaints had to do with the lack of player expressiveness in this sequel, compared to the first game (and it's Parklife expansion).

Well, developer Colossal Order has been hard at work trying to give the critics, and also myself, almost exactly what we were hoping for. The result is a pair of recent game patches that have addressed many of the biggest complaints with Cities Skylines II, and which very well might have saved the game from an early grave. If only Star Trek: Infinite had received the same loving attention...

Last year, after my initial enthusiasm for Civilization VI began petering out (until the announcement of the expansion), I went on a bit of a space-4x bender. I spent some time with the rebooted Master of Orion. It was good, but I was underwhelmed by its limited scale and casual depth. I also planned on hitting up Endless Space 2. I played the first Endless Space briefly off-and-on, and I liked it, but kept getting diverted to other games and projects and never really allowed myself the time to get comfortable with the game.

But first, before diving into Engless Space 2, I wanted to tackle a game that's been in my library for over a year: Stellaris. This is an epic, space 4x strategy game developed by Paradox Interactive -- the same developer who brought us the infamously complex and detailed Europa Universalis and Crusader Kings series.

A gentler learning curve than Europa Universalis

I was hesitant to try Stellaris because of its relationship to Europa Universalis (and its notorious complexity), but I was surprised to find that Stellaris has a bit of a gentler learning curve. Instead of starting you out "in median res" with a developed European kingdom with armies already mobilized, alliances and rivalries already in place, and wars already in progress, Stellaris starts you out in control of a single planet in a single star system, with just a small fleet of corvettes, a construction ship, and a science ship at your disposal. You send your science ship to explore the other planets in your system, then on to the nearest star, and slowly explore from there at a much more comfortable pace that is akin to a game like Civilization or Master of Orion. Unlike with Crusader Kings and Europa Universalis, I didn't feel like I needed to sit down with a history textbook in order to know what was going on at the start of my game.

You start the game with a single science ship to explore your own star system, and work your way out from there.

Don't let this initial apparent simplicity fool you. Stellaris is still quite deep, quite complex, and the galaxy that you'll explore really does feel vast. While the Master of Orion reboot has galaxies with a mere dozens of stars (very few of which contain more than one or two planets), Stellaris features a default galaxy size consisting of hundreds of stars, most with their own planets, which might (in turn) contain moons.

There's still going to be some trial and error, as you'll make a lot of mistakes and miss a lot of opportunities in your first few games. If you left the "ironman" mode disabled, then you'll at least be free to re-load earlier saves and try to play better if anything goes horribly wrong. However, Paradox throws a bit of a curve ball at players by disabling achievements if you disable ironman mode. You won't stumble into achievements in your learning game(s) or by save-scumming; you'll have to earn them in the Ironman mode!

You also won't be able to manually save while in Ironman mode. You have to wait for the game to perform an auto-save (which I think happens every few in-game months, or maybe every year?). This can be very annoying if you don't notice the "saving game" popup and don't know if the game has saved your most recent actions. It's fine to include a single save file for this mode, but they could at least include a "Save and Exit" option in the pause menu!

In my review of the Brave New World expansion for Civilization V, I expressed some disappointment that some of the legacy civilizations didn't receive significant updates. I also complained about a few mechanical issues such as how the "warmonger" mechanic works and the value of trade routes. Well, Firaxis has released a major update to the game earlier this fall that addresses some of these complaints.

Several of the vanilla civilizations received a major overhaul. As I mentioned in my review, Germany and America seem to have been completely one-upped by the Zulu and Shoshone. Well, Germany has been given a major update, and America has received a small tweak in order to better differentiate them from the BNW successors. In addition, Japan has received a small (but significant) buff.

Germany was probably the civ that was in the most dire need of a facelift, since the Zulu leave them completely in the dust. Both civs had a huge military flavor, discounts for unit maintenance, and a unique Pikeman replacement, and the Zulu had Germany beat on all accounts. In order to differentiate the two, The Landsknechts unique unit was replaced with a new unique building, the "Hanse".