Civilization 6 Rise and Fall: How to Get Dark Ages & What They Do

How to Get Dark Ages and What They Do in Civilization 6: Rise and Fall

In Civilization 6: Rise and Fall, one of the most anticipated new features in the game (among many others) are golden, dark and heroic ages. This is a new mechanic that rewards players for being proactive and trying to accomplish great things, and punishing civs that struggle or remain stagnant.

As you can probably imagine from the name, dark ages are kind of bad (although not all bad), and ideally you’d like to avoid them under most circumstances (but again, not all) in Civilization 6: Rise and Fall. To enter a dark age, you must be below a certain era score threshold (another new feature) by the time the current era ends and a new one begins (eras in this case mean ancient, classical, modern, etc.). Let’s break that all down one by one so you fully understand.

When you fall into a dark age in Civilization 6: Rise and Fall, the loyalty of your cities in your civilization will decay faster and if you don’t quickly fix that, your cities may declare Independence from you or even join another civ. When you enter a dark age in Rise and Fall, you also get risk/reward specific government policies that will greatly enhance a certain area of your civ, while negatively impacting another. It’s up to you if you want to use them or not. However, when you’re in a dark age, the era score threshold is lower in the following era. In other words, it’s easier to climb out of a dark age and into a normal age. And, it’s also easier to get a golden age. If you can reach a golden age, while in a dark age, you trigger the best age of all: a heroic age. Heroic ages in Civilization 6: Rise and Fall gives you strong bonuses towards loyalty, and allows you to pick three dedication bonuses, while everyone else not in a heroic age only gets one. These are large bonuses to your civ that you can choose from at the start of the era that last throughout the entire era.

To get your era score where you want it to be, you must go out and actually accomplish things. An era score is a counter that goes up as you do stuff in Civilization 6: Rise and Fall like: establishing a new government, building wonders, clearing out barbarians from your civ’s area, encountering new civs, recruiting great people, establishing a new district for the first time (such as a harbor), pressuring a free city to join your civ, establishing a trading post, doing bold actions such as settling a city near other civs, becoming a suzerain, etc. There’s a lot of stuff, and you can see what has earned you era points by viewing your timeline. You can view your timeline by clicking the scroll icon in the top left corner of your UI and check your era score at any time at the very bottom right of the screen.

That does it for how to get and enter dark ages and what they do in Civilization 6: Rise and Fall, best of luck out there!