Eras: Life Across Ages

The biggest Eras update yet: new peoples to meet, royal houses to rule, governments that rise and fall, and holidays in every age. NEW PEOPLES • Neanderthals and Denisovans share the Stone Age with you. Offer gifts, or sit at their fire. • The sea folk, who may pull a swimmer under, or follow one ashore. • The spaceborn, raised on ships and moons, who find Earth's gravity hard going. • Werewolves: one bite, or wolf blood in the family, and the full moon changes everything. • Vampires: a pale stranger on a dark road. Never age, hide your unchanging face, feed in your own way, offer the one you love forever, and one day choose the long sleep. • Visitors from the sky: a rare abduction, and maybe a companion who comes home with you. • Children can be half-blood, with traits of their own, and every people wears its own clothes, which the clothing store now sells too. CROWNS AND COURTS • Royalty in every age, from the Bronze Age to today, across 69 realms, with regalia fit for each. • Rarely, be born into a ruling house. Pass the crown to the heir you choose, press a claim, or marry into a royal family. • Earn a peerage in the Renaissance and Industrial ages. • Three suitors a year, each from a family with a rank. GOVERNMENTS THAT CHANGE • 70 forms of government. Countries become empires, republics, theocracies or juntas through coups, revolutions and reforms, and their laws change with them. • See who holds power, meet the officeholders, dress for office, and watch every act in office play out as a scene. • World news: wars, disasters, plagues and booms happen on their own, and reach your life when they reach your country. TRAVEL AND PASTIMES • Go on vacation in every era: choose where, who comes along and how comfortably, then see the sights. Bring home souvenirs, or a holiday romance. • Every activity now plays its own animated scene. • Yacht and sailboat owners can go yachting and sailing. FAMILY AND SCHOOL • Send your children to school, choose the school and pay for their years. Grown-ups can learn to read. • Pets respond to their nature and age, have stories of their own, are remembered when they pass, and stay with your family into the next age and the next life. NEW WAYS TO START • Custom Life: design your own character and begin. • Random Life in an Era: pick an age and start a free random life there. LOOKS AND MENUS • The clothing store shows every piece on you before you buy. • Faces of East and Southeast Asian characters now reflect their heritage, and pass down to their children. • Prisoners wear the prison dress of their age. • A simpler Healthcare screen, with this year's visit already filled in. • Redesigned Challenges and Rewards, with new artwork for treasures and heirlooms. • Clearer politics menus, smoother animations for every body type, and many fixes.