Millennia: "I could wait for Civ 7, but I want a Variant Age instead."

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Millennia: "I could wait for Civ 7, but I want a Variant Age instead."

Jossar: Apr 2, 2018; Current status: Angry about subs

Millennia will be out on March 26th. Pre-purchase it on Steam here:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1268590/Millennia/

Introduction

C Prompt Games is a moderate size studio founded by industry veterans Robert Fermier and Ian M. Fischer, and they're aiming to release Millennia, a historical themed 4X game. This is a category that's pretty heavily dominated by the Civilization series, so any competitor has to work hard in order to distinguish itself from the 800 pound gorilla in the room. Fortunately, Millennia does bring some interesting concepts to the table, although it remains to be seen if those will allow it to stand the test of time.

Basic Mechanics

(To be refined once I've had more time with the game apart from playing the demo at the February NextFest. This OP and any further resource posts are a work in progress!)

Map Overview

Okay, there's a lot going on here, but honestly this is about as clear a presentation as you can get while conveying this much information. Let's try and go through this piece by piece, starting with the capital city of Osaka.

Osaka sits inside a bubble of territorial influence called a Region. This both defines the amount of land belonging to your civilization as well as demarcating the specific set of tiles that can be worked by the city. Regions can be increased in size by accumulating enough Influence, which looks like a crown symbol on the screens where it appears. General Region efficiency can be improved through the addition of extra minor economic hubs, aka Towns as well as via increasing Region level. Towns can also have their own levels increased, which allows them to become more efficient as well as specialize in certain forms of generation which they feed back to either your city or you directly.

Note that while you can settle additional cities (or take control of city states) with their own separate regions, these will start as Vassals or cities with devolved level of control similar to a town, to be integrated later. Only once this is properly achieved will you be able to unlock the full level of production and city control described in the section below.

Most of the way that you construct these kinds of region-level improvements is done through a combination of Culture and Domain powers.

Culture generates points to fill up a bar, at which you pop off slightly different special abilities. These are typically powerful (like creating Settlers to make new Cities or creating Towns), but you only can pop off one at a time and the bar's on hold for future progress until you activate it.

The six Domains generally start out undiscovered with the exception of Government, and you discover them/obtain Domain points by performing their requisite activity or through building infrastructure that generates Domain points. Domain points are then spent to trigger the aforementioned powers. There's another customized level to this that I'll get back to in a little bit.

You can see that Osaka is also surrounded by a number of Resources. From what I've seen so far, Millennia is fairly generous about ensuring that you always have access to building basic stuff no matter what, but Resources are useful because of how they interact with supply chains. To get a better example of how these work, let's zoom in on a different city and look at its chains in action.

City Overview

Berlin here has 12 Population, doing the following activities:

3 Pops are working on a Farm, producing Grain. This by itself produces one Food (food bowl) each.
1 Pop is working at a Mill, taking two of those Grain and converting them into two Flour, each of which gives additional food.
1 Pop is working on a Plantation, producing Food and Saffron, which I believe is producing Wealth.
1 Pop is working in the Mines, producing a good that's either giving localized Production (hammer) or Improvement (shovel) points.
The same is true for the 1 Pop working in the Quarry.
1 Pop is working the Fishing Boats producing Processed Fish. Note that there are three Unprocessed Fish that appear to be collected even though no one is actively working those tiles.
1 Pop is producing a Log at a Forester, which would normally give Production, but...
1 Pop is taking that Log and turning it into Paper at a Papermaker, which would normally give Wealth, but...
1 Pop is taking that Paper and turning it into Poems at the Poets, which give Arts Domain points.
1 Pop is working the Midden to produce Sanitation.
Finally, no one's working anything relating to it, but the city is importing some goods from elsewhere.

These various buildings are all constructed by spending Improvement Points to physically construct the Improvement involved back on the region map. As previously stated, some buildings have effects just by being on the map even when no one is working them. This is particular important for Housing, which you want to build as part of the Needs system. If these Needs are sufficiently satisfied, the city involved becomes more productive. As cities grow in size they start having additional Needs, which can only be accounted for by Buildings and Improvements.

The Needs are as follows:

Food - Always present. Solved as a part of providing the city with Food, which fuels additional Population growth.
Housing - City must be greater than 5 Population.
Sanitation - City must be greater than 10 Population.
Luxury - City must be greater than 15 Population.
Faith - Only relevant if Religious Population exists in your city.
Education -
Power - Not a Population-based need, based on how much Power you're providing relative to Power Drain from Buildings.
Ideology - Appears in Age 8.
Information - Appears in Age 9.

That about covers everything specifically unique to Millennia on this screen. As in other games in the genre, you have your standard city build queue production and an Unrest bar that fills up if people are angry about Needs not being met or overpopulation, or what have you.

National Spirits Overview

As seen before, some of the Domain Powers have subcategories to them. These are National Spirits - customizable Domain trees that you can unlock once every two Ages (except for Age Ten). You also get a couple of Domain points for selecting them, with additional points being added on to the National Spirits that previous people haven't picked. These tend to be more narrowly focused than the general Domain powers listed above, but correspondingly more powerful. Some even focus on more bonuses for things you already have rather than creating a new unit/building.

Government is a little bit different from the other Domains in that it typically doesn't have a National Spirit. Instead, you work to evolve your Government Domain based on your choice of pathways, either through a peaceful or violent revolution depending on whether or not you can be bothered to wait for the power that triggers it to pop up.

Combat Overview

Combat works as follows: Combat is entirely an auto-battle system. Units combine into Army stacks based on a cap you have derived from your technology. More units in a single stack allows you to have more attacks, and provides larger Warfare XP, which units generate while fighting.

Unit types are as follows:

Line Units - Stand in front of your Army and absorb damage/fight in Melee
Cavalry Units - Stand in front, Melee focused, but with different bonuses than Line Units. Typically good against most things except for specifically anti-Cavalry counters.
Ranged Units - Stand in back, can shoot over Walls, usually good against Line Units.
Artillery Units - Stand in back, Highly effective in tearing down defensive structures.
Leaders - Typically upgraded from other troops. Stand in front, melee unit but the big bonus they have is providing a multiplier to the rest of the army based on their Tactics level (or the difference between Tactics levels if there are two opposing leaders).

After units fight a bunch and gain Combat XP, they generate Veterancy levels which provide them with an individual unit combat multiplier.

Warfare XP can be used to heal up units out of combat, spawn additional units, allow units to move/attack multiple times in a turn, and promote units from lower tech levels or to Leaders. Interestingly enough, Leaders can also be retired and turned into Warfare XP.

Defensive structures (like Walls and Towers) appear as units in combat. They don't have specific requirements to tear down, but Walls get in the way of your units attacking units inside of them and can sometimes be very annoying to defeat, especially beyond basic Wooden Palisades. Units hiding behind Walls can still run out and assault the attackers. Towns and Cities will typically spawn Militia units to defend them on their own, thus making relatively empty looking garrisons at least moderately annoying to take down, if not outright difficult.

Tech/Ages Overview

Alright, alright, I've held off on the core gimmick of the game long enough.

Knowledge contributes to your progress in researching techs within a given Age. Each of these individual techs unlocks buildings, units, and miscellaneous bonuses. Research three techs (or four in later parts of the game) and you can move on to the next Age.

But unlike most other games, progression through time is not necessarily constrained to that of our own history. The first person to reach the next Age determines what it will be. There are four types of Age.

Historical Age - Has a set of bonuses/techs to encourage development corresponding to conventional history. Always available.
Variant Age - Has a set of bonuses/techs to encourage development corresponding to an alternate history. This can be as subdued as "everyone's part of the age of discovery, not just a few European powers" or as wacky as "aliens invade". Can be optionally triggered if the tech leader meets the necessary conditions.
Crisis Age - Also has a set of bonuses/tech to encourage development corresponding to an alternate history... but they tend to be kind of a mess. Must be triggered if the tech leader meets the necessary conditions.
Victory Age - Has a set of bonuses/techs to encourage development corresponding to an alternate history... if you don't, y'know, win the game first. Can be optionally triggered if the tech leader meets the necessary conditions. Must be triggered in Age Ten, whose Victory Ages are all counted as a special subset called a Final Age, where the game cannot proceed any further technologically, and someone must win according to the listed conditions or wiping all other players off the map. This little hitch in categorization implies that at some point the devs might add Final Ages that occur prior to Age Ten.

Additionally, on top of the developments triggered by the Ages themselves, several mechanics, the ones not explicitly triggered by city size but not otherwise available at the start of the game (and some that require both!) only unfold as you get to later ages.

This is probably going to be the most unbalanced part of the experience if not handled correctly: the Tech Leader basically gets to drag everybody else along for the ride. There are a few counter-mechanisms in place - anyone can scoop the Victory if they reach the Victory Age and satisfy its conditions before the next Age is reached globally, and in fact the earliest possible Victory Age punishes you if you try to trigger it but screw up the execution. Several of the Crisis Ages are more likely to harm the tech leader than everyone else and I don't think you can chain Variant/Crisis/Victory Ages together (except for Age Ten, obviously) so there is some incentive for the tech leader to let other players take control of the wheel at certain points. But if the tech tree can somehow manage to keep from falling to pieces, it's also what promises to make Millennia a whole lot of fun.

Miscellaneous Overview

Wealth is money. Same as any other 4X game. Use it to buy stuff/purchase units early.
Social Fabrics are a way of further customizing your Nation that unlocks in Age V. They consist of passive bonuses based on the various Domains, and can be generated via Culture Power, maxing out Domain XP for a specific Social Fabric, certain researches, or finishing off the last node of a National Spirit tree.
Innovation and Chaos are the blue and red symbols in the upper right corner of the screen. Depending on certain pressures on your empire, they'll pop off every so often and cause something good/bad to happen.
Religion exists starting in Age IV. As mentioned before it is tied to introducing a Faith need to Populations, but in exchange provides a bunch of extra Culture points. Additional effects beyond that for boosting a Nation are usually tied to National Spirits.
Civilizations are entirely just aesthetics. You can choose some kind of minor bonus at the start of the game to differentiate you from other civs, but the core work of defining how your game is going to go is made during the game itself.

Conclusion

I'm exhausted just from writing all of that! Suffice to say, Millennia isn't going to be everyone's cup of tea (Kaolin>Porcelain>Teacup + Tea>Cup of Tea, +6 Culture), but I do think that it's an interesting enough take on the formula and seems to have gotten enough tentative positive reviews that I plan on giving the game a shot when it comes out.

Jossar fucked around with this message at 03:18 on Mar 26, 2024

# ¿ Mar 3, 2024 18:27

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ May 10, 2024 19:03

Jossar: Apr 2, 2018; Current status: Angry about subs

Advanced Mechanics/Additional Information

(Details obviously subject to change upon release of the game.)

Ages

Millennia's Ages are as follows:

Age of Stone (Historical Age, Age I): Required Unlocks - None

Technologies

Farming - Allows for construction of Food Stockpile Building, Plantation and Farm Improvements
Tribal Elders - Allows for construction of Council Building
Defenses - Gives Warfare XP, spawns an Archer and Defenders in Capital/Towns, allows for construction of Archers
Scouting - Allows units to move through Jungle and Deep Forest, Spawns a Scout, allows for construction of Lookout Tower Building
Workers - Gives Improvement points, improves the Levy Workers Project, allows for construction of Clay Pit Improvement

Additional Unlocks

None - Or I suppose you could say "the core features of the game upon which all others are further built."

All Millennia games start the same way - You spawn into the Age of Stone and work up to build your economy from nothing to a sustainable engine that lets you do the following: Defeat, or at least endure, the Barbarians around you. Explore the map to find tribal villages, landmarks, resources, and land for future settling. Start your journey towards becoming a powerhouse of some factor of the game.

Age of Bronze (Historical Age, Age II): Required Unlocks - 3 Technologies from Age I.

Technologies

Belief - Allows for construction of Temple Building and Press, Weaver, and Vats Improvements
Community - Allows for use of Gold to rush unit/building production. Allows for construction of Crane Building, Mill, Kiln, and Sawpit Improvements
Discipline - +1 Army Size, Gives two addition Warfare Domain powers, Allows for construction of Spearmen and Chariots
Officials - Gives an Envoy, Allows for use of Gold to rush Culture, Gives one Diplomacy and one Exploration Domain power, Allows for construction of Market Building
Mining - Gives a Pioneer, Allows for construction of Quarry, Mine, and Stonecutter Improvements
Shipbuilding - Allows for transportation of troops on shallow water, increases expansion on water, Gives one Exploration Domain power, Allows for construction of Galleys

Additional Unlocks

National Spirits unlocked.
Vassals integrate x2 times faster.
Barbarian Warlords may appear.
Innovation and Chaos events now unlocked.
Trade and Diplomatic Envoys now available.
Diplomacy and Engineering Domains unlocked.

The Age of Bronze is sort of like a turbo-charged version of the Age of Stone, where you're finishing getting everything off the ground: accounting for increased complexity in Needs and trade goods, starting to focus on big settlement and development projects, and possibly trying to take a first crack at your neighbors. Your performance in the Age of Bronze can also trigger the first divergence point from conventional history, so this is the time to set those things up if you want an alternative Age III!

Age of Iron (Historical Age, Age III): Required Unlocks - 3 Technologies from Age II.

Technologies

Smelting - Allows for construction of Weaponsmith, Toolsmith, and Furnace
Horses - +1 to Vassal Prosperity, Increased territory growth, Allows for the construction of Cavalry
Construction - Allows for construction of Stone Walls and Stone Towers Buildings, Catapults and Catapult Biremes
Scribes - Allows for construction of Scribe, Library and Paper Maker
Infrastructure - +1 Town per Region, Allows for construction of Aqueduct, Public Quarter, Oven
Arts - Allows for construction of Theater, Colosseum, Sculpting Studio, grants access to the Arts Domain, and spawns an Artist

Additional Unlocks

Mine improvements cost 20% less during the Age of Iron.
Growth rate of Population increases by 12.5% during the Age of Iron.
Gold and Iron discoverable.
New Government types (Imperial Dynasty, Kingdom) unlocked.
Arts Domain unlocked.

From here on out, the conventional ages are going to be much more sparse in detail since we haven't seen their gameplay yet. I can't even guess whether some of these involved things are Buildings or Improvements. Just imagine gameplay that encourages similar play to the events of conventional history.

Age of Heroes (Variant Age, Age III): Required Unlocks - 3 Technologies from Age II. Must have discovered 3 Landmarks.

Technologies

Smelting - Same as Age of Iron
Horses - Same as Age of Iron
Construction - Same as Age of Iron
Storytelling - Grants heroic quests of this Age more reward choices, Allows for construction of Paper Maker, Poets, Hall of Heroes.
Glory - +1 Town per Region, Allows for construction of Lodges, Mausoleums, Vomitoriums, and Ovens
Oracle - Gives Prophecy Arts power, spawning a Hero with a nearby quest. Allows construction of an Oracle and an Offerings Shrine
Spirituality - Reduces the cost of Diplomatic actions. Allows for the construction of Charmscrafters and Talismancrafters. of Theater, Colosseum, Sculpting Studio, grants access to the Arts Domain, and spawns an Artist

Additional Unlocks

A Hero unit spawns in your Homeland.
Send Hero units to explore new Quest Landmarks for rewards unique to the Age.
Higher levels of Veterancy (XP, either from promoting an already experienced unit like a Scout, combat generally, or completing Quests) allow Heroes to complete more difficult Quests.
Complete 4 Quests to be able to build the Parthenon.
Gold and Iron discoverable.
New Government types (Imperial Dynasty, Kingdom) unlocked.
Arts Domain unlocked.

So it turns out that unlocking a Variant/Crisis Age doesn't entirely overwrite history altogether. Some stuff is apparently just so vital to civilization (and core gameplay) that it has to be kept in no matter how you're pivoting. So you can't purge bread from existence just because there's documented historical evidence of Theseus now. The two alternate Age IIIs are here for people who like certain kinds of 4X gameplay that would otherwise be less prevalent during the Age of Iron. The Age of Heroes, by the devs' own words, allows the players to keep engaging in what is basically exploration-style gameplay during a period of time when it otherwise would have run out, at least within your own continent.

Age of Blood (Crisis Age, Age III): Required Unlocks - 3 Technologies from Age II. Must have destroyed 6 enemy (non-Barbarian) units. Must be triggered if available.

Technologies

Smelting - Same as Age of Iron
Horses - Same as Age of Iron
Brutality - Line/Melee units get 250% attack against siege targets, Allows construction of Bloodstone Walls and Skull Towers
Preservation - +1 Town per Region, Allows for construction of Salt House, Midden, Granary and Ovens
War Council - Allows for construction of War Council, Scriptorium, Paper Maker, and Military Camp
Gladiators - Allows for construction of Proving Ground, Barracks, and Fighting Pit
Barbarism - Gives two Warfare Domains powers and a Warfare-related Culture power

Additional Unlocks

All nations are locked into war during the Age of Blood.
Unrest from war is disabled, Chaos gained from conquering Regions is reduced by 50%.
Military units have reduced upkeep.
Earn Warfare XP by killing non-Barbarian units.
Gold and Iron discoverable.
New Government types (Imperial Dynasty, Kingdom) unlocked.
Arts Domain unlocked.

The Age of Blood, by the devs' own words, is about reducing the logistics problems involved with 4X gameplay so that everyone can just get down to the business of killing each other. If your goal is to have a more peaceful playthrough, you either want to make sure that this Age is avoided entirely or work out a way to hole up in your regions and endure it until someone hits Age IV, which ends the global eternal war effect.

Age of Kings (Historical Age, Age IV): Required Unlocks - 3 Technologies from Age III. Must be triggered if the previous Age was a Crisis Age or Variant Age.

Technologies

Machines - Allows for construction of Workshop and Logging Camp
Medieval University - Grants the Treatise ability, allowing for conversion of Production to Knowledge, Allows for construction of the Privy Council and the Medieval University
Guilds - Grants the Taxation ability, allowing for conversion of Production to Wealth, Allows for construction of the Jeweler, Great Hall, Winery, Market Square, and Villa
Dry Compass - Allows for construction of Fishing Fleets and Cogs
Professional Army - +1 Army Size, Allows construction of the Barracks, Pikes, and Longswords
Organized Religion - Allows for construction of Large Temples, Abbeys, and Holy Sites
Feudalism - +1 Town per Region, Allows for construction of Kitchen, Large Plantation, Plowed Farm, and Ranch

Additional Unlocks

Second tier National Spirits now unlocked.
Building a Castle by specializing an Outpost during the Age of Kings provides a Culture bonus.
Generate Culture per religious Population by founding or joining a Religion via the Arts Domain Power or Cultural Power.
Coffee, Sugar, Tea, Tobacco discoverable.

Apart from religion, there are two notable features about this Age. The first is that this is the age where you can start having your cities really pay back into large scale empire-wide production like Wealth and Knowledge. The second is that this is the introduction of Ages that force a return to the historical path after Variants/Crises, so if you specifically want one of the Age IV variants, you have to avoid triggering the Age of Blood/Age of Heroes.

Age of Monuments (Variant Age, Age IV): Required Unlocks - 3 Technologies from Age III. Previous Age cannot have been a Crisis Age or Variant Age. Must have built 3 Civic Monuments.

Technologies

Medieval University - Same as Age of Kings
Dry Compass - Same as Age of Kings
Grand Project - Grants ability related to construction of Monuments, Allows construction of Grand Workshop, Logging Camp, and Lathe Workshop
Trade Network - Grants the Taxation ability, allowing for conversion of Production to Wealth, Gives a separate Taxation domain power. Allows construction of the Jeweler, Winery, Market Square, and Villa
Mercenaries - +1 Army Size, Gives a Diplomacy Culture power, Allows construction of the Mercenary Hall, Knights, and Crossbow Mercenaries
Worship - Gives an Arts Domain power to spawn a Clergy unit, Allows construction of the Abbey and Grand Temple
Immigration - +1 Town per Region, Gives a Diplomacy domain power, Allows construction of Ranch, Kitchen, Migrant Farm, and Migrant Plantations

Additional Unlocks

Second tier National Spirits now unlocked.
Build and dedicate Monuments to gain benefits in your Regions.
Build Super Monuments that generate substantial resources.
During the Age of Monuments you generate an additional Improvement Point.
Generate Culture per religious Population by founding or joining a Religion via the Arts Domain Power or Cultural Power.
Coffee, Sugar, Tea, Tobacco discoverable.

The Age of Monuments is about you dragging in people from all over the world to help support your nation as it builds megaprojects that will continue to provide benefits for Regions even ages in the future. Cities that take advantage of what the Age of Monuments has to offer will have higher than normal Production compared to standard Age cities. The Age for players who specifically don't want to deal with all that war nonsense and just want to focus on building their engine, though less strictly so than future ages will be.

Age of Plague (Crisis Age, Age IV): Required Unlocks - 3 Technologies from Age III. Previous Age cannot have been a Crisis Age or Variant Age. Must have accumulated 20 Crisis Factor while not having sufficient Sanitation to meet the needs of your Nation. Must be triggered if available.

Technologies

Machines - Same as Age of Kings
Professional Army - Same as Age of Kings
Sanctuary - Gives an Arts Culture power, Allows construction of Holy Site and Abbey
Market Cornering - +1 Luxury on Plantation Goods, affects Outbreak Chances on Imports and Exports, Allows construction of Jeweler, Winery, Kitchen, and Market Manager
Humors - Affects Outbreak Chance per Population, Spawns a free Plague Doctor, allows construction of Plague Doctors, Physician's Guild, and Pious University
Isolation - Further Outbreak Effects, allows construction of Crossbow Guard, Turrets, Barricades, Armories, and Castles
Efficient Farming - +1 Town per Region, Gives a Diplomacy domain power, Allows construction of Cash Crop Plantations, Swidden Farm, and Foodlot Ranch

Additional Unlocks

Second tier National Spirits now unlocked.
A great plague strikes, reducing all populations to 67%.
Outbreaks disable Improvements and then reduce Population if not stopped.
A Plague Doctor spawns in your Homeland. Cleanse Outbreaks with Plague Doctors or Improvement points.
Generate Culture per religious Population by founding or joining a Religion via the Arts Domain Power or Cultural Power.
Coffee, Sugar, Tea, Tobacco discoverable.

The Age of Plague is really weird compared to all of the other Ages we've seen so far. Even the variants of earlier ages mostly just involved some slight turning of already extant dials, but here the game is starting to use Variant/Crisis Ages to throw in entirely different gameplay mechanics entirely. Also I see that the nations of this age have tried to solve the plague problem by just shooting anyone who tries to enter their cities and forcing all the people who've stayed alive into terrifying farming contract arrangements.

Age of Renaissance (Historical Age, Age V): Required Unlocks - 3 Technologies from Age IV. Must be triggered if the previous Age was a Crisis Age or Variant Age.

Technologies

Printing Press - Allows construction of Paper Mill and Printing Press
Public Works - Allows construction of Lifting Tower, Poorhouse, Waterworks, and Trash Heap
Administration - Gives a Government Culture power
Navigation - Enables Deep Water transports, Allows construction of Carrack and Harbor
Finance - Improves the Levy Workers Project, +1 to Vassal Prosperity, Allows construction of Warehouses and Textile Mills
Gunpowder - Allows construction of Arquebus, Cannon, and Bomb Vessel
Machinery - Gives an Engineering Domain power, Allows construction of Clay Mines, Brickworks, Sawmill, Deep Mine, and Blast Furnace

Additional Unlocks

The first Artist unit created in this Age provides a Culture bonus.
Social Fabrics now unlocked.
Every nation receives a Social Fabric Wildcard upon entering the Age of Renaissance.
Scouts can now upgrade to Explorers and undertake Expeditions of discovered Landmarks for various rewards.
New Government types (Empire, Feudal Monarchy, Republic) unlocked.

Game's opening up again, allowing all those Scouts you've had sitting around doing nothing for an Age or two be useful, in addition to finding players hiding across Deep Ocean. The Social Fabric system is mostly just about generating a bunch of passive bonuses to improve your already existing engine, but keep an eye out for its ability to win you the game later on.

Age of Discovery (Variant Age, Age V): Required Unlocks - 3 Technologies from Age IV. Previous Age cannot have been a Crisis Age or Variant Age. Must build 5 Docks.

Technologies

Printing Press - Same as Age of Renaissance
Open Sailing - Enables Deep Water transports, Grants a free Caravel, Allows construction of Caravels, Scorpion Boats, Trade Companies, Harbor
Technical Engineering - Improves the Levy Workers Project, gives an Engineering Domain Power, Allows construction of Clay Mines, Lifting Tower, Brickworks, Sawmill, and Civil Engineering
Baroque - Allows construction of Baroque Musician and Baroque Sculptor
Automachina - Allows construction of Giant Crossbows, Ornithopter Scout, and Mechanical Knight
Deference - Gives Innovation points when completing City of Gold Expeditions, Allows construction of Cultural District and Canton Office
Noble Court - Units gain 2.5% attack vs. Barbarians, Gives a Government Culture power, Allows construction of Museums and Court Painter

Additional Unlocks

You can now produce Conquistador units and undertake Expeditions to Cities of Gold.
Once explored, Cities of Gold provide unique Goods with high resource yields.
Social Fabrics now unlocked.
New Government types (Empire, Feudal Monarchy, Republic) unlocked.
Discover new Resource Camps (goody hut variant) on land and water.

One Part Clockpunk, one part increased naval focus, one part return of the quest system back from the Age of Heroes. Heightened focus on those aspects specifically unique to the time period, in exchange for less focus on general utility.

Age of Intolerance (Crisis Age, Age V): Required Unlocks - 3 Technologies from Age IV. Previous Age cannot have been a Crisis Age or Variant Age. Must have accumulated 20 Crisis Factor while not having sufficient Faith to meet the needs of your Nation. Must be triggered if available. Must be triggered if available.

Technologies

Navigation - Same as Age of Renaissance
Machinery - Same as Age of Renaissance
Benevolence - Allows construction of Alms House, Trash Heap, Lifting Tower, and Fountain
Indoctrination - Allows construction of the Track Printer and Paper Mill
Status Quo - Gives a Government Culture power, Allows construction of Religious Schools, Mission, and Inquisitors
Holy Order - Allows construction of Holy Avengers, Cannons, Bomb Vessels.
Holidays - Gives an Arts Culture and Arts Domain power, +1 Vassal Prosperity, Allows construction of the Grand Plaza

Additional Unlocks

Culture earned from Religious Population is doubled.
Sharing a Religion with another Nation improves diplomatic relations, not sharing one reduces diplomatic relations.
Chaos gained from conquering regions is reduced by 50%.
Building a Mission by specializing an Outpost in this Age provides a Culture bonus.
Social Fabrics now unlocked.
New Government types (Empire, Feudal Monarchy, Republic) unlocked.

Honestly, the Age of Intolerance doesn't look that bad as far as Crisis Ages go? If you've decided that you're gonna go all in on Religion, consider tanking your Faith in Age IV as long as you can pivot, so that you can set yourself up for a more powerful mid-late game.

Age of Conquest (Victory Age, Age V): Required Unlocks - 3 Technologies from Age IV. Previous Age cannot have been a Crisis Age or Variant Age. Must be 150% stronger than the next strongest player. May result in the end of the game.

Technologies

Printing Press - Same as Age of Renaissance
Navigation - Same as Age of Renaissance
Gunpowder - Same as Age of Renaissance
Unification -
Support -
Forward March -
Frontlines -

Additional Unlocks

Triggers a war between the nation who is seeking an Age of Conquest victory and all other nations. Winning the war provides a conquest victory that is easier than the default of conquering all other players' capitals.
Social Fabrics now unlocked.
More to be determined

The first Victory Age. Included as an offramp for players who are clearly running away with the game but aren't confident in their capacity to hunt down and destroy every other player. They just have to beat them in a solo super-war instead. Funny enough, while there are multiple ways to kill off all of the other players throughout the game, this becomes less of a viable strategy the closer towards the end of the game you get, and at least one of the Final Ages in Age X will make a victory through military might nearly impossible.

Age of Enlightenment (Historical Age, Age VI): Required Unlocks - 3 Technologies from Age V. Must be triggered if the previous Age was a Crisis Age, Variant Age, or Victory Age.

Technologies

Mercantilism -
Government -
Colonies -
Public Sphere -
Society -
Standing Army -
Reason -

Additional Unlocks

Third tier National Spirits now unlocked.
Your first Public Library built provides bonus Specialists.
Secularism is unlocked, preventing the founding of new Religions and converting Religious Population to be non-religious.
Four technologies now required to unlock the next Age from this point forward.

By contrast, the Age of Enlightenment looks like it's supposed to slow things down again. A new alternative resource for later tier improvements, reduction in efficiency of religion, increase to tech costs going forward.

Age of Alchemy (Variant Age, Age VI): Required Unlocks - 3 Technologies from Age V. Previous Age cannot have been a Crisis Age, Variant Age, or Victory Age. Requires 5 Insight Social Fabric to unlock.

Technologies

Society - Same as Age of Enlightenment
Government - Same as Age of Enlightenment
Colonies - Same as Age of Enlightenment
Elementary Physics -
Panacea -
Transmutation -
Black Powder -

Additional Unlocks

Third tier National Spirits now unlocked.
Arcana introduced as a resource.
Alchemist unit spawns in Homeland, and can be used on Arcana to create unique Improvements.
Additional ways to create Gold if you don't already have it as an available resource.
Additional ways to turn Gold into other products.
Four technologies now required to unlock the next Age from this point forward.

This one looks pretty neat! For those players who want an Age more focused on improving their Goods production chains via the powers of alchemical science. Apparently going into the Age of Alchemy looks like it delays Secularism for some reason? Didn't see that mentioned.

Age of Heresy (Crisis Age, Age VI): Required Unlocks - 3 Technologies from Age IV. Previous Age cannot have been a Crisis Age, Variant Age, or Victory Age. (add'l unlock, something about failure to produce a sufficient amount of Culture.) Must be triggered if available.

Technologies

Reason - Same as Age of Enlightenment
Mercantilism - Same as Age of Enlightenment
Colonies - Same as Age of Enlightenment
Reformers -
Rigor -
Order -
Private Security -

Additional Unlocks

Third tier National Spirits now unlocked.
Some kind of Cultist mechanism.
Secularism is unlocked (maybe different because of the Heresy?), preventing the founding of new Religions and converting Religious Population to be non-religious.
More to be determined

I guess in this Crisis Age, Thomas Hobbes is writing about a literal Leviathan than will rise from the deep to suppress everyone rather than an all-powerful sovereign. Or maybe it's just that in the absence of a public sphere that allows for Enlightenment thought, governments see any challenge to official thought as something that needs to be controlled. I wish we knew if it was possible to give in to the Cultists and let your Nation embrace the horrors or if this is just 100% a bad idea.

Age of Revolution (Historical Age, Age VII): Required Unlocks - 4 Technologies from Age VI. Must be triggered if the previous Age was a Crisis Age, or Variant Age.

Technologies

Communication -
Rail -
Urbanization -
Aeronautics -
Applied Science -
Industry -
Steel -
Militarization -

Additional Unlocks

Revolutionaries will appear to free your Regions and form new Nations.
Generate Power to power modern Buildings and Improvements.
Assemble an Air Force to defend your Regions.

I don't like how the Air Force shows up here rather than in Age VIII on a thematic level, but I suppose there wouldn't be enough time for it to be relevant on a gameplay level if it didn't start being available now. Chaos events have been able to create new Revolutionary Nations forever, but now the game's actively trying to force it to happen: for those who thought they were done with Barbarians at this stage of the game, beware! Honestly, depending on how weak your armies are, you might prefer Ignorance in some cases.

Age of Aether (Variant Age, Age VII): Required Unlocks - 4 Technologies from Age VI. Previous Age cannot have been a Crisis Age or Variant Age. Must have 5 Recon Balloon Engineers built.

Technologies

Communication - Same as Age of Revolution
Rail - Same as Age of Revolution
Urbanization - Same as Age of Revolution
Lighter Than Air -
Mad Science -
Automata -
Exotic Metallurgy -
Exotic Power -

Additional Unlocks

Unique Aether Resource revealed on Mountains which is used to power special Improvements.
All Barbarians and Barbarian Camps disbanded.
All Regional Unrest reset to 0.
Generate Power to power modern Buildings and Improvements.
Assemble an Air Force to defend your Regions.

I mean, it's a game about alternate history. There has to be a Steampunk Age in here somewhere. Aether itself can be used as a power source and the Improvements are fairly powerful, consuming Aether to produce additional goods. That bit about Unrest and Barbarian reset is interesting, kind of a mixed blessing depending on whether you were farming Barbarians for Warfare XP and goodie huts/hoping to use Unrest to force an opponent to collapse.

Age of Ignorance (Crisis Age, Age VII): Required Unlocks - 4 Technologies from Age VI. Previous Age cannot have been a Crisis Age or Variant Age. Locked in by having 20 Education Crisis Charge. Must be triggered if available.

Technologies

Urban Sprawl -
Garrison State -
Exploitation -

Additional Unlocks

To be determined

The game punishing you for relying on your old Knowledge economy without converting to the new one and accompanying production of Education. The Age of Ignorance has a much smaller number of techs than usual, but these are designed to take forever to get through, further stonewalling players who have nothing to their Nation but research capacity.

Age of Harmony (Victory Age, Age VII): Required Unlocks - 4 Technologies from Age VII. Previous Age cannot have been a Crisis Age or Variant Age. Must have 30% of the world's population following your Religion. May result in the end of the game.

Technologies

Additional Unlocks

Win if 66% of the world population follows your Religion.
Secularism does not generate during the Age of Harmony.
Generate Power to power modern Buildings and Improvements.
Assemble an Air Force to defend your regions.

The early offramp for Religion-focused players to win the game. Although honestly, the bonuses to allowing religion to stay relevant even into the endgame (including the complete shutdown of Secularism for the Age) make the Age of Harmony worth pursuing for such players even if they don't think they can clinch the win.

Age of Rocketry (Historical Age, Age VIII): Required Unlocks - 4 Technologies from Age VII, or all the Technologies from the Age of Ignorance. Must be triggered if the previous Age was a Crisis Age, or Variant Age.

Technologies

Additional Unlocks

Fourth tier National Spirits now unlocked.
Faction system - At the final tier of government (Democracy, Communist, Fundamentalist) you're automatically placed in a semi-cooperative position with other players of the same government type which discourages you from blowing them off the face of the planet until you get all of the Faction bonuses.
Space Race - Minigame where you complete projects roughly parallel to the US/Soviet space race in exchange for bonuses.

Either there's just a tiny bit more info that I've seen on the lategame rather than the midgame, or this is the point where the game figures that you're starting to get bored and needs to grab your attention again as you work your way through the last three Ages.

Age of Utopia (Variant Age, Age VIII): Required Unlocks - 4 Technologies from Age VII, or all the Technologies from the Age of Ignorance. Must have 3 Innovation events trigger. Previous Age cannot have been a Crisis Age, Variant Age, or Victory Age.

Technologies

Additional Unlocks

Ocean Settlers can settle Regions in Deep Water with unique Buildings, Improvements, and Goods.
x2 Unrest gained from an active war.
Naval Units cost 10% less during the Age of Utopia.
Fourth tier National Spirits now unlocked.
Faction system - At the final tier of government (Democracy, Communist, Fundamentalist) you're automatically placed in a semi-cooperative position with other players of the same government type which discourages you from blowing them off the face of the planet until you get all of the Faction bonuses.
Space Race - Minigame where you complete projects roughly parallel to the US/Soviet space race in exchange for bonuses.

The Age of Utopia is much like the Age of Rocketry, except with a much bigger focus on naval expansion. Probably decent to go for if you've been going ocean-heavy all game thanks to previous focus via National Spirits/Governments like Ancient Seafarers or Empire.

Age of Dystopia (Crisis Age, Age VIII): Required Unlocks - 4 Technologies from Age VII, or all the Technologies from the Age of Ignorance. Must have 3 Chaos events trigger. Previous Age cannot have been a Crisis Age, Variant Age, or Victory Age.

Technologies

Additional Unlocks

Fourth tier National Spirits now unlocked.
Riots break out when Needs are not met. Use Riot Police units to disperse Riots, one Riot Police generated at your Homeland to start.
Riots generate Chaos when they appear, and disable Improvements, reduce Regional Efficiency, and generate Unrest while active.
Faction system - At the final tier of government (Democracy, Communist, Fundamentalist) you're automatically placed in a semi-cooperative position with other players of the same government type which discourages you from blowing them off the face of the planet until you get all of the Faction bonuses.
Space Race - Minigame where you complete projects roughly parallel to the US/Soviet space race in exchange for bonuses.

Likewise, as the flipside of the coin, The Age of Dystopia is much like the Age of Rocketry, except with a focus on how everything's going to pot. Things can really spiral out of control quickly here.

Age of Generals (Victory Age, Age VIII): Required Unlocks - 4 Technologies from Age VII, or all the Technologies from the Age of Ignorance. Must have Must be 150% stronger than the next strongest player. Previous Age cannot have been a Crisis Age, Variant Age, or Victory Age. May result in the end of the game.

Technologies

Additional Unlocks

Fourth tier National Spirits now unlocked.
Faction system - At the final tier of government (Democracy, Communist, Fundamentalist) you're automatically placed in a semi-cooperative position with other players of the same government type which discourages you from blowing them off the face of the planet until you get all of the Faction bonuses.
Space Race - Minigame where you complete projects roughly parallel to the US/Soviet space race in exchange for bonuses.
Like the Age of Conquest, there's a big war between all the players, except this time instead of being a solo super-war, it's divided up by Factions.
Miscellaneous industrial/military building options available.
More to be determined

The last real huzzah for a military victory, this time as more of a shared thing than previous in the Age of Conquest. From this point on, military power is incidental (although still useful) to victory, not a cause of it.

Age of Information (Historical Age, Age IX): Required Unlocks - 4 Technologies from Age VIII, or all the Technologies from the Age of Ignorance. Must be triggered if the previous Age was a Crisis Age, or Variant Age.

Technologies

Additional Unlocks

The first Nation to build the Internet Backbone Building gains a Wealth bonus.
Regions now have a Need for Information.
The final age approaches, consider what victories lay ahead.
Information is unlocked as a Need.

The Age of Information and the other Age IX's are mostly here to serve as a preparatory phase for the final phase of the game: the struggle for victory or defeat that must come in Age X.

Age of Ecology (Variant Age, Age IX): Required Unlocks - 4 Technologies from Age VIII. Must have 5 in all of the Social Fabrics tracks. Previous Age cannot have been a Crisis Age, Variant Age, or Victory Age.

Technologies

Additional Unlocks

Terraform Domain Power.
Towns can be specialized into Ecocities to generate Culture and Food.
Create 3 Ecocities surrounded by Grasslands to earn a large Culture bonus.
Regions now have a Need for Information.
The final age approaches, consider what victories lay ahead.

The Age of Ecology offers a couple of fun toys for messing around with nature, but is primarily here as a way to supercharge your Nation's Need fulfillment and Social Fabrics. These are especially useful if you're trying to go for an Age of Transcendence Victory.

Age of Visitors (Crisis Age, Age IX): Required Unlocks - 4 Technologies from Age VIII. Locked in by sending out a signal in the SETI Radio Event, triggered among various options when using the SETI Radio Scan Exploration Cultural Power, obtained by completing the Space Race. Previous Age cannot have been a Crisis Age, Variant Age, or Victory Age.

Technologies

Additional Unlocks

Aliens have invaded the Earth!
Alien Motherships appear in each Region, destroying their surroundings and spawning Invaders.
Alien Invaders seek to destroy your Goods tiles, turning them into Deserts.
Destroy Alien Motherships with your Air Force and salvage the wreckage to gain Alien Technology.
Regions now have a Need for Information.
The final age approaches, consider what victories lay ahead.

The Age of Visitors mostly seems to be here as a way of getting one final shakeup of the board before the final set of Ages, as triggered by getting aliens to invade the planet in response to messages sent out during the Age of Rocketry or one of the Age VIII variants.

Age of Archangel (Final Age, Age X): Required Unlocks - 4 Technologies from Age IX. Must build 5 Smart Grids. Must result in the end of the game.

Technologies

Additional Unlocks

Gives access to Archangels, space lasers that can wipe out Regions, via the Archangel Satellite Array Improvement.
Build City Shield Buildings to delay the firing rate of another Nation's Archangel Satellite Array, or blow up their Array instead!
Victory is determined as soon as one player has 50% of the world's remaining population.

If all you've done is boom population all game, then you barely even need to touch the space lasers in order to win. I mean, they're there as an option, but they're not necessary. The most useful victory type for people who have built large but otherwise didn't have a specific plan on how to win the game.

Age of Transcendence (Final Age, Age X): Required Unlocks - 4 Technologies from Age IX. Must have 2 Social Fabric Tracks completed. Must result in the end of the game.

Technologies

Additional Unlocks

Generate swathes of Domain XP and Social Fabric points.
Improve your nation through mutually beneficial diplomacy.
Unrest gained from war is 5x greater.
Victory is determined by whoever is the first to max out all Social Fabrics.

By contrast, the Age of Transcendence is the victory type built around being the sort of player who's spent all game micromanaging all of Millennia's more fiddly little systems. I'm pretty sure this is the only Victory Age that actively forces everyone to play mostly peaceful, so think carefully about last minute snipes!

Age of Departure (Final Age, Age X): Required Unlocks - 4 Technologies from Age IX. Must result in the end of the game.

Technologies

Additional Unlocks

Victory is determined by building the Colony Ship Construction Pad Improvement and generating 5000 Colony Ship Progress via Projects (the things in your cities where you convert Production to other resources).

Short and simple: leverage your Production to pull a classic end of tech tree victory via rocket to the stars.

Age of the Singularity (Final/Crisis Age, Age X): Required Unlocks - 4 Technologies from Age IX. Locked in by having 30 AI Singularity Crisis Charge (obtained by building Supercomputer Improvements). Must result in the end of the game.

Technologies

Additional Unlocks

All Nations in Age VIII or earlier are immediately defeated by Rogue AI. Being defeated by the Rogue AI appears to convert the defeated players' cities into factories, from which Rogue AI units spawn, although their units will remain as Barbarians for the Rogue AI to chew through.
The Rogue AI attacks your nation, hacking Improvements and reducing your AI Alignment.
If AI Alignment reaches 0, your nation is defeated by the Rogue AI.
Building an AI Personality Core Improvement increases AI Alignment, but attracts the Rogue AI.
Victory is determined by whoever is the first player to have 10 AI Personality Core Improvements.

The wildcard option. The Age of the Singularity is about holding out the longest against a rampant AI or managing to successfully place it under your Nation's control. For those players who don't think they're strong enough to win against their opponents in any of the other victories, but excel at thriving in the midst of chaos thanks to strong defensive abilities... or since this is apparently a hybrid Crisis Age, because you just couldn't stop slamming out Supercomputers to take advantage of your Silicon Valley build.

Jossar fucked around with this message at 17:56 on Mar 24, 2024

# ¿ Mar 3, 2024 18:39

Jossar: Apr 2, 2018; Current status: Angry about subs

Bremen posted:

Oh hey, I was thinking of making a thread for this closer to release, good to see someone beat me to it.

The game... well, the demo struck me as a game produced by some developers with lots of great ideas but maybe not the budget for lots of graphics and polish. Not quite to "budget indie game" level, but if you want a AAA civ-like I gather you might be better off waiting for Ara: History Untold. That said, the more I played the demo (and I found myself playing those 60 turns over and over), the more I fell in love with the gameplay mechanics. Not even just the ages, though those look like a lot of fun, but setting up the production chains and what not in cities, or breaking slightly away from the "everything is cities" model with things like outposts and utility boats/hunter units being able to gain resources on the map, which IIRC was something SMAC did and then the entire genre seemed to permanently forget about.

And it had the single best feature ever for a Civ-like game: You can control click on something (like an improvement or ability) that you can't use yet to set a reminder, and the game will pop up a reminder when you can actually build or do that thing. I love this little mechanic so much.

This game is going to be a day 1 buy for me no question at this point.

Yeah, I did say that the Age variance is Millennia's most defining feature, but the reason it got shoved near the back of the intro post is because, like you, most of the stuff that felt fun to work with in the demo was the relatively subdued economics interactions and baseline mechanics. That's what makes me hopeful about this game in a way that I haven't been for some other recent 4Xs: even if things are wonky and need to be patched up heavily post-release, there's still a workable and enjoyable core gameplay loop.

Jossar fucked around with this message at 15:13 on Mar 4, 2024

# ¿ Mar 4, 2024 15:11

Jossar: Apr 2, 2018; Current status: Angry about subs

Well, I've been sick with a cold all day today, so absent the energy to do anything else I've been watching pretest Millennia videos. Most of it is just dev diary stuff, but PotatoMcWhiskey's extended, hour-long playthrough from last month with a more complete build of Millennia gave a couple of insights into the game to consider.

Combat is apparently really important early on just to give yourself breathing room/early development expansion, but...
You can use said early combat to mostly off-ramp yourself into a more peaceful/hybrid playstyle.
While being tech leader still seems pretty important, Potato didn't seem to feel that annoyed at being outclassed by the other civs while just sitting back and focusing on economy/infrastructure? I also got to see the bots trigger a Crisis Age on their own, which is something that people were wondering if they could do based on the demo.
Diplomacy between players exists, but is kind of meh. But on the other hand Diplomacy as a domain/playstyle is pretty interesting. Most of the post-early game part of Potato's run revolved around using Olympians to turbo boost the rest of his Domain XP via Olympic Games and then use both general military might and Envoys to build up a large network of Vassal cities.
Tying into this, I'd have to double check, but it looks like "foreign trade" is more of an economic abstraction where you spend Wealth to get resources for your cities, not really a literal trade setup between nations. I did see something in a different set of screenshots where you could make treaties for things like Culture though.
Likewise, since you have foreign trade, you can have a limited degree of domestic trade where you shuffle resources around your nation.
Outposts and other resource exclaves are apparently pretty cracked, but presumably the downside is that you have to expend effort trying to protect a relatively vulnerable area far outside your borders.

Jossar fucked around with this message at 18:11 on Mar 5, 2024

# ¿ Mar 5, 2024 18:02

Jossar: Apr 2, 2018; Current status: Angry about subs

Obviously, information is light on the ground at this point, but completed a basic skeleton of the Age tree. On initial review, it looks like the Variant Ages do a good job of being, well, variants instead of straight up-upgrades. But the Crisis Ages unfortunately do mostly look like they're there to punish the players more than encourage alternate playstyles. Definitely a "wait and see" sort of thing though.

# ¿ Mar 6, 2024 15:59

Jossar: Apr 2, 2018; Current status: Angry about subs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GnGqXlrTdho

Weirdly enough, today's tutorial (the second in a series of five leading up to the release date), which is ostensibly about National Spirits, also teases a decent amount of the Age VIII Space Race and how to properly trigger the Age IX Crisis Age, the Age of Visitors.

# ¿ Mar 7, 2024 16:00

Jossar: Apr 2, 2018; Current status: Angry about subs

twistedmentat posted:

I hope ages don't fly by, one of my biggest complains about Humankind is that due to how ages change, you rarely have enough time to build anything. I never build anything more advanced than a musketman because it was the industrial age before he was popped out of my most productive city. The AI just beelines all the stars to go up an age, so you have to as well. It was a game made of bizarre design decisions. It felt like it was based solely around the complaint that it takes too long to game a game of civ. Which anyone who plays this kinds of games, is a complaint that is met with "maybe you should play something else".

From what it looks like in the Steam storefront (the sensible pictures, not the one with British robots attacking Chinese tanks in 7750 BCE), Age 7/8 seems to take around 300 turns, Age 5 looks like it's somewhere around 180-ish, and it took about 60 turns to get to the start of the Age of Iron or thereabouts in the demo. Combined with something I saw in the dev notes about how starting at Age VI or so, you need an extra technology to progress through the Ages, it definitely seems like the game wants you to be spending the vast majority of your time in the "mid-game" unless you try to offramp with an early capital rush/Age of Conquest victory.

Jossar fucked around with this message at 19:20 on Mar 8, 2024

# ¿ Mar 8, 2024 19:06

Jossar: Apr 2, 2018; Current status: Angry about subs

Been a quiet couple of weeks while the devs work on finishing things off (although they are posting dev diaries), but PotatoMcWhiskey posted a more longform video up until about Age 6 or so, if people want to see more mid-game play: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwzp_F8kOHc

# ¿ Mar 16, 2024 13:34

Jossar: Apr 2, 2018; Current status: Angry about subs

Antigravitas posted:

Going to wait for the 3MA episode on the game, I think. The era thing could be annoying with higher player counts especially.

Since we're going full disclosure on reviews: TMA did release some commentary on the NextFest copy of Millennia, though not the full game - https://www.idlethumbs.net/3ma/episodes/the-strategy-games-of-steam-next-fest-2024, Millennia bit is approximately 12 minutes in.

It's a very lukewarm review: they said it was better than Humankind on an objective level, but felt like Millennia didn't have it's own "thesis" as to the nature of being a 4X game sufficient to distinguish it in a meaningful way from other offerings in the genre. They did say that they were still curious enough to see how its mid/endgame plays out, because a good mid/endgame could still make it fun enough to have a place in the pantheon of 4xs, but also it's got a big fight ahead of it because we're not starving for choice this year.

I remain hyped for Millennia, but the more I keep hearing other people talk about it, the more it's specifically a function of the game being exciting for me personally, and not in a way that can otherwise be articulated. A function of which is that, unfortunately, the best way to really determine "is the game good/right for me or not" is kind of limited to watching one of those several hour-long videos by content creators on YouTube. Although credit where credit is due, Paradox did shell out for a lot of them.

Jossar fucked around with this message at 01:13 on Mar 26, 2024

# ¿ Mar 26, 2024 01:10

Jossar: Apr 2, 2018; Current status: Angry about subs

Or I guess another way of putting Millennia, that I've been ruminating on for the past few days is as follows: It's mostly following Civ 4/6 gameplay but has a bunch of additional complication in terms of obligatory systems that matter in a mechanical way but aren't that immediately obvious on a visual level (mostly found in cities), options for deviating from conventional history via research, etc. So it's really just Caveman2Cosmos by professional devs that knew where to scale back on their ambitions (and the :biotruths:

). Which explains why I'm resonating well with it.

Jossar fucked around with this message at 12:01 on Mar 26, 2024

# ¿ Mar 26, 2024 11:57

Jossar: Apr 2, 2018; Current status: Angry about subs

Been testing out the game for a few hours, and I still think I like it. Still in the phase of trying to figure out how to translate scurrying around the map into a cohesive strategy though, feel like I don't quite "get" that part just yet.

I can understand the critiques that have been thrown out about the game, though I think most of them are blown out of proportion except for the archaic multiplayer system. But I suppose it also doesn't really do enough to win people over to overlook those. Oh well.

# ¿ Mar 27, 2024 01:09

Jossar: Apr 2, 2018; Current status: Angry about subs

Ugh, I should not have stayed up all night just to finish a game the day it dropped.

After a couple of false starts, I finally got a setup that I liked and went all-in on Production with God-King Dynasty. My neighbours (Russia and China) were bullying me right from the start, but the feedback loop meant that I was eventually able to turn the tide, and if I couldn't expand that much, then I could at least build super tall. Eventually Russia and China decided that I was too much of an annoyance (combined with an Age of Plague drop from Aztecs ruining everyone's economies) and decided to both make nice with me while fighting a forever war with each other for most of the game. I'm pretty sure each of them still backstabbed me at least once later on during the run - Chinese during the midgame and Russians near the end.

Other continent didn't really get involved with our squabbles at all, but caused plenty of headaches with Age shenanigans. Apart from that first shot with the Aztecs, the other front runner was Egypt, who I felt like I was trading science leader with on and off until we reached Age of Rocketry and the combination of my efficiency/production maximizing bonuses from Shogunate/Sultans and spamming Arcanum buildings in the Age of Alchemy let me build everything I needed to finally run ahead.

I probably could have gone full production and won with Age of Departure, but I was worried that four cities wouldn't be enough to outcompete the other civilizations even if the cities were boosted like crazy, since the AIs on the other continent did seem to still be mostly keeping up techwise (even if at a disadvantage). I'd already been grabbing a ton of Insight Social Fabrics to get the Age of Alchemy, hence the pivot to Transcendence. Since I was running ahead in Science, I decided to grab Space Agency to see if I could use the Space Race to help fill out Social Fabrics that I wasn't generating a lot of points on. I guess it worked? I mean it didn't feel like it was particularly due to Space Agency, but I ended up with all 10s in the middle of Age IX, at which point Russia broke off trade ties with me and turning the rest of the run into a rickety cart ride where I spammed late-game defensive units in the hope that would be enough to scare them off from actually declaring war. I played the last 2-3 ages very dumb, but fittingly enough after a certain point I just needed to strap a rocket to my backside and gun it for the victory condition anyway. Government path is standard tall/science build (Imperial Dynasty > Republic > Democracy)

Anything else people want to know about this run? I definitely feel like I learned a lot and will try to make less mistakes going forward, but figured I might as well get this kind of run out of my system.

# ¿ Mar 27, 2024 11:10

Jossar: Apr 2, 2018; Current status: Angry about subs

Unfortunately the lesson I'm quickly coming to learn is that unless the AI is explicitly coming over to your house with a gift basket and offers of open borders, it's always secretly planning to kill you and thus you need to always have a much larger back-pocket defensive army than you'd otherwise have if playing "optimally". That and sticking to your borders absent a specific goal that involves moving out with a bunch of troops apart from a few Scouts.

Other things of note based on how you're describing how the game went:

Warriors is weird because it's mostly defense based, probably should've either gone Raiders (if that was an option) if you were on the offense or just used the Spartans as a cheap and reliable defense while mainly focusing on infrastructure projects.
Tying into that, while some builds lean into it heavier than others, as soon as you get your initial food problems solved, Production is key in the early game as it lets you get everything else online. This meant that my Plague Age was just really annoying more than crippling, because I had the tile improvements/buildings in place to grow the cities back before the doom spiral came online.
After a certain point for a lot of the Domains (except Warfare, RIP) you should probably be transitioning over to buildings as the primary source of Domain XP at least until later-game exploration mechanics come back online again. Double check to see whether buildings that seem like they're mostly fulfilling a standard need also give Domain XP as well.
Wide vs. Tall is really about how many Vassals you have and whether they're a core part of your strategy or just there as a border wall. My super Tall game only had two, but even most Tall games will have a bunch more than that. But contrarily, you don't want THAT many early fully integrated cities as they'll provide an exponential culture sink.
Scouts should be run back home as quickly as possible once bad things start happening, maybe even via the "run away" command which costs a few exploration points but can haul them from halfway across the map as long as they're in neutral territory.

EDIT: Since we're talking about events and Plague, I had an Innovation event in my last game which offered that as long as the site was infected it generated Culture instead of its normal tile yield. Game actively incentivizing you to sit and fiddle while everybody dies around you. Also might want to try grabbing Age of Heroes if you're sick of Plague since it blocks a non-standard Age IV? They might have changed that on release though.

Jossar fucked around with this message at 23:37 on Mar 27, 2024

# ¿ Mar 27, 2024 23:27

Jossar: Apr 2, 2018; Current status: Angry about subs

EDIT: Lol, sniped by somebody else using utility ships. Glad to see you enjoyed them, Bremen!

Alright, second game down. Things got a bit wonky again, although unlike last time it was more a set of high level screwups rather than low level: on the ground execution was much better, which probably contributes to the lower turn count even with screwing around for various reasons that will be made clear below.

Used a bonus starting Scout to work my way towards an Exploration heavy build. Game was very favorable to me, with there being a lot of space between me and my neighbors, lots of Landmarks on offer, and even an early Envoy to vassalize some nearby city states. Unfortunately for me, this pissed off India, who saw my takeover of the city states in their direction as a threat and committed to an early war dec. Unfortunately for them, all of my southern neighbors had agreed to ally with me and we'd done a pretty good job of clearing out the barb camps so I was free to focus entirely on India. The scouting meant that I was also crazy far ahead on science (which I never let up on throughout the rest of the game) and poised to march the world into the Age of Heroes with a ton of high xp troops. As soon as I hit Age III, India rolled over and died immediately to a doomstack of Heroes.

Munich's heavy coastal influence, including that great set up for Coastal Towns you see there, combined with all the Exploration XP from scouting led me to decide to go all in on Natural Seafarers. It's kind of a weird build path going forward, because your ocean tiles pretty much handle all of your Food, Gold, and Exploration XP needs but as a result you need to think even more carefully about what goes on land since you have even more limited space than usual in that respect. I was lucky enough to draw the Innovation event which gave Docks a Production bonus to help with that early on though. The Exploration focus catapulted me through most of the game, further expanded on by Explorers (which let me grab the eponymous unit, cross the continents an Age early, and explore the entirety of the map) and Scholars (which pivoted in a more direct way to Science, of course the Luxury bonus didn't hurt either). I probably could have gone Space Race again, but the other feature of having a ton of Docks is that I was making piles and piles of money and so decided to go International Finance for my final National Spirit pick. It took a lot more time to get off the ground than I was expecting, but I was making so much money by the end it was ridiculous. A couple of turns of savings could buy an entire far-future army all at once.

Beating India up meant that I had a ton of Vassals and was in a good position to go wide via Kingdom and then Feudal Monarchy. Feudal Monarchy in particular was providing me with a crazy amount of Diplo and Govt XP... all of which I lost when transitioning to the final government type. Really, neither Democracy or Communism provided that much benefit and I should have saved popping the Culture power until after I'd already finished International Finance.

Somewhere around Age VI/VII is when things started going wonky from the high level perspective. I was worried about Age of Revolutions popping in a ton of Revolutionaries that I wouldn't be able to handle, so I popped the Age of Aether. This was a mistake because not only was I already neutral to Barbarians thanks to a perk in Explorers, but it meant a lot of stuff that was otherwise normally available with moderate bonuses was instead highly variable due to a lack of access to Aether - which I was in a bad position to grab in my mostly coastal cities. This also meant that I couldn't go Age of Utopia in Age VIII which might have synced up with the build a bit better due to all of the underwater cities you get at that point.

I could have won a really fast Transcendence victory, but I did that yesterday so I wanted to go for Age of Archangels instead. In retrospect, this was the sort of thing I could only get away with because I'd basically won the game already: the other AIs were lightyears behind and couldn't really catch up. Everyone else had been busy with city growth as well, so I was only 25% of the world's total population instead of 50%. I had to destroy at least two more nations via wars until I hit the point where my infrastructure was fully up and I could fire the doomsday laser and wipe a city off the map every turn. Interesting to note: the AI doesn't really seem to know who fires off the Archangel, so where a human player will see you having a scout balloon nearby and go "Wait a minute..." the three remaining computer Nations were happy to just sit and stay allied with me as cities turned into craters across the planet. Presumably if they made it to the Age of Archangel themselves they wouldn't have any compunction about firing on me though to maximize their own chances of winning.

Jossar fucked around with this message at 05:35 on Mar 29, 2024

# ¿ Mar 29, 2024 04:45

Jossar: Apr 2, 2018; Current status: Angry about subs

Did you attack a city somewhere? Taking over cities by force generates Chaos (I think 20-ish, but could be less earlier) that lasts until the event pops.

# ¿ Mar 29, 2024 13:12

Jossar: Apr 2, 2018; Current status: Angry about subs

Dunno, I was making a ton of gold from treatises in the last game that I posted. Maybe International Finance overrode the bug? That run also made me more understanding as to why Chaos events draining gold can be annoying - even if you don't use gold that frequently in the early game, there's still a lot of value in rushing Culture out a turn early or banking up to save on a really annoying build.

I think what my runs have taught me is that you can make friends, but you need to beat up somebody else first (or at least build up a big army) to show that you're not an easy target. Then the early-game stomping tends to calm down and settle into a more "diplomatic" situation unless you're locked into a forever war by bad luck. But as THE BAR said, might not apply on Master or higher. I hear on Grandmaster the AI gets REALLY aggressive.

Jossar fucked around with this message at 22:12 on Mar 29, 2024

# ¿ Mar 29, 2024 22:06

Jossar: Apr 2, 2018; Current status: Angry about subs

CommissarMega posted:

Yeah, that's what I'm afraid of. Either I nursemaid Envoys across a Huge map (which I admit is my fault), or I never really unlock Olympians' potential. Anyone have a suggestion for a better first Age 2 Spirit?

Kinda hard to say without at least cursory knowledge of what your area looks like. Any chance we can get a screenshot?

# ¿ Mar 29, 2024 22:30

Jossar: Apr 2, 2018; Current status: Angry about subs

Oh hey, SJM! Should have figured you would enjoy this game, given that you're the one who got me to try out C2C in the first place.

Anyways, last night's game is...

A guide to making the most of a bad situation? Sure, let's go with that.

I spent most of my early game getting bodied by Spain and the Ottomans. Wild Hunters is great for food, but unfortunately its other various bonuses don't really cohere into a neat and tidy whole unless they're otherwise paired with a bunch of good on-map resource/tile drops. Or maybe I was just unlucky in that this was sort of a hybrid Seafarers/Hunt spawn. I couldn't really think of a good pivot, so I decided to find religion, but didn't really expect that I'd be able to catapult myself to conquering the continent with Crusaders, so I went Theologians. On the one hand I couldn't really fight for good outpost spots, but with all the extra Culture I was able to keep spamming the Truce Diplomacy power to force stop all my enemies' wars until they got bored and left for more profitable prey.

So I had finally reached the point where I was left alone, but I had three core cities, a couple of outposts, and a single vassal I captured from the Ottomans. So it was time to go tall. Over the course of the rest of the playthrough this became a frankensteinian mash up of Science and Culture, going through Scholars and Pop Culture respectively to round these out. Using Culture to boost Science is kind of a wonky proposition as Eureka's science output falls off a cliff after using it about 2-3 times in an Age, even with Scholars, but if all you're trying to do is outrace the other players, that's all you need. Standard tall early game governments (Imperial Dynasty/Republic) apply, but Fundamentalist worked better to round out the build since I was the world leader in religion due to Spain adopting mine by default.

Transcend is usually the easiest of the "I need to win right now" endgame victory conditions, and honestly if I'd been going all in on it from the start I might have been able to do it (using a combination of Pop Culture Celebrity abilities and the final tier government for Religion's Cultural Power that lets you generate 50 of each XP), but this was such a ramshackle mess that I went for the saving grace of all hopeless runs - the AI Crisis Age. I initially thought that this would destroy all the other players who were still in Age VIII and let me win by default, but it turns out that there's a lot of things wonky about the in-game text (you need 30 Crisis Charge to lock in the Age, but you only get the message after 50, for instance) and it only destroys all the players from BEFORE Age VIII. Winning legitimately took a bit more effort, requiring a beeline to the victory Improvement and then having my vanguard cities hold out against the Rogue AI while I cannibalized all of my Improvements to make room for Brain Trusts and AI Personality Cores. Ten cores later and victory.

Lessons to be learned: I keep inadvertently forgetting that you have to assume the AI thinks you're a weakling and will try to bully you unless shown up. Otherwise, I dunno... don't focus so much on trying to maximize out the National Spirit that you miss the core production focus of the early to midgame? Eh, win's a win. Should probably at least try Master difficulty at some point soonish though. Felt a little too easy, even in this scenario to just force the Nation AI to leave me alone for the rest of the game.

# ¿ Mar 30, 2024 10:36

Jossar: Apr 2, 2018; Current status: Angry about subs

Cythereal posted:

I'm looking into this as a Civ fan who felt pretty cold on 6, and the idea of the variant ages sounds neat.

As someone who likes to play peacefully on the lowest difficulty setting and just build and research and make a pretty looking empire with cool stuff, is this game conducive to that, or does it demand a much more active and involved approach?

I played a Novice game earlier to try and do a couple of achievement unlocks, and... sorta. The AI nations will indeed become less competent as you go down in difficulty, and as mentioned even on medium level difficulty the AI will eventually learn to leave you alone if you have a high enough set of passive defenses. But unfortunately the Barbarians and "neutral" party threats remain pretty much at the same level of annoyance no matter what, so there is at least a minimal threshold of active gameplay that you have to go through, if only to make your local environs safe to then have a mostly peaceful game afterwards. And even then Barbarian-esque threats can return later depending on certain Ages.

EDIT: I forgot, but I also tried to test out a run on Grandmaster too for screwing-around purposes and I think this remained consistent but in the opposite direction. Barbarian AI remains unchanged, actual enemy nations become cracked.

Jossar fucked around with this message at 22:30 on Mar 30, 2024

# ¿ Mar 30, 2024 22:23

Jossar: Apr 2, 2018; Current status: Angry about subs

twistedmentat posted:

But I do get the next age asap unless i can get a special age. Though my advice is meaningless because I've only gotten one game past age of kings and that one I lost. What I'm trying to figure out what is the best starting bonus. It feels like either bonus production or bonus culture are the best options.

The best bonus is one that lets you start running ahead of the rest of the pack early given the limited resources at the start, so most of the recommendations I've seen are either for an early Production bonus or an early Scout.

# ¿ Apr 2, 2024 22:53

Jossar: Apr 2, 2018; Current status: Angry about subs

I will say that although I didn't get quite as crazy numbers as my dad's friend is showing, I was able to build pretty wide with good numbers in my Archangels game on a medium map just through the use of Kingdom/Feudal Kingdom, later replaced by International Finance as the supplementer so I was able to get things like a 30+ 350% Prosperity vassal city, and nearly two dozen overall. And that was without going all-in on vassal focused National Spirits for most of the game, although I did beat up a lot of other Nations and steal their cities, especially later on. So I wouldn't rule out that it's impossible if you're specifically trying to break the game as hard as you can.

Quoting from earlier in the thread:

quote:

Jossar fucked around with this message at 13:11 on Apr 3, 2024

# ¿ Apr 3, 2024 13:02

Jossar: Apr 2, 2018; Current status: Angry about subs

And to be honest, Seafarers already felt like it was outputting decent money before, so now it's just crazy!

Haven't gotten to play a lot recently, might postpone it until all the changes come out if they're not too far away, but then again most of the games I'm playing seem to be in the middle of an update spree.

# ¿ Apr 16, 2024 00:01

Jossar: Apr 2, 2018; Current status: Angry about subs

"Your 'Earth Currency' is no longer welcome here!"

# ¿ Apr 16, 2024 09:05

Jossar: Apr 2, 2018; Current status: Angry about subs

Update now live for people off the beta branch:

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1268590/view/4208126261069120016

# ¿ Apr 22, 2024 15:06

Jossar: Apr 2, 2018; Current status: Angry about subs

"I'm escaping to the one place that hasn't been corrupted by capitalism... SPACE!"

So yeah, first match post-patch. Earlygame was my standard of getting bullied by AI into building tall, building up via a wealth pivot, and then using my tech lead to go on a rampage and swap to wide. Unfortunately either Chaos/the Rebels got buffed or I stayed on the offense for a bit too long in the midgame, but come the Age of Revolutions, the Rebel deathstack did a lot of damage to my peripheral outposts and knocked me into a Chaos spiral that sent me into the Age of Dystopia. Dystopia then proceeded to define my endgame: I had the wealth to endure the individual Chaos events, but the constant Riots wrecking city Needs encouraged me to go Communist in order to ensure total damage control. From that point it was just about leveraging the synergy between Modernization and Communism to build as high production as possible for an Age of Departure victory.

Not really a fan of Communism or Modernization: I do appreciate that they exist for people who want to try and keep earlier fundamentals of Millennia relevant lategame and Level 5 Towns are amusing, but both of them encourage you to go crazy with region redesign/new region creation in a way that's really time consuming and persnickety for the last couple dozen turns. At the very least, I wish at least one of them would give a bonus to Specialists instead - nobody needs this many Improvement Points once you hit Age VIII, let alone beyond.

Lessons to be learned: quit while you're ahead in a war where you've gutted your opponents, at least if the Age of Revolutions is on the table. There's other lessons to be learned, but most of them are also about overextension to some extent.

Jossar fucked around with this message at 05:15 on Apr 29, 2024

# ¿ Apr 29, 2024 05:11

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ May 10, 2024 19:03

Jossar: Apr 2, 2018; Current status: Angry about subs

I tend to not worry about the AI expansion and just focus on playing tall, but even then yeah: the first city is usually a diplo-annex or an early conquest if I have enough dudes, then a proper settle protected by a stack after I've finished off the Tribal gov tree. I'm gonna switch to Master and see if this still holds up or I get flattened by the AI though.

Jossar fucked around with this message at 12:09 on Apr 29, 2024

# ¿ Apr 29, 2024 12:06

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Millennia: "I could wait for Civ 7, but I want a Variant Age instead."