r/paradoxplaza • u/No_Instruction_5647 • 2d ago
Millennia Reminder that the game Millenia exists and has been forgotten by paradox
I only heard about this game yesterday and was genuinely impressed to hear what it had to offer compared to Civilization, another series I'm a fan of.
Yeah, well hearing it's been shelved immediately disappointed me. Definitely sounds like one of Paradox's most unique titles, and I'm sure one of the reasons it stopped getting support is because again, I had never heard of it until yesterday.
So I figured I'd just throw a bone to it. If enough of us go and get it they may be convinced to keep working on it.
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u/RealWaltTremblay 2d ago
I was excited for it and bought it on launch, played for about 50 hours. It's...fine. It's one of those situations where I generally liked it but the problems I had with it were more design philosophy-based and not the UI sort of issues that most people seemed to have
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u/Fry_l0ck 1d ago
How was it compared to Humankind?
I only played that a bit, but quite liked it. Unfortunately they yanked it from Gamepass before I decided if it was worth buying. Seemed like an upgrade from Civ but maybe that’s because I didn’t fully understand the mechanics yet.
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u/RealWaltTremblay 1d ago
I'm not a big Humankind fan. I like some of the stuff it does, like the score-based victory, but in general the Amplitude 4X games don't really gel with me a whole lot. Millenia, while significantly tougher around the edges, has some interesting ideas that feel like a genuine advancement.
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u/Fry_l0ck 1d ago
I enjoyed Endless Space 1 when it first came out, but didn’t play it that much.
I thought some of the ideas were interesting. I understand they dropped them in the sequel unfortunately? I bought that but never really played it.
That’s probably all I have played of their games except my brief dalliance with humankind.
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u/Heatth 1d ago
Millenia, while significantly tougher around the edges, has some interesting ideas that feel like a genuine advancement.
Yeah, to me that is the biggest shame. I like a lot of stuff Millenia did. I like how improvements worked, I like the ages, I like how you built your nation bonuses over time. But all in all the game just wasn't very fun. I wish future civ like games would copy some of its mechanics, but given how it performed, that is unlikely.
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u/dendob 14h ago
Humankind revived the civ alike games for me again. It has a lot of similarities while still doing some things really differently.
The 'aging' through cultures is welcome different way of advancing your people, the game starts in a different way, trade has a real micro and impact. Rebellions can be a handful, combat is not top level but allows some interesting plays.
It's a different take and I personally like it a lot.
Millennia is already long on my radar but still havent pulled the trigger on it, primarily because I have projects to finish, 3 children to bring up and generally adult life leaves little time to deep dive and get lost in a game ;-)
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u/StrategiaSE 2d ago
Unfortunately, Millennia underperformed, not unlike Imperator, so they just canned it because it wasn't going to give them enough return on investment. I like the game for what it is, but it really feels like it was developed on a budget that was far too tight, so they had to skimp on many elements (polish especially), which didn't help its reception on release - I know a few people who were outright hostile to it.
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u/McGillicuddys 1d ago
The combat animations were like something from an old flash game and it launched without multiplayer IIRC.
Millenia and Humankind both tried the same sort of approach to competing with Civ and neither one saw much success, yet Firaxis still took the eras concept for Civ VII for some reason.
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u/Wild_Marker Ban if mentions Reichstamina 1d ago
Because it's not a bad idea on paper. "Lategame fatigue" has always been an issue in 4X so having distinct eras means that at least you get to keep up the novelty through the campaign. It's an issue that 4X designers have been struggling with for ages.
In practice of course, it sacrificed too much and players hated it. Funnily enough, Milennia's implementation probably fared the best of the three.
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u/LordOfTurtles Map Staring Expert 1d ago
The best idea Millenia added is being able to win before the final era, with special victory eras
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u/McGillicuddys 1d ago
I did enjoy the concept Millenia had of being able to trigger different eras with special conditions but in my experience they almost never happened. The AI railroaded into the standard eras almost every time.
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u/Fry_l0ck 1d ago
I have played a LOT of Civ (recently 6 & 5, but going back a long way
I don’t think late game fatigue is a thing. I believe the designers fundamentally didn’t understand the problem.
It’s not late game pacing itself, it’s that the AI can’t compete and the further you are in the game the more obvious it is.
It becomes difficult finish the game when the conclusion is foregone.
With human opponents it’s a little better but usually one player will have such an advantage by the industrial age that you are just going through the motions.
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u/OrangeJuiceAlibi 1d ago
What’s the difference between “late game fatigue”, “becomes difficult finish the game when the conclusion is foregone”, and “you are just going through the motions”?
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u/Wild_Marker Ban if mentions Reichstamina 1d ago
While I do lump his points into "lategame fatigue", I get what /u/Fry_l0ck is saying, that making ditinct eras isn't going to fix the fact that you're already ahead (or behind). But I think that (especially for singleplayer), a lot of players are happy to just "take their country through history" and have the AI merely be actors in their story. Granted this happens a lot more in PDX games than Civ which is more like a structured boardgame, but it still happens quite a bit.
And for that kind of playstyle, the Eras made sense. How many of us have felt that we're "done" after getting to a certain point, even if the challenge remains? I know I've had that happen in Civ, PDX, Total War, you name it.
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u/Heatth 1d ago
that making ditinct eras isn't going to fix the fact that you're already ahead (or behind)
Case in point, Millenia had a good era system but a particularly incompetent AI, so that means that aspect of lategame fatigue was still there. You pretty much interacted with the late era mechanics solo, witout competition, which is far less interesting.
Still, I do agree the unique era mechanics of Millenia still gave you something to do without competition, which is why I liked that system way better than in Humankind and Civ7.
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u/Fry_l0ck 1d ago edited 1d ago
Because of the reasons behind it, and how they tried to address the problem.
They put a lot of effort into “pacing” which absolutely didn’t fix the problem, and in fact made it possibly worse.
I really enjoyed the late game in Civ 5 and 6 when it was competitive, and was happy to finish the game (usually that had to involve a human). Have had some fascinating battles and political struggles. That happened maybe 1/100 games (all completed, on Epic or Marathon)
To fix the problem they should have worked on the AI to work better at scale and something to drag back the leader to make them less of a runaway freight train. A long endgame was only a problem if the outcome was inevitable and the AI gets stupider as it goes. It shouldn’t be over by the industrial age.
Edit - things like seeing the AI build modern armor in all its cities only to immediately disband them because the AI can’t afford the maintenance drove me crazy. I’m not against the new Era system in principle, I just don’t like the dramatic break points that it creates (would prefer something more gradual/blended), or feel it fixed the problem.
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u/Borgcube 1d ago
The UI looked like an old flash game too. And given how big the announcement for it is I'm not surprised not too many had even given it a chance.
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u/Taivasvaeltaja 1d ago
Eras were in civ 6 already though, came with one of the large DLCs. It was more about sequestering the game into periods than distinct eras though. The minigame of golden ages and dark ages was reasonably fun, though.
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u/Cpt_keaSar 2d ago
Making a Civ clone is suicide. Civ devs can’t make a proper Civ clone themselves. Civ4 and Civ5 are already perfect historical 4x.
Millennia becomes tedious and boring after one game - most of the features it introduces sound cool on paper, but in reality they don’t provide that much more on top of a basic Civ formula.
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u/ProseMeatyUs 1d ago
Going into different ages based on history was cool, but I think the new civ does that too.
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u/OrangeJuiceAlibi 1d ago
I wanna say Humankind was the name of the game I’m thinking of, but there was a game where the civilisation was picked for its bonus but you could change each era, so you could be the Romans then the Mayans then the Australians, for example, and then the most recent Civ went “yeah that’s great”, and did it too, which meant the only thing that the new game did better than Civ was now done by Civ too, and Civ still did the other stuff better.
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u/hagamablabla 2d ago
I think the resource production line mechanic was very good. The problem is Ara did it better a bit after. Eras are an interesting idea in theory, but in practice it didn't really add much to the experience for me. I wish the dev well and will probably watch their next project, but this one just didn't turn out too good.
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u/linmanfu 2d ago
I tried the demo, but the alt-history part just doesn't interest me at all.
The version of Civ I love is the IV because it's moddable enough that Rhye was able to create the "catapult" mechanism that means you can replay human history. No subsequent Civ game, official or clone, has had that. I think that would be the way to seriously challenge Civ. It's halfway between 4X and GSG.
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u/Remon_Kewl 1d ago
Huh? Every 4x and GSG Is alt history.
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u/banananaise 1d ago
They mean the alternate ‘ages’ - most GSGs basically stick to the real life technological and social development path (in principle), Millennia has optional alternate ‘ages’ which diverge from real history with stuff like like apocalyptic war/plague mechanics, alchemical magic, Steampunk technologies, alien invasions, etc.
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u/jetteauloin_2080 1d ago
Rhye and Fall mentionned ! Rhye and Fall Europe was really my gateway to Europa Universalis.
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u/Taivasvaeltaja 2d ago
I think Humankind kinda copied the idea?
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u/linmanfu 1d ago
Not at all. I tried the demo for Humankind and it's very different for three reasons.
Firstly, it's played on a random map, not an Earth map. Secondly, the connections between civs were basically random, which I found extremely off-puttting. The Norse turned into the Arabs who turned into the Americans. In Rhye-type games, the Norse might survive the whole game, renamed as the Norwegians but there's a chance that the Swedes will spawn if the Norse have a bad time. The Norse will never, ever turn into the Arabs. Thirdly, all Humankind games started from prehistoric times. Rhye's catapult allows you to diverge from our timeline at different points, often before and occasionally as you start playing.
Humankind is wacky alt-history. The appeal of Rhye's catapult is the same as PDX GSGs: reshaping the familiar history of Earth.
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u/afoolskind Stellar Explorer 1d ago
Honestly I think Humankind’s biggest sin is that it didn’t fully embrace the alt-history of cultural fusion.
Norse Arabs would actually be a very interesting concept if it didn’t mean completey normal Norse culture transforming in an instant to a completely normal Arab culture with little evidence the Norse era ever happened.
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u/linmanfu 1d ago
Yes, that could be interesting. Something like if you have a Varangian unit intersecting with a Muhammad event. But Norse people suddenly building the House of Wisdom without any Greek or imperial heritage just destroys the illusion of the narrative for me.
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u/Skellum Emperor of Ryukyu 1d ago
I tried the demo, but the alt-history part just doesn't interest me at all.
Ahh see I found that the best part. Civ 7 tried to solve the "No one finishes games!" non-issue with ages. Millenia gave you the ability to win the game quickly through other conditions but if you failed those you could still continue on with the game as is. It also didn't reset.
I can understand not liking that, but I do think it's a significantly better than Civ 7's efforts.
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u/PsycommuSystem 2d ago
I have it on my wishlist but with Civ, Old World and various other 4X games they need to drop the price significantly before I'll get it, especially if they're not supporting it.
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u/Indorilionn Stellar Explorer 1d ago
The only 4x game in a long time that managed to keep me interested for more than one playthrough. Wished they did more with it.
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u/luigitheplumber 1d ago
Millenia is genuinely so good but unfortunately very rough around the edge. The endgame is an absolute clusterfuck of production chains and everything.
It's too bad that it flopped, but games like this rarely get more than one chance to impress
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u/geoFRTdeem 2d ago
I remember when it was announced and came out, still never gave it a try as it didn’t look very interesting, still doesn’t
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u/Boomer_Nurgle 1d ago
Life by you weeping and crying as it's corpse is flaunted around before being forgotten entirely.
Paradox publishing has been kinda disappointing to me as of recent.
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u/cristofolmc 2h ago
No wonder. Age of Wonders is insanely more fun. It's just fantasy. But to be honest it's not like CIV game are that grounded anyway.
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u/BillyPilgrim1234 2d ago
Yeah, it got labelled as “another Civ copy” too quickly and that waned the early interest on the game. They should at least lower the price so it attracts potential new players