Developer Diary | Achievements, Modding & Multiplayer

[Red Death]

This makes me sad as i was waiting to push this game to my friend group so that we could have fun game nights together. I do understand that simultaneous turns would require quite a bit of redesign to be put in place compared to what we’ve seen.
Nonetheless wouldn’t a sequential online multiplayer be much easier to implement? Something similar to what is in CiV 5?

Isn't sequential equivalent to the "online hotseat" mode?

 

[elektrizikekswerk]

Isn't sequential equivalent to the "online hotseat" mode?

Yes and no. The "online hotseat" mode as described seems more like "play by email" so each player can make their turn whenever they like while with a "true" sequential MP mode all players still connect to a common host at the same time - similar to people sitting at a table for a board game.

Depending on the implementation of the former it could be that it's (on the user's side) virtually indistinguishable from the latter.

 

[wilcoxchar]

While my YT feed is full of paid actors playing the game with glee i found this post and my final thought was whomever is responsible for pushing it out of the door with half of the necessary features missing for a smooth launch should be reprimanded. This is begging to be a "performed under our expectation" side note on the next quarterly report.

P.S. I'm frustrated because I see large potential in this title despite my criticism and I want it to succeed. But I can't support something I realise is aiming for mediocrity based on greed or incompetence.

For me, while there are interesting core concepts in Millennia (the ages, the national spirits, domain XP), they really are wasted on a lack of creativity and willingness to lean into those concepts from a basic design standpoint, and then using flawed base level design decisions to justify limiting them even more, I hoped it would look better once we got a look at the later ages but unfortunately it really looks like just more of the same, very minimal changes to gameplay. And it's very telling that for all the talk about how the ages are equally valid and variant and crisis ages aren't good or bad, in the videos what you see is exactly what you expect from good and bad ages: players actively avoiding the crisis ages and pretty exclusively trying to get the variant ages. Just seems like a ton of wasted potential from the ground up in the design choices.

 

[MadCow94]

I've already pre-ordered, and I'm unlikely to ever play multiplayer (though it's possible), but the combination of lack of simultaneous multiplayer and lack of modding tools makes me a sad panda.

 

[Imp0815]

For me, while there are interesting core concepts in Millennia (the ages, the national spirits, domain XP), they really are wasted on a lack of creativity and willingness to lean into those concepts from a basic design standpoint, and then using flawed base level design decisions to justify limiting them even more, I hoped it would look better once we got a look at the later ages but unfortunately it really looks like just more of the same, very minimal changes to gameplay. And it's very telling that for all the talk about how the ages are equally valid and variant and crisis ages aren't good or bad, in the videos what you see is exactly what you expect from good and bad ages: players actively avoiding the crisis ages and pretty exclusively trying to get the variant ages. Just seems like a ton of wasted potential from the ground up in the design choices.

I agree somewhat, i hope they will (re)introduce more equality between the ages by giving each, even the default ages, a pre requirement so it doesn't feel like avoiding some but actively reaching certain ages.
I feel like it far too often reaches the default ages because the Empire with the most research will reach them before the pre requirements for the interesting ages are met. I also think empires are pushing the default ages to actively avoid the others, which is super easy as it does only require research. But maybe that is the design idea. Which does feel contradicting to the idea of having global ages that need adjustment when all it requires to avoid the interesting ages is just a tech-rush.

 

[Starfury]

I've already pre-ordered, and I'm unlikely to ever play multiplayer (though it's possible), but the combination of lack of simultaneous multiplayer and lack of modding tools makes me a sad panda.

For me its not even the missing features themselves that are the main problem.

The fact that something most people would've taken for granted (simultaneous multiplayer) is missing at release is alarming to me. Why didn't they have time to implement this during their development cycle? What else didn't they have time for?

It's definitely worrying enough for me to give the game a wide berth at launch.

 

[Roxolan]

in the videos what you see is exactly what you expect from good and bad ages: players actively avoiding the crisis ages and pretty exclusively trying to get the variant ages. Just seems like a ton of wasted potential from the ground up in the design choices.

Those are early-access streamers trying out the new toys. They often don't even know what the ages do. They're definitely not making optimized decisions.

There's no reason to avoid crisis ages in particular, AFAICT, since they affect everyone. It's all about which techs benefit you more than your rivals. Historical ages do cost more research so it's probably good to avoid them when possible? [e: not even, since the extra cost also applies to everyone.]

 

[wilcoxchar]

Those are early-access streamers trying out the new toys. They often don't even know what the ages do. They're definitely not making optimized decisions.

There's no reason to avoid crisis ages in particular, AFAICT, since they affect everyone. It's all about which techs benefit you more than your rivals. Historical ages do cost more research so it's probably good to avoid them when possible?

But that's partially the thing, since they're early access streamers and not playing optimally and are playing to show off different aspects of the game, you'd think they would actually be going into crisis ages to show their gameplay if it was actually something interesting and fun. But they're not. So it's very telling that even if you're not playing optimally you're going to just always be trying to avoid crisis ages and always trying to get the variant ages over historical ones. It just demonstrates again how fundamentally flawed the design is around how they're implementing the ages system, like the facts that you can't string alternate ages together or that historical ages can't have prerequisites like other ages because of a weird thing about the game not liking it when you have no techs to research, another example of the flawed base design concepts.

 

[Violent Hugs]

no simultaneous turns in multiplayer? tell me whats the average age of your demographic/playerbase and ask yourself who has time to play anything but simultaneous turns in multiplayer? we got jobs and lives to attend to you know? expecting 4x players to play multiplayer 'hotseat' with normal turns is a fever dream.

guess we'll not be getting the game till that's available (which most likely will happen a lot later along the line when the game is on discount so i guess its a win?

 

[Bankipriel]

But that's partially the thing, since they're early access streamers and not playing optimally and are playing to show off different aspects of the game, you'd think they would actually be going into crisis ages to show their gameplay if it was actually something interesting and fun. But they're not. So it's very telling that even if you're not playing optimally you're going to just always be trying to avoid crisis ages and always trying to get the variant ages over historical ones. It just demonstrates again how fundamentally flawed the design is around how they're implementing the ages system, like the facts that you can't string alternate ages together or that historical ages can't have prerequisites like other ages because of a weird thing about the game not liking it when you have no techs to research, another example of the flawed base design concepts.

I think you're way off base. Every stream I've seen has been blitzing for tech and barely skating by with enough military to *just* survive, however, a military focused empire could simply engage with chaos instead of buying its way out of every event with gold (as the streamers do), generating staggering amounts of military XP, and swamping the enemy empires with barbarians and uprisings, not to mention maxing veterancy and high tier leaders. There is IMHO a clearly visible path toward military victory by embracing military National Spirits, crisis ages, and utilizing chaos to one's own advantage---I've heard some people even consider it a "ladder"

Also, a screenshot of Age of Visitors shows crazy alien tech, weapons, mechs or power tanks, and alien energy sources, so it's not at all clear yet what kind of advantages one might be able to reap by overcoming a Crisis Age. As @Roxolon said, it's way too early to say for sure that Crisis Ages are fundamentally worse than vanilla or alternate Ages. It looks like they could be much better or much worse, depending on how one has built their empire.

I think once they get simultaneous multiplayer up and running, Crisis Ages will also be a way to punish players too focused on tech and culture who have neglected their military. Ursa Ryan's stream of beating "Grandmaster" difficulty was in some ways very impressive, but his military and vassals would not have survived if other empires had been slamming him with even half the global chaos events he paid his way to avoid. I also think the technology cost is way too low, and it allowed the streamers to avoid engaging with a lot of game systems by simply pushing to the next age and overwhelming the AI empires with focused mechanics that seemed (again IMHO) to work because the tech tree seemed to take them about 20 turns per Age (instead of the 50 the devs said they were aiming at) and because they were never under serious, sustained military pressure from without (AI aggression) or internal revolts (they seemed to completely bypass chaos events as did the Ai empires, which meant military positioning was never a strategic consideration after the warring with neighbors in the first three Ages), meaning a vast majority of the games were spent at peace or in brief wars of aggression.

I also don't think we know enough about the difference between historical Ages and Variant Ages to say that Variants are always better. The Age of Heroes looked cool, but I'm not convinced it's unilaterally "better," as I haven't seen a clear comparison of what buildings and abilities are available in the parallel historical and Crisis Ages.