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Millennia - Steam Next Fest Demo | Live Now!

Hello there! Community Manager Katten here, today we give access to the Steam Next Fest Demo! So this Diary is to get you caught up to speed to the question; What is Millennia?


Millennia is a revolutionary turn-based 4X game developed by C Prompt Games, a team of experienced strategy developers known for their work on the Age of Empires franchise. This game introduces innovative elements such as alternate history, custom tech trees, and a focus on both economy and combat.

Millennia stands out by redefining the 4X genre with dynamic historical progression, where your decisions shape the unfolding of different historical ages. Each age brings its own distinct gameplay challenges and opportunities, taking players on a journey from ancient civilizations to futuristic societies. With every choice holding significance, Millennia offers unparalleled replayability and strategic depth with its unique core pillars, so let's dive in!

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A key innovation in Millennia is the Age-based design.

There are ten Ages in a “normal” game, ranging from the Age of Stone to the near-future. Each Age provides the experience of the Age – the Age of Iron has Iron Age technologies, Iron Age units, Iron Age buildings, and rules specific to the conditions of the Iron Age.

If you keep things within “normal” parameters, you might progress through 10 “standard” Ages, each delivering historical gameplay.

However, Millennia allows history to go off the rails. If you make some different decisions, you might steer your timeline into alternate Ages. These Ages are still historically themed, but explore some “what-if” territory. The Age of Aether is based on a history where the internal combustion engine doesn’t come about as soon as it did and steam-power develops further. The Age of Blood is based on a war raging out of control and spreading across the world.

Ultimately, most of the things you have to use in a game come from the Ages, so you can end up with very, very different scenarios depending on the specific history and alternate history your timeline moves through.

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Think of National Spirits as “things a nation can be famous for.” Are your people known as great engineers? Is your nation seen as the center of global banking? Does the world fear your unbeatable warriors?

Mechanically, each National Spirit is a technology tree. You get to pick National Spirits from a set at different points in a game. Doing so makes the technologies of the National Spirit available to you.

Through National Spirits, you get to customize your Nation, to decide what you will be famous for, during the course of the game.
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Economy and combat are key to Millennia.

As you lead your nation, you’ll need to design the right economy for your strategy. Not all resources in Millennia are the same. Cutting down trees for Logs can provide Production, much like mining Copper. However, with the right Improvements, you can create a chain where your Logs are made into Paper which is then made into Books, getting you Knowledge (or Religion or Government or Wealth) instead of Production.

Some resources are (like the Logs) broad and capable of steering into a variety of different Goods while others are more focused and less flexible. How you decide to structure your economy has an impact on your capabilities and your ability to respond to changing conditions.

One of the places this is felt is with combat. The best military for you to field changes based on your economic design (and the Age you have moved into and the National Spirits you have selected). You might be better off with more Production to train troops, or more Warfare Domain to support them, or more Wealth to pay the upkeep on expensive elite troops.

Beyond the economy, combat offers its own interesting decisions. Different types of Units have different capabilities. You design your Armies by assigning multiple Units to fight together, allowing you to create different Army types for different needs.

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Here are also our series of feature breakdown videos that explain in more detail each system!

- Core Pillars
- National Spirits
- Economy
- Alternate History
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Combat

Here is also our list of Developer Diaries so far released, so if you want to get into the nitty gritty detail, let loose!

- Millennia | Developer Diaries List

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Now onto what you have been waiting for, the Demo. In the Demo, you have access to playing all the way up and during the 3rd age, within a 60 turn limiter. The Demo is Singleplayer only, but Multiplayer will be available at release.

The Demo is only available in English, with additional languages at release.

During the Demo, you might encounter bugs or find areas to give feedback upon. If that is the case, we would highly appreciate it if you would tell us about it on the Forum!

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Now before I let you go, we have a Giveaway starting RIGHT NOW! Join our Discord below and follow the steps in the Giveaways chat for your chance to win a fancy Paradox Mug!

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Remember, if you want to keep up to date with all things Millennia, follow us on our Socials!

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Wishlist Now on Steam!
 
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Many thanks for the demo! They're always much appreciated! Are you planning to keep the demo running after the Next Fest (and after launch)? I reckon many would find it helpful :)

I just finished a playthrough to turn 60. I restarted after ~20 turns in my first playthrough after I understood some things better (and lowered the difficulty). I think I've got a slightly better grasp of things now, at least of the very basics. I won't tread in details, but so far I've had lots of fun and I would've liked to have a couple more turns to finish some things at the end. Looking forward to the final product!
 
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I played through the demo twice. I thought it was rather enjoyable. I really like the idea of the chain of goods and the idea of upgrading them as you go along. I'm not sure how long the game keeps that going on as we only get 60 turns, but it seems really nifty. If this was being developed by Paradox and I was more or less guaranteed that it would get at least a couple of years of patches I would buy it day one. However, it is only being published by Paradox so I am terrified that it will be cancelled almost immediately. After Star Trek Infinite, Lamplighters League, Empire of Sin, no way will I buy this on launch. If it is still being supported a year after release, I'll probably grab it.
 
Overall quite enjoyed it. Loving the chain of goods! Public impovements are nice, loved them in Call to Power, love them here. And yes, the UI is very poor for this but I kind of don't care when the underlying gameplay is this satisfying. Also love the absense of improvement adjacency bonuses, quite bored with those in recent civ clones.
Domain XP and national spirits seem original and fresh. Domain powers feel strange though, mostly useful to get units but I hate "summoning" units this way. The only positive is that this way units don't compete with buildings but would have liked them to be somehow connected to cities and not to national mana - e.g. via separate production pools for units and buildings.
Neutral on the eras, they're ok but aside from adding some flavor they feel like a regular tech tree. Which isn't bad, but hardly hype-worthy.
Unit movement on the map is a problem though, mainly due to the number of units. Armies and leaders are a nice touch, landmark hunting is a bit annoying but the real problem is rather the amount of player time this side of the game takes.
 
Some balancing tips.
1. Is the main gold gameplay overly limited? The productivity value ratio of gold coins in the production sequence is 10:1, and the productivity ratio of resource gold coins produced by the plot is close to 1.5:1, resulting in a production status much higher than that of gold coins. Wanted to enhance the early gold gameplay.
2. Some options in the Spirit Tree suggest a balance adjustment, the raider is too powerful in the game. In addition, raider buff is not a lot of military strength improvement throughout the game, and warfare xp is easy to get, why can this national spirit tree get buff while sending two soldiers? Moreover, the raider was more effective than any other military of its time. This clearly requires a balancing act.
From the Demo point of view, the numerical design of this game is quite conservative, key resources such as technology value is basically cumulative in the early stage, there is little percentage buff, every bit of improvement is valuable, and more improvement and negative feedback, such as too much annexation of the city will increase the cost, which is very good and reasonable, but I hope that there will be no universal or supermodel choice.
 
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