Point of view: How to make the game even better

[Orach]

I've tried a lot of recent 4x strategies, civilization, old world, endless legend.
I didn't believe I could find an interesting and deep game. But Millennia surprised me... The game has great logical and realistic mechanics, moving away from the destructive 1upt approach.
The game captivated me like Civilization 4, which I consider to be the best 4x game. It was very interesting to learn these mechanics. The developers have done a great job. But the game is very linear, each next game is similar to the previous one...
Last year, I played 900 hours of Civ4. All these games were on the same type and size of map, with the same number of opponents. But each new game was unique in terms of finding the best development strategies. Sid Meier said about a strategy game needing meaningful decisions. And although Civ4 does not have such deep mechanics as Millennia, it allows you to make more meaningful choices. Different types of landscapes and the availability of certain resources greatly influence the choice of the path to dominance - whether to win the scientific race and then conquer your opponents with the best units, or to have a production advantage and try to prevent your opponents from overtaking you technologically with the power of the army.... Cultural influence and espionage add opportunities to influence other civilizations, but come at a price. Diplomacy is really important in the game. A few successful deals can also have a big impact on your development. The spread of different religions among civilizations forms geopolitical alliances, whose confrontations eventually escalate into world wars. Often, in order to have good relations with one state, you need to worsen relations with another state, which is very similar to the real world, and therefore fantastically interesting.
Most recent games of the genre replace the search for meaningful solutions with excessive micro-management, events and quests that have little impact on anything but create the illusion of decision-making, the illusion of a game…
Yes, the latest games in the Civilization series are selling well - but it has a brand and money. To get a brand and money, you first need to make a quality game. And now it is harder than 20 years ago, but it is possible. So if the developers of Millennia have decided to go this way, I wish them success.

 

[Red Death]

So, what do you think the game can improve?

 

[Orach]

I'm not a game designer, I'm just sharing my impressions and possible directions on how to improve it, but I don't have any ready-made recipes, just some concepts...

We use general diplomacy points to carry out diplomatic missions, it would be more logical to have a pool of diplomatic points for each empire.
Diplomatic points increment = Diplomatic Opinion(DO)/5 +5
If Diplomatic Opinion(DO) is less than 0, you generate +5 diplomacy points per turn with this state.
If DO = 20, then +9. If a war is declared, the points are reset and the generation starts from 0. And you will not be able to offer a peace agreement until you have accumulated enough points. If you have good relations with the empire, you have a good increase in points - you can carry out missions more often... This will allow you to abandon the artificial restriction of making diplomatic missions every n turns. These points could be used for spy missions.
Although it's a strategy game, it's still a game, and graphics and other aesthetic aspects that are not directly related to game mechanics also matter and cause emotional attachment to the game. For example, in civ3, you could improve your palace for certain achievements. This did not affect the game mechanics in any way, but added immersion to the atmosphere... Diplomacy in the game is essentially Excel. And it requires a certain amount of entertainment, whether through the addition of characters or, for example, in the form of a card game…
We gave up strategic resources as a civilization, okay, so be it... But we already have a Foundry that supplies spears to the city - so why not make the condition for building spearmen and pikemen - the presence of spears in the city? (The same with Rifles, Missiles) It would make sense to destroy mines and foundries in the region during wars to weaken the opponent. It would also promote the specialization of regions, and add new meaning to the internal export of goods. This would make the gameplay more variable.
In the last 4x games, the progress of science has nothing to do with the economic capacity of the state. In civ3,4, this is the core of the game, the key mechanic around which the rest are built. Your state produces money, which is spent mainly on technological development and military maintenance, but also on the maintenance of regions, on meeting the needs of the population, on the production of culture and espionage. These are the “meaningful decisions” that Sid Meyer talked about. It is realistic, logical, creates variability and replayability. But everyone wants to do it like in Civ 5,6 (and 7, probably), which in my opinion are more city planner simulators with strategy elements.This is also a direction in which gameplay variability can be improved...