Millennia

This was initially going to be a negative review as I'd played this game for a few hours back when it was released and I wasn't impressed by it at all. I started playing Millennia again last week when I gave the Paradox games a quick look through after I did an all achievements run of Surviving Mars, so thought I'd do an all achievements run of this game, which after "59.1 hrs last two weeks" I've achieved. Having played through all the ages and mastered the micromanagement intensive worker placement goods system, I have to say that the game is actually quite good. It did take awhile for me to learn to love the game. I initially had 6.3 hours on record before two weeks ago and I would've gave this game a negative review saying it's terrible and felt pretty good leaving at that. The game definitely takes a slow burn approach to enjoying it's content, as the principle component of it's enjoyment factor is derived from it's non-standard ages. In particular it's variant ages, or punk-verse ages as I like to call them. I normally don't recommend mods in reviews, but the "Ultimate Timelines" mod on the Workshop almost feels mandatory, as it lets the player string variant and even crisis ages together so that you can take them one after another, otherwise you're forced to make a standard pick every other age, which I feel just kills the enjoyment factor of the game. The Heroes variant age almost feels like playing a different game, and the Monuments age is just pure grandeur. Though in my opinion the fun doesn't truly start until the ago of Alchemy when the game introduces literal magic into your civilization, which is also the start of the punk-verse conga line as your cities take on a arcanapunk vibe as you start transmuting gold in to more useful goods such Ethereum and Panacea. Then with the "Ultimate Timelines" mod installed you can either transition from the age of Alchemy to the Age of Aether (Aetherpunk/Steampunk), the age of Atom (Atompunk/Raypunk) or for pure ♥♥♥♥♥ n' giggles you can hear the Call of Cthulhu "Iä! Iä! Cthulhu fhtagn!" and enter the age of The Old Ones and spam Cultists to bring about the end times. In the same vein as age of The Old Ones, there's also age of Visitors where aliens invade the world and you have defend the planet and salvage their technology to reverse engineer your own cool ♥♥♥♥, and age of The Singularity where you fight off an emergent rogue AI and their army of lethal killer Matrix-esque tentacled robots. It seems silly, and it is, but lots of hilarious fun to be had. There's also the age of Wasteland that lets you get all Mad Max-esque post-apocalyptic which much like age of Heroes feels like it could very well be it's own game. Personally though, I much preferred to transition from the age of Aether to the age of Utopia aka the Hydropunk-verse, and while underwater cities were somewhat underwhelming, it was nice just to see some love for the Hydropunk genre as I feel that it's such an underrepresented punk-verse. Then from the age of Utopia transition to the age of Ecology i.e. the age of Solarpunk, and what an amazing age it was, truly glorious and resplendent as the white-green iand improvements really made the map pop with strong Solarpunk visuals. I felt the age of Transcendence was also somewhat underwhelming, especially for one of the final ages, but after age of Ecology I couldn't deny the strong flavour, which feels weird since the transition isn't possible with the "Ultimate Timelines" mod. Age of Departure is basically your standard Civilization Science victory trope, build a spaceship and launch it kind of deal, which isn't too bad, but age of Archangels and age of The Singularity are much more enjoyable. The game also has a secret "true ending" but the unlock conditions were so convoluted that I'm not sure how you could manage it without being a modder searching through the games code. Personally, I used the wiki, though I'm not sure if the wiki info was provided by a modder that discovered it organically, or a Developer that decided to throw the community a bone. In either case, it's 7 achievements with the potential to be extremely frustrating. It's a shame that Paradox chose to abandon the game, still feels like there's a lot of untapped potential here, but I understand why they did it. The games requires several hours of consistent gameplay before players settle into Millennia's playstyle. Except the industry standard is two hours due to the refund window, and even then most people will move on in under an hour if they aren't vibing with the game. It's a little sad, but it is what it is. I hope more folk will give the game a shot, maybe at it's next 90% off sale, as the Millennia experience is definitely worth at least a few quid.