Millennia

tl;dr - Not recommended at full price, but a fun diversion at a discount The game offers some interesting ideas but in the end, if you're looking for a 4X fix, there are better options. I found the graphics decent, particularly the geography. Unit graphics, especially in the battle viewer, are more lacking, and their animations especially so. Watching a three-deck ship of the line bouncing like a bathtub toy when hit in battle, or a knight charging across the screen while his horse's legs remain still are somewhat immersion breaking. I like the Ages mechanic. it offers a good way to put together broader changes in society with the advance of time and technology without making everything ever done a separate individual technology. I particularly liked that barbarians go away after reaching a particular age. The variant ages are an interesting idea, allowing small changes to gameplay. The downside of the ages is that technologies are unlocked by the ages and have no other prerequisite, leading to some definitely ahistorical progressions. Different unit types are a good idea but they didn't actually have a big impact on my own play style. I mixed my armies and navies up a little and otherwise forgot about it. Your opponents are pretty interchangeable. The difference between China and Rome and Canada are just the colors of their banners. I found domestic trade routes very frustrating. A region can only trade with one other region, regardless of how many different trades they can have, which means you can't easily establish a region to, for example, supply oil to the rest of your empire. Or be the equivalent of Pennsylvania and send steel to Detroit and New York for their industry. This is perhaps the biggest failure in my opinion. I found vassals to be a so-so idea. they provide passive income to you but they also don't defend themselves. All cities do have militia to defend themselves even if there are no units garrisoning them, but vassals can't create additional defensive units. They'll also leave pillaged improvements unrepaired, even when they're able to build new ones. The urge was often strong to take over a vassal, fix their crap, and then release them again just so I didn't have to see burning farms turn after turn. No aircraft carriers in the game. WTF? The only mobile defense against enemy bombers on land or sea is providing fighter cover. Making outposts is certainly a way to extend the reach of your air force but many times I had to advance without air cover for my armies or navies. Late game performance is frustratingly slow. I set my regions to work on a colony ship and then spent the last twenty or thirty turns just clicking 'end turn' and waiting 30 seconds so I could click it again. My system is less than recommended, though, being a Ryzen 3600X with 36GB RAM.

TL;DR: The game is ridiculously fragile. It's a great game with a nifty concept, good UI and strong one-more-turn-ism, but it crashes frequently. I love this game. I'd cheerfully give it a glowing review, extol it's virtues and sing it's praises from the roof. Except it won't keep running. I can hear you wondering. [i]If it's so bad, how'd you get to 20+ hours of playing time?[/i] I'm glad you asked. The first hour or so was figuring out my a$$ from my elbow. I took a break, watched a bunch of videos and managed another hour or so before I went to bed. The next day I got about 90 minutes in and was having a ball before it crashed. I reloaded several times, but couldn't make it more than two or three turns before it'd die again. [i]Okay, maybe it's me.[/i] I updated my graphics drivers. No change. I verified the game files through Steam. That reloaded some of the Steam Common something (libraries?). Cool, I bet that got it. Nope. I tried a bunch more things along those lines including spelunking through the event viewer, but nothing worked. I uninstalled and reinstalled Millennia, started a new game, got almost two hours in.... And SPLAT! Reload gets me two turns before it dies again. I tried different scenarios, but no matter what I did, it'd die within two turns. I gave up and walked away in frustration. That evening I realized it wasn't me. I've had this computer 18 months. It's solid. I've played dozens of other games on it and it's been a rock. [i]I know! Turn down the graphics and go to a smaller map![/i] I did those in series. I had to restart with a new map to change the size and I had the same experience as before: I made it most of two hours, was having a ball and then it died. And it wouldn't play more than three turns (usually one or two) off the last save file. [i]Okay, fine. Crank the autosave up and try again.[/i] The same thing happened. I started a new map, played for a couple hours and the game crashed. I kept reloading autosaves and got to a point where I could rarely make it through one turn. [i]That's sounding suspiciously like a corrupted save file.[/i] I'd been doing web searches by this point. Lots of people have had problems with corrupted save files, though most of the reports are from around game launch. I also noticed the support people were blaming the crashes on anybody other than the game developer. It's using a TV rather than a video monitor. It's the cordless mouse giving low power notifications. Venus was in retrograde. A cow passed gas three counties over. You get the idea. [i]So where am I with the game?[/i] I'm still playing it, though I don't recommend it. I'm sure I'll get tired of manually saving and move on to greener pastures. In my experience, their autosave generates corrupt saves. I'm sure the manual version calls the same code, but I pick quiet moments and that works better. I still get corrupted saves and it takes me an hour to realize because sometimes the game will load a clean save and still die within a couple turns. When it does that three times in a row, I delete the save and try an older one. As a further argument against buying this game, it's $40 and published by Paradox. They're doing their usual DLC barrage. If the game wasn't so fragile, I'd have probably picked up one or two during a sale after getting a hundred hours in, rinsed and repeated.

Genuinely underrated. I personally find Millennia better than the civ series, as your nation isn't static, but gradually developing over time, as is in-game with the national spirits. The Ages mechanic also adds a level of replayability as you'll have to deal either with extraordinary circumstances or a crisis which your nation has to weather. I know that the "countries" are pure flavor and have little gameplay impact, but I think it's fine that way plus you can rp with national spirits There is a lot to improve, and I really hope this does not get abandoned and that the devs continue working on the game. It has a lot of potential

Without a specific nation with it's own way to play the game. There is no reason to play any of these Civ clones. The only reason I play Civ so much is because each civ gives it's own strengths and weaknesses. Otherwise I'm just playing a loop game with no real objectives.

Can't recommend. I thought being a fan of various Paradox games as well as Civ, this would right up my alley. I was wrong. There are some interesting concepts implemented, but too many systems are barebones or just bad. For example: - Bad UI - Terrible movement system. Somehow this manages to be even worse than Civ 5/6. You can't pass/move through other units, neither your own nor of friendly forces. Other nation has a scout on the road outside of your capital? Bad luck, any units wanting to move to the front will need to find a way around it. Want to retreat a damaged unit/army? Better hope there's an adjacent tile leading back that doesn't have a reinforcement army. Makes no sense. - Probably the worst diplomacy I've seen in a 4x game. There is only 1 relevant factor: how much points your nation has overall. If you've more points than another nation, they'll accept almost any proposal. If you're weaker, they'll accept almost no proposal. The only other relevant modifier is a negative 'cities are too close', which is 100% of the time due to an AI forward-settling you. Even if you can create an alliance by being stronger than them, they'll drop it in some turns without any explanation given. - You can have a good 4x without diplomacy but then combat must be great. That isn't the case here. While there's a half-decent army feature, due the movement issues mentioned above, warfare is just a pain. Moreover the AI is horrible, even for a 4x game. They'll declare war on you, kill themselves on your defense, and this will go on forever. The only way they'll accept peace is if you manage to end up significantly stronger than them, otherwise they'll happily spend centuries flinging troops your way to be killed without doing any damage. - I don't really care about this, but graphics are terribly outdated, they would've been outdated 15 years ago. I appreciate what the devs attempted and there are some good things hidden behind the bad. But as this is 1 year after release, and they've found the effort to release 2 DLCs but not fix these absolutely basic things, can't recommend.

The game has some interesting mechanics, but it's not a finished game and given that the last update came in December 2024 I think the developers have stopped supporting it. The most severe lacks (apart from the "old school graphics") are - the combat screen and lack of tactical depth (apart from the ridiculous graphics) - the win conditions: you can dominate the game and still need to keep on playing for hours to actually win and end the game. If this game is supported and improved in the future it might become OK, especially given that some of the mechanics made it into Civ 7 as well - for better or worse... (most apparent: lack of builders, overbuilding tile improvements, cities can have a different status in your empire, etc.)

After playing Civ7 I have to say I may have judged this game to harshly. Underneath the bad presentation there actually is a satisfying game.

if you want a good strategy game, civ 5 is better and cheaper. as long as the game wont let me play endless, then it's a no-go for me

They abandoned itttt :(