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pokiehl
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Review embargo is over today and it's not looking good.
Even the multitude of YouTubers who Paradox has paid for months to promote the game aren't really fawning over it. IGN gave it a 5/10: https://www.ign.com/articles/millennia-review
I thought the inability to clear forests until the information age is baffling, but then the reviewer described how Knowledge, Education and Specialists are three entirely different things. So you can have the most educated city in the world but lack engineers, or be scientifically advanced but suffer from a crippling lack of educational facilities, as those three things require three separate building chains. Which occupy space - and you can't clear forests to get more space for them
"The turn limit is 500, and hitting the “End Turn” button for Turn 499 on a “Huge” size map took a whopping one minute and 40 seconds to resolve on my Ryzen 7 3700X" - Jesus Christ how is it possible with that mediocre graphics!
"But with no difference in architecture or base units and no talking leaders, the flavor between nations is overall very lacking. It might surprise you that these white guys in fantasy barbarian armor are supposed to be Zulu."
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InsidiousMage
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I don't think I've ever seen a more brutal line in a review than this. . .
But, I'm not surprised Millennia is getting bad reviews. It always seemed like the devs started with "Let's make a Civ competitor" and then never made it much farther than that. Like, from what I've seen of Ages (including game play videos), they just seem like more a involved version of ages from Civ6, not some kind of evolutionary leap forward that you'd either need or want from a competitor to a major franchise. Also, just a kind of random observation, but the game seems almost entirely devoid of personality.
Boris Gudenuf
Deity
Not 'seems', it IS entirely devoid of personality, and that's by design.
They set out to give the gamer an ntirely Blank Slate to build his/her own Civilization. But a Blank Slate means just that: no Leaders, no specialized architecture or units or social/civic policies - everything is Up For Grabs during the game - including the progression of Eras/Ages. I applaud the idea, but I also found it incredibly boring after the first couple of games in their Demo: random units from randomly-named Civs/Factions whose only point of difference is the color, and those are all Primary: not even the 'subtlety' of Bavarian blue, Spartan dark red or British 'redcoats'.
What they forgot to include - and they are by no means alone in this - is some nod to the fact that whenever you start a game - nominally 10,000 or 4000 or 15,000 BCE, you are never starting at a truely blank Beginning. The little or not-so-little groups of people wandering the map at the Start have been doing so for 10s or 100s of thousands of years, and the map, climate, biome, whateveryioucallit has caused them to modify how they do things, and think about things: faction-specific 'uniques' are not random, they are a product of many factors and many centuries so that they appear random to the casual observer (us gamers). The only way to make Millennia's Blank Slate Start work would be to push the start date back several million years or so and make the starting technology Walk Upright for everybody, but that makes for a very long, very dull First Era indeed.
The best thing about Millennia (at least based on the Demo games) is that it is another set of examples of What Not To Do in Civ VII game design. I confess I've toyed with the idea of a Blank Slate Start all the way back to Civ V: some system where you 'earn' all your Uniques as you progress through the game. Now I know from Grim Demonstration how badly that works without a careful consideration of what everybody Starts With, no matter when they start. In short, there are reasons the Calusa, Chinese, and Nafutians did things differently and thought about things differently, and some of those are so basic to who and where they were that they cannot be left to chance or choice du ring the play of the game. The problem is to identify the Basic Identifiers from the Adopted As They Went to incorporate appropriate 'starting sets' for each Civ/Faction, not remove all sets of ever ything to give everyone an 'even start'.
The other bit of Good News is that the new 4X offerings in the past two years and this year are offering us a lot of demonstrations of both what works and what doesn't - mostly What Doesn't. We know from Humankind that progressive selection of entirely new sets of uniques in new Civilizations simply confuses. We also know from Humankind that gamers do not easily identify with a personal 'Avatar' when that personal construct is also supposed to represent a Civ constructed while playing the game: the Disconnect is simply too large. I also learned that Civ VI's On The Map philosophy of design has spoiled me: Humankind's twice as many buildings to construct in the city and no visible buildings on the map other than Districts and Wonders made it a major and time-consuming Pain to figure out what I should build in a city next. I was rarely in a good mood by the time I finished any game of Humankind.
On the other hand, I really liked Humankind's and Old World's still art vignettes for the Tech Tree and Constructables: much more iconic than Civ's icons without being an animated resource sink, and I note that Millennia is going this route of Really Nice Still Art for much of their UI also: Civ VII take note, when well done it's a lot more pleasing to look at than a bland line drawing Icon.
InsidiousMage
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Sorry, I'm not taking about the blank nations and so on but the aesthetic and generally feel of the game. It has a very "default late 90s/early 2000s game" template kind of feel to it. Like, Old World's aesthetic has a very, well, old world feel to it while, again, Millennia's doesn't have really have any kind of personality beyond "functional," which is always very boring, at a minimum.
Boris Gudenuf
Deity
Mea Culpa. The utter blandness of the Civs/Factions in the Demo simply overwhelmed any other impression I had of the game. Hopefully, in later ages of the game they get more distinct, but the Demo's limit of 60 turns did not in any way give me a feeling of "One more turn" either.
Naokaukodem
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Whereas I'm *far* more ignorant than you about History, I do not agree. If anything, blank civs would make multiplayer a lot less cheesy. I remember playing an archipelago map in multiplayer where my neighbour had Brazil. He built up a little culture pool just to get this insane battleship. I had a handful of ships, both melee and ranged, like frigates and the like, and he one shot my entire army in one turn and I didn't even see the tail of his battleships... that was wasted time. Another time Columbia declared war on me, he hadz 7 movement points horsemen that could pillage each of my improvements. This was insane. It's a way to learn the "game", but kind of a cheesy one IMO.
For solo, of course some civs have really early unique units. Things is, they often are anachronistic like the Shoshone scout in Civ5. Unique archers for Amanitore in Civ6 are not unique slingers, so one can imagine there is time from there to adopt a unique archer unit. By the way, uniques are here to represent, illustrate the History of a civ, not its reality in the details, and allow for what's similar to a militaristic golden age or a particular illustration of their deeds. Of course, every civ should have its own unique SET of units, of ALL units, because culture is a thing. I think that by going to your reasonment, this might be a much more high concern than blank civs.
pokiehl
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Any pre-colonial New World civs are going to have "anachronistic" unique components.
Having EVERYTHING be unique for every civ is just plain not feasible. Unique unit sets work on games with highly limited timeframes, like Total War for instance, but it's completely impossible for Civ.
Naokaukodem
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I know, that was just for the example.
I know. I was just explaining that what makes a civ particularity is not the "miracles" their uniques accomplish, but the way they illustrated themselves. (it can be from "that" or "this" time) And that each civ has its uniques, like languages, habits, clothes... and that's not because one civ archer has different clothes than another one that it's better or inferior.
Sherlock
Just one more turn...
Back to Caesar 3.
Boris Gudenuf
Deity
Up until a few months ago, I would have agreed with almost everything here: start blank, 'develop' all your Unique attributes (units, buildings, districts, even social/civic policies) as you play: a 'Civ-Building Toolkit'
I still think something resembling parts of that could be done, but not the way Millennia does it.
First, the game assumes that no one has done anything before the start date of the game except develop some very basic unit types. This is simply Fantasy.
Second, the 'uniques' you can develop during the game are 'generic uniques' not peculiar to your Faction/Civ, but to any civ or faction that follows the same general path of National Spirits, Technologies and/or Governments. The result, frankly, is a pretty bland set of uniques to play with or against - some very powerful, some not so much, but none that I found fascinating or interesting after the first play or two of the game. As stated, I hope that later Ages/turns introduce more really unique variety into the game, because it simply wasn't apparent (at least to me) in the Demo's first 60 turns.
To be completely honest with Millennia, many attributes identified as 'unique' to some group or the other since 4000 (or 10,000) BCE would be really hard to fit into a Development model: to use Amanitore in your post as a quick example, what made her Nubians develop exceptional archery skills, and not the Egyptians living just down river from her? The first thing I discovered about trying to put together a 'development model' for any set of uniques is that it is Damn Hard and requires a huge amount of detailed research into all the factors that potentially went into the original development - and Potentially deserves to be capitalized because there is frequently on-going debate among the academic sources about what did cause something to develop here instead of there, or anywhere at all.
As usual, I am convinced that there is a 'sweet spot' between having all of a Civ's Unique attributes presented to you as a package as Civ does - and inevitably, leaving out a bunch of unique attributes in any culture that has been around for more than a few centuries - and having a game system that presents you with a great bundle of unique attributes none of which are that unique but almost all of which have to be scrambled for in any game.
Essentially, a Millennia-type system means at the start of the game you have really no idea exactly what kind of Civ/Faction you are going to wind up playing, since everything is presented as a product of in-game play and you have only marginal control over which Ages, National Spirits, etc you are going to get to acquire throughout the game
Naokaukodem
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Maybe the most educated people in the world are not interested by engineers careers because maybe they are not supported by the state (a part that you control by creating them). Obviously, if you don't build anything for engineers, as educated your city would be, there would be no room for them. You can attract scientific elites without your people being educated. In fact that's the other way around : in Civ6 for example, it is assumed that a campus and a library will attract great scientists, or create them, it is guaranted while in reality this doesn't happen like this. It's a lot more complicated. As to not being able to cut woods until the information era, I see it as the most worrying fact here, but maybe it is to represent the fact that a tribe cannot and do want want to deforest the land ? Until information era is still a bit harsh in my opinion though. But after all, we are in information era and despite the fact that the man has no consideration whatsoever for nature anymore, there is still some good part of Amazonia forest to cut still. So it must require probably some good machines of mass-cutting to deforest, while in Civ you could maybe take care of the amazon forest by the medieval era. Well, there's also the fact that we colonized it "recently" and that the natives were tribes that lived in harmony with it. But whatever the justifications : those are all gameplay mechanics and one probably have to do with them, I probably would do very bad with them or complain and all, but I do not doubt some others could adapt better.but then the reviewer described how Knowledge, Education and Specialists are three entirely different things. So you can have the most educated city in the world but lack engineers, or be scientifically advanced but suffer from a crippling lack of educational facilities, as those three things require three separate building chains. Which occupy space - and you can't clear forests to get more space for them
Maybe that's just legend. And if it's recognized, then we can imagine that their culture would make people exercice with bows as soon as some degree of childhood, or have military traditions that made them use their archery units more efficiently than the egyptians, or against the egyptians or whatever. As a country, they have limited neighbours and maybe it was kind of a shifumi thing, every weapon has its strenghts and weaknesses. Maybe they inherited those traditions from a "great general" that had really an insight about ranged warfare, he was like (in terms of Civ obviously) giving all archers within 2 tiles +10 strenght and when vanishing he gave all ranged units +5 strenght ? All that is about Tradition. Or again, maybe that's just legend and that Nubians archers "happened" to do well in a battle, and became famous that way, and/or they reiterate exploits because they were famous and paralizing the enemies warriors already... you to say, actually.
Boris Gudenuf
Deity
Reputation works on two parties: those who have a reputation - as archers, as warriors, as philosophers, etc - and those who face them. The Nubians may have been no better with a bow than any other group in Africa, but they had a reputation as 'people of the bow' so they themselves expected to do better, and their enemies had to always be aware that the Nubians had a reputation - acquired no matter how - of being very good with a bow and arrows. It affects everybody involved, even if only at the most subtle level.Maybe that's just legend. And if it's recognized, then we can imagine that their culture would make people exercice with bows as soon as some degree of childhood, or have military traditions that made them use their archery units more efficiently than the egyptians, or against the egyptians or whatever. As a country, they have limited neighbours and maybe it was kind of a shifumi thing, every weapon has its strenghts and weaknesses. Maybe they inherited those traditions from a "great general" that had really an insight about ranged warfare, he was like (in terms of Civ obviously) giving all archers within 2 tiles +10 strenght and when vanishing he gave all ranged units +5 strenght ? All that is about Tradition. Or again, maybe that's just legend and that Nubians archers "happened" to do well in a battle, and became famous that way, and/or they reiterate exploits because they were famous and paralizing the enemies warriors already... you to say, actually.
All of which is a long-winded way of saying that the 'trigger' for any Unique Ability among units military or civilian doesn't have to be 'real', just real to the populations involved at the time and place. And that, of course, means that the number of potential 'causes' of Unique Abilities is very much expanded, because they don't all have to start from an actual 'historical' basis: legend will do fine . . .
Naokaukodem
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Yeah... and as legend will do fine, it is impossible to simulate such things in a video game, like it is impossible to give every civ only uniques, how ever it is simulated (it would be basically a simulation of reality, with human and subjective factors, collective and individual, whatever that means for a video game !).
That's why I said, if you want to stick with "reality" (or even historical fantasy, which by itself is a part of reality), and its simulation or emulation, you better stick to civs uniqueness for everything (which is nearly impossible) rather than be preoccupied by blank civs (which is perfectly possible), which are not necessarily totally "blank", because they have to use some flavor of History like basic warriors (with stone axes or clubs, whatever...), archers, etc.
We should try to see what this could bring to us players in terms of gameplay : as already mentionned, blank civs should at least be an option in multiplayer, because, because of uniques, some civs are litteraly broken. As to solo, the most benefit I see about blank civs is less work for arts, or at least more visible one, so the devs can recruit more game designers and less art designers. (under the reserve that their views do not conflict, that might be a major problem and as to why there was room for more artists in the team) I don't think it didn't work in Civ1 or Civ2, where you had respectively the "Militia" unit at start and the "Legion" unit with some early tech. It's the same idea that made elephants based units an option for every civ as long as you had the resource in Civ4. If this was abandonned due to balance, I really don't know why we have so many 'broken' civs in Civ6... except from the economic model of the game that has basically only uniques to propose as DLCs. (along with some marginal modes or scenarios)
As to leaderheads, their only benefit IMO is that they allow an instantaneous recognition of the faction you face off. But that could maybe be done even better by showing up a mini-map with your interlocutor civ in red on this map.
That's why I said, if you want to stick with "reality" (or even historical fantasy, which by itself is a part of reality), and its simulation or emulation, you better stick to civs uniqueness for everything (which is nearly impossible) rather than be preoccupied by blank civs (which is perfectly possible), which are not necessarily totally "blank", because they have to use some flavor of History like basic warriors (with stone axes or clubs, whatever...), archers, etc.
We should try to see what this could bring to us players in terms of gameplay : as already mentionned, blank civs should at least be an option in multiplayer, because, because of uniques, some civs are litteraly broken. As to solo, the most benefit I see about blank civs is less work for arts, or at least more visible one, so the devs can recruit more game designers and less art designers. (under the reserve that their views do not conflict, that might be a major problem and as to why there was room for more artists in the team) I don't think it didn't work in Civ1 or Civ2, where you had respectively the "Militia" unit at start and the "Legion" unit with some early tech. It's the same idea that made elephants based units an option for every civ as long as you had the resource in Civ4. If this was abandonned due to balance, I really don't know why we have so many 'broken' civs in Civ6... except from the economic model of the game that has basically only uniques to propose as DLCs. (along with some marginal modes or scenarios)
As to leaderheads, their only benefit IMO is that they allow an instantaneous recognition of the faction you face off. But that could maybe be done even better by showing up a mini-map with your interlocutor civ in red on this map.
pokiehl
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Eh, the benefit of the 3D animated leaders is that people like them. They add a lot of personality to the game, they’re interesting historical recreations, they contribute to emergent storytelling. They’re fun. Fans aren’t going to want to give them up.
Replacing that with a zoomed-in abstract minimap would go over like a lead balloon. I don’t think that would even be good at “instantaneous recognition” because a minimap is a snapshot of your current game only.
Benevolent Dictator
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Whenever I hear the "We have X at home" meme, it always brings me back to listening to Eddie Murphy specials Raw & Delirious from the 80s on Winamp in the early aughts.
I never see anyone attribute the meme to Murphy though, so I suppose it pre-existed him as well.
Naokaukodem
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Well I'm a fan too and I feel they are just overboard ridiculous and annoying. They do not contribute to emergent storytelling to me, except by seeing them mentionned in forums and Youtube videos, but that's not even storytelling... Fun maybe, like "loving to hate them" or something, but that's it.
If no civ has uniques (except city names, like in Civ1 and Civ2 but without leaders), it would not matter to know who exactly you are facing except its geographical location. By the way there would still be the civ name near the map, so that you can do emergeant storytelling... if being France and facing Toltecs helps. (I'm for the return of Culturally Linked Starting Locations as an option too, and maybe a new one, "Contemporary Culturally Linked Starting Locations" for better storystelling and "recreation of History" Just a name is enough for storytelling, and beside that we have city names uniques too to represent it on the map !)
pokiehl
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I can't agree with this at all. The leaders 100% contribute to emergent storytelling. For example, I remember in Civ 5, I loved having Suleiman on the map because he always allied with me. His jovial greetings gave me a real kick. With his friendliness, he became a real character. In Civ 6, I get a kick out of Kristina calling me a philistine who can't appreciate art.
The point is, their personalities make them characters in the story of our game as much as they are historical figures in real life. It's much easier to anthropomorphize a videogame character who is already human rather than this abstract notion of a civilization itself.
Luckily, if you don't like them, you can just turn animated leaders off and hit "Escape" every time the screens pop up. No big deal for you. But if you take them away, then the rest of us who really enjoy the leaders will have lost something significant.
I just disagree with this "no uniques for any civ" idea entirely. It'd be incredibly boring to me. You complained earlier about how they are unbalanced strategies that you had a bad experience with in multiplayer. Yeah that's unfortunate, but Civ isn't a competitive multiplayer game, so I don't think the devs need to focus on perfectly balancing every faction--that would really be to the detriment of the game and reduce any fun. The vast majority of players love that every civ has its own unique style or flair.
Removing everything from a faction's kit except their name and their city names would result in the financial death of this series. I can't fathom the fun in it at all.
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Boris Gudenuf
Deity
Same here. The animated and cavorting cartoonic 'Leaders' add nothing to my enjoyment of the game after the first 2 - 3 times they yammer at me, and of course the Leader you are 'playing' you never see cavort so Who Cares?
BUT they are both the Iconic Civ game device and also the most useful Recognition Device available (Fun Fact: the Human Face, even a stylized human face like Walmart's Happy Face, is virtually the first thing a human baby's eyes can focus on and recognize - it seems to be one of the very few 'built-in' human characteristics common to all modern humans: that makes a personalized human character the most instantly and universally useful recognition factor for any game or communication between humans. I suspect we will only see Civ abandon the Leaders when they start marketing Civ to Dolphins and Raccoons) so we are stuck with them. At the very least, I wish there was a single button that would 'minimize' the Leaders so they don't interrupt with inane commentary, which is really, really annoying after a few hundred hours of playing time.
The problem with unique-less Civs, as I have come to realize lately after reading several archeologically-based books, is that there is virtually No Such Thing in reality. By the time any group started concentrating people into 'cities' (or at least, Urbanish Settlements, because the early definition of 'city' has to be pretty flexible) they have already developed specific strategies and practices based on their available food to feed the concentration, available building materials to build the concentration, and social and civic practices and policies to manage the concentration. There are hundreds of early city sites that have been excavated to various extents from the coast of China all across Eurasia to the Mediterranean basin, and in Africa and South and Meso American, and almost all of them - even with the relatively limited knowledge we have of them - are different in some particular. As an example, multiple Chinese sites show up from 5000 BCE (approximately) to 1500 BCE when they start becoming recognizably 'Chinese' and they rely on different concentrations and combinations of millet, wheat, rice, seafood, hunting for food, have pottery decorated in a variety of styles, some have central granaries, some individual storage in houses, some have central ceremonial areas, either on special platforms or not - one even has a form of Totem Pole, which would certainly surprise the heck out of most gamers!
In other words, from the earliest City Start Date, there is simply no Unique-less 'Chinese' Civ that can be constructed without sliding into pure Fantasy.
Duplicate that for South, Southeastern, Near Eastern and Central Asian, European, Meso and South American, etc, etc, groups: everybody 'started' from a pre-developed basis that precedes (as far as the archeological types can tell) their settling down and building their first 'city' - or starting their first game.
To quote Kipling:
"There are nine and twenty ways
of constructing Tribal Lays
And each and every one of them is Right!"
- and each and every one of them or at least a fairly large sampling of them, has to be modeled in some way to at least get the Starting Posture somewhat accurate for each group.
What we could do, of course, is start with Un-Named Pre-Urban 'Tribal' Groups and have them develop their 'uniques' based on how far, how long, and where they wander before settling down. Humankind sort of tried this with their Neolithic Start, but frankly, didn't seem to have followed through on its potential: while wandering you could not develop any Civic or Social Policy differences, no new ways of doing things (Pottery, Weaving, Archery and Boating as Technologies all precede the first city-building by thousands of years), not even any new ways of fighting. Which meant that Humankind's 'start' was really a Pre-Start, because nothing much important happened except scouting until you advanced to the first 'Era' and selected a Civ to play based on virtually nothing you had already done.
I think that could have been much, much better done. Have the 'Neolithic' (or Paleolithic) wanderers get a chance to develop some Technologies, some Civic/Social policies, maybe even some special attributes to their religious practices (like, building Gobekli Tepe or one of the early wooden 'Henges' whose remains dot northern Europe) so that the 'choice' of which Civ they become on First City Founding is to some extent determined by what went before and where they wound up. And if you really, really want to play the game's version of the Phoenicians then you'd better 'wander' towards the coast or you may wind up with some very Un-Punic Uniques indeed!
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