PDX Firefly
Chieftain
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Hello, everyone.
I am Ian Fischer of C Prompt Games, back for another chat about Millennia. This Developer Diary was originally intended to present additional detail about the Ages, but we felt like we had already covered that material in prior Diaries.
Instead, since the release date has been announced, I thought it might be fun to talk a little about this stage of the project, our general development approach, and what we have been working on since the demo.
(Also, being honest, I have been too busy to provide any kind of reasonable build notes for the last few updates, so I liked the idea that, for part of this, I could Dev Diary-ize the build notes and correct that problem….)
Landing the Plane
From a theoretical standpoint, finishing a game is pretty straightforward. The typical practice is that you make a schedule with a chunk of time after everything is done and during this time you plan that nobody on the team has anything assigned to them to build. You then use that block of time to have everyone play their game, find and fix bugs, and polish everything as much as you can.
In practice, you almost never get that perfect chunk of time with nothing to do but test and polish. In fact, you can usually tell when the scheduled period of “nothing” has begun because it’s usually the day when you glance at your inbox and see something like this:
But, even though the scheduled chunk of nothing-assigned polish time is often filled with unexpected chaos, there are different flavors of chaos. I don’t want to curse us – we are not done yet – but Millennia has thus far (happily) enjoyed the mild variety in this phase leading up to release.
Compared to earlier phases of development, life for the team is more focused. We know what is going to be in the launch version of the game and we know when it will need to be done, so perspective shifts from more open-ended discussion about new systems or features to increased attention to completion. In the earlier stages, we spent more time in “hey, I had this idea” conversations and those often ended up with someone putting something in the game later that day. Now, those ideas go into our backlog for later so we can remain focused on tying things off.
While it’s always fun to be in a wide-open creative mode, there’s a lot of enjoyment in the current stage too. There are numerous small issues to address, so if you’re the kind of person that likes crossing things off of your list, you get to do a lot of that. And the list dominates too – unlike early stages of development, everyone is now working on specific items on the punchlist.
Another change in this stage is that the game is no longer a secret. Millennia has been shown to players (in this case played by some) and feedback is coming in. Seeing people having fun playing the early builds and the demo of Millennia is really exciting. It is fuel for the team. I think we were the seventh most-played demo at Next Fest and when we started getting notes that began with things like “so, I’ve played 40 hours of the demo and here’s what I think”, we were all happy.
C Prompt’s Approach
Feedback from the demo players is the latest round of feed but not the first. We make fairly extensive use of external playtesters and have had people playing and giving us feed all through the development of Millennia.
C Prompt is rooted in iterative development approaches. In our experience, the best way to make games is to build the minimum needed to get a skeleton of your idea shambling around, then start the loop of playtest -> feedback -> changes -> playtest.
That means we play our games a lot, from very early stages (the earliest testing of Millennia was more or less a green plane filled with red or white cubes labeled things like “GRAPES” and “HOPLITE”). There are a lot of advantages that come from this approach, but it also introduces a few challenges. For example, the act of looking at and changing a game daily alters your perspective of it. After 1000 hours, it takes considerable effort to see your game with the same perspective you had when you started or from the point of view of a new player.
In the same way, teams can develop a shared perspective on things over a period of time, playing and iterating on the game together.
We have always enjoyed being pretty close with players and found it useful for keeping our perspective on our work. Things have certainly changed over the years, but this is something that has always felt like The Way to us. Back on Age of Kings, at a time when you couldn’t put up a build for people to download, we were burning CDs of the game and freaking mailing them to our beta players.
You find some good things that should have been obvious to you by doing this (in early external tests, we found a bug with building Improvements that was immediately obvious to players but had been invisible to us because we all happened to place our Improvements in the same manner) and you get different feedback than what comes out of internal playtest.
Once the game has become public and more people have been able to play through something like the demo or a larger open beta, the amount of feedback you get increases and conversations between players, which are also valuable to development. Part of our plan for the block of time before release is designed with this in mind – we know early players are going to find things we want to polish or fix, so we plan for that when we lay out our schedules.
From then to Now
So, with the above in mind, with the idea that C Prompt’s focus is now on getting things tied off for a good initial release and that some of our tasks are being informed by beta and demo players, I thought what I would do is grab all of the change notes on our internal system from the point where we made the demo build up to the point where I started writing this.
That looks like this:
That’s maybe a little difficult to read.
I went through those and did my best to make most of what is in there make some kind of sense to someone not on the team. (I also made some notes in there on any of the changes I remembered being called out by beta or demo players, just because people have said they like knowing about those things).
It’s a wall of text but, if you’re into it, please enjoy:
Built and tested a new river delta piece that works better with coastal improvements. Decided we liked the way the original looked more, even with the occasional non-ideal improvement, and saw the old delta complimented in some posts and streams, so reverted.
New roads and ground decals (appear under Improvements, Cities) for each era.
New forest terrain texture.
New mountain texture and blend.
New deep forest terrain texture.
New jungle terrain texture.
New hill terrain texture.
Revised decoration object scale and placement on hills.
New marble Good.
Fixed bug with debris in Combat Viewer.
Made adjustments to terrain flatteners and décor removers used when Improvements are placed.
New Theodosian Walls in Combat Viewer.
Fixed Palisade gate animations.
Completed a pass on almost all Improvement icons. All of these have been polished / revised.
Fixed a bug with roads and bridges not updating correctly in mid to late game.
Finished new trees, replaced old trees.
Added a system for sway and tint on the new trees.
Adjusted the spacing of Units in the Combat Viewer so that some fights are not as packed.
Made optimization passes on much of the art in the game; textures, Units, Buildings, etc.
Fixed a bug with zero cost envoys (mentioned in demo feed).
Completed a pass on all ships in the Combat Viewer; fixed / improved display of naval combat.
Completed a pass on all aircraft in the Combat Viewer; fixed / improved display of air combat, extended the Combat Viewer to better show air combat.
Completed a pass on all ground-to-air in the Combat Viewer; fixed / improved display of anti-air.
Reviewed all of the random maps at all map sizes, adjusted these to have better distributions at all sizes.
Island maps adjusted for better player placement at different sizes and player counts. Hotseat will now reject some bad arrangements (eight player island maps games on a tiny map size).
Found a UI that was still a placeholder UI (hotseat turn start), fixed.
Revised Age requirement strings to be easier to understand.
Fixed an issue related to localized Nation names.
Added new functionality to the ambient sound system; added ability to play second ambient loop, added ability to scale volume based on zoom level, revised the system used to decide what ambient should play, made Towns trigger ambients the same way Capitals do, revised terrain categories so that ambient selection is generally more indicative of what is onscreen, added support for randomization ambient loop when not scrolling.
Added new ambient loops and variants.
Added new functionality to the audio system in Combat Viewer; added ability to play different battlefield sounds at sea or at land, added ability to change battlefield audio by era, added ability to play sounds on a number of new events during combat.
Added new sound effects for the Combat Viewer.
Added, expanded, or fixed sound settings for around 200 Units.
Tested around 200 Units (and defensive structures) in the Combat Viewer, fixing errors (attachments, animations, etc.) along the way.
Made improvements to the AI’s ability to conduct war, particularly in the early Ages. Armies flagged for attack are less likely to get peeled away for other tasks, idle Armies are more likely to be sent to fight, Armies not attacking a Capital will more reliably raze nearby Improvements. (This work was helped by savegames sent in from the community – thanks.)
Fixed some bugs with UI sounds not playing correctly.
Changed Infopedia entries under Misc heading to unlock with tech completion.
Removed National Guard Unit unlock from Dystopia (which has Riot Police).
Made the Biplane Bomber not fly backward.
Robot Submarines no longer load into naval transports.
Naval Units can no longer airlift.
Later Age naval Units now require Harbor instead of Dock to build.
Set missing progressive use cost on Early Sea’s Byblos Boats.
Added sound to the Airlift Ability.
Made Alien Invaders ranged, made aliens shoot lazors.
Updated description for powers that spawn multiple Units to describe specifically what they spawn.
Reduced cost of first Ideal in Mound Builders National Spirit, slightly increased higher tier Ideal cost.
Reduced Mound Builders food reduction Ideal, also reduced Mound’s workable Sanitation slightly.
Buffed Ancient Seafarers Safe Passage Ideal.
Added Barricades and Turret in Combat Viewer.
Changes air overlay to be able to show enemy / friendly / contested airspace.
Changed display of naval Units to only show for water Regions.
Fixed issue with Naturalists reducing the cost of movement in jungle too much.
Changed autosave from the developer-best version (save ‘em all) to a better-for-player-SSDs version (five most recent). Added an options setting for this.
Added animations to Cloud Estate.
Added animation to Aether Improvements.
Added UI sounds to Social Fabric.
Changed Military Base to satisfy the need for a Barracks. Similar change was made to the Royal Training Field so it satisfies the need for a Barracks or Military Base.
Royal Training Field now provides better Combat XP than Military Base when training Units.
Added to the set of things the AI thinks about training or building, adjusted how the AI rates the value of the things it can train or build.
Adjusted Food production (and other Needs) to make it slightly more difficult to maintain high Need satisfaction mid-game and later. Wheat went from 4 to 3, Flour from 8 to 6, Bread from 16 to 10. Fertilized Farm no longer gets an extra worker slot.
Made Supersonic Lancer sound like a jet when it moves instead of using foot movement sound.
Clarified Theologians National Spirit regarding how Divine Inspiration Ideal gives XP based on population.
Fixed powers that spawn Palace, Sacred Palace, New Palace, and World’s Fair so that they do not allow placement when the one-per-Nation buildings have been built.
Adjusted Education Need on buildings in Age 6.
Fixed a bug with using Claim Territory on a Vassal (mentioned in feedback).
Added nested tooltips to several places in Diplomacy.
Fixed a bug with Vassal expansion.
Added Keep in the Combat Viewer, FX, debris.
Made a polish pass on all Culture Power and Domain Power text; presentation and content.
Added unique icons for all three types of Artist.
Added nested links for Region Level and Prosperity.
Fixed a number of issues with undo (several surfaced in player feed).
Can no longer build Improvements in Vassal territory or in another player’s territory.
Adjusted Specialist-related costs. Power Station (and variants) now cost Specialists, Coffee House, most Aether Improvements.
Adjusted overall Knowledge economy.
Adjusted Culture upkeep relative to number of Regions (the amount of Culture required for upkeep scales more aggressively per Region now).
Revised display of Army power on map.
Fixed a bug where the Town Specialization menu was shown when selecting Towns that did not belong to you.
Added effect on Town Specialization menu.
Reduced cost of Stonecutters Ideal in God King National Spirit.
Revised air combat overlay.
Revised expansion overlay.
Fixed expansion overlay to show correctly on first turn of new game or loaded save.
Revised the Charms Improvement.
Made Raiders better after everyone complained that they were too weak (just wanted to see if anyone was reading).
New shaders in the Combat Viewer; made a pass on every terrain, all battlefields have substantially more detail.
Fixed a number of issues with the Combat Viewer camera.
Adjusted décor in all Combat Viewer battlefields.
New Unit Action icons; replaced most of the icons in use here with new portraits.
Found and fixed an issue with National Spirit Legacies using the wrong Domain.
Added some information in hotseat UI for help messages.
Various fixes for hotseat lobby and launch.
Reviewed the AI’s ability to use all of the different powers in the game (Culture Powers, Domain Powers, Unit Abilities, powers derived from different National Spirits or Ages, etc.) and the AI’s ability to make use of the Age rules in different Ages.
Added the ability to use / understand numerous things the AI was not using before, adjusted how the AI prioritizes dealing with all of these.
Found and fixed an issue with display of stats with Units that have Age-scaling bonuses (like Scouts).
Fixed issue with air Units disappearing.
Fixed issues with rebasing air Units.
Changed air Units to circle the location where they are based on the map.
Fixed issues with naval bombardment not applying damage properly.
ESC now closes Improvement Builder (mentioned in player feedback).
Reduced the value of retiring Leaders.
Pass to all content to show percentages instead of decimals where appropriate.
Completed performance improvements to the UI.
Completed performance improvements to display of Goods icons.
Completed performance improvements to world-wrap.
Completed performance improvements to new trees.
Checked on and improved save / load UI performance (after it was pointed out in bug forums).
Changed default graphical settings.
Now adjust décor, tree density with graphical settings.
Tweaked all of the terrains and all of the Improvements, adjusting décor and replacing old trees with new trees.
Completed a design pass and adjustments to Region Level (how you get them, maximum number).
Fixed incorrect Ideal prices in Scholars National Spirit.
Added new functionality to the audio system in Combat Viewer to support different sound events needed for air combat, added and hooked up new sounds.
Added a message at the end of combats to show Victory or Defeat, pulled this after testing (it was too confusing without being able to describe outcomes other than “you won” or “you lost”).
Fixed eliminated Nations so remaining Units are correctly passed over to a neutral AI to task them.
Host Olympics power now has a scaling instead of flat cost.
Fixed Arts and War Social Fabric rewards in Transcendence.
New explosion FX added.
Created new FX to show that something is razed (feed from multiple sources that the old raze FX made the map difficult to read).
Repairing a razed Improvement now correctly removes the raze FX.
Limited sound FX played by raze so that things that cause multiple razings don’t play a multitude of raze sounds.
Fixed Archangel laser targeting tooltip.
Fixed Archangel targeting in hotseat games.
Archangel now requires LOS to target.
Fixed some issues that could occur if won the game on another player’s turn.
Fixed Pop Culture Innovation Events.
Fixed issue where you could be called to war against an eliminated player.
Fixed some issues related to newly created Vassals.
Sound FX added to Peaceful Revolution.
Fixed Oath of Fealty to use the correct card effect.
Added new sound effects to the selection of certain terrain tiles.
Fixed issue where Buddhism icon could get reused in a custom Religion after Buddhism was already founded.
Adjusted placement in Combat Viewer so that large armies with mixed large and small Units are easier to see.
Fixes to allow Combat Viewer to properly close with ESC.
Rogue AI Factory no longer spawns Robot Drone Units.
Fixed issue where AI lost track of transport regions.
Flipped some Age paintings so that text displayed atop these is easier to read.
Decreased Vassal IP income.
Increased raze value.
Colony Ship now takes substantially more to complete.
Removed additional worker slots in Labor Camp.
Updated Age of Departure text to be clear on the amount of resources required for Victory.
Updated the medieval Keep model.
New Olive trees to match new trees.
Added animations to some Improvements, set these up to play when the Improvements are worked.
Adjusted the lighting sets used in Crisis and Variant Ages (issues with this mentioned in various feedback).
Adjusted a lot of tech costs in Age 7 and later.
Added air-to-air missile projectile and FX.
Adjusted Delta Wing Fighter production cost.
Fixed Pop Culture Chaos cards.
Fixed Social Fabric Domain Powers so that they cannot be used when Social Fabric scales are at maximum already.
“Fixed” terraforming power so it cannot be used on settlements.
Updated category of Improvements that use Computers to all be in “Computing” category.
Added death animation for cavalry Units.
Added checks to make sure Vassals do not place Improvements on Landmarks. (Also now correctly prevent Airfields from building on Landmarks.)
Fixed National Spirit Infopedia entries using outdated National Spirit images.
Fixed issue where AI considered some of its Armies “removed” and stopped commanding them.
Warrior Priests Sacrifice now requires 3 Pop Regions.
Utopia Spawn Ocean Settler now requires a target with 2 Pop (and not a Vassal).
Increased Secularism pressure in Age 9 and 10 Variant Ages.
Space Race now requires a Faction to start.
Updated Space Race costs, rewards, stages.
River bonus for Farms was missing from Age 4 and later Farm types, fixed.
Reduced Knowledge gained from Alien Tech.
Robot Soldier attack and defense increased, counter-units bonus reduced.
Review of balance of upgrade lines; adjusted Wealth from Bank line, Knowledge from Institute, Wealth and Ideology from Media, Arts XP from Plaza, Culture and Ideology from Stadium, Arts and Wealth from Theater, War XP from War Camp, Production from Warehouse, Education from Public School, Specialists from Literary Salon, Fountain provides more Sanitation, City Works provides more Production, Crane provides more IP, Increased Stone / Statue throughput of Holy Sculptor.
Fixed issue with not all players seeing revealed Goods in Age of Utopia.
Fixed an issue with Forced March used on harvesting Units like the Bow Hunter.
Removed incorrect bonus on Explorers Guild.
Changed the Computer / Supercomputer Goods chain to be more valuable.
Adjusted Combat Viewer’s display of special lighting.
Added a new close button on Game Log UI.
Fixed targeting issues with the Ocean Settler power.
Changed air model so that air Units that would have been destroyed by losing an Outpost now rebase to nearby locations with capacity.
Fixed palisades not showing near water.
Balance review of Vassal prosperity; reduced the number of places where the Vassal prosperity cap is increased.
The Prospector and Units like the Prospector are now more careful about destroying existing Improvements when used.
AI now does a better job of upgrading its Improvements.
AI no longer builds air Units when it does not have capacity for additional air Units.
Scaled all projectiles shown in the Combat Viewer correctly.
Fixed an issue where the AI incorrectly considered certain tiles as off-limits for building Improvements.
Fixed issue with move arrows showing across the entire map in some cases.
Fixed issue with Archangel Emigration power granting pop to Vassals.
Disabled UI hotkeys that were available in some interfaces where they shouldn’t be.
Clarified the “Promote Miracles” tooltip based on Discord callout.
Production Studio is now limited to one per Region, also moved to Professional Category in Improvements menu.
Clarified how bordering works for Absorb Outpost Culture Powe (mentioned in player feed).
Fixed Human Sacrifice power showing wrong population requirement.
Fixed issues with the megaproject “LAUNCH” button.
Replaced the terrain tiles shown in worker allocation to match current terrain.
Eliminated some clipping issues in the Combat Viewer.
Adjusted prop placement and terrain decals in all Combat Viewer battlefields, added new props.
Added, adjusted Combat Viewer effects.
Added functionality to Combat Viewer for showing vehicles in background; later Age fights show thins like cars driving by.
Created and added a new animated effect for showing Riots in Dystopia.
In the banner-type Army display, adjusted the banners for better visibility.
Removed Install Puppet power from Age of Generals, replaced with a War XP bonus for now.
Increased production cost of Elite Sniper.
Made an initial pass at increasing the value of the unique buildings rewarded by Innovation (mentioned in player feed).
Tactical Insertion can now only be targeted on revealed areas.
Balance pass on Shogunate. Generally increased the base Attack and Defense of Shogun and Samurai.
Improved AIs ability to make use of Shogunate National Spirit, build Daimyos, promote a Shogun.
Improved AIs ability to decide what to produce in its Regions.
Improved the value of the Caravanseai Outpost Improvement in the Spice Merchant National Spirit.
The Trade Network Ideal in Spice Merchant National Spirit now makes Trade Posts free.
Updated text to make clear that Ornithopter scout lasts for one turn only.
Balance pass on Militia. Militia now have some innate defense against Supports like Archer or Crossbow. These are Line type Units and there were cases where there were unintentionally too vulnerable.
Added sounds on numerous Unit Actions.
Reduced Diplomacy XP cost of spawning Envoy.
Increased Wealth value of Paper Good from 3 to 8.
Reduced Unrest Suppression of Hippodrome from 20 to 12.
Increased Logging Camp’s worked Production from 1 to 4.
Changed Raider Pillage Ideal from +50 Attack against Militia to +20%.
Increased Khan’s Pax Mongolica Innovation from 1 to 5 Wealth per Outpost.
Changed Knights of the Round in Chivalry to apply to all Knight-type Units, not only the Knight, also changed buff to additional Defense and Morale.
Changed Immortals Innovation from additional max HP to additional Defense.
Changed Solar Panel Roofing Innovation to target all level 5 Towns.
Increased Communist Innovation from 1 to 4 Production and Ideology.
Added relationship as a factor in difficulty modifiers (other Nations like you less from the start at higher difficulty levels).
Broke up Barbarian Camps and adjusted pieces for better placement on hills.
Fixed wrapping issue in Production UI.
Changed Research UI to show “LOCKED” on Ages that are locked out once a Crisis Age is locked in.
Slight reduction in value to Influence starting bonus.
Fixed the combat odds display to deal correctly with situations where a lot of different air Units could participate in the fight.
Added 1 Knowledge to Physicians Guild.
Fixed some issues with calculating the value of a Treaty correctly.
Adjusted Wealth provided by conquering Towns and Cities.
Adjusted events that care about a specific Age to use the correct current Age.
Increased Rare Earth Good placed on maps, decreased iron somewhat.
Balance pass on archer line (Support type) Units; reduced the bonus these Units have against Line type from 3x Attack to 2.5x Attack.
Balance pass on siege line Units; generally modified the overall balance of siege-type Units (Catapult, Trebuchet, Cannon, Howitzer, etc.) to be less lopsided. Overall, these were intentionally higher Attack / lower Defense, but the scaling was not appropriate and their lack of defense made using them involve a high degree of luck. By increasing their Defense some and reducing Attack for some of them, these remain true to their intended role and don’t evaporate if touched in combat.
Improved AI’s ability to select National Spirit Ideals.
Changed Envoy so that they do not need to wait a turn to Open Negotiations (mentioned in player feed).
Added additional support for showing City Attacks including range display and attack markers (multiple mentions of this system being difficult to read).
Fixed bug with bombers showing targets they cannot bomb as valid.
Fixed issues with the Religion overlay.
Fixed some issues with how we display that upgrades are possible for Improvements on the map.
Fixed numerous tooltip issues including text spilling out of bounds in some places, tooltips appearing under the cursor, tooltips sometimes being unable to lock, tooltips displaying long after they should have gone away.
Fixed issues with combat prediction and display of combat prediction in tooltip.
Fixed issues with Diplomatic treaty tooltips (mentioned in player feed).
Improved AI such that AI takes Chaos into consideration as part of Diplomatic actions.
AI is now much better at upgrading its Improvements and building to support Goods chains.
AI now has the ability to use air power. AI will use bombers to attack known targets, will move bombers to locations with the most threat when they do not have targets, will move fighters to fronts where enemy air threat is present.
Added options to the AI’s “escrow” setup, allowing it to reserve resources for use on more expensive things.
AI better considers diplomatic relationships and opportunistic strikes when selecting a war target.
Improved / optimized Public Housing model.
AI makes use of “do not advance” attack option, will use this when defending settlements.
Added reminders around later Age Governments to clarify that Secular Governments will dissolve State Religion.
Minor Nations and Barbarian Camps are now valid targets for siege.
Pass on targeting and requirement tooltips to improve clarity of these in all cases.
New Aqueduct socket building.
Improved the display of hexes on the map (the actual border lines).
Increased the padding at the upper and lower extents of the map to make it easier to see and issue commands in these locations (mentioned in feedback).
Improved the tooltip system. Previously, if you were mousing across a larger UI element with a tooltip, the time while you were moving the mouse counted toward the delay in popping up a tooltip. We’ve changed this so that the system only starts counting toward the delay if the mouse is still (or nearly still). The end result here is that the tooltips do not flicker as much if you’re moving around and there are fewer cases of tooltips popping up in odd locations.
Changed camera interpolation times to be consistent and based on map scroll setting.
Changed Feedlot Ranch to grant free Fertilizer Good, does not need to be worked. Made Warhorses Innovation from Khans apply to Feedlot Ranch.
School District Improvement now unlocked in Nationalism Tech in Age of Dystopia.
Added a more visible effect to selected techs and production orders to make what you are working on more apparent (mentioned in player feedback).
Production cost of Drone Sub increased.
Units that can normally enter another player’s territory in peacetime can now unload from Transports into that territory as well.
Barbarian Camps by water are more likely to produce Barbarian ships (still less likely if the body of water is small).
Fixed projectiles on Stone Tower, Turret.
Fixed issue with some naval and siege projectiles firing straight up.
Fixed Combat Log messages displaying twice in some cases.
Fixed issue with being able to get air Units but not have the air overlay activate.
Final Ages now show a message about being the final Age on the Research tab.
Revised most of help message images.
Adjusted the outbreak FX to not leave trails across map when scrolling.
Added / adjusted Paradox account logged-in status on main menu.
Animated Warehouse Improvement.
New sound effects for Archangel laser, torpedo attacks, ships sunk, robots hit in combat, using Adopt a Religion, lock / unlocking Workers…. Added ocean ambients. Added more dogs to the dog barking ambient mentioned in player feedback (not really).
Added a browser in the Government screen to make it possible to look at different Government options when it is possible to change.
Balance pass on all air combat -- air fighter effectiveness, bomber effectiveness, anti-air defenses. Substantial adjustments to all air-related.
Made Vassals that are at full Integration appear differently in the Outliner.
Completed a balance audit on late game items; adjusted price and value of a lot of late game things that were not where they should be.
Added a new system to show air Units moving to a location for an attack.
Fixed issues with terraforming powers, particularly powers related to mountains.
Fixed issue with decals causing odd lines to appear on map sometimes.
Fixed some LOS issues related to destruction of Outposts, Cities.
Renamed the Power Good to “Energy” to avoid confusion calling a Good and a Need the same thing.
Made changes to Monument names so there are not multiple different things called “Monument.”
Siege attacks now show a projectile.
Added / revised some options on the main menu.
Found and fixed issues with or added and improved things with a lot of text in the game.
Found and fixed issues with or added and improved things with a lot of toolips.
New sound for tech selected.
Added screenshot for Transcendence Victory help topic.
Fixed a popping issue with the aurora FX.
Fixed some issues with a font used in-game.
Fixed issues with megaproject UI elements.
New variation sound effects in UI for icon hover.
Fixed a number of places in UI where text did not display properly or scaled too small.
Fixed double display of Unrest icon on Goods tooltip.
Cleaned up Space Race Infopedia entry, added missing strings for Alien Tech.
Revised Age of Heroes Expedition text.
Thanks!
We hope you enjoyed this Developer Diary. If you are a beta or demo player, thanks, we appreciate the feedback – we’re excited about getting the release build of Millennia into your hands. If you’re excited too, please consider wishlisting or Pre-Purchasing Millennia!
I am Ian Fischer of C Prompt Games, back for another chat about Millennia. This Developer Diary was originally intended to present additional detail about the Ages, but we felt like we had already covered that material in prior Diaries.
Instead, since the release date has been announced, I thought it might be fun to talk a little about this stage of the project, our general development approach, and what we have been working on since the demo.
(Also, being honest, I have been too busy to provide any kind of reasonable build notes for the last few updates, so I liked the idea that, for part of this, I could Dev Diary-ize the build notes and correct that problem….)
Landing the Plane
From a theoretical standpoint, finishing a game is pretty straightforward. The typical practice is that you make a schedule with a chunk of time after everything is done and during this time you plan that nobody on the team has anything assigned to them to build. You then use that block of time to have everyone play their game, find and fix bugs, and polish everything as much as you can.
In practice, you almost never get that perfect chunk of time with nothing to do but test and polish. In fact, you can usually tell when the scheduled period of “nothing” has begun because it’s usually the day when you glance at your inbox and see something like this:
But, even though the scheduled chunk of nothing-assigned polish time is often filled with unexpected chaos, there are different flavors of chaos. I don’t want to curse us – we are not done yet – but Millennia has thus far (happily) enjoyed the mild variety in this phase leading up to release.
Compared to earlier phases of development, life for the team is more focused. We know what is going to be in the launch version of the game and we know when it will need to be done, so perspective shifts from more open-ended discussion about new systems or features to increased attention to completion. In the earlier stages, we spent more time in “hey, I had this idea” conversations and those often ended up with someone putting something in the game later that day. Now, those ideas go into our backlog for later so we can remain focused on tying things off.
While it’s always fun to be in a wide-open creative mode, there’s a lot of enjoyment in the current stage too. There are numerous small issues to address, so if you’re the kind of person that likes crossing things off of your list, you get to do a lot of that. And the list dominates too – unlike early stages of development, everyone is now working on specific items on the punchlist.
Another change in this stage is that the game is no longer a secret. Millennia has been shown to players (in this case played by some) and feedback is coming in. Seeing people having fun playing the early builds and the demo of Millennia is really exciting. It is fuel for the team. I think we were the seventh most-played demo at Next Fest and when we started getting notes that began with things like “so, I’ve played 40 hours of the demo and here’s what I think”, we were all happy.
C Prompt’s Approach
Feedback from the demo players is the latest round of feed but not the first. We make fairly extensive use of external playtesters and have had people playing and giving us feed all through the development of Millennia.
C Prompt is rooted in iterative development approaches. In our experience, the best way to make games is to build the minimum needed to get a skeleton of your idea shambling around, then start the loop of playtest -> feedback -> changes -> playtest.
That means we play our games a lot, from very early stages (the earliest testing of Millennia was more or less a green plane filled with red or white cubes labeled things like “GRAPES” and “HOPLITE”). There are a lot of advantages that come from this approach, but it also introduces a few challenges. For example, the act of looking at and changing a game daily alters your perspective of it. After 1000 hours, it takes considerable effort to see your game with the same perspective you had when you started or from the point of view of a new player.
In the same way, teams can develop a shared perspective on things over a period of time, playing and iterating on the game together.
We have always enjoyed being pretty close with players and found it useful for keeping our perspective on our work. Things have certainly changed over the years, but this is something that has always felt like The Way to us. Back on Age of Kings, at a time when you couldn’t put up a build for people to download, we were burning CDs of the game and freaking mailing them to our beta players.
You find some good things that should have been obvious to you by doing this (in early external tests, we found a bug with building Improvements that was immediately obvious to players but had been invisible to us because we all happened to place our Improvements in the same manner) and you get different feedback than what comes out of internal playtest.
Once the game has become public and more people have been able to play through something like the demo or a larger open beta, the amount of feedback you get increases and conversations between players, which are also valuable to development. Part of our plan for the block of time before release is designed with this in mind – we know early players are going to find things we want to polish or fix, so we plan for that when we lay out our schedules.
From then to Now
So, with the above in mind, with the idea that C Prompt’s focus is now on getting things tied off for a good initial release and that some of our tasks are being informed by beta and demo players, I thought what I would do is grab all of the change notes on our internal system from the point where we made the demo build up to the point where I started writing this.
That looks like this:
That’s maybe a little difficult to read.
I went through those and did my best to make most of what is in there make some kind of sense to someone not on the team. (I also made some notes in there on any of the changes I remembered being called out by beta or demo players, just because people have said they like knowing about those things).
It’s a wall of text but, if you’re into it, please enjoy:
Built and tested a new river delta piece that works better with coastal improvements. Decided we liked the way the original looked more, even with the occasional non-ideal improvement, and saw the old delta complimented in some posts and streams, so reverted.
New roads and ground decals (appear under Improvements, Cities) for each era.
New forest terrain texture.
New mountain texture and blend.
New deep forest terrain texture.
New jungle terrain texture.
New hill terrain texture.
Revised decoration object scale and placement on hills.
New marble Good.
Fixed bug with debris in Combat Viewer.
Made adjustments to terrain flatteners and décor removers used when Improvements are placed.
New Theodosian Walls in Combat Viewer.
Fixed Palisade gate animations.
Completed a pass on almost all Improvement icons. All of these have been polished / revised.
Fixed a bug with roads and bridges not updating correctly in mid to late game.
Finished new trees, replaced old trees.
Added a system for sway and tint on the new trees.
Adjusted the spacing of Units in the Combat Viewer so that some fights are not as packed.
Made optimization passes on much of the art in the game; textures, Units, Buildings, etc.
Fixed a bug with zero cost envoys (mentioned in demo feed).
Completed a pass on all ships in the Combat Viewer; fixed / improved display of naval combat.
Completed a pass on all aircraft in the Combat Viewer; fixed / improved display of air combat, extended the Combat Viewer to better show air combat.
Completed a pass on all ground-to-air in the Combat Viewer; fixed / improved display of anti-air.
Reviewed all of the random maps at all map sizes, adjusted these to have better distributions at all sizes.
Island maps adjusted for better player placement at different sizes and player counts. Hotseat will now reject some bad arrangements (eight player island maps games on a tiny map size).
Found a UI that was still a placeholder UI (hotseat turn start), fixed.
Revised Age requirement strings to be easier to understand.
Fixed an issue related to localized Nation names.
Added new functionality to the ambient sound system; added ability to play second ambient loop, added ability to scale volume based on zoom level, revised the system used to decide what ambient should play, made Towns trigger ambients the same way Capitals do, revised terrain categories so that ambient selection is generally more indicative of what is onscreen, added support for randomization ambient loop when not scrolling.
Added new ambient loops and variants.
Added new functionality to the audio system in Combat Viewer; added ability to play different battlefield sounds at sea or at land, added ability to change battlefield audio by era, added ability to play sounds on a number of new events during combat.
Added new sound effects for the Combat Viewer.
Added, expanded, or fixed sound settings for around 200 Units.
Tested around 200 Units (and defensive structures) in the Combat Viewer, fixing errors (attachments, animations, etc.) along the way.
Made improvements to the AI’s ability to conduct war, particularly in the early Ages. Armies flagged for attack are less likely to get peeled away for other tasks, idle Armies are more likely to be sent to fight, Armies not attacking a Capital will more reliably raze nearby Improvements. (This work was helped by savegames sent in from the community – thanks.)
Fixed some bugs with UI sounds not playing correctly.
Changed Infopedia entries under Misc heading to unlock with tech completion.
Removed National Guard Unit unlock from Dystopia (which has Riot Police).
Made the Biplane Bomber not fly backward.
Robot Submarines no longer load into naval transports.
Naval Units can no longer airlift.
Later Age naval Units now require Harbor instead of Dock to build.
Set missing progressive use cost on Early Sea’s Byblos Boats.
Added sound to the Airlift Ability.
Made Alien Invaders ranged, made aliens shoot lazors.
Updated description for powers that spawn multiple Units to describe specifically what they spawn.
Reduced cost of first Ideal in Mound Builders National Spirit, slightly increased higher tier Ideal cost.
Reduced Mound Builders food reduction Ideal, also reduced Mound’s workable Sanitation slightly.
Buffed Ancient Seafarers Safe Passage Ideal.
Added Barricades and Turret in Combat Viewer.
Changes air overlay to be able to show enemy / friendly / contested airspace.
Changed display of naval Units to only show for water Regions.
Fixed issue with Naturalists reducing the cost of movement in jungle too much.
Changed autosave from the developer-best version (save ‘em all) to a better-for-player-SSDs version (five most recent). Added an options setting for this.
Added animations to Cloud Estate.
Added animation to Aether Improvements.
Added UI sounds to Social Fabric.
Changed Military Base to satisfy the need for a Barracks. Similar change was made to the Royal Training Field so it satisfies the need for a Barracks or Military Base.
Royal Training Field now provides better Combat XP than Military Base when training Units.
Added to the set of things the AI thinks about training or building, adjusted how the AI rates the value of the things it can train or build.
Adjusted Food production (and other Needs) to make it slightly more difficult to maintain high Need satisfaction mid-game and later. Wheat went from 4 to 3, Flour from 8 to 6, Bread from 16 to 10. Fertilized Farm no longer gets an extra worker slot.
Made Supersonic Lancer sound like a jet when it moves instead of using foot movement sound.
Clarified Theologians National Spirit regarding how Divine Inspiration Ideal gives XP based on population.
Fixed powers that spawn Palace, Sacred Palace, New Palace, and World’s Fair so that they do not allow placement when the one-per-Nation buildings have been built.
Adjusted Education Need on buildings in Age 6.
Fixed a bug with using Claim Territory on a Vassal (mentioned in feedback).
Added nested tooltips to several places in Diplomacy.
Fixed a bug with Vassal expansion.
Added Keep in the Combat Viewer, FX, debris.
Made a polish pass on all Culture Power and Domain Power text; presentation and content.
Added unique icons for all three types of Artist.
Added nested links for Region Level and Prosperity.
Fixed a number of issues with undo (several surfaced in player feed).
Can no longer build Improvements in Vassal territory or in another player’s territory.
Adjusted Specialist-related costs. Power Station (and variants) now cost Specialists, Coffee House, most Aether Improvements.
Adjusted overall Knowledge economy.
Adjusted Culture upkeep relative to number of Regions (the amount of Culture required for upkeep scales more aggressively per Region now).
Revised display of Army power on map.
Fixed a bug where the Town Specialization menu was shown when selecting Towns that did not belong to you.
Added effect on Town Specialization menu.
Reduced cost of Stonecutters Ideal in God King National Spirit.
Revised air combat overlay.
Revised expansion overlay.
Fixed expansion overlay to show correctly on first turn of new game or loaded save.
Revised the Charms Improvement.
Made Raiders better after everyone complained that they were too weak (just wanted to see if anyone was reading).
New shaders in the Combat Viewer; made a pass on every terrain, all battlefields have substantially more detail.
Fixed a number of issues with the Combat Viewer camera.
Adjusted décor in all Combat Viewer battlefields.
New Unit Action icons; replaced most of the icons in use here with new portraits.
Found and fixed an issue with National Spirit Legacies using the wrong Domain.
Added some information in hotseat UI for help messages.
Various fixes for hotseat lobby and launch.
Reviewed the AI’s ability to use all of the different powers in the game (Culture Powers, Domain Powers, Unit Abilities, powers derived from different National Spirits or Ages, etc.) and the AI’s ability to make use of the Age rules in different Ages.
Added the ability to use / understand numerous things the AI was not using before, adjusted how the AI prioritizes dealing with all of these.
Found and fixed an issue with display of stats with Units that have Age-scaling bonuses (like Scouts).
Fixed issue with air Units disappearing.
Fixed issues with rebasing air Units.
Changed air Units to circle the location where they are based on the map.
Fixed issues with naval bombardment not applying damage properly.
ESC now closes Improvement Builder (mentioned in player feedback).
Reduced the value of retiring Leaders.
Pass to all content to show percentages instead of decimals where appropriate.
Completed performance improvements to the UI.
Completed performance improvements to display of Goods icons.
Completed performance improvements to world-wrap.
Completed performance improvements to new trees.
Checked on and improved save / load UI performance (after it was pointed out in bug forums).
Changed default graphical settings.
Now adjust décor, tree density with graphical settings.
Tweaked all of the terrains and all of the Improvements, adjusting décor and replacing old trees with new trees.
Completed a design pass and adjustments to Region Level (how you get them, maximum number).
Fixed incorrect Ideal prices in Scholars National Spirit.
Added new functionality to the audio system in Combat Viewer to support different sound events needed for air combat, added and hooked up new sounds.
Added a message at the end of combats to show Victory or Defeat, pulled this after testing (it was too confusing without being able to describe outcomes other than “you won” or “you lost”).
Fixed eliminated Nations so remaining Units are correctly passed over to a neutral AI to task them.
Host Olympics power now has a scaling instead of flat cost.
Fixed Arts and War Social Fabric rewards in Transcendence.
New explosion FX added.
Created new FX to show that something is razed (feed from multiple sources that the old raze FX made the map difficult to read).
Repairing a razed Improvement now correctly removes the raze FX.
Limited sound FX played by raze so that things that cause multiple razings don’t play a multitude of raze sounds.
Fixed Archangel laser targeting tooltip.
Fixed Archangel targeting in hotseat games.
Archangel now requires LOS to target.
Fixed some issues that could occur if won the game on another player’s turn.
Fixed Pop Culture Innovation Events.
Fixed issue where you could be called to war against an eliminated player.
Fixed some issues related to newly created Vassals.
Sound FX added to Peaceful Revolution.
Fixed Oath of Fealty to use the correct card effect.
Added new sound effects to the selection of certain terrain tiles.
Fixed issue where Buddhism icon could get reused in a custom Religion after Buddhism was already founded.
Adjusted placement in Combat Viewer so that large armies with mixed large and small Units are easier to see.
Fixes to allow Combat Viewer to properly close with ESC.
Rogue AI Factory no longer spawns Robot Drone Units.
Fixed issue where AI lost track of transport regions.
Flipped some Age paintings so that text displayed atop these is easier to read.
Decreased Vassal IP income.
Increased raze value.
Colony Ship now takes substantially more to complete.
Removed additional worker slots in Labor Camp.
Updated Age of Departure text to be clear on the amount of resources required for Victory.
Updated the medieval Keep model.
New Olive trees to match new trees.
Added animations to some Improvements, set these up to play when the Improvements are worked.
Adjusted the lighting sets used in Crisis and Variant Ages (issues with this mentioned in various feedback).
Adjusted a lot of tech costs in Age 7 and later.
Added air-to-air missile projectile and FX.
Adjusted Delta Wing Fighter production cost.
Fixed Pop Culture Chaos cards.
Fixed Social Fabric Domain Powers so that they cannot be used when Social Fabric scales are at maximum already.
“Fixed” terraforming power so it cannot be used on settlements.
Updated category of Improvements that use Computers to all be in “Computing” category.
Added death animation for cavalry Units.
Added checks to make sure Vassals do not place Improvements on Landmarks. (Also now correctly prevent Airfields from building on Landmarks.)
Fixed National Spirit Infopedia entries using outdated National Spirit images.
Fixed issue where AI considered some of its Armies “removed” and stopped commanding them.
Warrior Priests Sacrifice now requires 3 Pop Regions.
Utopia Spawn Ocean Settler now requires a target with 2 Pop (and not a Vassal).
Increased Secularism pressure in Age 9 and 10 Variant Ages.
Space Race now requires a Faction to start.
Updated Space Race costs, rewards, stages.
River bonus for Farms was missing from Age 4 and later Farm types, fixed.
Reduced Knowledge gained from Alien Tech.
Robot Soldier attack and defense increased, counter-units bonus reduced.
Review of balance of upgrade lines; adjusted Wealth from Bank line, Knowledge from Institute, Wealth and Ideology from Media, Arts XP from Plaza, Culture and Ideology from Stadium, Arts and Wealth from Theater, War XP from War Camp, Production from Warehouse, Education from Public School, Specialists from Literary Salon, Fountain provides more Sanitation, City Works provides more Production, Crane provides more IP, Increased Stone / Statue throughput of Holy Sculptor.
Fixed issue with not all players seeing revealed Goods in Age of Utopia.
Fixed an issue with Forced March used on harvesting Units like the Bow Hunter.
Removed incorrect bonus on Explorers Guild.
Changed the Computer / Supercomputer Goods chain to be more valuable.
Adjusted Combat Viewer’s display of special lighting.
Added a new close button on Game Log UI.
Fixed targeting issues with the Ocean Settler power.
Changed air model so that air Units that would have been destroyed by losing an Outpost now rebase to nearby locations with capacity.
Fixed palisades not showing near water.
Balance review of Vassal prosperity; reduced the number of places where the Vassal prosperity cap is increased.
The Prospector and Units like the Prospector are now more careful about destroying existing Improvements when used.
AI now does a better job of upgrading its Improvements.
AI no longer builds air Units when it does not have capacity for additional air Units.
Scaled all projectiles shown in the Combat Viewer correctly.
Fixed an issue where the AI incorrectly considered certain tiles as off-limits for building Improvements.
Fixed issue with move arrows showing across the entire map in some cases.
Fixed issue with Archangel Emigration power granting pop to Vassals.
Disabled UI hotkeys that were available in some interfaces where they shouldn’t be.
Clarified the “Promote Miracles” tooltip based on Discord callout.
Production Studio is now limited to one per Region, also moved to Professional Category in Improvements menu.
Clarified how bordering works for Absorb Outpost Culture Powe (mentioned in player feed).
Fixed Human Sacrifice power showing wrong population requirement.
Fixed issues with the megaproject “LAUNCH” button.
Replaced the terrain tiles shown in worker allocation to match current terrain.
Eliminated some clipping issues in the Combat Viewer.
Adjusted prop placement and terrain decals in all Combat Viewer battlefields, added new props.
Added, adjusted Combat Viewer effects.
Added functionality to Combat Viewer for showing vehicles in background; later Age fights show thins like cars driving by.
Created and added a new animated effect for showing Riots in Dystopia.
In the banner-type Army display, adjusted the banners for better visibility.
Removed Install Puppet power from Age of Generals, replaced with a War XP bonus for now.
Increased production cost of Elite Sniper.
Made an initial pass at increasing the value of the unique buildings rewarded by Innovation (mentioned in player feed).
Tactical Insertion can now only be targeted on revealed areas.
Balance pass on Shogunate. Generally increased the base Attack and Defense of Shogun and Samurai.
Improved AIs ability to make use of Shogunate National Spirit, build Daimyos, promote a Shogun.
Improved AIs ability to decide what to produce in its Regions.
Improved the value of the Caravanseai Outpost Improvement in the Spice Merchant National Spirit.
The Trade Network Ideal in Spice Merchant National Spirit now makes Trade Posts free.
Updated text to make clear that Ornithopter scout lasts for one turn only.
Balance pass on Militia. Militia now have some innate defense against Supports like Archer or Crossbow. These are Line type Units and there were cases where there were unintentionally too vulnerable.
Added sounds on numerous Unit Actions.
Reduced Diplomacy XP cost of spawning Envoy.
Increased Wealth value of Paper Good from 3 to 8.
Reduced Unrest Suppression of Hippodrome from 20 to 12.
Increased Logging Camp’s worked Production from 1 to 4.
Changed Raider Pillage Ideal from +50 Attack against Militia to +20%.
Increased Khan’s Pax Mongolica Innovation from 1 to 5 Wealth per Outpost.
Changed Knights of the Round in Chivalry to apply to all Knight-type Units, not only the Knight, also changed buff to additional Defense and Morale.
Changed Immortals Innovation from additional max HP to additional Defense.
Changed Solar Panel Roofing Innovation to target all level 5 Towns.
Increased Communist Innovation from 1 to 4 Production and Ideology.
Added relationship as a factor in difficulty modifiers (other Nations like you less from the start at higher difficulty levels).
Broke up Barbarian Camps and adjusted pieces for better placement on hills.
Fixed wrapping issue in Production UI.
Changed Research UI to show “LOCKED” on Ages that are locked out once a Crisis Age is locked in.
Slight reduction in value to Influence starting bonus.
Fixed the combat odds display to deal correctly with situations where a lot of different air Units could participate in the fight.
Added 1 Knowledge to Physicians Guild.
Fixed some issues with calculating the value of a Treaty correctly.
Adjusted Wealth provided by conquering Towns and Cities.
Adjusted events that care about a specific Age to use the correct current Age.
Increased Rare Earth Good placed on maps, decreased iron somewhat.
Balance pass on archer line (Support type) Units; reduced the bonus these Units have against Line type from 3x Attack to 2.5x Attack.
Balance pass on siege line Units; generally modified the overall balance of siege-type Units (Catapult, Trebuchet, Cannon, Howitzer, etc.) to be less lopsided. Overall, these were intentionally higher Attack / lower Defense, but the scaling was not appropriate and their lack of defense made using them involve a high degree of luck. By increasing their Defense some and reducing Attack for some of them, these remain true to their intended role and don’t evaporate if touched in combat.
Improved AI’s ability to select National Spirit Ideals.
Changed Envoy so that they do not need to wait a turn to Open Negotiations (mentioned in player feed).
Added additional support for showing City Attacks including range display and attack markers (multiple mentions of this system being difficult to read).
Fixed bug with bombers showing targets they cannot bomb as valid.
Fixed issues with the Religion overlay.
Fixed some issues with how we display that upgrades are possible for Improvements on the map.
Fixed numerous tooltip issues including text spilling out of bounds in some places, tooltips appearing under the cursor, tooltips sometimes being unable to lock, tooltips displaying long after they should have gone away.
Fixed issues with combat prediction and display of combat prediction in tooltip.
Fixed issues with Diplomatic treaty tooltips (mentioned in player feed).
Improved AI such that AI takes Chaos into consideration as part of Diplomatic actions.
AI is now much better at upgrading its Improvements and building to support Goods chains.
AI now has the ability to use air power. AI will use bombers to attack known targets, will move bombers to locations with the most threat when they do not have targets, will move fighters to fronts where enemy air threat is present.
Added options to the AI’s “escrow” setup, allowing it to reserve resources for use on more expensive things.
AI better considers diplomatic relationships and opportunistic strikes when selecting a war target.
Improved / optimized Public Housing model.
AI makes use of “do not advance” attack option, will use this when defending settlements.
Added reminders around later Age Governments to clarify that Secular Governments will dissolve State Religion.
Minor Nations and Barbarian Camps are now valid targets for siege.
Pass on targeting and requirement tooltips to improve clarity of these in all cases.
New Aqueduct socket building.
Improved the display of hexes on the map (the actual border lines).
Increased the padding at the upper and lower extents of the map to make it easier to see and issue commands in these locations (mentioned in feedback).
Improved the tooltip system. Previously, if you were mousing across a larger UI element with a tooltip, the time while you were moving the mouse counted toward the delay in popping up a tooltip. We’ve changed this so that the system only starts counting toward the delay if the mouse is still (or nearly still). The end result here is that the tooltips do not flicker as much if you’re moving around and there are fewer cases of tooltips popping up in odd locations.
Changed camera interpolation times to be consistent and based on map scroll setting.
Changed Feedlot Ranch to grant free Fertilizer Good, does not need to be worked. Made Warhorses Innovation from Khans apply to Feedlot Ranch.
School District Improvement now unlocked in Nationalism Tech in Age of Dystopia.
Added a more visible effect to selected techs and production orders to make what you are working on more apparent (mentioned in player feedback).
Production cost of Drone Sub increased.
Units that can normally enter another player’s territory in peacetime can now unload from Transports into that territory as well.
Barbarian Camps by water are more likely to produce Barbarian ships (still less likely if the body of water is small).
Fixed projectiles on Stone Tower, Turret.
Fixed issue with some naval and siege projectiles firing straight up.
Fixed Combat Log messages displaying twice in some cases.
Fixed issue with being able to get air Units but not have the air overlay activate.
Final Ages now show a message about being the final Age on the Research tab.
Revised most of help message images.
Adjusted the outbreak FX to not leave trails across map when scrolling.
Added / adjusted Paradox account logged-in status on main menu.
Animated Warehouse Improvement.
New sound effects for Archangel laser, torpedo attacks, ships sunk, robots hit in combat, using Adopt a Religion, lock / unlocking Workers…. Added ocean ambients. Added more dogs to the dog barking ambient mentioned in player feedback (not really).
Added a browser in the Government screen to make it possible to look at different Government options when it is possible to change.
Balance pass on all air combat -- air fighter effectiveness, bomber effectiveness, anti-air defenses. Substantial adjustments to all air-related.
Made Vassals that are at full Integration appear differently in the Outliner.
Completed a balance audit on late game items; adjusted price and value of a lot of late game things that were not where they should be.
Added a new system to show air Units moving to a location for an attack.
Fixed issues with terraforming powers, particularly powers related to mountains.
Fixed issue with decals causing odd lines to appear on map sometimes.
Fixed some LOS issues related to destruction of Outposts, Cities.
Renamed the Power Good to “Energy” to avoid confusion calling a Good and a Need the same thing.
Made changes to Monument names so there are not multiple different things called “Monument.”
Siege attacks now show a projectile.
Added / revised some options on the main menu.
Found and fixed issues with or added and improved things with a lot of text in the game.
Found and fixed issues with or added and improved things with a lot of toolips.
New sound for tech selected.
Added screenshot for Transcendence Victory help topic.
Fixed a popping issue with the aurora FX.
Fixed some issues with a font used in-game.
Fixed issues with megaproject UI elements.
New variation sound effects in UI for icon hover.
Fixed a number of places in UI where text did not display properly or scaled too small.
Fixed double display of Unrest icon on Goods tooltip.
Cleaned up Space Race Infopedia entry, added missing strings for Alien Tech.
Revised Age of Heroes Expedition text.
Thanks!
We hope you enjoyed this Developer Diary. If you are a beta or demo player, thanks, we appreciate the feedback – we’re excited about getting the release build of Millennia into your hands. If you’re excited too, please consider wishlisting or Pre-Purchasing Millennia!
![[party]](/images/smilies/partytime.gif "Party [party]")
(joking)
