Developer Diary | World & Map

[PDX Katten]

Hello! I’m Robert “Xemu” Fermier, the lead programmer and co-designer of Millennia. Welcome to our second Millennia design diary! If you want to learn more about the game overall and our team at C Prompt Games, take a look HERE, and be sure check out the exciting first trailer for the game.

Millennia is a huge game, packed with content and gameplay systems, but a good place to start explaining it all is with one of the most central pieces of the game – how you claim territory, grow your Nation, and explore the map.


Regions

At the start of the game, you control a single Region. Regions are the most vital element of the game economy – they define your borders, allow you to put your people to work, and let you build Units and Buildings. The Capital at the heart of a Region will feel pretty familiar to players comfortable with other 4X games, particularly at the start. Grow your Region’s population to work more tiles, collect more resources, and become an industrial powerhouse.

At a high level, the Region’s Population determines how many workers you can assign, while the territory controlled by the Region determines what those workers can be assigned to. Early on, many of your workers will be “foraging”, gathering from the land directly. This type of gathering is 1:1, so if you have 3 Forests, you can assign up to 3 workers to foraging in those Forests.

This is fine for getting started, but to really get your economy rolling you will want to build Improvements, such as Farms and Hunting Camps … or Oil Wells and Computer Factories when you reach the more advanced Ages. Improvements dramatically boost the value of workers in a Region, providing Goods that are worth significantly more than what foraging alone can generate (of course if you have the right National Spirit perhaps there are some alternative strategies you can find…).

Regions can also be strengthened by constructing “Capital Buildings”, which are permanent upgrades to the Region. These represent infrastructure, monuments, and other ways to improve your Region as a whole. Like Improvements, there are a huge range of these, providing additional resource income, army enhancements, and other bonuses.

Growing your Nation by gaining more Regions involves Vassals. These are similar to Regions, but they operate mostly on their own. They will grow over time and claim parts of the map, and they contribute some of their income to you each turn as tribute. You don’t have to manage the Needs or worker assignments of a Region, and they also don’t incur any of the costs associated with a Region, so they can be a very useful tool in “painting the map” without slowing down your economy. When the time is right, you can convert a Vassal into a Region to utilize its potential more fully.

We will talk a lot more about how Vassals, Needs, Improvements, and Goods work in a future diary, as there are a lot of interesting gameplay details to cover there.


Towns

In addition to settling new Regions, you also settle new Towns. Towns are part of a Region, smaller population centers that boost the central Capital. Each Town also influences the expansion of a Region’s borders, so they present a lot of choices for defining the “shape” of a Region. Do you want to steer your Region towards some vital resources, or to claim disputed territory from another Nation? Do you try to maximize the total area your Region can control, or focus on a more compact, easily defensible setup? Each game will require you to adapt your strategic positioning differently.

Enemies may try to raid your Towns. If a Towns falls, your Region can lose territory that was controlled by the Town. Towns also contribute Militia units to the Capital, bolstering defenses there when attacked, which creates some interesting tactical choices when assaulting an enemy Region. When planning your offense, do you chip away at their Towns to weaken them, or bypass the Towns and strike for the Capital directly?

Initially, your Towns will generate more Wealth for the region based on how many Improvements you have built nearby. As your Nation’s capabilities in civil engineering improve over time, you can expand the Towns to higher levels, increasing this bonus. Towns can also specialize, they can become “mining towns”, “farming towns”, and the like. A Town’s specialization allows it to provide different resources (and require different Improvements). Cleverly using your Towns to accomplish both your strategic and economic goals is very satisfying when you can juggle all the competing interests correctly.

Creating a new Town can only be done with by using a Culture Power, big moments in the growth of your Nation that only happen periodically. While creating a Town is only one of many possible choices of what do with Culture, knowing when and where to expand is an important skill to master in Millennia.


Outposts

Regions and Vassals are not the only way to control territory on the map. You can also send out Pioneers and have them build Outposts. When built, Outposts immediately bring all the tiles in a 1-hex radius under your control. Because they have much looser restrictions of where they can be placed, you can even build them right up against another Nation’s territory to stake a claim. Of course, Outposts are a lot easier to take down than Capitals or even Towns, so make sure you are prepared to defend them against roaming Barbarians and other Nations alike.

The basic Outpost can also build Trade Posts within its territory, allowing you to send valuable Goods to any of your Regions. Because these Trade Posts do not require workers, they can be an extremely potent way to supercharge your economy, particularly when available workers are scarce. Later in the game, more advanced Outpost types become available such as Castles or Missions. These allow you to provide extra abilities to your outposts and can make them a larger part of your overall strategy.

Outposts are also very convenient for establishing a road network through your Nation, as each one you build will automatically connect up with other nearby Outpost, Capitals, and Towns. Of course, just the normal progress of a Region and its Towns are often enough to get you roads where you need to go, but where there is a big gap of terrain to cover, Outposts can quickly get the job done.


Outposts also provide a defensive bonus and increase the healing rate for any of your Armies stationed there. There are also many Powers which let you spawn units at a friendly settlement – which includes Outposts. Using Outposts tactically as forward bases or reinforcement hubs can give you a significant military advantage!


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I hope this first look at some detailed mechanics in Millennia has provided a little more insight into some of the basic building blocks of the map-control game. There is a lot more to talk about so stay tuned for our next diary, where we will be talking more about Nations, Governments, and more!

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

Interesting.
When Humankind came out there was much discussion of the contrast between Regions and Tiles to organize map space. Millenium seems to be using both, using Tiles for specific work spaces, towns, outposts, etc and Regions as the measure of space that your Civ/Faction controls. -And, from what I gather here, the size and shape and amount of space taken by the Region is very flexible rather than near-rigid as in Humankind. Lots of water to come under the bridges between here and final release, but this could be the compromise/dual use that works better than either system by itself.

The screenshots may be only vaguely related, but assuming they are related, note that the secnd screenshot indicates it is Turn 17 and the in-game date is 6000 BCE. That would be at the very beginning of city/permanent settlement formation IRL, and long before any real metal-working (there have been cold-worked copper artifacts like needles and awls found, but nothing more complex).

But looking at the first screenshot:
Scout Cavalry is available at 6000 BCE, apparently, about 2000 years before the first evidence of anybody riding horses. In 6000 BCE, horses were strictly food animals.
Spear and Chariot are available to build/acquire. IF they mean a spear unit (anti-cav) then it and the chariot are about 3400 - 3900 years early: the first chariots don't show up as grave goods until about 2100 BCE, the first spear-armed unit until 2600 BCE. On the other hand, the spear as an individual weapon for hunters is on cave paintings dated to 6 - 9000 BCE.
The most interesting note is the Crane apparently being built. Sorry guys, but the early mechanical engineering was all ramps, levers and rollers. The earliest evidence of a crane that I know of is from Classical Greece, about 515 BCE in Corinth. It is hypothesized that the Greeks developed mechanical lifting devices because they didn't have access to the mass work force that the larger Egyptian and Middle eastern kingdoms had for monumental building, so had to compensate with better machinery.

This all is clearly labeled 'Work in Progress' and some of the map graphics look pretty 'place-holderish', so it may all be irrelevant to the final game. Just to let the Millenia team know that some of us are watching like the proverbial Hawks because we really, really want to see you get it Right . . .

 

[Dale]

You know this is just a game, right Boris?

An ALT HISTORY game. That means, game history will not reflect our history. And from the knowledge there will be fantastical and totally made up and sci-fi eras, I thought it was pretty obvious it was not based on Earth history.

I hope you don't spend months going on about this, like you have for Civ and ARA and other games.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

You know this is just a game, right Boris?

An ALT HISTORY game. That means, game history will not reflect our history. And from the knowledge there will be fantastical and totally made up and sci-fi eras, I thought it was pretty obvious it was not based on Earth history.

I hope you don't spend months going on about this, like you have for Civ and ARA and other games.

Yes, I'll probably keep commenting on this forever. I've been a historian all my life, it's what I do.

But, I would counter by pointing out that you and many others seem to confuse Alternate History with Instead of History. Alternate means History that happened differently, Instead of means fantasy, without logical antecedents. It can be a lot of fun, but but it requires that you ignore most about historical cause and effect, and frequently everything about human psycology and sociology, and effects of terrain, climate, conditions, and personal and cultural goals of human groups. So unless you are writing/gaming about complete Aliens, there is a massive element of Suspend Belief required in it.

To lecture a bit, History comes from an old Greek word, Istoriya, which originally meant "to learn by Study". IF instead of studying you are simply going to make it up as you please, it is not alternate, or instead of, or any other kind of History and calling the game 'historically based' is a Lie.

And I don't pick on games particularly (except, of course, on gaming Forums). All kinds of popular and even academic works are guilty of this, and in every case it is a jarring disconnect between what they are trying to convey and what actually comes across. Numerous authors, including academics who should know better, have been guilty of What If? scenarios about WWII: Could Hitler Have Won If He Did X Differently? When you look at the actual historical situations, in every case they are crap, promulgated because someone didn't examine the real situation carefully enough - and on too many occasions are trying to make a political rather than a historical point. History is not pre-ordained, but every historical event comes with a trail of other events behind it, so to make dramatic change requires a change of a direction to which events are already committed to a varying degree.

Back to a gaming example, I remember all too well numerous sets of miniatures rules for medieval wargaming (and a few board games) that included what became known as the Terminally Guided Heat-Seeking High Explosive Warhead longbow arrow: the 'medieval' missile weapon that outranged and outshot every personal weapon anywhere, always hit the target and destroyed every target it hit that was smaller than the town of Carcassone. It was so common it became a meme in the 1970s, a lot of fun - if you happened to be the one with the longbows - but not very well balanced for anything but a fantasy game in which the Other Side had Kevlar, layered Reactive Plate Armor on their men, horses, catapults, and the town of Carcassone.

So, to return to Millenia, they can have Scout Cavalry in 6000 BCE instead of 4000 BCE. BUT only if that particular Civ/Faction/Group have access to Horses in 6000 BCE, at which time the 'horse' group of animals were in a relatively narrow band of territory in Eurasia only, and they spend what appears from the archeological evidence to have been several hundred years breeding 'domestication' genes into that set of equines. We have a modern example of what happens when that 'historical antecedent' is not done: the zebra was never bred for domestication, and to this day nobody has domesticated them for any useful purpose. Scout Cavalry, then, does not spring full blown from the head of Zeus (or Hippos or Poseidon) but logically comes from preceding human activities and needs: otherwise it is fantasy springing full blown from the head of a Tolkienish or Leiberic game developer.

 

[TheCleanerDragon]

Map looks great, visually, I find it a lot more appealing that civ6's cartoon aesthetic.

I like the outpost system, it reminds of colonies in Civ3. A way to expand territorially without needing to found an entire city is nice, especially if it comes with benefits beyond gaining access to a single resource, as colonies did in Civ3.

The screenshots don't seem to line up with earth's geography, so I'm assuming the game will be played on randomly generated maps. If so, I hope there are lots of options for modifying map generation.

The screenshots may be only vaguely related, but assuming they are related, note that the secnd screenshot indicates it is Turn 17 and the in-game date is 6000 BCE. That would be at the very beginning of city/permanent settlement formation IRL, and long before any real metal-working (there have been cold-worked copper artifacts like needles and awls found, but nothing more complex).

But looking at the first screenshot:
Scout Cavalry is available at 6000 BCE, apparently, about 2000 years before the first evidence of anybody riding horses. In 6000 BCE, horses were strictly food animals.
Spear and Chariot are available to build/acquire. IF they mean a spear unit (anti-cav) then it and the chariot are about 3400 - 3900 years early: the first chariots don't show up as grave goods until about 2100 BCE, the first spear-armed unit until 2600 BCE. On the other hand, the spear as an individual weapon for hunters is on cave paintings dated to 6 - 9000 BCE.
The most interesting note is the Crane apparently being built. Sorry guys, but the early mechanical engineering was all ramps, levers and rollers. The earliest evidence of a crane that I know of is from Classical Greece, about 515 BCE in Corinth. It is hypothesized that the Greeks developed mechanical lifting devices because they didn't have access to the mass work force that the larger Egyptian and Middle eastern kingdoms had for monumental building, so had to compensate with better machinery.

If you look at the first screenshot, notice that the city is also Stockholm, but it's population is has grown from two to eight, and its borders are larger. I think that indicates the first screenshot was taken after the second. That could explain the advancements in technology.

 

[Dale]

Yes, I'll probably keep commenting on this forever. I've been a historian all my life, it's what I do.

But, I would counter by pointing out that you and many others seem to confuse Alternate History with Instead of History. Alternate means History that happened differently, Instead of means fantasy, without logical antecedents. It can be a lot of fun, but but it requires that you ignore most about historical cause and effect, and frequently everything about human psycology and sociology, and effects of terrain, climate, conditions, and personal and cultural goals of human groups. So unless you are writing/gaming about complete Aliens, there is a massive element of Suspend Belief required in it.

To lecture a bit, History comes from an old Greek word, Istoriya, which originally meant "to learn by Study". IF instead of studying you are simply going to make it up as you please, it is not alternate, or instead of, or any other kind of History and calling the game 'historically based' is a Lie.

And I don't pick on games particularly (except, of course, on gaming Forums). All kinds of popular and even academic works are guilty of this, and in every case it is a jarring disconnect between what they are trying to convey and what actually comes across. Numerous authors, including academics who should know better, have been guilty of What If? scenarios about WWII: Could Hitler Have Won If He Did X Differently? When you look at the actual historical situations, in every case they are crap, promulgated because someone didn't examine the real situation carefully enough - and on too many occasions are trying to make a political rather than a historical point. History is not pre-ordained, but every historical event comes with a trail of other events behind it, so to make dramatic change requires a change of a direction to which events are already committed to a varying degree.

Back to a gaming example, I remember all too well numerous sets of miniatures rules for medieval wargaming (and a few board games) that included what became known as the Terminally Guided Heat-Seeking High Explosive Warhead longbow arrow: the 'medieval' missile weapon that outranged and outshot every personal weapon anywhere, always hit the target and destroyed every target it hit that was smaller than the town of Carcassone. It was so common it became a meme in the 1970s, a lot of fun - if you happened to be the one with the longbows - but not very well balanced for anything but a fantasy game in which the Other Side had Kevlar, layered Reactive Plate Armor on their men, horses, catapults, and the town of Carcassone.

So, to return to Millenia, they can have Scout Cavalry in 6000 BCE instead of 4000 BCE. BUT only if that particular Civ/Faction/Group have access to Horses in 6000 BCE, at which time the 'horse' group of animals were in a relatively narrow band of territory in Eurasia only, and they spend what appears from the archeological evidence to have been several hundred years breeding 'domestication' genes into that set of equines. We have a modern example of what happens when that 'historical antecedent' is not done: the zebra was never bred for domestication, and to this day nobody has domesticated them for any useful purpose. Scout Cavalry, then, does not spring full blown from the head of Zeus (or Hippos or Poseidon) but logically comes from preceding human activities and needs: otherwise it is fantasy springing full blown from the head of a Tolkienish or Leiberic game developer.

Please stop.

Alt history as applied to games is a genre. It is a sub genre of science fiction. This sub genre is based on a completely speculative fiction where something in the past diverged history hard away from Earth's history.

Stop confusing academic "alt history" with computer game "alt history".

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

Please stop.

Alt history as applied to games is a genre. It is a sub genre of science fiction. This sub genre is based on a completely speculative fiction where something in the past diverged history hard away from Earth's history.

Stop confusing academic "alt history" with computer game "alt history".

I will stop confusing academic with computer game if you will stop confusing 'completely speculative' with 'alternative'.

Alternative History takes a particular point or points in history and explores possible divergences from those points. It therefore has to start from a historical basis, not complete speculation.

Complete speculation is fantasy: a perfectly valid basis for either fiction or games, NOT the same as exploring an alternative history.

 

[Dale]

I'm telling you what the definition of "alt history" is in computer game genres. I'm not confusing anything, you are, by conflating academic alt history with computer game sub genre alt history.

I agree with you that in an academic sense, these types of games are purely fictional with fantastical back settings. However, in the computer game world, alt history is defined as a sub genre of sci-fi, based on a speculative divergence in Earth's history, which results in the creation of an alternative history. Civilization, Humankind, Old World, ARA, and now Millennia, are games which depict the creation of an alternative history. Therefore, in computer game sub genres, they fit into alt-history.

Here's a decent enough explanation of what alt-history means in computer games: https://gamerant.com/alternate-history-subgenre-explained

Edit to note: Fantastical history sub genre (which you believe these types of games are), is where an fantastical, or mythical element is introduced to radically alter the speculative history. For instance, aliens landing and impacting a historical event, the use of magic, or other intelligent species as a counter to humans.

 

[Quintillus]

Let's try not to let the thread devolve into a one-on-one-debate about historical accuracy in games. If we want to debate whether a strictly historical approach or a more broad-outlines approach is our favorite, we can start an "All Other Games" discussion for it, but there's enough in the opening post to discuss about Millenia that the focus should remain on the game at hand.

It looks pretty interesting to me. I like that new ideas are being explored around secondary population centers. I've seen secondary population centers go from non-existent (Civ III) to simple wealth-producing villages that grew over time (Civ IV), to districts (Endless Legend, Old World) that are somewhat hybrids of secondary population centers and exploded-onto-the-map primary population centers, as well as the sort-of-hybrid approach with regions and outposts in Humankind that didn't quite hit the target for me. I'll be curious to hear more about how these Towns work in practice, but their inclusion, as well as the lighter-weight outposts, seems like a positive to me.

The adding regions via Vassals also sounds interesting to me. It makes me think of the early Roman Republic, and its Latin allies that eventually became part of the Republic proper. I'll also be curious to hear if there are predetermined regions with full-fledged civilizations that are the only ones that can expand, or if any region's original ruler could vassalize neighbors and eventually become a regional or world power. Given that it's a Paradox (published?) game I wouldn't be shocked if it's the latter, and that would be appealing. I was able to re-adjust to a smaller roster of civilizations in Old World in part due to its focused time frame, but after playing Paradox games, going back to a game whose time span is multiple millennia, such as Humankind or Civilization, and only having a small roster of contestants, can be jarring. Perhaps vassals will lead to the solution that minor civs in Civ never quite were for me.

 

[greenOak]

Interesting.
When Humankind came out there was much discussion of the contrast between Regions and Tiles to organize map space. Millenium seems to be using both, using Tiles for specific work spaces, towns, outposts, etc and Regions as the measure of space that your Civ/Faction controls. -And, from what I gather here, the size and shape and amount of space taken by the Region is very flexible rather than near-rigid as in Humankind. Lots of water to come under the bridges between here and final release, but this could be the compromise/dual use that works better than either system by itself.

The screenshots may be only vaguely related, but assuming they are related, note that the secnd screenshot indicates it is Turn 17 and the in-game date is 6000 BCE. That would be at the very beginning of city/permanent settlement formation IRL, and long before any real metal-working (there have been cold-worked copper artifacts like needles and awls found, but nothing more complex).

But looking at the first screenshot:
Scout Cavalry is available at 6000 BCE, apparently, about 2000 years before the first evidence of anybody riding horses. In 6000 BCE, horses were strictly food animals.
Spear and Chariot are available to build/acquire. IF they mean a spear unit (anti-cav) then it and the chariot are about 3400 - 3900 years early: the first chariots don't show up as grave goods until about 2100 BCE, the first spear-armed unit until 2600 BCE. On the other hand, the spear as an individual weapon for hunters is on cave paintings dated to 6 - 9000 BCE.
The most interesting note is the Crane apparently being built. Sorry guys, but the early mechanical engineering was all ramps, levers and rollers. The earliest evidence of a crane that I know of is from Classical Greece, about 515 BCE in Corinth. It is hypothesized that the Greeks developed mechanical lifting devices because they didn't have access to the mass work force that the larger Egyptian and Middle eastern kingdoms had for monumental building, so had to compensate with better machinery.

This all is clearly labeled 'Work in Progress' and some of the map graphics look pretty 'place-holderish', so it may all be irrelevant to the final game. Just to let the Millenia team know that some of us are watching like the proverbial Hawks because we really, really want to see you get it Right . . .

You do realize that 2000 years is like 10-15 turns at this point of the game right? Depending on the order the player/AI decides to research tech, horseback riding could arrive 2000 years early or 2000 years late. The stone age covers something like 8000 years in this game and has only 5 techs. Unless you drastically increase the number of techs (a matter of preference), or railroad players into a particular order (just bad game design), it's inevitable that some techs are going to arrive thousands of years early or late.