Millennia | Announcement

[Bergest]

He's not arguing for blank Civs, but a fantasy game with its own lore. It can't be pseudo-historical.

No, I'm mainly arguing for Civs that are more or less heavily inspired by the real peoples without the burden of real names and thus pseudo-historicity. Blank Civs would actually also be a very cool concept.

 

[lymond]

played Dox games for over 20 years and did not even know we had a forum here

 

[AntSou]

You seem to be taking the idea that people want to make their own blank civ however the game allows them very personally. Like dude, calm down.

At no point have I argued against that concept.

No, I'm mainly arguing for Civs that are more or less heavily inspired by the real peoples without the burden of real names and thus pseudo-historicity. Blank Civs would actually also be a very cool concept.

I have no ability to engage with dishonest people and I will refrain from commenting further because it will just result in a moderator coming to this thread.

You can't say a thing, then casually and off-handedly say "No", as if that cancelled out everything you said up until then.

"Just create your own factions that are inspired by real peoples [...] Why not create your own lore with some actual consistency?"

Not only did you not argue for a blank Civ, you gave the silly stereotypical factions of Beyond Earth as an example of what you were proposing.

You also need to explain why you set the red line at civilizations and wonders, but will inevitably have to accept pseudo-historicity in technological and cultural developments.

 

[Bergest]

At no point have I argued against that concept.


I have no ability to engage with dishonest people and I will refrain from commenting further because it will just result in a moderator coming to this thread.

You can't say a thing, then casually and off-handedly say "No", as if that cancelled out everything you said up until then.



Not only did you not argue for a blank Civ, you gave the silly stereotypical factions of Beyond Earth as an example of what you were proposing.

You also need to explain why you set the red line at civilizations and wonders, but will inevitably have to accept pseudo-historicity in technological and cultural developments.

What are you doing when you create Civs that are more or less heavily inspired by real peoples but of course with their own leaders, names and maybe a few cultural peculiarities and special buildings? Yes, you are creating your own lore. Those two things are not mutually exclusive. I also never claimed that I was arguing for blank Civs. I was obviously not. I simply stated that I like that concept too. To be more precise, I would be perfectly fine with either full on fantasy Civs with extensive lore, Civs that are more or less stand-ins for real peoples just without the burden of historical names and wonders or full-on blank Civs. My main critique since the first post, has been the weird slop world states that the current Civ faction system creates. Anything that improves on that is a preferable alternative in my book.

"You also need to explain why you set the red line at civilizations and wonders, but will inevitably have to accept pseudo-historicity in technological and cultural developments."

I do? Well, the reason is that the typically far more generic developments hurt my subjective suspension of disbelief far less than real peoples with real historical names and cultural buildings that were built by very specific cultures at a very specific time in real history being mashed together beyond recognition.

 

[Swissy]

The illustration of a 'Spartan' warrior does not impress. He has the Spartan 'lambda' (λ) insignia on his shield, but it was specifically described as "the red lambdas gleaming", not a thin monochrome line, and the shield looks to be only about 2 feet in diameter, not a full-sized 3-foot diameter Aspis. His cloak is a very light pinkish red, when it was intended to hide bloodstains, so should be much darker. Most importantly, the Spartans were famous for NOT wearing metal body armor or metal helmets, preferring the lighter Phrygian-style felt cap (heavily padded for defense against blows to the skull) and rely on their skill with the shield to protect themselves. If the devil is in the details, this is Bealzebubblish and does not bode well.

The "Spartan" appears to be a designation for an early era Military domain ethos choice, the other being "Raiders". The basic unit for this is called a Spartan. Looking at the Spartan domain screen it appears to be focused on a military system dependent on warriors who are regularly trained in a standing army. The devs have already commented the game isn't specific to the existing historic timeline. Looks very much a build your own civ from scratch with extensive customization elements.

 

[Crezth]

Watching this with the hope we’ll finally have a 4X game to replace civ4 with

 

[FishFishFish]

View attachment 673159

Age of renaissance at 10,000 BCE?

 

[The_J]

I'd heavily suspect that the screenshots are heavily doctored and don't show realistic situations.

 

[Thorvald of Lym]

Age of Empires as a TBS? I wish I'd thought of that sooner!

Never played Humankind myself but this sounds like Millennia intends to correct its shortcomings. Civ4's Caveman2Cosmos features discretionary alternate history paths, but the idea of multiple paths as a dynamic feature of the base game is really exciting. If the Civ series suffers one cardinal sin, it's the Whig History railroading—we know the Polynesians explored the whole of Oceania with stars and catamarans, and When They Severed Earth From Sky made me realize we had figured out millennial-scale astronomical calendars before we even had writing! Making progress adaptive will do wonders for replayability.

The best military for you to field changes based on your economic design (and the Age you have moved into and the National Spirits you have selected). You might be better with more Production to train troops, or more Warfare Domain to support them, or more Wealth to pay the upkeep on expensive elite troops or…

I really like the suggestion that different economic models shape different military structures, beyond what's been a fairly linear arithmetic of "more resource = more production = more troops" and toward complementary specializations. I literally cannot think of a mainstream game in this genre that offers different paradigms as a conscious strategy, rather than taking them as granted for the epoch: compare Medieval feudal levies to the dominance of mercenaries in the Renaissance, or NATO's smaller-but-high-tech arsenal v. WARPAC's conscript-driven economy-of-scale. Couple this with National Spirits (hi HoI4! ) and it'll hopefully allow for distinctive character, while still keeping different civs balanced.

The return of stacking. and battle scene that's supposed to be. but it is still Call to Power to me.

I've never played CTP but that screenshot was my first thought too. Would have liked more details on the plan for combat: this isn't a PDS title so battles need not be relegated to jousting spreadsheets.

And it doesn't follow from people wanting a simplified "make a civ" function that the civs would be ahistorical. Looking at the workshop, most modded civs seem to be either historical or based on other franchises (animes, witcher, etc).

Granted, unless it's really compelling, you're not gonna get much of an audience for personal micronations. Custom civs are something best handled in-game, and I too am surprised that the actual options remain so limited: literally the only game in the whole Civ series that lets you customize your leader portrait without back-end modding is CivNet.

Millennia looks to be aping the diegetic cultural evolution from Humankind, but in a more tribe-neutral way so your flavour doesn't magically rewrite every epoch. Couple this with something like the Stellaris empire maker where you can pick your flag, race, architectural and unit style, and even name list, this could be best fodder for "truly" custom civs.

I'll keep an eye on this for sure but the fact that you are using the Spartans as your "ancient, awesome warriors" doesn't really inspire a lot of confidence about the history-related aspects of the game.

I also support de-Spartanization.

Age of renaissance at 10,000 BCE?

I'd heavily suspect that the screenshots are heavily doctored and don't show realistic situations.

I for one admire C Prompt's courage to spotlight the long-neglected scholarship of the period before the Finno–Korean Hyperwar.

Although personally all the debate about "history" is a bit silly. Even Paradox GSG games can't simulate core aspects of history like Culture or Religion or even Government.

Whaddaya MEAN polar bears aren't a real culture group??

 

[ezzlar]

So, link to beta test?

 

[Urlance Woolsbane]

I'm glad to see someone had the same idea I had about how to evolve Civ VI's golden/dark age system: It's a good, solid central gimmick. At a glance this looks like a promising game, and I'm intrigued to see what the finished product will look like.

I'll keep an eye on this for sure but the fact that you are using the Spartans as your "ancient, awesome warriors" doesn't really inspire a lot of confidence about the history-related aspects of the game. Hopefully that won't be a major concern in the end though.

I don't see the problem with using Spartans as an instance of an ancient, militarist society. Doing does not entail buying into the "Freedom-loving Spartans"-myth peddled by the likes of 300 nor does it meant that the devs think that the Spartans were the best warriors ever nor are they saying "Oppressing helots was good. We love steeply stratified slave-states!"

 

[blackbutterfly]

I'm watching Jumbo's YouTube but he hasn't mentioned anything about Millenia having leaders?

Opportune moment to have Boudica...as she is sorely missing in Civ VI (along with Hannibal, Harun Rashid, Asoka to name a few).

 

[CivLuvah]

These mechanics sound interesting, there seems to be more choices for the player to do with regards to making their civilization unique and taking it to different directions. Colour me intrigued, but I'm not really sold yet.

I am wondering though whether the diverging ages would be global or would just occur on the player. It wouldn't really feel fair from the perspective of other players in another continent, separated by an ocean, if the main one suddenly unleashed an Age of Plague into the world.

 

[1SDANi]

Do mine eyes decieve me, is a Paradox game finally taking some cues from Rhye's and Fall?

 

[Takhisis]

Watching this with the hope we’ll finally have a 4X game to replace civ4 with

Actually Firaxis was so prescient about this that they made it beforehand and called it Civ3.

*sigh* It's a pity that later games have lost the sense of humungous scale that games up to Civ4 had.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

The "Spartan" appears to be a designation for an early era Military domain ethos choice, the other being "Raiders". The basic unit for this is called a Spartan. Looking at the Spartan domain screen it appears to be focused on a military system dependent on warriors who are regularly trained in a standing army. The devs have already commented the game isn't specific to the existing historic timeline. Looks very much a build your own civ from scratch with extensive customization elements.

A lot, of course, depends on the specifics of how they define the actions of these titles, but while the term Spartan does bring up a professional, full-time group of troops supported by the state in some way, I would point out that it was supported - and made necessary by - a mass of slaves that were worked to produce what the professional warriors did not have time to. Also, the result was a Spartan society with virtually no visual or performed art other than declaimed poetry, no commercial organizations - in act, very little contact between Spartans and the outside world except at spear point or in international athletic contests.

I realize they are going for the pop history reference, but the real division with professional soldiers on one side has Amateurs or Militia on the other, not 'raiders'. The essential difference is between people that devote the bulk of their time to fighting or training to fight, and those that run the economy and society and only show up to fight when called. Raiders, ironically, tend to spend far more time at militant activities than those folks, and so are not the real cotrast to the full-time 'Spartans'.

I am, however, very happy that they seem to be recognizing that the division between amateur and professional troops exists - something not acknowledged in either Civ or Humankind - and, potentially, that it is far more important than any differences in weaponry within the same era/age

 

[AntSou]

Granted, unless it's really compelling, you're not gonna get much of an audience for personal micronations. Custom civs are something best handled in-game, and I too am surprised that the actual options remain so limited: literally the only game in the whole Civ series that lets you customize your leader portrait without back-end modding is CivNet.

Lore for fantasy nations would require really good writers. That feels to me like the wrong way to go about it. If a studio is willing to steer away from historical cultures, developing a system where one customizes their Civ through the ages seems like the way to do it.

This is of course nothing new, at least in terms of requests by players. I was really excited when Humankind revealed it was attempting something of this kind, but the sort of "meet-me-half-way" approach they took just made the whole thing feel a bit weird in the end.

And this also exists in Civ already, when it comes to Religions. It's just bonuses attached to an icon.

Looking forward to seeing the upcoming dev diaries. Also interested in how the game handles units, as we can see they're using some form of stacking.

I realize they are going for the pop history reference, but the real division with professional soldiers on one side has Amateurs or Militia on the other, not 'raiders'. The essential difference is between people that devote the bulk of their time to fighting or training to fight, and those that run the economy and society and only show up to fight when called. Raiders, ironically, tend to spend far more time at militant activities than those folks, and so are not the real contrast to the full-time 'Spartans'.

Raiders aren't intended to contrast with Spartans. Both are military focused designs. If the game does well we may see additional "National Spirits" in the future for different stages.

We won't have to pick between Spartans or Raiders (as in, you can just pick something else entirely).

 

[Dale]

This game sounds like Age of Empires having you meet goals/thresholds to jump from Age to Age, whilst playing Civilisation-ish inside each age.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

Lore for fantasy nations would require really good writers. That feels to me like the wrong way to go about it. If a studio is willing to steer away from historical cultures, developing a system where one customizes their Civ through the ages seems like the way to do it.

This is of course nothing new, at least in terms of requests by players. I was really excited when Humankind revealed it was attempting something of this kind, but the sort of "meet-me-half-way" approach they took just made the whole thing feel a bit weird in the end.

And this also exists in Civ already, when it comes to Religions. It's just bonuses attached to an icon.

Looking forward to seeing the upcoming dev diaries. Also interested in how the game handles units, as we can see they're using some form of stacking.



Raiders aren't intended to contrast with Spartans. Both are military focused designs. If the game does well we may see additional "National Spirits" in the future for different stages.

We won't have to pick between Spartans or Raiders (as in, you can just pick something else entirely).

View attachment 673295

Using 'Raiders' and 'Spartans' as two sides of a militant/warlike proposition makes more sense. That assumes that the militia/amateur opposite is simply the default for people who don't go military, which also makes sense (if that's what they are doing).
Next question that comes to mind looking at the illustration is: does your choice of 'Engineering' and type of engineering modify what you can construct? Like, if the game includes Wonders or Massive Civic Projects that would seem like an obvious connection and a good way to make Engineering a more attractive choice . . .

 

[Caesar of Bread]

Hello, everyone!

We’re excited to present the first Dev Diary for Millennia.

In this, we’ll talk a little about the vision and features for the game and also about
us, C Prompt Games. You can expect additional Diaries that go into more detail on
various features and the thought behind them in the coming months, leading up to
our release next year. If you like what you see, you can wishlist the game right
now!

C Prompt Games

Before we get rolling, we should say a few words about who we are.

C Prompt Games was formed by experienced strategy developers who have worked together on some of your favorite stuff. We are probably most known for our work on the Age of Empires franchise.

We love working in smaller teams – there are around twenty people on Millennia currently. Our office is in Colorado, but we are organized to support hybrid remote / in-office development and the team is in numerous other locations, including Texas, New Mexico, and Oregon.

At our core, we are life-long hardcore strategy gamers and we have basically wanted to make a 4X since forever. We started Millennia in 2019 -- it is definitely a labor of love and we are very excited to start being able to share it with you.


What’s This?

If you haven’t seen anything else about the game, Millennia is a new turn-based 4X that features alternate history, custom tech trees, and deep economy and combat.


In The Beginning…
View attachment 673156


We have carried the concept of Millennia around for a long time (please note my intentional avoidance of a pun there). That is fairly typical of our process. We tend to have a lot of rough game directions percolating and these get worked on here and there until we feel like it is the right time for one of them.

In the case of Millennia, a few things motivated us to make this our next game:

• As strategy game developers, 4X is a cornerstone of the entire genre. It’s something we love and something we want to work on. (Designing alongside Bruce Shelley while at Ensemble certainly provided some motivation in this direction.)
  
  
• As strategy game players, we saw 4X as receiving less attention than it deserved. To us, the amount of obvious player interest was far greater than the number of games being provided and amount of new gameplay being explored. Certainly, we personally wanted more 4X games and we had talked to a lot of fans who felt the same way.
  
  
• Shortly after we started to flesh out the systems that would become the pillars of Millennia, we really felt the spark. Not only did we see how things could fit together, but we also started to see something unique, something we really wanted to play ourselves. (The Age model in particular quickly developed into something that everyone saw potential in and was excited about.)

During the early stages of development, C Prompt shared a prototype of Millennia with our friends at Paradox and happily discovered agreement on those motivations.


Vision

4X is a large genre and can support a lot of different experiences. One of the experiences we felt had been overlooked was that of player authorship, of feeling like you’re the one writing the story. When we played, we often felt less like we were leading a nation and more like we were trying to remember boardgame rules.

So, from a very high level, one of our goals was to steer in the direction of more open-ended, systems-based gameplay - to deliver a feeling of being the guiding spirit of a nation.

First and foremost, that direction informs a lot of our decisions.


Pillar: Alternate History
View attachment 673157

A key innovation in Millennia is the Age-based design.

There are ten Ages in a “normal” game, ranging from the Stone Age to the near-future. Each Age provides the experience of the Age – the Iron Age has Iron Age technologies, Iron Age units, Iron Age buildings, and rules specific to the conditions of the Iron Age.

If you keep things within “normal” parameters, you might progress through 10 “standard” Ages, each delivering historical gameplay.

However, Millennia allows history to go off the rails. If you make some different decisions, you might steer your timeline into alternate Ages. These Ages are still historically themed, but explore some “what-if” territory. The Age of Aether is based on a history where the internal combustion engine doesn’t come about as soon as it did and steam-power develops further. The Age of Blood is based on a war raging out of control and spreading across the world.

Ultimately, most of the things you have to use in a game come from the Ages, so you can end up with very, very different scenarios depending on the specific history and alternate history you timeline moves through.


Pillar: Custom Tech Trees
View attachment 673158


Millennia features a system called “National Spirits.”

Think of National Spirits as “things a nation can be famous for.” Are your people known as great engineers? Is one of your major cities seen as the center of global banking? Does the world fear your unbeatable warriors?

Mechanically, each National Spirt is a technology tree. You get to pick National Spirits from a set at different points in a game. Doing so makes the technologies of the National Spirit available to you.

Through National Spirits, you get customize your Nation, to decide what you will be famous for, during the course of the game.


Pillar: Deep Economy and Combat
View attachment 673159


Economy and combat are key to Millennia.

As you lead your nation, you’ll need to design the right economy for your strategy. Not all resources in Millennia are the same. Cutting down trees for Logs can provide Production, much like mining Copper. However, with the right Improvements, you can create a chain where your Logs are made into Paper which is then made into Books, getting you Knowledge (or Religion or Government or Wealth) instead of Production.

Some resources are (like the Logs) broad and capable of steering into a variety of different Goods while others are more focused and less flexible. How you decide to structure your economy has an impact on your capabilities and your ability to respond to changing conditions.

One of the places this is felt is with combat. The best military for you to field changes based on your economic design (and the Age you have moved into and the National Spirits you have selected). You might be better with more Production to train troops, or more Warfare Domain to support them, or more Wealth to pay the upkeep on expensive elite troops or…

Beyond the economy, combat offers its own interesting decisions. Different types of Units have different capabilities. You design your Armies by assigning multiple Units to fight together, allowing you to create different Army types for different needs.


Next
View attachment 673160


This is the tip of the iceberg -- Millennia is a huge game. The outline above is an introduction but there is plenty to cover regarding the pillars, plus a substantial number of major systems that haven’t even been mentioned.

Over the next few weeks, we will present additional Dev Diaries to showcase more of the game and to dive deeper into specific features. Next up, in two weeks, we’ll talk about the building blocks of your nation, Regions, Towns, and Outposts, and also cover a bit of the World Map itself.

We hope you’ll check back and join us for more on the game.

And, of course, if this sounds good, please wishlist the game on Steam and join the community.

YouTube - https://pdxint.at/MillenniaYouTube​

Twitter - https://pdxint.at/MillenniaTwitter​

Facebook - https://pdxint.at/MillenniaFB​

Discord - https://pdxint.at/MillenniaDiscord​

Embrace the Chaos!

They did it.