Millennia - Steam Next Fest Demo | Live Now!

[OzzyKP]

Check taskmanager for CPU and Ram Utilization. Check Nvidia performance overlay (alt+R) for GPU and CPU utilization. SSD will just make the game load faster, it is not that necessary for strategy games unless you load savegames a lot. Installing the lastest nvidia graphic drivers might help if GPU usage is a problem.

Sometimes games just have bad performance or bugs. I played an older RPG latelty that ran with 20fps or something. Once I disabled vsync I had nearly 60 fps.

Hmm, I'm not sure how to get to the Nvidia performance overlay, alt+R does nothing for me. But here is the task manager screen:

 

[The_J]

Lol, they extended the demo with an additional week As much as I love the game, this is getting a bit silly

Spoiler steam pic :

View attachment 684600

I think this means that the demo is either played a lot, or rather little .

 

[Solver]

I think this means that the demo is either played a lot, or rather little .

Probably a lot. A daily peak of over 400 players today, more than a week after releasing a demo is IMO a very good showing.

 

[Quintillus]

Per steamdb.info, Millennia has significantly increased their Steam follower count since the demo launched:

15,500 the day before the demo started (already up from 13,300 a month ago), to 20,850 today, still gaining hundreds per day. I would expect that is considered significant for a new studio (even as it is composed by veterans of games such as Age of Mythology).

Now I'm curious if, if Solver has the wizardry to tell that there were 400 players today, is there also the wizardry to tell what the peak was last Monday?

 

[Solver]

My wizardry is the same site you just used The demo peaked at 2440 players the day of its release, which again is quite a lot of interest.

 

[Dale]

Per steamdb.info, Millennia has significantly increased their Steam follower count since the demo launched:

View attachment 684611
15,500 the day before the demo started (already up from 13,300 a month ago), to 20,850 today, still gaining hundreds per day. I would expect that is considered significant for a new studio (even as it is composed by veterans of games such as Age of Mythology).

Now I'm curious if, if Solver has the wizardry to tell that there were 400 players today, is there also the wizardry to tell what the peak was last Monday?

20,850 followers. Some maths (cuz we be nerds).

By Steam game averages, followers -> wishlist multiplier for pre-release turn-based strategy 4x games (which Millennia is), is 9.0.
In general, wishlist to sales conversions (7-day post release conversion of release day wishlist) is between 10-20%, with weighting towards 12%.

So what's that tell us?

Of the current 20,850 followers, we can generalise that translates to 187,650 wishlists.
Of the generalised current 187,650 wishlists, we can estimate that will translate to 22,518 first week sales.

If we then say Millennia will sell for $50 USD (most of PDX's recent large scale titles have been this price), then ~$1.125 million USD raw sales, ~$788,130 USD after Steam's 30% cut.

Let's reverse engineer a bit. Say PDX wants $5 million USD first week gross after Steam (which is actually probably on the low side if they want to make this a long term title). That's aiming at ~143,000 sales.
They would be aiming for (based on the above generalisations) ~132,200 followers.

They got a fair way to go.

EDIT: BTW, I just want to be totally clear. I have no idea on the figures that Paradox C-Prompt are working on for the game. The above is based on some research I did for myself, for other things, and in relation to Indie games. Whilst there is statistical support for the above, it in no way means accuracy. Just want to make sure that's on the table before you all reply.

 

[Quintillus]

Ahh, the player count is only visible on the SteamDB page for the demo, whereas the follower count is for the full-game's page.

Interesting maths, Dale. It would be quite interesting to be a (video-game-playing, Swedish/English understanding) fly on their wall. They still have a long way to go until release, so a lot of time to increase that follower count. By point of comparison, Humankind had 170,000 when it released, which was about 19 months after it reached 20,000 followers. Victoria III had about 120,000 at release, 17 months after it was announced and nearly instantly reached 20,000. So far, it has remained a going concern despite its 64% positive review rating. Crusader Kings III only had 95,000 followers at release.

All in all that leads me to think this is a good start for a new IP, particularly since this is a well they can likely tap again before release.

 

[Dale]

Ahh, the player count is only visible on the SteamDB page for the demo, whereas the follower count is for the full-game's page.

Interesting maths, Dale. It would be quite interesting to be a (video-game-playing, Swedish/English understanding) fly on their wall. They still have a long way to go until release, so a lot of time to increase that follower count. By point of comparison, Humankind had 170,000 when it released, which was about 19 months after it reached 20,000 followers. Victoria III had about 120,000 at release, 17 months after it was announced and nearly instantly reached 20,000. So far, it has remained a going concern despite its 64% positive review rating. Crusader Kings III only had 95,000 followers at release.

All in all that leads me to think this is a good start for a new IP, particularly since this is a well they can likely tap again before release.

So based on those other games, it looks like the math is at least consistent.

I will posit too, that Paradox has quite a loyal core following. Unlike some other companies they tend to have a core group which buy Paradox games consistently. So they may actually have a higher follower -> wishlist rate, and higher wishlist -> first week sale than some other publishers purely through brand loyalty. Though that too could be in turmoil considering the general public appraisal of their games (made and published) over the last couple of years. After Lamplighters, Star Trek Infinite, and Cities Skylines 2 their brand has taken a bit of a hit. Whether that translates into lower wishlist -> sale conversions, or lower follower -> wishlist rates, we will never know.

I think really this sort of maths is as accurate as throwing a tennis ball out of helicopter high above a footy stadium, and hoping the tennis ball hits the umpire on the head.

 

[TheMarshmallowBear]

So based on those other games, it looks like the math is at least consistent.

I will posit too, that Paradox has quite a loyal core following. Unlike some other companies they tend to have a core group which buy Paradox games consistently. So they may actually have a higher follower -> wishlist rate, and higher wishlist -> first week sale than some other publishers purely through brand loyalty. Though that too could be in turmoil considering the general public appraisal of their games (made and published) over the last couple of years. After Lamplighters, Star Trek Infinite, and Cities Skylines 2 their brand has taken a bit of a hit. Whether that translates into lower wishlist -> sale conversions, or lower follower -> wishlist rates, we will never know.

I think really this sort of maths is as accurate as throwing a tennis ball out of helicopter high above a footy stadium, and hoping the tennis ball hits the umpire on the head.

I also think a lot of people may be on the fence - I think if the game manages to improve and fix some of the UI/UX aspects, people are on board, but to me, it's currently the one thing that is keeping me away from it.

 

[Dale]

I also think a lot of people may be on the fence - I think if the game manages to improve and fix some of the UI/UX aspects, people are on board, but to me, it's currently the one thing that is keeping me away from it.

Yeah, there's probably an under-current of that, as well as the toxic brand image of Paradox (which is why I won't be buying this).

 

[Sephi]

Hmm, I'm not sure how to get to the Nvidia performance overlay, alt+R does nothing for me. But here is the task manager screen:

If alt+R does nothing then probably your nvidia drivers do not have it. CPU und ram looks fine. My guess is GPU. Millenia uses fairly high detailed trees and in my experience that can be costly in Unity. Civ6 for example uses much simpler trees. But it could also just be a bug or performance issue. I hope that feedback for the demo helps the developers to improve the games performance.

 

[Revolutionist_8]

My specs:
Intel Core i7-8750H CPU @ 2.20Ghz 2.21 Ghz
16 GB Ram
WIndows 10 Home 64 Bit
Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060
Running it off of my HDD instead of my SSD (which is nearly full)

This isn't the only game that runs slow for me (Frostpunk made my computer very angry). I've been thinking about getting a new computer, but I'm not even sure what the weak point is on my current PC. New computers (in my price range) don't have more than 16 GB Ram, so... I dunno. Any folks care to humor a small digression and tell me what's wrong with my PC?

If alt+R does nothing then probably your nvidia drivers do not have it. CPU und ram looks fine. My guess is GPU. Millenia uses fairly high detailed trees and in my experience that can be costly in Unity. Civ6 for example uses much simpler trees. But it could also just be a bug or performance issue. I hope that feedback for the demo helps the developers to improve the games performance.

I noticed that using Banner view for units significantly reduced "lagging" (for example when I'm dragging the map) for me, which makes sense - no need to visualize the individual units, just a simple flag. Maybe you can try that as well, but probably while it'll certainly help a bit, won't solve your problem.

 

[TheMarshmallowBear]

So maybe it's time for my unwarranted opinion (that nobody asked for)

I think Millenia does some things VERY well and some things very BADLY.

UX/UI is one of the bad things, it is atrocious, confusing, and takes a really longer-than-it-should to get the hang of it, biggest culprit being the Improvements Point Screen, I like the system, but it's easy to forget you have points. THe lack of readability of the map is another, because I honestly still don't know what the priorities for the improvements is, apart from the obvious resource exploitation, I don't exactly know what to build on the empty tiles.

The resource system is intriguing, but also rather obtuse, I know things get converted to other things, but there is no UI indication to help you with it, sure you get buildings unlocked with eras and technologies, but some recommendation "maybe build this" could be better.

Battle was initially really horrible but then I realised that it was simply a shortened version of what Civ 3 and Civ 4 did with the battle mechanics anyway, it's just instead of a single unit attacking another unit the entire mechanism is grouped within the unit stack. UI is good enough to tell you if you are likely to win and have better odds at winning, basically, I only attack if I'm doing more damage than taking it.

The Domains and National Spirits are cute, ather underwhelming from a strategic point of view, and I felt expansion was slow (this then compounded by the slow improvement rate), it felt easy to fall behind too.

I think what Civ does well is prepare you for the future, while this game doesn't. Sure it's difficult to know what the future may be when it's divergent, but still, knowing which direction to go with would be nice for a novice.

However, where I think this game ultimately shines is it's approach to the Ages, the core feature of the game - I actually really like the divergent eras.

I managed to get to Age of Heroes through Hotseat (Which, big bonus, Humankind doesn't even have THAT because of the combat system which is imho ridicolous). and although I didn't get to play much with it, the taste was enough. I think what this game will do well is keep you playing by having eras/ages introduce new mechanics to play with that offer reward, something that I think Civ tends to falter with, we all know the End-Turn-Syndrome, and I think Millenia has an opportunity to actually solve it in a fun way.

The game rules simply change with new divergent eras, I'm curious to know what exactly occurs in Age of Blood. And I was slightly disappointed to discover that the game won't tell you what the next ages could be in the third one (or second one, whichever you look at it).

I think this game has potential to be really fun, I will defeniately be stealing some ideas for my own game, I think it could do the onboarding process much easier. Classic Paradox to have a steep learning curve in one of their published games.

I'm currently leaning towards getting the game. Graphics are bit harsh, and mobiley, and I think the fact that someone dug up that one of the targeted platforms was Android, I mean it's to be expected.

The only other downfall was that once I had more things going on in the game the performance started to slow down and it got bit laggy. But I was also playing as 8 individual nations.

 

[The_J]

Now, that the demo is over, could I maybe get a 1-sentence judgement from everyone who's played it ?

 

[MrRadar]

Now, that the demo is over, could I maybe get a 1-sentence judgement from everyone who's played it ?

A challenger appears!

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

A collection of interesting ideas and concepts, but very few new ones. How it comes together over all 10 Eras instead of just the first 60 turns will be the really interesting question.

 

[Revolutionist_8]

Now, that the demo is over, could I maybe get a 1-sentence judgement from everyone who's played it ?

A decent and fun game, where the scale of how things can go differently is huge, because you have a ton of options and freedom how do you want to play and which area you want to focus.

Huhh, 1 (not oversized) sentence is really really hard, when I could write pages and explain every small detail I found

 

[Dale]

Now, that the demo is over, could I maybe get a 1-sentence judgement from everyone who's played it ?

This game comes with Paradox attached, so prepare for a very barebones release (that most likely won't work as advertised), to be DLC'ed to hell, banned on their forums for reporting issues with the game, and called toxic customers.

 

[Nikolai II]

This game comes with Paradox attached, so prepare for a very barebones release (that most likely won't work as advertised), to be DLC'ed to hell, banned on their forums for reporting issues with the game, and called toxic customers.

I reported a problem with the pricing on CK3's Gamepass DLC (someone used the calculator wrong and ended with a bundle of two season costing ca 450 NOK each costing ca 1600 NOK, about 160 USD), got no reply, asked again a week later with a link to my first post with more info, and got it deleted and warned by a mod for "spamming".

 

[Dale]

I reported a problem with the pricing on CK3's Gamepass DLC (someone used the calculator wrong and ended with a bundle of two season costing ca 450 NOK each costing ca 1600 NOK, about 160 USD), got no reply, asked again a week later with a link to my first post with more info, and got it deleted and warned by a mod for "spamming".

Yeah, their mods are out of control. In the Cities Skylines 2 forum, someone posted my review, and asked some questions about it. I then replied later in the thread saying yeah that was mine, and that I stand by every word of it, and got perma-banned.