Suggestions and Ideas for Improving Millennia

[CalebR_300]

The general consensus seems to be that Millennia's gameplay is largely disappointing; many good ideas, but implemented haphazardly.
That said, the game still holds a lot of promise, and with (a lot) of tweaks, it could even be great.
So I decided to create this thread so people could pitch in suggestions of what would improve the gameplay experience.

Spoiler :

And perhaps to vent the many frustrations I'm having in my current game, despite faring quite well for all intents and purposes.

Here's some of the things I would like to see in future updates/with mods:

Era System:

• Special ages being tied to individual nations, rather than be applied globally (kind of like golden/dark ages in civ 6). Conditions and effects will have to be tweaked, naturally.
• Gamerule to alter the minimum techs required to advance an era.
• Replace (or option to replace) game ending eras with victory conditions instead.

Tiles/Cities:

• Ability to swap tiles between cities (towns too if possible).
• Fixed cost for tile purchasing with cooldown, or scale cost based on distance to closest city/town, or cap tile purchase cost (Say 100).
• Be able to build manufacturing/urban improvements on hills. Charge more Improvement Points (say, 25%) if you have to.
• Be able to manually build improvements in vassal land would be nice.
• Longer road connections by default and wider minimum spacing for cities. (Mods exist for this, I know).
• I would personally prefer towns to grow naturally over time. Probably outpost castles too. Domain powers could still be used to boost speed however.
• Luxuries should always provide a benefit, regardless of city size.
• Population should provide a small boost to influence (say 0.1-0.2/pop).
• Improvements should act as a road for units, or ability to manually place roads.
• Unemployed citizens should provide some small benefit to the city (like civ specialists, but nerfed).

City States:

• City states should develop and expand by themselves (much like a vassal), and even support a small army (like two stacks or thereabouts).
• Spawn city states further apart.

Religion:

• Existing religious buildings provide more faith for pops and/or house of worship to become available earlier.
• Be able to eliminate a rival holy site that you conquer.
• Inquisition is fixed cost, but spreading religion scales. I feel these need to be made consistent.

Combat/Units:

• No auto razing improvements on conquest, let me choose whether to plunder.
• All units should be upgradable (with the exception of leader units).
• Be able to pass player units through non-hostile units and vice versa. (Stacking on the same tile with allied units would be nice).
• Be able to change what region gathering units send their harvest to.
• A valid means of countering bombard (capital) ships from land.
• Pike units to upgrade to either a heavy pike/tercio/pike and shot, and for arquebus units to upgrade to muskets. (Unit upgrade tree probably needs tweaks overall).

Diplomacy:

• Diplomacy needs a overhaul. Not sure about specifics, but it needs more personality. Warnings of weaknesses, encouragement of trade, grumbling about being too chummy with another civ, that kind of thing.
• Ability to give/take land/cities via diplomacy.

Domain Powers/Social Fabric:

• Clear cut should be available way earlier. For instance, Bronze working for forests, Smelting for jungles, Machines for swamps.
• Perhaps use improvement points for clear cut instead?
• Debuff most of the social fabric bonuses. As it is, the exploration one is fine, diplo is okay, but the rest are way too generous.
• Diplomatic social fabric should probably provide a relations boost rather than gold.
• Scout heal/teleport ability cost needs to either scale or have a cooldown.
• Reinforcement abilities are fairly overpowered when used defensively. Needs a cooldown or stronger debuff.
• A means of 'selling' excess domain XP, especially if the associated social fabric is already maxed.

UI/Other:

• Infopedia needs to be more informative, complete, and include a search function. Upgrade trees for units would be handy.
• Option for notifications regarding: pop growth, border growth, vassal improvements, or hostile units in friendly territory.
• Consistent Undo Button or no Undo Button, because at present, some decisions can be undone, but some can't.
• Display unit veterancy in ledger.
• Option to ignore 'go to' units constantly asking for confirmation reaching their destination.

 

[fjaoaoaoao]

I don't find the gameplay disappointing at all, but yes things are haphazardly implemented.
The game just needs more polish in general, so the release strategy was interesting. Just speculating, but it feels like some variation of gauge interest in the skeleton of the game and then do more and polish if there's enough demand.

Era System:

• Special ages being tied to individual nations, rather than be applied globally (kind of like golden/dark ages in civ 6). Conditions and effects will have to be tweaked, naturally.

I think this could work but would require a lot more playtesting than maybe its worth. There's something nice and different about forcing everyone to go into the same age and making it sort of a race that you want to force or prevent.

I think the most needed suggestions you made:

Tiles/Cities:

• Ability to swap tiles between cities (towns too if possible).

Diplomacy:

• Diplomacy needs a overhaul. Not sure about specifics, but it needs more personality. Warnings of weaknesses, encouragement of trade, grumbling about being too chummy with another civ, that kind of thing

 

[greenOak]

Diplomacy in its current state is a deal breaker for me.

The issue stems from the AI hating you if you are not militarily dominant to them. It's one thing if an AI who is much stronger than you doesn't like you and views you as a target of war, but the AI still hates you if you have 80% of their power score - hell the AI hates you even when you have 100% of their power score. Even though the player can easily defend their empire with 80% of the military power as the attacking AI, the AI will constantly declare wars it has no hope of winning. It seems the only way to ensure peace is to be way ahead of them in power, and if you do that you may as well go conquering. Basically, the game's awful diplomacy system railroads you into being a warmonger.

 

[Rambo919]

It has one major flaw that I have noticed has crept into many a modern strategy game.... the attempt to be cinematic.

If you go that route you have to have an exceptionally clear interface and not manage to condescend to the player. In this particular game everything in effect when taken together is a very impressed with itself muddle.

I just can't play this thing it keeps loosing me and I don't even properly understand when someone is at war with me because I keep skipping the "trumpets and drama" notifications quicker and quicker out of increased annoyance.