Millennia News

Hello and welcome to another Millennia Design Diary! I’m Rob “Xemu” Fermier, lead programmer and co-designer (along with Ian Fischer – fun fact, we’ve been working together since “Age of Mythology” way back in 1999!). We’ve talked about the Map, the Nations, and the Combat in the game, but today I’m excited to talk in more detail about the Economy of the game.

Ever since the early concepting of the game, having deep and rich economic systems has been one of our primary goals. Whether your path to victory involves raising massive armies, rushing ahead in the tech tree, or securing your cultural prominence, doing any of those things requires a strong economy to be successful. There’s a lot to cover here – in fact so much that we’ll be doing a second entire Design Diary on the economy later on!

[h3]Econ 101[/h3]

At the heart of the economy are your Regions, which house your Population. Your Population lets you work the tiles controlled by the Region, generating Resources directly, or Goods that convert back into Resources at the end of the turn. There are many paths to a bountiful economy – more Population to let you work more tiles, more advanced Goods which convert into more valuable resources, or just expanding to control more Regions in the first place.

How you assign your workers gives you a lot of flexibility about what you’re actually generating each turn. When there’s a war going on, sometimes extra Production to finish out a new Unit is a lot more important than growing your Population. You can manually control each worker’s assignment, but if you prefer to just focus on the big picture, the game will make sure that no workers are left idle at the end of a turn.

Some parts of your economy generate passive income as well. For example, you can construct a Town Center for +1 Government XP per turn. There are many Technologies and Ideals which also give you income directly, or for each Region you control. When creating a “wide” Nation these per-Region bonuses are important as they can scale up dramatically.


Let’s get into some details!


[h3]National Resources[/h3]

These are all tracked & accumulated at the “nation level”, pooling income from all your Regions together. They generally carry over from turn to turn.

Knowledge – Used to develop Technologies, which give you new bonuses and unlocks as well as let you progress through the Ages. In a game about moving through thousands of years of progress, this is always an important Resource to focus on!

Culture – Each time the Culture meter is filled up, you use one “Culture Power”, which provides a wide range of potent effects from instantly mustering armies, expanding your Regions, or change your Government. Each time you use a Culture Power, the cost for the next one increases slightly. Managing your Culture when you have a lot of Regions can be quite challenging, but many of the Culture Powers provide abilities you cannot access in any other way.

Wealth – If you want to maintain a large standing army, you’ll need plenty of Wealth to pay for Upkeep on your Units. Some elite Units require a great deal of Wealth to maintain, while others are much more affordable. As you progress in the game you’ll unlock the ability to use Wealth to “rush” progress in Regions, or towards your next Culture power.

Improvement Points – These do pretty much right what it says on the tin, you use them to build new Improvements! Improvements let you get much more out of your workers, and are the primary way you get and convert Goods. Later in the game you’ll also encounter Specialists, which function similarly but represent the requirements of a more educated workforce as opposed to pure infrastructure (and in the Age of Alchemy you might find yourself in need something rather more exotic…)

Domain XP – Each of the six Domains in the game (Exploration, Warfare, Engineering, Diplomacy, and Arts) has its own Resource, representing your Nation’s expertise and preparation in that Domain. They are used to both to use Domain Powers (like spawning Settlers, Artists and other unique units) as well as to purchase new Ideals from your National Spirits (which can provide extremely powerful specialized bonuses).


[h3]Regional Resources[/h3]

These are generated by, and used with, a specific Region. They generally do not carry over from turn to turn but instead are used immediately.

Production – Each Region can build one thing at a time, usually a Unit or Building. Each turn your Production is applied to the current build, in a process that should be quite familiar to most 4X players. Regions can also work on “Projects” which let you convert your Production over to other Resources instead of building a new thing.

Influence – By generating Influence, a Region can control more territory on the world map. There are many factors that control which specific tiles are acquired such as Town placement, geography, and Technology adjustments, but they all start with Influence. Well developed, high Population Regions require a lot of space for all their Improvements so this is an important, if subtle, Resource to manage.

Needs – There are a wide variety of Resources that Regions use to keep their Populations satisfied. Early on this is met by Food and Housing, but by the end of the game large regions can require Education, Ideology, and more. Meeting the Needs of a Region grows your Population, which in turn can cause them to have more types of Needs.


[h3]Needs[/h3]

Needs are worth describing a bit more in detail, because they are such a key concept in the game. There are 9 types of Needs in total, and how well your population grows is directly determined by your overall “Needs Satisfaction” (which is simply the average of all the individual Needs). If you meet the need at 100%, your people will have their basic requirements met – slow and steady growth. But if you can provide up to 200% Satisfaction, you can grow a Region much, much faster. Of course, the converse is true as well, as a Region with less than 100% Satisfaction will not only cause your Population to decrease but also has other negative consequences for a Region!

Five of the Needs (Food, Housing, Sanitation, Luxury, and Education) are triggered simply by hitting various Population thresholds in the Region (for example, Sanitation becomes required once you are above 10 Population). The other four (Faith, Power, Ideology, and Information) are more conditional, activating based on external factors like Religion or Government.

Almost all Needs grow directly with your Population, so managing a full set of Needs on a very large Region can be quite challenging! Vassals have a key advantage in that you don’t need to manage their Needs at all – the autonomy provided to a Vassal lets them grow at a steady pace without any guidance.

[h3]Goods[/h3]

While Resources are directly gathered via Forage (on unimproved tiles) and Buildings / passive bonuses, any advanced economy is going to run mainly on Goods. Goods represent a wide variety of things from raw materials to advanced consumer products – there are around 130 different Goods! Each type of Goods has a different “consume value”, which is what you get at the end of the turn if you don’t use it for anything else. Many Goods even give you multiple types of Resources when consumed!

Goods come from a variety of sources, but the most common way to get them is to work Improvements. For example, direct Forage from a Grassland tile gives 2 Food, but if you build a Farm you can instead get one Wheat, worth 4 Food. Finding “bonus” tiles in the world can take that even further – building a Farm on Wheat bonus gives you 2 Wheat from that same Farm, for a total of 8 Food.

To really get the most value out of your Goods, however, you will want to convert them into more advanced types of Goods. The aforementioned Wheat (4 Food) can be turned into Flour (8 Food) at the Mill – and each Mill provides capacity for converting up to two units of Wheat. Pursuing advanced Goods chains can be extremely efficient but they require an investment to build the right Improvements as well as have enough workers available to operate every step in the chain.


Which chains of Goods you decide the invest in makes a huge difference in how your strategy in Millenia will play out. National Spirits can modify the values of some Goods, and some chains are much more efficient if you have the right bonus tiles available. You can also use Goods to make both foreign and domestic trades, but we’ll get into that more in a future Design Diary.

[h3]Workers[/h3]

You may have noticed that this overview of the economy refers to both Population, and “workers”, somewhat interchangeably. Early in the game, these concepts are the same – each Population provides exactly one worker, so a Region with Population 3 can work exactly three improved tiles. However, as you get deeper in the game, a few things change up that dynamic.

Around the middle of the game, depending on which specific Ages are chosen in a given game, higher levels of industrialization become possible. This is reflected in a few different ways in the game (efficiency, costs, Power requirements) but one unique thing about industrialized improvements is that they allow multiple workers to be assigned to the same Improvement! For dense, highly developed Regions this makes a significant difference in how you build up your economy. To take maximum advantage of these Goods chains you may have to retool your infrastructure significantly.

In the later Ages, economies of scale are represented by “bonus workers”. Regions with larger Populations start getting workers at better than 1:1, so for example at 20 Population you might get not just the 20 workers available from population but +2 bonus workers (1 for every 10 Population). Getting the right Technologies (and Ages) can push that even further, giving a nice bonus to late game mega-Regions.

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From a design perspective, it’s been a fun and exciting challenge to make an economic system which fits the scope of a 4X that covers all of history. Managing your economy starts out pretty simple in the Stone Age but by the end of the game there are a lot of moving pieces.

As mentioned at the start, this is just “part 1” of our look at the economy in Millennia. There’s lots to cover with trade, merchants, outposts, town specializations, and more. Until then, we’ll see you again next time to discuss some more specifics about how Ages work.

If you like what you see, please wishlist the game here!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1268590/Millennia/

Hello everyone, unfortunately there isn’t a Developer Diary this week. Our next one will be Economy Part One on the 28th of November. But we do have something to share with you today!

We recently asked you over on our discord server for your questions and you didn’t disappoint. Here’s our answers and if you have any questions head on over to the Millennia Discord where we’ll be asking for more questions soon.






Question: Will we see real issues such as climate change being depicted throughout the ages? How would this work?

Answer: We take inspiration from real-world things, so you should be playing with “real issues.” A strength of that is that it helps guide toward intuitive mechanics where you can understand relationships and think about options without having to consider things through a lens of more abstract rules.

We have some content in a number of Ages (Utopia and Dystopia come to mind), that touch on themes like climate change and we have some powers that allow types of “terraforming.”

That said, I’d argue that we aren’t really using climate change (not the way I think you might be asking about it, anyway). We are designed to add things like this in as we expand, a full climate change mechanic just wasn’t on our list for the initial release.

Question: Will there be more Ages added in later dlc?

Answer: Yes.

Question: Which is your favourite Age and any particular reasons for that?

Answer: It’s hard for me to pick favourites. I like Visitors – I think it’s a fun idea and a good example of how the Age model allows Millennia to provide a unique, fun experience.

Question: Are there any plans for any magic based ages?

Answer: Not really. Millennia is a historical game. The vision for the alternate history Ages is to base things on historical “what if” scenarios. That’s not an irrefutable definition – I could easily argue that our “what ifs” in things like Alchemy or Aether are “magic” if I wanted to.

So, there’s some intangible “feel” involved. I’d say that a lot of how we look at it is to think about the perception of the Age from a historical standpoint.

In the case of Aether, if you look at material about what the future was going to be like done by people in the late 1800s, early 1900s, you’ll find a lot of sketches of world capitals with flying cars, flying ships, and flying buildings filling the sky. That’s what they thought it would be. So, it feels like a “historical” fit for us because it has that kind of “by the 1950s, we’ll take rockets to work at our office on the moon” tone – it didn’t happen that way, but here’s an Age that explores what it might have been like if it had.

Question: I have no idea what the”Age of Archangel” could you please explain?

Answer: It is Archangels now … this is what we named a space-based weapon that is a centerpiece of the Age. This is a Victory Age and involves winning by having the majority population on the planet, something you can do by out-growing the other Nations … or, you know, by using the aforementioned Archangel array. We just liked Age of Archangels more than “Age of Space Lasers.”

Question: If a variant ages happens. How much of an impact will that have during later ages?
E.g. If we go through the Age of Aether, will subsequent ages still unlock new Aether themed units? Will things that have been built stay Aether-y but no new aether related things unlock, or does everything get turned to "normal" after the age?

Answer: It depends on the specific Variant. In general, the design approach for the Ages was to identify things that were different during the Age itself, things that were different because of the Variant for a time after the Age, and things that had long-term impact.

Other than Age-specific rules, things do not suddenly “change back” when a Variant or Crisis Age ends. Upgrade lines can provide options to replace some of these things as a game progresses -- things you can build in a Variant Age can be great for that Age but can be surpassed by later Age options and you might end up replacing the Variant content with new stuff (still, the use of what the Variant Age provided changed the overall course of the game by giving you more, less, or different “stuff” relative to the other possibilities).

Other options from Variant Ages can persist through the game. Air Taxis from Age of Aether are a good source of Luxury – you might have them around for the rest of the game. Aether is a good source of Power – you might gather it for the rest of the game.

Question: Will the terrain change with ages? Like finding new ores in civ. And are they influenced by the kind of age? Like the age of plague making fresh water more important

Answer: There are Goods that are revealed as the game progresses or when certain Ages are entered into (or certain National Spirits are selected).

Question: Are some age combinations impossible? Like is it impossible for me to go from the Age of Ecology to the Age of Floods because by definition I’m doing such a good job taking care of the environment by being in this age

Answer: What is being described here is basically conditions and since all Ages have some kind of requirements, those could make anything “impossible.” Plague, for example, is based on not dealing with Sanitation, so if you deal with Sanitation, you make it “impossible” to go from Iron to Plague.

Structurally, Ages are limited by their space on the timeline – it’s impossible to move from Renaissance (5) to Stone (1), for example. Branching Ages also collapse back (most of the time) to the next standard Age, which makes progression from Variant or Crisis to another Variant or Crisis impossible.

Question: Is there an Age of Chivalry?

Answer: Maybe? There is no Age (now) called “Chivalry” but there is an Age I think fits the bill – Age of Kings in 4.

Question: What National Spirits are in the Stone Age?

Answer: None (now). The first National Spirit choice is in the second Age.

Question: How detailed is the industrial era and industrialization and as well as factories on Millennia?

Answer: There are mechanics and content (and an Age) that represent this. New Goods, Factories, Power becomes a Need as you industrialize… Depends on what you mean by “detailed”?




Question: Will techs become completely obsolete, or will their effects still be visible many ages later?

Answer: In general, Technologies do not become obsolete from a game mechanical perspective. There are Techs that aren’t of the same value when researched in Age 8 compared to having them in Age 2.

Question: How many techs are shared between variant ages? The latest short shows that Smelting is shared between Heroes and Blood, while Construction is shared between Iron and Heroes. Is it something like half the techs? I can certainly imagine Smelting, Horses, and Construction being shared between all three of the Age 3 variants

Answer: I have a sense for it but not in a way that I could swear “20.9% “or anything. I just asked Game Designer Ben and he said about two per Age. I was looking at some of the Age 9s before I wrote this and there were two in there, so those tracks.




Question: Is there an Alien Civilization/Nation?

Answer: Not a playable one (now).

Question: Will there be civics/policies/laws that will distinguish your government from other nations with the same government type?

Answer: Yes? There aren’t things that are entirely unique to two Nations that both adopt the same Government, but Governments have Ideals and can vary in applicability. You and I could have the same Government, but you could fully unlock yours and play to its strengths while I do other things – we’d have the same Government but you’d be pretty different. In the late game, Factions also come into play with Governments.

Question: Will there be a separate ethnic map and can it influence your empire if there are many nationalities in it?

Answer: No. This is not modeled as of now.

Question: If you occupy an area from another, will the inhabitants of the nation try to revolt?

Answer: When you occupy an area, it becomes a Vassal. Vassals have to achieve a level of Integration before they can become full Regions. Vassals that are taken via conquest require substantially more Integration than Vassals established via something like Settlers.

Question: Will it be possible to assimilate nationalities?

Answer: No, not at launch, not in the way I imagine you are thinking about it.

Question: Will there be a migration effect?

Answer: The Needs system represents migration effects. When Needs aren’t met, people leave, when Needs are met, people flow in.

Question: How will a peace negotiation work? Will it be possible for other nations to be created?

Answer: “Splinter” Nations can be formed if a Region revolts after Unrest gets to very high levels.

Diplomacy is still a little early at this point, but it can be used to end hostilities.




Question: Are there "wonders" like in other 4x games i.e. big projects or buildings requiring large investments of resources for a large return, typically embodying some historical wonder like the Colossus of Rhodes or the Library of Alexandria?

Answer: Wonders exists, but in a different way than in other 4X games. A wonder potentially comes from the empire Innovation system, that grants them (the Colossus of Rhodes is one of these). We also have “megaprojects” which are more involved multi-stage constructions – the Space Race is a megaproject, for example.

Question: Are there monuments specific to ages? As in whichever ages you go into, specific monuments/wonders can be locked away.
E.g: In the Age of Heroes there is the Knossos Labyrinth, etc.

Answer: Yes, some are exclusive. A lot of Innovation (and Chaos) events are Age-specific.

Question: Are there wonders of the world available to build (ie Pyramids, Stonehenge, Easter Island statues, etc)?

Answer: Yes, but, as above, generally not with the same mechanics. (Pyramids are part of the God-King Dynasty National Spirit.)




Question: Will we be able to access other instances of the map or regions? Like the sky, seafloor, underground, space…

Answer: No, not in the way I read this question. Sea, air, and space are involved in the game and there are some things that show specific information about these, but there isn’t (now) a button you press to see and interact with a “space layer” or the like.

Question: Will there be new world/colonization mechanics?

Answer: It depends on what you mean / how you define this? There are specific mechanics for founding new settlements and expansion, there are Nationals Spirits that focus more on “colonization”, and there are things that represent other people in the world, but there is not a specific old world / new world division or mechanic.

Question: Will the landmarks be based on real world landmarks?

Answer: There are landmarks based on / named after real-world landmarks.




Question: Will multiplayer be available at launch?

Answer: Local and online hotseat multiplayer will be available at launch. Additional multiplayer support is planned.

Question: How long does one campaign usually take?

Answer: Depends on player and strategy, settings, map size, difficulty – I’d say 5-15 hours as an average with a lot of range in either direction depending on specifics.

Question: Is the game meant to be complex or casual?

Answer: Millennia is meant to be deep, not complex, but I wouldn’t call it a “casual game” either way.

Question: Will there be game modes (tech shuffle, myth unit mode)?

Answer: We are focused on getting the core gameplay right before we start tweaking things like this. Let’s get the engine running before we put on some cool rims.

Question: Is there any other way of winning besides out-ageing / beating your neighbours?

Answer: Every Victory Age has specific victory conditions. Out-ageing other Nations can be an advantage for having access to techs or being able to set the Age, but tech costs (including Age-up costs) are reduced based on how far things have advanced and how many other Nations have a Technology, so you’re also making progress faster / cheaper for the Nations you leave behind. (I am positive we are going to find some tech-focused strategies we need to better balance but we have a number of tools for this.)

Question: Is this going to be so hard to learn (like HOI4) or more playable for the gamer that only has 8 - 10 hours a week to play (like Civ 6)

Answer: Easy to play, hard to master. We generally introduce mechanics over time so players can learn as they go and we’ve been refining UI, tooltip format, Infopedia entries, and help messages based on player feedback for a while now. It’s an intentionally deep game with a lot of things in it, so it is going to have some curve, but we keep approachability in mind as we develop.

Question: Will the game have an espionage system and/or intel system?

Answer: We have a few things you might generously call intel (like fog of war, and some National Spirit abilities / Culture Powers), but Millennia does not have what we would call an espionage system as of today.

Question: How many different goods types are there? As in like how many goods are food, utility, luxury, etc? I ask this question because you guys said in a video there are 100 unique goods in the game. And I just would like a deeper understanding of how many of these goods are truly unique? Or is it just dependent on what your region is for you to get certain goods? In example you live in a region with less wheat and more game so you sell mainly meat as a good over bread.

Answer: 130ish Goods icons in the game right now. Goods lines are intended to have some context around a number of factors – how much infrastructure does this Good take, what is the upper limit of what it can be refined into, how flexible is it, what National Spirits does it work well with, what does it do to other Needs, how many Improvements and workers does it take? The intent of the lines is to produce different ways to achieve the same goals but with tradeoffs involved – I can build this line to get X sooner but I need to make that count by this point because after that I’ll be behind until I retool….

Question: Will there be religion like civ or other games alike?
If yes, will they change/upgrade along with the ages? So going to the age of blood makes the religions more murderous while age of heroes makes them more quest based.

Answer: There is Religion and the various Ages, National Spirits, and Governments can change the tenor / importance of Religion.

Question: What are late game factions based on? Like, are they based on values like stuff, for example Liberty-Equality being the 'anarcho-communist' faction, Progressive-Liberty-Equality being the 'anarcho-transhumanist' faction, Conservative-Authority-Hierarchy being the 'theocratic fascism' faction, etc?

Answer: Late game factions are associated with specific Governments. These Governments have ideals that can help or hinder different strategies and Victory Age approaches. The Faction aspect of this creates another dimension to think about before you pick, as all players with the same Government are in the same Faction (which doesn’t mean you are cooperating, but could mean that).

Question: Will we be able to build science buildings or is science and society bundled together? Aka is there a seperate science tree or is it just the ages culture unlocks

Answer: I don’t know exactly how to parse this question, sorry. There are “science things.” There are “society things.” Some of these are distinct. Some of these are bundled together. Some of it comes from Governments, some from National Spirits, some from Techs.

Question: Would the game have controversial themes such as slavery, genocide, discrimination, terrorism, etc.?

Answer: Any game dealing with history will (sadly) involve some of these themes, directly or indirectly. I’d say Millennia is about average in this regard.




Question: How will armies and diplomacy be managed during wars? I don’t know, secret pacts about entering the war on someone’s side, for example, or various purchases of weapons for the army(how do the units be supplied in general, you showed that, for example, from the same wood you can make paper for books or cut it into boards for construction, then there should probably be the production of different weapons from different materials).

Answer: Goods are not “supply” but rather resources used to produce Units / Armies or to support their use (and diplomatic efforts, for that matter) via the Domains. If you produce a type of “war supply”, for example, it resolves into Warfare Domain which means you can use Warfare Domain Powers more often – you’re creating the supplies needed to do this.


Question: How will larger scale combat occur when considering units like archers catapults spearmen cavalry and swordsmen - are there counters? Is it simultaneous or turn based? Will individual units cause damage to other individual ones or just apply damage in general? Also what about area of effect weapons? Will they feature?

Answer: We did a Dev Diary on combat that covers a lot of this: pdxint.at/3tQfLB8




Question: On the topic of National Spirits: there is a bonus for selecting a NS not yet selected by anyone else (scaling with how many have already been selected). There also seem to be 8 NS in each set. Does that mean the typical player limit is 8, or do the 9th and following players to transition to the new age just have tough luck?

Answer: There are a few moving parts here.

When we originally implemented National Spirits, the selection was exclusive – after someone selected a National Spirit, it was removed from the set of options for other players. There is still some discussion about this mechanic from time to time, primarily based on the feeling that it’s just more special if you are the One And Only, but the frustration of having plans derailed by sniped National Spirit was substantial.

So, we moved to non-exclusive, but then felt like the choice lacked a little depth. The bonus surfaced as a way to “fuzz” choices a little more – in games like Millennia, it’s common for players to fall into comfortable patterns from past play, so one thing the bonus does is tweak the choices a bit, possibly getting you to consider a National Spirit you weren’t planning on because it comes with the bonus.

In support of the original implementation / vision of the National Spirits, the bonus is applied to the Spirits that have not been taken (or are the least taken), the intent there being to make it more worthwhile to take National Spirits that have not been claimed yet – trying to accomplish that One And Only feel via a means other than hard exclusivity.

Since they are not exclusive, the number of National Spirits doesn’t limit Millennia to any particular number of players. Players who pick last don’t really suffer any particular penalty – depending on how the Nations before them went, picking last has the potential for the highest bonuses.

Question: Will the buildings change based on national spirits and location?

Answer: There are unique buildings (and Units) that are part of National Spirits, but all of the buildings in your Nation don’t change based on the National Spirit that you pick.




Question: Can we create our own maps?

Answer: No, you cannot do this (now).

Question: Will we be able to tailor religions and cultures to our liking?

Answer: Game-mechanical customization, for (now), is limited. Religions, for example, do not inherently have any bonuses associated with them (what they provide is derived from how spread them and meet Religion Needs). The surrounding themes -- names of Religions, names of Nations, icons, flags, names of Towns – are selectable. You can custom-name Religions, Capital names, and the like.

Question: Modding API, plans, anything, etc...?

Answer: Modding support is not in at launch. It will come post-launch, however.

Question: Can we add more techs to a single era, so you have 20 techs in it? Or increase the total amount of ages that you play through within a single campaign?

Answer: No, you cannot do this (now).




Question: Will there be Russian language support?

Answer: CM Katten here, yes there will be Russian language support at release!

Question: Any plans for creating a game franchise? Is support for next generation consoles going to happen? Would we be able to see a mobile version of the game or a spin off version like Tropico mobile?

Answer: We would like nothing more than to get to continue to build on what we’ve done so far.

Question: Could you please also include Italian as language? I see there are lots of languages and is disappointing to me to see this language isn't considered, especially with AI shoudn't be much work. Thanks

Answer: CM Katten here, at release it is not planned, but that of course does not exclude it potentially from the future.

Question: When will the game be released?

Answer: Paradox will announce a date soon, I wager.

Question: How are you doing?

Answer: We are doing great, thanks for asking -- we’ve had awesome response from players, good things go into the game every day, Paradox is helping us to make a better game … the coffee maker works again. The team is in high spirits. We’re excited.

Developer Diary | Combat

Hello, everyone. Ian Fischer of C Prompt Games here again, excited to share another Developer Diary for Millennia. We are heads-down working on our end-of-year objectives but I am going to take a quick break from that to talk about combat.

[h3]Goals of Combat[/h3]

Before we get to specifics, let’s outline some of our goals.

To start with, we want Millennia’s combat to be “inline.” There are a lot of strategy games with tactical combat that we love (how ya doin’, Age of Wonders), but Millennia is primarily about the arc of history and our goal is to keep the focus at that level. We want you thinking more about technologies, government types, the growth of cities, and the course of wars, less about “that archer should take cover behind that tree.”

To support this, combat choices in Millennia are at the strategic level -- you decide who fights who, where, and when, but you do not give orders during combat. Similarly, combat is presented in window atop the world map and provides controls that allow you to analyze or quickly resolve a battle as you want. This is intended to show combat while still keeping you in the flow of the game as much as possible.

Secondly, we want combat to be manageable. In the early stages of a 4X, you tend to have a small number of units. These are important, easy to keep track of, and you often have a specific plan for each of them. Contrast this with not-uncommon mid- to late-game conditions, where you have a multitude of units, you spend a chunk of your turn trying to remember what you were thinking when you sent someone with a club to the other side of the planet 20 turns ago, and “plans” sometimes tend more toward masterful stratagems like “send everything here.”

We want to do what we can to keep things trending more in the early game feel. Some of this is accomplished with core game balance and UI support like the Outliner or the ability to name Armies, but the biggest contributor is having combat built around multiple Unit Armies.
One of the two stylistic approaches to naming Armies...

Armies size starts at three but can grow to seven later in the game. Larger numbers of Units are thus grouped into a smaller number of Armies to command, plan around, and keep track of.

Finally, like almost everything, one of our goals is to have interesting choices at the heart of the gameplay. We like making combat inline and not having tactical choices during the fighting – but we want solid strategic choices about the fighting. Armies are a good structure to focus decisions around warfare – but there need to be interesting decisions about how you build Armies for it to be worthwhile.

Our core combat mechanics (which we’ll talk about next) are organized largely around supporting this objective.


[h3]Basics of Combat[/h3]

Battles in Millennia are generally structured around one Army fighting another Army.

The fighting is resolved during up to three rounds of combat. All of the Units in each Army get to take an action during each round. If an attacker wins the fight, their Army moves into the space that was occupied by their target and the defender (assuming any of them are still around) retreats. If there is no winner after all three rounds, the battle is considered a “push” and both Armies remain in their original locations.
This will go poorly for you, Roman Raiders.

During a round of combat, one Unit in an Army will target an enemy Unit. This causes the attacking Unit’s Attack value to be compared to the target’s Defense value. From the result, damage is determined and applied to the target Unit’s Health and Organization.

Health is something of a “normalized” value, meaning that Millennia uses it primarily as a way to scale lethality overall, not as a differentiating factor -- the majority of Units (but not all) have 50 health.

Organization, which is somewhat related to Health, is a differentiating factor and different Units have different Organization values despite having the same Health.

At zero or less Health, a Unit is destroyed. At zero or less Organization, a Unit is routed and attempts to flee the fight. Damage to Health is recovered over several turns (it is faster if the damaged Unit is recovering within its own territory, including territory held by an Outpost). Damage to Organization is fully recovered at the start of the next turn.

Additional factors, such as the terrain where a fight takes place or an Army being fortified, can further modify combat, but this is the basic arrangement.


[h3]Unit Types[/h3]

Unit Types inject interesting gameplay into these core mechanics by adjusting various rules of the combat system.

With all of the Variant Ages, Crisis Ages, National Spirits, and upgrades through the Ages, there are close to 250 Units in Millennia. While many of these have unique characteristics, almost all of them have one of three basic Types and the Type defines their general operation.

Support Type Units are Units like Archers. In Millennia, Units of this type have the ability to do a lot of damage, but they need protection – they are relatively weak in direct combat.

Support Units go first in each round of combat and they select their targets at random. (If you believe in luck, you can run all Support Type Armies and hope your initial attack is enough to cripple the enemy Army.)

Line Type Units are what is supposed to protect the Support Types. Line Type are Units like Spear in the early game, evolving into Pike, then Musket, then Assault Rifle in later Ages. Line Units tend to do less damage but have strong Defense and Organization.

Line Units go second in each round of combat. From a targeting perspective, if there are Line Units that are valid targets, they must be attacked before other Units can be engaged (when there are multiple valid enemy targets, Line Types select one to attack at random). Hence, stacking Line Units in an Army is a good way to keep damage-dealing Supports alive.

Mobile Type Units represent “maneuver warfare.” These are Units, like Knights or (later) Main Battle Tanks, that are intended to make a mess of things by showing up in places where the enemy doesn’t want to see them.

Mobile Types go last in each round of combat. If there are enemy Line Units present, Mobiles must target these first but, representing their ability to strike at enemy weak points, Mobile Types don’t select targets at random, instead always picking the valid target with the lowest Health.

Additionally, Mobile Types do double the normal damage to enemy Organization, representing the cavalry charges or similar shock tactics. With the focused targeting and shock damage, Mobile Type Units are useful for breaking enemy Line defenders and then chasing down any Supports they might be protecting.


[h3]Warfare Domain[/h3]

Combat, as part of a 4X, generally involves considerations beyond just the actual fighting and composition of Armies – economic factors play a part too.

The typical considerations that flow from that structure, like Unit Production and Upkeep Costs, are part of Millennia’s combat system. Similar to the way that the Types rules introduce an additional dimension to how you think about your Armies, the Domains in Millennia create another dimension for the economic interaction with warfare, beyond the “typical” material.

To begin with, not all Units in Millennia are built at the Capitals with Production. There are a number of Domain Powers that can be used to spawn Units or Armies. For example, the starting Tribal Government includes Raise Tribal Army, which allows you to spawn a Warband at a Capital using Government Domain.
It costs some political capital to raise the tribal army, but it’s a good option for defending Towns when surprises happen.

Units that are part of a particular National Spirit often have ways to earn or deploy these Units that are not the standard “build them with Production.” This allows a variety of economic plan and National Spirit combinations that can produce unique approaches to war.

The Warfare Domain itself has a number of National Spirits that are focused on war (as you might imagine), but even the basic Warfare Domain Powers that all Nations have access to influence combat heavily. Warfare Domain Powers like Forced March and Reinforcements can be used get Armies (of whatever composition) where you want them or to heal them after a fight. These uses also compete with upgrading older Units to more modern (and more powerful) versions when you advance in Ages, which has a Warfare Domain cost.
Get with the times!

In general, a reserve of Warfare Domain represents a Nation’s overall preparation for war. If you’re going to be fighting, you want to have some Warfare Domain in the bank to use Domain Powers, upgrade Units, and make the most of your National Spirits.


[h3]Leaders[/h3]

There are several sources for Leaders in Millennia, but the basic way to get one is to make your own via promotion.

As Units fight in Millennia, they gain experience, which eventually translates into levels of Veterancy. Each level of Veterancy increases the Unit’s Attack and Defense, but Veterancy also allows a Unit to be promoted into a Leader (at a cost of Warfare Domain).

Leaders are reasonably capable Units on their own, but their true value is in the bonus they apply to other Units in their Army.

Leaders have a Tactics value. When combat occurs, the Leaders with the highest Tactics value on each side (you generally do not want more than one Leader in an Army) are compared and the difference between their scores becomes a bonus for the side with higher Tactics leader.

Each level of the Tactics bonus is, essentially, an additional level of Veterancy for ALL Units in the Army, so good Leaders can provide a considerable advantage.

Leaders start with a Tactics value that depends on the corresponding Age of the Unit promoted – an Age 1 Warband will promote into a 1 Tactics Leader while an Age 2 Spear will promote into a 2 Tactics Leader. Gaining levels of Veterancy will further increase a Leader’s Tactics value.

Hence, the total potential Tactics value of a Leader caps out at maximum Veterancy, which means that Units from later Ages promoted into leaders always have a higher maximum Tactics level than Leaders from earlier Ages. Once a Unit has been promoted into a Leader, it can no longer be upgraded, which means it generally becomes outclassed over time.

When Leaders get a little long in the tooth, a Unit ability can be used to Retire the Leader, which provides a Warfare Domain reward.
Agamemnon, heretofore not known to have commanded Main Battle Tanks.

(Overall, this means that Leaders can be very powerful for their Age, and the spirit of what they did can live on productively into the next Age or so, but generally you don’t want the Leader you had in the Stone Age to stick around to the end of the game.)


[h3]Thanks![/h3]

We hope you have enjoyed this look at combat in Millennia. While we covered a lot of the basics, combat is a deep system and there are aspects we didn’t get into or only touched on at a high level. Still, I hope the basic shape of things came across, especially the interplay of all the decisions – your economy, your National Spirits, how you compose your Armies, and how you manage your Warfare Domain all work together and provide a lot of options for crafting fun approaches to fighting.

We’ll be back on 14th of November to talk about Economy Part one. As usual, if you like what you have seen, please Wishlist us!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1268590/Millennia/

Developer Diary | Nations

Hello, everyone! Ian Fischer of C Prompt Games here again, this time with our third Developer Diary for Millennia. Today we’re going to talk about Nations.

Nation is something of a catch-all for everything controlled by any distinct “player” in the game. Millennia makes you the guiding spirit of a people, in charge of leading them through 10,000 years of human history -- the thing you lead and build with your decisions during the game is your Nation.

[h3]Regions and Vassals[/h3]

Rob went over some basics of Regions and Vassals in our last Developer Diary, here (https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/developer-diary/developer-diary-world-map.1600764/).

Regions define a big chunk of your Nation. They have territory and population, provide places for Improvements and Capital Buildings to be built, and they are the primary source of the Goods and resources that power everything you do.

Vassals are similar to Regions, but they are not directly controlled. Vassals grow on their own, expand borders, build buildings, and so on. They also pay a portion of their income to their Nation, which can make them quite valuable.

When you conquer an enemy Capital or use a Settler, you gain a new Vassal. Your Vassals have an Integration level, which describes how much the people there feel like part of your Nation. Vassals you gain by using a Settler need less Integration than Vassals you acquire after your army takes control of the place by force, but Integration in either will slowly increase over time (and a power in the Diplomacy Domain can be used to speed this up).


If you want the Vassal to be a full Region, one that you control directly, you only need to worry about Integration – once you have 100 Integration, you can make the Vassal a Region. However, Vassals also have a Prosperity rating. If you plan to keep a Vassal as a Vassal, you might want to work to increase its Prosperity, as this will make it more productive and increase the value of what it contributes each turn.

As Nations grow larger, they require more to maintain cohesion. Each Region in your Nation increases the amount of Culture “spent” to keep it together and also increases the amount of Unrest across the Nation. Hence, depending on your strategy and how you have guided your Nation, you probably want a mix between a number of Regions and a number of Vassals.

[h3]Minor Nations[/h3]

Another way you might add a Vassal to your Nation is through a Minor Nation.


Minor Nations are larger protected settlements that occupy spaces in the world from the start of a game. They do claim territory, but unlike many borders, anyone can move into and through a Minor Nation’s space.

If you have a strong enough military, you can attack and conquer a Minor, which will make it a Vassal in your Nation. Alternatively, you might go the diplomatic route and send an Envoy to convince the Minor to join willingly.

[h3]Governments[/h3]

One factor that can have a substantial impact on the number of Regions and Vassals best for a Nation is Government. All Nations have a Government, starting with Tribal. In Ages 3, 5, and 8, other options become available.

Structurally, Governments are similar to National Spirits – they provide access to a set of Ideals that can be unlocked using Government Domain Points. Unlike National Spirits, they do not stack. You only have one Government at a time and taking a new one replaces the old one.

Governments provide a specific Government Building and also define the baseline value of a Capital City. The Capital of a Nation with the Tribal Government, for example, generates 2 Culture per turn (among other things). As a Democratic Republic, the same Capital City would provide 4 Culture per turn.


Governments are designed to guide and support different strategies. As mentioned above, some Nations will benefit more from having a lot of Vassals and a small number of Regions, whereas for others the opposite is true. Governments have a heavy hand in that decision, either by taking a Government that suits your direction so far, or taking a Government and playing to its strengths.

If you research a Government into its highest tier, you can “Reform” it, which provides additional Innovation and Culture. Once your current Government is reformed, the ability to select a new form of government via a Peaceful Revolution (a Culture Power) is also unlocked.

You can still adopt a new Government if you have not Reformed your current one, but it must be through Violent Revolution in this case. Violent Revolutions come with a non-trivial amount of Chaos, so it is generally better to avoid this route unless you feel you must transition to a new Government right away.

During later Ages, Governments take on additional importance through Faction. With Faction, your choice of Government encourages your Nation to favor other Nations with the same Government (and to dislike those with different Governments). At this point, Nations also start competing to advance their Faction (which provides bonuses for all members of the Faction) and to lead their Factions (which provides bonuses for the leader).

(The Space Race, which generally dominates Age 8, provides considerable Faction bonuses, especially for the Nation that manages a moon landing.)


[h3]Diplomatic Relationships[/h3]

Once they have made contact, Nations have diplomatic standing with one another. There are five diplomatic states: War, Hostilities, Peace, Open Borders, and Alliance. Nations begin “At Peace” with one another and the simplest form of diplomacy is available immediately – you can propose improving your diplomatic state (for example, suggesting going from Peace to Open Borders) or you can declare a move in the other direction (for example, declaring that you’re changing from At Peace to Hostilities).

More sophisticated diplomatic options are available if you deploy an Envoy at another Nation. With an Envoy in place, you gain a new set of actions that allow you to adjust your relationship in more specific ways (…like extorting money from weaker neighbors).


A final stage here is achieved if you can afford and get agreement for opening an Embassy. Like the Envoy, an Embassy opens up a new set of diplomatic options. In this case, it allows you to establish Treaties, which reward both sides with ongoing resources.

[h3]Barbarians[/h3]

Barbarians and their ilk can be thought of as a special kind of “Nation” but they aren’t a true Nation in most respects.

In early Ages, Barbarians are a bit of danger in the unknown world. They’re out looking for things to fight or burn down, so you need to take some precautions. They do not expand in the same way that other Nations do, but they will multiply and establish new camps if they are not dealt with.

Barbarians advance and become more dangerous with time (and on occasion Barbarian Warlords make an appearance), but their objectives remain mostly the same. There are different hostile groups that operate in a manner similar to the Barbarians but which are unique to the different Variant, Crisis, and Victory Ages. Each of these have slightly different priorities, such as razing improvements, destroying towns, getting into fights with your units, or stealing your cattle. In the Age of Revolution for example, Rebels are a new Barbarian-like threat – if not managed, they can cause Regions to declare independence and break away from a Nation (forming new “splinter” Nations).


Thanks!

We hope you have enjoyed this look into some of the Nation-related systems of Millennia. We’ll be back on November 2nd to talk about War. If you like what you have seen, please wishlist us! https://store.steampowered.com/app/1268590/Millennia/

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.


[h3]Regions[/h3]

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 Vassal, 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.


[h3]Towns[/h3]

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.


[h3]Outposts[/h3]

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!


----


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!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1268590/Millennia/