Millennia Review

thesixthaxis.com:

Millennia looks takes a different approach to the passage of time and the evolution of civilisations, nations and empires, building its retelling of history around the concept of Ages. That’s far from the only difference to its peers in the 4X strategy genre, but it’s certainly one of the most distinctive, as you explore ‘what if?’ scenarios across 10,000 years of history.

Each game will go through ten ages (unless you push for an early victory age), going from Stone to Bronze and Iron, from The Renaissance to Revolution, and through to a sci-fi future. As the ages go, you’ll gradually be introduced to new concepts, like the need for sanitation, the notion of a Social Fabric, education, and other elements to cater for as you build your cities. However, there’s also the potential to deviate from the known path of history, well before the modern day.

Ages are a kind of flattened out tech tree, and to advance to the next age you need to have researched a certain number of them to move ahead. The first person to reach that point, though, might have a choice. From the Age of Kings, for example, the natural progression is through to the Age of Renaissance, but if the first nation to reach this point is filled with world explorers seeking out wonders of the world, it could be the Age of Discovery instead. If society has folded in on itself with crisis after crisis, it could be the Age of Intolerance, a crisis age that plunges the world into temporary darkness before reverting to a standard age. Certain points will allow runaway leaders to push for an early win, in this case the Age of Conquest for military powerhouses – having early win conditions like this are great.

It’s an intriguing concept, and each different age shifts the world dynamics and options available to all nations for new units, types of government, and more. Those lagging behind will benefit from a boost to research, so in theory, multiple nations will be able to define the path ahead in time, but at the same