Millennia bears a strong visual resemblance to Civilization VI
If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, the developers of Millennia have waited an awful long time to flatter Sid Meier. It’s been more than seven years since Firaxis launched Sid Meier’s Civilization VI and now comes along Millennia: a game that owes a huge debt of gratitude to Mr Meier, but does add a couple of neat ideas to the mix.
There has been an influx of contenders to the Civ VI crown recently, most notably Humankind. However, I’ve yet to see one as nakedly similar to Civ VI as Millennia, which has been released in demo form this week.
Anyone who’s spent any time with Civ VI will be instantly at home in Millennia. Everything from the layout of the hex-based map, to researching technologies and civics (called “culture” here), to moving units, to developing your primitive civilization is all but identical. Unlike many of the titles published by Paradox Interactive, there’s no steep learning curve here.
As with Civ VI, you start in a small plot of the map, quickly sending your scouts out to uncover the parts of the world shrouded in clouds. You’ll soon discover barbarian encampments and AI civilizations parked in your surroundings, and before many turns have passed you’ll be thrown into the first of Millennia’s notable points of difference: the superb combat system.
Millennia Combat
The combat system is more tactical, but lacks graphical gloss
Combat differs from Civ VI in two ways. You probably won’t notice it initially, as you pile a platoon of club-wielding goons into the nearest Barbarian camp, but you can combine different units into one army which occupies the same hex.
So, for example, you might combine archers with a pack of Spartans, giving your fragile arrow-slingers a meat blanket to soak up attacks from the enemy. You might add a bunch of spearmen to the party to provide extra poke.
The demo is only 60-turns long, so it’s not really possible to get too far into the nuances of combining different units in an army, but even in the early game you can see how this adds another tactical dimension to combat.
Another point of difference is how the combat unfolds. In Civ VI you might pile in with a knight on horseback, for example, and you’ll see a little animation of the enemy units colliding and damage scores for each.
In Millennia, you get a sports-like action replay of how the combat unfolded, which is handy for working out which units work best in a given situation. For example, my first attack on a barbarian encampment failed disastrously, because I went in with spears alone, who struggled to get past the encampment’s wooden walls. Once they were backed up by a pack of archers who could fire over the fences, the damage was done.
Alas, these battle replays are woefully lacking in graphical finesse. It all feels like an even lower budget version of the Monty Python Black Knight sketch, with the troops taking turns to take lumps out of one another before collapsing to the ground like matchstick men.
Undoing Mistakes
The second of Millennia’s great ideas is the undo button.
Made a tactical error in a battle or sent a scout off into hostile territory, where they’re sure to be sent back in a body bag before the next turn? Then you can hit the undo button and rewind the error.
This will doubtless be a controversial feature, akin to the much frowned upon practice of save-scumming (repeatedly reloading a saved game until you get the desired outcome). But I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve accidentally misdirected units in Civ VI, especially in the late game where there are dozens of units huddled together. If used ethically—for example, only for undoing genuine mistakes—I think it’s a great addition.
And if you’re going to cheat anyway, the undo button just cuts down on the admin...
Millennia: Demo Verdict
It’s still early days for Millennia, but there are areas where it’s clearly underwhelming.
I’ve already mentioned the iffy graphics in the combat system, but the overall look of the game is inferior—a disappointment given Millennia has arrived the thick end of a decade behind Sid Meier’s masterwork. The character animations lack finesse, some of the menu screens are plain ugly, and there are none of Civ VI’s special touches, such as caricatures of world leaders or Sean Bean’s narration. It’s doubtless being produced on a much lower budget than Sid Meier’s game, but it shows.
You’ve also got to question whether a better combat system and the addition of an undo button is really going to be enough to tempt Civ VI fans to pay afresh for a very similar offering.
Perhaps stronger differences between the two games will unveil themselves when the full game is released, but on the basis of the 60-turn demo, I think it’s going to be a hard sell.
