So many problems

[Verenti]

I want to like this game. It's the right level of jank that I like in my 4X games (that is games that do something new and interesting, if not well), but some of these features just seem super poorly thought out.

First of all, Ages shouldn't be so restricted. They are the main draw of the game. Having every second age having to be a normal age is not fun. Crisis ages aren't fun. Especially if you get forced into a crisis era ages before you get to meaningfully engage with the crisis mechanics. I've seen the AIs get screwed over, therefore the world, because they couldn't deal with the age of dystopia because they were not yet in the age of revolutions. I've abandoned that game because I didn't have any means to meaningfully engage with the mechanics beyond this deeply unfun wack-a-mole. If anything, crisis ages should inspire even weirder ages to come after them. Age of Dystopia is especially bad. There should be cool mechanics that you're given for surviving a crisis age, maybe like some strong authoritarian mechanics which give you like 1984 style abilities to control you society. Maybe like geofront cities, maybe robot armies that don't need people to operate and thereby can be used against the population.

Second, religions and secularism shouldn't be a given for non-fundamentalist playthroughs. My religion was the only real religion on the planet for hundreds of years and so when I got to the last era of governments (and it shouldn't be the last. Believe it or not, government will change after the 1880s) I shouldn't be given the choice of throwing away my religion or fundamentalism. It became a choice, my capstone choice, was between avoiding a penalty or choosing something that synergised with my empire.

I don't think the national spirits or governments are there yet. Mechanically, I think they're fine, but the choice isn't granular enough. It's like asking me to decide well in advance to design my empire and that doesn't feel right in a strategy game. I'm not really adapting to emerging situations if I am making, every ... second age? a choice of which bonuses I want to double down on. Also, that some choices get expired because of age is a bad feeling. I know that a classical peasant army or knights doesn't make sense in the 19th century, except it was still a thing in the 19th century. It just wasn't common. It's not literally forming a unit of armoured cavalry men, its about an enduring tradition that is integral to my empire's culture.

I think the chief problem of this game that permeates out to all of the systems is that its a game about divergent histories and a unique permutations of global histories that continuously attempts to reconverge on our unique timeline. I might decide to go into alchemy, but the development of alchemy stops in that era. Do you think if chemists today had the ability to transmute materials today, that wouldn't permeate into modern technology? The ages should ripple forward into present day. At this game's heart, it is spiritually part RPG, and in RPGs choices matter, they have consequences, both immediate and long term.

I know that would likely have taken a lot of development hours. I'm not pretending that would be an easy patch. It clearly wouldn't. It would be a radical redesign of a lot of systems that I don't believe, from my baseless position, that this studio has the resources to implement. However, I think there are a few bad choices that have taken up manpower that shouldn't. This game is, I'm guess, impossible to make in synchronous multiplayer. The powers system basically guarantees that any sort of simultaneous competitive experience is going to be a bad time considering how much I can use reinforcement and forced march to decimate the AI. That would be awful if another player did that to me.

This game clearly takes a lot of notes from Call to Power, which I love, but ... it kinda sucks too because I love it. The tile improvement system is nice but when you run out of space and need to integrate new needs, but you can't without dismantling your economy? It's frustrating.

As a closing note, I would change the Age of Dystopia's trigger (to never fire? Maybe) but change from Chaos events to Chaos events that you don't bribe off. I basically never figured out what I need to do to manage my faith resource, so... yeah.

I hope you guys can pull this game out of the nose dive it's in. Good luck.

[chaney]

IMHO it isn't in a nose dive ... nothing seems to be getting worse.
It is more flying in ground effect. That means it technically flies, but can't get far off the ground until the wings get improved.

I don't know the team by reputation or anything, but based on what they have done so far, they seem to have done a better job not only conceiving but designing the game systems at release than most of the 4X predecessors. That gives me a general confidence in their basic competence at building game systems --- not perfection, clearly not on release --- but I feel better confidence in the team than I ever did for Humankind or the last couple of Civ titles.

I'm willing to give them time, and I think the title will get out of ground effect and fly high.

With some base systems in place, what will probably propel the game from high flight into orbit is modding. I'm sure there are lots of concepts for Spirits and Governments that could customize the game to suit a huge range of tastes. Turn off Crisis, eliminate Chaos altogether, lots of mods to suit different player preferences.

I can't guarantee it, but my sense is this one is going to end up well, if not for everyone because it does not seem to be designed for the Citybuilder crowd, but more for people who like responding to dynamic systems with some challenge.

[Toppopia]

I havnt gotten too far into the game since I keep restarting when I reach 100 ish turns (so I could be wrong about this) but I feel like the national spirits should give more bonuses for the tiles you are meant to focus on. The naturalists spread faster in forests but you dont get any bonuses per say on the actual forest tiles. Spreading faster is good but maybe a bonus good when you exploit a forest so you get extra logs? Or the wild hunters, as well as spreading faster in scrublands maybe give bonuses when you exploit a scrubland.

Later national spirits might address my idea but getting an extra nifty bonus from your biome would add more feeling to making a unique nation and give a more roleplay feel as well.

[becephalus]

Disagree. The ages are good and work well. I also think the improvement system works well.

[Brakiros]

The biggest problem sapping my enjoyment right now is the horrific optimization end game takes so long to process a single turn

[Tiojion]

How long does a turn take to process at end game?

[alan_buchbach]

Originally posted by Tiojion:

How long does a turn take to process at end game?

On my old potato, it takes about 10 or so minutes when I'm in ages 9 / 10. Particularly Singularity with the endless hordes of kill bots. I just click end turn and go watch tv for a bit. Come back play a turn, back to tv.

[The Doctor]

What settings are you guys playing with? I finished a game with 3 AIs on a LARGE map and didn't have any significant slow down even in era 10. I didn't kill any of the AIs. Now that's not a lot so perhaps playing on HUGE maps with 8 players will provide a different experience?

[chaney]

Increasing RAM fixed the problem for me so far. I was at 16 GB, went to 64 GB which was probably overkill.

[neilwilkes]

For me, there are so many problems with this game that I even tried to get a refund, but sadly was refused by Steam because I had played more than 23 hours, which is crap of them as at least I gave it a good look. I will not be buying anything else from Steam as a direct result of this until & unless they fix their rules as I am now locked into this piece of garbage.

Problems are many and in addition to all of the above in the OP, I want to add that the AI and it's habit of aggressive forward settling of regional capitals as close top one of mine as it can possibly get is about as aggravating as things can possibly be because I now know this game is a write-off as it will from this point on be in a forever war that the AI will lie about but effectively will never end it. So it's now a waste of time, as allowing this to happen will inevitably trigger lots of bad things happening that I have no control over or effect on.

If you make it to the end game, you will die of tedious boredom as by this time you are hitting hard caps on XP, so will have loads of the stuff but nothing you can spend it on. It's a snore-fest that promised so much and ended up delivering very little and I actually now understand why the demo was restricted to 60 turns - if it had gone any further, it would have been obvious that the commonest age by far is the Age of Blood, as the AI is aggressive and will wipe out all minor nations it encounters, triggering lots of the negative ages.

Avoid.

[The Doctor]

Originally posted by neilwilkes:

For me, there are so many problems with this game that I even tried to get a refund, but sadly was refused by Steam because I had played more than 23 hours, which is crap of them as at least I gave it a good look. I will not be buying anything else from Steam as a direct result of this until & unless they fix their rules as I am now locked into this piece of garbage.

Problems are many and in addition to all of the above in the OP, I want to add that the AI and it's habit of aggressive forward settling of regional capitals as close top one of mine as it can possibly get is about as aggravating as things can possibly be because I now know this game is a write-off as it will from this point on be in a forever war that the AI will lie about but effectively will never end it. So it's now a waste of time, as allowing this to happen will inevitably trigger lots of bad things happening that I have no control over or effect on.

If you make it to the end game, you will die of tedious boredom as by this time you are hitting hard caps on XP, so will have loads of the stuff but nothing you can spend it on. It's a snore-fest that promised so much and ended up delivering very little and I actually now understand why the demo was restricted to 60 turns - if it had gone any further, it would have been obvious that the commonest age by far is the Age of Blood, as the AI is aggressive and will wipe out all minor nations it encounters, triggering lots of the negative ages.

Avoid.

Steam's refund policy is 2 hours. It's been this way since I was aware of it and it needs to be this way because people could just buy a $50 game, play it until they're bored with it, refund it and buy a new game with the refund.

You can change the game settings to give you the kind of game you want. I haven't had a single AI forward settle me in any of my three games so far because I play with only 3 or 4 on a large map and drop the difficulty to level 2 while I'm learning the ropes. Just rolling with the default settings, 8 players at Adept difficulty is a harsh start until you really know how to manage the games' systems.

You have an enormous amount of control over what is happening. Generate some gold and pay off those negative events. Keep a reasonable army or two near your settlements and aggressively hunt down any barbs being aware that when you move to the Bronze Age, you'll need to be wary of the Barb heroes who pack a greater punch.

The end game of most 4X games is pretty slow unless you're really far behind the AI and haven't been able to catch up. The early eras are also rather dull because you haven't really got many options and it takes ages to buiild/research anything new. But I'd agree that the demo doesn't show you enough to know what the rest of the game is like - I just disagree that it doesn't get much, much better.

Or you can just fume over the lost money and time. It's up to you.

BTW, I don't do Clown points - that's for children. I write proper responses to people instead.

[Cythil]

Now I will say I have had fun with the game and not have as many issues as Verenti. But I agree on many points.

I can see how it can be to easy to get locked in to a crises age in some respects. Yet sometimes is far to easy to avoid them to. Well I like them more as something you can optinally push towards anyway and using the mechanics of those ages to your advantage. Even if they put a lot of stress on the world. But the key factor is that it all of the world. And like Verrnti points out the Computer players may not be able to handle the stiatuion. But I have heard of a lot of people always getting stuck with age of plague even if I have never had that problem.

Now I think the reason why you have special age being followed by a normal age is so you can better control the flow of the game. Make sure certain developments happens so you do not need up in a situation where you lack a fairly vital development for the game. But that is my guess behind that design choice. But I also would rather have i so one would have a bit more freedom here.

And is those limitation that do change the game longterm anyway. I when with the age of blood and that means now, even in the age of aether, that I can not spawn artist. So some ages do leave a lasting impression. And I do think how it should be. With age of Alchemy you risk getting locked out of Alchemy. Since most of the mechanics, especially the collect Arcane dispears. Now you can get arcane though a innovation event if you unlock it in that age lets you produce arcane after via books. Or at least I think there is. Since I did not get the event during my own Alchmy playthough. But in the end that age leave very little lasting impression on ages after. While some have more impact. But I very much think that all ages should have some legacy on the game. And that even goes for the Normal ages. I know the age of discovery is now continuing to impact my game even long after that age. Which I like.

The designers likely need to go though and think a bit what impression a age will leave. Units will get obsolute with time, if not outright then at least with how effective they are. But thinks like for example collecting Arcane could be with the game even toward the end really. And there are a lot more mechanics like that that could transfer over. Not everything need to leave a impression of course. The defining feature of the Age of Blood being that everyone is always at war with each other should not be transfered. But maybe something else. Why not let the barbarian spawning mechanics presist to the end game. With of course a improved verison as you progresss so it does not effectivly become obsolute. Indeed those mechanics that presist from a crisis age should be more as a Reward for you being able to handle that crisis age. A crisis age should not feel as a punishment. But as a challange. And if you meet the challange head on and surive you should feel like got a bit of a reward for doing so.

(Now the age of blood was actually to my benefit since I was able to just crush all opposition with my millitary and they could not really ally against me. So elements of that need to be taken in to account to.)

There other elements like that both with national spirts and goverment and religion is a bit of a example of that. It seem like the game ether pushes you with religion to ether go full on fundementalist or secular. And of course in reality is more complex then that. But I also realise that it a game. But the reglion but do not seem to be that well realised. And the fact that you are pushed away from older froms of goverment when it may still feel very benefical to stay with a older goverment model does not help. After all the goverment types are not stright upgrades but do thing a big diffrently. And if you have optimized you empire towards that empire, it create issues. (The whole ideology mechnic later on hiches on you picking one of the 3/4 goverment types.)

So many elements need to be reblanced and sometimes even reworked. The lastest post on there road map do give me some hope.

[Tiojion]

I've been following the game for some time as well as this thread with great interest. It is still unclear to me what moves the age progression forward. Is it only science/research? That would be very problematic from both reality and game mechanics standpoints.

Do I have this wrong and the progression also accounts for the size/economy/influence of the country that pushes a new age? It would create problems as well as be unrealistic if a tiny country no one ever heard of at the edge of the world could bring about new ages for the whole world no matter how advanced they were as compared to large, powerful countries being the ones that made the world turn.

Streamers tend to move quickly without looking into how things tick. Maybe one of you more learned folks could clue me in.

[TheCollector]

Originally posted by Tiojion:

I've been following the game for some time as well as this thread with great interest. It is still unclear to me what moves the age progression forward. Is it only science/research? That would be very problematic from both reality and game mechanics standpoints.

Do I have this wrong and the progression also accounts for the size/economy/influence of the country that pushes a new age? It would create problems as well as be unrealistic if a tiny country no one ever heard of at the edge of the world could bring about new ages for the whole world no matter how advanced they were as compared to large, powerful countries being the ones that made the world turn.

Streamers tend to move quickly without looking into how things tick. Maybe one of you more learned folks could clue me in.

It is simply Knowledge which drives technological progress.

Variant Ages are triggered by certain conditions. Some are optional, others are not if you accidentially triggered the conditions. However the player who researches a new Age first sets the Age for everybody, so even if you are locked into a Crisis Age you can try to avoid it by slowing down research and letting another player set the next Age.

SPOILER :
https://millennia.paradoxwikis.com/Ages

[Tiojion]

That is very unfortunate. No Earth age ever moved forward purely on knowledge. That knowledge had to be in the hands of those powerful enough to change the world. At the very least it would take much much longer for knowledge coming from some tiny place to disseminate to the rest of the world. To tie changes of age purely to knowledge without accounting for the degree of actual influence from the nation promoting the change would be like launching a rocket for the moon while only using one's fingers for calculations.

PS Thanks for the link @TheCollector. =)

So I've read that link to the wiki. Basically in this game Mongolia today could bring about a new age for the whole world despite having almost zero influence on said world. It's a shame they made all these age changes take place based on such a simple measure. That is a broken game system.

[Cythil]

Originally posted by Tiojion:

That is very unfortunate. No Earth age ever moved forward purely on knowledge. That knowledge had to be in the hands of those powerful enough to change the world. To tie changes of age purely to knowledge without accounting for the degree of actual influence would be like launching a rocket for the moon while only using one's fingers for calculations.

It is pretty much the norms for 4x games. Research pushes you in to a new age. If anything Millenia is a bit diffrent since if you going for a variant age you need to do more then just do research.