My top 3 priority fixes for Millennia

[Uncle Ruckus]

Hey all,

With all of the bugs and balance issues plaguing the game, I wanted to give my 2 cents on what priorities need to be focused (most impactful but easy/simple). For context I am really enjoying the game and have clocked about 90 hours already.


Issue 1: Unkillable cities.
Perhaps a bug or just an oversight, but we HAVE to be able to raze AI cities (we can do it for neutrals so its not like its not a system already implemented). It makes no sense and ruins the game on Grandmaster or even Master difficulty. I'm sure I don't need to elaborate, but please ask if you want more on that.

Issue 2: Hills - improvements
Hills are the bane of any city. We have to be able to build industry buildings on hills. Only being able to make mines and quarries makes no sense and feels terrible past the early game. Every other tile is flexible in this game and have a clear early mid and late game purpose. For those of you who don't make it often to the late game I'll be brief. Tiles become more efficient as you go on, and more types of improvements need to be made. This means your massive lumber towns may need to be trimmed back, especially if you are going particularly tall. You can remove forests later, but hills are there forever and serve as a massive waste of potential.
On that note I just beat a game on Age of Ecology/Transcendance with a city of 100 pops, and realized that you can't terraform hills. Why is this? You can turn mountains and other tiles into hills, but not the other way around? You can even make desert tiles in the sea (though limited as the engi cost scales extremely fast).

Issue 3: Minor nations are too weak early
It seems strange to me that there are so many national spirits/governments in the mid/late game for converting these cities when they ALL die or get vassalized in the first 25 turns (less on GM difficulty). The exact tweaking here is not something I specifically know what to do about, but the current state doesn't feel right. Fixing the strength of minor nations would help balance the elephant in the room too (looking at you raiders). Expecting to lose zero units and effortlessly roll over these cities doesn't feel correct.


Unless the devs created the game in an obscure way, these seem like easy fixes that would, in my opinion, help the game in the easiest and most impactful way. It is my belief that these underlying systems need to be fixed prior to rolling out balance patches based on those fundamentally wrong/broken mechanics.


Thanks for reading, and please let me know what you think!

[Suisight]

Agree to all of this. I've added some other stuff as suggestions here, but I'd say these are among the more major issues.

Similar to 3.: You get settlers through research at some later point in the game. Useless, you swim in Government points by then AND there is no space left anyway.

To 2.: Too much hills are bad, but you need SOME amount of hills for the imo OP production-focused build (iron prospector). But yes, building some buildings on hills could be good - or even strengthen the production build more, must be balanced.

I'd add diplomacy tuning to the list because at the moment, there is no meaningful negotiation or AI war consideration. I feel it's just a formula of difference in calculated strength (which isn't even the military potential).

[Material Ghost]

Hills are pretty good in my opinion, even on late game, but i can 100% agree it make no sense not to be able to make anything but mines and quarries. IRL, my parents have their home on hills, and as far as i know, there is no mines anywhere near.
I would add another thing i would like to see changed :
I completely understand that we cannot take an alternative age twice in a row, this indeed is quite OP, and shouldn't be changed. But why does it stop other players too ??? I just don't understand why the fact that a player go for the age of aether stop another player to go for the age of utopia next turn. Not to mention that i've noticed it appears to prevent crisis ages to happen too (which makes absolutely no sense for me there) .

[Ryu.82]

The first one, unkillable cities, might be addressed with the next big update. At least in the announcement to update 0 and future ages, can be found on the storepage, there is a small passage talking over future plans and there it is mentioned that one thing the next big update is adding is a way to get rid of vassals.

I only half agree to point 2. Yes, it would be nice if there were at least a few more things you could do with hills, but for me that is just one thing you must consider when planing the growth of your regions and you can use the hills later to produce energy if you don´t want mines on them, so I think it is okay.

I totaly agree to point three. The fact that minor nations are too easy to defeat makes the military in the early game way too powerful, and it makes envoys way less important, because once you can generate the points needed for them most free cities are already vassals through conquest.
And the worst thing is that makling them vassals through conquest does not even come with a penalty. Razing them gives chaos, but making them a vassal is just´: Here is your present, have fun with it. Yes, it does take a little longer before you can integrate them because they need more points, but that is not a problem in early game, because you don´t have the points to integrate anyway.
They need to be stronger and you should also get chaos for conquering them and not only for razing them.


And @Material Ghost:
The reason why another player can´t choose an alternate age if you were going into an alternate age is quite simple: Since all nations go to the same age, that would be the same as you choosing two alternate ages behind each other.
But if I´m not total mistaken there already are some exceptions there, where alternate ages can lead to other alternate ages. I think the age of the old ones was an age that came after another alternate age, if I remember correctly.
And since future updates also include new ages, maybe at some point there will be more ages that come after alternate ages, who knows?

[Suisight]

Originally posted by Ryu.82:

And @Material Ghost:
The reason why another player can´t choose an alternate age if you were going into an alternate age is quite simple: Since all nations go to the same age, that would be the same as you choosing two alternate ages behind each other.
But if I´m not total mistaken there already are some exceptions there, where alternate ages can lead to other alternate ages. I think the age of the old ones was an age that came after another alternate age, if I remember correctly.
And since future updates also include new ages, maybe at some point there will be more ages that come after alternate ages, who knows?

I would actually challenge that several Variant Ages in a row would be OP. Just because they are not necessarily better than the "Main" timeline. They are different, but putting aside some indeed op individual products (Panacea), I don't see a structural difference. And indeed, everyone has this age (or multiple variant ages), so I doN't think fairness is a point here.

But balancing might be: In my perspective, the devlopers already struggle to line up a balanced technology set in all variations (e.g. production conversion missing in some timelines, energy generation options can vary very hard). Maybe adding more possible combinations would make it even harder.

[Isidorn]

I mostly agree. Just want to add that you can build wind power plants on hills. So there's that, even if it usually is far from optimal since you want to build those near water for the bonus energy.

[sinot2]

Number 1 fix need - Font size changer or UI scale in Settings to increase font size,
because Texts size in game too small, especially in the tooltips.

[taomastercu]

Hills and Razing are great arguments. But the neutral cities one is mid. Do you only play on small or medium maps? *Tons* of cities remain extant in the late game on the settings I use.

[Suisight]

Originally posted by taomastercu:

Hills and Razing are great arguments. But the neutral cities one is mid. Do you only play on small or medium maps? *Tons* of cities remain extant in the late game on the settings I use.

Because they can hold their own against the AI or because they are just too far away? If the latter, I don't think it invalidates the OP's point.

[Ryu.82]

Originally posted by Suisight:

I would actually challenge that several Variant Ages in a row would be OP. Just because they are not necessarily better than the "Main" timeline. They are different, but putting aside some indeed op individual products (Panacea), I don't see a structural difference. And indeed, everyone has this age (or multiple variant ages), so I doN't think fairness is a point here.

But balancing might be: In my perspective, the devlopers already struggle to line up a balanced technology set in all variations (e.g. production conversion missing in some timelines, energy generation options can vary very hard). Maybe adding more possible combinations would make it even harder.

Most variant ages have something in them that is really strong, even the crisis ones. Buildings with boni you usually don´t get, like science and religion on the same buildings, strong science boni, easy to get energy sources on tiles you normaly can´t use, special goods chains for strong boni, and so on. Not everything is OP and yeah, since everyone can get them it is not unfair, but most of this things benefit you more if you get them early, and if the science leader could just hurry from variant age to variant age getting the strongest boni fast while everyone else is still an age behind, that would snowball out of control really fast. I mean, it already does anyway, but with the special things of the variant ages it would be worse, I think, because they would basically undo the small benefits those behind get, like lower tech costs.

[TheCollector]

Age of Discovery gives you Conquistadores which have the ability to spawn Pioneers for a flat 60 Eng XP.

[chaney]

The problem with chained alternate ages is that they will tend to be unstable in terms of which player is punished or gets the benefits. The one who triggers a positive age is probably well equipped to leverage it, and then better equipped to leverage a positive follow-on related age. The one who triggers a negative age is probably least equipped to deal with it, and any follow-on. In some situations rich get richer poor get poorer suits, but for games like this, most players already complain about runaway/snowballing problems.

[shoobers]

Ehhh... even in Age of Stone, those cities require 2 dedicated stacks, maybe 3, to secure. With age of bronze, you can get away with 1.5 IF you have discipline, maybe less if you have raiders too. Otherwise, they're not really meant to stand up to age 3+ armies.