After the gamescom 2024, many strategy game fans are now waiting for Civilization 7. Our author Schuhmann says: If you like the new ideas in Civ 7, you should treat yourself to Millennia on Steam. It is currently available on the PC platform for 20 euros. It implements many of the ideas that Civilization 7 will have, and has already received its first expansion.
Why can Millennia be recommended now?
The strategy game Millennia is similar to Civilization – but is more of a city-building game than the famous series. I already introduced the game in April, but back then – after about 130 hours – I could not give a clear purchase recommendation. Since then, the game has received some updates, I have played over 130 more hours and am now at 264 hours of gameplay: I can fully recommend the game now – especially because it is currently 50% cheaper and you can grab it for 20 € on Steam.
In Millennia, the focus is to build your own cities as efficiently as possible. Because even with optimal gameplay, you are limited to a few cities, which can grow enormously over time and occupy a lot of play space on the map. Unfortunately, the AI opponents build closely – when you inevitably conquer their cities, you can now demolish them and make room for expansion.
Millennia has been meaningfully improved since its rough launch in March 2024 and has already overcome the biggest pain points, such as those terribly cramped cities of the opponents.
Furthermore, Millennia is already implementing some ideas that Civilization 7 will also bring.
Millennia is already implementing some ideas that Civilization 7 will be praised for
Which ideas does Millennia anticipate for Civ 7:
For one, there are no workers in Millennia anymore, but you collect improvement points and can improve individual fields of the city in each turn by building mines or fields. The “workers” exist in a similar form with certain experts who mine rare resources on a map at certain ages, such as in the age of alchemy.
Also, there are no “fixed cultures” in Millennia: The cultures are actually just empty shells, with which you can regularly take new paths and specialize them. Early in each game, you have to choose whether you want to play more as a culture of seafarers, want to benefit strongly from quarries and stone masons, or take a warlike path.
This is what makes Millennia very clever: Even the “wonders” are cleverly designed in Millennia – you unlock them by investing points in “innovation” and temporarily forgoing other special effects, such as waiting to expand a city or foregoing a boost for research.
The most important feature of Millennia is surely the ages – the technically most advanced nation can regularly determine which direction humanity takes by meeting certain conditions:
- For example, one can declare the age of Spanish conquistadors and discover lost cities that hold treasures.
- Or one must, if things go badly, deal with the plague.
- One of the worst ages I ever had completely paralyzed my economy in the endgame due to demonstrations and civil protests, and the game became a torment.
Millennia is not perfect, but definitely worth a solid recommendation.
This is my experience with Millennia: I played a lot of Civilization 6 and got bored and although I liked Humankind, it could not completely captivate me.
Millennia is a strong alternative to Civilization – an initial DLC, “Ancient Worlds,” has now loosened up the first hour of the game a bit. It’s nice, but nothing that has really changed the game: The improvement came more from clever patches that have noticeably improved the gameplay experience.
I still have criticisms of the game: There is still no satisfying end screen and the game becomes very tedious in the endgame, when you have actually already won, but I can now recommend it to any fan of strategy games to spend 20 € on the game.
It really has some excellent, fresh ideas and the part about city-building is really fun. Another highlight in the strategy game genre is coming in a month: I am obsessed with a game on Steam, I have spent 1,360 hours in it – Now the series is getting the best new feature in 20 years.
