Millennia

In an era of video games that can often feel repetitive or derivative, Millennia from C Prompt Games is a truly unique experience. This massively ambitious 4X strategy game puts you in the role of guiding a civilization across 10,000 years of human history, from the dawn of the species to speculative future eras.

At its core, Millennia is a turn-based strategy game about developing your cities, managing resources, researching technologies, and conquering opponents. But it takes this familiar 4X gameplay loop and expands it across multiple "ages" of history that fundamentally change the rules and systems at play.

A Brief History of the World

The game begins in the Ancient Age, where you start with just a few early human settlements surviving off basic gathering and hunting. As you develop agriculture, found cities, and research primitive technologies, you can advance through the Classical, Medieval, and Renaissance ages.

What's brilliant is how each new age introduces factors that realistically simulate that period of history. In the Medieval age, for example, the Catholic Church emerges as an influential political force. You'll need to decide whether to devote efforts to appeasing the Pope or risk being excommunicated.

Millennia truly shines, however, in how it handles the more recent ages leading into the modern era. The Industrial Age, for example, models the rise of capitalism and the global economy. You'll need to strategically establish trade routes, resources like coal and oil become critically important, and pollution starts impacting the environment.

A Tale of Two Futures

From there, Millennia takes an inspired turn by letting you divert the course of history into one of two "Variant Ages" - the Data Age or the Aether Age - which present wildly divergent visions of the future.

The Data Age envisions an artificial intelligence-driven world, complete with concepts like software production facilities, robot workers, and virtual cities in the cloud. The Aether Age, on the other hand, explores mind-bending future sci-fi possibilities like teleportation and anti-gravity technology.

A Deep and Rewarding Challenge

Millennia can feel overwhelming at first due to the sheer depth of its gameplay systems and historical complexity. But its well-designed tutorials ease you in, and the rewarding feeling of mastering the game's mechanics makes it all worth it.

While fundamentally a turn-based strategy game, every age puts a creative spin on familiar 4X concepts. This makes for gameplay that stays feeling fresh and demands you adapt new strategies throughout the millennia-spanning campaign.

For advanced players, Millennia offers not just the intriguing Variant Age possibilities, but also brutal "Crisis Ages" that can plunge your civ into an apocalyptic dark age if you make the wrong moves. These optional challenges add delicious extra layers of replayability.

In that sense, Millennia is quite reminiscent of the excellent Civilization: Beyond Earth, which similarly built an engrossing game around exploring divergent futuristic paths for humanity.

Review: 9/10

With breathtaking historical scope, tons of strategic depth, and endless replayability, Millennia is among the most impressively ambitious strategy games ever made. Its few flaws, like some fiddly user interface elements and balance issues in the late game, are far outweighed by its massive scale and creative vision.

Pros:

• Incredibly deep strategy gameplay that evolves across ages
• Creatively models different periods of human history
• Intriguing "what-if" Variant Age and Crisis Age scenarios
• Satisfying mix of economic/technological management and combat
• High replayability due to branching historical paths

Cons:

• Can feel overwhelming for genre newcomers
• Some interface hassles, especially on smaller screens
• Balancing issues and AI flaws in late-game eras
• Steep learning curve to mastering advanced mechanics