Millennia | Update 2

Hello there! Katten here. It's time to go over the updates to the Roadmap as well as what is inside Update 2, which is now available for everyone to play!

The roadmap itself has seen some minor changes, foremost being an update to what is inside Update 2, along with one confirmed addition for Update 3: the ability to "Quick Restart" your games by pressing ESC while inside your game > Quick Restart. This feature reloads your game with the custom settings you previously chose. "How you quick restart might change"

Link to 2024 Roadmap image

Now onto Update 2 with Build Number: 1.0.22.F! We've implemented the new Hotseat system, eliminating the need for port forwarding, and allowing you to simply invite your Steam friends! Consequently, the old MP Guide is now obsolete. But that's not all; there's a whole bunch more to discover, so keep reading below and enjoy playing Millennia! See you later this month for Update 3!

Update 2 Changelog

Featured Changes

• Implemented new hotseat multiplayer functionality -- this replaces the system previously in place, which has been removed. When hosting, you can now click Invite in the upper right of the Cloud Hotseat UI to see your Steam Friends List and select a friend to invite. (You can also invite a friend by right clicking and selecting Invite to Game through the Steam Overlay.) If your friend is also running Millennia, not in and active lobby, and not loaded into a game already, they will receive a pop-up invite. Alternately, you can invite players who are not in your Friends List by sharing the Game ID displayed on the left of the Cloud Hotseat UI. Invited players then join the game by selecting Join and using the ID provided to them by the host.
• Added additional indications of growing Unrest. Icons now appear below the Capital City nameplates to call attention to growing unrest in the Region.

These icons are also shown in the Outliner.

• Added display of “exhausted” Units in the Outliner. When Units have no remaining Movement for the turn, their icon appears dimmed.

• When enemy Units move inside your territory, a warning of their presence now appears in the Outliner (exclamation point). (This is shown if you are not already Under Siege.)

• Added a key remapping system. This is available in the Controls tab of Options.

• Expanded the Nation Builder. Functionality has been added that allows the removal of player-made Nations from within the Nation Builder. Additionally, it is now possible to modify most aspects of existing custom Nations from the Nation Builder. Flag selection has been changed to a grid display.

• Revised Improvement tooltips. These now include better information for where Improvements can be built and what they produce.

• Added Canada as a new default Nation (default Personality is Cooperative and default Starting Bonus is Scout Unit).

Balance

PLEASE REMEMBER THAT BALANCE CHANGES WILL ONLY APPLY TO NEW GAMES.​

• All Outpost Improvements except for Trade Post and Trade Factory have a limit of three per Outpost.
• Colony Outpost Specialization now provides +2 Culture (as opposed to +2 Trade Goods which are worth +2 Culture).
• Replaced the Culture bonus and gather from Castle Town Improvements with +3 Wealth and +1 Wheat.
• Limited the Mercenary Training Camp to Colony Outposts only.
• Made some tweaks intended to make it easier to meet Faith Needs in new Regions when you have a Religion; the base Capital bonus of the Fundamentalist Government provides 2 Faith, increased the amount of Faith provided by a Temple to 2, reduced the cost of constructing a Holy Site from 160 to 140 Production.
• Reduced the number of Monuments needed to trigger Age of Monuments from 3 to 2.
• Changed Shells (the Ideal) from Early Seafarers to be additive; instead of replacing Fish Goods, you keep existing Fish and gain additional Shells (the Good).
• The Tyrian Purple Ideal in Early Seafarers swapped places with Lighthouses, making it available earlier.
• Reduced the Hunting Grounds Ideal in Wild Hunters so that Bow Hunters are Crossbow equivalent instead of stronger.
• Increased Stonecutter Improvement output from 1 Stone -> 1 Stone Blocks to 2 -> 2.
• Narrowed the Victors Ideal of Raiders to affect only Raiders instead of all pre-gunpowder Units.
• Increased value of Mead from 2 Food to 5.
• Changed Castle Town Improvement terrain requirement from open terrain to grassland.
• Updated Tapestry Weaver to take in Cloth or Textiles, instead of only Cloth.
• Increased Remote Camp Exploration XP reward value (from 40 -> 60 in Age of Kings, continues to scale in later ages).
• Moved Remote Camps earlier in the Explorers tree (shifted Tier 1 Fearsome Appearance to Tier 2 and Veteran Explorers to Tier 3).
• Updated Tinker Improvement to convert Ingots into Machines instead of Tools.
• Increased Machines consumed IP value from 4 -> 5.
• The Crusaders Headquarters now gives all Knight Units a +5 Defense buff in addition to x2 Attack bonus against Religious Heretics.
• Reduced Daiymo and Shogun Regional Efficiency bonuses (from 10% -> 5% from Daimyo, and 20% -> 10% from Shogun Innovation).
• Reduced the Samurai Combat Bonus gained when in an Army with a Shogun (from 50% -> 20%).
• Reduced Concrete value from 4 Production, 4 IP to 3 / 3.

Gameplay

• Outpost Specializations can now build Improvements from previous Specializations.
• Trade Posts can now be upgraded to Trade Factories within Castles.
• Added a new Event that is used if a revolt would cause you to lose your only remaining Region.
• Changed the victory condition of Old Ones to having 50% of the global population and eliminating a third of the remaining Nations (the intent is to shorten the time between when a Nation has effectively won this Age and when Victory is declared).
• Previously, any Unit (other than your own) within your borders would raise Unrest. This was changed so that only enemy Units within your borders increase Unrest.
• Temples now start to generate Faith after a Religion is adopted.
• Now reset Expedition chances after failing an Expedition.
• Firing the Archangel space laser at another Nation is now considered an act of war.
• Envoys no longer need to move next to a Capital to open negotiations; they can use their relevant abilities from anywhere inside another Nation’s borders.
• Eliminated Nations are no longer counted in some calculations (for example, Global Cooperation providing Social Fabric Tolerance per allied Nation).
• The Allow Custom Nations in Random option in singleplayer games now allows Custom Nations to be explicitly picked, but not randomly picked in various contexts.

• When unchecked:
  • Custom Nations should not be chosen for AI players.
  • Custom Nations can be picked from the dropdown.
  • Custom Nations should not be randomly picked for any player set to Random.

• When checked:
  • Custom Nations can be chosen for AI players.
  • Custom Nations can be picked from the dropdown.
  • Custom Nations can be randomly picked for any player set to Random.

• In all cases:
  • Randomly picked Nations will check for flag conflicts with all previously picked Nations.
  • In a multiplayer lobby, Custom Nations will not be picked randomly nor will they be in the dropdown for any player.

AI

• Adjusted AI to more frequently make decisions that avoid steering into Age of Plague.
• Improved AI’s handling of Vassals. Vassals now properly consider the Goods they would produce if they were a Region when deciding what Improvements they should build.
• AI players and Vassals are more likely to build an Improvement on a tile that provides it bonus goods than on tiles that do not (e.g. putting Farms on Wheat tiles)

UI / Art

• Replaced prior Cloud Hotseat multiplayer UI and information with content for the new system.

• Adjusted the UI used for “mega projects” to provide a better indication of rewards. (Without this, some of the options in Space Race appear to flat-out negatives.)
• Added a new maximum member count slider to options. This is an option for performance that allows adjustment of the number of individual models used to represent a Unit on the map or in the Combat Viewer. (This is visual only and the setting has no impact on gameplay.)
• Updated Infopedia and tooltips related to Regional Efficiency to clarify that it does not affect Goods.
• Updated the tooltips for numerous Ideals to clarify which Building Upgrade Line they apply to.
• Adjusted the Scout Unit Abilities. Scouts now have a “Promote to Hero” Unit Ability during Age of Heroes to reduce confusion over Leaders vs. Heroes.
• Adjusted the Information Need tooltip to show population required for Information to become a Need.
• Expanded Infopedia for Quests.
• Added additional information to tooltips and Infopedia entries on Hero, Berserker, Corrupted AI Core, Colony Ship Launch Pad, Archangel Satellite Array, City Shield, Alien Mothership, Alien Invader (land and water), Riot Police, Aether Harvester, Aether Refinery, Alchemist, Conquistador, Monument, and Plague Doctor to clarify their use.
• Added Diplomacy status to the Diplomacy tooltip.

• Added display of map name and size to the display of map seed.
• Now display an effect on Units spawned by Chaos Events to make it more obvious what has been added to the world by the Event.
• Added display of bonuses to Landmark tooltips.
• Adjusted Unit tooltips in the Combat Viewer to show Tactics.
• Added Domain tooltips in the Culture Power UI.
• Added itemized display for Needs Satisfaction in the Region info panel.

• Victory Age tooltips now shows progress of other Nations.

• Revised From Each, Their Ability and To Each, Their Need Ideals and related Ideology tooltip information.
• Clarified targeting message when placing World Fair.
• Made display of “Unit Type:” consistent; changed Militia, Alien, and Armor Types to use the same format.
• Made references to “Capitals” or “Regional Capitals” consistent throughout.
• Adjusted where the tooltip on the “Next” button in the bottom right displays (this was getting in the way for some players).

Bugfixes

• Fixed the Temple Building not being affected by the Theologians Ideal from Divine Inspiration (which affects other buildings in the same building line already).
• Fixed missing text issue for tooltips for Goods tiles, revealed by recent tooltip improvements.
• Fixed a text overflowing with very long player names in the Cloud Hotseat UI.
• Fixed Internal Combustion Fuel and Agnosticism Innovations having no tooltip.
• Fixed Events in Age of Monuments that could trigger under bad conditions (like lost progress on a Super Monument after it had been completed).
• Fixed an issue with Explorers’ Guild going up when Expeditions are failed.
• Fixed an issue with certain buildings unlocked by Governments or National Spirits not appearing in the Infopedia.
• Fixed Oath of Fealty to affect underwater Regions in Age of Utopia.
• Fixed a number of incorrect Swedish city and town names.
• Updated movement logic and pathing visualization to fix a number of issues, including incorrect presentation of air attack range, units excluded from showing attack range in certain diplomatic conditions, Envoys showing invalid attack and expel icons, air Units showing incorrect targets for attack, Envoys being able to target other Envoys, and naval Units not showing land attacks correctly.
• Found and fixed an issue with AI Nations not correctly receiving and using Chaos and Innovation Events.
• Found and fixed an issue with the targeting system (the way things like Events are or Diplomatic Actions are directed at a particular Nation).
• Found and fixed an error where loading saves could cause issues with random values; the RNG stream should now be more consistent across save / load boundaries.
• Corrected Merchant tooltip to specify that the Unit is deployed to improve Vassal Prosperity.
• Fixed the progress message in Age of Monuments showing many decimal places.
• Fixed Alien Invader Navy having incorrect tooltip.
• Fixed World Fair tooltip using “Research” instead of “Analytics.”
• Fixed typo in Pangea tooltip.
• Fixed a scenario where “undo” did not work properly.
• Fixed splinter Nations not showing on the minimap.
• Tooltip with diplomacy breakdown for a Nation now shows on the main Diplomacy UI (instead of having to select a specific Nation first).
• Fixed some situations that could cause buff durations to show as “-1.”
• Fixed an issue where small islands map could cause graphical corruption.
• We corrected an issue with the AI players and Chaos and Innovation cards -- this is good. However, this created a scenario where multiple AIs could get the Barbarian Resurgence Chaos Event at around the same time, which occasionally produced a large number of Barbarian Warlords visiting player Regions – this is bad. This Event has been disabled for now. (If you are restoring a save in Age 3, you could still have this Event.)
• We found some issues with multi-turn movement (in particular, related to multi-turn movement, undo, and transports). This has been fixed.
• Fixed the Infopedia link for Printing Press.