August has finally arrived, and with it, we are proud to officially announce the first expansion for Millennia: Ancient Worlds. It will be released alongside Update 5 on August 12th. Here is a quick summary of what the DLC includes: Nomadic Game Start, New "PVE" Threats, New Terrain, New National Spirit, New Starting Government, and New Landmarks!
Before I hand it over to the developers, I want to inform that an updated roadmap will be arriving alongside the release of the DLC and Update 5.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2829680/Millennia_Ancient_Worlds/
Developer Diary | Ancient Worlds
Hello! It’s been a while since I’ve written a dev diary, I’m Ben Friedman, Game Designer and DLC Design Lead for Millennia: Ancient Worlds. Let’s talk about the first expansion for Millennia!
Overview
Millennia: Ancient Worlds is focused on the early human experience of scavenging the land for resources, hiding from or fighting dangerous predators, and eventually finding a place to settle down and start your Nation.
As soon as you have the Ancient Worlds DLC enabled, you’ll have access to a new quick start rule set that will start a game with all of the new features turned on:
This will enable three new game rules:
- Nomad Band Start
- Frozen Terrain Start
- Megafauna Dens
Nomad Band Start
As part of the regular update that’s releasing alongside Millennia: Ancient Worlds we have a new Game Rule for starting with a Settler instead of starting with your first Region settled for you. Ancient Worlds has a special version that uses the new Nomad Band Unit.
Typically, the fear of falling behind economically more often outweighs the decision to delay setting a few turns to find a better location. We wanted to build in “permission” with the Nomad Band Start to allow players to not feel the pressure to immediately settle on the first turn. Millennia: Ancient Worlds is specifically about not settling, so we’ve built in a few features to allow players to feel confident about scouting around and picking the best place to settle.
We don’t let you settle your first Region until your Nomad Band has earned 10 Combat XP, so you’ll have to find ways to gather experience first. This gives explicit permission to not settle because you simply can’t settle right away. This also means you are going to spend your first turns scouting around, and you’ll know more about your starting location and have a better idea of where to settle when you’re ready.
Nomad Bands share the Discover Landmark ability with Scouts, as well as three new “Scavenge” abilities that are used on different terrain types: Hills, Forests, and Frozen terrain. Each of these provide a small reward event when used on their corresponding terrain, and grant some experience to the Nomad Band. We want Nomad Bands to emulate roaming around and foraging from different locations, so you can only use each Scavenge ability once per terrain type.
When you inevitably settle, you’re rewarded for having more experience on your Nomad Band, so you should probably Scavenge all of the terrain types and Discover Landmarks if you can find them nearby. The bonus you get from having full experience should be more than enough to compensate for spending your first turns scouting around instead of settling right away. We really wanted to double-down on alleviating the fear of not settling on the first possible turn, so the reward here scales pretty well if you can reach maximum experience by Scavenging from all of the terrains and Discovering a Landmark.
Once you’ve maxed out your Nomad Band’s experience, you’ll inevitably have scouted some pretty cool locations to settle, and you can spend one or two more turns getting into the perfect position knowing that when you finally settle you’ll be rewarded with a big boost.
Additionally, when settling down with your Nomad Band you get the choice between starting a Tribal Government or the new Band Society Government.
We wanted to have an alternative to Tribalism that felt like you continued to carry on the nomadic lifestyle. Within the constraints of designing a new Age 1 Government, we found that the best distinction was to separate out Tribalism as the “Homeland” and “Settled Down” Government type, and make Band Society the “Nomadic” and “Ephemeral” Government.
Three of the 5 unique Ideals spawn Units, which you can use to quickly scout out your starting area and continue to wander around. This theme of spawning units makes the Band Society excel at scouting and early combat, but it also means very few Ideals grant economic rewards. We want players to make up for the lack of passive income by collecting Tribal Camp and fighting off Barbarians for their rewards, which is why we give you specifically a Scout and Archer to help with those tasks.
Eventually though, these bonuses will peter out compared to Tribalism’s passive income. We want Band Society to feel like you’re accelerating through the first few Ages, then you quickly jump ship and hold a Revolution in Age 3 to pick your new Government.
Frozen Terrain Start
The Frozen Terrain Start dramatically transforms the landscape of any map into a frozen ice age. Grasslands, Scrublands, Forests, Hills, and Deserts all become “Frozen” variants.
The Frozen Terrain Start is designed to change the personality of the first few turns of foraging as your budding Nation has to survive the harsh terrain, unable to grow as quickly as a standard game start due to the Frozen Terrain giving fewer foraging resources.
The terrain then thaws over the next few turns, and thawing Grasslands, Scrublands, and Forests have a chance to become “Lush,” giving increased foraging resources and boosting some Improvements built on them (such as Farms on Lush Grasslands).
If you start next to Lush Terrain, or you’re playing with Nomad Bands and choose to settle next to Lush Terrain, we want you to be able to quickly accelerate past the deficit incurred by the Frozen Terrain. Lush Terrain gives bonus foraging resources, and bonus resources to certain improvements (such as Farms on Lush Grassland), so keep a watchful eye and make sure to take advantage of the opportunity whenever you can.
There’s a strong intentional synergy between the Nomad Band Start and the Frozen Terrain Start. You can wait out the harsh frozen period spending your time Scavenging and scouting around, and you’ll be ready to settle down by the time the terrain has begun to thaw and become Lush. You have the best chance at settling in the best possible starting area if you wait for all of the terrain to thaw, this is another intentional way we give permission to wait before settling because guaranteeing a very Lush starting area will be much better than having no Lush Terrain.
Perhaps you might even get lucky and find a Lush Grassland with a Bonus Wheat tile on it! Those provide quite a lot of Food for an early Nation.
Megafauna
Megafauna stalk the land, threatening your prehistoric nomads. The Mastodon Unit and Smilodon Unit are straight out of the Pleistocene. We’ve made the Megafauna more dangerous than Barbarians starting out, but they won’t repopulate their dens on the map, nor will they grow in strength over time like the Barbarians do. We’ve designed them to follow the normal path of history by being threats to early humans, but eventually die off as you master the tools needed to fight back.
Megafauna are going to be especially scary if you’re playing with the Nomad Band Start, and on Frozen Terrain you have a defensive penalty, rather than a bonus you might find by camping out on Hills or Forests, so be careful not to leave your Nomad alone in the wilderness.
The Mastodon and Smilodon are intended to provide a difficult challenge for early Nations, and a satisfying reward when you can clear out their Megafauna Dens. Their dens provide a reward similar to Barbarian Camps when conquered. Who knows, you might even find an injured Smilodon you can nurse back to health…
Messengers National Spirit
In addition to the new Game Rules, Millennia: Ancient Worlds also provides a new National Spirit, the Messengers, which is based off of the Incan chasqui messenger runners.
Messengers is a Diplomacy National Spirit that was designed specifically to interact with Minor Nations in a new way. The National Spirit gives you a new Unit, the eponymous Messenger, which you can send to Minor Nations to recruit them to join your Nation. Unlike Envoys, we’ve made it so that the Messengers just care about the Population, which you’re inviting to immigrate to your Homeland Region. You’ll also convert the Minor Nation into an Outpost, which you can leave where it is or pack it up and move it somewhere else.
Once you’ve converted the Minor Nations into an Outpost you can use the “Spawn Messenger” Domain Power to spawn new Messengers at that Outpost. And as always, the Outposts will connect roads to nearby Settlements, like other Outposts or possibly other Minor Nations, allowing you to quickly sprint your Messengers abroad, recruiting many Minor Nations and building a very tall empire.
We’ve also given Messengers the ability to upgrade their Outposts into Tambos, which increase friendly Units’ movement speed temporarily. This boost, in combination with the roads connected to nearby Settlements, will make the network of fast traveling Messengers run at light-speed across the continent.
We’ve made sure that the National Spirit keeps working even after you’ve recruited all of the nearby Minor Nations and converted them into Outposts. You can repack the Outposts and deploy the Pioneers to connect your Regions together or to other Nations via roads, and your Messenger Units can visit those Nations to gain Diplomatic Opinion. You could also use the roads to march an army to their front gates, depending on how you feel about your neighbors.
Additional
Millennia: Ancient Worlds also spices up other content that you’ll run into as you play the game. There are new Starting Bonuses that will help you shape your starting Region. New events for Barbarians Camps, Tribal Camps, Innovation, and Chaos that interact with Megafauna, Nomads, and Frozen Terrain that enhance the early nomadic experience. And new Landmarks with brand new Expedition events as well. Plus, new music to enjoy your exploration of the early world.
Hopefully this breakdown of Millennia: Ancient Worlds is getting you excited for our first expansion for Millennia! We can’t wait to share it with you and hear your stories from playing the new content.
