Civilization 7 is coming. There are rumors about Europa Universalis 5. And Manor Lords and Cities Skylines 2 continue to grow. 2025 looks like another vintage year for strategy games, but don’t let Millennia pass you by. While its original launch was troubled, over time, the Paradox-published 4X game has gotten steadily better, and now, thanks to a significant new update, it’s well worth another try. Whether you’re an experienced player considering another round or a newbie coming to Millennia for the first time, there’s a lot here to enjoy.
Compared to a lot of its straight-faced, history-driven rivals, Millennia takes the 4X game formula and treats it with more fun and humor. While the typical ages and epochs still exist, depending on your choices, you can also trigger alternate-history and fantasy eras. Overproduce technology, for example, and you may find yourself overthrown by your intelligent cyber servants and cast into the Age of the Robot Overlords. Lean hard into nuclear weapons, and brace yourself for the Age of Wasteland.
Developed by C-Prompt, while it choked a little at launch, Millennia has slowly gotten better, and the big new update from Monday December 9 makes a lot of vital changes. The simultaneous multiplayer mode is now free from beta and considerably more functional and stable. There are also dozens of quality-of-life improvements and efforts to add a higher degree of polish, as well as gameplay and mechanical changes in response to community requests.
Two key components in any great strategy game are building and resource management. In Millenia’s past, when you harvested a resource, it would be split evenly between all your production projects. Now you can choose which one to prioritize – if you have a cache of stone and want your new fortification built with haste, you can allocate the majority of your stone supply to that particular building. There are also new harvestable goods and also new achievements.
Millennia’s endgame has been transformed, too. To win in Millennia, you need to enter a ‘victory’ age. Rather than processing through the same number of ages each time, so long as you have met certain conditions, you can now enter a victory age from any other age. Opponent AI has been improved as well.
Your CPU-controlled rivals are now better military strategists and their individual personalities will have a greater bearing on diplomacy. They’ve also gotten better at city planning and will readily clear out defunct buildings and improvements to make way for new works.
Millennia’s Steam reviews have improved. Though it still has a lifetime ‘mixed’ rating, 69% of the almost 3,000 Steam reviews for Millennia are positive, meaning it’s right on the cusp of the more admirable ‘mostly positive’ label. Recent reviews – those from the last 30 days – are already there, however. If you want to give it a try yourself, head here.
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