This game could revolutionize the 4X genre! - Millennia

hey folks my name is provis and welcome to Millennia this is a new upcoming Forex strategy game that is releasing on March 26 and it's going to take players through 10,000 years of Earth history with maybe a couple of alternate history twists along the way if we're lucky you'll see what I mean in just a bit this game is developed by seat prompt games and published by Paradox interactive who are sponsoring me to take a look at the game today and of course a big thank you for that now I'll be honest the more I play around with this game and the more test runs I've done the more I appreciate it because this game has some genuinely creative and Innovative mechanics that are going to help separate it from a lot of its competition and let's be frank with ourselves the 4X genre is very saturated and dominated by some big games like Civ oldw World humankind and so on I don't think it's fair to go into this expecting it to go toe-to-toe with a game like Civ this is not going to be the Civ killer what you should think of it as is like an indie game that's trying to innovate in an already very wellestablished market and if you go into it with that expectation you'll like this game a lot more for what it is now of course because this game is sponsored by Paradox I want to make sure you guys know that there is a link in the description down below if you guys like what you see as I play this you want to learn more there will be that link you can go ahead and click on that otherwise let's go ahead and jump directly into things and I will try to explain things as I go now I do think I'm going to play as Rome for this game just because the flag is cool though it doesn't really matter who you play because all the different National bonuses here can be swapped out for whatever you want them to be some of these these are going to be really good for you extra Scouts can be nice extra production food and so on or culture I'm going to stick around with a discounted envoys though and try to build around that because I think that could be a very fun build and here we go oh okay this is already kind of um an unusual starting location but let's go ahead and explore the map and find out what is around us so we know how to expand our capital of banum I did not name this by the way the game has decided that Byzantium is superior to Rome you heard it here first all right let's go ahead and choose research now one thing that's different about research and ages in Millennia is that they are not necessarily the same linear path you're already familiar with in stuff like Civilization right in Civilization you go from something like the Medieval Era into the Renaissance Era into the industrial era it's a very set in stone thing what you're going to find in Millennia is that as you technologically progress there are opportunities to Branch off into different ages with different objectives depending on some decisions you made or maybe a bit of luck either good luck or bad luck you'll see more about that in a bit that all starts after the age of bronze so our goal right now is to be line to this in order to advance an age you need to research a certain number of Technologies from the existing age in this case three out of five I'm going to start with the scouting Tech because I think exploring the map rapidly is going to be very important for us then we're going to come back to our city we're going to start working on building a town center to get some extra government XP uh alternatively a scout Cavalry may not be a bad decision but this is the one that I'm going for the reason being government XP is a way of getting settlers So the faster we get this the more I can expand it's also a way of reforming our current government we are tribal if I can get some XP I can get more food more science more Improvement points to upgrade our tiles lots of stuff we want the faster we can snowball this the better and believe me when I say you're going to need a lot of government XP I'm also going to go ahead and change some tiles I'm working I see I have one pop working a water tile for one food right now that makes no sense I'd rather be working a grasslands tile for two food and grow in four turns instead oh we found a goodie Hut over here to the north perfect let's go ahead and pick this up looks like we get some knowledge or culture I will take the knowledge the faster that I can upgrade into the next age the better and also by getting a scouting Tech it's going to give me a free Scout so the sooner I get this the sooner I can see more of the map over in this direction and I think that's going to be good for us so there's that Scout we'll start exploring over this direction over there let's see what else we got going on this way we found barbarians already okay once barbarians spot you they have a tendency to throw themselves at you uh whether it's suicidal or not if that happens you can either run from them or try to find a good defensive location in the early game some Forest some hills anything that gives you defensive B bonus and then just kind of let them do their thing they'll throw themselves eventually you'll get experience they will die it's going to slow down your expansion and your uh exploration and that sucks but it's better than risking losing a unit all right and over here we have six government XP we can reform our tribal government I will go ahead and get the extra food so I can scale up just a tiny bit faster for some new research my next thing is going to be a workers cuz I I want to get some improvement points to upgrade some tiles and also get a clay pit early on then after that I'm either going to pick up farming probably farming or maybe tribal Elders defenses isn't bad this is a way of getting archers and archers are great but I don't know a science building or the ability to get more food kind of hard to decide which one's going to be better and now we have a culture power ready to go so this is actually extremely useful it's another currency that's building up over time in your cities when it reaches its full meter you'll have a power to activate and the longer you play the game the more Powers you'll have and some of them are really impactful at the beginning of the game there's only a couple things we could do we could spawn ourself a couple of War bands which is not a bad plan for me right now because a couple of extra units to run around and kill barbarians could be good and also explore the map alternatively we could go ahead and create a town and this is one way of trying to expand my borders I think the Army might be the right call but I'm going to expand my town right now and place one over here just to show you how this works it needs to be placed adjacent to your existing territory I don't want to place down here cuz I don't know what's around here but over this direction close to some of the deer as well as the wheat this makes sense in order to expand the growth of my city so we're going to place it right there that's Antioch it will take a bit of time for the borders to expand but eventually we'll control this entire area my city can only support one town right now you can see that right up right here one out of one over time this will go up with some different Technologies so you'll have a chance to expand your borders further but this is just one of those things the sooner you place it down the sooner you can grab all the stuff o okay I found a couple of important things over here with my Scout so there's another goodie Hut but also a natural Landmark over here it's currently undiscovered if we can move our Scout over here we'll be able to do an expedition and Discover it only one person can discover a landmark then it is taken up if we can get three of these we in theory will be able to advance to a special age later on I've never been able to pull that off maybe today will be the day more government XP with our Nomads here from this Hut that's actually great cuz I can use this to go for the extra knowledge the faster we pick this up the better and then yeah let's go ahead and get this tropical rainforest now we've got some extra XP here you can see not only combat XP which can lead to veterancy levels for your units but also exploration XP you may actually see there's something else over here so beyond just government we can get exploration we can get Warfare there are many different types of experience in this game including at some point things like art diplomacy engineering there might be more Beyond that I'm not sure but those are the six I know of and every one of these just like the government has special powers if I can get 20 exporation XP I can get myself another Scout right or if I can get myself more military XP then I'm going to get some volunteer free units you can get these up by a lot of different things exploration mainly by exploring and finding things like landmarks Warfare just by fighting and stuff like that right and more Powers will be unlocked throughout the game and actually I just found some more exploration XP over here at another goody Hut perfect let's go ahead and take advantage of that and SP spawn other Scout okay the workers technology is done I am going to pop over to farming since it looks like we're going to have access to the wheat farm pretty soon and now I want to start developing some tiles now what is that going to look like well if I come over here to these Improvement points in the bottom left we're generating only one per turn right now I've got 17 I can use this to upgrade a number of tiles in certain types of tiles I can place down let's say a hunting camp and like some shrub land and stuff like that a Clay Pit is something important that I just unlocked can place next to some grasslands and if we do that let's say right over here I guess what this is going to do now is it's going to start getting me extra production as well as some improvement points so now we can upgrade tiles even faster and I'm going to need that for a lot of farms but also on top of that we are going to be able to get a production good this clay right here right this is what's being consumed and getting me all that stuff eventually you'll be able to get production chains in Millennia so clay will be able to become bricks which is worth even more right and there are a lot of those things wheat can become flour can become bread and it progressively gets better and better value the more you process it so that's one thing that is very different right from this game compared to other games like Civ there's actually a certain level of City management production chain stuff that you have to build for and I think that's kind of cool another free Scout Cavalry oh my gosh is it my birthday the more I explore the better seriously back at our city I'm going to go ahead and build up a dolman this will get me some influence uh influence is the resource that gradually gets new tiles in your Empire and expands your borders can also get things at the lookout notice that this building would get me some passive exploration XP so different types of buildings are actually going to lend to these special powers depending on which one is most important to you another landmark okay that's two out of three ooh also barbarians are about to attack my town towns do have some militia though admittedly this is not much uh I hope it doesn't die because losing a town would really suck oh looks like we met another player that looks like the Aztec to me okay depending on how far away they actually are that could be bad regardless at 6,000 BCE it looks like we are ready to advance and since we are the first ones to do so we get acknowledged as the trend Setter welcome to the age of bronze New National Spirits are available I'll show you that in a second vassals integrate faster Barbarian Warlords can appear that's actually scary cuz if you don't have military units around back home this is a very good way to get your towns destroyed and that can be disastrous Innovation and Chaos trade and diplomatic envoys yeah you'll see more about that in a second let's go and take a look at the new domains these National Spirits so the first person to enter an age has their pick of the litter there are several different types and the first person to pick a version of these Spirits get some bonus XP for their respective category we've got exploration Warfare engineering and diplomacy and these are very powerful and drastically change up your game depending on what you want to do exploration for example we've got the wild hunters you pick this up you can spend exploration XP just like you would with your government reforms in order to unlock bow hunters and reveal elephants on the map and so on there's a lot of benefits that you can pick up Raiders is extremely powerful and possibly overpowered honestly you can get a ton of free military units tons of them and they're good like every single one of these gets you more the more you fight the more you get right and then you just kill everybody in the entire world mountain builders is really good I like this one it's an engineering one that gets you uh burial mounds ways of getting some extra culture and sanitation and stuff not bad Olympians is what I'm going to go for though this works well with my Envoy cost reduction we saw when I first chose my Civ and this is diplomatically focused a bit weird but I think trying to go for a diplomatic tall game is very viable in this game and is kind of what I'm shooting for so let's select the Olympians and I'll explain more as you go why this can be really good now in the age of bronze we have a whole new set of technology to look at so that you can see we can still go back and pick these up if we want to that said I think what I want to go for is probably Community First this is going to get me access to things like kils and Mills which I can use to upgrade my clay and my wheat so I think this has a lot of value then probably officials because this works well with a diplomatic game and from there I'm not sure belief is good for some science and culture mining to work the hills that I've got not too sure what I want to do here let's do community first now what I want to point out though is there are different ages available to us from here on out the age of iron is the typical historical progression right and you can see if we just get three texts we'll automatically be able to move here if however we discover one more Landmark we could go to the age of Heroes which is similar but different and unlocks whole new mechanics and the entire world will be into a new bizarre era or there could be a crisis age if we kill six units from other nations that is to say not bar Varian we could get the age of blood which is again going to change up Technologies and a lot of stuff going on the entire world be plunged into a state of Perpetual War non-stop murder right and left pretty good if you're going for a Raider game that's not what I'm doing though the age of Heroes could be fun but I've never been able to pull that off back at our city the first thing we're going to go ahead and build up is a meeting hall now that we finish with the dolman I want that passive diplomatic XP the more we can build that up the more I can upgrade my Olympians oh and here's something else really important okay what's better for me here knowledge or innovation ooh boy probably the knowledge but Innovation is a very fun mechanic and I do want to show that off for you cuz this is new in this particular age so up here in the top right you can now see we have Innovation and Chaos Innovation is something that is going to passively start building up when it reaches 100% we're going to get some sort of a randomized benefit for our nation it could make a particular building even better than usual it could do a lot of different things these are always is great for you the other flip side is going to be chaos the more we unrest we have in our civilization the more cities we conquer and so on that's going to create chaos and again if this builds up to 100 bad things are going to happen always try to avoid this though if you can't having a lot of money on hand can get you out of a pinch to deal with a crisis every time this reaches 100 though the progress you make per turn does kind of go down and reset so it's something you have to constantly be investing in and actually if we go to our tribal government with 25 XP I actually could get tribalism to be reformed which I'll do and that's going to get me more Innovation per turn plus some extra culture we so we can get more of these Powers so now I'm getting 20 Innovation per turn that's pretty nice oh and I did find another landmark over here but it looks like the Aztecs got there first all right so I'm not going to be able to use this to push me into a uh Age of Heroes we were this close ah dang it holy crap hold on hold on hold on I've got some more knowledge right here um or I can get investment point no we're going to take the knowledge just go ahead and boost this up that's another Wonder oh my gosh we actually found three if I can get this before another player does in like two turns we've got an age of Heroes oh baby oh also some barbarians are on the way uh-oh I'm so excited I've literally never been able to pull this off okay um back here at the city we've got a fourth person who's currently doing nothing we could go for an upgrade to let's say the Forester tile and get some logs which is worth production at the cost of some food or what I should be able to do is take this wheat and get our first production chain up and running so right now I believe each one of these Wheats is worth three food so this is a six food tile right here which is great but what we can do is take a regular tile that doesn't have anything on it that I don't care about get a Mill and this will take two wheat and make them into two flour which is worth six food for one worker so if I click right here for example um yeah this is fine boom now we're growing in three turns that is a lot more food being produced we've got 19 that's good another culture power available we could go for a Eureka which is a way of getting some extra knowledge and that's not bad we could also go for raising an army I don't need to do a truce no one's attacking me you can't create more towns we already said we have a limit to how many we can do so that's not going to help me much so is it better to go ahead and raise some armies knowing that the barbarians are on the way or would it be better to get some extra science and finish this just a bit faster I want to force the age of Heroes before anyone else can get to it cuz right Whoever has more science is going to be able to be the trend Setter so I need to go for eurekka get this up nice and fast that finishes up with officials what comes next um I I like the mining I don't know if I have any iron around so we can get quaries for Limestone discipline for more units this is a way of boosting up your army size if we're going to an age of Heroes I think I need strong armies so we're we actually going to do something weird and we're going to go for discipline this is not what I normally would do but I actually think we need it and with this Envoy what do we do that's a great question um we want to send it to a little city states like maybe the one over here in Malmo or maybe the close by one in Delhi there's barbarians on the way I don't know if sending my Envoy over here makes a lot of sense we could also just hold tight for a little bit um I'm going to go ahead and try to grab Deli so an Envoy can do a lot of things if you stack them up with another player and we did find the Aztec Empire down here we'll open up diplomatic options with them and that's good we can also use it to instantly take an independent city state and make it a part of my Empire and let's discover the Borneo rainforest thank you oh my god Age of Heroes boys and here's our first Innovation torch bearers make the Hippodrome a better building get some extra diplomacy XP that works well with my Olympians the Hippodrome is something we actually have to unlock so I don't have this right away but do this now it's going to reduce unrest it's going to build up culture it gets me bonus culture for every nation that has an Envoy and now it also gives me diplomacy XP an amazingly good building for us and now over here in Delhi let's use my Envoy and we are going to vassalize this minor Nation all right so now the city is mine just like that now here's the thing about cities whether you vassalize them diplomatically or you settle a new city you do not control them directly they are vassal States and they're going to take time to integrate into your Empire when they finish this you can spend government XP to Annex the city and then you can control it directly in the meantime though it provides a small amount of income and it can build up its own prosperity and eventually develop its own tiles it struggles to do this on its own though send a merchant here and prosperity will build up more Prosperity just means more income another landmark are you kidding me we found four of them this is ridiculous what what happening okay I think that's good for now let's just go ahead and move on now something I do want to address kind of upfront I may have wanted to do this a little bit earlier honestly oh gosh getting around to this is going to be really hard maybe I wanted to do this earlier though um I think that people are going to look at this game and they're going to look at the graphical style and say yeah this ain't for me and I'll be honest I kind of get it I was very turned off by the aesthetic of this game when I first saw it as well to me this just kind of felt like um a very lackluster presentation these are Indie graph right I'm I'm spoiled by games like Civ this is just kind of right but I think you're maybe starting to see as I play through this put this aside for now don't use this and hold this to the same standard as the really big established titles and instead think about it from the perspective of a Forex game that has new stuff like the ages like this experience system and everything else and that's going to continue getting more and more interesting as time goes on trust me it gets it gets pretty cool like you got to admit the addition of things things like production chains in of itself is a pretty interesting change it really does uh shift up the game quite a bit barbarians are attacking and burning down my wheat well that's rude hopefully they attack Antioch I've got three War bands that are ready we can spend some money to rush our culture an extra turn I'll go ahead and do that and then do we want to raise an army I am making a fair bit of money and there are a lot of Barbarians around I need to do this here in Deli let just go ahead and get two War bands so that as they attack we are going to be completely fine ah really wish that IID held off on that cultural Power by one turn though I got enough XP to get the Olympic Games the Olympic Games is a new cultural power we'd have access to where I can get some various different XP and the more I upgrade it the more we can get including money and science so the more people I meet the more people I'm friends with the more our culture is going to help boost the XP of every other AIS of my government let's take a look at something here uh we can see that I went for Olympians Japan went for warriors okay so they are militaristic and they have uh lots of strong military units so they're probably going to be aggressive that's a problem the Aztec went for God King H they're going to be building tall probably that's interesting okay um over here by the way we can see that there are going to be some special screens for when people do attack you so we can see here units are going to take their turns and attack and blah blah blah blah um I've heard some people say they really like this part of the game because it shows kind of the tactics that are happening instead of just a random dice roll and there are tactics right having line infantry to protect archers and stuff does matter that said I don't really like this screen to me this is kind of a thing that doesn't add a lot of value if you know what I mean okay we finished with discipline that means that I can now choose to move the age of Heroes 13 turns oh my god I've literally been trying to do this for a very very long time this feels great can also spend my Warfare XP in order to upgrade these units to Spearman instead of War bands that is absolutely something I want to do stronger units please and we could actually spawn a settler now too we did that where would I go that's a good question um we could place another city close to Delhi and that would actually create roads to make it easier to navigate that said placing down a town by Deli would probably do the same thing I could expand up this direction toward a bunch of Hills try to find some iron could expand down this direction there's some wheat plus a lot of jungle around shrub lands and stuff maybe going down over here is probably too far away the thing is there's so many forests and hills in the way that getting around to defend my cities is going to be extremely difficult so I don't know how well that's going to work that said I feel like we need to try spawning some cities so let's Place one in banum that does take up one of my pops and I think we're going to start moving up this direction there's some cotton around a river some hills lots of forests I can chop down this doesn't seem like a bad area to go I'm going to place down a kiln probably in this useless shrub over here this means that if I can get another person in our city which we're already doing actually I can convert the bricks H sorry the clay into bricks so one production and one uh Improvement Point becomes two production and two Improvement points so for two workers it's the exact same as having two clay pits the difference is now I'm also passively making engineering XP which to this point we haven't discovered we also found another another neutral City Brazilia which I could try to conquer right now but that would get me chaos and if I can get envoys we can do that for free so right now I'd say that's not a high priority oh oh gosh okay hang on spawn a merchant or get some diplomacy XP oof oof oof oof oof oof what's better here a merchant is very valuable and cost Diplo XP this is the most coste effective solution this is the one that would let me get cheaper envoys though uh uh I think we're going to get the diplomacy XP we're going to come over here and we're going to go ahead and grab the neutral ground or do we want to get the Hippodrome if we go to our city our Capital over here in banum what are we building right now we're working on Market it'll be done in four turns I actually think I'm going to go for the Hippodrome so I can build this in my city soon because the sooner I get this the more culture and the more diplomacy XP I get cheaper envoys though is obviously great cuz it means I can get a lot more of them we're going to go ahead and clear out some of these Barbarian camps which is great doing so gets you more rewards spawn a crossbow at the cost of getting 10 chaos per turn ooh it's nice but I think I'd rather take the 15 production back at banum and really kick stuff stuff off that's going to be great also we can go to our culture and host our first ever Olympic Games could also go for things like The Cutting Edge which is a way of getting more Innovation per turn we're about to actually get something there let's do this we get a bunch of XP the more more people we have met the more we get all right let's get that dang Hippodrome oh my gosh this is going to be huge also I can do something else here as far as my engineering XP so there's a lot you can do with this you can get some extra Improvement points you can get some Pioneers who build outposts in different areas which is kind of like a way of temporarily expanding your borders around some resource you need you spend some points and you send those trade goods back to your city it can be nice but I'm going to expand a town specifically Antioch right over here so once this becomes a level to town now I can choose a specialization in this case I'll take let's say a farming Town what this now means is every adjacent Farm including eventually this grasslands tile which is why I've been saving it will get me extra food so I just got an extra two food in my city by doing this eventually I can make that even more value this grasslands tile will be worth for food even though it doesn't have wheat on it fact I can just do that right now there we go so even though I may not be working it boom Antioch is now worth four extra food there see another Innovation Masons Limestone and marble gives extra production ooh that actually could make working these Hills worthwhile with mines if I had that Tech because then we'd be able to get some good stuff H also Japan just surpassed me in science but fortunately they are also working toward the age of Heroes so they are slightly ahead of me but we're still going to end up having the same result right now I'm not going to lie that actually scared me for a moment I actually thought we were about to lose the age of Heroes because another Sith was better at me in science that was going to make me very angry Okay Age of Heroes officially begins a hero unit spawns in the Homeland send Heroes to explore Quest landmarks gain veterancy on your Heroes to complete more difficult quests complete four to unlock the Parthenon building which is like a wonder and then whole new governments are going to be unlocked I'm pretty sure I could take like let's say this scout and make him into a hero right now at the cost of warfare XP which is one of the reasons I've been holding on to these scouts because now it's a really strong unit and look there's a quest igdrasil that requires at least one level in veterancy but this guy has two so that's fine but other kind of quests are around here looks like we've got a monster some riddles a trapped Tower okay more monsters um not as many quests as I would expect prophecies up that direction but yeah so this is a whole new area of the game that normally you would not have any access to if you had moved on to the age of iron there would be no Heroes and these things would be completely hidden so this is a very interesting Direction the world is taking right now and now that I am also in the age of Heroes we can take a look at our science this is different than what you would normally see things like storytelling Glory Oracle spirituality these are not texts that are available during the age of iron they're similar though a lot of the same sort of stuff can be done paper makers and so on some temples and so on right but these are all special versions just for the age of Heroes and they really are going to help with a lot of other stuff quests have extra reward choices that could be kind of good for me right Glory get yourself a bath house for a ton of Sanitation instead of an aqueduct sure a melum mhm mhm here's an oven for some bread extra towns become available the Oracle can get me what prophecy spawn Another Hero at the Target capital okay I think I need to go for storytelling this is going to get me access to diplomacy XP with paper makers take logs make paper then we can get things like a poet which takes paper and makes poems and also gets me science and I desperately need more science I don't like the Japan beat me I'm only making 3.1 also more quests could be good and also here's another science building perfect I'm going to take another Envoy here with neutral ground so with this Envoy do we take another city or do I try to get some relations with other people people I think I'm going to go up to Brazilia since this already has a road connecting it it looks like so it's somewhat easier to reach we've also discovered we have a couple sources of iron in Delhi okay that's going to be useful to know in the future nothing on my own home mountains though okay so over here at idrasil let's go ahead and go on our quests since we have a high enough veterany level and this gets me knowledge combat XP and we can complete the Expedition or exploration no science absolutely is the better way to go let's pick that one up grab Brasilia as my new city okay there's a goodie Hut over here we missed plus uh-oh problems good notice your cities have needs by the way so right now we have a food need which I'm overdoing by a long shot we also have a housing need which I wish this UI would improve a little bit faster there we go housing and as long as you have enough of this your needs are being met but once your population continues to grow this will start going down uh the higher this gets the more demanding your people will be so at some point we're going to need things like sanitation and we're going to need things like religion we're going to need luxuries so on and so forth let's go ahead and fight a monster gain some more XP thank you and I am going to pay to rush my culture because there's something else I want to do right now we have a special ability called a peaceful Revolution we can actually instead if we wanted to reform our government forcibly using government XP but I'd rather do the culture so we don't have any chaos or anything like that this is going to get rid of my tribal government and replace it with something new we could either go for an imperial d d y which is basically going to focus a lot on making your capital city as good as possible or we can go for a kingdom which is a way of building up your vassals it also works really well with a diplomatic Focus which is what I'm doing so we're going to go for a kingdom but both are viable with different circumstances now we could make settlers a lot cheaper could also go ahead and make envoys a lot cheaper which is a way of snagging up all the city states so I'm going to pick this up now an Envoy is only going to cost me 9 diplomatic power that's like nothing yeah I'm going to go ahead and Spawn Two envoys we're going to start working our way over here Malo and luur over here I want to grab both of these cities we also want to upgrade our government building to a seat of power which not only gets me even more government XP but also some diplomacy XP which is why the kingdom government form works so well for us we've now also completed four quests which not only gets me more exploration XP and so on but of course that means we finish whatever that bonus is this is great awesome we can keep doing more quests and we will but what else we want to do more Diplo XP government XP we will continue down the Diplo route and next we go to the monster I need to get this hero some more XP never mind we're actually at vary level two which means I can go to trap Tower I assume the higher level the quest the more rewards you can get so that's why we want to grab as many of these as we can before all the other players get the good stuff never mind someone just grabbed this monster quest over here so there's another hero around I haven't seen yet uh-oh well we better grab this fast before they do oh there's a Japanese hero he's making his way what's your veterancy level can I see I have no idea but I'm pretty sure I can beat you fool good Lord there are a lot of Barbarians in these areas good thing I've got some really powerful Heroes ready to slay also storytelling is done perfect okay so with that move on to probably glory to get things to the bath house we're going to need methods of getting sanitation soon plus the oven work and wouldn't mind having extra towns though if you're going to have a lot of uh towns that means you need a lot of culture in order to place them which can get very tedious anyway over here in Byzantium we should now be able to place down a paper maker get some of that Diplo XP we have two Foresters making me logs and this is kind of the only tile I can place it on so we will do that perfect so now I'm making a lot of extra money not science unfortunately we need books for that but there we go and I'm going to be making the extra Diplo XP grab that level two Quest the trapped Tower what do we want ooh what hang on hang hang because we finish storytelling I get something else bring the wax and Feathers The Prisoner requests spawn Icarus oh hello I mean I have to do this how could I not perfect thank you whoa all right we got a flying boy and do I know of any more quests or are they all gone it seems like they are all gone it's interesting that none spawned in this area I wonder if the quests primarily spawn around whoever originated the city of uh the age of Heroes so that they are able to get more of the quests done and that's the reward you get that would be interesting and let's see do I want to do another Eureka for 25 science which is a lot I think we want more XP host more Olympic Games 37 and a half across the board Oo we can get more upgrades do I want to go for more defense on all of my line units or do I want to save up and work towards some of these or do I want to get myself some merchants and build up the prosperity of my vassals it's a really hard decision to be honest all of these are completely valid options what does the Parthenon do for us by the way interesting unrest culture and bonus knowledge for every completed quest of which I've done many well now that's interesting yeah I mean how can I say no I like all of those things those are all great well I'm going to take record keeping as my next power up for the Olympians we do need to get three envoys deployed in other nations that's going to be important for us at some point I also feel like I need to Annex another city let's go ahead and Annex medianum over here now it's shrinking that's not going to work hold on there we go all right let's go ahead and place down a couple of plantations get that cotton up and a running that's going to be worth food like a grasslands tile but also some money so I like that and we can start expanding this as we we see fit ah dang it my Envoy is going to get captured by a barbarian there's nothing I can do to avoid that unfortunately we can try to run but it's not going to matter he's going to see me and he's going to chase after me it's what they do it's just like the reavers from Firefly yep goodbye dang it all the heck seriously just get rid of these dang Barbarian camps they really are very very annoying we going go ahead and start establishing some envoys so Japan for example we now have which means we have a bunch of new options we could send some gifts improve relations open up embassies and so on eventually leading to some treaties and you can imagine getting an extra 2.5 culture would be huge right this would be like a 50% boost in culture knowledge that's a lot too right these things matter so this is where I think that actually having a whole load of envoys could end up being a very good thing for me playing diplomatic and getting friends not a bad plan I'm going to try to settle another city by the way I think placing down over here could be pretty good a fair bit of open space to work with could get a forestry Town up over here and really ramp up a lot of wood production so how much is the Parthenon really worth to me now it just says bonus knowledge per completed Quest we're up to 4.8 science does it say anywhere 4.5 hold on maybe I can figure out exactly how much value I just got per Quest here 1.5 from the Parthenon and that's for finishing what six quests is okay not sure exactly how that calculates still I'm glad to have it this is a effectively a better Library speaking of which let's get the Hall of Heroes cuz that is effectively a library and I need that knowledge seriously even now would be like a 20% boost to my science I'm glad to have Glory done what comes next um I mean oracles and stuff could be kind of fun for a lot of culture if I had gold this could be good I don't have gold right now though spawn Another Hero I don't need that spirituality would be interesting I don't have excess logs though I'm going to be making paper but artists would be a way of rushing out some extra culture and then diplomatic actions like gifts become a lot cheaper too if only I had some extra Limestone I don't know about any of that though could be better to go for things like some Stone maybe some catapults go for some aggression against the Aztec that could be a thing what I really want is smelting because of smelting I'd be able to get some serious production If I Only Had access to some metal but I don't I think it might make sense to just go ahead and grab things like construction get access to better walls get access to some catapults and stuff like that I really really really would have loved to go for smelting though that would have been so much better and it's not that we'll never get it there's a lot of cities that I eventually can Annex that have plenty of iron around them it's just it's going to be a while I'm also going to go ahead and place down one of those poets know I was talking about that we'll go ahead and do that now get that boom so as long as that's being worked we good why do I not have oh right this Farm's on fire ah I don't have enough points ah we're not making as much food anymore but that's fine all right so now we have poetry that's getting me Arts XP which you haven't seen yet but that's now building up not to mention we should have even more knowledge so what does Arts XP do right now it mostly can do things like help reduce unrest and get some extra population in your um little regions that have less than 10 population that could be kind of good we could also promote our cultural exports and make vassalized territories get more prosperity it's good we like art it works well with my current build that said it's kind of a big investment gonna go ahead and finish off with the Olympians here by the way so this is now all done we've got all these benefits next time we do Olympic Games we're going to get a lot of value so culture is extremely good for me right now and if I can just get some more envoys deployed this is an opportunity to get some extra XP plus something called social fabric tolerance that's not going to be until Age 5 though got to start working on that bath house in our c Capital we're almost at uh 11 population once we do that our needs are going to go up might actually want to consider pulling back on some of our food production which seems weird but like I don't necessarily want to grow yet if we do that we're kind of introducing some problems I think I might want to rush the culture we're going to host an Olympic game and uh darn it we did not get a bunch of to freebies I was kind of hoping we'd have an option to maybe get some money or some knowledge but that did not happen all right what I can do is go over here and install satrap pece which now means even without Merchants all of our vassals are slowly gaining Prosperity they don't really do a good job of doing that on their own right right now they're still seeting it here at 100% I'm not getting extra income if I had a merchant it would go up over time but now without even happen to spend all the Diplo XP we are starting to see that happen also Persia is already advancing ing us on in the next age so I haven't made any progress on that I'm still behind and Japan is at 20% as well so is the Aztec so everyone is ahead of me that should say a lot about the current status of my science we're in trouble it probably has a lot to do with the fact that I still only in controlling Two Towns directly I should probably get a lot more of those if I'm honest well I guess now is a good time to go ahead and start spawning some Merchants so let's go ahead and do that in a couple of places over here for example and we will now deploy the merchants which means we should see as of next turn that our prosperity is going up oh and there's a sanitation need in banum I told you that was going to happen and there it is so that's why we are currently trying to build up that bath house and it looks like we get about 10% Prosperity per turn with a merchant good so now we're going to start popping off I hope this might mean that we're going to start seeing all of our vassal cities start producing more and more income including science culture everything that I am going to need the higher that gets the more I can start to catch up I don't really want to be behind with the age of Kings I kind of feel like I have to start working on this even though 17 turns is still way too long let's also go ahead and start sending envoys Uh crap there's still a camp here this might be dangerous we'll find out I got a camp snuck over here under the Mayans I've got one with the Japanese so if I can get one more we'll be in a slightly better spot there we go that should be three envoys which means we can now get our Legacy done looks like Persia has pushed us into the next age Age of Kings begins castles can be specializing in outposts providing culture we can get culture per religious population by founding or joining religions founding or join them is now a culture power New National Spirits unlocked um in my experience religions are difficult to work with in this game I don't know if I'm just crazy in this maybe we can see later but there's only a couple of buildings in the entire game that provide religious needs and once your population builds high enough you inevitably create a crisis for yourself I don't know maybe we I'll get to show you that later in the meantime let's integrate another city cuz I need one of those and we'll also set up an outpost over here with my Pioneer this now gets me access to some fish we can also spend some of our points to get a Trade Post which then sends a copy of iron to our Capital same thing can be true with the iron over here there we go all right all right age of Kings now if I want to form religions I could but what I want to do is take a look at the national Spirits looks like machinery and chivalry have been taken okay what are my other options then what would make sense here chivalry actually might have made sense because if I could have done this and gotten a lot of art XP vassel populations and stuff could make some sense for me this would be actually pretty good it's tempting to go for this even though I wouldn't get the XP bonus alternatively we really could go for a relig this game and if I'm going to do that then theologians wouldn't be a terrible plan we could use this to get access to some special religious buildings and really boost up my faith never done this before yeah if there's any way to make a faith work this might be it let's give theologians a go this now means that art experience is very important to me we need to get that up and running quickly scientifically what makes sense here organized religion right yeah no no no get things like the holy sites and stuff like that that uh get the abies get the large temples that said there's something to be said about things like feudalism this let me start working some really big farms and plantations right so I can get even more food start building tall and then of course there's professional Army you know just start getting better troops go kill my neighbors think I'm going to try going for feudalism so we can start boosting up our population but we really need to be looking at things that get me more science still very important oh I didn't even check what kind of new ages do we have available here age of Discovery get some docks okay crisis age this is the one that I always seem to trigger here um if you don't have enough religion meeting your needs and I mean like even one person your empire being unhappy then you're going to hit the age of intolerance pretty quickly so that's a crisis and then if you can be a lot stronger than anyone else you will be able to get the age of Conquest I am not much stronger than everyone else I'm sorely tempted to get myself some Prospectors and try to find gold in my nearby Hills and I think I will we're going to do that because if I can find some gold which I did here for example get the gold eventually I can start getting things like Jewelers and that's a way of getting a fair bit more art XP oh I say that I mean the gold actually wouldn't be worth as much as I think okay maybe not but whatever it's a good idea in theory right lots of gold religious icons suray do we found a religion now yes we found religion boy what do we want there's a lot of symbols there's no eclipses though that always makes me sad fine The Cult of provis and all of my Gamers live in a stinky little Den that's where they worship me in their mama's basements now here's something weird I only just noticed so the monastery that I picked up here this actually is a tile Improvement but it goes on Hills that are not a part of your Empire it has to be done on an outpost like I've done out over here so these Hills right here that I'm using for an iron mine to send back to banum for the production actually could have been a monastery but I couldn't build a monastery right here which is kind of weird so we may need to consider placing down a bunch of pioneers just to grab more resources and then also be able to place down monasteries so we can control where we are getting the extra Faith fascinating well I do think it's worth placing down some Pioneers regardless if I can start getting enough of these Improvement points together and we're starting to get there I can deliberately send things like let's say Some Coal which is worth a couple production to one of the cities where I am struggling to get enough production right things like that could make my life a bit easier so like let's make an outpost right here that's worth a bunch of iron I'd be able to get myself yeah some of this start setting at places but here's the monastery I was talking about there it is so it's worth art XP plus the whole religious text thing which is worth religion and we should be able to decide which city it goes to okay this this makes a lot of sense Zulu and the Aztecs are now at War this smells like an opportunity for me possibly get in here snag a city or two away from the Mayans reduce the competition own this corner of Pangia and now that feudalism is done you'll notice we have a bunch of little green arrows these mean that we can upgrade some of the these uh improvements we can get a ploud farm and instead of only getting two copies of wheat we would get four copies of wheat which means we can get a lot of good stuff I'd love to upgrade my Mills so I could get even more flower same thing is true with some of these plantations get more copies of cotton if I had access to the Weaver Tech I could place a bunch of those down that'd be a way of getting some money another Innovation pay homage all farming towns give more wealth I got a few of those at least yeah I mean that's that's probably fine I actually think I could probably get rid of this Farm over here instead replace that with another plow Farm over here the problem is all these upgraded tiles require a lot of development points and I'm not as good at producing those as I would like I could go to my city and say hey I have nothing here I want to build go ahead and Levy the workers and that would be a way of getting a lot extra another 10 per turn not a bad way to go and I think I will do that at least temporarily so I can upgrade more of these tiles and get more productivity all right let's see if we can do a war here let's go ahead and attack the Aztec bye buddy we're taking you down do you have a catapult we will see how good this does for us it should do extra damage against this Palisade wish I could have a range unit as well that would have been nice but oh yeah we knocked down those walls real quick which means his militia are taking pretty heavy damage nice think going to oh his settler is the only thing keeping it together well that's just ridiculous tell you what we're going to move with our hero let the hero go nobly kill the settler bye now the city is mine okay so we take this from the Aztec notice we gained some chaos 20 per turn now coming on this will go down as chaos events fire all right so it's not the end of the world but it is going to hurt medeval University is done guilds maybe or machinery and go for much better logging camps of which I do have many this could be worth a ton of production for me let's integrate our next city over here ceria all right now this city needs to get improved honestly I feel like we're just starting to find our footing in a lot of ways my culture production is actually really quite good now and the research is starting to pick up um by the time I see the next people moving for the next age that will give me a clue as to whether we're doing okay or terribly ooh we've got our first chaos okay so vassals across the entire Empire would have Rebels oh boy that'd be difficult to deal with good thing we have some money on hand and we can just pay it off now that's the thing about chaos it's gone down it's going to keep building up but it's not so bad as long as you have a lot of cash on hand you can weather the storm okay let's try assaulting into Tex Coco how strong do we think they are oh they got stone walls oh those going to be fun to deal with okay can we at least knock that down and soften them up to the next attack the answer is yes I have not lost any units okay though he'll be able to keep shooting at me so we need to get in here and take advantage of the Broken Walls and see if we can kill off all these little militia men which it looks like we can then we take out the tower and boom that city is mine too now of course this does mean we're getting a lot more chaos there are ways to get around this a little bit besides just the money trick you can use your culture to Institute propaganda and reduce chaos per turn that could work I am going to try to offer piece to the Aztec and see if they'll back off our strength is about equivalent so they got a large army that I still haven't run into cuz they've been fighting the Zulu but I've taken two of their cities that's going to hurt them so I I kind of am okay with just taking what I've got and running with it oh it also does not help that the Aztecs and Persia just formed an alliance with means Persia is going to be at war with me in a moment and the Aztecs do accept peace okay well at least that resolves that issue and now we go ahead and spawn a merchant in Tex Coco and we go ahead and start rebuilding its Prosperity uhoh but we are and have an intolerance crisis where where's the issue we are meeting our needs in banum where are we not not Medi alanium not Brasilia not ceria where are we not meeting our needs we should be we're getting plus three Medi alanium it says face satisfactions fine here but yet somehow it's actually in crisis I don't know why but it is well tell you what we are already linked to Med alanium with this Outpost let's just go over here and build a monastery and does that solve the issue it says we're doing more than enough okay and that is our third Tech in this age if I built a couple of more ports we actually could try to shoot for the age of Discovery I wish I could see a preview of exactly what came out of this so I would know if it's really worth doing this but it feels heroic so I'm kind of feeling like maybe well can I build two more docks real quick the answer is yeah I definitely can one and then and let's say two boom perfect I don't like that people are working in these docks though these docks are not very good so now I should be able to choose the age of Discovery it'll take 22 turns it is a little bit faster than the age of Renaissance so I don't know maybe that's the big reward it's just a faster age Advance oh and of course now Persia is already working on well dang it all right so they're a little faster than me I'm going to have to use a Eureka or two in order to boost this and even then maybe I get it maybe I don't well we can Rush some remaining privy councils which will get me two more knowledge and the reason this gets me two is because I never got the level one Council building at the age of stone so this is going to get me double the Boost just took longer to build so that helps so now I'm making a lot more science per turn more chaos yeah this is the price of Wars you literally will have like three of those events for taking two cities it is going to happen all right let's Eureka ourselves back ahead a schedule not by much though Persia will catch up but in six turns I can do that again actually looks like I'm starting to pull away from Persia a little bit okay so I'm officially making more science than he is and next turn I can buy myself another Eureka we got this hey that's another special age it's coming at a price though I have not been getting any of the stuff that I really need in order to advance theologians any further find a way of find a way of starting to get some more art we're we're going to have a problem which means I do need to dip back in some old technology but for now let's just push forward with what I've got and here comes comes a brand new age oh I'm awesome at everything I do okay launch Expeditions into cities of Golds with conquistadors and then if you find them you can work them for rare Goods discover new reward camps on land and water new social fabric system is unlocked and the new governments are unlocked okay so Scouts get upgraded into conquistadors so do I already know of any l cities hang on there's the caves of chill huh that's the only one that I seem to know about though okay well knowing that's the case let's spawn a conquistador over here and send him to go do his thing and I can do this quickly because I have exploration XP Also let's Rush our culture and let's go for a peaceful Revolution to the next government immediately forget this whole Kingdom nonsense we don't need none of that do we want to be an Empire a feudal monarchy or a republic honestly probably the feudal monarchy it just makes sense since we have a whole load of loyal vassals so we get oursel a throne room which is Grand more vassel Prosperity which honestly doesn't matter that much to me they're already pretty prosperous but double the Improvement points means they develop cities on their own plus they get extra wealth and so on yeah this is pretty solid it means I just want to keep getting more and more cities I feel like this is the right call and yeah we could spend our points and just say screw it go for more let's say more Improvement points and then more government XP from vassals or increased population more government XP yes that's great all right I just spent all my stuff but we're now getting 10.84 per turn okay and this introduces a whole new other mechanic into the game called social fabric Yep this is a thing where you are able to start building up some of the uh culture of your people they can be organized insightful to aous and so on and all of them provide some sort of a bonus my opinion the best one to go for is probably going to be exploration at least to start we do like a small research cost reduction though expansion costs uh yeah I mean maybe cheaper improvements wow that's a lot of unrest reduction actually huh yeah I don't think I need this but if I did this would be very very helpful so what do we get in the age of Discovery uh these are all very different okay printing presses make a lot of pap paper and books so you can get knowledge out the wo seems like a very smart decision we have a lot of Lumber in my Empire open sailing if we cared about that technical engineering utaka ooh giant crossbows and stuff sick mechanical Knights what do you mean I've got mechanical Knights ornithopters see I actually don't remember this looking like this huh I wonder if one of my test games I got into the age of Renaissance and that opened up a bunch of new branching paths but now that I'm already on the age of Discovery I have to get back on track fascinating well if I want to have a lot of Arts it does sort of seem like this is the stuff to do with Baroque differences would be fun so I can get more Innovation when completing a city of gold Expedition though but how important is that really just a little bit of innovation oh boy all of this is great I think we're going to start with the printing press get the research up and running then go Baroque and then I'm not sure uh we could go Noble courts we could go Auto mechanica we could go technical engineering ooh that's probably the one to go for this gives me a lot of options to improve my tiles but honestly I do think that's a good place for us to end this video it's already been fairly long I've been recording for about 4 hours and uh we have a very very very long way to go but my Empire is looking pretty massive right about now and we're in a pretty good position to go ahead and start beating the snot out of everyone around us as long as I can stay ahead with my technology but if we were able to beat the other AIS there I feel like we are in the running oh look there's another Expedition hang on hang on hang on hang on spun thank you boom all right um I feel like we're in the running I feel like we are absolutely in the running for going for a scientific Victory here or at least staying on top of things and making sure I use that to bully all of my neighbors ultimately though what I hope I've convinced you of is that while this game does show a lot of immediate similarities to games like Civ humankind old world and so on it does have a fair bit of special innovation in this game that really does make it worthwhile I don't think that the graphics necessarily do it any justice but I do think mechanically this is a solid strategy game I like a lot of the changes that are being made we've already been able to dip into two totally different ages and see how that changes the world it's pretty cool things that I actually wouldn't mind seeing emulated on other kinds of games once again though of course a very big thank you to Paradox interactive for sponsoring today's video If you guys like what you see and you want to learn more the game is coming out on March 26th you can find a link in the description down below what I would encourage you to click on that link otherwise please consider hitting that like button leave a comment subscribe hit the notify Bell and I will see you guys next [Music] time [Music]

Channel: Pravus

Views: 90,936

Keywords: Pravus, Thrive, early, access, beta, strategy, city, builder

Id: ZDoBe5M0pIM

Length: 58min 29sec (3509 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 14 2024