Summary
Paradox’sunique 4X strategy gameMillenniadoesn’t use nation cultures like most other games in the genre. Nations are barely more than a name and a flag at the start of the game, and simply moving from one era to the next gives them no new unique abilities or units. To customize each player’s factions,Millenniauses national spirits instead.
National spirits are unlocked at different points in the game. Each group of national spirits is stronger than the ones before it, and choosing a new one in a new era replaces the one before. Players will choose a national spirit for the first time at the start of the second age, theAge of Bronze. This is an important choice since it can only be changed with a new spirit during the fourth age of the game, many turns later.
8Olympians
Diplomacy-Based Powers
The Olympian national spirit promises a lot, opening with the ability tohost the Olympic games, but the reality is a bit less exciting than how it looks. The Olympians are a bit too focused on diplomacy, only dabbling in producing envoys and hosting the games. At the same time, most other national spirits of this age allow players to focus on multiple aspects of the game by lowering the cost of being good at one important thing.
The problem of the Olympians is that diplomacy, at least in its current state, is quite lackluster inMillenniaand can be safely ignored. That is especially true in the early game, where any diplomatic effort boils down to sending an envoy. That is pretty much everything the Olympians do, even if they do it quite well. Their powers include boosting the speed of diplomatic envoys and reducing their production costs.
7Warriors
Defensive Warfare Faction
The Warriors are the more traditional warring national spirit of the two available at this point. Like the Raiders, they have a dedicated fighting unit, the Spartan. They can spawn this unit with warfare power, and their upkeep cost can be turned off with one of their ideals. Curiously, the Warriors are better at defending a nation than conquering others through war, although they are pretty good at that, too.
Perhaps the Warriors are meant to be used in a moment of crisis to ward off a stronger nation. For that purpose, they are certainly adequate; maybe even great. But what brings them down is what is lost by not choosing other national spirits. Whether it’s a boost in population, food harvesting, or even actively pillaging from others, every other nation will be improving while this one stays put.
6God-King Dynasty
Builders Of Mountainous Regions
The God-King Dynasty is one of builders. While it’s quite hard to collect the necessary amount of engineering points needed for this national spirit to start really working, the benefits it gives are quite staggering. The God-King Dynasty can cut the cost of building stonecutters and quarries by half. And as if that wasn’t enough, they can build quarries on every tile, not just hills.
Quarries produce limestone, which stonecutters transform into a lot of production, a bit of engineering, and thanks to Obelisks innovation of the God-King Dynasty, into influence. This is also one of the most thematic national spirits, clearlybased on ancient Egyptian dynasties, with its ability to build pyramids and conduct elaborate funeral rites.
5Wild Hunters
Roaming Hunters Produce A Lot Of Food
The Wild Hunters promise to be a compromise between a warring national spirit and one focused on exploration and food. In reality, their main improvements come in the form of increased food production, boosting the results of hunting and letting roaming bow hunters produce even more meat.
Curing meat can produce ungodly amounts of food, as does adding food production properties to dwellings. They can even use bone and ivory, which usually only produce wealth, to harvest improvement points as well. They don’t have much in the way of fighting ability unless they improve their hunters with the Hunting Ground ideal, which makes this unit comparable to advanced fighters of the early game, if not stronger.
4Ancient Seafarers
Explorers Of The Sea
The Ancient Seafarers are quite a fun national spirit to play as, even if they are very situational. A faction that chooses the Ancient Seafarers will almost certainlycontrol the sea around themin the early game, but how important that control will depend heavily on the game.
Ancient Seafarers are best used not just when a player finds themselves with access to the sea, but when their sea has a lot of fish in it, too. Expanding through water is still a slow process, Seafarers or not, although this national spirit does make it faster. But with the right resources, fish, and shells, this group can place their entire food and wealth economy into water tiles, leaving dry land for other uses.
3Raiders
Pillaging Others For A Living
The Raiders are probably the strongest military-focused civilization of the second era. Each of their ideals, except the last one, spawns two raider band units on the player’s homeland tile. Those units can also be created with the Spawn Raider warfare power. Raiders are all about making combat feed into more units and more warfare.
What’s interesting is that following the Raiders' skill tree naturally leads players to the Marauders ideal, which grants additional warfare points for every unit in every fight; warfare points that can immediately be put back into the Raiders' skill tree. Other noticeable Raider ideals lower the upkeep cost of raider bands to zero and heal them upon every victory.
2Mound Builders
The strength of the Mound Builders is in their ability to basically remove the need for food and, eventually, sanitation. This allows them to sustain much larger populations than any other civilization, at least at this point in the game. Their main power is the burial mound, an improvement that generates culture and can eventually generate sanitation, too.
The most staggering power given by the Mound Builders is Food Rationing, which reduces the need for food per population by a whole 50%, allowing a player to pretty much double their nation’s population. Of course, that’s assuming theplayer has a bit of experiencealready and has been growing their regions consciously.
1Naturalists
Forgoing Improvements In Dense Forest
Naturalists are a good choice of national spirit for factions with alot of forestry surrounding their regions. Still, they become one of the best factions in the early game for players who are lagging behind haven’t built a lot of improvements, and don’t have a lot of improvement points to spend anyway.
While most national spirits (and most nations) are built on improvements, the buildings placed directly on the tiles of the map, the Naturalists thrive in mostly empty regions. They can also heavily boost the power of dwellings,Millennia’searly housing improvements. Counterintuitively, the Naturalists are one of the best choices for players planning to do a lot of forestry since they rapidly expand into forest and deep forest tiles.
