Paradox's toe-to-toe bout with Sid Meier scheduled for March as Millennia gets a release date

A skull wearing a crown accumulates sand in a desert, ruined cities in the background.

(Image credit: Paradox)

Millennia, that Paradox-published Civilization-like from C-Prompt Games, has gotten its release date. It's coming March 26, giving you a shot at navigating 10,000 years of history in an orderly, hex-based manner across all sorts of ages and crises.

That also means you can pre-purchase it, if you're so inclined. Millennia's standard edition is going for $40 (£35) on Steam right now, while its whizzbang premium version is $60 (£50). Both pre-orders come with the soundtrack and, well, the base game, but if you're already all-in then the premium edition also grants you access to a couple of cosmetics and the game's first two DLCs—Ancient Worlds and Atomic Ambitions—when they hit in Q3 and Q4 this year.

You can probably guess what Atomic Ambitions has in store. It'll add a bunch of nuclear-themed goodies and hazards to play with and promises "ways to turn the planet into a fallout-filled wasteland." Ancient Worlds sounds a bit more interesting to my ear, though. That one will add a new nomadic game start option and give you a chance to play a civilisation before it's, ah, civilised, letting you relive humanity's glory days before we mucked it all up with this "permanent settlements" and "agriculture" business.

I'm interested in this one. Plenty of challengers have tried to take on Civ over the years, and pretty much all of them have fallen in the attempt. But this one has Paradox backing, and that kind of strategy pedigree is nothing to sniff at.

When I saw Millennia at last year's Gamescom, I was a little concerned by just how much of it felt similar to every game of Civ I've played, but let's be fair: there's only so much systemic depth you can get into in a short demo on a trade show floor. With any luck, Millennia's economic systems, myriad ages, and national spirits wil properly mix the traditional Civ formula up over the course of a full game. Either that, or it'll end up another set of trunkless legs of stone stood in the big, wide desert of Civilization's challengers. Look on its works, ye mighty, and despair.

One of Josh's first memories is of playing Quake 2 on the family computer when he was much too young to be doing that, and he's been irreparably game-brained ever since. His writing has been featured in Vice, Fanbyte, and the Financial Times. He'll play pretty much anything, and has written far too much on everything from visual novels to Assassin's Creed. His most profound loves are for CRPGs, immersive sims, and any game whose ambition outstrips its budget. He thinks you're all far too mean about Deus Ex: Invisible War.