Ages, Broadly
The timeline in Millennia is separated into 10 distinct Ages. Each Age houses a handful of Techs that unlock Units, Buildings, Improvements, and more. Unlocking each Age will both progress you through history and potentially expose you to these “what-if” alternate history timelines. The historical Ages have Technologies you’ll recognize, and the alternative history Ages have new Techs unique to that Age. The “What if steam power was viable?” Age has floating airships, steampunk machines, and more, just to give you a taste!


Types of Ages
If you want to diverge your timeline into an Age that you like, you’ll have to compete with all of the other Nations trying to do the same thing. Some Ages are easier to reach, some are harder, and some you’ll accidentally slip into. Historical Ages don’t have any additional requirements beyond the minimum Tech requirement, and they tend to have more subtle Age rules. These follow a traditional historical route that will be familiar. There is plenty to do if you stay on the “known path,” there are fine strategies that involve trying to progress through the standard Ages timeline, but you’ll miss some of the fun of the alternate Ages. Variant Ages are the primary place where “what-if” scenarios are explored. These have special requirements to unlock them, but you might meet those by accident because of your playstyle (or you might decide to go out of your way to steer into a Variant). Variant Ages tend to be somewhat equivalent to historical Ages, except their “what if” scenario bends the game, making it play differently. If your Nation is booming in the Age of Iron, it might be wise to push for the Age of Monuments next, instead of Kings, as Monuments offers unique Improvements that can help your Regions grow. Crisis Ages are Similar to Variants, they have unique Units, Buildings, and other content to help you progress, but they also generally come with some horrible disaster that will challenge every Nation in the game. That isn’t always “bad”, if you’re well-suited to overcome the challenge, you might want to go into the Crisis just to make other Nations suffer (or you might want to go into the Crisis Age for a Unit or Tech you couldn’t get otherwise). Another difference in Crisis Ages is that you are locked out of other Age options when you meet their requirements. You don’t necessarily have to enter the Crisis Age at that point, if you don’t want to, you could instead continue to research Technologies and bide your time, hoping that another Nation researches a different Age and sets the timeline to something else.
Historical Ages
As mentioned before, after you progress through an alternate Age you’ll return to the next historical Age, which means that at least half of the Ages you play in will be historical Ages. To best walk through what the historical ages are like, here’s a general description of how my games tend to go when sticking to just the historical ages. (Note: most games will play differently due to the alt-history ages, different National Spirits, and another zillion granular choices you can make.)Stone c. 10,000 B.C.E.
Despite being the first turn of the game, with only one Region and a few Units to control, there’s lots of decisions you need to make to get the ball rolling. I normally focus on building farms and keeping my Needs met at 200% as much as possible. I use my starting Warband Units to clear the fog of war around my starting area, supplemented by one or two Scouts I’ll build. I try to collect Reward Camps and stomp out any Barbarian Camps I see to hopefully get something helpful to rocket myself into a good position.Bronze C. 5,000 B.C.E.
In the Age of Bronze, I’ll pick my first National Spirit based on what I think is going to be the most beneficial for me. Most of these National Spirits care about what terrain is nearby, but my go-to (with all factors being equal) is the Mound Builders NS because it helps me grow my population faster. I’m still focusing on keeping my Needs at 200% as much as possible, so I like to chain together my wheat farms with flour mills. Flour is so efficient that I can normally free up a spare worker that otherwise would’ve been on a farm to go work at a clay pit or forester Improvement and get some production flowing.Iron C. 2,000 B.C.E.
I like reaching the Iron Age ASAP because I can reform my Tribal Government into a new Government. Which Government I pick depends on how my game is going, whether I have a lot of Vassals, or if I’m better off keeping my borders close-knit and just focus on keeping my Regions growing. By the Age of Iron, I also normally have a plan for how I’m going to get ahead of my neighboring Nations. If I’m lucky with the terrain near where I spawned, I can focus on investing in myself, getting my iron mines up and running, and continuing to chain together basic foods into more efficient refined goods. If I’m unlucky, I’ll have no choice but to invest in my military and train some Cavalry to harass my neighbors or try and steal an unprotected Vassal from them.Kings C. 0 C.E.
In the Age of Kings, I like to upgrade my Outposts into Castles early to get the Age Rule reward for building Castles, and because it protects my Outposts from attacks. (I may or may not get into a lot of wars early on.) I can also found a Religion in this Age, but tend to wait on it instead of rushing in, because meeting the Faith Need is a bit trickier than other Needs, and not meeting the Need will result in an upcoming Crisis Age. The Age of Kings also has the Feudalism Tech which I tend to take first, because it makes my farms extremely efficient, and chaining together the mills and ovens to bake bread means I have loads of free workers to work other Improvements outside of just meeting my Needs.Renaissance C. 1400 C.E.
Continuing down the path of known history, I arrive at the Age of Renaissance. You get a free Explorer Unit when you research this Age, which I use to go on Expeditions at Landmarks near my Regions. I’ll also upgrade any Scouts into more Explorers to help with the Expeditions. I tend to get the Navigation Tech quickly here, as it allows me to load up my land Units into Deep Water Transports, and send them across the deep blue sea. I want to know what’s going on at the other continents or islands, and I’ll either join a winning battle to steal a piece of land for myself from the losing side, or I’ll instigate conflict on my own now that my territory is safe on the other side of an ocean. Renaissance also reveals the Social Fabric system, which I’ll typically start with a few free points from the National Spirits I’ve taken, and I’ll focus on producing a lot of Domain Points to increase my Social Fabric Score to get the sweet bonuses.Enlightenment C. 1650 C.E.
In the Age of Enlightenment, the game gives you the tools to really explode your Knowledge production and put it into high gear, but I tend to play it safe because there’s also a Crisis Age coming related to over-doing it and failing to meet the associated Education Need. I use this age as a cooling period to make sure all of my Regions have upgraded Improvements, their Needs are still being met, and I’ll spend my resources where I can to get all of my Regions to be powerful economic machines.Revolutions C. 1800 C.E.
Knowing what I know about the game, I seek out locations early on in anticipation for the Age of Revolutions. Specifically, I look to claim as much Coal on the map as I can, even though it doesn’t have much use until now. Coal is a really cheap way to generate Power, to meet my upcoming Power Need. Power Needs for a Region comes from building “factory” style Improvements and other advanced Buildings, which I intend to do as soon as possible once I’ve unlocked them. The benefit for doing so is that I can assign multiple workers to each factory Improvement, and my smaller Regions can catch up to my Regions that control much more territory. Revolutions is a really important inflection point in the game, but is also one of the only historical Ages that comes with its own conflict built-in. When revolutionary Rebel units start spawning, I need to be prepared with my military to fend them off, which is why it’s good that I use the Age of Enlightenment to cool down my wars and bring my troops home.ATOM C. 1920 C.E.
If I’m the first player to this Age, I’ll update my Government to whichever Government benefits me the most, but if I’m late to the party I’ll pick whichever Government allows me to join the most powerful Faction, so that I can ride their coattails and claw my way back into the lead. I also leverage the Space Race whenever I can, as the first player to complete it gets a nice reward for themselves and for their Faction, which can be the tipping point to get a high tier Faction Reward.Information C. 1980~2030 C.E.
Once I hit the Age of Information, I have to start focusing on how I’m going to win. If I feel like I’m in a safe position relative to the other Nations, I enjoy heading into the riskiest Victory Age: the Age of Singularity. I take the Information Tech that unlocks the supercomputer Improvement, and build an unreasonable amount of them to summon the Rogue AI Crisis to end the game in a big firework final showdown.