But the games are too much work even for Germans, as Steam shows

In 2024 there were attempts by major publishers to overtake the Civilization series with a historical strategy game simulation. In March 2024, the strategy experts Paradox tried Millenia, and in September 2024 Microsoft tried its luck with Ara: History Untold. At the end of 2024 you have to say soberly: That was nothing like the player numbers on Steam.

These are the situations in the historical 4x strategy games: Sid Meier’s Civilization has dominated the scene since the 1990s. Part 6 was released in 2016 and received 12 DLCs or expansions. Part 7 is planned for 2025.

Over the years there have been hardly any alternatives to the “Just one more round” classic. The closest thing to a new Civilization was the graphically pretty Humankind, which appeared in 2021 with new ideas, some of which Civ 7 will adopt.

In 2024 that should change and Civilization’s monopoly position should finally fall: 2 challengers from well-known publishers came to the start to use the time until Civilization 7 is released to conquer the market of historical 4x strategy games.

Millenia – Good approaches, but teething problems prevent breakthrough

This is how it went for Millenia: The 4x strategy game was released in March 2024 and was published by Paradox Interactive, who are real specialists in strategy games.

Millennia focused on city development and divided the game into individual eras. Depending on which conditions the technologically leading player meets, “golden times” or “dark times” can dawn for all players.

However, Millenia started with a few teething problems that prevented the game from achieving great success: You couldn’t tear down cities. Since the AI ​​built very tightly, but cities need a lot of space to develop, this reduced the fun of the game.

The biggest errors have now been ironed out and the second expansion was released a few days ago, but the number of players on Steam is still sobering:

The game never took off on Steam and the expansion now only brought back a few players.

The longer a game of Millenia runs, the less fun it becomes

What’s the problem with Millennia? Millennia suffers from the typical “bloat” of 4x strategy games. As long as you have a few cities and can take care of each one, the game is fun, but later it turns into work to optimally expand many cities. Especially since the power structures in a match are established early on and only shift gradually.

The longer a game of Millenia runs, the less fun it becomes.

In addition, there is a tough research race in Millenia, because only the player who is technically in the lead can determine which new era it leads to. The new DLC brings about two new eras, but you can only reach them after countless hours of play and only if the game runs according to plan.

As a Millennia player, you got significantly more from the first DLC, which reworked the way you start a game.

Microsoft leads us into micromanagement hell with great graphics

This is how Ara feels: History Untold: In September, Ara launched History Untold, published by Microsoft. The game scored with great graphics, but failed to wow players.

The problems with the game principle were obvious: the strategy game introduced complicated production chains, but gave the players no opportunity to keep track of them.

Players quickly cursed that they were stuck in a “micromanagement nightmare.”

The mood on Steam was sobering: the game had a lot of potential and looked fantastic, but was driving players crazy because it expected them to remember so much.

In the months since its release, the number of players on Steam has fallen from an initial 4,260 to just 500. Now the patch is supposed to appear that will turn the game around again, but the momentum seems to be lost.

Ara: Histroy Untold was also just too much work for players to really enjoy.

We Germans like to be teased that we love working in games and then distract ourselves from our everyday work by working in games in games like Factorio. Pirate Software said that the time when Germans play a video game is also the time when the economic simulation Factoria is most often mentioned in the game chat. In his opinion, the favorite player of all Germans because they work so hard:

So even we Germans, who are so keen on working in games, will have to keep hoping for Civilizaion 7. Maybe you can save a little: Civilization 7 has its first problems even before its release – if you want to play all the races, you have to pay €100 on Steam