Humankind Game by Amplitude

Eagle Pursuit said:
I've been lurking there for a few days. It was pretty active, but now it is dying down a bit with no new info.
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Always gonna be the way with a new purpose-built community. It’s much better here where we’re already established :p. Guess it makes sense for us to decamp to the Other Civ-related Games forum, mind.
 
Does anyone suppose that they will add new civs? One problem I’ve noticed is that it might get repetitive seeing the same 10 civs per era. I know that some people don’t like seeing modern civs in the bronze age but there’s a certain goofy charm to how Civ6 handles civs.
 
So basically the region split map is carried over from Endless Legend. It's just weird to put that in a civ-like game. In Endless Legend, it was justified by the fact that Auriga actually already has civilizations in them that got wiped out when long winter arrives, thus the regional split and regional names.

What would be the justification for the existence of the regions this time?
 
Zenstrive said:
So basically the region split map is carried over from Endless Legend. It's just weird to put that in a civ-like game. In Endless Legend, it was justified by the fact that Auriga actually already has civilizations in them that got wiped out when long winter arrives, thus the regional split and regional names.

What would be the justification for the existence of the regions this time?
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Maybe just for fun gameplay reasons?
 
Kung-Fu knight said:
Does anyone suppose that they will add new civs? One problem I’ve noticed is that it might get repetitive seeing the same 10 civs per era. I know that some people don’t like seeing modern civs in the bronze age but there’s a certain goofy charm to how Civ6 handles civs.
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The civs themselves will repeat, but the 1 million combinations promise to have fewer repeats, as long as it is fairly well balanced.
 
For the traits of civilizations, if it's still using Endless Legend and Endless Space engine, will probably be like ongoing faction customizations.
In EL And ES/ES2, you pick a faction or make a custom faction which is based on one existing faction but removing and adding traits, adding and reducing a quota of points until it's zero.
It's like You make a custom trait, based on England, but removing their unique dockyard and adding Mali's capability if the points allowed.
So for Humankind, you will probably pick egypt template of traits that has agricultural and polytheism, and then you then pick England template that has sailings and economic traits, and so on and so on.
 
Zenstrive said:
So basically the region split map is carried over from Endless Legend. It's just weird to put that in a civ-like game. In Endless Legend, it was justified by the fact that Auriga actually already has civilizations in them that got wiped out when long winter arrives, thus the regional split and regional names.

What would be the justification for the existence of the regions this time?
Click to expand...
It does seem like a strange choice, as it would mean the map is full of pre-made borders from the start of the game. Who made those borders? If you settle on the edge of a region, what force is compelling you not to expand your city across those lines? If they just wanted to control the density of settlements, that could have been accomplished using either Civilization's approach or Fallen Enchantress' approach. With the Civilization approach, just increase the minimum distance between cities. For Civilization VI it is 3, but there is no reason why it couldn't be a much higher number. With the Fallen Enchantress approach, you could have stricter requirements on what locations could support a permanent settlement. These requirements could change as technology advanced, which would provide a mechanism to increase density as the game progressed.

If they need regions for some other purpose, I would rather they flipped it around: instead of city placement being determined by region borders, let region borders be determined by city placement.
 
Kung-Fu knight said:
Does anyone suppose that they will add new civs? One problem I’ve noticed is that it might get repetitive seeing the same 10 civs per era. I know that some people don’t like seeing modern civs in the bronze age but there’s a certain goofy charm to how Civ6 handles civs.
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In a way yes. But what will not happen is that as in civ you pick the Americans and then have conquered the world by the Medieval Era without ever using their unique units. Each game will be more similar to the ones you played before, allowing you to learn and adapt. It‘s true, the number of combinations don‘t really matter. What difference does it make if you go Egyptians -> Romans than Egyptians -> Greeks or Babylonians -> Romans? Or Egyptians -> Egyptians for that matter. It‘s the experience of playing with the civ that matters, not the combinations. Of those, the good ones and the non-sensical ones will soon be clear anyways.

60 civs are more than civ has, but you will play more of them in one game. So, in 10 games you may have played them all. That means, variety needs to come from somewhere else, and I read that Amplitude is really good at the roleplaying elements. I love that! The other area where this can work is multiplayer. Experience allows for a more dynamic game and again, it lets you play as America the modern empire. I can see myself trying a multiplayer game here, it depends on the length of the game through.

By the way, In those multiplayer games, will more than one players be able to chose the same civ? And do we call the factions still civs? What do they call them?
 
Civilization bingo for 19 of 60 cultures:
https://www.games2gether.com/amplit...me-gorgeous-looking-faction-cards-from-stream

Starter for 10:
(1) Assyrian, (2) Babylonian, 3) Egyptian,
(4) Harrapan, (5) Hittite, 6) Mycenaeans?,
(7) Nubian?, (8) Mayan?, 9) Phoenician/Carthaginian?,
(10) Tang Dynasty?, (9) Greek, (10) Goths/Gauls?,
(13) Persian, (14) Roman [Colosseum], (15) Franks? [Medieval],
(16) Khmer [Angkor Wat], (17) Viking, (18) Ming Dynasty? [Great Wall],
(19) German (U Boat)

If these are from the stream then I guess the answers are in there too.

Equivalent Humankind forum thread here.
 
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Number 15 (medieval) is probably something like Franks. Devs mentioned them a lot in the interview.
 
I can see the Franks, Anglosaxons and Teutons in the Medieval era, taking up space from others. It gives continuity and they after all need some options left for possible expansions.

I'm thinking they may leave out nomadic (horse) tribes, you can do a lot of different things with Mongols, Sioux and Berbers. And then have Maori, Zulu and so on besides lesser known names.
 
KayAU said:
If they need regions for some other purpose, I would rather they flipped it around: instead of city placement being determined by region borders, let region borders be determined by city placement.
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Sounds like it's not exactly the same system. From one of the Devs on the humankind forum:
"You will be able to have cities span across regions in Humankind. Where Endless Legend had hard region borders, Humankind's will be "soft". For an analogy, this is the difference between the city limits in the last SimCity and those in Cities Skylines. I'm pretty happy about the way this is turning out and hopefully we can show you more soon!"

So sounds quite similar to Civ VI Continents in a way.

On Units
"I won't get into much detail, but a stabby dude with a murder sword is still dangerous when you have a rifle... How dangerous exactly? You'll find out in the coming months. :D"

On theme:
"This is very much an historically-minded game made out of historically authentic building blocks, like a jenga tower where the pieces are cultures from different eras in history.

The tone is very much serious, and the game doesn't joke around, but just because we're building a serious big game doesn't mean we can't have fun with our community and the way we communicate, Amplitude style."


The Humankind forum helpfully highlights posts from the Devs at the top:
https://www.games2gether.com/amplitude-studios/humankind/forums/169-game-design
 
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The game sounds interesting. What I still don't like, and what both civ and humankind don't get right, is that there's no cultural core to a culture/civilisation that just plays out in history but that culture develops in relation to its natural surroundings and in contact and contra distinction to other human groups in its neighbourhoods. If there's a annual river flooding a culture will emerge that relates to that. They will learn from their neighbors and integrate or repel them based on available resources and interactions. I really would love to see a strategy game based on that.
 
Trav'ling Canuck said:
Here's another article by someone else who sat in on the same demo, I believe. It's a relatively well written piece:

https://ca.ign.com/articles/2019/08...iculturalism-its-killer-feature-gamescom-2019
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I’m really not that excited. Mashing together different cultures doesn’t feel very organic - it’s not like you capture or are captured by or live next to Rome and therefore are influenced by their culture - and maybe then later end up all that’s left of that culture. No, you just tick over another Era and select a random Culture to be your upgrade.

I think the way different Civilizations develop distinct cultural institutions, and those institutions sometimes spread (or don’t), is super interesting. Like, I love how the ideas of the Magna Carta have spread through various institutions; and how different that concept is to say the more european (or even French) concept of a republic. Two different ideas about what you do with the centralisation of power and elites: do you try to rule the king or kill the king?

HK’s culture system doesn’t seem to be really capturing this based on what we’ve seen so far - although, in fairness, Civ doesn’t really tackle this either (surprise! Everyone discovers Feudalism!).

So far, the different cultures also sound like you just get different units or some extra yields. That’s not all that exciting either, and it’s not really all the different to Civ.

I’m not trying to rag on this game. Honest. I just don’t think it’s doing anything particularly different to Civ. Sure, Civ VI is also not doing anything different to Civ, but given three years of development and more stuff in the works, plus all the experience from previous games, I suspect Civ will still be the better version of Civ than any clone.

Frankly, I more excited about Dwarf Fortress (remastered) and finally getting around to playing EUIV. Those seem much more innovative as far as 4X games go.

Prester John 2 said:
The game sounds interesting. What I still don't like, and what both civ and humankind don't get right, is that there's no cultural core to a culture/civilisation that just plays out in history but that culture develops in relation to its natural surroundings and in contact and contra distinction to other human groups in its neighbourhoods. If there's a annual river flooding a culture will emerge that relates to that. They will learn from their neighbors and integrate or repel them based on available resources and interactions. I really would love to see a strategy game based on that.
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Bother. You just said the same thing I was trying to say. But, you know, with more better English.
 
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