Civ7 made me like Humankind

[GuiSKJ]

I bought Humankind on a 90% sale quite a while back and never even installed it.

But all the civ switching thing of Civ7 finally got me to try it out and I am having a blast. There are some things that Humankind does similarly to what Civ7 will do and people have been very hard on Humankind for:

1. Ahistorical transitions of culture => I only have the base game and I still find that I can have plausible transitions. One time I had an Age where no Culture really made sense to me, so I just Elevated my current culture, meaning I got some bonuses and kept the culture I was playing for another age instead of being forced to change. Quite nice.

2. Race against picking the next culture you want => This is very much the case, EXCEPT you can turn on a rule that allows multiple players having the same culture. Because what defines your Civ is its layering of cultures, I actually wasn't bothered at all about the idea of having multiple players with the same culture. In reality all that meant is that I, as the player, had the freedom to pick anything while the AI itself never did repeat a culture. Problem solved.

3. Armies having multiple units and deploying to combat => not necessarily a contentious part of Humankind, but I get the feeling that (minus the commander part which is unique to Civ7), the way that this plays in Humankind will likely feel pretty close to how Civ7 will. Battles feel a lot more engaging than in Civ6, specially sieges. HOWEVER, it noticeably slows down the pace of the game during wartime. It seems like Civ7 will be more streamlined, with deployment being automatic, but it is something to worry a bit about.


Overall, I think Humankind's reputation may have been warranted in its first year, but the game is actually pretty solid now. And absolutely gorgeous to look at.

 

[bladex1200]

The big issue to me is Humankind's balance. Many of its ideas are great ones and thats why Firaxis took notice and integrated them into Civ 7, but the execution was a total flop and resulted in the game's mixed-to-negative reception.

With the standard being cultures being exclusive (you have to turn ON the ability for the same culture to be picked by multiple players), players quickly figured out that some cultures were generally objectively stronger for warfare, expansion, etc. than others. This meant that racing for cultures was an important beat out of the gate, which informed a lot of perception of the game having pacing and balance issues mid-game. As another side effect, because of the default rules of culture exclusivity, a lot of cultures never got play in the vanilla game unless you were playing on lower difficulties or intentionally wanted to handicap yourself.

Balance also affected infrastructure and quarter/district placement. In the pre-release build, infrastructure often added adjacency bonuses to placing diverse quarters next to each other (e.g. a makers quarter next to a farmers quarter might be positively modified by a watermill, I don't remember the exact bonuses). But on release, infrastructures only added adjacency bonuses for placing the same quarters next to each other. That combined with most quarters requiring adjacency to be placed, and thus placing more quarters often squashing the yields of existing quarters (or requiring you to snake your cities in thin lines so quarters wouldn't have their adjacency exploitation squashed), made city-building very same-y and unsatisfying by mid-game.

 

[TheMarshmallowBear]

The big issue to me is Humankind's balance. Many of its ideas are great ones and thats why Firaxis took notice and integrated them into Civ 7, but the execution was a total flop and resulted in the game's mixed-to-negative reception.

With the standard being cultures being exclusive (you have to turn ON the ability for the same culture to be picked by multiple players), players quickly figured out that some cultures were generally objectively stronger for warfare, expansion, etc. than others. This meant that racing for cultures was an important beat out of the gate, which informed a lot of perception of the game having pacing and balance issues mid-game. As another side effect, because of the default rules of culture exclusivity, a lot of cultures never got play in the vanilla game unless you were playing on lower difficulties or intentionally wanted to handicap yourself.

Balance also affected infrastructure and quarter/district placement. In the pre-release build, infrastructure often added adjacency bonuses to placing diverse quarters next to each other (e.g. a makers quarter next to a farmers quarter might be positively modified by a watermill, I don't remember the exact bonuses). But on release, infrastructures only added adjacency bonuses for placing the same quarters next to each other. That combined with most quarters requiring adjacency to be placed, and thus placing more quarters often squashing the yields of existing quarters (or requiring you to snake your cities in thin lines so quarters wouldn't have their adjacency exploitation squashed), made city-building very same-y and unsatisfying by mid-game.

I always found Humankind unsatisfying to play. Most of the time the game ends up a snowball machine of one player having ridicolous yields, and the way you advance is repetitive of earning "X of Y".

 

[bladex1200]

I always found Humankind unsatisfying to play. Most of the time the game ends up a snowball machine of one player having ridicolous yields, and the way you advance is repetitive of earning "X of Y".

I think the advancement using era stars was only boring because the mechanics that allowed you to expand and earn the era stars were not balanced to be engaging. The snowballing issue is a great example; snowballing and the need to snowball the early game meant that you had to engage 100% optimally with the mechanics in order to be competitive mid-to-late game, and that accentuated the poor game balance. Quarter/district cost scaled to a ridiculous degree, population was not nearly as important as it should have been (instead you had these sprawling district cities that were often ghost-towns if you whip-rushed construction), sieges often got bogged down resulting in mid-game warfare being a chore.

I think Firaxis can make the mechanics from Humankind work IF they balance them properly and work on the snowballing issue that plagues all 4X games, which it seems like they are focused on.

 

[NickTheGreek!]

For me Humankind made me fear of the "switch" mechanic also adopted in CIV. It has been a while since i played Humanking but as far as i can remember my main Problem was that the CIVs were too generic, not easy to relate to/care for. Then came the switch to something completely different which broke my immersion immediately and made me lose interest. I am pretty sure CIV will not be so blunt-switching CIVs and hope they will actually make it work.

 

[Zaarin]

For me Humankind made me fear of the "switch" mechanic also adopted in CIV. It has been a while since i played Humanking but as far as i can remember my main Problem was that the CIVs were too generic, not easy to relate to/care for. Then came the switch to something completely different which broke my immersion immediately and made me lose interest. I am pretty sure CIV will not be so blunt-switching CIVs and hope they will actually make it work.

HK gave me a knee-jerk dislike when the idea was announced for Civ7, as well, though I've come around to liking the idea now that I've gotten past that first shock.

 

[Aquila SPQR]

I didn't like the idea when it was announced in Humankind, I absolutely didn't like the idea when I finally started to play Humankind and that's why I totally don't like the idea of transplanting the same mechanic into my beloved Civ franchise.

 

[King Flevance]

I have been playing HK again lately. The biggest criticism I have against the game is the reason I tend to take breaks. The 'flavor' events are the same every game.

[A game gets popular that has divination subtext and you play it in front of an audience and it starts to spell doom for the civilization > Option A vs B.]

These events are meant to add flavor and personality but every civ I play encounters every single identical event - right on schedule. And option A vs option B is always 10 turns of [yield] vs 10 turns of [yield]. This is very generic flavoring. I would rather these events just not be in the game at all. The first event is the most valuable. Do you want +2 food per city or +25% to Domesticated Research.for the remainder of the game? Then after that it is just 10 turns of science OR 10 turns of money. But they come at the same time, in the same order.

The civ switching I like, but I also came into the game late due to very harsh criticisms against the title. I actually like the versatility and flavor behind the civs. I like the customized narration about the civ you pick as the camera sweeps over your empire showing the building structures changing on the map. As well as the narration scenes upon certain techs being researched. They did inject some nice ideas for flavor into the game and it does not always feel generic. It can even feel very personal at times.

I think the minimal UI really is a big point of criticism against the game as well. Almost no info screens for empire management. Diplomacy is not very intuitive even downright obtuse in areas. They brought a new system and forgot to offer tools to understand it. This is also a contender for my biggest criticism.

 

[Leucarum]

I still think I'd prefer Civ7 without civ switching. But that ship sailed a long time ago and at least it looks like they learned from Humankind's biggest mistakes with the system (enemy civs tough to track, too many eras, no immersion).

They're probably making some new ones in the process though - historical paths, and civ diversity at launch have me worried.

 

[Krajzen]

Humankind was an utter disaster regarding my personal enjoyment,
I waited for that game for a year and lost all my good will for it after a day of playing it - believe me or not, in my second game session (after first one failing very early) I have managed to accidentally hit economic singularity and by the endgame have like 10x higher yields than all eight of the remaining AI players combined. HK has redefined my understanding of an unbalanced game.

Eras flying past you with the lightning speed (I vaguely recall being able to start and finish one in less than 30 minutes on normal speed big map), which combined with too many civ transitions resulted in zero identity of you and your AI rivals, map is just flashing caleidoscope of changing colors led by cosplay avatars

Interaction with the map limited to combining all cities into one mega city covering the continent and just spamming +yield multipliers with minimum attention, I don't even need to know what tiles do my lands consist of

Somehow even worse endgame inertion that in Civ games, nonexistent trade diplomacy and religion, and worst of all, my fundamental problem with all Amplitude games - the incessant feeling that those games are way too obsessed with yields (FIDSI), with everything blatantly bowing down to the yield modifiers (very upsetting once I realized most civs can be broadly reduced to that - choice between Umayyads and Ghana is between +science civ and +gold civ)

 

[Evolena]

Humankind was an utter disaster regarding my personal enjoyment,
I waited for that game for a year and lost all my good will for it after a day of playing it - believe me or not, in my second game session (after first one failing very early) I have managed to accidentally hit economic singularity and by the endgame have like 10x higher yields than all eight of the remaining AI players combined. HK has redefined my understanding of an unbalanced game.

Eras flying past you with the lightning speed (I vaguely recall being able to start and finish one in less than 30 minutes on normal speed big map), which combined with too many civ transitions resulted in zero identity of you and your AI rivals, map is just flashing caleidoscope of changing colors led by cosplay avatars

Interaction with the map limited to combining all cities into one mega city covering the continent and just spamming +yield multipliers with minimum attention, I don't even need to know what tiles do my lands consist of

Somehow even worse endgame inertion that in Civ games, nonexistent trade diplomacy and religion, and worst of all, my fundamental problem with all Amplitude games - the incessant feeling that those games are way too obsessed with yields (FIDSI), with everything blatantly bowing down to the yield modifiers (very upsetting once I realized most civs can be broadly reduced to that - choice between Umayyads and Ghana is between +science civ and +gold civ)

Extreme snowballing and nothing-matter-ness was also what I didn't like in Humanking. The map was pretty at the start, and then a big blob of quarter greyness. Civ switching had nothing to do with that.

 

[Shadowhal]

I feel like some of the criticism Humankind gets in this and other posts is, while valid, also overstated.

The mechanical bones seem mostly good or at least fixable from my perspective. The combat system is a lot of fun, a good balance for this depth of game. Many players hate the war system but I think it's a good way to signal intent and limit wars. Could tweak around edges.

The bigger issue for me, and probably others, is immersion. The game seemed to do whatever it could to strip the "human" factor out of Humankind. Which makes it somewhat bland and sterile, sadly. Persistent and historical leader personalities in Civ 7 should help a lot with that, as should some conditions on how factions can evolve.

I never bothered playing past early modern, so can't comment much on balance. But there are some objective measures, eg the spiralling cost of quarters and infrastructures, that do indeed suggest major balance issues here. Maybe just too many variables at play to direct the engine in an at least vaguely predictable path.

Despite all that, I had my fun with Humankind and am interested what (if anything) the devs there come up with next. Normally, the comms is pretty good but this year it's been atrocious with basically no info what they are working on or when it will be done. Pity.

 

[Krikkit1]

I thought the star/fame victory idea was good, because it allowed the possibility of fighting the snowball by
“Do X to Win the game, but it will cost you in later eras…ie get stars for expanding beyond your ability to hold it for long term”
“Get points toward victory even though you collapsed”
It would work well with Civ7s Crisis (each era earn as much stars/greatness as you can because the crisis will squash you back to small…or focus on getting medium stars every era)

But HK didn’t have any crisis and things that gave you stars also made your empire better for the next age.

 

[mitsho]

Interesting post. I liked the idea, I wanted to get into the game, but in the end, it never felt like a game to me. I feel like there was just "too much content" in that I could never use it all and that content was "always the same". I'd always build the special district, and then the next era was there and I had to build that new special district in every city. So I never got around to the other districts or the buildings. And the civs didn't feel very distinct in the end. A lot of that is city names but you mainly build them at the start and then it feels wrong to have "wrongly named cities". At times, with all the different yields and the long texts of effects that the buildings give, it felt more like an excel sheet.

So I welcome, that civ 7 has fewer eras, that the civs feel distinct (not all with the same elements), that they seem to simplify the game and that you lose your cities names in an era transition. But I do worry about the unit micromanagement and the sheer amount of content (too much) and I'll miss the neolithic start and I'll get annoyed by the "3 tiles minimum distance" and the constant chatter of Leaders. So yeah, Humankind seems like a very necessary innovative step, and I'm curious for civ7, but it might miss the mark for me anyways

 

[Zaarin]

The mechanical bones seem mostly good or at least fixable from my perspective.

I also think HK could have been fixed. My initial take, even on release, was optimistic. The problem is that it never was fixed.

The combat system is a lot of fun

I think I hate HK's combat more than anything else in the game.

The bigger issue for me, and probably others, is immersion. The game seemed to do whatever it could to strip the "human" factor out of Humankind.

Yes. Amplitude's other games are very charming and quirky, but they seemed to go to great lengths to stamp out anything resembling personality from HK. Much like Civ5, HK took itself much too seriously.

Despite all that, I had my fun with Humankind and am interested what (if anything) the devs there come up with next. Normally, the comms is pretty good but this year it's been atrocious with basically no info what they are working on or when it will be done. Pity.

I believe their currently focus is on Endless Dungeon, which doesn't appeal to me but seems to have been pretty well received. If they announced Endless Space 3, I'd pay attention, having loved the last two iterations; I don't think anything else they announced would catch my eye--which saddens me as I was a fan of their work before.

 

[Trav'ling Canuck]

I feel like some of the criticism Humankind gets in this and other posts is, while valid, also overstated.

The mechanical bones seem mostly good or at least fixable from my perspective. The combat system is a lot of fun, a good balance for this depth of game. Many players hate the war system but I think it's a good way to signal intent and limit wars. Could tweak around edges.

The bigger issue for me, and probably others, is immersion. The game seemed to do whatever it could to strip the "human" factor out of Humankind. Which makes it somewhat bland and sterile, sadly. Persistent and historical leader personalities in Civ 7 should help a lot with that, as should some conditions on how factions can evolve.

I never bothered playing past early modern, so can't comment much on balance. But there are some objective measures, eg the spiralling cost of quarters and infrastructures, that do indeed suggest major balance issues here. Maybe just too many variables at play to direct the engine in an at least vaguely predictable path.

Despite all that, I had my fun with Humankind and am interested what (if anything) the devs there come up with next. Normally, the comms is pretty good but this year it's been atrocious with basically no info what they are working on or when it will be done. Pity.

I have a somewhat different take, personally. I had no problems with HK's immersion, that wasn't the issue for me. And I loved the idea of a lot of the innovative stuff they did, including the neolithic age, the tactical battles on the strategy map, and the war support system. The problem for me was entirely in how they executed on their good ideas. The dev team could never fully figure out how they wanted their economy to run, there were too many barriers to making use of uniques, the enemy leader avatars never lived up to the potential the dev team saw in them, etc etc. It didn't help that one of the lead designers got hired away while the game was still in development, but the sense I was left with was a team with a lot of great ideas but no firm idea of how to implement those ideas in the game and how to tie them together, and they spent so much time on those topics that they never got around to editing for fun, i.e. removing the irritants to player enjoyment.

 

[Shadowhal]

I also think HK could have been fixed. My initial take, even on release, was optimistic. The problem is that it never was fixed.


I think I hate HK's combat more than anything else in the game.


Yes. Amplitude's other games are very charming and quirky, but they seemed to go to great lengths to stamp out anything resembling personality from HK. Much like Civ5, HK took itself much too seriously.


I believe their currently focus is on Endless Dungeon, which doesn't appeal to me but seems to have been pretty well received. If they announced Endless Space 3, I'd pay attention, having loved the last two iterations; I don't think anything else they announced would catch my eye--which saddens me as I was a fan of their work before.

Well, I play with a mod, that helps. I don't play many 4Xs "vanilla" anymore these days.

Huh, interesting. What do you hate most about the combat system then?

For me, I'll list a few personal pros and cons, because there are elements that don't work that well for me either.

Pros:
- There are genuine tactical choices in the battles. Terrain matters. A lot. But there are also bonuses for keeping tight formations, unit type counters. But it doesn't go overboard with complexity like eg the AoW series would. It's still fairly simple and streamlined and a good balance for me.
- The battle and army movement system cuts down on the annoying micromanagement of logistics. You move around armies, not individual units. Civ VI helped a bit with stacking up units but it still felt like a less elegant and efficient system. And let's not talk about Civ V here.
- The battles are flexible and dynamic. You're not doomed just because your armies aren't perfectly positioned on the strategic map. Everone in the vicinity can participate, even after the battle started.
- Related to that point, there is a retreat option and I find it reasonably balanced. You don't have to fight a hopeless battle. But with the "retreat" status, you can only run so far and you don't have to chase forever as the aggressor.
- Also related, how you can control the layout of the battlefield based on which type you attack from. Makes you really think about how you want to use the terrain, if you have the movement points to go around the enemy.
- By and large, the AI is at least competent in tactical battles. Not perfect but it focuses down my units and I usually take losses from reasonably evenly matched battles. Again, going beyond battles as such, the AI also mounts competent attacks. I have lost cities to them and been under threat. A far cry from what I have seen in recent Civ entries.
- Tech level matters for strength advantage but is surmountable with sufficient numbers.


As for some cons:
- Line of sight remains unclear to me in many situations. They improved the rules in some update and it works better. But I still get caught out when I though my positioning should allow me to attack but doesn't.
- "All your units move, then all my units move". It can give the attacked a pretty big advantage with a heavy first salvo, especially when you get to the gunpowder age and attacks do not come with taking damage. The larger deployment zones help with that a little bit in that you can position yourself deeper down so that fewer attackers immediately get into range. But it can still be problematic. Separate "initiative" values as in EL could have helped, though would have added complexity.
- Not strictly the battle system as such, but the simultaneous turn system sometimes drives me nuts. I want to chase an opponent (or run away, having just retreated) but by the time I click away all the pop up messages, the AI has already moved to my disadvantage. I play TBS so I don't have to care about acting fast. It's just silly.
- The battles can take a notch too long when a lot of units get involved. It's still kind of ok but I can see it getting out of hand in larger games or late game. In that sense, the system from EL worked better. Shame it proved too complex to be intuively easy. On balance, I'd probably also prefer them to last over fewer strategic turns or for the multi-turn battles to ramp up more slowly with unit count.
- Having spoken positively about the tactical battle AI, there were some weaknesse too, especially when it's on the defensive and lets itself get picked off one by one, rather than consolidating its available forces to inflict at least some noticeable damage.


Does any of that hold true for you as well? Do you have other gripes with it?


Also a side note, Amplitude announced yesterday that they are becoming independent again and that they will announce the next Humankind patch next week. I have no idea what to expect after such a long pause.

 

[Zaarin]

Huh, interesting. What do you hate most about the combat system then?

I'm not a war-oriented player. If a single battle takes more than 30 seconds of my attention, it's taking too much of my attention, and HK penalizes auto-resolving battles. I'm also not overly fond of bringing a tactical emphasis into a game that should be focused on the strategic level. So this is a personal preference thing; I can see how the combat system might appeal to those more interested in that portion of the game than I am.

Also a side note, Amplitude announced yesterday that they are becoming independent again and that they will announce the next Humankind patch next week. I have no idea what to expect after such a long pause.

I saw that! As someone who dearly loves Amplitude's earlier work but was disappointed in HK, that announcement made me very happy! They explicitly mentioned returning to the Endless universe, too. I suppose Endless Legends is next up for a sequel, but their recent attention to Endless Space 2 (new patches, a novel) make me selfishly hope for Endless Space 3.

 

[Siptah]

The patch will come after around 10 months of silence. I‘m very curious what they have in store. I would have assumed a dev diary in case it has larger changes or even a kind of 2.0 overhaul. But maybe, hopefully, desperately, it‘s the big balance overhaul I’ve been waiting for for years.



Edit: apparently the big news will be revealed in January… so, probably no reason to get too excited for next week.

 

[Shadowhal]

I have a somewhat different take, personally. I had no problems with HK's immersion, that wasn't the issue for me. And I loved the idea of a lot of the innovative stuff they did, including the neolithic age, the tactical battles on the strategy map, and the war support system. The problem for me was entirely in how they executed on their good ideas. The dev team could never fully figure out how they wanted their economy to run, there were too many barriers to making use of uniques, the enemy leader avatars never lived up to the potential the dev team saw in them, etc etc. It didn't help that one of the lead designers got hired away while the game was still in development, but the sense I was left with was a team with a lot of great ideas but no firm idea of how to implement those ideas in the game and how to tie them together, and they spent so much time on those topics that they never got around to editing for fun, i.e. removing the irritants to player enjoyment.

Yeah, this avatar thin never quite worked out for me either. I just need an opponent with personality to fight against. If the faction itself doesn't do that - because they are all mash-ups and change regularly - then the leader or avatar of the faction has to do that heavy lifting. And they didnt. Over in Amplitude's forums I suggested pseudo-historical avators, eg Gaius Julius Churchill, Genghis Bonaparte. Respects the game's build-your-own-faction theme immediately evokes something more than Lucy or Orello.

I tend to agree on the economy. It has several interesting pieces but they don't quite come together. Civ VI's district system was a nice puzzle, but boy did it have a lot of rules to remember to use it remotely efficiently. The idea of just a few but repeatable district types was appealing. Even more interesting in the beta how adjacencies weren't purely self-referencing but with specific other district type. But combined with infrastructures and more and more adjacency bonuses, the potential for snowballing became so big as to be barely controllable and posed a balancing challenge. Too many multiplicatory factors within each element and then collectively playing together. I almost feel like less would have been more. Fewer infrastructure types to be built. Maybe repeatable but have to be placed within a corresponding quarter. But then, a big tech tree needs to be filled with stuff to unlock ...

One other smaller thing that frustrated me is how they wasted the ideology axis as a driver for diplomatic friction. For one, I have my doubts that the games' calculations are accurate. Also, the impact of that seems pretty minor which is a shame. Could have more, also in relation to Independent Peoples.

That all being said, I still had my fun with it and it did improve a fair bit post release.