HUMANKIND a Civ VI killer?

All this talk about what the Tower of Babel can do makes me want a wonder that can automatically make you win a diplo victory.
And I'm talking about Shangri-La not the United Nations.

 

Considering the U.N. is -----------------------------------------------------------------------, I agree with you that Shangri-La should be a Diplomatic Wonder. I do not believe in Wonders that automatically give you a Victory, though.

 

It has them, but without any individual bonuses like in Civ VI or EL. They have unique names, and they can be aggressive or peaceful, their armies can be levied or their cities integrated into your empire. They rise and fall over the course of the game, so you don't end up with ancient era Independent People in the industrial era, for example.

That's an interesting take, but you are getting it wrong, at least regarding the base structure of the game (it has exploiting the terrain with a lot of different districts, has wonders, natural wonder, independent people, religion, civics tree with empire-wide values, etc). Although, to be fair, it also has the 60 culture bonuses, with unique quarters and units for each, plus a legacy trait that carries over. Also has some bonuses from religion, but are also quite down to earth as well.

Maybe, maybe not. The game is quite complex, but takes the complexity in a different direction. Of course, will definitely add more things in any potential expansion. But I think it was a conscious decision to focus the more "crazy" stuff on cultures and some wonders, and keeping things like natural wonders and independent people a bit more homogeneous to create a good balance.

 

That is one thing I am unsure about Humankind's territory system. IP seems to only emerge in no man's land, or territories that haven't been taken by major cultures. In the Stadia OpenDev, the human and AI cultures can easily partition the entire continent into their own territory, whether through conquest or patronage, and left no more "blank" spaces for IP to spawn - that can happen before the Medieval Era.

 

I wasn't being serious about Shangri-La being a wonder anyway.

 

Yeah, it depends a lot on map size. Small pangeas will surely run out of them fast, while a huge map, even with the 10 players, will have a lot of empty spaces for a longer time, plus on islands or even other continents.

 

The fact that it’s 17% off before it’s released does not suggest confidence in their own product. I can’t remember any good AAA games that offer a discount before release - it’s usually the bad games that does this.

 

Well, first of all, there are no good AAA games; AAA games are mediocre by definition because big investors demand taking no risks. But more to the point, Humankind isn't a AAA game. I'd call it bigger than indie, but Amplitude is still a small studio.

 

To answer the question being asked in the title: no; "the Vikings" were never a unified country, and I thought we had moved on from this myth over a decade ago

 

The amount of effort they've put in so far feels like they're making an AAA title

 

Not really. Plus it's the digital deluxe edition. The game at release will be around this price. So instead of saying "Pre-Order the game at full $50 price and get the digital deluxe edition for free", they sell the digital deluxe edition with a discount that places it at the $50 dollars the game will cost.

 

Unless somebody has an employee list and financial statement from Amplitude, I think it is more accurate to say that the amount of interest and commentary they've produced from the gaming community (specifically, the 4X Historical gaming community) makes it appear to be an AAA game.
A lot of that, of course, is because there haven't been a lot of 4X historical games to comment on in the past. My impression, and that's all it is, is that they have been building up to this for years and have made some better decisions as to where to allocate their assets. Case in point: the animated Leaders of Civ VI, which have generated some discussion over in the Civilization VI: Possible New Civilizations Thread and which I would argue are a Resource Sink for graphics and other resources that could be better used elsewhere, as Humankind does.

 

HK looks pretty from the shots of the map we have seen, but that part is somewhat easy. Count up how many terrain types civ6 actually has- it’s not many, and several variants of graphics were added later. Maps aren’t that hard.
Even making the city buildings look nice isn’t the biggest issue.
What kills the Art budget is when you need 60 new and unique looking tiles To add into the map, or 60 unique palaces, or 60 unique unit models. Even Civ didn’t have 100% unique palaces at launch. I am not expecting absolute AAA polish, things like wonder movies/animations, for example. The other thing to watch for is how much marketing they do. Marketing Is $$$ and can be as much or more than development itself for AAA games.
If the game is not really mass marketed In any meaningful way, that will likely tip off their budget level.

 

People generally underestimate the marketing/advertising costs of everything. The last figure I saw (in a class on Economic Geography, of all things), the actual cost of manufacturing a bar of bath soap was less than 10 cents. Everything else in the price is distribution, marketing, advertising costs and profit, and the profit is generally no more than pennies per bar. Given the drastic changes in marketing and distribution means (internet, electronic download, etc) I would not care to guess how the exact breakdown of costs measures out now, but I would not bet that the 'marketing' and Post Production/distribution costs are much less than the actual development and production costs.

 

That's a really interesting comment. I liked EL and thought it was decent but got tired of the fantasy element after a while.

That's the problem with studios like Firaxis and Paradox these days - too many artists and not enough programmers working on AI and key mechanics.

 

To be fair, if Firaxis has an artist overpopulation problem, then Paradox probably has an artist depopulation problem. Most of the games developed by Paradox Development Studio, if anything, are very meh at the level of art, especially 3d art, when compare to Firaxis (cf. no unique unit models, poor 3d combat animation combinations). They do have very good UI designs though.

 

I don't know about that. Paradox sells unique unit models as separate DLC packs and pre-order bonuses and the like. I'm not sure what you like about their UIs, either. They often don't scale properly with screen resolution, they hide useful information many levels deep, and they often present inaccurate or simply incorrect information to the player. They've gotten somewhat better over the years, but, ...

Amplitude's UIs have always been a pleasure to use. And the art is top notch. I just hope that the Humankind gameplay is better than EL or ES2.

 

Even with DLCs these models are still hard to match FXS's works. Besides, selling 3d models as separate DLC already says that Paradox's art team has certain constrains, as FXS never had this problem and would put all the unique arts in the main game/major DLCs (One can also argue that this is part of Paradox's traditional selling strategy, which I also agree).

FXS also devoted a lot of resources into animations of buildings as of Civ VI - for instance, every Improvement has 3 different sets of animations: being worked, not being worked, and being pillaged - while Paradox games have little to none similar animations.

That's sure, I do like how they tend to make a unique cover art for every single tech and build.

Although I would say please don't just shrink the size of the said cover art and use it as a small button icon, I really can't tell what that icon means because the once beautiful picture is now a few colored patches.

 

Humankind a Civ killer? I doubt it, as I fully intend to play both.