HUMANKIND a Civ VI killer?

[Archon_Wing]

Similar to Cities: Skylines "killing" SimCity,

Welll, EA killed Sim City with Sim City there, so....

 

[The Civs 6]

You know, I was thinking the exact same thing but I played the humankind demo and didn't find it as plodding as endless legend. I'm optimistic but I completely understand your concern.

Everybody is welcome at Humankind subforum, it is lovely place, you should visit us here, every week there is a new culture revealed and we are 5/6 way through.

I don't like such agressive, sensationalist title, it's like modern day clickbait journalism (though if anybody ever says Humankind is "Dark Souls of 4X games" I'll die from laughter). With Humankind we will have total of TWO high budget videogames "4X empire building simulation of history from ancient era to space". TWO games in a "genre" is not nearly enough to make 'killing' necessary

I have played Humankind in open dev and it's VERY different from civ. Land is divided on territories, combat is on tactical battlefields, players switch between many "civilizations" during the game, there are no historical leaders but generated avatars, there are no victories per se but one very elaborate version of score victory etc etc. One can coexist next to another.

Although personally I'll 100% switch to Humankind if it's decent, as Civ6 have somehow managed to annoy me with almost every design decision it has ever made. Different tastes I guess.





Humankind has tactical battles very different from both civ6 and Endless Legend, and I had more difficulty winning them in pre alpha than combating civ6 AI after fours years od patching

well in that case I'll give it a shot. totally open to an alternative to Civ to the extent that Im not personally burnt out on the 4x genre.

 

[Wielki Hegemon]

It is not Humankind that can kill the Civilization game. It is Civilization itself if bad decisions will be taken and mistakes will be made. Look at World of Warcraft. The game was not killed by anybody. The game is slowly killing itself.

 

[Kwami]

It is not Humankind that can kill the Civilization game. It is Civilization itself if bad decisions will be taken and mistakes will be made. Look at World of Warcraft. The game was not killed by anybody. The game is slowly killing itself.

WoW has been "slowly killing itself" for years now. And for years, every MMO has been "the WoW killer". But here we are at the end of 2020 and WoW still has about 5M active players in any given month and they've just released WoW Classic and a new expansion (Shadowlands). So, I think they'll be fine.

I gave it up back in 2012, though. Every expansion was the same as the last one and they started to introduce a cash shop. No, thanks.

I think Civ will be fine, anyway. Even if Humankind is a big hit (unlikely), Firaxis isn't going to just stop making Civ games. That would be silly.

 

[Wielki Hegemon]

WoW has been "slowly killing itself" for years now. And for years, every MMO has been "the WoW killer". But here we are at the end of 2020 and WoW still has about 5M active players in any given month and they've just released WoW Classic and a new expansion (Shadowlands). So, I think they'll be fine.

Big games do not fall in one day, and fall doesn't mean the game is done for good. It is always a process and a consequence of many many decisions over the years. What I mean is they are (WoW) on the last stage of PLM now. They are milking their product.
But it was not caused by any of those MMO WoW killers you have mentioned of course. The same way Civilization will not be killed by Humankind and will not be killed in one day. The real threat for the game is possible bad dev's decisions, and if something goes wrong this will not be a one-day collapse. We should more worry about the Civ game itself not how Humankind affects it.

 

[Kwami]

Big games do not fall in one day, and fall doesn't mean the game is done for good. It is always a process and a consequence of many many decisions over the years. What I mean is they are (WoW) on the last stage of PLM now. They are milking their product.

I mean, maybe. But WoW has been going for 16 years now and they doubled their player base last summer when they launched Classic. Last time I looked, they still had about 5 million active players. That doesn't sound like a game that's dying.

But yeah, nothing is going to "kill" Civ. As long as the developers keep making good games, Civ will have an audience, regardless of what Humankind does.

 

[The Civs 6]

I mean, maybe. But WoW has been going for 16 years now and they doubled their player base last summer when they launched Classic. Last time I looked, they still had about 5 million active players. That doesn't sound like a game that's dying.

But yeah, nothing is going to "kill" Civ. As long as the developers keep making good games, Civ will have an audience, regardless of what Humankind does.

I'm not sure Civ will always have an audience. I assume 4x games will always have a niche fanbase. I also dunno how I feel about comparing all this to WoW. By the time Civ 4 was made (which was roughly concurrent with WoW), Civ had been around for at least a decade. I'm sort of at peace with the idea that a 20+ year old video game franchise is slowly drifting into a quiet retirement.

And we've seen nothing close to the stroke of genius that was WoW classic coming out of Civland. Heck people in WoW classic half-jokingly talk about buying WoW Classic "Burning Crusade" etc. They are basically going to get at least some people pay money to go through the whole damn cycle of expansions again.

 

[Abaxial]

From what I've seen of Humankind, I'm just not excited.

 

[God of Kings]

Welll, EA killed Sim City with Sim City there, so....

Hence the quotes around "killed" as Cities: Skylines simply killed off the remains of SimCity, which killed itself through numerous bad decisions. I mentioned RollerCoaster Tycoon, which also killed itself through bad decisions allowing Planet Coaster to take over.

 

[cain3456]

I tried to like Endless Legend, but found it "meh". Humankind has been so hyped that it cannot possibly meet expectations.

 

[SMcM]

The way you create your own leader, and your civilization developing from a blend of multiple (not necessarily related) civilizations through history isn't really appealing to me coming from and being used to Civilization tbh. I like the distinct civilizations with pre-existing historical leaders much more.

 

[Sostratus]

Hence the quotes around "killed" as Cities: Skylines simply killed off the remains of SimCity, which killed itself through numerous bad decisions. I mentioned RollerCoaster Tycoon, which also killed itself through bad decisions allowing Planet Coaster to take over.

I play skylines sometimes and while it is a modern city builder, it doesn’t capture the magic and feel of sim city. Man, it’s so sad what happened there.

I tried to like Endless Legend, but found it "meh". Humankind has been so hyped that it cannot possibly meet expectations.

What I like about HK is that it seems like it will be an evolution of the economic/empire builder gameplay of civ6. People need to be very aware that the game narrative will be a lot different from classic Civ. Who knows- maybe, like Skylines, it will be a technically good game but missing a little of the magic.

 

[8housesofelixir]

I play skylines sometimes and while it is a modern city builder, it doesn’t capture the magic and feel of sim city. Man, it’s so sad what happened there.
What I like about HK is that it seems like it will be an evolution of the economic/empire builder gameplay of civ6. People need to be very aware that the game narrative will be a lot different from classic Civ. Who knows- maybe, like Skylines, it will be a technically good game but missing a little of the magic.

City:Skylines has an important characteristic that is different from the older Sim City - C:S is a very easy game, economically. There is no economic differences of your citizens, your citizens will not move away from the city even if they are out of work, and every one of them will go to university eventually. Therefore, once your city is up and running, it's very hard for it to go to bankrupt, and you are more like playing a sandbox instead of managing a city.

This is very similar to many people's complain about Civ VI: Too easy compare to older games, once your empire is up and running it's very hard for AI to stop you.

If Humankind, say, offers a fun and challenging empire building gameplay compare to Civ VI, I think it will draw the Civ players from this particular camp to it.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

Humankind and Civ Whatever The Number will co-exist because, while they are both 'Historical 4X" games, they are approaching the historical 4x genre from very different directions.

Civ sets up a Personal Narrative. You have a named Leader, a single named and unique Civ throughout the game, and near-complete freedom of choice about how you will develop that Civ. Just for instance, there are almost no constraints on your Civic/Social Policy choices - switch from Oligarchy to Merchant Republic to Totalitarian tendencies with no penalties whatsoever.

Humankind (based on the OpenDev and other 'glimpses' of the final game, since it is still a Work In Progress) is designed as a more Linear Journey, in that there is only one victory condition, but a much more interactive Decision Tree to reach it. Again for instance, your Social/Civic decisions are Choices, and each choice moves you further along a progression, and all such Choices have Consequences in your development and diplomacy with other Factions (and maybe even the Minor Factions, although that hasn't been shown yet). That means, regardless of the much-discussed 'progression' from one 'historical' Faction to another by Era, you are also building the social and civic development of those Factions on a much longer term, and are forced to live with the results of your decisions much more firmly than Civ requires.

So, the games are going to appeal to very different gamers in many different ways.
Humankind is graphically gorgeous, easily some of the best-looking terrain you ever played on. On the other hand, IMHO, the terrain is sometimes more gorgeous than Utilitarian - it's not always easy to tell what the attributes of the terrain are at a glance. That may be a product, of course, of having only a few hours on a testbed version of Humankind compared to a few thousand hours of Civ VI. Civ's combat is Extremely idealized: battles take centuries of game time and cover the equivalent of counties or states. In Humankind the battles are much more concentrated and, frankly, more realistically concentrated in time and space, but are also much more complex than Civ's 'click and shoot', 'click and charge' One Unit At A Time. Having spent 50+ years studying military history, that's gravy to me, but not to everyone's taste.
Humankind, IMHO, has a much better system of Districts and exploitation of the terrain by cities, developed from the EL system but much improved. On the other hand, unlike Civ, most of Humankind's buildings and structures inside the city are not visible, which, after getting used to Civ VI, is just annoying.

Best of all, as I've posted before, is that having two games with different approaches to the same genre will inevitably produce some more concentrated thinking about All the ways of doing things in a 4X Historical Game. That's why we've started a Thread on Perfect Historical 4X Game, because that critter will undoubtedly be a cross between Civ and Humankind and whatever wild ideas come out of the woodwork.

 

[8housesofelixir]

On the other hand, IMHO, the terrain is sometimes more gorgeous than Utilitarian - it's not always easy to tell what the attributes of the terrain are at a glance.

That's currently my biggest complaint of Humankind. When open the yield view, you will see some barren-looking terrain actually has a good food output, while some lush-looking terrain lacks food but production rich, which completely break my intuition of landscape.

In my OpenDev playthrough I simply turned off all the yields, and only try to look up it when placing quarters - that's at least less confusing.

On the other hand, unlike Civ, most of Humankind's buildings and structures inside the city are not visible, which, after getting used to Civ VI, is just annoying.

I assume that's partly because Amplitude has a relatively small art team compare to FXS, they also talked about the art developing constrains on dev streams. If they provide a list of what a city already built in the UI (like in Civ V and IV I think) that would be helpful.

 

[Kwami]

I assume that's partly because Amplitude has a relatively small art team compare to FXS, they also talked about the art developing constrains on dev streams. If they provide a list of what a city already built in the UI (like in Civ V and IV I think) that would be helpful.

Civ VI also provides a list of what's already been built in the city UI...

 

[AaronTBD]

There’s a fair amount of Historical Strategy Games other than civ that are popular, so Humankind and Civ can co-exist (Besides Civ has existed for 30 years, while Humankind is only the first game, I don’t think that a brand new game can single handedly end an entire 30 year series).

 

[KayAU]

Will Humankind be better than Civ VI? I am cautiously optimistic about this, but I can't tell yet. Amplitude is a good developer, but for all it's strong qualities, I just couldn't get into their previous "civ-like", Endless Legend. I have tried several times, but the game still stands at an unimpressive ~65 hours in Steam. I expect Humankind to hold my attention for longer, though. For one thing, they have improved the tactical battles, which were one of the things I disliked in EL. For another, I think the historical setting is going to help make everything more recognizable and relatable. I am somewhat concerned about them keeping the region system, but at least they are refining it, along with probably every other system or mechanic they are carrying over from Endless Legend. I am very curious about the end result.

Civ VI has already mostly lost my attention, as I have returned instead to Vox Populi. Mind you, I do have more than 2k hours in it, so it's not as if I didn't get a lot out of it. I believe most of the time I put into it was enjoyable, although a fair amount was probably tedious late-game slog as well. What ended up disappointing me a bit, was that there was not a lot of refinement to Civ VI's systems, and too little interaction between them. The expansions and DLC didn't really improve the game that much, beyond adding more content.

I believe some competition in the "historical 4X" genre is a good thing, and will likely end up playing both Humankind and Civilization, as well as Old World.

 

[HiRezAudio]

To answer the original question, no it's not a Civ 6 killer considering the game has been out for a couple of years and has sold well.

Really?
Why does it tell me that the game is not yet released then from my Steam library if it has been out already for a couple of years??

 

[leif erikson]

Really?
Why does it tell me that the game is not yet released then from my Steam library if it has been out already for a couple of years??

I think he means that Civ6 has been out and sold well.

Humankind is not out yet.