Humankind Game by Amplitude

[tedhebert]

Has anyone here gotten access to the beta yet? How is it?

I received the emails confirming I'm in the running... that's all so far.

But I seem to remember that they didn't really say it was 'impending' either. I think they said 'later in 2019'... so I'm not setting any time frame on that one

 

[CivLuvah]

Has anyone here gotten access to the beta yet? How is it?

[I'm writing this assuming you are aware of/signed up for the OpenDev program for the game.]
The emails said they're going to send you an email of confirmation if you are selected around July, so I assume no one has gotten the beta yet.

 

[Elhoim]

I'm hoping I won't feel the same in regards to Humankind's combat.

You probably won't since the movement in combat is just like Civ (move and attack), instead of orders and let it play out.

 

[Siptah]

You probably won't since the movement in combat is just like Civ (move and attack), instead of orders and let it play out.

And as it seems combat will be much less complex compared to EL‘s sophisticated mechanics and options. No free choice of weapons and defenses for each units And no fantasy abilities.

 

[CivLuvah]

Imgur album updated to include the Umayyads:

https://imgur.com/a/4cPjGSY

Kinda disappointed they didn't go with the Abbassids (which are more appropriate for the Scientist affinity for me), but okay.

 

[tedhebert]

[I'm writing this assuming you are aware of/signed up for the OpenDev program for the game.]
The emails said they're going to send you an email of confirmation if you are selected around July, so I assume no one has gotten the beta yet.

That's right... sorry I should have gone and reread my mail... July it is !

 

[Siptah]

interesting statements from the interview with Catoninetails:

it's almost impossible to eliminate a faction in the first half of the game due to how combat and diplomacy works.

you can conquer an outpost without declaring war, either destroying it or taking it over with the right technology.

cultural influence has very different effects as expected: you do not take one city peacefully. It's ideological pressure, i.e. there's pressure to change your civic choices and you get penalties when declaring war on someone who's culture is influential on you.

conditions to get an era star are dynamically adapted for each era based on your development in that category in the previous era. So it's not always just +5 territory for each star or any static value.

Celtic swordsmen wear chain mail

There's still some discussion if you might be able to build EQs after you change the culture for some time.

EUs are available until you research an upgrade. Units that are not replaced by a more modern unit might be available for some time after you switch cultures. (does this mean if you transcend, you might use your EU if there is an upgrade available?)

It is not decided yet if there will be scenarios in the final game, but specific map probably will.

They acknowledge the demand for map and scenario editors, but the current tools are not for publication.

There are independent peoples, no barbarians. The aggressive independent peoples can fulfill a similar role, but there are others as well. These independent peoples are named after cultures that didn't make the cut as major factions.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

interesting statements from the interview with Catoninetails:

it's almost impossible to eliminate a faction in the first half of the game due to how combat and diplomacy works.

you can conquer an outpost without declaring war, either destroying it or taking it over with the right technology.

cultural influence has very different effects as expected: you do not take one city peacefully. It's ideological pressure, i.e. there's pressure to change your civic choices and you get penalties when declaring war on someone who's culture is influential on you.

conditions to get an era star are dynamically adapted for each era based on your development in that category in the previous era. So it's not always just +5 territory for each star or any static value.

Celtic swordsmen wear chain mail

There's still some discussion if you might be able to build EQs after you change the culture for some time.

EUs are available until you research an upgrade. Units that are not replaced by a more modern unit might be available for some time after you switch cultures. (does this mean if you transcend, you might use your EU if there is an upgrade available?)

It is not decided yet if there will be scenarios in the final game, but specific map probably will.

They acknowledge the demand for map and scenario editors, but the current tools are not for publication.

There are independent peoples, no barbarians. The aggressive independent peoples can fulfill a similar role, but there are others as well. These independent peoples are named after cultures that didn't make the cut as major factions.

Couple of comments spring to keyboard:

1. Almost impossible to eliminate a Faction in the (early game) combined with being able to conquer an Outpost without declaring war sounds like the early game will see a lot more 'short of war' skirmishing for territories/regions not secured by a City but none of the Wars to Destruction Civ sees. An interesting, and very different, view of Ancient/Classical history. I hope
that the actual circumstance is that you can conquer another Faction, but it is very hard to keep it conquered - as in Alexander could conquer Persia, but Persia less than 'Era' later and was a going concern in various forms from then on, while Alexander's Empire fell apart into separate Successor States in less than a generation.
That would make for a much more dynamic early game IF that's the way the system works. A simple prohibition or impossibility of a warof conquest only removes options for the player to make mistakes, which IMHO is not as good.

2. OF COURSE Celtic swordsmen wear link mail - they invented it, and it was so good even the Romans adopted it for the late Imperial Army!

3. "Independent peoples are named after cultures that didn't make the cut as major factions" - which means, I presume, that a list of the 'Independents' will give also give us a list of potential DLC Major Factions, since work on them was already started/attempted?

 

[Zaarin]

OF COURSE Celtic swordsmen wear link mail - they invented it, and it was so good even the Romans adopted it for the late Imperial Army!

Nonsense. Everyone knows the Celts exclusively fought naked, protected only by their "woad tattoos," even though woad is caustic and will burn your flesh not dye it.

 

[Siptah]

Yes, that’s why he mentioned it. Topless warriors = emblematic, but the standard units wear the infamous chainmail.

 

[SupremacyKing2]

it's almost impossible to eliminate a faction in the first half of the game due to how combat and diplomacy works.

I really hope this means that wars will be means to an end, and not an end unto themselves. As Von Clausewitz said, "War is the continuation of Diplomacy by other means". In other words, there will still be wars in the game of course but they will be to help you in your pursuit of more fame or because of ideological reasons and not just to conquer everybody.

 

[AntSou]

3. "Independent peoples are named after cultures that didn't make the cut as major factions" - which means, I presume, that a list of the 'Independents' will give also give us a list of potential DLC Major Factions, since work on them was already started/attempted?

I'm not sure about that. It could be the other way around. They pick for Minor Factions those cultures which they have no plans of releasing as Major Factions in future DLC.

 

[Elhoim]

I'm not sure about that. It could be the other way around. They pick for Minor Factions those cultures which they have no plans of releasing as Major Factions in future DLC.

Depends. If you take a look at Civ VI, many City States became full civs in expansions.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

Yes, that’s why he mentioned it. Topless warriors = emblematic, but the standard units wear the infamous chainmail.

Sorry for what is, in fact, a digression, but let's drive a stake through this sucker's heart here and now.

There are two sources for the 'Naked Gauls/Celts' meme.
First, Latin authors mention them.
Specifically, Polybius, the source of the Gaesetae naked mercenaries, and Diodorus Sicilus in his Library of History. We can dispose of Diodorus immediately - he was copying Polybius (there were no copyright laws in the Classical Era - lifting whole paragraphs that you thought were good was perfectly acceptable). But Polybius is writing well after the events he describes, and doesn't tell us where he got the story. And gets significant details wrong, like saying that the Gaulic shields didn't cover their whole body - when in fact the most common Gaullic oval shield covered its holder from shin to head.
More importantly, no Roman who actually fought Gauls or Celts - not Caesar, nor any of the accounts from Britannic Celtica - ever say they actually saw any Gauls/Celts fighting naked. They talk a lot about 'towering warriors' and long swords, which appear to have impressed them the most - also the inability of Celts to maintain the fury of their initial assault - but do not mention it being easy to repel a Celtic charge because they had no clothing.
Second, the Celtic Successor (and heavily Celtic-influenced) Picts have some pictographs of naked warriors fighting with swords. Or, more specifically, they show two naked warriors facing each other with swords and a third man in a cloak standing between them with no obvious weapon. I find that a far better interpretation of this (not mine, by another Pict-specialist historian wrestling with this same question) is not that they were in battle, but that they were taking part in a ritual - possibly ritual combat or judicial combat with a judge standing by. If you believe that God Judges, then removing any advantage or imbalance among the ritual warriors by having them fight without covering or armor makes sense.
Racing into battle against a potential conqueror after throwing away effective armor makes no sense at all unless you assume that the Celts thought that All Combat was Ritual, and given that they also engaged in ambush of entire Roman armies, siege warfare, cavalry raids, and guerrilla warfare in addition to 'regular' infantry battles, 'ritual' does not seem adequate to describe their combat behavior.

As to why the Naked Gaul became a meme even among later Romans, one possibility I find more probable than actual nakedness is that many Classical authors used 'naked' to describe any warrior who had no body armor, in comparison to a classical Hoplite or Republican Roman Legionary who wore a complete panoply of metal armor covering them from the top of their head to their knees. The difference in personal confidence between the man who feels safe behind metal and the man without such protection can easily be lost on a civilian who has never been in battle in either condition: they can wind up with very different definitions of 'naked'.

 

[Krajzen]

it's almost impossible to eliminate a faction in the first half of the game due to how combat and diplomacy works.

Sounds weird, but I'd love if devs somehow prevented Civ's 'best strategy in every game ever is to rapidly murder every civ nearby, use their resources and linearly snowball until incredibly boring endgame'. Also this is gonna be useful mechanic if we get only 10 players per session for release...

cultural influence has very different effects as expected: you do not take one city peacefully. It's ideological pressure, i.e. there's pressure to change your civic choices and you get penalties when declaring war on someone who's culture is influential on you.

Thank God, I have always disliked the absurd notion of capturing other nations cities by sheer cultural magical magnetism, ignoring military and political control over territory and communication. If that was so easy IRL then North Korea would fall decades ago. I have never liked this weird idea (it has like two decades), along borders behaving like living fluctuating organism instead of standing in goddamn Yalta - enforced place.

It is also really nice how they acknowledge the map editor question, instead of being like certain other devs and being silent on the issue for a very long time.

Do we know how bad the situation is regarding modding?

 

[Catoninetales_Amplitude]

First off, sorry to anybody who has been waiting for my reply. I've been quite busy the past few days, as you can probably imagine, given the recent flood of previews. (And as much as I love reading your discussions, I do need breaks and weekends now and then, too. )
Now, let me dig through the various questions.

I couldn't get into Endless Space 2 (space bores me, I'm sorry to say), but I'm really excited about this game. Thank you for taking the time to answer questions and the like.

Space bores you? But there's a hexagon on the north pole of Saturn!

The Civics are multi-Era. That is, once you decide to build an army of 'Conscripts' in the Ancient Era, unless you pick a contrary Civic later, your Conscript Army still has the same structure in the Modern Era - when your Mycenean Conscripts are presumably carrying rifles!
[. . . ]
Emblematic structures/Quarters remain when you change Eras. The Mycenean Citadel on the hill may have modern American graffiti all over it, but it's (apparently) still giving the same bonuses it gave to Agamemnon 5 Eras earlier.

Yes, Civics choices are permanent, unless other events force you to revoke or change a civic (e.g. the cultural influence others have already mentioned.)
And as mentioned in my interview with Writing Bull, we are still experimenting with when and how EQ become unavailable or obsolete. If I recall correctly, in an early version Emblematic Quarters lost their effects and instead provided culture once you added another culture, but that was unsatisfying and did not give you a sense of building your own Civilization. So the specifics of this are not set in stone yet (we think we'll unlock Masonry sometime before 2021... )

If combat is anything like Endless Legend (which it appears to be with some simplification) that Roman +3 army limit will be a huge bonus. If you've got a 5 unit cap limit based on your current technology/civics if Rome is at a similar level they'll be rocking up with an 8 unit limit army. Now sure you can have reinforcements but Rome can deploy 8 units into battle at a time with combat apparently being quite lethal according to Eurogamers preview theres a good chance you'll be overwhelmed and your reinforcements will be going into a slaughter.

As others have theorized, this isn't an increase to Army Size, but to your number of Generals. Basically, Persians are better at administering a large empire, Romans are better at having the military presence to defend it.

By the way, anybody else think that you'll be able to transcend as your neolithic tribe allowing for the in-game recreation of that weird, but endearing spacefaring EDM neanderthal as seen in the first trailer?

I'm afraid I have to disappoint you: You won't be able to transcend your neolithic tribe.

@Catoninetales_Amplitude: Can you replace quarters with another one? For example, replace an agrarian one for a trade one. Or once you plop them they stay as they are forever and ever?

We're planning for that to be possible, yes.

But why not say +3 generals then?

Because this is a pre-alpha or early-alpha version, so not all gameplay terms are consistently implemented everywhere, and some may not even be finalized yet.

I am also curious now the game will balance between picking a new civ or keeping the old civ when you move on to the next era. The game should make that an interersting choice for the player. It should be not a no-brainer to always pick a new civ.

"Transcending" your current Culture will give you a permanent trait that increases the fame you gain, so if you are confident you can compete without gaining new bonuses, that can be a potentially strong play to increase your Fame.

@Catoninetales_Amplitude I know that you can convert an outpost into a new city or attach it to neighboring one. Now, my question is, can you attach a CITY to another city? Or once you decide a region it's going to be it's own city that's it?

Yes, that's planned, but would not be available at the start of the game.

Also it would seem there are some civic choices that are purely intended to shift your culture's position on the ideological spectrum - both options give the same bonus, but you choose them for different ideological reasons.

I believe both of them do give +1 Administrator, but there are long-term consequences. Specifically (if I recall correctly), this Civics is the starting point of that branching path you can see on the overview screen, so your choice here determines which choices you get later.

In many of the preview alpha gameplay videos that I've seen, I always hear some small voices coming from the units when they move towards a tile, especially in the early part of the B-roll. Does that mean units will have voiceovers like in RTS games, and will the language of the voices depend on the culture you selected for an era?

We have some unit responses, but as far as I know, we won't be "localizing" them to your current culture (it would be rather difficult to find a Harappan or Olmec voice-actor...)

They clearly also put a lot of thought in the "Random" Events with regard to the UI. Here, the looks do matter a lot. If you don't give the flooding character, it's just text on a wall and a modifier for you to choose from. Better do it right and tell a good story. But... it also means that repetition might be the death of it. I don't have a problem with it though

On the repetition of events, we are aiming to largely avoid this through the trigger conditions of the events. Of course, you will probably see some events in several of your games, but I think the combination of events you get should always feel different.

On this issue, do eras modify how much fame something is worth? For example, do wonders earn more fame in different eras? I ask because I feel like modifying how much fame players can earn at different points in the game could really address this issue by creating early game or late game opportunities to earn more fame, for players who are behind to catch up and just make the "race to fame" more intense. Perhaps things could earn +50% more fame in the last 75 turns of the game. This would create like a finish line sprint where the last 75 turns of the game would be faster in terms of fame earned. It would make the endgame more intense and thus prevent the late game from getting tedious.

I don't think we change the Fame of different actions between Eras (e.g. a wonder is always the same amount), but the Fame for Era Stars declines within an Era, so if another culture snatches a bunch of Era Stars quickly after entering the Contemporary, they may well overtake you if you take a long time to gain yours. And as far as I recall, we also have some late-game Competitive Deeds.

Something I noticed is that when placing a city or quarter you don't get the sum of the yields like in EL. Can you ask for it to be added? It was EXTREMELY great not having to count tile yields.

Sorry, but it is too late for me to ask for this to be added... We already had that preview in the latest dev build I tried. It wasn't in the Press Build, as it is not quite done at the time.

first, congratulations on the summer press tour for Humankind. It seemed to be a huge success and everybody was enthusiastic about the game.
All the previous mentioned that fame system and that you win if you have the most fame after 300 turns. I hope that the turn number is customizable and you can also choose to play just 100 turns or whatever. How about having an option to set the finish line in fame instead of turns? The first player to 2000 fame wins, for example. Or the first player to reach 400 fame and a 30% fame lead wins?

Unfortunately, I can't give you any clear answers on this. Our Game Designers have been discussing various options on how to end the game early.

Humankind seems to be adopting something like this method for 'Civics' in that there is no obvious 'progression' from one Civic to the next. This makes the potential variety within a Faction of Civic and Social 'Policies' even more enormous than I first thought: the same Faction could have a wildly variable Culture and Society as defined by your Civic choices, and some of those choices will effect Production, Gold, and Units - and keep on affecting them even after you change Factions in the next Era.

Now I wonder how many Later choices will act to 'Reverse' earlier Choices. That is, once started down the path of being Anarcho-Fascists, how easy is it to Change Course in the later Eras with later Civic choices? And how many, if any, later choices are absolutely Precluded by your earlier choices?

Some Civics have pre-requisites of other Civics, but most do not. Also, Civics can be revoked or altered under the right circumstances... But more on that Later™.

Exactly: 3 'rounds' of combat in a single turn, and a 'deployment' phase at the beginning where you tweak where your units are after the 'battlefield' spreads out from the map. I'm not sure how much movement you can actually do in that deployment: from the screenshots I saw it looks very limited, and the battlefields aren't that big, at least in the early game and especially if, say, you were fielding an all-cavalry maneuver army of Huns or Goths. I would suspect that the battlefields will get larger as the possible number of units in a 'regiment' get larger.

Battlefields do tend to get larger as the game progresses, but the details of how combat works are for Later™. (I sure get a lot of use out of that alt-code since we started talking about Humankind...)

And as it seems combat will be much less complex compared to EL‘s sophisticated mechanics and options. No free choice of weapons and defenses for each units And no fantasy abilities.

No, there will not be unit customization. Boris has laid out some of the reasons for that quite nicely in this forum before, the difficulties of creating historically authentic units if we allow players to mess around with them. However, I personally think that neither this nor the simpler core combat calculation are detrimental to the depth of the combat, as there are many more interesting inherent unit abilities than in Endless Legend. (The vast number of "more damage against certain unit type" abilities in Endless Legend always felt like one of the biggest weaknesses of the system to myself, as they did not mesh well with the hands-off nature of the system.)

it's almost impossible to eliminate a faction in the first half of the game due to how combat and diplomacy works.

At least that's the goal, but it's sadly not ready to be shown yet.

It is not decided yet if there will be scenarios in the final game, but specific map probably will.

Well, we do have scenarios for the OpenDev. The big question is when and how we integrate the ability to play scenarios, how complex they can become.

1. Almost impossible to eliminate a Faction in the (early game) combined with being able to conquer an Outpost without declaring war sounds like the early game will see a lot more 'short of war' skirmishing for territories/regions not secured by a City but none of the Wars to Destruction Civ sees. An interesting, and very different, view of Ancient/Classical history. I hope that the actual circumstance is that you can conquer another Faction, but it is very hard to keep it conquered - as in Alexander could conquer Persia, but Persia less than 'Era' later and was a going concern in various forms from then on, while Alexander's Empire fell apart into separate Successor States in less than a generation.
That would make for a much more dynamic early game IF that's the way the system works. A simple prohibition or impossibility of a warof conquest only removes options for the player to make mistakes, which IMHO is not as good.

You're able to conquer territory, but the goal is that you cannot outright annex all the territory of another civilization. You might still be able to get your hands on some of their resources by war, though...

Do we know how bad the situation is regarding modding?

Unfortunately, modding is too complex a technical subject for me to be able to give any clear answer on that other than that we've been discussing what is and is not possible.

 

[SupremacyKing2]

First off, sorry to anybody who has been waiting for my reply. I've been quite busy the past few days, as you can probably imagine, given the recent flood of previews. (And as much as I love reading your discussions, I do need breaks and weekends now and then, too. )
Now, let me dig through the various questions.



Space bores you? But there's a hexagon on the north pole of Saturn!


Yes, Civics choices are permanent, unless other events force you to revoke or change a civic (e.g. the cultural influence others have already mentioned.)
And as mentioned in my interview with Writing Bull, we are still experimenting with when and how EQ become unavailable or obsolete. If I recall correctly, in an early version Emblematic Quarters lost their effects and instead provided culture once you added another culture, but that was unsatisfying and did not give you a sense of building your own Civilization. So the specifics of this are not set in stone yet (we think we'll unlock Masonry sometime before 2021... )


As others have theorized, this isn't an increase to Army Size, but to your number of Generals. Basically, Persians are better at administering a large empire, Romans are better at having the military presence to defend it.


I'm afraid I have to disappoint you: You won't be able to transcend your neolithic tribe.


We're planning for that to be possible, yes.


Because this is a pre-alpha or early-alpha version, so not all gameplay terms are consistently implemented everywhere, and some may not even be finalized yet.


"Transcending" your current Culture will give you a permanent trait that increases the fame you gain, so if you are confident you can compete without gaining new bonuses, that can be a potentially strong play to increase your Fame.


Yes, that's planned, but would not be available at the start of the game.


I believe both of them do give +1 Administrator, but there are long-term consequences. Specifically (if I recall correctly), this Civics is the starting point of that branching path you can see on the overview screen, so your choice here determines which choices you get later.


We have some unit responses, but as far as I know, we won't be "localizing" them to your current culture (it would be rather difficult to find a Harappan or Olmec voice-actor...)


On the repetition of events, we are aiming to largely avoid this through the trigger conditions of the events. Of course, you will probably see some events in several of your games, but I think the combination of events you get should always feel different.


I don't think we change the Fame of different actions between Eras (e.g. a wonder is always the same amount), but the Fame for Era Stars declines within an Era, so if another culture snatches a bunch of Era Stars quickly after entering the Contemporary, they may well overtake you if you take a long time to gain yours. And as far as I recall, we also have some late-game Competitive Deeds.


Sorry, but it is too late for me to ask for this to be added... We already had that preview in the latest dev build I tried. It wasn't in the Press Build, as it is not quite done at the time.


Unfortunately, I can't give you any clear answers on this. Our Game Designers have been discussing various options on how to end the game early.


Some Civics have pre-requisites of other Civics, but most do not. Also, Civics can be revoked or altered under the right circumstances... But more on that Later™.


Battlefields do tend to get larger as the game progresses, but the details of how combat works are for Later™. (I sure get a lot of use out of that alt-code since we started talking about Humankind...)


No, there will not be unit customization. Boris has laid out some of the reasons for that quite nicely in this forum before, the difficulties of creating historically authentic units if we allow players to mess around with them. However, I personally think that neither this nor the simpler core combat calculation are detrimental to the depth of the combat, as there are many more interesting inherent unit abilities than in Endless Legend. (The vast number of "more damage against certain unit type" abilities in Endless Legend always felt like one of the biggest weaknesses of the system to myself, as they did not mesh well with the hands-off nature of the system.)


At least that's the goal, but it's sadly not ready to be shown yet.


Well, we do have scenarios for the OpenDev. The big question is when and how we integrate the ability to play scenarios, how complex they can become.


You're able to conquer territory, but the goal is that you cannot outright annex all the territory of another civilization. You might still be able to get your hands on some of their resources by war, though...


Unfortunately, modding is too complex a technical subject for me to be able to give any clear answer on that other than that we've been discussing what is and is not possible.

Thank you so much for answering so many questions. The trait to get more fame if you transcend sounds good.

 

[Elhoim]

We're planning for that to be possible, yes.

Yes, that's planned, but would not be available at the start of the game.

Sorry, but it is too late for me to ask for this to be added... We already had that preview in the latest dev build I tried. It wasn't in the Press Build, as it is not quite done at the time.

You guys are awesome. It really shows you know the kind of game you want to make and play. They seem like minor things, but not being able to do those things with cities would create needless annoyances due to lack of flexibility when playing. Soldier on, Amplitude. The only issue I'll really have with your game is that you will kill all productivity of our studio, everyone here is eagerly waiting for it jajajaja

 

[SupremacyKing2]

@Catoninetales_Amplitude first, congratulations on the summer press tour for Humankind. It seemed to be a huge success and everybody was enthusiastic about the game.
All the previous mentioned that fame system and that you win if you have the most fame after 300 turns. I hope that the turn number is customizable and you can also choose to play just 100 turns or whatever. How about having an option to set the finish line in fame instead of turns? The first player to 2000 fame wins, for example. Or the first player to reach 400 fame and a 30% fame lead wins?

I like the idea of having both rules, first player to X fame wins AND player with the most fame at the end of the game wins. The first rule will prevent late game boredom by ending the game early when there is a clear runaway winner. But in the cases where there is no clear runaway winner, the second rule will serve as a tie breaker by declaring a winner when you do run out of turns.

 

[CivLuvah]

First off, sorry to anybody who has been waiting for my reply. I've been quite busy the past few days, as you can probably imagine, given the recent flood of previews. (And as much as I love reading your discussions, I do need breaks and weekends now and then, too. )
Now, let me dig through the various questions.

Thanks for all your effort!