Humankind Game by Amplitude

[Catoninetales_Amplitude]

No, that was not my intention. We want auto-resolve results to be comparable to fighting out the battles, not better.

We want to avoid situations like picking auto-resolve for a one-sided battle, and you still come out losing a unit or two. (I remember in early versions of Planetfall you would sometimes lose healthy units in battles labeled "safe" when you autoresolved.) And EL players will know the pain of having a lone scout who is fast enough they could kite around the battlefield for 6 turns and survive, but the autoresolve smashes them face-first into the walking wall of crystals and kills them...
But we also want to avoid situations where the auto-resolve option is exploitable. E.g. I think some total war titles had issues with archers being valued extremely highly by the autoresolution, so autoresolving would let you win extremely difficult battles with minimal casualties. (See also SpiffingBrit's "Rome 2 autoresolve only" challenge.)

A small mistake in the resolution algorithm can potentially turn into a huge problem and intense player frustration.

 

[SupremacyKing2]

I agree on that. Even I don't play out all the battles in Endless Legend and Endless Space 2, and I am a staunch defender of the core concept of these systems (even as I keep rambling about some of the implementation...)
We do already have automation. The trickier part is the "quick resolution," as it needs to be fast, but also feel accurate to the player. We want to avoid any feelings of "I should not have clicked autoresolve, I would have done better" as much as possible (and on the flipside, avoid the "autoresolve doomstack" that I have heard of in some games were certain unit types did disproportionally well in autoresolved battles.)

Good to know you are thinking about these issues.

I think the key is transparency. Give the player enough information on how auto resolve works and what happened in combat. For example, unit A dealt 10 damage, unit B dealt 13 damage etc... Defender got +20% defense from forest. There is nothing worse than a game mechanic that is a black box where the player does not understand how it works. You definitely don't want auto resolve combat to be a black box where the player has no idea how it works.

If the players knows how auto resolve works and knows what probable outcomes to expect, then they can make an informed decision on whether to skip manual combat or not.

I don't think auto resolve should ever give you a better result than manual combat because then there would be every incentive to always skip manual combat. You never want to encourage the player to skip an entire game mechanic.

But I am ok with auto resolve giving you similar or sometimes worse result than manual combat. Manual combat is like you personally taking charge of the battle. Auto resolve is like trusting one of your generals to handle the battle for you. Maybe your general is not as good as you on the battlefield. If it's a pivotal battle that you really care about winning, then you can take charge of it yourself. So maybe battles where you have a very strong advantage, you could use auto resolve because you don't want to waste time with a battle you know you can't lose. But the price of that decision might be losing a bit more troops than if you had personally done manual combat. But battles that are very equal in strength, the player would probably want to do manual combat to try to edge out a victory.

 

[mitsho]

Autoplay would also be an interesting tutorial option, showing a new player how battles go and assuring the veterans that the auto-resolve makes sense (transparency).

 

[Catoninetales_Amplitude]

I think the key is transparency. Give the player enough information on how auto resolve works and what happened in combat. For example, unit A dealt 10 damage, unit B dealt 13 damage etc... Defender got +20% defense from forest. There is nothing worse than a game mechanic that is a black box where the player does not understand how it works. You definitely don't want auto resolve combat to be a black box where the player has no idea how it works.

Our current automation plays the battle out in full on the map and you can take back over at any point during your combat round. Unfortunately, while it allows you to not command the battles yourself, it doesn't really speed up the resolution, which is why we need a quicker "off-map" solution that doesn't unfold in its entirety on the strategic map.

 

[tedhebert]

I agree on that. Even I don't play out all the battles in Endless Legend and Endless Space 2, and I am a staunch defender of the core concept of these systems (even as I keep rambling about some of the implementation...)
We do already have automation. The trickier part is the "quick resolution," as it needs to be fast, but also feel accurate to the player. We want to avoid any feelings of "I should not have clicked autoresolve, I would have done better" as much as possible (and on the flipside, avoid the "autoresolve doomstack" that I have heard of in some games were certain unit types did disproportionally well in autoresolved battles.)

No, that was not my intention. We want auto-resolve results to be comparable to fighting out the battles, not better.

We want to avoid situations like picking auto-resolve for a one-sided battle, and you still come out losing a unit or two. (I remember in early versions of Planetfall you would sometimes lose healthy units in battles labeled "safe" when you autoresolved.) And EL players will know the pain of having a lone scout who is fast enough they could kite around the battlefield for 6 turns and survive, but the autoresolve smashes them face-first into the walking wall of crystals and kills them...
But we also want to avoid situations where the auto-resolve option is exploitable. E.g. I think some total war titles had issues with archers being valued extremely highly by the autoresolution, so autoresolving would let you win extremely difficult battles with minimal casualties. (See also SpiffingBrit's "Rome 2 autoresolve only" challenge.)

A small mistake in the resolution algorithm can potentially turn into a huge problem and intense player frustration.

So glad to read things like this ! It's really fascinating to be allowed some small glimpses of all that goes into the thinking of every little aspect of a game this magnitude from those on the inside ! Thx again @Catoninetales_Amplitude for the efforts you put in for us here at Civfanatics,,, really appreciated

 

[Elhoim]

We want to avoid situations like picking auto-resolve for a one-sided battle, and you still come out losing a unit or two. (I remember in early versions of Planetfall you would sometimes lose healthy units in battles labeled "safe" when you autoresolved.) And EL players will know the pain of having a lone scout who is fast enough they could kite around the battlefield for 6 turns and survive, but the autoresolve smashes them face-first into the walking wall of crystals and kills them...
But we also want to avoid situations where the auto-resolve option is exploitable. E.g. I think some total war titles had issues with archers being valued extremely highly by the autoresolution, so autoresolving would let you win extremely difficult battles with minimal casualties. (See also SpiffingBrit's "Rome 2 autoresolve only" challenge.)

A small mistake in the resolution algorithm can potentially turn into a huge problem and intense player frustration.

I think the key is transparency. Give the player enough information on how auto resolve works and what happened in combat. For example, unit A dealt 10 damage, unit B dealt 13 damage etc... Defender got +20% defense from forest. There is nothing worse than a game mechanic that is a black box where the player does not understand how it works. You definitely don't want auto resolve combat to be a black box where the player has no idea how it works.

If the players knows how auto resolve works and knows what probable outcomes to expect, then they can make an informed decision on whether to skip manual combat or not.

But I am ok with auto resolve giving you similar or sometimes worse result than manual combat. Manual combat is like you personally taking charge of the battle. Auto resolve is like trusting one of your generals to handle the battle for you. Maybe your general is not as good as you on the battlefield. If it's a pivotal battle that you really care about winning, then you can take charge of it yourself. So maybe battles where you have a very strong advantage, you could use auto resolve because you don't want to waste time with a battle you know you can't lose. But the price of that decision might be losing a bit more troops than if you had personally done manual combat. But battles that are very equal in strength, the player would probably want to do manual combat to try to edge out a victory.

Yeah, ideally it should be:

- If a battle is extremely one-sided on the prediction, I use autoresolve, and as you guys said, I expect not to lose any unit.
- If a battle is balanced, the player skill should definitely be able to make a difference.
- If a battle is extremely hard, player skill should lessen the losses, but I believe not outright winning.

Our current automation plays the battle out in full on the map and you can take back over at any point during your combat round. Unfortunately, while it allows you to not command the battles yourself, it doesn't really speed up the resolution, which is why we need a quicker "off-map" solution that doesn't unfold in its entirety on the strategic map.

@Catoninetales_Amplitude : This made me recall something about EL. How is animation speed handled in Humankind? I recall having to select it on game creation in EL, which was odd. I guess it's because not giving an unfair advantage on manipulating the animation speed mid turn? In any case, it's similarly handled here?

 

[Catoninetales_Amplitude]

If I recall correctly, it's an option in the settings now, not during game setup.

 

[CivLuvah]

Imgur album updated to include the Aztecs:

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

 

[Siptah]

@Catoninetales_Amplitude do you continue the reveals over the summer or take a French August?

 

[Shadowhal]

Some thoughts on combat resolution.

Age of Wonders: Planetfall has an interesting feature called "combat retry". Basically, you auto-resolve battles (you don't need to watch, you get results instantly). If you don't like the results, you can replay the battle manually. That gives an incentive to automate lesser battles and focus on those that matter. The obvious problem is that it's prone to abuse. You can always try auto-resolve and mitigate the negatives by fighting those battles where the RNG turned against you. AoW addressed this via combat cards - you could only re-try a certain number of battles over some turns.

While they didn't go the whole hog in activating that also for battles where you never tried auto-combat (against the AI; I think it does apply for MP). But the concept is interesting. There is a limited number of battles you might fight manually, the rest you need to rely on auto-resolve. It's your strategic decision which ones to fight out. That would be especially interesting, if stretched over a few turns, i.e. you need to consider the potential need to fight the next turn or the turn after.


A slightly different take on this would be to only allow manual control under certain circumstances, e.g. if the army is led by a general. Some youtubers posted that the combat system actually works like that now. Not sure about the details. Maybe you can move (and fight?) individual units, but can only form multi-unit armies by deploying generals. If these are a limited resources and need to balanced with city governors, I think that would result in some interesting decision-making.


Other that that, I look forward to finding out more about combat and how different weapon types shake things up over the eras. Keep it up!

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

I'm excited that next week starts Early Modern culture reveals.

 

[Krajzen]

I'm excited that next week starts Early Modern culture reveals.

Here's my shot at them.

Dutch - merchant
Iroquis - merchant / Inca - agrarian
Joseon - scientist
Kongo - aestethe / Songhai - exp
Ming - builder or merchant
Mughals - builder or aestethe
Ottomans - expansionist
Poland - agrarian
Spain - expansionist
Tokugawa - militarist

I'd love Dutch being scientist (they were brilliant in this era and hey, its early modern, time for some scientific European ) and Joseon for once not being overrated in this regard but oh well.

I'd also love this era having Italy in some form, Austria and Safavids.

 

[Catoninetales_Amplitude]

@Catoninetales_Amplitude do you continue the reveals over the summer or take a French August?

I'm pretty sure the plan is to keep going without interruption.

 

[Prester John 2]

Here's my shot at them.

Dutch - merchant
Iroquis - merchant / Inca - agrarian
Joseon - scientist
Kongo - aestethe / Songhai - exp
Ming - builder or merchant
Mughals - builder or aestethe
Ottomans - expansionist
Poland - agrarian
Spain - expansionist
Tokugawa - militarist

I'd love Dutch being scientist (they were brilliant in this era and hey, its early modern, time for some scientific European ) and Joseon for once not being overrated in this regard but oh well.

I'd also love this era having Italy in some form, Austria and Safavids.

This is my only problem with the Humankind approach of cultural change. It seems reasonable to me that in the earlier eras the number of cultures is limited. But at least starting in the early modern era there are so many cultures synchronically that its very hard to limit their number to ten. They also cover more terrain. As essential cultures in the early modern period I would count:
Spain
Ottomans
Mughals
Qing
Russia
Netherlands
France
Sweden
Safavids
England (rising)
Japan

 

[Krajzen]

This is my only problem with the Humankind approach of cultural change. It seems reasonable to me that in the earlier eras the number of cultures is limited. But at least starting in the early modern era there are so many cultures synchronically that its very hard to limit their number to ten. They also cover more terrain.

I'm sorry but, how to put it, I find your reasoning surprising. It's objectively exactly opposite, it is medieval era which is crazy overflowing with cultures while the later you go the LESS cultures you get. I'm surprised you didn't notice that, and yet you have noticed they cover more terrain in later eras - well damn, there are only few big empires left after centuries of conquest, and they killed off countless others, that's why they are so big

The more cultures the later you go? Diseases and conquistadors annihilate natives in Americas, and we are left with no cultures in Andes and Mesoamerica where you could conjure like a dozen of them before. Africa and almost entire Asia is either colonized in later eras or reduced to irrelevance and dependency. And an entire Europe in 19th century is a playground of Great Britain, France, Russia, Austro - Hungary, Prussia (Germany) and barely uniting Italy. That's it. Six cultures in 19th century cover Europe, unless you want to be desperate and include backwards and pathetic by then Spain and Ottomans, or insignificant small countries such as Sweden. Six important powers, two big dead men and few minors which will be necessary anyway (I could accept Sweden, Swiss and Belgium as industrial cultures, for their cultural advances even if they were utterly politically unimportant). Let's round this up to like 10 European cultures covering entire industrial era - but the problem is, most of these can be used in other eras as well.

Meanwhile let me, out of memory, count medieval cultures that were not just barely existing (like Spain in 19th century) but mattering and having periods of immense political/cultural power in the medieval Europe:

Spoiler :

Umayyads, Moors, Portugal, Castille, Aragon, Asturias, Franks, French, Burgundians, Flemish, Anglo - Saxons, England, Welsh, Scotland, Irish, Swiss, Teutons, I'll mercifully treat HRE as one entity here lol, Norse, Danish, Norwegians, Venetians, Goths, Lombards, Sicilians, Normans, Hungarians, Bohemia, Poland, Slavs (blob), Kievan Rus, Lithuanians, Novgorod, Muscovy (duchy), Huns, Serbia, Bulgarians, Byzantium...

40 cultures. That's without doing dynastic hair splitting, dividing HRE, or including many more questionably powerful entities (Avars, Croatia, Wallachia, Sweden which was real backwater back then, and so on).

Before industrial era you could also conjure at least 20 separate cultures out of Indian subcontinent alone

I could also list like 20 major medieval islamic empires, on the area which by the year 1550 was limited only to Ottomans, Safavids, Mughals and Morocco, and by the 1800 all of these countries were dead or stagnant.

To make matters worse, most of these medieval cultures can be used only in the medieval era, while most of industrial and modern cultures can be used in many eras. That's one of reasons I'd support splitting medieval in Early Medieval/Migration Age and Medieval Age.

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

Spain
Ottomans
Mughals
Qing
Russia
Netherlands
France
Sweden
Safavids
England (rising)
Japan

The English won't appear because they were put in the medieval era.
I think French will sit out too and wait until the Industrial era based around Napoleonic France.
I'm pretty sure you mean the Ming instead of Qing which I believe we are getting.
I can also see Russia getting pushed back to the Industrial if they base it around more around Catherine the Great's time period.

 

[Elhoim]

Yeah, England will appear again at industrial (as Great Britain) IMO. It's definitely iconic there, with the industrial revolution.

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

Yeah, England will appear again at industrial (as Great Britain) IMO. It's definitely iconic there, with the industrial revolution.

Yes I forgot to mention that. Industrial Era as the British is certainly a guarantee alongside the French (Napoleonic Era).

 

[CivLuvah]

This is my only problem with the Humankind approach of cultural change. It seems reasonable to me that in the earlier eras the number of cultures is limited. But at least starting in the early modern era there are so many cultures synchronically that its very hard to limit their number to ten. They also cover more terrain. As essential cultures in the early modern period I would count:
Spain
Ottomans
Mughals
Qing
Russia
Netherlands
France
Sweden
Safavids
England (rising)
Japan

Well, there will always DLCs and mods, which I'm sure people will make for this game.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

Well, there will always DLCs and mods, which I'm sure people will make for this game.

Given that Humankind does not require any graphically-challenging animated Leaders for new Factions, then depending on the amount and type of Mod Support released with the game, I'm hoping for a flood of Modded 'Factions' after the game releases.

Mind you, they might be alternatives rather than additions, because increasing the number of Factions per Era might be more difficult, depending on how much is hard coded about Fame generation per Era and map size requirements per Faction.