Humankind Game by Amplitude

[Boris Gudenuf]

Not a tank nut, but these tanks model looks like WWII or early Cold War tanks, and PRC tanks around the time usually has a domed turret that looks like an upside-down Chinese frying pan. These tank models look nothing like PRC tanks.

To me the in-game tank model looks like Tiger I but with its turret backwards. Anyway, we may need to consult @Boris Gudenuf on this case.

Both the tanks and the towed antitank gun to the right of the ones in front appear to be 'artist's conceptions' not specifically modeled on actual vehicles.
The tank turrets most closely resemble the 'conical turret' used on late-model versions of the Soviet T-26 and BT-7 tanks of the late 1930s, but with a commander's cupola on top, which no Soviet medium or light tank had until 1943. The sloping front hull with a vertical bulge where the driver (presumably) sits is like nothing I can find on any tank built since 1940.

The towed guns at a glance resemble the 75mm guns used towards the end of WWII, but none of the historical guns - the German 7.5cm Pak 41, the Soviet ZiS-3, the American M5, nor the British 17-lber, had a trapezoidal top to the gun shield - all had flat-topped shields.

The infantry also appears to be 'generic', although saying they definitely aren't PRC is harder: up until the 1960s the PRC was still equipped with a great deal of 'hand-me-down' Soviet and Japanese material from the 1940s so there was a near-bewildering variety to PRC infantry until about 8 - 10 years after the Korean War.

On the other hand, no one has said anything about the ships bearing down on the coast:
The angled-deck aircraft carrier is a post-WWII design first used by the Royal Navy.
The battleship to the right of the carrier is configured with main guns in 4 turrets, 2 aft and 2 forward with 2 guns each, which is a typical British or German design, not Japanese or American.
The smaller ship is, relative to the carrier or the battleship, too big to be a Destroyer, but appears in any case to be another post-WWII design: it has what looks like a helicopter pad aft of the superstructure and what looks very much like a cruise missile or other missile installation in front of the superstructure, which would appear to make it siilar to 'missile frigates' or 'missile cruisers' of no earlier than the late 1960s . . .

And note the landing craft at the top left: Humankind may be giving us a taste of the real expense of modern amphibious landings, which require special purpose landing craft and landing ships of all kinds

 

[Lonecat Nekophrodite]

Can a tank nut identify the Chinese tanks in the screenshot? (if they are real tanks)

I'm curious if the modern era will have unique models for vehicles where possible I'd be very impressed if the game had a couple of different models for things like tanks to have some variety.

Also I thought the Empire State building looking district was the American city centre but here its part of Beijing, unless it was conquered from America and incorporated into Beijing? Or its just for the sake of this screenshot.

1. Tank shown here appears to be Pz6 Tiger. This tank model is so popular due to their wartime legends (or dev team think everyone is gettin' sick with Shermans being over presented in 4X games, Actually why didn't use Chaffee or Bulldog tank instead??)
2. What the devteam called a big warship? Cruiser or Battleship? again it looks like 1915s BBs, Dreadnoughts without wing turrets, four main battery, each has two 20 or 30 cm main guns. Something like an Austrian dreadnought of WW1 or Four Japanese Early Dreads (Something like Ise class Dreads).
Eventually Japan did follow American approaches when desigining Superdreadnoughts. which eventually culminated into something like Iowa or Yamato

3. AA appears to be separate unit rather than stacking support unit. Actually it should be technical upgrades like what @Boris Gudenuf proposes.
4. On a city of Beijing. this game now has correct toning marks resemble actual Hanyu Pinyin (漢語拼音)

 

[FinalDoomsday]

I'll actually mildly disagree; I wouldn't mind having one model per unit, for clarity's sake. I may not easily recognise dozens of different unit models as being one and the same unit, unless the unit itself is very distinct (e.g. contrast a tank with an infantry unit).

I understand your point but I doubt the game has a large variety of infantry types you would need to tell apart. Maybe theres a machine gun and anti-tank unit which will be easily told apart by the large weapons they carry. As long as the silhouettes are clear it shouldent matter what headgear or combat dress is being worn, it will always be a guy with a rifle.

It would be nice if there were some broad unit groups for the final era like NATO/US style uniforms and Soviet/Chinese for example.

 

[need my speed]

As long as the silhouettes are clear

Exactly. If the model is (99%) the same, with only a different skin (that still preserves some generic details, perhaps), that should work perfectly fine. I was more thinking of classical or medieval units, that may not be so easily readable. We'll see, I'm pretty sure it'll be all fine anyway.

 

[notNamed]

=And note the landing craft at the top left: Humankind may be giving us a taste of the real expense of modern amphibious landings, which require special purpose landing craft and landing ships of all kinds

The landing ships are just a continuation of the transport ship line. A special unit all of your land units turn into when they get on water. They are not buildable, nor cost anything.
This unit even has emblematic versions (Longboat and Fluyt are both emblematic transport ships).

The vehicles are generic mish-mashes of hardware to fit no nation in particular, IMO.
We have asked about culture-specific vehicle versions in the past (since all the infantry and cavalry units are unique, but ships are all shared) and the official response was that the art team would love to differentiate them, but it wasn't decided upon yet. The screenshots no longer have the Pre-Alpha tag and we can see this mix-y tank both in the Chinese army and in another shot besides mostly western-looking mixture of a modern MBT, it is reasonable to assume they will be shared by all sides.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

The landing ships are just a continuation of the transport ship line. A special unit all of your land units turn into when they get on water. They are not buildable, nor cost anything.
This unit even has emblematic versions (Longboat and Fluyt are both emblematic transport ships).

The vehicles are generic mish-mashes of hardware to fit no nation in particular, IMO.
We have asked about culture-specific vehicle versions in the past (since all the infantry and cavalry units are unique, but ships are all shared) and the official response was that the art team would love to differentiate them, but it wasn't decided upon yet. The screenshots no longer have the Pre-Alpha tag and we can see this mix-y tank both in the Chinese army and in another shot besides mostly western-looking mixture of a modern MBT, it is reasonable to assume they will be shared by all sides.

Sigh. I knew they had a 'transport line' that included the Fluyt and Longboat, hadn't realized they'd extended it to 'generic landing craft'. That's really a shame, because it perpetuates Civ VI's mistake in overlooking the enormous Resource and Technology requirements to design and build the specialized craft required for a modern amphibious operation.

And I suspect the Pre-Alpha tag is gone because they have largely finalized the graphics of the game and are now looking to 'tweak' numbers and factors rather than introduce any major new mechanics, units, buildings, etc. In fact, I'd bet the OpenDev game being offered in a few days is designed to get more feedback on the 'finalized' graphics and potential balance issues with the numbers.

 

[FinalDoomsday]

Isn't one of the main reasons Civ and other games went with the magical transport ships to make it easier for the AI to conduct overseas attacks? As a dumb child one of the simplest ways to improve my odds at beating the computer in many strategy games was to pick a water map! Games like Troy:Total War featured very simple embarking mechanics but it at least means the AI can legitimately threaten your islands.

There is definitly things they could do though to make moving troops over water a costly endeavour maybe increased upkeep or so many turns to build the ships on the coast (or rush with gold?)

 

[need my speed]

That's really a shame, because it perpetuates Civ VI's mistake in overlooking the enormous Resource and Technology requirements to design and build the specialized craft required for a modern amphibious operation.

I very much disagree. From a gameplay perspective, there is no fun in needing to build transport ship, and getting units into such a ship is always a logistical hassle. Further, as FinalDoomsday says, the AI is also worse at handling this than the human player. In my opinion, there is zero reason for including transport ships as a separate unit.

 

[notNamed]

In my opinion, there is zero reason for including transport ships as a separate unit.

It depends on the game. Rome 2 infamously gave you the ability to spawn perfectly capable super-navies at the drop of a hat (faster, in fact, than building a "real" navy) since the transport ships were very capable on their own and basically always enjoyed numerical advantage. Likewise, Three Kingdoms has had multiple issues with the large rivers separating northern and southern China, which made for historically very significant obstacles, but only allow various unintentional shenanigans. In cases like those, a well developed transportation system would be beneficial.
However, in other games, they are at best a dead weight (no one has ever used the transport ships in AoE games in a real match and even the developers caught on and excluded their need from later campaigns) or worse an annoyance with no real purpose (the case for most 4X games, IMO) since the water/sea gameplay is really just added to make the maps look believable.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

One possibility to avoid the complexity of separate Specialized Transports might be to make an Amphibious Promotion (as in Civ VI) more expensive. As I see it, that promotion implies the specialized landing craft/ships we are talking about, so, perhaps doubling the maintenance cost and adding, say, an extra Oil resource requirement (representing lots of transports burning lots of fuel) would be a 'quick and dirty' way to indicate that concentrating on Amphibious Warfare is going to cost you and you'd better have a very good reason for doing it.

I don't remember ever seeing a list of late-game units for Humankind. Can someone tell us if they have specific Amphibious Units ("Marines") or in fact any indication of the specialized nature and cost of amphibious warfare?

 

[notNamed]

One possibility to avoid the complexity of separate Specialized Transports might be to make an Amphibious Promotion (as in Civ VI) more expensive. As I see it, that promotion implies the specialized landing craft/ships we are talking about, so, perhaps doubling the maintenance cost and adding, say, an extra Oil resource requirement (representing lots of transports burning lots of fuel) would be a 'quick and dirty' way to indicate that concentrating on Amphibious Warfare is going to cost you and you'd better have a very good reason for doing it.

I don't remember ever seeing a list of late-game units for Humankind. Can someone tell us if they have specific Amphibious Units ("Marines") or in fact any indication of the specialized nature and cost of amphibious warfare?

We don't have a full picture yet, just the analysis of the unit trees from the preorder posters. Though the info from those as well as earlier developer responses were clear on the no separately built transport unit front, units which do interact favorably with water like Marines, Navy Seals or amphibious vehicles have not been deconfirmed as of yet.

 

[FinalDoomsday]

With rivers playing such a huge part of tactical battles having amphibious vehicles or infantry that ignore river movement and/or combat penalties could be very powerful.

I'm interested to see how modern combat plays out since all units will be ranged in some form.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

With rivers playing such a huge part of tactical battles having amphibious vehicles or infantry that ignore river movement and/or combat penalties could be very powerful.

I'm interested to see how modern combat plays out since all units will be ranged in some form.

Theoretically ranged, but I suspect the 'melee' or close combat effect will still be a primary one for the basic ground combat. For one thing, they have already admitted that in the late game ranged units like Artillery will be able to 'join' the battle from outside the battlefield tile, which implies to me that most of the Ranged Effects will come from much more powerful long-range units like Artillery, Rockets, and Air Power. That's completely realistic, but I am very interested to see what mechanism they will use to control those off-battle tile effects. Historically, most armies had to pre-plan artillery support until the development of the Fire Direction Center in the US Army, so having you designate long-range units to support a stack/army would be appropriate for most Factions until the very last Era of the game

 

[Catoninetales_Amplitude]

As I understand it though, to get to play the Lucy OpenDev you have to have pre-ordered the game.

will this be available for MacOS users as well?

Because of the last opendev, I have a question, does this opendev require internet connection as well?

For clarity:
You can access the OpenDev through pre-ordering or Twitch Drops.
You should still get access if you pre-order after the OpenDev begins.
More details on the Twitch Drops will be released when OpenDev begins, including a list of participating streamers.
This OpenDev runs through Steam, so you don't nee a permanent internet connection as you did with Stadia.
Unfortunately, the MacOS version is not ready to be played yet.

Can a tank nut identify the Chinese tanks in the screenshot? (if they are real tanks)

I talked to the artists, and can confirm this is just a mix of features from different tanks. (Though I didn't request a detailed list.)

Theoretically ranged, but I suspect the 'melee' or close combat effect will still be a primary one for the basic ground combat.

In practice, too. From the Industrial Era onward, all the generic units are ranged units (with at least four tiles range in combat, if I recall correctly).

 

[FinalDoomsday]

For clarity:

I talked to the artists, and can confirm this is just a mix of features from different tanks. (Though I didn't request a detailed list.)


In practice, too. From the Industrial Era onward, all the generic units are ranged units (with at least four tiles range in combat, if I recall correctly).

That's cool I was just curious as I did not recognise it!

I suspected all generic units would be ranged in contempoary as you made the Musketeer or Gunner a ranged unit when thats been normally depicted as a 'melee' unit in this type of game I think it will help make later era combat feel a lot different from early which is going to be interesting.

 

[Catoninetales_Amplitude]

In my opinion, it does have quite the impact on field battles, but even more so on siege battles. It's easy to forget, but city tiles provide a strong defensive bonus against ranged attacks, so Arquebusiers, Musketmen, Line Infatry... It can be quite difficult to dislodge defenders in a city using only "standard" ranged units.

 

[Ondolindë]

For clarity:

Unfortunately, the MacOS version is not ready to be played yet.

That is sad news indeed. I would ask then that the wording on Steam, Games2Gether, etc, be changed because it says that anyone who bought the game already could give it a try. That is not very honest and I know of one MacOS-user friend who bought the game thinking that this was going to be possible.

 

[Krajzen]

Thank God for the changed English image, the previous one was very lame. The new one is perfect.

It is actually slightly uncanny, as it is EXACTLY the kind of English image I was desiring.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

That is sad news indeed. I would ask then that the wording on Steam, Games2Gether, etc, be changed because it says that anyone who bought the game already could give it a try. That is not very honest and I know of one MacOS-user friend who bought the game thinking that this was going to be possible.

Given that the other Endless games from Amplitude are available on the Mac, I have assumed that it will be available on release on that platform.

But, when it was first announced, I also put a Windows partition on my Mac so I could play any preliminary versions, because, alas, I also assumed any development work would be strictly Windows and not available on the Mac. Sad to see I was correct, but at least I have been able to play the OpenDev versions before Launch.

 

[Catoninetales_Amplitude]

That is sad news indeed. I would ask then that the wording on Steam, Games2Gether, etc, be changed because it says that anyone who bought the game already could give it a try. That is not very honest and I know of one MacOS-user friend who bought the game thinking that this was going to be possible.

I will change it when I have a moment, and make sure the OpenDev Release blog is clear on that matter. Dishonesty is far from my intention. When I wrote the blog, I did not remember to specifically ask the producers about the Mac version. I had heard we have a running version not long ago, but I guess it was not stable enough for public consumption.

It is actually slightly uncanny, as it is EXACTLY the kind of English image I was desiring.

That's not uncanny, that's our artists actually reading the discussions on G2G and here.