Humankind Game by Amplitude

Do you have any impressions regarding my other question, about whether it will be a challenge to prevent an empire from splintering? If not, I understand, I have the feeling, as was indicated earlier, that the average player has less of an apatite for challenges than I do, which is fine. Eventually, mods will probably come out to satisfy these sorts of niche tastes.

 

Honestly, in 4X genre in which the same continuous military units last for centuries and millenias, where a random stroll around nation's borders lasts decades... Supply system doesn't really fit this scale of abstraction. If you trace unit's supply route, you should also trace the way it replenishes troops, and how it maintains experience levels and combat prowess, and morale... and at some point things need to be abstracted.


What is needed is "major military campaign happens" and "major military campaign fails or succeeds because of major qualities of each civilization + local geopolitics + broad strategy". It is not really the scale of impactful weather, ammunition, food, warm clothing, disease, tired horses, freezing engines, vehicles stuck in mud, inefficient command structure, too few radios, bickering between generals, a traitor opening the gates, mind games etc.

Supplies in a game like this (with a lot of exploration of neutral lands, jungles, deserts, seas) would also bring too much frustration.

 

I have not looked at every video released so far but have played games in the Lucy Open Dev and another, earlier version of the Pre-Alpha game - which means that everything may have been changed by now. But I have not seen anything that indicates any mechanism for a Faction losing cities to 'break away' or independence. There are some non-combat means for another Faction to take territory away from you - the Expansionist Factions I think can take an Outpost away from you with Influence or Money or some other currency. And there is the Influence 'currency' in the game itself, which I would think would be a potential way to break down a Faction: if a neighboring Faction/Civ has more Influence on one of your cities than you do, I would think that might lead to a situation where that city 'breaks away' - but I haven't actually seen anything like that up to now.
Among the many reasons I'm looking forward to what, they've hinted, is a new Open Dev next week . . .

 

I THINK I saw in the previous Open Dev the AI losing some territory to rebels, so it might happen the same to the player.

 

I agree, in my ideal game, Wars act like the battles do in Humankind. It starts, the battle happens with the current available units (turn 1). You have time in your turn to rush units or bring in an ally (turn 2). They have time to react (turn 3) and as soon as next turn is pressed now, you go to a peace treaty screen where it is determined how much land you lose/gain. Maybe even two turns are enough but in the intermediate time, no land changes hand. It‘s not the battles that need to be on a separate tactical screen, it‘s the whole wars. (Personal opinion - I‘ll enjoy Humankind regardless )

 

There is a mechanic, when the Stability of a territory is too low, the territory will rebel into an IP territory, and controlled by a new IP named after the major faction.

 

In Lucy the stability system did not seems to work, like you lose 5 stability per quarter but commons quarters which instead get +5 stability from being adjacent to other quarters, including other conmons quarters made stability completely trivial. You could also gain stability by placing armies in your quarters but I don't remember how much stability a unit gave. It was hardly clear what parts of the game stability impacted

In Endless legend happiness is which is the closest equivalent is much less trivial and feels more meaningful, it also work on both a city and an empire level, city level determin production of local resources, food and industry as well how easy espionage is against the city. Empire happiness which is based on average happiness of all cities determin production of global resources, dust and science.

Happiness is reduced by number of cities owned and expanding cities with quarters, but you can level up quarters by placing enough quarters adjcent to it and an upgraded quarters produce happiness instead of reducing it. It feels like a much more complete system than the stability system we saw in Lucy open dev. In fact just copying it may not be a bad idea.

Administrators, I'm not sure what was the point of these, I get the idea they want to limit how many good cities you can have, thus encourage merging cities. But the only thing I saw them do was to reduce the food needed and maybe give a small stability buff. Again endless legend allow for heroes to be governors who can add various bonuses, such as making population more productive, that feels meaningful.

 

This is something Civ has desperately needed for ages, and which cannot be implemented due to the lack of leaders for such emergent factions. At least that's my explanation for the lack of such major feature.

 

Imgur album updated to include the Australians:
https://imgur.com/a/4cPjGSY

 

Played about 40 turns of new open dev and the differences are huge, generally the game is much slower and less snowballing.

Neolithic era give you less resources and combat seems harder, also outpost no longer give influence, making the exponentional growth overall less of an issue. Founding cities now need influence, 160 for the second city is alot given at that point your influence rate is maybe as low as 5 per turn, getting a religion as early as possible is probably the first major goal, a religion is atleast 5 influence per turn and can become much more. Overall your ability to expand and get cities seems to have been greatly reduced compared to Lucy.

Population growth seems to be much slower, now it is directly based on your food production, however a population need 6 food and a basic farmer produce 6 food, meaning at early game your farmers can only maintain the growth rate, not improve it.

AI seems far more capable, playing on the humankind difficulty and the ai is advancing quickly. You no longer seems to be able to simply destroy outposts, it cost influence to ransack them for some reason, atleast if they are on neolithic era.

The difference is roughly so that before I could maybe reach early modern era around 40-50 turns, now I have not been able to reach classical era in that timeframe, but I suspect I can do better once I get used to the differences.

 

I think somewhere they said that the Optimal Game Length was about 350 turns, or about 50 turns per Era plus the Neolithic (which in my experience in past Open Dev shouldn't take more than 8 - 13 turns), which seems to indicate, if you are spending 40 - 50 turns in Ancient Era, that the game is approaching their desired Pace. That's really good to see given how late it is in the Development Cycle.

 

Those sound like good changes to the pacing. It made it really difficult to actually evaluate other parts of the game during Lucy.

 

The main slowdowns is pop growth is slower, cities cost influence to found and that cost increase per city you already have, so no more 1 city per territory, attachment is much cheaper (but give little compared to another city), also research cost seems dramatically higher. Add in the removal of outpost influence and slower neolithic and the game speed is maybe 1/3 of the speed in early game and maybe 10 times slower by later game due to reducing snowballing, getting through the eras do take time and the ai seems to keep up in fame, expansion and other stuff and it do field armies and one ai conquered another more or less completely and in combat it try to use things like terrain to its advantage, animals not so much.

There are still some issues I can see. Some infrastructure is pretty bad, tax office for example give just 3 gold, should give like +1 or +2 gold per population, all influence infrastructure just give a flat amount to city center, influence is however much more valuable and harder to produce than gold. District cost inflation make multi territorial cities feel a bit lackluster, the cities I have end up with most territories looking about as developed as they did as outposts, only quarters I build in those is like emblematic (due to 1 per territory limit) it also work strange with habours, for some reason an outpost can build an harbour for a small amount of production, which become a massive cost once attached. I suspect the idea is attached territories are ment to be filled with hamlets to exploit them as much as possible for as little cost.

More cities seems to be pretty much better than larger cities, but it is reflected in the costs, found a city is much more expensive in terms of influence and there is a city limit now. More cities mean cheaper districts and more population. Population is the most valuable resource in the game, your ability to produce armies is pretty much how fast you can grow your population and population can also be sacrificed for a huge amount of production, in fact I have built many quarters with just sacrificing my population.

I would suggest making limited quarters such as harbours and emblematic have fixed costs while the spamable quarters cost should work like now. Market quarter infrastructure should give more gold for being next to market quarters, right now they still are tied to agriculture quarters even though the base values of market quarter is now tied to being next to other market quarters, like how all other spamable quarters works, except like the garrison. The garrison could need a buff, like make all units in it cost half upkeep or something, right now it don't feel that worthwhile to build.

Militarist and expansionist and asthete affinities should get some passive ability as all other affinites have a passive ability. Militarist I would give +5 stability per garrisoned unit. Expansionist could get more war support for territories under their culture influence and asthete could get more stability from territories under their influence.

 

Two quick comments on Victor Opendev, as it is said that this Opendev is focusing on naval battles and developments:

- Early Modern naval units still seem to have just 2 range. In a world which a musketeer can have 4 range, a ship with cannons only have 2 range is a little bit absurd.
- It also seems that you now cannot build a Harbor far away from City Center and then build other quarters next to the Harbor. This change would discourage the player to develop the coastline (since you now need more investment to build your quarters to coastlines), and made naval units partly lost their importance as they have much fewer quarters to protect or to attack. Basically, if nothing is really on the coast, there is not really a need for a navy.

In general, there are still much work need to do to make naval units/naval campaigns more important in the gameplay.

 

On the other hand, it means that you'll actually want to build the city itself next to the water, since you can't just put all your cities inland and then build a Harbor to have 2 nodes to expand from.

 

And since Outpost/City Center cannot exploit water tiles (only Harbor can exploit water tiles IIRC), a coastal CC will always be less good than an inland CC since they have less tiles to work from the beginning (unlike, say, in Civ series), which would also discourage coastal development.

In general, less land-sea interaction would resulted in less incentive to develop the sea, and less incentive to develop the sea would make navy less meaningful.

 

LOTS to say after completing one OpenDev, which I will put in bullet form

• Being aware of Tolerate Skirmishes as you start the game is important. This allows battles between players in neutral territory, and OUTPOSTS COUNT. I was very frustrated because I didn't understand this at first, and even "friendly" AI were aggressive and tried to contest outposts. I don't feel like this is BAD per se, but for new players it will be difficult to understand why their "friend" is attacking them even though they aren't at war.
• Did a full Native American run (Olmec, Maya, Aztec, and a little bit of Haudenosaunee) and these cultures actually mesh pretty well with one another. Starting Influence, to Builder, then Mil and finally Ag is actually pretty nice. All of those cultures had nice quarters and units that went well together, but Mayans were by far my favorite of the four to play. Those industry bonuses are awesome.
• The limits on emblematic quarters seemed so much more appropriate than before where you could spam them. They are appropriately powerful to compensate.
• The game is better at giving you areas that synergize for quarter placement. Also, constructing massive cities is still so much fun.
• Battle AI is still a bit wonky...by that I mean things like enemy archers bum rushing onto the plains to shoot my scouts in the face.
• Also, I had an AGGRESSIVE HARRAPPANS that rushed me with Runners super early. It was historically annoying but also now I have a mortal enemy in that AI player.
• I love the War Support mechanic. It feels realistic, and if you beat someone down to no support then all your claims you've piled up get fulfilled, and you can select items from war score as well. Need to play around with it but war definitely felt objective based.
• Speaking of war, I did see ruined outposts and cities (razed a couple outposts myself) and it was a nice touch.
• The pacing is MUCH better, but 150 turns was barely enough to play a little with the Iroquois. I think that is a good sign. Snowballing is harder, and I didn't have limitless money and ability to do anything in the first 60 turns like the Nubia opendev.

More to think about and say, and more to play but it's shaping up nicely.

EDIT: also the AI WILL transcend cultures, Babylon never fell in this world

 

Just a glimpse so far - it's been a disgustingly busy day, but tomorrow will have more time to delve.

The Research costs have actually been reduced since last OpenDec. I believe the first tiers used to cost 35 - 150 - 400, and now they appear to be 35 - 100 - 200. Will try to follow the progression further tomorrow, but since my research was always 'way behind in Lucy, this is a Good Thing.

Take a look at the Religious Tenets: some of them allow +1 Money, Influence, Production or Science per population or per Believer/Religion Follower. Found a religion early, and you could potentially multiply whichever currency you want (but apparently only one at a time) without actually having to build anything - you don't even need a Holy Site to found or spread a religion initially, much different from Civ!

Early Harappans are potential Nasty: as soon as you progress to Ancient Era, all your Hunter-Gatherers automatically upgrade to Runners, which have a superior Combat Strength to ordinary Scouts. That means in the first turns of the Ancient Era, before your neighbors get the Tech to produce Archers and/or Warriors (and have the population to produce them, because it now costs city population to build units) the Harappans can Romp and Stomp if they have a mind to.

So many aspects to explore . . .

 

More:

• War resolution screen needs some work, it is really hard to know what you are taking in the peace treaty.
• Expansionist seems to the weakest affinity, the goal is actually even harder now since you no longer can spam many small cities and attachment have its own issues, meaning you will likely have to expansionst with war. The ability is hard to use. In the end in order to be expansionist you will likely gain asthete, merchant, militarist and scientist stars, I don't think any other affinity have a goal that is such interdependent on other affinity stars goals. Strongest affinity seems to be agriculture, additional population is simply so powerful, builder is perhaps somewhat better choice for fame due to easy goal.
• District cost could need some rebalance, right now attached territories look pretty much like outposts, probably because exploiting land is weak compared to concentrating districts, especially maker's quarters get huge adjacency bonus. Hamlet cost should be reduced to be the same as a normal district, harbour cost could also be reduced.
• Right now the majority of the territories will likely only be used for their resources (which are really powerful) and strategic positions. Attachment use is limited, it count towards era stars, block other players armies, have roads much earlier than outposts and allow you to build districts, mostly just things such as harbours and forts to help manage military, the administrative center is basically just a buffed hamlet. Drawbacks of attachment, include stability and influence cost. Atleast now you have the ability to turn attached territories back into outposts, allowing it to become a new city or be attached to a new city.
• Warfare is maybe even more powerful now than it was before, being able to annex a city can save you thousands of influence on not having to found one yourself.
• If you are willing to micromanage, it may be a good idea to attach/detach territories, build them up, then detach to reduce district cost and outpost for some reason can be good at growing population. The drawback is you may end up with alot of temporary useless districts and have to pay alot of influnce.

 

The AI Harrappans actually did this to me, luckily I had got a warrior and was able to purchase a Javelin Thrower before the war went south but it ironically makes the historically peaceful culture the biggest threat right after that era turn