Humankind Game by Amplitude

What is the point of military units costing population, other than making warfare in the ancient era extremely infeasible?

It also ties Food into Warfare as an extra cost, which turns conquest into a different type of growth rather than strictly more growth. It also means that losing Military units means losing Population, and allows the Population Star to count Military units (because then you can actually hamper someone's Population growth without having to actually take their cities.)
 
I like a suggestion from another thread that when you get 4 stars of the next era your city styles all change to the current culture. So over time, eventually, all cities will look like your current-era. Maybe Restrict it to certain things (city center?) and let the other things keep the flavor they had when built?
Interesting idea I just want some way to update city centres. I'd love to make it a choice for role playing so I can choose to keep old city centres if I want or go full Victorian and bulldoze everything in favour of new stuff. But tying it to gameplay in some way could work too.
 
What is the point of military units costing population, other than making warfare in the ancient era extremely infeasible?

I really enjoy the balancing act between keeping specialists in cities or training them for military purposes. Losing population in battles really hurts. I can't just spam them with gold and production.

Plus when you're not at war and you have too many units, you can just send them back to the cities. It just feels right to me.

Also, has anyone mentioned mercenaries yet? Because they tie really well with this. You can use gold to rent mercenaries rather than having your own standing army.

I find it so much better to be able to rent single units from Independent People, rather than paying for the whole lot like in Civ 6 and then losing it all because the city-state flipped. I always found the mercenary system in civ 6 underwhelming.
 
What is the point of military units costing population, other than making warfare in the ancient era extremely infeasible?

i like it, to me it's just a rule like pawns take diagonally

i would like them to eat food too instead of only needing moneys for maintenance
 
AI using cavalry to chop down trees in the tile most distant from their city (and therefore most useless in terms of yields):

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I had not thought to use fast moving units to chop distant tiles, so I just learned something from the AI.

Is there any point or advantage in keeping distant forests, other than for the defensive bonuses?
 
What is the point of military units costing population, other than making warfare in the ancient era extremely infeasible?

I think one purpose is to provide that soft cap so that you can't just spam units. I find it is an effective cap on units. It also reflects the reality that mobilizing your population for war, takes them away from peaceful development at home. It creates a decision for the player in terms of when to focus on the home economy and when to focus on war because you can't just keep a big standing army for a long time. It also kinda makes sense because populations were smaller in the ancient era compared to the modern era. So players should have smaller armies in the early game.
 
AI using cavalry to chop down trees in the tile most distant from their city (and therefore most useless in terms of yields):

View attachment 606050

I had not thought to use fast moving units to chop distant tiles, so I just learned something from the AI.

Is there any point or advantage in keeping distant forests, other than for the defensive bonuses?

Seems like Forests also help with Pollution, though I haven't gotten that far into the game yet. But I do run my Scout Cavalry around my empire to chop tiles I'm about to build a non-Industry non-Garrison district on.
 
I sense a slight balance issue here..

Seeing as you can immediately end the game by finishing the tech tree, being able to quintuple your science output at the push of a button if you're playing a Scientific civ in the Contemporary Era just by putting your cities on Collective Minds seems a little bit silly



 
Stability in general has just seemed like such a total non-issue in my experience so far. Other than freshly conquered cities it feels like I have everything at 100% basically all the time no matter how many districts I spam out

Also religion it just seems like it's spread like a wildfire across the map and suddenly everyone is following my religion eventually even though I barely did anything other than build new holy sites once I was able too. Some mechanics feel a little bit out of tune still
 
Stability in general has just seemed like such a total non-issue in my experience so far
I think the Egyptians are rather strong but you play them best at about 40-50% stability early. Later on in the game, especially with wonders it’s no problem but try a civilization level game.
If you play aesthete you want stability to always be at 91% in all cities, quite a different game early on.
I remember 1 game had a random event of -50 stability.
 
I think the Egyptians are rather strong but you play them best at about 40-50% stability early. Later on in the game, especially with wonders it’s no problem but try a civilization level game.
If you play aesthete you want stability to always be at 91% in all cities, quite a different game early on.
I remember 1 game had a random event of -50 stability.
Yeah I was playing on Empire last time which still feels too easy so I guess I'll go up to Civilization next and see how different it feels. One step at a time
 
I just found out you can surround your ranged units with friendly units to give them strength bonuses which also apply when performing ranged attacks. This probably shouldn't work like this. It's very powerful on the Egyptian emblematic unit. I can just surround a tile, move a Markabata unit on it, shoot, move it out and repeat with every other Markabata :D

I'm starting to get the hang of combat now. The AI seems reluctant to quit even when good odds become pretty bad ones.
 
I just found out you can surround your ranged units....

Yeah...adjacency bonuses work for all units, so positioning really matters in combat. I will often move some units into positions before attacking anyone to max bonuses. Works great with units with no ZoC issues. Then you have units like the Hoplites that get even more inherent adjacency bonus. The Hordes are crazy with their almost unlimited movement, as they can reposition for bonuses constantly, which really works well in the hands of the human player.

And if you don't know you there is a rear flank bonus as well.
 
Yeah...adjacency bonuses work for all units, so positioning really matters in combat. I will often move some units into positions before attacking anyone to max bonuses. Works great with units with no ZoC issues. Then you have units like the Hoplites that get even more inherent adjacency bonus. The Hordes are crazy with their almost unlimited movement, as they can reposition for bonuses constantly, which really works well in the hands of the human player.

And if you don't know you there is a rear flank bonus as well.

That 'flank' (rear) Bonus is the one thing that the Scout Riders are really good for: as mounted/mobile units they are really weak - weaker than anything except Scouts and Archers - but with 6 movement they are really good at zipping all over the early battlefields into position to hit the flank/rear of a unit: combined with something bigger hitting them from the front the target can usually be so beaten up they can't retaliate effectively against the Rider. Just keep them away from Spearmen. It also helps that you can get them with your very first Tech, if needed - with a Horse resource in your first city, you can have them as your first post-Scout unit, which is really handy if your neighbor took Harappans and is harassing your Scouts with his Runners: Riders trump Runners and Archers both . . .
 
In my experience, which admittedly is two games since release, the first AI to hit Ancient always takes Harappans.
 
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