Humankind Game by Amplitude

[8housesofelixir]

Huh, just noticed that outposts are actually named after stars--a reference to Endless Space 2, no doubt. It was Cor Caroli that tipped me off, and since then I've noticed several more star names.

All the outpost names are in fact the names of territories, so basically every territory is named after a star or a part of a constellation. I'd say it's a nice way to pull off a long list of not-random names (a normal size map easily has 70+ territories) without burning out all your brain cells.

Since you have basically free access to everyone else's luxuries just by spending a bit of money in diplomacy, even if you're mainly just doing it for the yield bonuses it gives to your cities, in the process you also get so many global Stability bonuses that alone makes up for the Stability costs of districts, and that's not even taking other things that increase it into account yet. Like imagine having free access to every luxury resource on the map in Civ V, how easy it would've been to manage Happiness in that case. That's basically what Humankind is doing here. Something needs to be adjusted.

Note that trading is not something the player can entirely control; unlike Civ you cannot actively sell things. So if you angered a lot of AIs - which will happen from time to time! - and therefore lost that free access, your stability and yield will tank.

I do agree that for 80% of the time is not hard to please the AI by buying and selling resources; on the other hand, that's how trading works for most of the 4x games.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

All the outpost names are in fact the names of territories, so basically every territory is named after a star or a part of a constellation. I'd say it's a nice way to pull off a long list of not-random names (a normal size map easily has 70+ territories) without burning out all your brain cells.

Shuckee Gee, if they'd asked, I have a list of almost 300 tribal names/areas from all over the world from the pre-historic on that could have been used, and would have been a bit more appropriate than star names.

In fact, I wish they'd allow the option of renaming Regional territories to something more appropriate to our Faction: it would make them a lot easier to remember in the End-of-War negotiations . . .

Note that trading is not something the player can entirely control; unlike Civ you cannot actively sell things. So if you angered a lot of AIs - which will happen from time to time! - and therefore lost that free access, your stability and yield will tank.

I do agree that for 80% of the time is not hard to please the AI by buying and selling resources; on the other hand, that's how trading works for most of the 4x games.

Personal example: in one game I was trading with a couple of Factions on another continent in the Early Modern, resulting in my Stability and Money both heavily positive. Then one of them was vassalized by my rival on that continent (we were trading the lead in Fame Stars and had harassed each other's territory earlier) and suddenly trade with him was cut off completely: my average Stability went from 100 to about 35 per city and I had to scramble to keep it from falling further and spawning Rebel Armies everywhere. Taught me to play closer attention to relationships around the world . . .

 

[Zaarin]

All the outpost names are in fact the names of territories, so basically every territory is named after a star or a part of a constellation. I'd say it's a nice way to pull off a long list of not-random names (a normal size map easily has 70+ territories) without burning out all your brain cells.

Huh, didn't realize the territories were prenamed. I assumed the outpost names were randomly generated when founded.

Shuckee Gee, if they'd asked, I have a list of almost 300 tribal names/areas from all over the world from the pre-historic on that could have been used, and would have been a bit more appropriate than star names.

In fact, I wish they'd allow the option of renaming Regional territories to something more appropriate to our Faction: it would make them a lot easier to remember in the End-of-War negotiations . . .

As an astronomy nerd I don't mind the star names for outposts, but I wish they'd take on faction-appropriate names when they were annexed by a city.

 

[Taefin]

It's not built around trade-offs, it's built around giving the player mostly free and mostly immediate access to resources without having to make choices that matter about where to specialise their workers, or whether building along one chain will cost time, resources or space that limit future options.

Here I wonder if a more aggressive curve on quarters cost would help. Currently it seems either linear or mildly geometric/exponential. If your first 10 quarters were easily enough to get, expanding to get more exploitation and/or starting some money/science, but then became sufficiently more expensive to the point that building a few more MQ was not enough to drive the cost back down to 1-2 turns each, then you’d force the player to decide between a high production city with reduxed/delayed money/science output, or a smaller money/science city that stayed lower production.

Currently I don’t think exploitation is the problem, as that only accounts for 100-200 yields for my larger cities compared to 1-2k+ for districts and adjacencies. I think exploitation is mostly useful early game and creates a fun city planning puzzle before you just start paving over forests and rivers for adjacencies. I’d rather exploitation stayed a larger proportion of overall yields through a longer portion of the game. Definitely looking forward to modding opening up possibilities to fine tune the game to different preferences.

 

[CivLuvah]

It has Amplitude AI, so basically take all the flaws of Civ VI AI and imagine they're about an order of magnitude worse. Hopefully some of this is difficulty-related (I didn't see a difficulty level option so just went with whatever the default is for a first game), but enemies not building armies and attacking larger forces with single units is a consistent pattern in all the Endless games that recurs here, so I expect it to be general.

Just a comment, but I remember in one OpenDev people were complaining about the AI being too punishing.

 

[Taefin]

Just a comment, but I remember in one OpenDev people were complaining about the AI being too punishing.

At Victor I sure got killed a lot, AI used archers like a human and really put the EU to work. Even now I would get leveled by early classical AI if they had the heart to attack the second they got swords out, or the war support to keep our ancient era wars going.

Also just got Harappans for the first time (the AI must have thought I was cheating, but I actually just stumbled on a lot of river food and got 5 pop by T5). Wow! Who’d have through 1 extra combat strength made such a difference in early conquest. I thought their power lay in the AI having +2 str to EU and +2 (I think) on HW. I ended up with a neighbor right next door and since it was so early killed a bunch of their gatherers. Surprise war the second they got a city, they then immediately founded a second city and we ended war one. Built up a real army and came right back for the other. Left a scout alive to go found another city but I guess they have closed borders with the Maya Now I need to decide if I want Celts or Aksumites (or Romans but yuck) to go with Stonehenge, not bad choices for being the last out of Ancient at T53. This is by far my strongest start! I probably won’t play past classical unless one of the leader picks up some steam.

Edit: And this is why I taunt this game so brashly, I picked the game up after dinner, choosing the the Aksumites, and on the very next turn Maya declares war on me and a city is already under siege. Oh they’ve had standing army for a few turns

 

[PhilBowles]

Just a comment, but I remember in one OpenDev people were complaining about the AI being too punishing.

As a combatant? I've hit early modern and am just starting to see actual AI armies - one of which I've lost to twice as a pair of horse archer stacks that sit so close to one another on the coast that I can't deploy fully to take advantage of my more advanced units. The AI placement there is fairly clever, but also very passive - the army made no attempt to cross to the island nearby with my undefended outpost, and as the only practical reason for engaging in warfare is to get kills for militaristic stars you aren't really encouraged to engage in fights you might not win unless you make the mistake I did and declare a war, then forget you'd done so and let war weariness build up because you weren't fighting.

 

[Onii-chan]

There were three tutorial options (never played a 4x, played non-Humankind 4x, played Humanlind) - if those have any bearing on difficulty rather than just being different levels of tip dropdown, maybe each is at a different level? I chose option 2.

You can see the difficulty among other things in the game settings tab. Picking number 2 still only puts it on Town difficulty, which is level 2 out of 7, and described as easy mode. So yes it's just a cakewalk of a tutorial

That said I still agree with the majority of your points after having played a couple games of it now as the experience is similar regardless of difficulty. It's obviously more challenging overall on higher difficulties, however the overall game balance from a mechanical standpoint doesn't seem right. It just feels like you get too much of well, everything sooner or later

Note that trading is not something the player can entirely control; unlike Civ you cannot actively sell things. So if you angered a lot of AIs - which will happen from time to time! - and therefore lost that free access, your stability and yield will tank.

I do agree that for 80% of the time is not hard to please the AI by buying and selling resources; on the other hand, that's how trading works for most of the 4x games.

If it was difficult to stay on friendly terms with AI factions then yes, that would definitely work as a limiter for it, but so far I can't really say that's been the case. It's easier to make allies than enemies even on higher difficulties without really putting much effort into it. Maybe because you can just renounce the million demands you could do from the absolute wildfire that is your religion spreading across the world already seems to put everyone on friendly terms with you (that by itself is another bad balance issue)

 

[PhilBowles]

You can see the difficulty among other things in the game settings tab. Picking number 2 still only puts it on Town difficulty, which is level 2 out of 7, and described as easy mode. So yes it's just a cakewalk of a tutorial

That said I still agree with the majority of your points after having played a couple games of it now as the experience is similar regardless of difficulty. It's obviously more challenging overall on higher difficulties, however the overall game balance from a mechanical standpoint doesn't seem right. It just feels like you get too much of well, everything sooner or later

Thanks. I specifically tried looking for the difficulty when I carried on the session and still couldn't see it. I think I want to finish this as a first playthrough rather than starting again on a higher difficulty, but it will definitely be welcome if systems like combat actually play more of a part in the game at higher difficulties (the exploded-view combat mechanics still seem a bit gimmicky, but at least seem to give the player vaguely more agency than in Endless Legend where they pretty much always just gave the same result as autoresolving).

I'm still not sure how the game really prompts interaction since it's not obvious that you can disrupt opposing era progress or fame scores and wars don't seem to achieve a lot except costing the losing player resources - it's the old Civ issue that everyone's playing solitaire on a common game board, but with fewer ways even than that to disrupt your rivals.

 

[Taefin]

I agree that we could use some less friendly AI. Seems like one of the game elements they wanted to keep opaque/organic, but I could really do with an opinion score for each leader.

This game above evolved somewhat ideally to capture the stability dynamics we are musing about here. I had two neighbors, conquered one, bought a bunch of luxuries from the other, and when that one declared on me my stability dropped low enough that I had to shuffle a territory to a different city until I got infrastructure up. But this is classical before meeting the rest of the AI. Also random super fun dynamic, the only iron deposit was in the city they sieged. I researched standing army during the siege but had to win 16v16 against swords and Mayan javelins using warriors and archers. Sent in tons of reinforcements and ended with 6 units. Swapped the iron territory to another uncontested city (that’s what lost the stability) and then it became a pretty easy fight, once I could swarm cheap Aksumite swords.

 

[Vilvatiktan]

Interesting perspective, but I don't share it. All historical civilizations from the classical period on were "frankenstein" civilizations, as they all built on the traditions of civilizations that preceded them and that they evolved from / absorbed / conquered as they took over that same geographic area. I personally find the civilizations of HK far more realistic than any prior depiction, because they capture this gradual evolution of cultures over time.

I also don't feel like I'm trying a different civilization each era - I'm still the civilization I was before, with its prior bonuses, unique units, unique districts, and territorial reach. All that happens when I change era is I add a new set of bonuses, a unit and a district to my culture (or I could transcend for fame, but I don't like seeing my culture ossifying like that, personally).

I personally love the variation this creates in my empire and my neighbours. Combined with the subtle but noticeable difference in how my neighbours behave based on a combination of what's going on around them and their own traits, and the game doesn't feel bland to me.

Let's highlight the gradual evolution aspect of our real-life civilizations. Indeed that our own historical civilizations evolve from one thing to another by absorbing and updating themselves with the cultures surrounding them as they expand and progress. Perhaps Egypt would be a great example of this, from the Old Dynastic Egyptians with all of those Ra/Horus/Osiris pantheon, and then followed by a Hellenised period in the Ptolemaic Era, continued by Roman Aegyptus province, then conquered by the moslems, and then the British and so on. This gradual process gives Egypt its own identity by incorporating the old cultures. Even until today, that legacy remains, for example in the Egyptian Pantheon, we call the names of the gods with their Hellenised names.

However, with Humankind, the most aggravating thing to me is that they frankensteinize all of the factions in the game and you can't barely have love to your own thing as there's no identity for each faction. The gradual process does not happen in Humankind. For example, you started as a wandering tribe, and then continued with Olmecs culture (which has Spanish name for their cities), then followed by Celtic culture, after that you chose Khmer culture, your faction becomes frankensteinised so hard that you have San Lorenzo next to Bibracte and Yasodharapura. Unique buildings and units do not have any depth to the identity as much as the Civics, which makes the actual faction's identity. By several games, no matter how many millions of combinations you can make, this expected gradual evolution does not happen.

The inconsistencies of your identity are confusing and it makes all of the playing factions in the game very very bland.

 

[Zaarin]

then followed by a Hellenised period in the Ptolemaic Era

Worth noting that Hellenization only really affected the urban elite until the Roman conquest of Egypt. The Ptolemies despised the Copts, and the Copts returned the sentiment. Even under Rome, Hellenization remained concentrated in the cities; the most striking change in the Roman era was not Hellenization but Christianization, which was much more thorough (unlike the rest of North Africa, which adopted a very tepid variety of Christianity--which is why Christianity survived the Muslim conquest of Egypt but not North Africa).

Even until today, that legacy remains, for example in the Egyptian Pantheon, we call the names of the gods with their Hellenised names.

Some of them, but most are known by the Egyptological pronunciation of their names, like Ra, Sekhmet, Bastet, Ma'at, Wadjet, etc. Most of the Egyptian gods that have Hellenized names were important in the mystery cults: Isis, Osiris, Thoth, Horus...You also have the special class of gods the Ptolemies invented or syncretized, like Serapis.

 

[NombreyApellido]

we call the olmecs but we don't know how they called themselves... also, those aren't city names but archaeological sites

 

[God of Kings]

we call the olmecs but we don't know how they called themselves... also, those aren't city names but archaeological sites

Good thing Humankind doesn't have the Scythians as a playable faction with a city named "Seven Brothers."

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

Good thing Humankind doesn't have the Scythians as a playable faction with a city named "Seven Brothers."

There are a number of Scythian settlements known, but they are all filtered through Greek writers, and there is no way to know how badly they mis-spelled, mis-pronounced, or flatly got wrong the original names and titles.

 

[Siptah]

Like the purely Greek Neapolis. Which is also what the Scythian Independent People in Humankind use as city name .

 

[fortydayweekend]

I'm not sure if it's possible within the way the game is set up, but I'd like to see older cultures survive as non-state cultures even after each change. So instead of being 90% Zhou 10% AI changing to 90% Maya 10% AI, you might become 50% Maya in your capital only, 40% Zhou, 10% AI... with other cities not changing at all or maybe just being 10% Maya and still majority Zhou.

Then your new Maya "state culture" could spread during the Era. In a small nation it might quickly take over almost completely, but in a large sprawling empire you'd end up with multiple legacy groups in all your cities, and your "state culture" might always be a minority.

That could then lead to events and stability issues for large empires (stability issues arising from multicultural cities shouldn't necessarily be inevitable but could be as an outcome of event choices, you should have to work to keep everyone happy).

If you liberated a mostly-Zhou city it could become a Zhou independent city and have a bit more flavour in interactions depending on how each player/AI deals with its Zhou citizens.

That seems like a relatively simple change that would provide more continuity between culture changes by smoothing out the transition. It'd be a bit more realistic in that you'd have multiple cultural groups even in your core cities, with a few pockets of old cultures surviving into Contemporary. And it would make expansion more difficult/interesting as you'd have less control over your distant cities.

As much as I'd like to see even more realistic mechanics like synthesis between cultures to form new ones, I think that would need procedurally generated cultures and would be a different game.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

Like the purely Greek Neapolis. Which is also what the Scythian Independent People in Humankind use as city name .

Purely Greek 'Neapolis' everywhere. By my count, there were towns named Neapolis (New City) in Thrace, on Cyprus, in the Caucasus, in Tunesia (now called Nabeul), in Italy (it was the original Greek name of Napoli), in Apulia, Italy, and on Sardinia - all Greek colonies, plus an 'original' Greek (or at least, pre-classical Greek) Neapolis on the island of Lesbos, all in addition to 'Skythian Neapolis' in the Crimea, which, again, was a Greek colony controlled by the Scythians, but not actually settled by the Scythians at all.

 

[Zaarin]

I played a game for the first time in a few weeks yesterday and noticed the game is overall much more polished than the last time I played, and specifically I noticed that, as I requested earlier, outfits are much more detailed and distinct. I was very pleased.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

I played a game for the first time in a few weeks yesterday and noticed the game is overall much more polished than the last time I played, and specifically I noticed that, as I requested earlier, outfits are much more detailed and distinct. I was very pleased.

There is still continuous discussion of potential changes, fixes, and Additional Content on the Humankind VIP Forum, so, thankfully, Amplitude seems to be going the 'Old World' route of constant fixing rather than wait 6 months or a year to address concerns. This is very, very heartening.