Humankind Game by Amplitude

More from a Dev on Fame and Ages:

https://www.games2gether.com/amplit...34423-the-changing-of-ages?page=1#post-286122

Hello,


To be a bit more specific: progressing through the ages is related to challenge common to every culture BUT depending on the specialty of your culture. You'll gain more from a specific challenge. Moreover, the gain of Fame is based on how fast you are to fulfill these challenges.


In addition to that, there will be other way to gain Fame which won't help you to move to the next Age.


Cheers,
 
More from a Dev on Fame and Ages:

https://www.games2gether.com/amplit...34423-the-changing-of-ages?page=1#post-286122

Hello,


To be a bit more specific: progressing through the ages is related to challenge common to every culture BUT depending on the specialty of your culture. You'll gain more from a specific challenge. Moreover, the gain of Fame is based on how fast you are to fulfill these challenges.


In addition to that, there will be other way to gain Fame which won't help you to move to the next Age.


Cheers,

Okay, so that's interesting. Fame is both score and era advancement, but some Fame does one and not the other. Possibly it's only the era advancement Fame that's recorded with the stars?

Now a prior comment about being to stay in an era to try and gather more Fame is coming into better focus. I thought it meant you could advance once you hit 7 stars or delay and try to collect more Fame from that era, but maybe it meant you chart your course to the collection of the stars based on how many ancillary Fame objectives you want to strive for that era.
 
Okay, so that's interesting. Fame is both score and era advancement, but some Fame does one and not the other. Possibly it's only the era advancement Fame that's recorded with the stars?

Now a prior comment about being to stay in an era to try and gather more Fame is coming into better focus. I thought it meant you could advance once you hit 7 stars or delay and try to collect more Fame from that era, but maybe it meant you chart your course to the collection of the stars based on how many ancillary Fame objectives you want to strive for that era.

I think the civ-specific challenges might be interesting as well.

Maybe something like:
Egypt: Build Great Pyramid of Giza

Hittites: Research Ironworking and build 5 Chariots

Babylon: Research all Bronze Age technologies
 
However it works, I welcome competition and innovation. I have loved the Civ series since the beginning but somehow have not been able to maintain that "one more turn" vibe with Civ 6. Perhaps a fresh take on the concept may kick Firaxis into a more creative mindset. We'll see. Either way, I'll look forward to this Humanity game as much as I will the next Civ game, assuming I'm still around for either/both.
 
However it works, I welcome competition and innovation. I have loved the Civ series since the beginning but somehow have not been able to maintain that "one more turn" vibe with Civ 6. Perhaps a fresh take on the concept may kick Firaxis into a more creative mindset. We'll see. Either way, I'll look forward to this Humanity game as much as I will the next Civ game, assuming I'm still around for either/both.

This. I've been playing Civ games since Civ 2 came out on the Mac, including all the Civoid games like SMAC and Test of Time, Galactic Civ, etc. Probably played 2 or 3 times as many hours of Civ as all other games put together, even when I had a PC for gaming for a while.
And, noticeably, some of the best ideas were in games other than the 'normal' Civ games. SMAC is still the best all-around Science-Fiction-based game of them all: the combination of internal story lines, really Alien flora and fauna and innovative Unit Building and Tech 'Web' were and are incomparable. ToT was the greatest Flawed Civ game ever: full of innovative and great ideas, virtually all of which were so badly implemented that the game was practically unplayable after a few repetitions (5 year long bombing missions, farmers hoeing a field in space being two of the greatest Howlers in any game anywhere).

So, having another New Look at the Civ-type Historical Grand Strategy Game is very, very welcome. Even if Humankind fails on one or more fronts, simply by trying to do things differently it will stimulate the entire Civ Community: Developers, Modders, Commenters and Gamers.

To each his own, but I don't think these borders are a sensible, and certainly not accurate, way to represent the concept of land being inhabited. I suppose subdividing the map in this way could allow you to say that "this region has this native population, and here are some ways of dealing with that", but I don't know that is what they are doing.

More specifically, though, I don't think it makes sense in terms of settling rules, as per my example above. Just who is it who are enforcing these borders, and how do they compel me to not to settle more than 1 city in a region? If I have a city in a corner of a large region, what is preventing a another power from settling in the other corner? If this is like in Endless Legend, the rule is basically that, at least at the time of settling, there must be a line between one city and another. One of my issues with this is that I don't see what these lines are supposed to represent which could dictate city placement.

Specific and Rigid 'Region Borders' is an utterly artificial game mechanism, and so represents a failure of development.

To throw in my usual Historical Argument, it is completely unrepresentative of human settlement early in the game: IF the gamer starts with Civs as pastoral 'nomads', then presumably all the other factions are either proto-agricultural villages or other pastoral groups. None of these 'controlled' any rigid area more than walking distance around their camp/village until they could ride something, and even then they only 'controlled' the best pasturage or water sources. Border and Passport Control was a lot of years in the future, and no group was extensive enough to control a 'region' at game scale until the Bronze Age, and then only in a few places in the world: even as late as the Classical Era the majority of people in the world lived in the equivalent of one-city States: you could count the regional-controlling 'Empires' on the fingers of one hand.

On the other hand, having much more robust 'minor factions' is a Big Step towards the more extensive Barbarian Camp/Goodie Hut/City State interactions I have been banging on for some time. Kudos if they can make that work, because if so it could be implemented without needing the artificial Regions.
 
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@KayAU i haven't played the endless games for a LONG time, but i wasn't under the impression that you COULDN'T build a 2nd or more cities in a specific region... just that you couldn't build one if YOU don't own it

are my memories wrong ?
 
@KayAU i haven't played the endless games for a LONG time, but i wasn't under the impression that you COULDN'T build a 2nd or more cities in a specific region... just that you couldn't build one if YOU don't own it

are my memories wrong ?

You build one city in a region and that's it - you own that region and have access to all its resource (if you build the right building for them). Only one city per region.
 
In addition to not making sense, I feel the subdivision into regions thing just takes some of the joy away from exploring. In Civilization or Fallen Enchantress, finding a great spot to settle is a rush, which immediately inspires me to make plans for expansion. In Endless Legend, however, each entire region is just a large board game tile to try and control. The internal layout and terrain is highly secondary, and not something I really notice beyond the FIDS output.

The negatives to the region-system seem to be that it feels artificial and restricts choice.

The positives seem to be:
  • Infinite City Spam never enters the game lexicon
  • It creates a natural ordering to the minor factions (this is where the So-and-Sos live, over there is whether the Other Guys live)
  • It creates a structure that might simplify AI decision making (Am I ready to expand yet? Y/N? If Y, which region? Within that region, which city site?)
From reading online comments, the main issues people seem to have with how the region system works in Endless Legend are:
  • The region borders do not follow geography. They look and feel contrived and unnatural.
  • The AI is not good at picking where in the region to place it's city.
Both of the above issues appear to me to be ones that could be improved, but either (a) they may be more difficult to improve than I think, or (b) this may not be a priority for Amplitude.

The only thing we know that is different about regions in HK is that each city is not limited to one region. A city can absorb adjacent regions.


So they don't have Builders or Improvements do they?

Endless Legend has the equivalent of improvements for strategic and luxury resources. You can place an improvement on them and get their yield regardless of where they are in the region. These are placed directly from the production queue: no interim step of creating the Builder and then placing the improvement.
 
Does Endless Legend region system allow you on settling any region in the world, no matter how faraway? Or does it introduce some restriction 'can settle only if it neighbors land you control or is coastal'?

Because region system combined with the above would solve my eternal pain from civ series: how awfully unorganically borders look and grow, especially in early eras, with several faraway cities separated by vast neutral land (or even worse, other civs forward settling).

Region system can also avoid the problem of significant parts of the map being completely useless trash which either remains unsettled forever (looks very strange in modern era) or is settled by AI forward settling terrible city/border abominations. I don't know how EL region system work but if algorithm divides whole world in regions then you have greatly simplifies job of making the entire world interesting.

Civ's completely random spawn of whatever terrain and features wherever always had the downside of huge areas of complete trash resource-less flat lands with almost no yields.

Region system may also solve the issue of half of map being impossible to navigate by ships due to cultural borders going insanely deep into ocean + balance of ocean tiles yields (nobody gets them so nobody can complain!)

And on top of that all, I have never really liked the concept of borders growing by culture. It just never made sense to me. Historical states established their borders by military force and political influence, not by monuments, art, opera, theatre etc.

Combine this with the fact you still have free hand in choosing city location, just inside region's borders, and I like this concept more and more.

EDIT
It also helps you with geographic naming of the map - things happen inside province named X, not "uhm three tiles from city Y and four tiles from city Z"
 
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So each region would have a minor nation residing in it. And there are potentially dozens of regions per map, right?

And theoretically, each minor nation should have an authentic historical name a la Civ's city-states, right?

Would each one of them have historically flavorful Emblematic Units?

Do you suppose they change identities each Age like the players?
 
Does Endless Legend region system allow you on settling any region in the world, no matter how faraway? Or does it introduce some restriction 'can settle only if it neighbors land you control or is coastal'?

Someone with greater familiarity can correct me, but there seem to be two systems:
  • In Endless Legends, you build a Settler and claim any region you want, subject only to your ability to hold the region
  • In Endless Space, you establish an outpost which over time can grow into a Colony (= City) assuming you can maintain the outpost long enough. Multiple players can set up outposts in the same region, with only the first to upgrade then claiming the territory.
Per here (https://hookedgamers.com/pc/humankind/preview/article-1570.html) and possibly other articles, HK will utilize outposts, which are a stake in the ground for that region. You can't settle a city in that region without eliminating any outposts established by other civs.


So each region would have a minor nation residing in it. And there are potentially dozens of regions per map, right?

And theoretically, each minor nation should have an authentic historical name a la Civ's city-states, right?

Would each one of them have historically flavorful Emblematic Units?

Do you suppose they change identities each Age like the players?

On the changing identities, my guess is no.

And when you set out the scope like that, it starts to sound like expansion territory, rather than base game, as @Casworon previously speculated. On the other hand, having the region system without minor nations to occupy them would feel half-implemented, so I guess we'll see.
 
Someone with greater familiarity can correct me, but there seem to be two systems:
  • In Endless Legends, you build a Settler and claim any region you want, subject only to your ability to hold the region
  • In Endless Space, you establish an outpost which over time can grow into a Colony (= City) assuming you can maintain the outpost long enough. Multiple players can set up outposts in the same region, with only the first to upgrade then claiming the territory.
Per here (https://hookedgamers.com/pc/humankind/preview/article-1570.html) and possibly other articles, HK will utilize outposts, which are a stake in the ground for that region. You can't settle a city in that region without eliminating any outposts established by other civs.




On the changing identities, my guess is no.

And when you set out the scope like that, it starts to sound like expansion territory, rather than base game, as @Casworon previously speculated. On the other hand, having the region system without minor nations to occupy them would feel half-implemented, so I guess we'll see.

I'm going to guess they don't have Emblematic Units either. That just seems like a lot of unit abilities to keep track of.
 
Region system can also avoid the problem of significant parts of the map being completely useless trash which either remains unsettled forever (looks very strange in modern era) or is settled by AI forward settling terrible city/border abominations. I don't know how EL region system work but if algorithm divides whole world in regions then you have greatly simplifies job of making the entire world interesting.
Civ's completely random spawn of whatever terrain and features wherever always had the downside of huge areas of complete trash resource-less flat lands with almost no yields.
Region system may also solve the issue of half of map being impossible to navigate by ships due to cultural borders going insanely deep into ocean + balance of ocean tiles yields (nobody gets them so nobody can complain!)
I suppose, regions help the AIs to administer better many things: the production of yields, amenities, strategic resources; pathfinding & strategic distribution of military units ...

Also at map generation time can be "standardized" abilities be woven in to the terrain tiles, which are easier for the AI to handle eg. isthmuses etc.
Ie. if the terrain is not _completely_ "random", the cooperation of AI units may be more competitive to the human player.

Can the zoom-in for tactical combat resolution happen everywhere? Or is this actual mini sub-map -- you play right now -- one of, say, 37 thousand in that library with predefined terrain, possible positions & moves (cf. CHESS).

Who owns a region? How do tactical mini sub-map and regions play together?

.
 
If regions are easier for the AI, I'm all for it, even if borders at the start feel contrived. But then, with the outpost system, you can't get surprised by a settler from another Civ. You can contest the region by an outpost or go to war over just that region. That feels much better than the Civ way of settler -> bang -> city.

I imagine the minor nations to be categorized into types: horse nomads, city state, naval-oriented tribe, farmers, etc. and bonuses per type and era. And that is btw. a negative for civ(6) as well, whose city states excel in one era and then peter of. Same is true for civs, who plays Sumer in a medieval advanced start?
 
The negatives to the region-system seem to be that it feels artificial and restricts choice.

The positives seem to be:
  • Infinite City Spam never enters the game lexicon
  • It creates a natural ordering to the minor factions (this is where the So-and-Sos live, over there is whether the Other Guys live)
  • It creates a structure that might simplify AI decision making (Am I ready to expand yet? Y/N? If Y, which region? Within that region, which city site?)
Well, infinite city spam can be fought in more other ways, such as stricter settling requirements, increased minimum distance, a form of distance-from-administrative center penalty or even a direct city limit. The latter two may be controversial to some, but they do make sense, and they could mitigated by technological advancements and more advanced governments in the later game.

Providing a natural ordering to minor factions is good, but I would rather this was done with a more subtle form of geographical regions, more akin to Civ 6's continents, rather than a bunch of strict political borders. Looking at Endless Legend, I feel that the regions are very much at the topmost level of the map, and dominates the over the terrain itself.

As for helping the AI out...yes, I suppose it might. But I wouldn't sacrifice something so fundamental as the game map to help the AI out, and really, I don't think we should have to choose.

If regions are easier for the AI, I'm all for it, even if borders at the start feel contrived. But then, with the outpost system, you can't get surprised by a settler from another Civ. You can contest the region by an outpost or go to war over just that region. That feels much better than the Civ way of settler -> bang -> city.

I think it would be better if the regions weren't locked in from the start, but rather were determined later by things like where the different civs placed their cities, or how civs otherwise exerted their influence.
 
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I'm a little bit disappointed they are going the route of "one city per region" again, it just doesn't seem right for the setting. It basically means the world will start out full of arbitrary borders, with arbitrary gameplay consequences. For instance, say you settle your first city near a region border, 3 tiles to the west of the city center. Then you make a settler to make a new city. Now, if you move west, you can found that city right next to the first one. Move east, and you will have to travel across the entire "region", until you find another border to cross, and the game rules will permit you to settle. How does this make sense?

Games like Civilization VI and Fallen Enchantress also have settling rules, but they can be rationalized:
  • Civilization: Cities must be placed no less than 3 tiles apart. This is easily rationalized, as settling closer would place you inside the workable area of the first city, effectively meaning there are not really two distinct cities.
  • Fallen Enchantress: Cities have a minimum distance (which I don't remember off the top of my head), and they need to be placed on fertile land. Someone commented that this is basically the same as Endless Legend, but I strongly disagree. The fertility requirement is based on terrain features, and there are no actual borders placed down by the map generator. A little bit further into the game, a spell becomes available which will "revitalize" land, allowing you to settle in terrain which was previously unavailable. Anyway, these requirements are again easy to rationalize, as they represent the ability of the land to support a settlement.

In addition to not making sense, I feel the subdivision into regions thing just takes some of the joy away from exploring. In Civilization or Fallen Enchantress, finding a great spot to settle is a rush, which immediately inspires me to make plans for expansion. In Endless Legend, however, each entire region is just a large board game tile to try and control. The internal layout and terrain is highly secondary, and not something I really notice beyond the FIDS output.

This is actually my chief worry about this game. When it comes to the morphing cultural identities, I think I need to see it in action to know just how it will work. I actually trust Amplitude to be able to pull it off, though.

This rule does sound kind of ridiculous, and it hasn't been part of any TBS game I've ever played. Mind, the ones I've played were - Civ1, Civ2, Civ3, and Civ6, but not Civ4 or Civ5, Alpha Centauri (but not Beyond Earth), Colonization (the old DOS version, not Civ4 version), Master of Magic, Master of Orion 2, and Call to Power 1.
 
I think it would be better if the regions weren't locked in from the start, but rather were determined later by things like where the different civs placed their cities, or how civs otherwise exerted their influence.

Sure, it would be better. But I can't see how this could be done in-game in a easy, failure-resistent way. And until, I'm fine with that solution that lets the developers spend more on other things. And civ6 will still be there for the others though.
 
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