Humankind Game by Amplitude

[Boris Gudenuf]

You know I'm the first to ask for more modding capabilities for civ6, but I think this here could be already possible to code thanks to its graphical capabilities.

IIRC you can define multiple variation of an unit element in the artdef, and we have functions to set those with Lua methods.

but the amount of work required...

Yeah. I know a lot can be done with 're-skins' but I also have visions of a bunch of 3-D artists chained to desks in front of computer screens in a catacomb in Paris for the next six months . . .

 

[Trav'ling Canuck]

Yeah. I know a lot can be done with 're-skins' but I also have visions of a bunch of 3-D artists chained to desks in front of computer screens in a catacomb in Paris for the next six months . . .

Well, I mean if they're stuck on the Paris metro at this stage of the strike, might as well give them something to do while they're down there ...

 

[bbbt]

From my memory of Endless Legend you could upgrade the troop and/or the gear to new material, though I can't remember if there was a limit? Ie if Humankind allows you to have knights on horseback with Kevlar armor and uzis, well I can see that annoying more of the purists but also being very memeable.

 

[AntSou]

that's 4 types of arctic terrain plus special features [...] So, not only is the terrain gorgeous, but it potentially has a lot more variety of terrain-types and features to 'exploit'.

I'd be more inclined to believe there's a base terrain, e.g. grassland, plains, etc, and the snow is just an effect on top of each type of base terrain. That's how winter worked in Endless Legend.



I haven't been paying attention to this thread, but this tweet seems to be about climate alterations.

That mammoth is most likely going to die once it gets warmer so I'd expect its meant to provide some early boost.

Edit: Also fauna. There will possibly be biomes and animals will depend on each biome. So if there's elephants near you you might want to select a Civ which allows you to take advantage of awesome Elephant Units, for instance.

 

[mitsho]

Equipment gear seems a level too low for me for the scale of humankind. Also unrealistic that you could equip your whole army with the same stuff. I could see it with a base unit per class and era and then you can equip that with skirmishers (attrition), scouts (sight), medics (heal rate), knights (shock, heavy armour) and so on. But i guess that doesnt fit with the combat system.

also, didnt they say you can keep a Roman Legion and equip it with different weapons in a later era / they will keep their signature look even if they now drive around in a tank. Or did i dream that?

 

[AntSou]

Equipment gear seems a level too low for me for the scale of humankind. Also unrealistic that you could equip your whole army with the same stuff. I could see it with a base unit per class and era and then you can equip that with skirmishers (attrition), scouts (sight), medics (heal rate), knights (shock, heavy armour) and so on. But i guess that doesnt fit with the combat system.

also, didnt they say you can keep a Roman Legion and equip it with different weapons in a later era / they will keep their signature look even if they now drive around in a tank. Or did i dream that?

You can have many different types of equipment, which are more expensive to produce, require the appropriate resources and tech, and may make the upkeep of your units higher. So you could have swordsmen units walking around with iron swords while others already have steel swords.

Again, that's how it was done in Endless Legend

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

Well, I mean if they're stuck on the Paris metro at this stage of the strike, might as well give them something to do while they're down there ...

- Which in turn makes me wonder if trying to develop an ambitious game like Humankind while surrounded by political chaos might delay launching the game.
But them I realized that American game companies have been doing the same thing for years . . .

From my memory of Endless Legend you could upgrade the troop and/or the gear to new material, though I can't remember if there was a limit? Ie if Humankind allows you to have knights on horseback with Kevlar armor and uzis, well I can see that annoying more of the purists but also being very memeable.

To do any kind of a "upgradable workshop" system in a Historical 4X game you'd have to get the details right or it too easily falls into silliness. Knights on horseback with Kevlar armor and Uzis is an excellent example. A horse is approximately a 10 times larger target than a man (that's from the American Kriegspiel war-game for professional military officers of 1898 - full of semi useful Trivia like that!), and putting the horse in Kevlar is not physically possible - the animal would overheat and die within hours even at a slow trot.
In World War Two the Soviet Army had 7 Corps of mounted cavalry, and their casualties to enemy automatic weapons, artillery and air attack were simply horrendous - too big a set of targets. On the other hand, half of the mounted men were armed with submachine guns, so the 'Uzi' part was almost right and their main advantage was that a man on a horse could go places that no truck, car, or even tank could go - swamps, marshes, forested terrain, for example.

What made the mounted cavalry work at all, though, was that each Corps had the same collection of supporting weapons that a Tank or Mechanized Corps had: antitank, antiaircraft, heavy mortar, rocket artillery, combat engineers, and even their own tank support. Basically, each cavalry corps was a mechanized corps with the men riding on Organic Personnel Transports instead of riding inside Motorized Personnel Transports. But they dismounted to fight, just like ordinary infantry, because staying on a horse only worked in a few instances - like if enemy infantry was trying to run away, in which case the man on a horse with a sharp sword was just as effective as he had been ever since about 800 BCE.

So, sure, allow your cavalryman to be in Kevlar armor and carry an Uzi (or M4, or Ak-74), but he'll be slower than a mechanized infantryman in most terrain and be about 5 to 10 times more vulnerable to enemy fire - if the game is doing it right.

 

[Lonecat Nekophrodite]

To do any kind of a "upgradable workshop" system in a Historical 4X game you'd have to get the details right or it too easily falls into silliness. Knights on horseback with Kevlar armor and Uzis is an excellent example. A horse is approximately a 10 times larger target than a man (that's from the American Kriegspiel war-game for professional military officers of 1898 - full of semi useful Trivia like that!), and putting the horse in Kevlar is not physically possible - the animal would overheat and die within hours even at a slow trot.
In World War Two the Soviet Army had 7 Corps of mounted cavalry, and their casualties to enemy automatic weapons, artillery and air attack were simply horrendous - too big a set of targets. On the other hand, half of the mounted men were armed with submachine guns, so the 'Uzi' part was almost right and their main advantage was that a man on a horse could go places that no truck, car, or even tank could go - swamps, marshes, forested terrain, for example.
.

That is '12 Men Strong' movie!
AFAIK South African wars in the post colonial era (Rhodesian maybe?) were still fought with horse cavalry armed with FN FAL (exported autorifles rivaling to Kalashinikov). did they fight as mounted infantry or shoot on horseback like cowboys?
In Civ6 'Light' cavalry were upgraded to helicopters. is it actually a shadow to US Army 'Air Cavalry' concepts extensively used in their Indochine intervention wars? (the 'Nam to be precise)

 

[agonistes]

So for the first time in ages I'm playing Endless Legend. It's improved since the last time I played it. Three things stand out to me: 1) the map is gorgeous (waterfalls!!!), 2) you are a slave to RNG (this is to a lesser extent true in ES2, but your starting location can make or break your EL game), and 3) EL games are much longer than ES2 games. I play ES2 on Endless speed, but Long on EL seems much longer than ES2 on Endless.

I'm glad you mentioned speeds.

One thing I really like about Civ is the different speeds. Short and/or quick strategy games don't interest me.

I really hope you can continue playing after the game is 'won.' Having a definite finish line would be a deal breaker for me.

It's not the amount of 'work' in the game, it's the significance of the effort you're putting into it. Micromanaging a city when it's the only city you have is one thing: micromanaging 30 cities is a game designed as Torture and should be banned by the Geneva Convention (assuming another Civ hasn't conquered Geneva by then, which it usually has).
To my (limited) knowledge, it's a problem that has never been adequately solved in any 4X game. I think that a big part of the solution would be a workable 'intermediate' layer of Governor/Mayor/Minister between the player and the individual decisions. This has been tried in previous Civ games, and found wanting.
The trick to it, I think, would be to limit the decisions to what the AI is capable of while focusing the decisions on the type of outcome the gamer desires.
.

I disagree. I am looking forward to more micromanagement. The only downside I see is that the more MM there is, the bigger the advantage human players have over the AI, if the human player chooses to take advantage of the MM.

 

[Elhoim]

The main problem is when micromanagement means busywork, usually due to bad UI.

 

[agonistes]

The main problem is when micromanagement means busywork, usually due to bad UI.

Let's separate bad UI out from MM. Considering MM 'busywork' without UI considerations is a matter of perspective. Its really only busywork if it has no meaningful impact on the game.

Slightly off point, not only does MM have the potential to impact strategy and the quality of the player's play, it also can lend itself to any narrative that a player chooses to pursue.

Back on point, skilled play begins with MM. After reading @TheMeInTeam 's post about the SC2 ai that can beat 98% of players (something, btw, I have long advocated is possible to do with a Civ ai), I am more than ever hoping to see more MM in 4x games. The more MM available, the higher the ceiling is raised for the AI to be challenging. Down the road, a game with a lot of MM and a truly nasty AI would be awesome, because the number of important strategic and tactical decisions would be insane.

 

[mitsho]

Again, the main problem with micromanagement is the difference between Turn 1 and turn 150, namely how long a turn takes. But that, I think, is a very different conception from your point of view. You are right though: if you want a competitive game against an AI or another human player, then the more Micromanagement options available, the better. They allow a distinction between the expertise level of the players. In a turn-based game such as civ, that's even more pronounced as the time factor falls away.

But having those options means that a turn in the late game will take 20x or more longer than at the start. You have to set your citizens to working the tiles you want in all your cities. You have to move that infantry from that city to the border, times ten. Theres quite a good reason why in civilization you usually in a domination game attack that civ next where the bulk of your army already is. It's such a nuisance to move those units. A turn taking 20x or longer for such reasons is simply horrible for casual players wanting to experience a story. For role-playing, it's not as important to have 0.05 % more food, they need to see a change and the next element.

So ideally for me, the game will take away choices that work well at the start during its course and add new ones later on. Maybe setting your citizens to work specific tiles will not be important since you will automatically work all the tiles due to population growth?

 

[bbbt]

Again, the main problem with micromanagement is the difference between Turn 1 and turn 150, namely how long a turn takes. But that, I think, is a very different conception from your point of view. You are right though: if you want a competitive game against an AI or another human player, then the more Micromanagement options available, the better. They allow a distinction between the expertise level of the players. In a turn-based game such as civ, that's even more pronounced as the time factor falls away.

So ideally for me, the game will take away choices that work well at the start during its course and add new ones later on. Maybe setting your citizens to work specific tiles will not be important since you will automatically work all the tiles due to population growth?

A lot of micomanagment can be assuaged by having automanage options for those less inclined. Citizens working tiles is a good example. Imagine if it prompted you to assign a pop every time a new one appeared in any city? Instead the game automatically does that for you, but you can change it if you want, or choose 'emphasis' (i.e. food and production) for the auto-assignment.

I don't know why they don't have things like 'auto manage my city build order' options like they did in Civ 4 and earlier. I mean they must essentially have the logic there for the AI.

But the biggest micro issues for me in Civ games - both in 1UPT and in stacks of doom tbh - has always been unit micro, which always seems to be so much work it discourages me from playing dom games in Civ (even outside AI issues).

 

[Trav'ling Canuck]

A lot of micomanagment can be assuaged by having automanage options for those less inclined.

It can, but I'm personally more of a view like @mitsho expressed.

Good game design doesn't have you continue to make more and more decisions as the game goes on, each of which is less and less important. It keeps the relative importance of each decision you make as constant as possible from the start of the game to the end. Shutting off the decisions by assigning them to automanage is just masking that the game is bogging itself down over tiny, insignificant decisions because the design team hasn't thought through how empire-management changes as empires gets bigger.

Civ's decision making process is based around the sort of things a tribal leader in pre-history decides: which fields people should work in, which way a scouting group should travel, what building to put up during the summer. Then it never really gets out of that mode. Your people research higher levels of government, but never implement them. You just keep making the same micro-management decisions at the same scale as you always did.

 

[The googles do nothing]

You just keep making the same micro-management decisions at the same scale as you always did.

I wonder if Humankind is thinking about this right now or waiting until later. Civ 6 introduced districts and adjacency and then gave us railroads that act the same way as Civ 1 and don't interact with the new ideas at all.

Edit: They have added trade route and resources to railroads in the expansions.

 

[mitsho]

The thing with automation is that if it's bad, nobody uses it and it destroys immersion (units circling around endlessly. And if it's too good, why do the cumbersome task yourself and so the developer has removed an element from his game that he spent hours developing. There is a sweet spot of course, and no process to determine it that is valid everytime...

(and yes, trade routes reacting to the tiles they travel through would be awesome, also with them literally traveling back and forth, giving a dump amount of resources at the end would have been interesting, doable and a good example of good automatisation and creating interesting decisions. It would also have made a distinction between the early game when you get jumps of gold compared to a late game with a steady income due to having many more routes)

 

[9gkj548hkm20vk79dj689bnj4]

few points after reading this thread:

If there are cliffs, then were are the hills? Hills had bonuses and penalties in and of themselves in Civ. Mines, for one thing. Where are the mines and such in Humankind? In the mountains? This seems to be "hills" in the form of "steps" between different elevations, and moving between elevations during the movement phase is what determines your advantages/disadvantages, rather than being stationary upon a hill tile.
I do like clearly different elevations, though.

The choosing traits from different civilizations sounds too much like Civ 5 policies. Which is fine. I just wish it wouldn't have this "mix and match" feel to it. With that being said, part of the appeal of playing an historical game is that you are, well...choosing to roleplay as a historical figure or faction! Isn't that appealing? I wouldn't ever want to play as a blank slate civilization.

(And for those who say the ancient pre-civilization era isn't well represented...well I don't know how you can portray that other than having some scouting minigame at the beginning of the game. In Civ I always thought your first city was your first real permanent "settlement" and your scouts finding goody huts was simply a representation of "un"civilized or nomadic tribes being integrated into your empire.)

The map, however, looks fantastic. I love the city sprawl. And the tiny people walking around! Actual mundane activity going on! But how big that map will be, I don't know. We might be sacrificing game world size for level of detail here...

 

[Red_warning]

I wouldn't worry too much, most genres have a lot more competition between titles than 4X and people still find the time to play multiple games of the same genre.

 

[Quintillus]

Very interesting; somehow I hadn't heard of Humankind yet. I love the idea of an established studio such as Amplitude giving their take on the concept of a strategy game covering the history of humanity. Part of that is that I was not a fan of Civ V and haven't picked up VI yet (and was only in the forum to see if it was time to snag it), but also just the fact that right now you only get a Civ game every 5 or 6 years... wouldn't it be great to have two games, with different visions, coming out twice as often?

Endless Legend is a fun game, with new concepts, and one I almost started up again over Christmas break, and likely will at some point in the future. It'll be interesting to see what Amplitude comes up with... and it might even be to their advantage that there won't be as many pre-conceptions of what the game should be, since it will be the first one in the series.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Let's separate bad UI out from MM. Considering MM 'busywork' without UI considerations is a matter of perspective. Its really only busywork if it has no meaningful impact on the game.

Slightly off point, not only does MM have the potential to impact strategy and the quality of the player's play, it also can lend itself to any narrative that a player chooses to pursue.

Back on point, skilled play begins with MM. After reading @TheMeInTeam 's post about the SC2 ai that can beat 98% of players (something, btw, I have long advocated is possible to do with a Civ ai), I am more than ever hoping to see more MM in 4x games. The more MM available, the higher the ceiling is raised for the AI to be challenging. Down the road, a game with a lot of MM and a truly nasty AI would be awesome, because the number of important strategic and tactical decisions would be insane.

Recently the SC2 AI, while constrained in actions per minute to slow inputs below that of top human players, soundly defeated Serral. Serral has recent world championship credentials/is widely considered among the best players in the world, if not the best. So it's a lot higher than 98% now. Serral was able to take one of the games, but got smacked in 5+ others.

MM implies meaningful choices made at micro levels. They're not bad, in fact as long as they're reasonable to scope of the game they're a crucial part of the experience. There's a reason MM gets associated with "busywork" though, and that's because in practice these choices tend to be 1) trivial and 2) force the player into 100's to 10,000s of extra rote inputs to interact with them, only a tiny fraction of which are necessary to accomplish the same thing. It's not a problem unique to Civ.

Even Dominions 5, which puts a good bit of effort into creating shortcut hotkeys, could vastly improve its information presentation + limit inputs to accomplish same things. So when a MM decision is added, it IS good to consider carefully how often that choice will require careful consideration rather than being something that in 95% of cases players can just "always do x" and not be punished.