Humankind Game by Amplitude

[mitsho]

We don't. That's what I was getting at. So far, it only shows a turn number, and dates are never mentioned anywhere in the game interface, and I don't think we have plans to change that. I may be wrong about that, though.

Upps, I should read better... Thanks for the patience and the clarification

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

We don't. That's what I was getting at. So far, it only shows a turn number, and dates are never mentioned anywhere in the game interface, and I don't think we have plans to change that. I may be wrong about that, though.

Given the number of different dating systems used in various cultures and parts of the world until very recent times, has any thought been given to providing the gamer with the option of using a 'regional variant' Dating System?
One of my favorite things in Civ V was the fact that the Mayan Civilization had all their dates in a Long Count format instead of BCE/CE or BC/AD. I thought that was immensely flavorful and could be expanded to the majority of civs/Factions before the last Eras of the game.

 

[FinalDoomsday]

I'd really avoid the civ 6 design choice of wanting to decrease the amount of warfare the further you go into the game as it just makes the game anti-climatic. Now Alliances and power blocs? Go for that and really try and encourage world wars in the late game. Endless Space 2 did this pretty well with an event that forced everyone to pick a side and fight and really felt like a finale for your game.

 

[Siptah]

So, feature video today? Tomorrow? Next week?

 

[aguaacrobata2]

Given the number of different dating systems used in various cultures and parts of the world until very recent times, has any thought been given to providing the gamer with the option of using a 'regional variant' Dating System?
One of my favorite things in Civ V was the fact that the Mayan Civilization had all their dates in a Long Count format instead of BCE/CE or BC/AD. I thought that was immensely flavorful and could be expanded to the majority of civs/Factions before the last Eras of the game.

I totally agree on that. A cool feature would be that when a culture creates a religion it restarts its year count to 0 (and if other culture adopts this religion it would adjust its year count), and therefore different cultures could have different dating systems.

 

[Elhoim]

So, feature video today? Tomorrow? Next week?

They seem to be every 3 weeks. Today we got a screenshot.

 

[Krajzen]

I'd really avoid the civ 6 design choice of wanting to decrease the amount of warfare the further you go into the game as it just makes the game anti-climatic. Now Alliances and power blocs? Go for that and really try and encourage world wars in the late game. Endless Space 2 did this pretty well with an event that forced everyone to pick a side and fight and really felt like a finale for your game.

This idea has always seemed goddamn stupid to me.
First, it makes no historical sense at all - the only long period of peace which maybe can be tied to "inevitable" progress is
a) Last 70 years, after ww2
b) Between highly developed countries, when any potential war has become too mindbogglingly complicated, expensive and unpopular.

Otherwise, you are not going to convince me that ancient world was murderous free for all while 20th century was spectacularly peaceful
Ah yes, the horror of living in peaceful ancient Egypt or during Pax Romana - unlike wonderful existence in Europe in years 1914 - 1945, in China 1911 - 1960, in Afghanistan 1979 - 2020, in Indochina in the second half of 20th century, in Kashmir, Rwanda, Yugoslavia, Syria, Yemen, Iraq, Sudan, Somalia, Ethiopia, Central Africa, Angola, Mozambique...
To be honest I do think there is a great decline in violence across ages, but not in a way translatable to geopolitical scale of Civ games.

Secondly, it makes for a terribly anticlimactic gameplay. Instead of finał escalation towards grand ideological world wars like IRL, or danger of nuclear confrontation like IRL, or proxy wars like IRL, or resource wars like IRL... We get boredom until inevitable victory.

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

https://twitter.com/Writing_Bull/status/1243566816292675587?s=19

Writing Bull has some kind of Humankind exclusive?

 

[Siptah]

https://twitter.com/Writing_Bull/status/1243566816292675587?s=19

Writing Bull has some kind of Humankind exclusive?

Good news! So we'll learn more about the game soon.

Writing Bull regularly visits European developers and often has them as guests on his stream. If this turns out to contain exclusive info, I'll watch it (probably on Monday) and report here.
I would guess that the guest in this case might actually be @Catoninetales_Amplitude. I would also guess that his presentation is available in English simultaneously or a day later.

 

[Catoninetales_Amplitude]

The only "exclusivity" here is that I'll be speaking German rather than English. It's all based on the two Feature Focus videos and our twitter teasers and culture reveals.
If any questions come up that I can answer but you have not asked yet (which seems rather unlikely) I'll take notes and let you know as well.

 

[Siptah]

So I was able to catch the VoD of yesterday's stream in German and there are a few new infos - or at least infos that I did not realize yet. There's also one or two new screenshots I think.

Thanks @Catoninetales_Amplitude!

Screenshot showcasing different elevations, and showing unit designs we haven't seen before (Goths against Greeks?).

Spoiler :

Screenshot showing the same terrain with different biomes (tundra or taiga on the left and savannah on the right)

Spoiler :

Information:

• there are no seasons
• climate change/terra forming/future era are on the dev's minds but cannot be promised for release
• rivers moderate movement and can give a bonus to resources/trade (memory is fuzzy here what exactly was said)
• the specific quarters interact with the environment, so a production focused quarter is better built on a tile surrounded by rocks than by grassland. Some quarters (the word "temple-like" was uttered as well) interact with surrounding quarters
• you advance to the next era with (7?) era stars. Those seem to be things that you need to accomplish in the game.
• Food, science and industry/production confirmed as resources.
• no Dust resource
• approval or something similar with a different name will be in as well
• wonders are not unlocked by tech. Instead by other actions in game. If you unlock a wonder, no one else can build it. So the wonder race seems to be for the unlocking, not the actual building.
• Mount Everest natural wonder confirmed
• controlling natural wonders gives you fame
• natural wonders only appear in the associated biome
• the culture "gauls" was named a few times, for whatever reason...
• no workers or builder as it seems: resource extractors are built with city production and then placed on the map where they are automatically connected with roads.
• game is confirmed for PC, could not be confirmed for Mac or Linux (but it was announced for mac, right? Otherwise I would have probably ignored it)
• Writing Bull originally planned to visit Amplitude "in a few days" to play an early build, but this was canceled due to the current situation. However, he said that it won't be "an eternity" anymore until the first preview let's play on his channel and that catoninetails will visit again in the near future.

 

[FinalDoomsday]

Thank you Siptah theres lots of talk about there.

Regarding future era I'd really like the game to stick to known history perhaps up to the end of the cold war after all we don't really know what our current 'era' is all about let alone the future I'd really like them to end with ideological battles of the 20th century rather than chuck in some laser tanks or try and figure out what effect social media should have on a civ.

 

[Siptah]

Thank you Siptah theres lots of talk about there.

Regarding future era I'd really like the game to stick to known history perhaps up to the end of the cold war after all we don't really know what our current 'era' is all about let alone the future I'd really like them to end with ideological battles of the 20th century rather than chuck in some laser tanks or try and figure out what effect social media should have on a civ.

Well, they said it ends in the age of communication and social media. So really more today than in the 20th century.

 

[Catoninetales_Amplitude]

Thank you Siptah for the summary. I would have provided one myself otherwise, but did not yet get around to that.

The two screenshots you shared weren't new, though. They've been available on Games2Gether since Feature Focus #02.


Now let me add some remarks on your summary:

• Rivers can be economically exploited in a few ways, and they do have an impact on movement and combat. They are not navigable by naval units, however.
• The "temple-like" quarters in this case were Commons Quarters.
• Yes, the construction is not a race for Wonders. We can't talk about the specifics of unlocking yet, though, as we need to reveal other game systems before we can explain that.
• Finding the natural wonders gives you fame. Whether controlling it provides additional fame is something I'd need to look up.
• Mentioning the Gauls was really just humorously riffing on Asterix (it has been on my mind a bit, after the recent death of Uderzo).
• Regarding Mac: Our previous games where out on Mac, but I am not going to make any promises until I have QA confirmation of a working Mac build.

And yes, the end of the game is probably closer to our current time than to the end of the cold war. I don't think tere's a specific cut-off year, but I don't recall any wildly futuristic techs, either.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

Thank you Siptah for the summary. I would have provided one myself otherwise, but did not yet get around to that.

The two screenshots you shared weren't new, though. They've been available on Games2Gether since Feature Focus #02.


Now let me add some remarks on your summary:

• Rivers can be economically exploited in a few ways, and they do have an impact on movement and combat. They are not navigable by naval units, however.
• The "temple-like" quarters in this case were Commons Quarters.
• Yes, the construction is not a race for Wonders. We can't talk about the specifics of unlocking yet, though, as we need to reveal other game systems before we can explain that.
• Finding the natural wonders gives you fame. Whether controlling it provides additional fame is something I'd need to look up.
• Mentioning the Gauls was really just humorously riffing on Asterix (it has been on my mind a bit, after the recent death of Uderzo).
• Regarding Mac: Our previous games where out on Mac, but I am not going to make any promises until I have QA confirmation of a working Mac build.

And yes, the end of the game is probably closer to our current time than to the end of the cold war. I don't think tere's a specific cut-off year, but I don't recall any wildly futuristic techs, either.

Regarding the summary that 'resources' were Production, Science, Food, and 'Not Dust' (which I'd always assumed would be replaced by Gold in a Historical 4X anyway), that means we have a Basic Resource Quad of Food, Production, Science and Gold.
So, I would assume that the City Quarters would be related to increasing the totals of those 4 Resources in the city, and that Religion and Culture, unlike Civ VI, are not 'Resources' to be accumulated and spent at will.

As regards the Mac, I too assumed that Humankind would be available for it since all the previous Endless games from Amplitude are. IF it takes extra time to port to the Mac I can understand, especially since all development work has gotten a little more difficult given the current situation. Just remember everyone that there are alternatives: I finally broke down a few months ago and set up a Bootcamp partition on my Mac so that I could access old Windows/PC games left over from some years ago when I maintained a separate PC for gaming only. That's allowed me to dabble in my old favorites Settlers 6, Patrician and Port Royale, and assuming it doesn't turn out to be too much of a graphics test, also gets me ready for Humankind on release regardless of platform.

I presume that it's much too early to release System Requirements for Humankind?

 

[Siptah]

As regards the Mac, I too assumed that Humankind would be available for it since all the previous Endless games from Amplitude are. IF it takes extra time to port to the Mac I can understand, especially since all development work has gotten a little more difficult given the current situation. Just remember everyone that there are alternatives: I finally broke down a few months ago and set up a Bootcamp partition on my Mac so that I could access old Windows/PC games left over from some years ago when I maintained a separate PC for gaming only. That's allowed me to dabble in my old favorites Settlers 6, Patrician and Port Royale

I‘m aware of it, but prefer to not reboot all the time and like to have as much disk space as possible, as it really speeds up calculations I do for work.
Just so you know, you can play these game with wine as well, I played a lot of these older games on mac with it (Patrician and Port Royale are always fun). However, I‘m not sure if it still works with Catalina.

 

[Catoninetales_Amplitude]

As far as I am aware, the goal is to have a Mac port. But given my experience with our other games on Mac the last few months, I don't want to make promises for release date until I see it running.

And yes, it is indeed far too early for us to talk about specs.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

I‘m aware of it, but prefer to not reboot all the time and like to have as much disk space as possible, as it really speeds up calculations I do for work.
Just so you know, you can play these game with wine as well, I played a lot of these older games on mac with it (Patrician and Port Royale are always fun). However, I‘m not sure if it still works with Catalina.

I refuse to go to Catalina for a while, since it will require Upgrading several sets of software I use constantly, in turn requiring some substantial costs. Also there is nothing that Catalina does that I am interested in. This is not new for me - I stuck with Mac OS 9 for about 6 years until too much software simply wouldn't work with it anymore and I had to upgrade to OS 10.
Luckily for me, the bulk of my work is Word Processing, which is does not tax memory excessively. Of course, downloading thousands of pages of archive documents from the Russian Ministry of Defense and several obscure websites in the past few years that are all graphics (Preview/JPEG files) files is starting to eat into my file space, but I'm a long way from maxing it out.

 

[danza4x]

So I was able to catch the VoD of yesterday's stream in German and there are a few new infos - or at least infos that I did not realize yet. There's also one or two new screenshots I think.

Great info. Couple of things I'm curious about here:

1) Will biome actually have any effect at all on gameplay? I understand that it doesn't affect base tile yields, which is cool and will help with balance, but it would still be cool if there were certain effects in the game that were impacted by it (religion, wonder construction, culture bonuses, whatever else) - I can see it affects natural wonders, so this makes me think it will impact other things in some ways as well.
2) Lack of "dust" is very interesting. Is this just because it's not called that? Will gold be a resource? Gold/dust has generally played a fairly core role in the way 4x gameplay works.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

Great info. Couple of things I'm curious about here:

1) Will biome actually have any effect at all on gameplay? I understand that it doesn't affect base tile yields, which is cool and will help with balance, but it would still be cool if there were certain effects in the game that were impacted by it (religion, wonder construction, culture bonuses, whatever else) - I can see it affects natural wonders, so this makes me think it will impact other things in some ways as well.
2) Lack of "dust" is very interesting. Is this just because it's not called that? Will gold be a resource? Gold/dust has generally played a fairly core role in the way 4x gameplay works.

From the terrain video they put out, it looks like they have the same kind of resources per tile based on terrain and biome that Civ has (+Food on grassland, + Production on hills, etc) but with more variety of biome (from the visuals) and therefore probably some very different 'bonuses' or yields from them.
As for 'Adjacency bonuses' or something similar for Religion, Culture, Quarters, World Wonders, etc I would assume they have them, but I don't remember seeing any details or specifics.

'Dust' was used in Endless Legend almost exactly the same way 'Gold' is used in Civ VI, so I always assumed that in Humankind, Dust would be renamed Gold. After all, it's hard to see how a Historical 4X could be designed without Money in the game!
On the other hand, and as usual, details are lacking. Can we buy units with Gold only? Can we speed up production with Gold? Is accumulation of Gold going to yield 'Fame Stars' that lead directly to Victory? (one would assume so, but so far that's an assumption only)