That already seems like a large number of districts for such an early city. How big will the maps be to incorporate for such a urban sprawl? Or will you as a player only control a very small number of cities? I don't want my French Empire to just exist around Paris (pun intended). And I don't want every tile occupied with districts. Ah, we'll see, this probably is just a manufactured screen shot.
I love the Endless series but my main critique is that they have a lot of features that create micromanagement nightmares as the game rolls on. To mention but a few examples:
- Re-equipping / re-designing military units every time you discover a new technology, with multiple designs requiring updating every few turns or so
- Assigning skill points to heroes, which when you have 10+ heroes is a total nightmare
- Some interesting/creative mechanics that ultimately become very tedious and chore-like, yet you have to do the chores if you want to maximize your chance of winning, i.e., the "hacking" thing from Endless Space 2, the pearl collecting thing from Endless Legend
- The kind of mindless/indistinguishable buildings within each FIDSI color that you mindlessly build since most of them just add +X to ____ FIDSI resource
What's troubling is that the "complete" or latest versions of Endless Space 2 and Endless Legends do not resolve these issues even after many years.
Of course there are a ton of good parts that I look forward to, like quests, etc. But I really hope they have learned how to reduce the micro.
That already seems like a large number of districts for such an early city. How big will the maps be to incorporate for such a urban sprawl? Or will you as a player only control a very small number of cities? I don't want my French Empire to just exist around Paris (pun intended). And I don't want every tile occupied with districts. Ah, we'll see, this probably is just a manufactured screen shot.
It's a pretty safe bet that anything released to us Unwashed Masses (ie,, Da Public) will be artificially 'manufactured' to avoid releasing too much information, or information about features that may be abandoned or modified before the game comes out.
On the other hand, given the Food-Industry-Gold("Dust" from EL) -Science-Influence model, they could have several different 'specialized' Districts from very early. Or they could refurbish the EL model and have single type District for everything except Harbors. I doubt that they will do that, because as was pointed out, there seems to be a graphic differentiation between 'Districts' within the nominal city wall as well as a graphic distinction between tiles adjacent to the city and tiles further away in the same region (assuming the entire land area in the latest screen shot is all one region).
Given the more complex requirements for a 6000+ year span Historical Game compared to a Fantasy game, in which you may have to show Industrial 'districts', entertainment and religious complexes, railroad, airport, and commercial 'business' districts, I would expect distinctions between Districts from the start, so that the city will begin laying down 'farming/Food", "Manufacturing/Workshop/Industrial", and "Trade/Commercial/Gold" districts early. Science, Religion, and the Military might get their own Districts as well, but now we're getting very close to copying Civ, and I don't think they will do that. They've got a Blank Slate to work on and different set of mechanisms in the Endless games that they've refined for several years. They have no reason to simply copy the districts from Civ VI, and every reason from both a design and commercial standpoint to do something Distinctively Different.
The new screenshots look amazing, but I still need convincing when it comes to the whole "regions" concept. If it is a subtle thing like continents in Civ 6 I don't mind, but if it is like the regions in Endless Legend, chances are high I will not like it.
The new screenshots look amazing, but I still need convincing when it comes to the whole "regions" concept. If it is a subtle thing like continents in Civ 6 I don't mind, but if it is like the regions in Endless Legend, chances are high I will not like it.
Quick overview:
Every region has a climate (arid, arctic, etc.) and a type (mountains, plains, etc) that determines its resource boni (energy("gold"), science, food, and production). For example, both arid and mountains give +1 to production and +1 energy. So arid mountains give +2 each.
Colonies (aka cities) are build in any region and can expand into 4 more regions and exploit them for one resource each. Upgrading these sectors (unlocked through research or from the terrain modifiers) increases the amount of pops that can work that yield in the city, and the amount they produce.
1. On the topic of AI, I can tell you we have a bigger AI team on Humankind than on any of the previous games, but ultimately whether or not the AI is good will be for our players to judge.
2. We have plans for dealing with excessive micromanagement (especially in the late game), and they tie into how we handle regions, but we'll go into more detail on that at a later time.
3. As Boris points out, these screenshots are indeed "manufactured," in the sense that we create situations specific to what we want to show off (in this case, a tropical island and the Zhou), but they are all legitimate gameplay situations without any touchups except disabling the UI and adding the watermark.
1. On the topic of AI, I can tell you we have a bigger AI team on Humankind than on any of the previous games, but ultimately whether or not the AI is good will be for our players to judge.
2. We have plans for dealing with excessive micromanagement (especially in the late game), and they tie into how we handle regions, but we'll go into more detail on that at a later time.
3. As Boris points out, these screenshots are indeed "manufactured," in the sense that we create situations specific to what we want to show off (in this case, a tropical island and the Zhou), but they are all legitimate gameplay situations without any touchups except disabling the UI and adding the watermark.
Thanks for the continued interaction, Cat o'Nine! We're always hungry for more information about upcoming changes on the games we play, or want to play. (It's really sad that we get so little about Civ.)
1. On the topic of AI, I can tell you we have a bigger AI team on Humankind than on any of the previous games, but ultimately whether or not the AI is good will be for our players to judge.
This is the deciding factor on the game for me. Well mostly anyhow. Extensive mod support would go a long way but a living world is the most important thing. What's the point of 4X if the world is dead from the start?
The AI needs to show it's in the same world as you with their own stakes. Does it mean that it absolutely has to throw everything they have at the single victor as if global hegemony is the only satisfactory achievement in 4X? No, I don't think so. The rules could very well allow your own victory separate from current powers. Survival, for one. Features only worth investing in for smaller powers are possible, such as small border-based blocs or foreign oriented policies. What does it matter if there's one big civ on the world stage if it reached a stalemate?
Went off on a particular point after reading an old AI dev post on g2g, sorry .
Anywho, industry trends as they are, I have my doubts on what will be achieved in that area.
Mod support? Any chance for something as expansive as Civ5's Vox Populi for both AI and gameplay is all I really care to ask for.
1. On the topic of AI, I can tell you we have a bigger AI team on Humankind than on any of the previous games, but ultimately whether or not the AI is good will be for our players to judge.
2. We have plans for dealing with excessive micromanagement (especially in the late game), and they tie into how we handle regions, but we'll go into more detail on that at a later time.
3. As Boris points out, these screenshots are indeed "manufactured," in the sense that we create situations specific to what we want to show off (in this case, a tropical island and the Zhou), but they are all legitimate gameplay situations without any touchups except disabling the UI and adding the watermark.
1. On the topic of AI, I can tell you we have a bigger AI team on Humankind than on any of the previous games, but ultimately whether or not the AI is good will be for our players to judge.
2. We have plans for dealing with excessive micromanagement (especially in the late game), and they tie into how we handle regions, but we'll go into more detail on that at a later time.
3. As Boris points out, these screenshots are indeed "manufactured," in the sense that we create situations specific to what we want to show off (in this case, a tropical island and the Zhou), but they are all legitimate gameplay situations without any touchups except disabling the UI and adding the watermark.
Thanks for the continued interaction, Cat o'Nine! We're always hungry for more information about upcoming changes on the games we play, or want to play. (It's really sad that we get so little about Civ.)
Yeah Amplitude has always been very good in their communication. They even have/had a monthly beer event where any player, lucky enough to be in Paris where the studio is located, could pass by and share a beer with the team. Unheard openness in my book.
The new screenshots look amazing, but I still need convincing when it comes to the whole "regions" concept. If it is a subtle thing like continents in Civ 6 I don't mind, but if it is like the regions in Endless Legend, chances are high I will not like it.
I also did not like the regions in Endless Legend, but I was also unaware that you can apparently set the size of them in the game settings, and suspect I might have been fine with smaller ones than the standard.
Yeah Amplitude has always been very good in their communication. They even have/had a monthly beer event where any player, lucky enough to be in Paris where the studio is located, could pass by and share a beer with the team. Unheard openness in my book.
I also did not like the regions in Endless Legend, but I was also unaware that you can apparently set the size of them in the game settings, and suspect I might have been fine with smaller ones than the standard.
I was also dubious about the 'regions' concept when I first heard about it, then I played EL (got it cheap on a Steam Sale) a few times, and have been reading a little more about the implementation in Humankind.
As I understand it, the regional boundaries are not Cemented as in EL, but more flexible, in that a city can spread across more than one Region. That gives you the opportunity to set regions very small at the start but essentially expand them later, city by city.
Also, and I think this is indicated by the screenshots released so far (especially the latest one), the Region concept allows them to implement the same mechanism in Humankind that they had in EL: a city automatically 'works' every tile adjacent to a City/District tile and in the same region (the tiles next to the city in the latest screenshot show what appear to be a sprinkling of huts and farmed fields, definitely different graphically from 'wilderness' tiles further away from the city), and a city can also build an Improvement over any Resource in the region, no matter how far away, and gain access to that Resource. That dramatically increases the potential power of the early cities, and (in my experience in EL, at least) also dramatically increases the speed with which you can grow your early cities and Empire.
Again, assuming they are going to use some of the same mechanism they established in EL and going by the sprawling Mega-Cities earlier screenshots of Humankind showed off, I suspect there is little or no limit to the number of Districts a city can have except amount of land available in the region or regions the city controls. That means the city could access all the tiles it has Districts on plus all the tiles bordering those districts. Again, based on the sprawling (and presumably, Late Game) cities shown already, I'd say we are already looking at dozens of tiles being workable, which compares favorably with any mega city in Civ V or VI - and in addition Improvements elsewhere in the region can, presumably, also contribute as they do in EL.
What I find most interesting is that we already have potentially a new 'model' for the interaction between City and Country compared to Civ's hoary old Work The Tiles Near The City With the City Population: Amplitude's Endless Legend mechanism simply allowed all tiles bordering the city or District of the city to be automatically 'worked' and contribute to the city output: city maintenance consisted not of moving people around the tiles, but improving tiles or adding new ones by extending Districts - and now, apparently, in Humankind you can also add Regions or 'stretch' the Regional boundary that kept an EL city from accessing any tile beyond it.
Makes me wonder how many 'standard practices' in the Civ Franchise will get a Relook in Humankind and give us (and the Mod Community) more ideas about how to tweak both games, and maybe even ideas for the Design Teams on how to do Civ VII in New Ways compared to what Went Before.
Makes me wonder how many 'standard practices' in the Civ Franchise will get a Relook in Humankind and give us (and the Mod Community) more ideas about how to tweak both games, and maybe even ideas for the Design Teams on how to do Civ VII in New Ways compared to what Went Before.
well one thing they did in endless legend I really liked is that you can build tall cities by clustering your districts together, if a district is surrounded by districts it get an upgrade. I recall a faction that could build extra tall, it was really fun. That's at least one thing that works fundamentally different than civ.
Is it too early to speculate on the art style of the different "cultures"? Because I like how the Zhou's early buildings look like it's from ancient China
Is it too early to speculate on the art style of the different "cultures"? Because I like how the Zhou's early buildings look like it's from ancient China
This site uses cookies to help personalise content, tailor your experience and to keep you logged in if you register.
By continuing to use this site, you are consenting to our use of cookies.
.
