Humankind Game by Amplitude

And they are placed alphabetically after N, so Olmecs, Phoenicians and Shang or Zhou?

Olmecs and Zhou definitely, they were mentioned and they only fit this age. Phoenicians were mentioned as well but they fit both ancient and classical era (personally I'd prefer them in ancient).
 
I'd guess ancient and we get Carthaginians in Classical along with Libyans who can't be ancient now, right? :) They wouldn't disturb that alphabetical order they started. I'd rather have a bit of chaos, but okay...
 
Libyans are such a bizarre idea for a civ. I have read Libya's history Wikipedia page just to be sure and yep, Libya has kind of miserable "native" history. It has always been desert wasteland barring few coastal cities settled by faraway colonizers. Sure, sometimes they were very important (Cyrene) but still, Libya is one of last countries I would expect translated to a civ. Unless it is Gaddafi's modern Libya, as it was quite 'influential'... Jesus Christ that would be such a terrible modern representation of Arab state. Goddamn, Libya sucks in every age! Thus, to this day I am in denial, hoping it was some stupid journalist confusing it with Nubia or whatever.

Please don't bring me any proofs ruining this denial, I love it.

No but seriously, Libya? There are so many unusual civs from Middle East and North Africa you could introduce and which were never major empires and I'd be fine - Algeria (Tlemcen sułtanate?), "Berbers", Tunisia (Ifriqiya?), Saba, Himyar, Nabateans, Oman, Numidians - but Libya?
 
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They were quite calm so far about modern or industrial civs, so I didn't have the impression that Libya could be anything other than Bronze or Classical. Or rather, I thought they were Bronze together with Nubia because of the phrasing there.

But Libya being a modern civ could be quite genious, as a representation of an Arab Dictatorship you can't really go wrong with one that is history rather than ongoing...

Ah, we'll see :)
 
They were quite calm so far about modern or industrial civs,

I clearly recall how in some interview they mentioned three Chinese civilizations: Zhou, Ming and... PRC. So based on this template, we'll probably get some major civs in several instances, one of them being Modern State: the Definitive Edition.

I am thus 95% sure we'll get modern India as well.
 
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Categorising a colossal head as a "quarter" just seems odd to me. I highly doubt the Olmecs built entire districts centered around these statues.

I'm going to miss the variety of having unique improvements and buildings, which fit some civilisations much better than districts.
 
Looks good, like everything else. As a writer, I am not a fan of unique component nomenclature that uses the name of the faction itself.

I think it would do better as "Colossal Heads" rather than "Olmec Heads."

I suspect they ran into the on-going Olmec Problem: we can't really read their language, so we don't know what They called the "Heads" and have to make up a title for them. I will be very, very interested to see what the City List looks like for Olmecs, because last I looked, we don't have a name for any Olmec site that isn't just a modern Spanish archeological site name.

On the other hand, Phoenicians, Olmecs, Shang/Zhou Chinese play to Humankind's major difference (so far!) from Civ: Civ requires a Named Leader, and we don't really know any Non-Legendary Leaders for any of those: Humankind can include them with only minor difficulties in naming, while Civ would have to bend over sideways to include them the way it includes other, better known and attested Civs.

Libyans are such a bizarre idea for a civ. I have read Libya's history Wikipedia page just to be sure and yep, Libya has kind of miserable "native" history. It has always been desert wasteland barring few coastal cities settled by faraway colonizers. Sure, sometimes they were very important (Cyrene) but still, Libya is one of last countries I would expect translated to a civ. Unless it is Gaddafi's modern Libya, as it was quite 'influential'... Jesus Christ that would be such a terrible modern representation of Arab state. Goddamn, Libya sucks in every age! Thus, to this day I am in denial, hoping it was some stupid journalist confusing it with Nubia or whatever.

Please don't bring me any proofs ruining this denial, I love it.

No but seriously, Libya? There are so many unusual civs from Middle East and North Africa you could introduce and which were never major empires and I'd be fine - Algeria (Tlemcen sułtanate?), "Berbers", Tunisia (Ifriqiya?), Saba, Himyar, Nabateans, Oman, Numidians - but Libya?

Okay, not quite Ruining Your Denial, but a 'minor' correction: Libya has not "always been a desert wasteland". Since Humankind announced that they were gong to start with a sort of Pre-City nomad 'Era' or period, I've been delving into the Neolithic sites and cultures and conditions: roughly, the period from 10,000 to about 4 - 3000 BCE.
And major interesting fact: the Sahara was not a Desert during that period. There was an climate African Humid Period (AHP) from about 12,000 BCE to 39 - 3600 BCE in which the area from the Atlantic Coast to Arabia now desert was much wetter, grasslands and savannah with extensive lakes (the modern Quattara Depression west of Egypt was a great inland lake at the time) so that there were several cultures of Neolithic herding or agriculturalist or hunter-gatherers in the area.
'Way too early for any of them to be culturally connected with 'Libyan', but an indication that if the Civ game was to be 'back-dated' for a Prehistoric or Neolithic Era, some interesting 'natural' climate change mechanisms could be applied: people might be too thin on the ground for much conflict, but your surrounding terrain could shift on you and force you to react in some way, as it forced all of the 'Pre-Sahara' cultures to move to riverine (Egypt, Nubia) locations or further south to where there was still some grassland (Mali, Niger).
 
I suspect they ran into the on-going Olmec Problem: we can't really read their language, so we don't know what They called the "Heads" and have to make up a title for them. I will be very, very interested to see what the City List looks like for Olmecs, because last I looked, we don't have a name for any Olmec site that isn't just a modern Spanish archeological site name.

On the other hand, Phoenicians, Olmecs, Shang/Zhou Chinese play to Humankind's major difference (so far!) from Civ: Civ requires a Named Leader, and we don't really know any Non-Legendary Leaders for any of those: Humankind can include them with only minor difficulties in naming, while Civ would have to bend over sideways to include them the way it includes other, better known and attested Civs.



Okay, not quite Ruining Your Denial, but a 'minor' correction: Libya has not "always been a desert wasteland". Since Humankind announced that they were gong to start with a sort of Pre-City nomad 'Era' or period, I've been delving into the Neolithic sites and cultures and conditions: roughly, the period from 10,000 to about 4 - 3000 BCE.
And major interesting fact: the Sahara was not a Desert during that period. There was an climate African Humid Period (AHP) from about 12,000 BCE to 39 - 3600 BCE in which the area from the Atlantic Coast to Arabia now desert was much wetter, grasslands and savannah with extensive lakes (the modern Quattara Depression west of Egypt was a great inland lake at the time) so that there were several cultures of Neolithic herding or agriculturalist or hunter-gatherers in the area.
'Way too early for any of them to be culturally connected with 'Libyan', but an indication that if the Civ game was to be 'back-dated' for a Prehistoric or Neolithic Era, some interesting 'natural' climate change mechanisms could be applied: people might be too thin on the ground for much conflict, but your surrounding terrain could shift on you and force you to react in some way, as it forced all of the 'Pre-Sahara' cultures to move to riverine (Egypt, Nubia) locations or further south to where there was still some grassland (Mali, Niger).

Yeah, I know about Green Sahara and it's pretty fascinating, but then having "Libyan" civilization based on some neolithic peoples existing more than 6000 years ago is crazy as well :p Would you call neolithic people from 10 000 years ago who built Jericho "Hebrews"? :p
 
Categorising a colossal head as a "quarter" just seems odd to me. I highly doubt the Olmecs built entire districts centered around these statues.

I'm going to miss the variety of having unique improvements and buildings, which fit some civilisations much better than districts.
Emblematic Quarter seems to be the only name that they are giving, which if you look at the ones revealed, most of them don't appear to be district-like in the first place other than the Canal Network of the Harappans.
It's more akin to Unique Infrastructure which can accompany either an improvement, building, or district, just there is no distinction in Humankind apparently.
 
I'm definitely curious about HK but too much focus on dazzling screenshots and poor information on overall game mechanics makes me very skeptic about the quality of the game. It's starting to feel more like a marketing stunt to catch everyone's attention.

Sure, those cities on the top of the cliffs look beautiful indeed, I wish I lived there. But sitting and staring at the views is not what strategy gamers normally do most of the time. Of course visuals help immersion but not necessarily its quality and definitely not in the way most people think. Otherwise I wouldn't still miss the clumsy-pixeled-torch cursor of Civ I, or the marching of troops in front of the city-view everytime you conquered a city. I know a big part of this has to do with personal taste and emotional experience but what I mean to say is that the role of Graphics in immersion and gameplay has more to do with designer choices than with spatial resolution or color depth. For a game dev, getting a screen with HD and millions of colours is easy: he just needs more bits. But getting an interface or environment where the player really feels he's guiding a civilization through the ages, exploring, exploiting and expanding, the dev needs much more than that.

Sure, we'll have 60 civs, each with its emblematic building, unit and trait, that's all very nice but quite obvious. But exactly how will that affect gameplay? Civs in the Age of Empires series also have special units and traits and that doesn't mean we can compare AOE to Sid Meier's Civilization. Also, what will be the point in (e.g) Harappans having special building "Canals" to irrigate more efficiently, if the AI is not developed enough to use them logically and efficiently? Or what will be the point in (again e.g.) Olmecs having special unit "Javelin Throwers" if the game pace is so unbalanced that you skip through the Olmec era without a single javelin shot?

To sum up, what I would expect from a game that aims to compete with the Civ series was a deeply improved gameplay with a good immersion, with better AI and a balanced Game Pace (no rushing in early age, no boredom in middle and late age). So if the creators of HK really wanted to get civers hooked they would be adressing those issues, not just visuals and cultural diversity. Fancy screenshots and a bunch of new civs with a bunch of new emblematic units, buildings and traits, just seems a bit...shallow. But let's wait and see. Maybe they have a really good product and are just focusing on mainstream players for now.
 
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Classification: Aesthete

"Aesthete" - Ampltude continues to dig deep into the thesaurus for terminology. In addition to expanding players' knowledge of history, they seem intent on broadening their vocabulary as well. :lol:


Categorising a colossal head as a "quarter" just seems odd to me. I highly doubt the Olmecs built entire districts centered around these statues.

I'm going to miss the variety of having unique improvements and buildings, which fit some civilisations much better than districts.

The visual aspect of the game seems quite important to Amplitude. I suspect they've gone this route because quarters are presumably large and appear on the map, so emblematic quarters add visual distinctions between one culture and another. What the quarters do could still vary wildly, and thus encompass the gameplay impact of both Civ's improvements and Civ's districts. I'd guess it's just the unique buildings that HK may have dropped, in favour of more map variety.


Looks good, like everything else. As a writer, I am not a fan of unique component nomenclature that uses the name of the faction itself.

I think it would do better as "Colossal Heads" rather than "Olmec Heads."

Perhaps they went this route to make room for an Easter Island culture, too ...
 
Perhaps they went this route to make room for an Easter Island culture, too ...
Well, the Rapa Nui had a name for those statues - Moai. We don't know what the Olmecs called there's though.
 
I‘m not following this very closely, was this the first time that two civs were revealed within a single week? For a 2020 release date, they surely need to speed up with this teasers.

Also, I wonder if we will see some bronze age gameplay once all 10 bronze age civs are revealed.
 
There are 52 civs left to reveal. At 2 per week, that is 6 months until they run out.
 
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