Humankind Game by Amplitude

[Boris Gudenuf]

I agree it looks like go, despite the stones not all being on the intersections of the lines. Also, the board has only 17x17 lines. I believe that by the Edo period it was standardized to 19x19; earlier boards had more variation. It's a plausible board position, could have been taken from depictions in Chinese or Japanese art. Black seems to have a solid lead.

A Chinese Go (Yi) Board with a 17 x 17 grid was found in a tomb (apparently, improvised so the tomb guards could play) dated to Eastern Han (20 - 220 CE or so) while the earliest (Chinese) 19 x 19 board was a ceramic board dated to the Sui Dynasty (581 - 618 CE)

Interestingly, the 17 x 17 board is still played in Tibet. Alas, nothing else in the picture looks Tibetan, but wouldn't that be Something Different!

I suspect a Classical Chinese Faction of Han Dynasty . . .

 

[Cerilis]

I'm not sure the artists would go as far as to precisely look up the appropriate size of the board for the given time period and culture.

 

[Krajzen]

I'm not sure the artists would go as far as to precisely look up the appropriate size of the board for the given time period and culture.

You'd be goddamn surprised how far would they go if they were recruited from civ fanatics



Anyway, here are my predictions for classical and medieval era.

CLASSICAL AGE/IRON AGE
Greece
Rome
Celts/Gauls
Persia/Iran (pls devs give them their own name) (devs I will become your slave if for once they'll be based on Sassanids, not goddamn Achaemenids)
Scythians
Korea in some incarnation
Maurya (India)
Maya
Nazca or Moche (Andes)
Axum (Ethiopia) or Nok (Nigeria)

Alternatives:
- Han but IIRC devs said somewhere China will be represented as Zhou, Ming and PRC
- Carthage but IMO it seems unlikely as they'd be basically Phoenicians 2.0 (much more than Greece is Mycenae 2.0)
- Armenia, Hebrews or Goths (I'd love them all, I'm just pessimistic)

MEDIEVAL AGE
this one is very hard because there are so damn many civs from an entire world which can fit this period
Khmer - confirmed
Arabs - goddamn necessary
Mali or Zimbabwe - token black
Byzantium - goddamn necessary
Vikings - IIRC mentioned, also necessary
Franks or HRE
Kievan Rus or Anglo-Saxons
Aztec, with Inca being sent to exploration era
Pueblo or Cahokia
Asian civ - incarnation of either China, India or Korea

Alternatives
- Mongolia: the only reason I didn't put them in "necessary" is because of the weirdness of the "Mongol Horde" thing
- Turks (based on Seljuks, Rûm or whatever)
- Indonesia: because it is the only period when it had really powerful civilizations
- Why Pueblo/Cahokia? Because they are the only opportunity to add "proper" city building civs from North America, and they fit only this period.
- Why those four sets of civs? Byzantium and Vikings are necessary. Some incarnation of Carolingians, Charlemagne, HRE or whatever is also necessary. Anglo-Saxons or Rus is a gamble because you can fit incarnations of England and Russia into damn every age since medieval.

 

[Siptah]

I wonder if there is a game mode with 10 factions on the map in which every civ can only be chosen once. Would motivate to be among the first to reach a new era to have more to choose from.

I hope that in standard games, we can see 12 Harappans fighting it out...

 

[pokiehl]

Perhaps now is the time a mod should change the title of this thread? I'm sure it's a misconception that neither Firaxis nor Amplitude want to promote.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

Perhaps now is the time a mod should change the title of this thread? I'm sure it's a misconception that neither Firaxis nor Amplitude want to promote.

"Is Civilization VI Humankind as a Cartoon?"

- Okay, I'll go away and be quiet now.

 

[ThunderLizard2]

I think HK could definitely steal players from the civ playerbase. The reason is because HK has the same "stone age to space age" historical setting as civ. So HK is in the same house as civ. The thing with Endless Legend is that while it shared some 4X similarities with civ, it had a lot of fantasy elements that made it a different game entirely. There was no overlap there. HK and civ do overlap eventhough they may have some different game mechanics.

The key will be how the game plays. If HK is more "grand strategy" and tries to follow real history too much then I could definitely see civ players staying with civ since they prefer more the "what if" history of civ games. But if HK plays a lot like a civ game, just with different graphics and different mechanics, then I could see it stealing civ players. It also depends on good HK is. If the game is not that good, and releases with bugs and missing features, then no, it won't steal civ players. If HK is super good and super addictive and has that "just one more turn" feel, then yes, it will steal civ players.

Agree that EL was too fantasy for me. HK looks like a true successor to Civ IV BTS which was the last Civ game I found challenging. Combat seems to be better as well - much better than the 1 UPT in Civ V and VI.

 

[Wyvern_Parade]

Well the Zhou look pretty cool, but I can't say that I expected them to be another "Aesthete" civ. I assume this means they'll have some similarities to a culture/religious focus if we are thinking in Civilization terms.

Can anyone who has a better knowledge of Chinese history shed some light on why they may have gone in this direction rather than warmonger or something like that?

 

[pokiehl]

Well the Zhou look pretty cool, but I can't say that I expected them to be another "Aesthete" civ. I assume this means they'll have some similarities to a culture/religious focus if we are thinking in Civilization terms.

Can anyone who has a better knowledge of Chinese history shed some light on why they may have gone in this direction rather than warmonger or something like that?

confucianism + "mandate of heaven"

 

[CivLuvah]

Imgur album updated to include Zhou

https://imgur.com/a/4cPjGSY

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

Imgur album updated to include Zhou

https://imgur.com/a/4cPjGSY

10 civs and 1 era down. 50 civs and 5 eras to go.

 

[CivLuvah]

10 civs and 1 era down. 50 civs and 5 eras to go.

Maybe I should make separate albums per era once we get all the civs; or label each picture somehow based on era.

 

[Siptah]

Perhaps now is the time a mod should change the title of this thread? I'm sure it's a misconception that neither Firaxis nor Amplitude want to promote.

It may be time to create a a subform in "other games" for Humankind

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

Well the Zhou look pretty cool, but I can't say that I expected them to be another "Aesthete" civ. I assume this means they'll have some similarities to a culture/religious focus if we are thinking in Civilization terms.

Can anyone who has a better knowledge of Chinese history shed some light on why they may have gone in this direction rather than warmonger or something like that?

Eastern and Western Zhou were roughly dated 1046 - 256 BCE.
In that same period, aside from the first Chinese Crossbows, heavy chariots, and Sun Tzu, they also had Confucius (Kong Fu Tse) and Lao Tse, the earliest brush/ink painting, bronze decorative cast objects, and the earliest indications of feng shui techniques - including using lodestone compasses to determine orientations.

Which means I would think they could have gone War Monger, Scientific or Aesthete (Cultural, I presume). Since there are more than enough War Mongering cultures in the Bronze Age (Assyrians and Myceneans, just for two) I suspect they decided to emphasize the Aesthetic aspect of the Zhou for Balance.

Which makes me wonder if the later Tang and Ming will also be Aesthete or other Affinity? I would think the Tang with their heavy armored horsemen-based army would be better as War Monger and the Ming, who after all extended Chinese borders into Korea and central Asia, possibly Expansionist

 

[nauberry]

Do we have any idea how big the map will be? Seeing the screenshot with the pyramids, it seems that the desert itself is already huge. It oculd be just for the screenshot though. The cities sprawl on such a large area, that a civ 6 sized map would propably be too small in my opinion.

 

[Uberfrog]

Do we have any idea how big the map will be? Seeing the screenshot with the pyramids, it seems that the desert itself is already huge. It oculd be just for the screenshot though. The cities sprawl on such a large area, that a civ 6 sized map would propably be too small in my opinion.

I think it’s quite likely that a Humankind empire will involve a smaller number of larger, more sprawling cities than in Civ 6.

 

[Catoninetales_Amplitude]

Do we have any idea how big the map will be? Seeing the screenshot with the pyramids, it seems that the desert itself is already huge. It oculd be just for the screenshot though. The cities sprawl on such a large area, that a civ 6 sized map would propably be too small in my opinion.

I haven't looked up the specific numbers, but from my gut feeling the smallest map is comparable to a tiny Civ6 map in size, but the biggest maps are quite a bit bigger than a Huge Civ 6 map, but of course this feels different with the region system, and may still change.

 

[Eddie Verdde]

but the biggest maps are quite a bit bigger than a Huge Civ 6 map, but of course this feels different with the region system, and may still change.

As long as the proportion of tundra+ice caps to the rest of the world is realistic, this is great news.

I don't know about Civ6, but in Civ5 there's too much tundra, probably because the designers didn't take into account that they were using flat maps. In real life (i.e. espherical world) the proportion of polar surface is much smaller than in the maps of civ.

 

[Catoninetales_Amplitude]

I am afraid that just like Civilization and pretty much every other game that uses a flat map to represent a global scale, we are bound by the facts of mathematics and map projections, making it impossible to maintain distances, angles, and areas simultaneously.
In other words: 10 tiles worth of map height near the poles will be the same area as 10 tiles worth of map height near the equator, so there will probably be "too much" polar region.

 

[nauberry]

I am afraid that just like Civilization and pretty much every other game that uses a flat map to represent a global scale, we are bound by the facts of mathematics and map projections, making it impossible to maintain distances, angles, and areas simultaneously.
In other words: 10 tiles worth of map height near the poles will be the same area as 10 tiles worth of map height near the equator, so there will probably be "too much" polar region.

Some of the ture start location map mods in teh workshop have solved this issue by cutting off the polar regions of the map. This would mean less tundra area and ice, but would still allow icy areas in places such as greenland.