Humankind Game by Amplitude

[Nerevatar]

please be polite about the placement of the subforum.

Didnt mean to come off snarky about the subforum, sorry. Im just happy about the interaction and wanted to give you as easy a time as possible in return.

Back on topic: isnt that big structure the main building atop the terracotta army?

 

[Siptah]

Didnt mean to come off snarky about the subforum, sorry. Im just happy about the interaction and wanted to give you as easy a time as possible in return.

Back on topic: isnt that big structure the main building atop the terracotta army?

I think it is just the city center of a Zhou city. The city center has to be in inside these walls and the other salient building is the confucian school emblematic quarter.

 

[Lord Xavius]

This is the first result I get when Googling for "Zhou dynasty palace":

So it checks out.

 

[Eddie Verdde]

Those would be much better than the extremely overrated Mercator projection. Practically every single modern cartographer is tired of the Mercator projection (the traditional one with Ellesmere Island in northern Nunavut larger than Australia and Greenland being larger than South America).

That's why I mentioned the (irrealistic) excess of tundra in civ maps, a couple of pages back.

This is how a map should look to keep the actual proportions of area from the equator to the poles:

https://geoawesomeness.com/after-this-video-youll-never-trust-a-map-again/

But then there's the wrapping problems as somenone mentioned, so I guess we better get used to Mercator's projections.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

Since the unique quarter of the Zhou is now known, we can identify this screenshot as a Zhou city. Nice city center...

Spoiler :

View attachment 546136

Look closely at the city walls: while they are still 'curtain' walls (European style) instead of the correct Rammed Earth, the towers on the walls have a Chinese-style superstructure and roof.
So, assuming everybody gets to build city walls in Classical/Medieval Eras, does that mean that even 'ordinary' city structures are graphically specific to regions or Factions?
Wow.

 

[FinalDoomsday]

More graphical diversity between civs cities and units the better I personally find it a much better allocation of resources than animated 3d leaders.

Can we really expect each civ to have its own city centre graphics? And I wonder how many generic building styles there will be with the sprawl. As some one who doesn't like playing civs in civ 6 that don't have their own unique palace this is exciting indeed!

 

[Matthias Corvinus]

More graphical diversity between civs cities and units the better I personally find it a much better allocation of resources than animated 3d leaders.

Can we really expect each civ to have its own city centre graphics? And I wonder how many generic building styles there will be with the sprawl. As some one who doesn't like playing civs in civ 6 that don't have their own unique palace this is exciting indeed!

Perhaps Amplitude has been working on this project for much longer than previously thought, Firaxis hasn’t been working nearly as hard as they used to, or it is a combination of both. You may be correct with your assumption, but I am just trying to get my own hopes up after the severe content drought from Firaxis.

 

[AntSou]

That's why I mentioned the (irrealistic) excess of tundra in civ maps, a couple of pages back.

This is how a map should look to keep the actual proportions of area from the equator to the poles:

https://geoawesomeness.com/after-this-video-youll-never-trust-a-map-again/

But then there's the wrapping problems as somenone mentioned, so I guess we better get used to Mercator's projections.

But none of that matters unless one is using a real map of earth. True Start Location would make no sense in Humankind. It might actually feel a bit silly imo.

Since one relies on map generation to create a fantasy land, projections do not matter.

Besides, not everyone will agree less tundra is better. I like diminishing returns applied to expansion, and having to fight for the most fertile lands. Making everything fertile is no fun.

And then of course there's the issue of playability. The map you provided is terrible, regardless of how realistic. Something like 3/4 of all the civs would be squashed in the first top third of the map, which is why nobody uses that in Civ.

 

[Eddie Verdde]

But none of that matters unless one is using a real map of earth. True Start Location would make no sense in Humankind. It might actually feel a bit silly imo.

Since one relies on map generation to create a fantasy land, projections do not matter.

Besides, not everyone will agree less tundra is better. I like diminishing returns applied to expansion, and having to fight for the most fertile lands. Making everything fertile is no fun.

And then of course there's the issue of playability. The map you provided is terrible, regardless of how realistic. Something like 3/4 of all the civs would be squashed in the first top third of the map, which is why nobody uses that in Civ.

I showed the map to demonstrate that, in Civ, maps have an excess of tundra and polar ice-caps when you play in a Earth-like world, that's all.
I never assumed that everyone prefers less tundra. But if someone wants to play in a barren world to increase competition for the fertile lands, there are dozens of possible combinations in the advanced setup to get such a map. Whereas if someone wants to play in a Earth-like map with Earth-like climate (e.g. Terra, not the actual Earth with Europe, Asia, etc.) there's no way to set the tundra and ice-caps to realistic areas, so the result is a map with about 1/3 of land where nothing happens. In adition, reducing the area of tundra doesn't necessariy imply that everything else would be fertile - there would still be mountains, deserts and jungles.

Using a non-Mercator map, most civs would be squashed in the first top third of the map, as you say, only if you're assuming a True-Earth Map and True Starting Locations. But that's not the reason why such a map never made it into Civ. The reason is just technical, and has to do with the problem of projecting a spherical, continual surface into a 2D area that can be "wrapped". And using this exact map and packing most of the civs into a limited, fertile land, while most part of the planet would be ocean and inhospitable jungle and desert, would create a scenario where the civs would actively compete for the best regions, which, I believe, is exactly what you like.

Anyway, we are talking about civ - we don't know how the game mechanics of Humankind will be affected by the map. So, we'll just have to wait and see,

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

What's nice about having it's own sub forum is we can now make threads about each culture as they are announced.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

What's nice about having it's own sub forum is we can now make threads about each culture as they are announced.

- And a host of other, still open questions, like Religion and how they handle it, Social/Civic Policies, Diplomacy, Wonders, Combat, 'Avatars', etc., etc.

 

[Siptah]

... and don‘t forget the missing Screenshots Analysis Thread

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

... and don‘t forget the missing Screenshots Analysis Thread

Getting that started right would first require culling through all 78 pages of this Thread. Any volunteers?

 

[Matthias Corvinus]

Getting that started right would first require culling through all 78 pages of this Thread. Any volunteers?

There already is a known info thread

 

[Krajzen]

There already is a known info thread

It is also newly created, still poor and rudimentary

 

[WillowBrook]

There already is a known info thread

Which would be appropriate for posting obvious things gleaned from screenshots, but not the wild speculation (or even mild speculation) that regularly occurs in screenshot analysis threads.

 

[Catoninetales_Amplitude]

That's why I mentioned the (irrealistic) excess of tundra in civ maps, a couple of pages back.

This is how a map should look to keep the actual proportions of area from the equator to the poles:

https://geoawesomeness.com/after-this-video-youll-never-trust-a-map-again/

But then there's the wrapping problems as somenone mentioned, so I guess we better get used to Mercator's projections.

Using a non-Mercator map, most civs would be squashed in the first top third of the map, as you say, only if you're assuming a True-Earth Map and True Starting Locations. But that's not the reason why such a map never made it into Civ. The reason is just technical, and has to do with the problem of projecting a spherical, continual surface into a 2D area that can be "wrapped". And using this exact map and packing most of the civs into a limited, fertile land, while most part of the planet would be ocean and inhospitable jungle and desert, would create a scenario where the civs would actively compete for the best regions, which, I believe, is exactly what you like.

Anyway, we are talking about civ - we don't know how the game mechanics of Humankind will be affected by the map. So, we'll just have to wait and see,

Bold part added for emphasis. The example map you posted actually nicely demonstartes the issue: Any map that is rectangular and thus "wrappable" for our purposes will ahve severe distortions. See for example the deformation indicatrices on for the Gall-Peters projection you showed:

Spoiler Map Image :

You can see that they are heavily squashed in north-south direction near the poles, and stretched near the equator, so this map would have an excess of equatorial distancecompared to temperate and sub-polar regions. It may preserve areas, but it most certainly does not preserve distances, and nobody likes walking through desert for 10 turns. In the end, something always has to give when going from a spherical surface to a flat map.

The gist of all this is: We don't design a globe and then flatten it, we are trying to design a flat map that will be interesting to play on but feels plausible.

Look closely at the city walls: while they are still 'curtain' walls (European style) instead of the correct Rammed Earth, the towers on the walls have a Chinese-style superstructure and roof.
So, assuming everybody gets to build city walls in Classical/Medieval Eras, does that mean that even 'ordinary' city structures are graphically specific to regions or Factions?
Wow.

I guess proper rammed earth walls would indeed be much wider than these, and this may have been an artistic conceit to keep the walls from occupying too much space on the tile borders. We do have variation of wall styles along with the variation of the "ordinary" city structures, though admittedly there will likely not be 60 distinct styles. However, you can already see some of this comparing the screenshots of Assyrian or Babylonian cities to the one of the Zhou city and the one of the Greek city.

Can we really expect each civ to have its own city centre graphics?

Yes.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

. . . I guess proper rammed earth walls would indeed be much wider than these, and this may have been an artistic conceit to keep the walls from occupying too much space on the tile borders. We do have variation of wall styles along with the variation of the "ordinary" city structures, though admittedly there will likely not be 60 distinct styles. However, you can already see some of this comparing the screenshots of Assyrian or Babylonian cities to the one of the Zhou city and the one of the Greek city.

No apologies necessary. If I hadn't happened to find a thesis on Rammed Earth Architecture from the University of Calgary last year on an obscure academic site I wouldn't know anything about rammed earth walls either, and the 'pagoda-like' towers are graphic enough to proclaim "Eastern Asia" on the map.

Differentiation of city graphics by Civ instead of Era is Stunning all by itself.

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

Tomorrow, video dev diary #2 or first classical culture?

 

[Siptah]

Tomorrow, video dev diary #2 or first classical culture?

Classical culture tomorrow, dev diary on Friday