Humankind Game by Amplitude

[Krajzen]

Really love the art style and the UI of HK. Everything just look better on every aspect than Civ VI aesthetically.

Hell, everything in this game 'looks' better conceptually as well. We will see how this game plays in practice, but if it is half as good as it seems on paper, then Sid Meier has finally received worthy enemy.

Civ5 was my great love and contender to one of the most beloved games of my life (haven't played previous titles). Civ6 is still a good game but it couldn't compare to the old love, was a disappointment overall, mainly because I disagree on goddamn nearly Platonic level with nearly every conceptual and aestethic design decision of this game lol (since the very announcement back in 2016). Humankind so far scares my cynical, weary heart, because it is opposite, on paper it not only fulfills my desires of design, it even invents new ideas I didn't know I needed.

Time will show how it plays, but Amplitude so far has a history of strong and stable releases, realizing their initial vision, and detractors come mainly from people who dislike something about the design in the first place... For example, to be honest I haven't become fan of Endless Legend unfortunately, but that's because ultimately the fundamental idea of "fantasy 4X" didn't work for me at all (tl;dr every second I played this game I loved its world, I just wanted to play RPG game in this setting, not global strategy). But it wasn't hatred or indifference; I could feel this is incredible game with heart, soul and high quality. So I have faith that if Amplitude manages once again reach this heart, soul and high quality but with a game that's core idea is actually appealing to me 100% then I will love it very much.

 

[Siptah]

And here's the IGN interview

https://www.ign.com/videos/how-humankind-differs-from-other-4x-games

I don't think that there is much new info in it, but it shows a bit more footage. For example, coffee is a luxury, and a chariot is seen in action.

 

[FinalDoomsday]

It's looking great but I am glad it's coming out next year as theres clearly a lot of systems that are not even implemented yet such as religion. As my most anticipated video game I want it to be as good as it possibly can!

 

[SupremacyKing2]

One question I have: are the civs each era, picked on a first come first serve basis meaning if you are late in getting to an era, you pick from whatever is left? If they are not picked on a first come first serve basis, then can 2 players pick the same civ?

 

[aguaacrobata2]

One question I have: are the civs each era, picked on a first come first serve basis meaning if you are late in getting to an era, you pick from whatever is left? If they are not picked on a first come first serve basis, then can 2 players pick the same civ?

It is first come first serve. In one of the First Impression video there is a screenshot of the second era culture selection where it can be seen that a culture is already taken and hence not available.

 

[SupremacyKing2]

It is first come first serve. In one of the First Impression video there is a screenshot of the second era culture selection where it can be seen that a culture is already taken and hence not available.

Thanks. I thought that might be the case but wanted to make sure. It encourages player to progress to the next era in a timely manner, if they want to pick a specific civ since waiting too long will run the risk that it will be unavailable.

 

[Siptah]

Thanks. I thought that might be the case but wanted to make sure. It encourages player to progress to the next era in a timely manner, if they want to pick a specific civ since waiting too long will run the risk that it will be unavailable.

There seems to be other incentives to transition quickly as well, namely fame generation. There's more fame for era stars early in an era (starts at 100 as it seems), and the amount of fame declines as the era progresses (the lowest I saw was 40-something). So staying longer in an era to get the low hanging fruit in form of additional era stars that you are close to might often not be worth it. The whole game might be a kind of race, especially on higher difficulties.

 

[Catoninetales_Amplitude]

I wonder if they might not be going a little in the same direction as Endless Space 2 and the Fleet system. For those who never played it, it allowed you to join together in a fleet a bunch of ship. Each ship had something called (from memory, not altogether sure of the name) Command Points, and your fleets had a certain max number of command points available in its formation. The VERY interesting point about that system was that some research through the technology tree were specifically to increase that Max Command Points to fleet. It allowed you to get much stronger, but you had to spend time and resource to research it first. I could very well envision the same kind of system here,
where the regiment size and strength would be defined by a likewise value that could be increased by teching, or even civics...

More like Endless Legend than Endless Space 2.

Of course, it also raises many more questions which I suspect will need to "later(TM)" for full replies:

1. How are civic points earned? How does it interact with other game systems, e.g. a completely separate "currency" and diplomatic interactions.

Later™

1. The previous question whether there are downsides to going to extremes in the civic bars. And to what extent one could "reverse course" over the game without first losing all benefits accumulated, i.e. by "going back down" the scale.

As that one screenshot shows, the axes all have two bonuses associated with them, with each being strong at one side and disappearing at the other. And I do think you can reverse course, but it's not a "radical shift" in just a turn or two: You'll have to put in the effort and go back across the bar.

1. What are "unadministered" cities and their counter-parts? The IGN article suggests it's those going over your expansion limit, using a similar mechanism as in ES2. Would also be interesting if there was some interaction between level of control and administration status.

The short version of it is that you only have a limited number of Administrators, and Unadministered Cities are less productive than Administered ones.

iirc the screen in the video said "next civic unlocks in 25 turns" which seems quite a long time if you intend to unlock all 30-something of them.

Yes, 25 turns does sound like a long time, doesn't it?

This also helps us discriminating the Hunnic EQ from the Mongol one. They are hopefully different, as the Hunnic ones does nothing apparently.

With this, much as with the wonder, I would urge you to keep in mind that this was an early version. Not everything is ready yet, and there may also be UI errors. (Those icons really aren't supposed to overlap, for example.)

1. The background music changes once you transition to a culture.

That really shouldn't be a surprise. We had an entire video of Arnaud talking about that.

the fundamental idea of "fantasy 4X" didn't work for me at all (tl;dr every second I played this game I loved its world, I just wanted to play RPG game in this setting

You and what feels like 90% of our fans.

It's looking great but I am glad it's coming out next year as theres clearly a lot of systems that are not even implemented yet such as religion. As my most anticipated video game I want it to be as good as it possibly can!

There are a lot of systems we haven't shown, but there are various different reasons for that: Maybe the UI is not ready (many of you have probably watched PDX streams and know what "Programmer UI" is like, which is not suitable for the digital equivalent of E3), maybe the system is there but not yet filled with content, maybe the AI did not handle the system well yet... Our VIPs can attest there's a lot more already in the build they got to try, but "ready to test" is not the same as "ready to show to the public."

 

[SupremacyKing2]

There seems to be other incentives to transition quickly as well, namely fame generation. There's more fame for era stars early in an era (starts at 100 as it seems), and the amount of fame declines as the era progresses (the lowest I saw was 40-something). So staying longer in an era to get the low hanging fruit in form of additional era stars that you are close to might often not be worth it. The whole game might be a kind of race, especially on higher difficulties.

To be clear, when you get 7 era stars, you automatically progress to the next era. You can't stick around to get more era stars. I think what you mean is that you can delay getting the 7 era stars to try to accumulate more fame.

Games automatically end after a certain number of turns and the civ with the most fame wins. So yes, the game will definitely be a race to earn fame as quickly as possible.

One thing that I find interesting with era stars is that you can earn multiple era stars per challenge but you only need 7 to progress to the next era. As we can see from the screenshot, this means that you can generalize your civ and get 1 star from each challenge +1 extra star or you can specialize your civ and focus on just 3 challenges and get all 3 stars in just 2 challenges and +1 star from a 3rd challenge.

 

[Siptah]

To be clear, when you get 7 era stars, you automatically progress to the next era.

According to the videos, this is apparently not the case. I heard in at least two videos that you can stick around to get 8 or 9 stars if you think the investment (delay your culture pick and be later to the next era) is worth it.

 

[Elhoim]

According to the videos, this is apparently not the case. I heard in at least two videos that you can stick around to get 8 or 9 stars if you think the investment (delay your culture pick and be later to the next era) is worth it.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure as well.

 

[tedhebert]

Been watching all the videos listed in the first Impressions Thread. boy am I excited by this game ;-)

One thought really popped in my mind when watching that specific image of all the cultures available in the build ( I think there were some 14 on the image) with details on their bonuses; The Egyptian UU, the Markabata, seems to me extremely strong for a culture that is tagged as builder, and not Militarist. At 27 ST, 6 moves and 3 range, it seems to me that it compares pretty well to UU available to other cultures from the NEXT Era. I'm sure all those numbers will be further revised as balancing the game keeps on, but this suggest to me ways in which a long term strategy will be able to be prepared in advance and make a possible race for choosing next culture a very real thing.

I hope there are many other examples of this linked to the emblematic infra and/or the legacy trait. those would be more subtle and harder to figure out than militaruy unit strength without actually playing the game, but they've really got my hopes up !

 

[Catoninetales_Amplitude]

To be clear, when you get 7 era stars, you automatically progress to the next era. You can't stick around to get more era stars

Confirming what Siptah and Elhoim are saying: It's your choice when you advance once you have 7 stars.

 

[Siptah]

The Egyptian UU, the Markabata, seems to me extremely strong for a culture that is tagged as builder, and not Militarist. At 27 ST, 6 moves and 3 range, it seems to me that it compares pretty well to UU available to other cultures from the NEXT Era. I'm sure all those numbers will be further revised as balancing the game keeps on, but this suggest to me ways in which a long term strategy will be able to be prepared in advance and make a possible race for choosing next culture a very real thing.

One streamer pointed out that the Markabata requires horses to build, which you might not have access to. I don't know requirements of other EUs, but that might be why it's stronger. And similar to the Egyptian UU in civ VI, it might be strong but too expensive to build a lot of them. We don't really know.

To me, Egypt seems to be, once again, the prime wonder builder culture. You spam trade quarters and their EQ that gives influence based on adjacency to unlock the wonders, which are reduced in price. Additionally, the builder trait seems to give a mind-boggling amount of industry. You might want to go builder-aesthete-builder-aesthete-builder-aesthete though for wonders ;-)

 

[danza4x]

Mycenaeans also look like they could be pretty insanely strong. That +200% XP is a legacy trait, right? So that will carry on throughout the game?

Yeesh, nobody knows how the game will play out yet but I can picture some horrific military strategies coming out of that.

 

[Siptah]

Mycenaeans also look like they could be pretty insanely strong. That +200% XP is a legacy trait, right? So that will carry on throughout the game?

Yeesh, nobody knows how the game will play out yet but I can picture some horrific military strategies coming out of that.

Their EU gets it’s bonus only in friendly terrain though, and the militarist trait seems to be better for defense compared to offense. Except maybe all out offense. But yes, Gaining XP with thrice the speed seems quite strong.

 

[danza4x]

Their EU gets it’s bonus only in friendly terrain though, and the militarist trait seems to be better for defense compared to offense. Except maybe all out offense. But yes, Gaining XP with thrice the speed seems quite strong.

You wouldn't necessarily have to fight the war during that era, though. You could pick them early, then spend the next two eras farming xp for a big push with a Medieval militarist or something like that.

 

[SupremacyKing2]

Confirming what Siptah and Elhoim are saying: It's your choice when you advance once you have 7 stars.

Thanks for the clarification.

 

[danza4x]

Their EU gets it’s bonus only in friendly terrain though, and the militarist trait seems to be better for defense compared to offense. Except maybe all out offense. But yes, Gaining XP with thrice the speed seems quite strong.

Having said all that, though, I do like this design. You might pick the Mycenaeans if you feel vulnerable to early war, so you gain the defensive bonuses, and then 'turn the tables' so to speak by becoming an insane military powerhouse yourself later in the game.

 

[SupremacyKing2]

Having said all that, though, I do like this design. You might pick the Mycenaeans if you feel vulnerable to early war, so you gain the defensive bonuses, and then 'turn the tables' so to speak by becoming an insane military powerhouse yourself later in the game.

Which is great both from a gameplay perspective but also from a historical perspective. Cultures did change over time. Some cultures started agrarian and became militaristic or started militaristic and later became very cultural and scientific.