Humankind: impressive but not good (yet?)

[Kwami]

Ah yes, the "Gotcha!" system of game design. I think the biggest sign that this is a game still under development is the fact that they do not tell you enough about what the consequences are going to be, or even what it is that you are doing, exactly.

Case in point: the Civics Choice: "Irreligion" between Secularism or State Atheism. First of all, I question how that could even be a legitimate choice before the late Industrial Era, if even then: Religion was very much an Undeniable part of Human Existence in every society I've ever heard of until after the Renaissance/Early Modern period - look at the trouble Voltaire got into just questioning some of the tenets of the 'established' religion as late as the Enlghtenment!
Then of course, they don't bother to tell you that all the Civics Choices have a Third Choice: Ignore both of the choices given and don't ever spend a Civics Point on it! I suspect I am not the only gamer who learned about the "Irreligion" choice the hard way, by wiping out about 3/4 of my Science production, which was all coming from the effects of chosen Religious Tenets, by spending a Civics Point on 'Irreligion'.

Needless to say, won't ever make that mistake again, but it leaves me wondering what other pitfalls are waiting in the game to send the unwary gamer plunging onto the stakes below . . .

I'm wondering about the Independent Peoples civic, too. One side is assimilation and the other is military recruitment, or something like that. If you go into the window for an independent people, then it'll say that you need a civic to assimilate them. So, I've always chosen assimilation. But do you really need it? Because the civic itself doesn't say anything about that. It's just a discount, according to the civic.

On the other hand, I've never been able to recruit an army from an independent people. They always just say that units can't be recruited because they're defensive units. Well, OK, but what does that mean? How do I know which ones can be recruited? Is it because I didn't pick that civic?

Basically, the civics system is a mess and the in-game information needs some big updates. Otherwise, I'm just very confused.

 

[j51]

I watched a humankind twitch stream yesterday and a dev popped up in chat. The streamer complained about the lack of proper information, and he said he agreed but that ui was really hard and they had trouble finding good ui people. And that ubisoft was hunting all the talent.

That's really interesting and a shame. Do you have any more info on this?

 

[MrRadar]

The game doesn't explain to me what osmosis even is. It just says that a city benefited from osmosis. What's it really doing? My stability basically never went under 99% after the first era, so I don't think osmosis was hurting my stability. But what benefit was I getting?

This one wasn't too difficult to figure out, if you remembered from school what "osmosis" meant (something trickles in) , and went to look at the respective city, where you saw a beaker next to its name banner. It means that some knowledge from a technologically advanced neighbour has spilled over onto your nation and you are being offered two choices in the game: to buy an unresearched tech for a certain sum of money or to add some research points to your ongoing research.

But yeah, UI still needs some work and we would benefit from some more information and less clicking. Like, to see what the effect would be of the civic choice in terms of numerical values for yields generation, when relevant. Like, upgrade all units in an army not one by one, but at once, with 1 click; or even 1-click-upgrade all your available upgradeable units! And so on...

 

[blackbutterfly]

Edit, my picks:
Babylonians (science) - Celts (food) - Khmer (elephants ) - Dutch (gold)

Those Elephant units are great.

I also like the idea of avatars. Will we be able to create avatars of ourselves (rather than some random person like Lucy or Victor)? That would make sense, especially in MP.

So I see why Amplitude did avatars of YouTubers and Twitch streamers. Cos they can play as themselves in MP or whatever, rather than playing as Gandhi or Victoria or Teddy.

 

[Siptah]

Those Elephant units are great.

I also like the idea of avatars. Will we be able to create avatars of ourselves (rather than some random person like Lucy or Victor)? That would make sense, especially in MP.

So I see why Amplitude did avatars of YouTubers and Twitch streamers. Cos they can play as themselves in MP or whatever, rather than playing as Gandhi or Victoria or Teddy.

Apparently you can create your own avatars and also the ones that the AI uses in SP, including set personality traits and biases. It‘s a great system as far as I am concerned: it also allows the easy creation of any historical or fictional personality that I want and giving them the traits I see fitting.

 

[Kwami]

This one wasn't too difficult to figure out, if you remembered from school what "osmosis" meant (something trickles in) , and went to look at the respective city, where you saw a beaker next to its name banner. It means that some knowledge from a technologically advanced neighbour has spilled over onto your nation and you are being offered two choices in the game: to buy an unresearched tech for a certain sum of money or to add some research points to your ongoing research.

Really? Where do you get to make that choice? All I could do was acknowledge the osmosis event and then the notification would go away. It never prompted me to make a choice. Do I have to go to the city and click the beaker or something? None of this is intuitive.

Like, the UI is bad enough that it kind of ruins the game for me.

 

[MrRadar]

Do I have to go to the city and click the beaker

Yes, precisely, then the beaker banner gets extended, revealing the choice.
As for intuitiveness, that depends, I guess. When I get to learn a new game, I just try to click on everything, whether that looks clickable or not. Or at least mouse over, expecting a tooltip. Much more chance to discover something that way.

 

[Taefin]

Really? Where do you get to make that choice? All I could do was acknowledge the osmosis event and then the notification would go away. It never prompted me to make a choice.

I noticed there are major and minor osmosis events. Minor ones just give a small quantity of science, with no choice to make. Major ones give the choice between paying a chunk of gold for a tech, or getting what looked to me to be about half the science value of that tech toward the tech your are currently researching. It would be cool if they gave options for more advanced techs, or maybe gave a few techs to choose from. I thought I noticed it was always one of the lowest techs I didn’t yet have. Let’s say it gave the gunpowder tech to a Civ who didn’t have it, for a steep gold cost. That could be a way to model how many civilizations purchase new weapons systems from trading partners. Also, if you didn’t have the gold on hand, I’d have liked it if you had the option to wait and save up the gold before deciding on the osmosis.

Alternatively, if you could use gold to purchase units you hadn’t research so long as you had strategic resources trading with a player who had researched them, but perhaps at 2x cost. And probably not including EU, so you’d have to research those yourself, even if that player had the corresponding tech.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

There are (were!) at least two types of Osmosis events in the Open Dev. I never experienced any of the Science events, because I worked my butt off to stay ahead in Science, and if my neighbors got Science osmosis events, they never told me.
But you can also get "Influence osmosis" in which you will be prompted to change a Civics choice you've made to match that of a neighboring Faction that made a different choice. IF you do not make the change, or develop enough Influence to counter the 'pressure' you lose Stability. In one instance, ignoring a repeated Osmosis notice and not making any change to match the osmosis demand cut my nearest city's stability in half in just a few turns even while I was being careful not to do anything else to lower Stability (not building any new Quarters or making any other Civics choices that might affect it)

A far as I know, this is the only way to change a Civics choice once it is made, at least in the Victor Open Dev, and it's a choice you have to make under Osmosis pressure, and of course it only happens if your original choice was different from your neighbor exerting the Influence pressure on you. I couldn't find out while playing the Open Dev, but I would be very interested to know if there are any other events associated with having a neighbor who is, essentially, Influencing parts of your Empire this way . . .

 

[Kwami]

I remember that one of the treaties available to allies has to do with cultural influence. The wording on it was very confusing, though. It sounded like it would cause more of the influence osmosis that you're talking about, but that doesn't sound like a good thing in many cases.