I didn't even reach the industrial era and the game ended?

[9gkj548hkm20vk79dj689bnj4]

Finished my first game.
So apparently 300 turns is standard. On Normal speed, though, I barely entered the "early modern" era as the Dutch and the game was over. The problem is, if I change speeds, that will just increase or decrease the speed of research.

Am I just not generating enough science or what is going on here? Like, how can I continue to earn stars into later eras without the game ending prematurely?

(EDIT: I was generating about 500 science per turn, across 4 cities, right before the the game ended.)

I'm thinking I'm not building enough science quarters. In Civ 6, you had like one science district per city, but here it looks like you can keep on building more. Is that it?

Just wondering if anyone had the same experience, coming off of Civ 6.

 

[MrRadar]

In Civ 6, you had like one science district per city, but here it looks like you can keep on building more. Is that it?

Yes, that’s a right direction. Forget Civ 6 habits, city sprawl is real here - spam same districts, in clusters or around special districts for increased adjacencies. 500 bpt ain’t gonna cut it, get at least 10x that, or better 100x
Don’t forget that you can attach several outpost regions to one city region. That way city centre infrastructure buildings also become much more viable as they benefit larger number of suitable tiles or districts or specialist slots.

 

[Victoria]

Just wondering if anyone had the same experience, coming off of Civ 6

Yes, my first game was science poor. My second was science rich and I want to the moon very early.
The mistake I made was building districts but not infrastructure but also not enough scientists slotted early. Your first city with one district attached is around 20 food 20 production. Slotting more of them when you can slot science is a mistake because better science gives you a higher city cap earlier amongst a zillion other things like better infrastructure earlier.

 

[Taefin]

Sounds a lot like my first game when I stumbled across HK beta coming from Civ6. I looked at a research quarter and thought, “3 science plus exploitation of a science tile, I probably have more important things to do than build another of those”. It turns out a large portion of science generation is about the adjacency bonus that quarters of the same kind give each other. +1 by default but it increases with various infrastructures and relatively early you are getting an extra 18+ science for building another quarter. I also was neglecting my researchers who represent most of my early game science. Infrastructure that boosts researchers science yield up to 12+, add another dozen or two RQ in a city or two and the yields begin to scale quickly. Though what really makes it take off is picking a science culture that has an emblematic quarter that works well with your empire. Being able to put 4+ of these in each city (once in each region) begins to create multiplicative effects, i.e. number of regions * city population that can really encourage you to merge cities at the right time. I basically play ignoring research, except running researchers when I can spare them, until I start to getting better tech. Then I dedicate a city to research. Somewhere around early modern and industrial you just need to spam RQ to keep up with the increasing tech cost, but usually the effort to stay on pace through industrial makes contemporary a breeze.

Edit: one more thing I remembered I overlooked my first 4 games, you only need to research one prerequisite to move on to a higher tier tech. At first I was really struggling to get wheel early for the EU. Not the primary issue here but one of the changes from Civ6.

 

[9gkj548hkm20vk79dj689bnj4]

Yes, that’s a right direction. Forget Civ 6 habits, city sprawl is real here - spam same districts, in clusters or around special districts for increased adjacencies. 500 bpt ain’t gonna cut it, get at least 10x that, or better 100x
Don’t forget that you can attach several outpost regions to one city region. That way city centre infrastructure buildings also become much more viable as they benefit larger number of suitable tiles or districts or specialist slots.

Tell me about it. I saw some Youtuber have something like 10 thousand science per turn.
I don't know how these guys do it, but I'll keep trying.

 

[MrRadar]

Tell me about it. I saw some Youtuber have something like 10 thousand science per turn.
I don't know how these guys do it, but I'll keep trying.

Districts of the same type benefit from adjacency per each adjacent district.
For example, if you build a cluster of 7 research quarters by having one RQ district surrounded by 6 other RQs, the central one will get +6 beakers from adjacencies alone, and the 6 outer ones +3 each, not counting other possible adjacencies from other districts.
Building a school will add another +1 beaker per adjacent district, effectively doubling the figures mentioned above and will add another +2 beakers per RQ. And those districts provide specialist slots, which also provide a lot of beakers when specialists are slotted.
Also such infrastructure as House of Scribes increase productivity of research specialists and add more slots for them.
And it is like that for respective yields of other specialty districts: makers, farmers and market. Get food, get people and slot in specialists, build more districts and so on. Make some friends, buy luxuries from them to balance stability.
Then, scientific cultures can set their cities to 'collective minds' build for 5 turns, which converts their industry, money and surplus food to science output.

 

[Zaarin]

General principle of Humankind is that you want more of everything. This is a big change from Civ6 where you can do just fine with six cities, can only build one of each district per city, and get no benefit from multiple luxuries.

 

[Siptah]

This is a big change from Civ6 where you can do just fine with six cities

While you are of course correct that everything is better, I feel 6 cities with several territories each are just fine in Humankind.

 

[Zaarin]

While you are of course correct that everything is better, I feel 6 cities with several territories each are just fine in Humankind.

Yes, you're right, and you should definitely be attaching territories to your cities and merging cities. I ran into a serious overexpansion problem in my last game where I had too many cities and ended up with -24,000 influence. I eventually got my influence per turn back into positive numbers...but I never did get my actual influence back into the positive, which put an end to my expansion.

 

[Aristos]

Yes, you're right, and you should definitely be attaching territories to your cities and merging cities. I ran into a serious overexpansion problem in my last game where I had too many cities and ended up with -24,000 influence. I eventually got my influence per turn back into positive numbers...but I never did get my actual influence back into the positive, which put an end to my expansion.

Sounds like a well designed system, doesn't it?

 

[Zaarin]

Sounds like a well designed system, doesn't it?

Agreed, I think Humankind has found a way to both reward aggressive expansion and put a limit on expansion.

 

[fortydayweekend]

While you are of course correct that everything is better, I feel 6 cities with several territories each are just fine in Humankind.

Do you have any thoughts on optimum number of territories per city? It's a trade off of a few things
- influence to attach or merge (though not a bottleneck late game)
- saving production by only building city center building in one vs multiple cities - though some double ups will be lost if merging
- increased food per population cost
- increased adjacency bonuses on territory borders

I seem to be using 3-4 territories per city because that makes sense early game with limited influence and city caps. Number of cities is basically just first 2 + captured cities, and maybe an extra one on islands. I do some detaching and swapping territories around once everything is backfilled, mainly to make the borders as smooth as possible.

It feels like it isn't worth merging later on but maybe it would be, after manufactured luxuries when there's a massive stability boost. That might then justify building more of the late game 6000+ production buildings which only have an 80-100 turn payoff in a 70-pop 4-territory city.

 

[Siptah]

Do you have any thoughts on optimum number of territories per city? It's a trade off of a few things
- influence to attach or merge (though not a bottleneck late game)
- saving production by only building city center building in one vs multiple cities - though some double ups will be lost if merging
- increased food per population cost
- increased adjacency bonuses on territory borders

I seem to be using 3-4 territories per city because that makes sense early game with limited influence and city caps. Number of cities is basically just first 2 + captured cities, and maybe an extra one on islands. I do some detaching and swapping territories around once everything is backfilled, mainly to make the borders as smooth as possible.

It feels like it isn't worth merging later on but maybe it would be, after manufactured luxuries when there's a massive stability boost. That might then justify building more of the late game 6000+ production buildings which only have an 80-100 turn payoff in a 70-pop 4-territory city.

I developed a habit of having 3-5 territories on all cities, if possible. As you say, it's what works well in the beginning of the game. I merge smaller cities later on, so that all are ~5-7. But it's less an optimization than me not wanting to control more than a few cities in the late game ;-) I haven't done any calculation when the best point for merging and re-attaching comes (if at all), this is just a thing that I do at some point, often in early modern or when entering contemporary. It's actually bad for pollution though, as more cities would mean less cities with high pollution. But I hope that mechanic changes a bit soon anyway.
I'm not sure about your last point in the list btw, I think that adjacency works across city borders (but I'm not really sure right now). It's tremendous fun to play a game with just one city and dozens of territories though. It has its own challenges, put also its own rewards.

 

[Elhoim]

Yeah, managing one city feels like you are controlling a single empire, with a strong capital and satellite cities all around.

 

[Psychotronics]

Tbh, I'm feeling that the turn limit needs to be brought up. I think the normal game should have 450, without the yields being adjusted.

 

[Swissy]

Played three full games, plus numerous half games when I was getting a feel for the game, and what appears to be the overall determining factor in how well you do is how many people you have. Population is the biggest advantage you can have in this game. The legacy traits and emblematic quarters that give yeilds for population are very exploitable. Ending the game as the Turks is just broken when you play the whole game as making the largest empire in population.

 

[NombreyApellido]

i'm leaning more and more towards many cities of just two territories, three at most, and nearly all of them stolen from the AI

i feel INF is best spent on powerful civics and wonders, claiming and instantly building extractors

 

[Cherenkov]

Yes, you're right, and you should definitely be attaching territories to your cities and merging cities. I ran into a serious overexpansion problem in my last game where I had too many cities and ended up with -24,000 influence. I eventually got my influence per turn back into positive numbers...but I never did get my actual influence back into the positive, which put an end to my expansion.

If you are over the city cap by a huge amount then ransack some cities then create outposts over them and attach those to other cities. Infrastructure stays intact and it is way cheaper than merging cities.

 

[Taefin]

If you are over the city cap by a huge amount then ransack some cities then create outposts over them and attach those to other cities. Infrastructure stays intact and it is way cheaper than merging cities.

For sure, I often do this, especially in war. Merging cities is for saving the pops.

 

[9gkj548hkm20vk79dj689bnj4]

Again, turn 230 and I'm barely into the Early Modern era. I'm just hitting "next turn" until the game is over.
Meanwhile I see folks here in the Industrial era in a little over 100 turns.
I don't know how it's done. This game doesn't seem to be clicking with me.