Just what the 4X franchise needed

[Don Andre]

HK is full of tweaks and changes that are very refreshing for the series. The early exploration for instance actually provides a more interesting first decision than civ's and reliefs developers from the burden of having to provide optimal start locations. In addition exploration is actually a necessity to collect resources than just a chance to grab an advantage.
The territories and the ability to link them, just fantastic. Even trade is way better.
Battle is the best in any civ series yet. Civ 5/6 was also nice, but HK avoids the complex logistics. Also siege is possible!

It's amazing that humankind being a first to the series is quite complex already and adds so much in total

Also I like influence as a resource like money, but for civics and growing empire. This creates an interesting different approach to culture.

Playing through my first campaign the game seems rather easy towards the end. I suppose some tweaking patches will have to follow. For instance the costs to handle those events is rather tiny. When you are making 1000+ money each turn and having 15k ready to spend, 200 is nothing to cover for some bad consequences.

I also think that something like tension could arise if the ideologies that you create do not match your actions. Right now you're moving pretty fearlessly from authority to liberalism. In reality a change of ideology is gradual and greatly affects stability. I didn't have any problems with stability. I suppose it's a bit too easy the way it is implemented.

Definitely lots of potential for a successor game.

 

[Don Andre]

Too bad I ran into the pollution trap on my first game. Built train stations, aerodromes and airports everywhere. Now I have a lot of pollution and my stability goes down down down.
It doesn't seem possible to remove the pollution again :-(
So how do I recover the stability values? I went from stability is no problem to stability is unrecoverable in the last 20 turns or so.

I certainly didn't expect this severity with just a couple of aerodromes, airports and train stations.

 

[Kevin Rohrer]

I am having the same problem in my current game where I took over 2-territories from Greece and my stability is -285 a turn. There is no way to recover from this, so will have to Concede. Am thinking this needs to be changed.

 

[Elhoim]

Yes, pollution needs a bit of a rework, IMO, and those quarters pollution heavily reduced. Same for the "first tier penalty" per quarter.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

Yes, pollution needs a bit of a rework, IMO, and those quarters pollution heavily reduced. Same for the "first tier penalty" per quarter.

Pollution mechanics were added late in the development cycle and started out even worse then they are now - and were being commented on extensively right up to Release. Definitely needs more Balance, specially since it is essentially a purely Negative system - you get nothing positive from Pollution, except the chance to end the game with a grayed-out planet before Turn 300.

On the other hand, IF you know what's coming, there are some Anti-Pollution things you can do:
1. Plant forests. It's cheap and quick and gives a small minus to the Pollution with every new tree. I frequently wind up with "Green Belts" around my cities by the Late Game.
2. Get to Power Lines Tech and then Renewable Energy Tech (Both Modern/Contemporary Age). The first gives you Hydroelectric Dams, the second Solar Farms and Wind Farms to build that reduce Pollution accumulation dramatically: I was top polluter in one of my first post-release games, had the Money banked to start buying Dams and Wind Farms as soon as they were available, and managed to drop my Pollution accumulation from over 300/turn to about 40/turn, which allowed me to end the game on my terms and not by Pollution Default.
3. As a last resort, the End of Game Tech Fusion Reactor cuts Pollution on all your territories by 50%: this is massive, but unless you've been really careful up to that point, by the time you get to it it may be Too Late

 

[Taefin]

At least you get 100 fame for being the most responsible for killing humanity that’s double what you get for skirmishing with another tribe early game.

Edit: On a constructive note, I think pollution should just be that for every X thousand points is -10 food and stability on every region (I’d rather hit big cities harder, since they’ll be the first to go). When we start getting -100 per territory the end game will start to have a bit of direness to it that I think will actually make emissions management rewarding and dire.

 

[looorg]

Isn't the polution issue that the AI doesn't seem to care about it? They just crank out as many buildings/districts etc it can. Also they seem to be very happy to chop down all their forests in earlier ages. They probably more or less by accident build the dam and other green buildings. I have not seen them plant any forests. So you as a player holding back then and trying to be responsible becomes a drop in a bucket of pollution.

 

[Taefin]

Yeah, I’d agree that’s the problem. HK certainly does not need to start adding features the AI is not programmed to use

 

[Don Andre]

I could recover from the stability issues by replacing lots of districts with common quarters. Maybe the stability problems were a combination of me spamming too many districts in the late game and the pollution issues.
Anyway, in my second game, I went for a smaller map, faster gameplay and increased difficulty. I got locked in a rather small part with just three territories. I tried to wage war with my neighbor, but had to face too much opposition, plus he had horses and I didn't. Anyway, I feel that manual battle resolution is much more favorable for me than the instant resolution. It's a bit tedious to micromanage every single battle. Of course I haven't compared side by side the same battle using save-load, but just a feeling so far.