Maybe my biggest gripe about the game is...

[Aristos]

I am confused, when I play for stars I get practically all the techs before advancing.

Exactly. Comes with trying to maximize star power in each era.

 

[Leucarum]

For sure some of the stars - tech, builder, agrarian especially - I seem to pretty much always get regardless of my strategy... I hadn't considered it but unless you are in imminent danger of war, the hard ceilings on progress per era really do make tech rushing seem less important because stars matter more...

And not enjoying the combat mechanics in Humankind much certainly biases me more towards peaceful games... So that's something to bear in mind.

 

[Jkchart]

It's hilarious how for all this time, right until the release, I have been utterly convinced that leaderless switching cultures system will be clearly better than civ's system, and it took me like an hour into the game to realize I am not sure of this in practice. What annoys me the most is how I have immediately switched in my brain from finding great historical argumentation for rotation to finding equally great argumentation against it. I'm wondering if some of the devs didn't have a feeling 'goddamn this looked better on paper than in practice".

I don't think you can change much with it, at this point, only make it much clearer in the UI in some way. Maybe we can get a mod that would limit switching to k i n d a historical choices, but I'm not sure how moddable the game will be.

My most recent game was fairly interesting with that historicity. I started on a continent with four other players of ten, so half the world's empires showed up here.

Personally, I did a bit of a weird thing, as I started as the Olmecs and went Maya, but then upon arriving at age 3 I had founded an outpost on an island and decided to play the English, founding a new capital city there. So, I "colonized" myself a bit, and after that was the Dutch, British, and Australians, so maybe not too out there. My biggest rival all game started as my Ally (they were the Assyrians first) and had two vassals, the third empire was my vassal. Assyria became Persia, but then Aztecs around the same time as I went England. So head-canon-wise, since my Mesoamericans were interacting with their Middle Easterners for a time, it sort of made sense that I was influencing them toward becoming more like me. Anyway, we went and had our first massive war around age 4 after years of hurling insults and demands at each other because the status quo was two dominant empires lording it over the smaller ones on the continent, and of course that never ends well. As said before I became the Dutch and he became...Japanese? Ok weird flex, and diverged a bit there. I can't for the life of me remember who he ended up as in the Industrial era, but by the Contemporary he was Egypt.

This is funny to me because my vassal fief started as Egypt (at some point they went Khmer so maybe there's an argument as to how they influenced the Assyro-Japanese people), so another semitic culture eventually took on the cultural mantle of Egypt, which is how it worked historically in a way. I'm not sure what the Phoenicians were doing, they started by correctly going Carthage, making their way to Byzantines (well...ok, not too far off), and eventually breaking free as the Italians? I'm not sure where they ended up at in EM because they were fairly irrelevant by that point and I only took notice of them again after breaking free and I allied them to protect them against their former overlords.

No idea what Brown was doing though since he started Zhou, ended up as both the Poles and Zulu at some point.

Kinda fun the interactions that you can think of with the head canon but also makes me wish for a "plausibility" setting, where you are limited to X culture unless you interact significantly with Y culture or something like that.

 

[tsf4]

I enjoy the builder type game, I lean to be passive because of this. It doesn’t interest me to fight units all the time or have to expand to enjoy a game. Hoping tall gameplay will be decent and that the devs keep that in mind that not everyone wars a lot.

 

[Jkchart]

My biggest gripe is I appear to suck at this game. Just got it today and on my first game. How is the AI so good in getting fame? It seems like once someone gets on top, they will always have the advantage of getting higher fame (since they are unlocking stars first). I'm not a big fan of the fame system.

It's embarrassing that I'm playing below normal and still losing (in 2nd place). I'm not sure how to get on top other than build a bunch of troops and stomp. Which is what I'm doing now. I've run out of room to expand, and I just don't think I have enough territory to get fame faster than the top AI.

And should I be keeping these outposts around or try to convert them into cities? I feel like my bigger cities depend on them now for food. How many outposts should I have per city? I have no clue what I'm doing apparently. I might need to check if there's a manual to the game.

Overall I feel like Civ6 is a far superior game. The only thing this game has over Civ6 is the AI can actually compete for winning the game.

Nah it’s just adjusting the idea of what you need to build or do instead of how Civ does it. They just play fairly differently but you can get the hang of it.

a lot of what you ask depends on how you specifically learn to play the game, but good general tips i would give are to make sure you are getting food because high population scales so well if you invest in infrastructure, and I’ve personally found 3-4 is a good number of territories to have one city administer (of course on a case by case basis, and I’ve made fairly viable single or two city territories).

Outposts are only valuable for temporary control since they don’t count as your borders and people can walk right in, ransack, and place their own if you can’t (or won’t) defend it, or if it’s in a safe area from enemy attack, typically small islands with a single resource that I can’t attach are ones that may remain as outposts depending on my city cap. However, again you still need to commit something to defend an outpost since it’s vulnerable and technically disputed land, or if it’s fairly isolated the AI at the very least isn’t all that willing to invade tiny island outposts.

 

[Disgustipated]

I'll have to work on delaying going to the next age, which still seems like a strange concept to me. But I can probably adjust. And my other issue is knowing how many districts of each type to build. I was building one of each type civ6 style, it still seems weird to build multiple of the same type.

 

[CoconutTank]

I've only been playing on Nation difficulty thus far, but ime I've earned up to 12 stars before advancing. I'm usually holding back b/c I want to build my culture's EDs before moving on, mostly for Confucian Schools or Cyclopian Fortresses.

If I've felt any pressure to actually advance, it's usually one of these reasons:

1. I've run out of tech in my current era, and now my science yields are being wasted.

-or-

2. I need to pick Khmer for their "Keshigs" and I somehow feel like there's a chance they might get picked before I can get them.

 

[Taefin]

I don’t stress it too much. If I were to always advance the moment I get the message, I’d probably be 1500-2000 points behind where I end up, and trailing the AI by ~4K going into contemporary, which it sounds like is not reliable to catch up from. But I can usually stay within 2k fame just by looking at the era stars and asking, is there anything I’m just a few turns away from, and are there any other good reasons to wait (about to add a territory so wait to put 1 turn of production into an EQ, about to win a war that might give me some population/district/territory stars, any cheap early techs I skipped that would be helpful now and that I can blitz for a star). And if there are a few options for cultures I’d enjoy playing with and not too many AI camping 6+ stars that I’m afraid of taking them all. But if I’m catching up to the AI, there is a culture I really want to get the most out of, or there’s just one star several turns away, I’ll usually advance.

Then once per game I’ll usually have a little golden era where it seems clear I’ve got the momentum to get most of the stars, often industrial or an era as a science culture, and use that to catch up to within striking distance.

Though usually if I notice that I can pull ahead in a given era I’ll consider that as one last hurrah, get ahead on fame, get into one last fight if I have some fun units, and then start a new game.

 

[CoconutTank]

Actually, what are the rules for keeping an outdated ED upon adopting a new culture? I thought leaving the ED in my production queue would be enough, but that doesn't seem to be the case? I guess as long as I've put 1 turn into the ED, it'll stick around?

 

[Siptah]

Actually, what are the rules for keeping an outdated ED upon adopting a new culture? I thought leaving the ED in my production queue would be enough, but that doesn't seem to be the case? I guess as long as I've put 1 turn into the ED, it'll stick around?

yes, there has to be some production spent towards it already. If you start and then change cultures the same turn, it's still lost.

 

[Jkchart]

I'll have to work on delaying going to the next age, which still seems like a strange concept to me. But I can probably adjust. And my other issue is knowing how many districts of each type to build. I was building one of each type civ6 style, it still seems weird to build multiple of the same type.

Delaying to the next age is a trade off. On the one hand, you get your Civ started faster and are more likely to get the culture you want, but you lose out on extra fame opportunities. In the neolithic, you can also just amass a massive scout army and cover a ton of ground, and if you get 10 curiosities (which takes some time a lot of the time, thereby delaying your start) then you can ALSO get the Neolithic Era trait giving you +1 Food, Industry, or Science per population, so you actually can make a fairly viable strategy of it if you're open to taking the cultural leftovers.

Districts, you can build as many normal quarters per territory as you have space and as stability allows (so Farmers, Research, Traders, Makers, Garrisons, Commons, maybe a couple others) while any Emblematic Quarters and certain special quarters (Harbors and Airports for example) are 1 per territory. Spam districts to your heart's content but remember to catch up on infrastructure to get some good scaling yields from high population cities.

I reiterate my FOOD point again too

 

[Gregorios]

I'm mixed on the whole culture-changing mechanic. On the one hand, I can see how a civilization's identity shifting over time is more true to how actual human history works on a grand scale. On the other hand, the identity shifts often seem too abrupt, arbitrary, and tied to era transitions. Real history is messier than that. Of course, I don't expect a game to capture 100% of the complexity of human society, but I'm quite sure a closer approximation at least (that still works as a game) is easily possible.

I think the main problem is that they got the trigger(s) for the change wrong. Shifts in cultural identity don't just happen when you reach a certain threshold of renown and progress to a new era. If anything, accomplishing great feats is likely to render people resistant to changing the name and banner under which they march, because of what a modern marketer might nowadays call brand recognition. I'm no historian, but transformations in the identity of a civilization generally seem to follow great changes in either the style of government or the composition of the citizenry, or at least, those two broad phenomena would seem like much more realistic fodder for in-game triggers than just, "Whoop, the classical era is over! Hello, Middle Ages!"

One empire may absorb another politically only to be culturally influenced by its new vassal(s), forming a new hybrid culture. On the flip side, a region within an empire may become so influenced by another culture on the border that they secede, again forming a new hybrid culture. Maybe the demographics don't really change, but the government does, shifting from a long-entrenched monarchy to some form of representative republic. Of course, none of these scenarios has necessarily caused a civilization's identity to change virtually overnight. The French didn't start calling themselves Swedes as soon as they beheaded Louis XVI, but notably, I think it was around the time of the Revolution (or maybe the Bonapartist period) that the fleur-de-lis flag started getting replaced by the now familiar tricolor. So again, using such events as triggers would likely still be an oversimplification, but much less so than the current mechanic.

The odd thing is that at least some of the mechanics for a more realistic system already exist. Imagine a Humankind where culture change is triggered by acquiescing to X number of cultural osmosis events across Y number of territories or by moving X number of slots on Y ideology axes in the direction opposite to where you've been for Z turns. I, for one, really like the ideology, civic, and sphere-of-influence system in this game, and regardless of specific execution, the idea of a civ's cultural identity morphing over the eons (while retaining a clear memory of its former selves) is a welcome improvement in overall verisimilitude over Sid Meier's whole Civ series. So the developers had several great ideas! They just missed an opportunity to put them all together in a more cohesive way.

I feel a few people miss the point of the mechanic.

To me the point of the changing cultures, thats the keyword here, is that you're building up your civilization and its bonuses from scratch. You're not starting with a premade civilization with all their bonuses set out for you, you're creating one through the ages and when you reach contemporary age you can look back at how far you've come and how you ended up creating your own civilization. You can call it your own, because YOU determined how it would be shaped, not the devs.

They do need to work on the naming of each civilization though so we can remember whos whos

I think you may be right about what they were going for, but I think a better way would've been to let players choose unique affinities, units, buildings, etc directly instead of having them all tied to a pre-named culture based on real-world history. Let us not forget the alternate-history nature of these games. Take wonders, for example. You don't need to be the Egyptians to build the Great Pyramid of Giza, and building the Eiffel Tower doesn't make you French. If what you describe is indeed what they were aiming for, then a better implementation might've been to treat affinities and other unique attributes more like wonders and/or civics. Maybe an agrarian affinity, for example, is earned by being the first civilization to build X number of farmer's quarters or research a certain agricultural technology. Maybe if Y number of generic spearmen get Z number of veterancy stars, you get to choose a unique unit in the anti-cavalry class (e.g. hoplites). Even names should be customizable, so you can either choose from a list of known culture names or just make up your own.

For me at least, it would be icing on the cake if civ names took on the form "the X of Y" at some point in the game (maybe with the discovery of nationalism), where X referred to a government type and Y referred either to the people or to the geography, depending on which civics you have enacted. For example, the Kingdom of the Franks becomes the Democratic Republic of France, with the algorithm filling in the blanks based on what the user either chooses or inputs into a short dialog box at the beginning of the game where it asks for a demonym, an adjective, and a toponym (a bit like earlier versions of Civ). Maybe instead, the Kingdom of the Randomians becomes the Democratic Republic of Randomland.

In a nutshell, if I were talking to a potential developer of Humankind 2 (fingers crossed that such a game eventually exists), the shifting cultural identities was a great idea, but it's tied to the wrong things. Divorce it from eras altogether and tie it to civics and/or ideologies. While we're at it, take that newly divorced era system and marry it more firmly to technology, because maybe I'm just OCD, but I'm rather tired of earning enough stars to go contemporary when I'm not even halfway through industrial techs. Unless someone else is about to beat me to it, I don't like advancing to the next era until I have at most one or two techs left to research from the current era. Otherwise, it just feels unearned, no matter how many literal gold stars I have.

 

[Lightjolly]

I think you may be right about what they were going for, but I think a better way would've been to let players choose unique affinities, units, buildings, etc directly instead of having them all tied to a pre-named culture based on real-world history. Let us not forget the alternate-history nature of these games. Take wonders, for example. You don't need to be the Egyptians to build the Great Pyramid of Giza, and building the Eiffel Tower doesn't make you French. If what you describe is indeed what they were aiming for, then a better implementation might've been to treat affinities and other unique attributes more like wonders and/or civics. Maybe an agrarian affinity, for example, is earned by being the first civilization to build X number of farmer's quarters or research a certain agricultural technology. Maybe if Y number of generic spearmen get Z number of veterancy stars, you get to choose a unique unit in the anti-cavalry class (e.g. hoplites). Even names should be customizable, so you can either choose from a list of known culture names or just make up your own.

For me at least, it would be icing on the cake if civ names took on the form "the X of Y" at some point in the game (maybe with the discovery of nationalism), where X referred to a government type and Y referred either to the people or to the geography, depending on which civics you have enacted. For example, the Kingdom of the Franks becomes the Democratic Republic of France, with the algorithm filling in the blanks based on what the user either chooses or inputs into a short dialog box at the beginning of the game where it asks for a demonym, an adjective, and a toponym (a bit like earlier versions of Civ). Maybe instead, the Kingdom of the Randomians becomes the Democratic Republic of Randomland.

In a nutshell, if I were talking to a potential developer of Humankind 2 (fingers crossed that such a game eventually exists), the shifting cultural identities was a great idea, but it's tied to the wrong things. Divorce it from eras altogether and tie it to civics and/or ideologies. While we're at it, take that newly divorced era system and marry it more firmly to technology, because maybe I'm just OCD, but I'm rather tired of earning enough stars to go contemporary when I'm not even halfway through industrial techs. Unless someone else is about to beat me to it, I don't like advancing to the next era until I have at most one or two techs left to research from the current era. Otherwise, it just feels unearned, no matter how many literal gold stars I have.

That's a solid way of doing it, it would make the culture shifts more organic, but yeah that's more for a Humankind 2 with a complete overhaul to mechanics, for now HK has to be a learning experience for the devs and we'll see where they take things balance wise, plus the DLC's

Most they can do now is just make each era feel longer so the change doesn't feel to abrupt

 

[Taefin]

Most they can do now is just make each era feel longer so the change doesn't feel to abrupt

I just tried a game on slow speed (50% slower). It’s subtle, everything certainly takes longer, and I had to get used to something taking 5-9 turns instead of 3-6, but doesn’t feel needlessly stretched out (probably because HK is pretty quick turn wise on normal speed).

It risks upsetting balance since the player now has more time to take advance of a good military matchup against an AI, possibly declaring multiple wars in a era or giving time to ransack to claim territory during the war. But it helped me field knights more effectively than I have before. Might help with immersion if eras feel short.