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The comparison of Humankind to Civilization is both inevitable and warranted: the historical 4x genre is a small space, and to date, no other title has credibly challenged Civilization's dominance. That is not to suggest that competition between games is zero-sum--purchasing and playing one does not preclude purchasing playing the other--but if another title does not offer something to improve the historical 4x experience that Civilization offers, players have no incentive to buy it.
I hope my embracement of the comparison through the lens of my experience as a Civilization 6 modder will offer you a unique perspective.
Gameplay
City Building
This is where Humankind's gameplay shines. The treatment of the tall vs. wide dichotomy through the constant tension of the outpost system results in a masterful and addictive gameplay loop that is a welcome reprieve from the endless city spam of Civilization 6. The player has a constant dilemma: should this outpost be attached to another city to make it stronger, or should it be its own city? Attaching an outpost is a great shot in the arm for an existing city, but comes at the price of a big Stability hit. Promoting an outpost to a city is well and good, but if I'm at my city cap, then I need to carefully evaluate the hit to my Influence. This loop makes managing your cities absolutely engaging, and the rule of "1 outpost per territory" prevents the bogging down of the game with infinite city spam but simultaneously never feels like an artificial pressure limiting my ability to expand.
I never liked the "settle as many cities as closely together as possible" meta of Civilization 6. Aside from the inherent tediousness, it always chafed at me to take away a ring of usable tiles from my cities by cramming them together. This is just a peculiarity of mine, but the Humankind system is much more satisfying.
Worldbuilding
Humankind's game set-up screen offers more granular control Civilization 6, and it's awesome. Rather than being limited to specific map scripts, you can change parameters to get the world you want, including the number of continents, the shapes of continents, and the amount of rivers and lakes. I hope they add even more options, like for ocean rifts, inland seas, and other settings.
The addition of elevation and the large amount of different biomes all make Humankind's worlds more engaging and interesting than Civilization 6's, which look too homogenous because of the lack of different art styles for different parts of the world (a sorely missed feature from Civilization 5!).
Combat
Combat is my least favorite part of 4x games. I don't like spending more time on it than I have to, so I tend to autoresolve battles rather than utilize the full mechanics, which didn't grab me when I tried them.
Factions
Factions are much less distinctive than in Civilization 6 because their unique traits are all rather simple. I prefer this over Civilization 6's paragraph-long abilities and Civilizations that are railroaded into one-note play styles.
Gameplay Systems
I adore the constant permanent choices you make through the random event system or Civics. These choices feel more meaningful than anything to do with Policies or Governments in Civilization 6, which can be swapped out at any time and don't ever feel like the evolution of something.
The late game suffers a lot from a lack of fun or interesting things. I wish they'd implement a climate system or something else to completely shake up this portion, like the end-game crisis from Stellaris.
Miscellaneous
The customization of your avatar is surprisingly fun, and I liked being able to choose my own color and emblem.
Graphics
Humankind's maps and cities are beautiful to behold and best of all look more cohesive than those of Civilization 6. I absolutely love looking at the game. This comes, however, at the price of readability. Everything in Humankind blends together so well and so organically that it's difficult to parse out the visual information sometimes. Civilization 6's map and the cities that dot it look disappointingly disjointed in comparison, but are eminently more readable, thanks to both the larger scale of models and the color-coded district system. Regarding the models, I find Civilization 6's to be much more distinctive and detailed overall. Compare say, the Temple of Artemis models in the two games, and Humankind's version looks distinctively more low budget. To summarize, in Humankind, the visual experience is far more than the sum of its parts, but in Civilization 6, the parts tend to look better.
As a final note, Humankind has a subtle and strange yellow tint to seemingly everything, and I hope the developers take a second pass at.
User Interface
I like the clean, modern look, but I detest how the unit command UI takes over a quarter of your entire screen. It's so frustrating that it almost ruins the UI entirely to me. I wish they'd make that one window resizable or something. It's absolutely killing me.
The UI is not good at explaining things. I still have no idea what Pollution does.
The game is also missing a minimap, which was a major disappointment. Not only are minimaps aesthetically pleasing (one of my favorite parts of these games is beholding the world generation at all scales), they are a great way to show the player the political state of their game at a glance. Another complaint is the map zoom levels. One of them is just a gray blob that tells me practically nothing. It's utterly useless, and I wish it would have functioned as just a wider perspective of the normal map.
The yield icons are outright unappealing to me. They're flat and boring and look like placeholder art.
Audio
While I haven't yet found any tracks that are eminently memorable, the soundscape of Humankind fits the game perfectly. The music is great "videogame music" in that it blends in well with the game and is never distracting. In comparison, Civilization 6's music is full of wonderful individual pieces, but many of them sit on top of the game and draw your attention away, rather than blend in with it.
I don't like the voices in the game; a lot of the avatars' lines are delivered very strangely, and the unit voices are cheesy. The narrator himself does a fine job reading his lines, but the lines themselves can be too corny to take. I was hoping Humankind would have more gravitas in its atmosphere than Civilization 6, but they're both quite irreverent and silly, and not to my taste.
Conclusion
Humankind has won me over. It's a very good game with the potential to become great if Amplitude can flesh out some of the core gameplay systems and improve the UI. Compared with the OpenDevs, the final product is far more polished, fun, and engaging, and I'm glad I was given the opportunity to give the game another shot.
Disclosure: I was provided a review copy of the game for free to write this review. I am unaffiliated with Amplitude or any other company that works on this game or similar games. I am unaffiliated with any news websites. I was given no guidance or restriction on what to write.
I hope my embracement of the comparison through the lens of my experience as a Civilization 6 modder will offer you a unique perspective.
Gameplay
City Building
This is where Humankind's gameplay shines. The treatment of the tall vs. wide dichotomy through the constant tension of the outpost system results in a masterful and addictive gameplay loop that is a welcome reprieve from the endless city spam of Civilization 6. The player has a constant dilemma: should this outpost be attached to another city to make it stronger, or should it be its own city? Attaching an outpost is a great shot in the arm for an existing city, but comes at the price of a big Stability hit. Promoting an outpost to a city is well and good, but if I'm at my city cap, then I need to carefully evaluate the hit to my Influence. This loop makes managing your cities absolutely engaging, and the rule of "1 outpost per territory" prevents the bogging down of the game with infinite city spam but simultaneously never feels like an artificial pressure limiting my ability to expand.
I never liked the "settle as many cities as closely together as possible" meta of Civilization 6. Aside from the inherent tediousness, it always chafed at me to take away a ring of usable tiles from my cities by cramming them together. This is just a peculiarity of mine, but the Humankind system is much more satisfying.
Worldbuilding
Humankind's game set-up screen offers more granular control Civilization 6, and it's awesome. Rather than being limited to specific map scripts, you can change parameters to get the world you want, including the number of continents, the shapes of continents, and the amount of rivers and lakes. I hope they add even more options, like for ocean rifts, inland seas, and other settings.
The addition of elevation and the large amount of different biomes all make Humankind's worlds more engaging and interesting than Civilization 6's, which look too homogenous because of the lack of different art styles for different parts of the world (a sorely missed feature from Civilization 5!).
Combat
Combat is my least favorite part of 4x games. I don't like spending more time on it than I have to, so I tend to autoresolve battles rather than utilize the full mechanics, which didn't grab me when I tried them.
Factions
Factions are much less distinctive than in Civilization 6 because their unique traits are all rather simple. I prefer this over Civilization 6's paragraph-long abilities and Civilizations that are railroaded into one-note play styles.
Gameplay Systems
I adore the constant permanent choices you make through the random event system or Civics. These choices feel more meaningful than anything to do with Policies or Governments in Civilization 6, which can be swapped out at any time and don't ever feel like the evolution of something.
The late game suffers a lot from a lack of fun or interesting things. I wish they'd implement a climate system or something else to completely shake up this portion, like the end-game crisis from Stellaris.
Miscellaneous
The customization of your avatar is surprisingly fun, and I liked being able to choose my own color and emblem.
Graphics
Humankind's maps and cities are beautiful to behold and best of all look more cohesive than those of Civilization 6. I absolutely love looking at the game. This comes, however, at the price of readability. Everything in Humankind blends together so well and so organically that it's difficult to parse out the visual information sometimes. Civilization 6's map and the cities that dot it look disappointingly disjointed in comparison, but are eminently more readable, thanks to both the larger scale of models and the color-coded district system. Regarding the models, I find Civilization 6's to be much more distinctive and detailed overall. Compare say, the Temple of Artemis models in the two games, and Humankind's version looks distinctively more low budget. To summarize, in Humankind, the visual experience is far more than the sum of its parts, but in Civilization 6, the parts tend to look better.
As a final note, Humankind has a subtle and strange yellow tint to seemingly everything, and I hope the developers take a second pass at.
User Interface
I like the clean, modern look, but I detest how the unit command UI takes over a quarter of your entire screen. It's so frustrating that it almost ruins the UI entirely to me. I wish they'd make that one window resizable or something. It's absolutely killing me.
The UI is not good at explaining things. I still have no idea what Pollution does.
The game is also missing a minimap, which was a major disappointment. Not only are minimaps aesthetically pleasing (one of my favorite parts of these games is beholding the world generation at all scales), they are a great way to show the player the political state of their game at a glance. Another complaint is the map zoom levels. One of them is just a gray blob that tells me practically nothing. It's utterly useless, and I wish it would have functioned as just a wider perspective of the normal map.
The yield icons are outright unappealing to me. They're flat and boring and look like placeholder art.
Audio
While I haven't yet found any tracks that are eminently memorable, the soundscape of Humankind fits the game perfectly. The music is great "videogame music" in that it blends in well with the game and is never distracting. In comparison, Civilization 6's music is full of wonderful individual pieces, but many of them sit on top of the game and draw your attention away, rather than blend in with it.
I don't like the voices in the game; a lot of the avatars' lines are delivered very strangely, and the unit voices are cheesy. The narrator himself does a fine job reading his lines, but the lines themselves can be too corny to take. I was hoping Humankind would have more gravitas in its atmosphere than Civilization 6, but they're both quite irreverent and silly, and not to my taste.
Conclusion
Humankind has won me over. It's a very good game with the potential to become great if Amplitude can flesh out some of the core gameplay systems and improve the UI. Compared with the OpenDevs, the final product is far more polished, fun, and engaging, and I'm glad I was given the opportunity to give the game another shot.
Disclosure: I was provided a review copy of the game for free to write this review. I am unaffiliated with Amplitude or any other company that works on this game or similar games. I am unaffiliated with any news websites. I was given no guidance or restriction on what to write.
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I actually like Civ 6's districts and city planning...in the early game. What I don't like is the meta of having lots of cities, as it adds a ton of micromanagement. I also don't like how weak, relatively speaking, large cities are to mid-sized ones. This is for the most part because of how districts work. You can only have one of each type in a city, and they produce flat yields. This basically means that the commercial district of London and the commercial district of Reading have roughly the same value. To get more yields, you need more of the same districts, which means more cities.
