New 4X

[Stalker0]

I've always been an advocate of judging the quality of a sing star by the quality of their songs, not their political views. Both things are compatible. Critic their political views and praise their singing.

I do think that looking at the original question of the OP "What game are you most interested in" .... that the two aspects are one in the same for some people.

If I've decided to boycott a company due to its practices...then my interest in their upcoming products is going to be low regardless of quality. Others of course my decide that those practices are either not bad based on their viewpoints, or not bad enough to warrant said boycott.

Now if this thread was focused more on a comparison of Civ to Humankind or a focus on its gameplay mechanics....then the company's actions have 0 place in the discussion. But that is technically not the thread we have here.

 

[CppMaster]

then the company's actions have 0 place in the discussion.

What company's actions? The VP on Steam case?

 

[theMisterRud]

Played the first scenario of Humankind OpenDev and 2 small Combat scenarios

Seamed Endless Legend without Hero units to be honest: expansion with outposts is nice, city expansion with districts seams cool as well, combat is ok.

Like, it's fine but I honestly don't know if there is a market for this: it's not appreciatively different from Endless Legend (hell, depending on how you see it, it might be worse) and Civ6 not only is like 2 expansions ahead but it also has a Season Pass-like.

Like, it made me wish for an Endless Legend 2 with a revamped tactical combat layer.

 

[Anastase Alex]

I am at the moment taking part of the alpha of the new version of slipways.
I used to love the 3X Pico8 version, but boy oh boy this game has potential!
More people will be added to the alpha soon, if you are interested.
Also I am looking forward to humankind as a game, but indeed I worry about the AI a bit.
Vox Populi remains my love though!

 

[Elhoim]

I'm more interested in Humankind, but Old World is definitely interesting as well.

 

[PlanarFreak]

And now Humankind is out in open dev. Anyone trying it out?

I played OpenDev! It was fun, but in the end I came away with few conclusions - the game was pretty bare bones.

The first scenario placed me in control of a city and a few units. I mostly explored the world to see the resources and terrain; the buildings and techs were hard to get into without context. The game uses a similar district system to the previous game, Endless Legend, which I found to be a plus. The outpost system was also interesting; it reminded me of outposts from Stellaris (great game btw).

The rest of the scenarios were battles and combat, which I had quite a bit of fun with despite not being a fan of the tactics system (I mostly auto the battles in Endless Legend). The worst scenario was a highly frustrating fight across a river against superior forces (I believe it was Japan versus Korea). The best scenario was a very satisfying raid against a city fortified upon an island - it was really fun using my siege weapons to crumble the walls and fortifications while my raiders swept away the defenders.

Overall, I'm optimistic about Humankind, although I wish that the OpenDev had more 4x-style expansion scenarios to play with.

e. Typing on mobile is hard.

 

[PlanarFreak]

Speaking of Endless Legends, has anyone tried their Community Patch ?

Very very good. There are some modifying of the base mechanics, mostly stopping exploits etc, so not as much of a change as VP has made. But it has massively improved the AI. For a start they now all use their races mechanics and special abilities, try to stop people from winning etc etc. Highly recommended if you like endless legend. Can't imagine it playing it without it

Chiming in, the Endless Legend Community Patch is excellent work! Balance has been greatly improved, as has AI logic. It's more similar to the original Civ5 Community Patch before Vox Populi got going - no major reworks of systems, just a lot of improvements to what already exists. It gives the game new life, and you'll never go back to base game.

 

[Nightmare Dusk]

While there's many things that will peak my interest in games, competitive bots will always be the most important aspect to keeping me playing a game, and by Competitive, i mean strategy wise being in the Same neighborhood as human, not that the bot is hard because he has triple your income, quadruple your production, etc. Yeah those aspects are needed, especially for the bot to be able to face min maxers, but the bot shouldn't solely rely on them

 

[Anastase Alex]

Personally I am getting tirred of the slog of micromanaging units for war.

 

[bonniepbilly]

I have to resuscitate this thread as Humankind is out today.

As for me, my PC cannot run it so I'll happily stick to VP! I have been keeping 3rd and 4th Unique Components for later so now might be the time to try it out!

Curious to see what VP lovers think of Humankind though, for the not too distant future where I'll have a new PC...

 

[dailyminerals]

I've been playing Humankind today, and frankly I'm not a huge fan. The UI is weirdly annoying for some reason, as well as inconsistent. And its just messy. Windows everywhere, with info puked up across the entire screen, but little of it comprehensible or transparent in its relevance or significance, with the info that IS actually important requiring you to dig through menu after menu. Blegh. I still don't know where my "Faith" counter is, how much I'm accumulating, or why I even want it in the first place.

I also really dislike the era star mechanic for advancing through the eras. I often find myself accidentally acquiring them even when I'm not trying to, with zero idea how. And requiring them to advance through the game basically shoehorns you into performing actions you simply don't want to but are forced to by the game: Kill 8 units in war for an era star. But I don't want to kill 8 units. I've killed 5, and that's all I needed to achieve my war goal. You're saying I need to f*ck around for another couple turns just...because? No thanks.

I also find it kind of boring honestly. Only 2 hours into my first game and I just quit. I picked it back up later, but I still wasn't very interested. Maybe DLC and patches will make it great in a couple years, but right now it definitely isn't worth $60.

 

[Zuizgond]

For those who have played Humankind, how is the AI? Endless Legend was pretty bad in that regards and giving AI a ton of bonuses (a la Civ6) to compensate for the lack of challenge is not the solution.

 

[legoras]

For those who have played Humankind, how is the AI? Endless Legend was pretty bad in that regards and giving AI a ton of bonuses (a la Civ6) to compensate for the lack of challenge is not the solution.

How to says that.. AI at humankind.. is around typical 'monkey', btw. AI cheats (yes, AI LOVE to cheats at higher difficulty), but it is so crap.. AI is created for typical casual players, so game cannot be hard for them..
So yeah, humankind is casual crap not worth buying at that price, with idiotic UI, mechanics.. no optimization, freezing for some seconds sometimes..

And what is the best? Until release, up to last minute they Promoting and Selling game with Workshop function (store page), at release they delete workshop instant.
When I created thread at forum, where is workshop, you promoting and selling game with that function, my thread was instant deleted two times
Then I check game files.. now I know why they fast delete workshop, cause game files are not 'open' for easy access, someone can even says they are hardcoded.

So even fans/modders will not fix that crap most likely.

 

[burleigh]

Having played for about 5 hours yesterday, it was…. Meh. Mainly clicking end of turn waiting for the next era. Not a lot seemed to be happening. Other factions were docile. Biggest military threat were nasty independent tribes, but they weren’t a major problem. Very slow moving. Old World, on the other hand is growing in me big time. (And the peak AI quality is still Vox by far… but OW is developing week by week)

 

[looorg]

I played some today and yesterday and I'm not really a fan either. I'm not claiming to understand all the mechanics etc but so far it seems overly simplistic and most of the time is just spent pressing next turn and watching the yields trickle in. Everything learned from the other Endless games appear to apply and work. So far the strategy seems to just be to put all cities on growth focus and wait for victory. So far I'm mostly just flying thru the eras that way, it was hard to keep up tech and building wise in the middle of the game(s) due to it. The AI seems to be on par with 4x games these days, ie utterly stupid and very passive. The bears and independents are usually a bigger threat in the beginning compared to other civs. I think I lost more units to sea fatigue then to the enemy (my mistake in thinking that a unit in an army with a boat would sort of be in the boat and not swim next to it and drown the next turn). Combat is not very funny, at least the AI is smart enough to try and kill one unit at the time but it does it in a suicidal fashion. But you sort of have to do it manually otherwise your units will use the same disastrous technique and thinking as the AI and there will be much unnecessary death. The diplo system takes some getting used to but mostly it's just blowing a lot of hot air, so it's just like reality. At the later stages of the game it's just an endless (haha!) stream of grievances that have to be dealt with (ie ignored since nothing comes of it and the AI mostly seems to ignore your complaints to, or forgive them). The notification spam per turn is quite severe, but not quite on CIV5 levels.

The best part of the game so far is the somewhat snarky voice over comments. Sadly that will get old quite quickly.

As far as some ranking it's still CIV5VP >>>> CIV6 / HUMANKIND / OLD WORLD. Which are all on some kind of shared place but while looking nice and so they are mechanic wise bad. Old World might be the best of the second place trio but it's quite dull. They all also utterly failed in doing or how combat is done. They have become 4x story driven games in some regard, old world and humankind more so then CIV6. But I'm sure CIV7 will be even more inline with the "new" thinking of how 4x games should be these days (ie bad).

Was it worth the $ price tag? Nope.

For those who have played Humankind, how is the AI? Endless Legend was pretty bad in that regards and giving AI a ton of bonuses (a la Civ6) to compensate for the lack of challenge is not the solution.

Bad. It's pretty much Endless but with a Civ-like finish applied to it. I'm not sure how much bonuses the AI are getting to be competitive but clearly it's not enough vs the human. That said in the two games I played so far the AI managed to kill another AI but that is all. It has no, or shouldn't have any, chance against a human opponent of any level.

 

[theMisterRud]

I'm playing Humankind and I really enjoying it. I will gloss over AI (good AI doesn't sell, this is why 4X games come out with barebones AI, that's the way it is) and overall feature set (hard to compare base game with games receiving 2+ years of support).

I can say I like it much more than civ6. I find the culture change thing brilliant, I like the diplomacy aspect and in general I like the map management. I really liked Endless Legend, so that's my bias I guess. I personally think it's a more solid foundation than Civ6.

I don't even compare it with VP, I play the 2 games for different reasons fundamentally.

So yeah, I'd say keep an eye on post launch support and mod support, the base is solid.

 

[Bromar1]

In my opinion, there are some very significant game design choices that really open the game possibilities for Humankind that just don't translate to VP, even if the software itself is still getting optimised/debugged etc. In regards to the AI itself, it's certainly not perfect but I think on day 1, Hk's AI is leaps and bounds ahead of Civ 5's day 1.

For example, the Era Culture system is really interesting you essentially get a new set of UA/UB/UI every era. VP is really constrained by having to choose 1 culture to play as for eternity. Instead of rerolling a map to get the perfect broken start for the Civ chosen at the beginning, you have to really interact with the land around you. Your first city is very rarely where the game decides to spawn your starter unit. There is strategic tension from turn 1: do I settle my first outpost right away or do I scout for better terrain? Do you want to split up your units to cover as much ground as possible or do you stack them up for a mammoth hunt? If you split up too thinly, your lone nomads are vulnerable to your neighbors who might have kept their tribal doomstack. Every unit costs 1 pop to create and can be disbanded back into city pops so losing even 1 unit early can make a big snowball difference. Not spreading enough can cause you to miss out on science and influence from curiosities and spawning animals. So before you choose your first culture, you've made a lot of decisions that have consequence for the rest of the game.

City states are also not a static diplomatic center of power that spawns and settles turn 1 and stays there for eternity. Independent people crop up naturally in unclaimed land. Some will be aggressive, some are peaceful traders. They can be assimilated diplomatically or militarily or ignored until they eventually decline and die out.

Luxuries and Strategic resources have to be actually transported via trade routes, no more instantaneously teleporting 5 iron across the map in ancient era so geopolitical unrest can interfere with critical resources. Luxury benefits stack so you have to consider your reserves, no more keeping 1 copy of lux for all the benefit.

I will admit Science and Religion are pretty weak for Hk, not much to defend there.

Overall, it may not be as perfected as VP but so far the devs seem receptive to their community. Just a few hours ago they announced a patch for reported issues and are already planning more balancing so I think the game will continue to improve

 

[Heinz_Guderian]

Yeah it should probably be compared to vanilla Civ/old world etc and not VP. Vanilla anything is almost always inferior to the best mods. That is why pretty much all my favourite games outside childhood nostalgia are games that have good modding communities.

 

[ashendashin]

good AI doesn't sell, this is why 4X games come out with barebones AI, that's the way it is

Any focus on interesting AI is and has been very rare in games. This claim is repeated often for this genre with little to back it up from my view and is honestly frustrating. That a game can sell regardless of the AI is a different matter.

 

[Recursive]

Moderator Action: We now have a separate forum for Humankind / Old World discussions. Please move discussions on those games to those forums.