Perspectives on Humankind as it relates to Civ VI

[Catoninetales_Amplitude]

Yes, the player emblem will be part of your profile customization options. But at the moment we are using culture-based emblems as placeholders (and they also help make the culture change across the game clearer in any visual material we share.)

 

[mitsho]

Yes, the player emblem will be part of your profile customization options. But at the moment we are using culture-based emblems as placeholders (and they also help make the culture change across the game clearer in any visual material we share.)

Cool, so will the 2-9 AI players in a single player game also get such an emblem and will they repeat from one game to the next?

 

[Catoninetales_Amplitude]

Pretty sure the AI empires will use emblems as well, but I haven't looked into the details of how it is all set up yet.

 

[CivLuvah]

"Humankind is Dark Souls of historical 4X games"

I see Humankind as more of the "Cyberpunk 2077 of 4X Games". I feel it will reinvigorate the genre.

 

[Shadowhal]

My input: so far I greatly prefer what was shown of Humankind.

1) After playing Humankind, civ6 feels so horribly slow, clunky and overcrowded. Rough terrain everywhere, units moving essentially one tile per turn, constant traffic jam everywhere. War of conquest is pure pain with cities and encampments shooting at you every few tiles and borders being fill to the brim with a chaotic set of units.

Meanwhile Humankind felt so
C L E A N
S M O O T H
T A C T I C A L S P E E D
M A N E U V E R

3) Civ6 generally has too much of everything. Literally everything. Tons of resources, special map features, disasters, city states and their unique bonuses, great people and their unique bonuses, religion building, districts, improvements, housing, amenities, congress, special units, corps, adjacencies, diplomatic favor, alliance metres, era points, loyalty, tourism, archeology, great map density filled to the brim with units, ton of random agendas and
diplomatic actons - TOO MUCH. By "too much" I mean "too much tedious or pointless choices, piles of bonuses, instead of macro scale strategic dilemmas".

Look at how Humankind does warfare. You get few simple rules - high ground, rivers, forests, sight, Simple special abilities, walls - and those simple few rules create a lot of tactical depth. A choice between settling a new city, resource outpost or attached outpost? Simple and yet such a major strategic choice. Less but more.

This. So much.

One thing to remember: Civ VI has "too much of everything" because things have been added to it constantly in a whole series of DLCs and Major Additions, including the NFP going on now. And all of these are Additions - does anybody remember the last time a DLC of any kind Removed something from the game?
The same thing could happen to Humankind once it is the subject of several years of 'development'. The risk is always there in any commercial game, because there is always a commercial/business reason to 'add something' that can be sold to the gamers. The good thing is, given Amplitude's extremely good communication with the Community (us and the Games2gether grognards) we can keep an eye out for that and remind them when they risk buying the clean mechanics of the Release game under a surplus of 'bells and whistles'.

Also true. I feel Amplitude has a bit of a mixed history on that front. Most DLC was EL was good, but it did get a bit bloated towards the end. Urkans? Didn't we have a (free) DLC that was supposed to do the same thing (guardians)? On-land "weather"? I did like Tempest, though. Espionage and pillaging too, though in practice those systems rarely succeeded in getting scarce resources allocated from me. On ES2, the DLC got more flack, especially hacking and pirates.

That said, their base games usually had enough meat to not really need any DLC. So, if they do that right, I can opt to just skip those that are of less interest to me.


On the wider thread - I don't care about labels. If the game is fun, I'll play it. Having too many fun games to play is definitely a good problem to have ...

 

[Elhoim]

Also true. I feel Amplitude has a bit of a mixed history on that front. Most DLC was EL was good, but it did get a bit bloated towards the end. Urkans? Didn't we have a (free) DLC that was supposed to do the same thing (guardians)? On-land "weather"? I did like Tempest, though. Espionage and pillaging too, though in practice those systems rarely succeeded in getting scarce resources allocated from me. On ES2, the DLC got more flack, especially hacking and pirates.

That said, their base games usually had enough meat to not really need any DLC. So, if they do that right, I can opt to just skip those that are of less interest to me.

Yeah, they were small and focused, but sometimes a bit pointless or disconnected, kinda like the new civ pass. I would prefer for Humankind to go the traditional Civ expansion way, so that the additions are more integrated. I don't mind DLC for Civs and such, but I prefer new mechanics to come in a full cohesive package.

 

[Gwydden]

Also true. I feel Amplitude has a bit of a mixed history on that front. Most DLC was EL was good, but it did get a bit bloated towards the end. Urkans? Didn't we have a (free) DLC that was supposed to do the same thing (guardians)? On-land "weather"? I did like Tempest, though. Espionage and pillaging too, though in practice those systems rarely succeeded in getting scarce resources allocated from me. On ES2, the DLC got more flack, especially hacking and pirates.

So, the Amplitude DLC for EL are quite on point, because they address major gaps in vanilla. Guardians? Adds Wonders, late game units, and competitive/cooperative quests (which is to say, more interaction between empires). Shadows? Espionage. Shifters? Makes winter much more dynamic. Tempest? Makes the oceans actually fun and meaningful. None of those felt tacked on, and with all of them the game seemed pretty complete.

The new studio they got to make Inferno and Symbiosis had some neat ideas, but ultimately they were a bit overenthusiastic. I really like Inferno's concept of a new type of biome that's practically useless to all but one faction who get to terraform the entire planet to suit their needs, and wish they had stopped there. I'm not a fan of Dust Eclipses because they overcomplicate the game: both the seasonal pattern and faction abilities. Similarly, I like the new take on a one city faction from Symbiosis, but Urkans do feel redundant in a game that already has Guardians.

It's too early to tell which areas of Humankind will be in most need of post-release development, if any. At the least, I can see the idea of culture packs being quite popular for this game. It's not a question so much of whether expansions are conceptually a good idea, but about whether those expansions synergize with previously released content. Unlike grand strategy games, 4X titles don't benefit from escalating complexity.

 

[Krajzen]

So, the Amplitude DLC for EL are quite on point, because they address major gaps in vanilla. Guardians? Adds Wonders, late game units, and competitive/cooperative quests (which is to say, more interaction between empires). Shadows? Espionage. Shifters? Makes winter much more dynamic. Tempest? Makes the oceans actually fun and meaningful. None of those felt tacked on, and with all of them the game seemed pretty complete.

The new studio they got to make Inferno and Symbiosis had some neat ideas, but ultimately they were a bit overenthusiastic. I really like Inferno's concept of a new type of biome that's practically useless to all but one faction who get to terraform the entire planet to suit their needs, and wish they had stopped there. I'm not a fan of Dust Eclipses because they overcomplicate the game: both the seasonal pattern and faction abilities. Similarly, I like the new take on a one city faction from Symbiosis, but Urkans do feel redundant in a game that already has Guardians.

It's too early to tell which areas of Humankind will be in most need of post-release development, if any. At the least, I can see the idea of culture packs being quite popular for this game. It's not a question so much of whether expansions are conceptually a good idea, but about whether those expansions synergize with previously released content. Unlike grand strategy games, 4X titles don't benefit from escalating complexity.

Personally I'd have nothing against that crazy but mostly constructive approach of Paradox interactive:
"You know that, that part of the game (which is, like, half of the game) sucks. Let's completely blow it up and replace with something completely, utterly different and better. This process of destruction will be our next DLC."
Of course, it has its detractors.
But I'd pay for Firaxis deciding to completely revamp half of Civ6 mechanics. Even to the radical extremes. For example, one of Stellaris patches was brave enough to take away one of the main initial selling points of the game, the choice between three FTL types of transport (turning it into just one). The reason for this was the impossibility of balancing warfare around such diversity. To this day there are many people salty about this change, but it has allowed the game to reach new heights. If Firaxis was crazy enough to throw money at "you know what, let's design a game mode with entirely different combat, limited stacks" - I'd consider buying it, I hate 1UPT that much (not in theory but in practice of AI being utterly unable to use it).

 

[Catoninetales_Amplitude]

Personally I'd have nothing against that crazy but mostly constructive approach of Paradox interactive:
"You know that, that part of the game (which is, like, half of the game) sucks. Let's completely blow it up and replace with something completely, utterly different and better. This process of destruction will be our next DLC."

In Paradox's defense, these days the replacement system tends to be part of the free update. The DLC just comes with a lot of extra content for the new system.
I think they adopted this approach after one of the Stellaris DLCs, when they realized not making the system itself free restricted their options when developing future DLC. (E.g. Ascension Perks used to be a paid feature, then they made it free to give themselves more development space, and a lot of DLCs released since them seem to follow a similar approach.)

 

[Krajzen]

In Paradox's defense, these days the replacement system tends to be part of the free update. The DLC just comes with a lot of extra content for the new system.
I think they adopted this approach after one of the Stellaris DLCs, when they realized not making the system itself free restricted their options when developing future DLC. (E.g. Ascension Perks used to be a paid feature, then they made it free to give themselves more development space, and a lot of DLCs released since them seem to follow a similar approach.)

Yeah, I have been complimenting them
Stellaris has crazy development life cycle in general, this game is like game embodiment of Theseus Ship Paradox, 90% of it now is completely different than release version, and yet the game has been always thriving.

 

[CivLuvah]

Personally I'd have nothing against that crazy but mostly constructive approach of Paradox interactive:
"You know that, that part of the game (which is, like, half of the game) sucks. Let's completely blow it up and replace with something completely, utterly different and better. This process of destruction will be our next DLC."
Of course, it has its detractors.
But I'd pay for Firaxis deciding to completely revamp half of Civ6 mechanics. Even to the radical extremes. For example, one of Stellaris patches was brave enough to take away one of the main initial selling points of the game, the choice between three FTL types of transport (turning it into just one). The reason for this was the impossibility of balancing warfare around such diversity. To this day there are many people salty about this change, but it has allowed the game to reach new heights. If Firaxis was crazy enough to throw money at "you know what, let's design a game mode with entirely different combat, limited stacks" - I'd consider buying it, I hate 1UPT that much (not in theory but in practice of AI being utterly unable to use it).

The learning curve for such a model will be very steep though. Who has the time to follow every developer diary?