The OpenDev/Preview Thread

[CivLuvah]

Thank you again @Catoninetales_Amplitude for answering our feedback!

 

[SupremacyKing2]

While edge-scrolling is not implemented yet, click-and-drag should work.

Thanks!

 

[Krajzen]

I liked the first scenario, lots of things familiar from the Endless Legend/Endless Space series. The other scenarios I found very dull... might be because tactical combat is not something I've ever enjoyed nor found interesting. I'm sure everyone complaining about combat in Civilization 5/6 will love it though.

I don't know how well it works, but please note the game does have (or will have) automatic battle resolution, which is impossible in civ

 

[Uberfrog]

The names Londonia and Oxeneford are taken from the Domesday Book.

Ah! That explains it! Londonia/Lundonia is presumably a medieval Latinisation of the Old English.

 

[Elhoim]

Pacing is one of the areas we were looking for feedback, and we got a lot.

Heh, I think many of us were annoyed by how fast tech went in Civ VI, so yeah, we can be kinda vocal about it

 

[Jkchart]

So Hold the Fort is well designed and I am supremely impressed with the pre-Alpha. I won it in one try, but I ended up sacrificing Oxeneford 75% of the way through by just doing sorties and trying to hold up and damage Khmer and Aztec armies.

Elephants SUCK. Longbows are awesome. I need to play again/some more, but I found combat integrated into the main game to be a wholly satisfying experience.

The strategic resource requirements are interesting, not sure entirely how i feel yet, but it did up the pressure losing my iron right as I unlocked greatswords.

 

[CivLuvah]

I have finally played Scenario 2. I am going to convey my thoughts on the mechanics based on what I have experienced in all four battles. I played three run-throughs of each to make sure I have a full picture of how battles would look like in Humankind. Like in my thread about Scenario 1, it's most likely that many of the impressions that I would want to share have already been mentioned somewhere in these forums or elsewhere, so here are the impressions I got that I feel haven't been mentioned yet. I also put in some questions that I'm not sure had been answered already, as well as some criticisms that I'm not sure are supposed to be in the game.

The Good:

1. What blew me away with the combat system is the opportunity to really make your battle feel tactical. I've heard this system is somewhat of a bare-bones version of Endless Legend; but I've never played it, so this is all new to me, and it's a breath of fresh air. In Civilization, you mostly move your units like in a chessboard, except there are no tactical rules, you just move them and eat the pieces. Humankind's combat allows for more, deeper strategy. After I played each battle I felt there was a sense of purpose in tactically planning and playing a battle, as well as satisfaction in from doing it. There is this feeling that every battle you do might tip the scales of war. This is in contrast with Civilization, in which it's just a slog to just move units. That's why I'm never the warmonger in Civ. The combat system in Humankind is so good and so refreshing that I mostly left with a feeling that I want to engage in combat, again, despite me always avoiding any kind of war!
   
2. The way tactics are important in the combat system is making me learn and think about combat bonuses, how these stack up the odds, even the basic actions of unit classes. In turn, this made me think about how to take advantage of those abilities. Again, I was never the warmonger in Civ, so I didn't pay attention to these kinds of things in my units, I just click and hope for the best. If they have bonuses, then yey -_- With this, however, it was more thinking and anticipating.
3. The siege is my favourite battle! They actually feel like sieges. I love how powerful the trebuchets are. They're so powerful that in my third playthrough, only a lone trebuchet was left standing, and I was able to defeat all units with just one trebuchet.
4. I also like how ranged units can shoot from far away, as opposed to, say two or three tiles away.
5. I love how the character model for each unit is unique depending on the culture in-game, as opposed to its generic artwork. It's good to see Korean and Japanese arquebusiers that don't look like they are Portuguese imports.
6. I like how the battle prediction metre is like a slider, which estimates how long your unit will last.
7. The AI know what they're doing. For example, in the first battle, third playthrough, I send all my units to the cliff to the right, just to test if they will proceed under the cliff. They didn't; instead they followed me into the elevated territory and attacked from there!

The Criticisms:

1. My major criticism of the battle system, as much as I really like it, is that auto-resolve is too slow. I expected it to be just lickety-split, like a blimp, similar to how Total War auto-resolves battles (I've never actually gotten deep into a Total War title either, but I've seen videos of auto-resolve in action). Instead, the auto-resolve here seems to take its time, step-by-step. I assume with auto-resolve when you're in a major war, and you don't have time to manage your battles, you can just focus on the ones with the highest stakes and then use auto-resolve for the rest. If the auto-resolve in the OpenDev scenarios is this slow, wars would be a slog. I hope this gets addressed early on or at least modified in a way that has a good amount of speed.
2. There are no indicators of whether the tile is high terrain whenever I hover over a tile in battle mode. It would be useful to know so I could plan accordingly.
3. There is no distinction between the unit classes. In battle three, I had a hard time realizing that what I thought was a swordsman was actually a pikeman. I know this would be fixed later on in development.
4. The reinforcement mechanic wasn't clear to me. For example, in battle 2, I wasn't able to move my reinforcements, until I realized that it was because an enemy unit was on the same tile as them. In battle three, I couldn't end a round because the hover UI said "no idle unit" yet in order to proceed. That unit that wasn't idle was one of my reinforcement in the water, but for some reason, I couldn't get them to move and make them exhaust their movement.
5. Line of sight for ranged units wasn't clear to me either. In battle 4, for instance, my arquebusier was on top of the cliff, and an enemy of the same unit was in front of me. Somehow, I could kill defeat him. I assume this is because it's too near to be in my light of sight? It was really all clear to me. This is also a question if this is supposed to be how light of sight works.

Stray Thoughts and Questions:

1. Terrain is key. In the first battle, first playthrough, I was able to take advantage of the rivers and cliffs against my enemy.
2. In battle 1, I like how they put an independent people (The Akkadians) in the scenario - a taste of what's to come!
3. I like how ranged and siege units can shoot from far away.
4. I always find it funny that a unit of mine can die at the same time as the opponents. It happened to me several times.
5. Is the battle music the same music but more complicated as the eras progress? Am I the only one who notices this? Because it's cool.

Also:
I found this glitch in which one of the swordsmen was doing a T-pose, probably doing a blood-eagle ritual before battle (I know what an actual blood eagle is, so please don't remind me :/)

In battle 4, first playthrough, once all of my units were decimated only this lone samurai remained, so I put him on the tile with the flag, which is cool.

And here he is in his dying moments:

So, those are my thoughts on the second scenario. There's a lot of potential in this combat system and I'm loving it so far. It just needs to be fixed in some areas, especially the auto-resolve speed.

 

[Elhoim]

My major criticism of the battle system, as much as I really like it, is that auto-resolve is too slow. I expected it to be just lickety-split, like a blimp, similar to how Total War auto-resolves battles (I've never actually gotten deep into a Total War title either, but I've seen videos of auto-resolve in action). Instead, the auto-resolve here seems to take its time, step-by-step. I assume with auto-resolve when you're in a major war, and you don't have time to manage your battles, you can just focus on the ones with the highest stakes and then use auto-resolve for the rest. If the auto-resolve in the OpenDev scenarios is this slow, wars would be a slog. I hope this gets addressed early on or at least modified in a way that has a good amount of speed.

They are planning an automatic battle resolve for the full release.

 

[Krajzen]

1. The siege is my favourite battle! They actually feel like sieges. I love how powerful the trebuchets are. They're so powerful that in my third playthrough, only a lone trebuchet was left standing, and I was able to defeat all units with just one trebuchet.
2. I also like how ranged units can shoot from far away, as opposed to, say two or three tiles away.
3. There are no indicators of whether the tile is high terrain whenever I hover over a tile in battle mode. It would be useful to know so I could plan accordingly.
4. There is no distinction between the unit classes. In battle three, I had a hard time realizing that what I thought was a swordsman was actually a pikeman. I know this would be fixed later on in development.
5. Line of sight for ranged units wasn't clear to me either. In battle 4, for instance, my arquebusier was on top of the cliff, and an enemy of the same unit was in front of me. Somehow, I could kill defeat him. I assume this is because it's too near to be in my light of sight? It was really all clear to me. This is also a question if this is supposed to be how light of sight works.
6. In battle 1, I like how they put an independent people (The Akkadians) in the scenario - a taste of what's to come!
7. I always find it funny that a unit of mine can die at the same time as the opponents. It happened to me several times.
8. I found this glitch in which one of the swordsmen was doing a T-pose, probably doing a blood-eagle ritual before battle (I know what an actual blood eagle is, so please don't remind me :/)

1. I'm not sure if I like how powerful trebuchets are, it is weird that those siege weapons are decimating enemy army as if they were a rocket artillery. Maybe that's the prelude of later stages of siege units but still, I think siege weapons should be mediocre vs units before gunpowder.
2. Yeah, I like how units have way longer movement and shoot range here, it does make everything feel faster and less tedious.
3. No indicators of high/low ground on the battle map are an unbearable UI oversight, I really hope something will be done in this regard.
4. You mean the sword icon for pikeman? Yeah, its even worse than crossbow and arquebusier having the same icon.
5. I have no idea at all how does line of sight work on this game, and again I do hope hope this gets some UI colors and overlay. Maybe the issue is connected to the high/low ground obstructing vision.
6. Wait, what?
7. I am not sure if I like this idea, it feels strange for both units to kilka each other. Maybe the point is to simulate local pyrrhic victory, of one unit defeating enemy but dissolving due to heavy losses? Maybe that's better than Civ's approach of 'there is always a victor, even with 1HP'?
8. I had the same bug. Swordman doing T-pose and jerking nervously (only one man man, rest of the formation being normal). Hilarious! Also, blood eagle is probably a sensational myth, IIRC it is anatomically impossible and not attested.

 

[Siptah]

I don't have a problem with pikeman and swordsman, who are the same class (melee), and crossbows and arquebusiers (gunners) sharing icons. It's only a problem because we are accustomed to civ and its unit icons for each unit type. In the long run, it might be quite beneficial to have this reduction which makes it actually easier to identify at a glance what you have to deal with, because there will presumably only be a handful, and not 50+ (not even counting UUs). It's only a little step to change how you deal with these icons in practice. These class icons tell you something basic about the unit in question: approximately how far it can move, attack with range or not, or if it needs line of sight to do so (archers and siege don't for example). It's easy to decode information, and you do not need to memorize dozens of unit characteristics. The attack bonus of pikemen against cavalry happens within this class, apparently, as it is seen as a bonus, like charge, bastion etc. We need to see how this holds up once we've seen all classes (presumably, later eras will add one or two new ones, while melee and archers will disappear), but so far, I quite like it.

 

[Catoninetales_Amplitude]

The siege is my favourite battle! They actually feel like sieges. I love how powerful the trebuchets are. They're so powerful that in my third playthrough, only a lone trebuchet was left standing, and I was able to defeat all units with just one trebuchet.

I'm not sure if I like how powerful trebuchets are, it is weird that those siege weapons are decimating enemy army as if they were a rocket artillery. Maybe that's the prelude of later stages of siege units but still, I think siege weapons should be mediocre vs units before gunpowder.

I believe the Trebuchet's in Scenario 2 were beefed up a bit. You can probably see the real strength value in the Scenario 3 tech tree somewhere, but I don't remember it off the top of my head.

My major criticism of the battle system, as much as I really like it, is that auto-resolve is too slow. I expected it to be just lickety-split, like a blimp, similar to how Total War auto-resolves battles

As Elhoim mentioned, we are working on this. We want to have both the current automation (which you can turn off at any moment if you think you need to intervene), as well as a more "instant" auto-resolve. For the time being, you can simply click out of the battle and go manage your empire while the battle plays itself out.

 

[Wyvern_Parade]

Just finished up a few runs of Scenario 3 Hold the Fort, and I have to say I'm impressed. The integration of combat and managing a small empire was very fun, and I like most of the mechanics related to sieges so far.

The fact that you cannot produce anything while under siege feels very immersive and puts pressure on the defender to break it instead of just sitting in a defensive position without doing any damage. Actually I like that BOTH the attacker and defender have motivations to make progress to finish the battle:

The defender needs to break the siege to resume regular city functions and is further motivated to do so before the attacker has time to build their siege weapons.

The attacker obviously wants to get the city for the yields, but also has to worry about the defender bringing reinforcements or purchasing extra units to help break the siege. Overall it seems like a good system.

When I played scenario 2 I didn't like the fact that you could block reinforcement points, but it grew on me in this scenario. It gives another strategic location in the tactical battle and can help speed up what could otherwise become real slogfests.

My only big issue is that I wish all reinforcement points were visible to all players during the battle, even if they technically fall outside your line of vision. I don't feel it adds much strategy to the game to hide them and then be ambushed by units that you weren't expecting and whose combat strength weren't represented in the battle preview. Having the reinforcement points always visible at least tips off the players where new enemies could spawn from so you can position accordingly. Having outside reinforcements (a mechanic I like!) is enough of a surprise, much less not knowing which direction they'll be coming from.

I found the battles to be challenging enough to be interesting, but not overwhelming. For pre-alpha the AI is quite good, but obviously not perfect. While the melee and cav units usually go for the best targets, the AI's ranged tactics could use a little work with focus firing. The Khmer elephants were super strong and tough to deal with, but I definitely would have lost more to them if they focus fired on my longbows better. (I'm already having nightmares of facing those elephants in multiplayer btw, please at least make them weak to anti-cav!)

My other big wish after playing scenario 3 is an overlay for range of potential movement for my armies and enemy armies on the strategic map. (I also want this feature for individual units in tactical battles, btw). For example, In AoW Planetfall if you mouse over any army on the strategic map there is a "ring" outlining their maximum move distance in any direction from where they are. This is super helpful when trying to decide where to move armies, and how to keep them out of range of attackers. Or even to see if an enemy will be able to reach your city borders next turn and start a siege. These kind of quality of life features let you focus on strategy and tactics instead of counting tiles every turn.

Overall I'm having a blast with OpenDev, and once the UI inevitably gets better I think HK will have a great combat system.

 

[CivLuvah]

As Elhoim mentioned, we are working on this. We want to have both the current automation (which you can turn off at any moment if you think you need to intervene), as well as a more "instant" auto-resolve. For the time being, you can simply click out of the battle and go manage your empire while the battle plays itself out.

I didn't know this was mentioned before. Thanks for this!

 

[CivLuvah]

6. Wait, what?

This was what I was referring to in Battle 1. @Catoninetales_Amplitude correct me if I'm wrong if this is supposed to be an independent people

 

[SupremacyKing2]

Finished the Japanese - Korea battle. Really cool. I love how big the battles can get and how truly tactical they are. In this battle, you definitely wanted to keep your defenfers back and on high ground. In HK, ranged units are great at holding off larger armies if you hold the high ground which is realistic.

I did notice that you can decimate the opponent and still get a "defeat" because you failed to capture the flag or kill every enemy. And then in this battle, I killed more units but the enemy was still more powerful but I got a "victory" since the enemy failed to capture my flag or kill all my units. Which makes sens if you think of "victory" and "defeat" in terms of whether you achieved your battle objectives. Like in real life, you can fail to achieve your goals but maybe your troops killed more of the enemy.

 

[mitsho]

So, I actually got to the chance to play on Saturday, got the two first scenarios, I will probably not manage the third even though that one seems to be the combination and quite interesting. The map really is gorgeous and even though it still not resembles a „google Earth“ type of realism, the map just makes sense and gives you a historic feel. I do need to get a new laptop and I guess that says all I feel about the game. Some Take-aways:

1) Moving units still takes a lot of the early turns. Hunting Game in the neolithic will be micro-managey, but most players should be fine with the auto-resolve. Curiosities still don‘t really make sense, but okay. I missed a mini-map, was there one?

2) The tech progress was off. I guess I will play on slower speed but stop at every era change. I couldn‘t really get a feel for what my city was doing and how, though it definitely will and we haven‘t seen the full city UI, right. Also, outposts should get a name straight away. It can vanish when absorbed into an other city, but it gives it character and the impression of a changing landscape (and not the same city list all the time). Might also be a solution to introduce city names of civs from later eras.

3) The battles will take up a long time. It even feels like they are a separate game on their own. Which means actually that they are not a battle, but a „war on itself“, you want to bring all your units into one battle or siege. Due to movement points, if you win, you should march trough the rest. If it is like this, it will be manageable for me. I did miss a retreat button when the battles were clearly lost (due to my impatience or when I only had trebuchets left f.e.), and the battle map could use clearer (more colourful) indications of forests, bridges, quarters, etc..

 

[Catoninetales_Amplitude]

This was what I was referring to in Battle 1. @Catoninetales_Amplitude correct me if I'm wrong if this is supposed to be an independent people

Yes, the city of Kadesh belongs to independent people in this scenario, though you're not getting to see much about them other than their existence.

 

[Elhoim]

1) Moving units still takes a lot of the early turns.

Keep in mind that the 20 "Generals" was just for this scenario. The proper game seems to have a much lower limit, and I think it would be more in line with the 3rd scenario in which you could have 8 armies at medieval, so maybe around 4-5 at the start of the game.

 

[mitsho]

Keep in mind that the 20 "Generals" was just for this scenario. The proper game seems to have a much lower limit, and I think it would be more in line with the 3rd scenario in which you could have 8 armies at medieval, so maybe around 4-5 at the start of the game.

I think I only ever used 3 armies in total... ;-) Maybe I'm just a slow player. The thing is, even that was a lot of zigzaging around the map, since the units have a lot of movement points. Which is a good thing, but meant that I had to click a few times: to move to clear the fog and to go again.

It also took me ages to understand that I had to click right during deployment phase. Also, a range-layer (to shoot for archers, line of sight for gunners and movement for melee) would have been helpful.

During the battles I also wondered whether there will be medic support units (like the trebuchets are support).

 

[CivLuvah]

So I've played Scenario 3 yesterday, and I better give my impressions on it before the next culture reveal tomorrow (at the time of writing). This thread is going to be a bit different from my previous first impressions on this thread, since many of the concepts and mechanics in the previous two are already in this scenario, except it's mostly focused on defending a siege. I won't divide this into categories. Like in my previous posts, it's most likely that many of the impressions that I would want to share have already been mentioned somewhere in these forums or elsewhere, so here are the impressions I got that I feel haven't been mentioned yet.

I mentioned in my first impressions post on scenario one that the game seems to be optimized well for low-mid systems. I might have spoken too soon about that when I notice that once there's more stuff in the game, it lags a bit and you have to lower the graphics settings. What more if you go into the modern era?

In this scenario, on my second playthrough, I managed both the siege at Oxenford and Londinia. I find it quite fun actually, compared to Civ6, in which sieges by invading armies are a chore which have enormous consequences to your units if you don't do well. Here, it doesn't really feel like a slog so much as it is fun to maneuver your units and think where to place them so you could be more effective in defending. I know where my units are when I defend and how they're going to be alive; instead of that feeling that I'm playing blind whenever I defend in Civ6. I know some people might see this turtling as a bit too much, but from someone who rarely does combat in 4x games, it's interesting.

I noticed that when I turned on auto-resolve during my defense of Oxenford that the AI that does my side of the battle is only focusing on one unit. It might probably because of the line of sight (which I haven't understood yet), but I find it a bit odd.

There are two glitches: when I target one of the enemies' units using my ranged unit, I get this glitch that overlaps the target with another tile.

Another one is when after I killed all of the units that are trying to siege Londinia, the battle didn't end, and I had to end my round constantly. I don't have pics for that.

The Dhanvi-gaja is quite scary, but eventually I managed to defeat three of them using the terrain and fortifications to my advantage.

I like how in one siege I was defending against, my longbowmen could shoot over Mt. Vesuvius. Too bad it won't cause fire arrows to rain down upon them.

The medieval music is gorgeous! It really reminds me of Civ4.

Overall, I think the scenario's quite good. All three of them are good! For a pre-alpha build, this game already feels like a finished product in itself. There are some general criticisms about the scenarios that I want to point out:

1. I had trouble understanding the exploitation system until someone who has played Endless Legend explained it to me well. I think there should be a way to let new players like me understand these basic city-building mechanics.
2. As much as I really like the combat - the tactics and all that - I have to admit it needs to be a bit quick because it can get a bit slow at times. I know they're going to make auto-resolve instant, but if they could find a balance between deep tactics and fast battles, I'd be happy, and so would a lot of people.

I can't wait for the finished product! Or another round of OpenDev if there will be hehe