The OpenDev/Preview Thread

Most definitely is, as your first focus is on exploiting tiles. Plus at some point you run out of worthwhile, strong tiles. THEN you switch to clustering. It's not one or the other, the district limit is very high, so you go through phases of exploitation, first by taking the low hanging fruit of strong tiles, then switching to infrastructure development.
Uh, I hope this rather simplistic meta system is not true for the final game, as it would rob us of some of the more interesting decisions. I hope quarter tiers based on the number of adjacent quarters and negative stability influence of low level quarters make a return. Not that „always build triangles“ was much more complex.

there should be a choice between quantity (more yields) and quality (better yields) that is never a no-brainer after the first two or three quarters for basic growth and production. I hope that influence (arguably the most valuable resource in general in EL as you need it a lot for every playstyle) will change things up, as it does not appear on the map. Hopefully, playing someone else than Babylon will also proof that science is a more valuable yield...
 
Last edited:
Decided to really try and see just how much I could break the game in this playthrough. Biggest observation that led to this is that scouting is VERY powerful. You really cannot have too many scout units. They can find curiosities, but more importantly, hunt loads of mammoths. The scout cavalry unit in particular is really good and worth getting as fast as possible as it costs the exact same as a regular scout, but is stronger and faster.

Also noticed the real strength of harbours in this run. With lumber yards, fisheries and fishmongers you can really pump their yields up pretty high.

View attachment 564853

wow... those results are impressive... did you actually manage to oupost AND attach all the territories ? 17 is an awful lot
 
wow... those results are impressive... did you actually manage to oupost AND attach all the territories ? 17 is an awful lot
Yeah. It was mainly a mix of very aggressively hunting mammoths and expanding to natural wonders quickly. There were times when I killed like 5 mammoth in a single battle... giving *200* money.... :eek:

Also, pro tip about mammoths - they only spawn in "cold" biomes whereas deer seem to only spawn in "warm" biomes. So if you keep your units hanging around nearer the cold regions on the map you'll find more of them.

Natural wonders give 10 money per turn just for having an outpost in their region so that's worth doing asap where possible.
 
Most definitely is, as your first focus is on exploiting tiles. Plus at some point you run out of worthwhile, strong tiles. THEN you switch to clustering. It's not one or the other, the district limit is very high, so you go through phases of exploitation, first by taking the low hanging fruit of strong tiles, then switching to infrastructure development.
Agreed. There's a situational case for both clustering and picking out individual strong tiles and I think the game will see you doing both in fairly equal measure. I really like it honestly, it feels so organic, like I'm creating these small villages and settlements in key areas to complement my big cities.

I think once stability comes into play and we start using commons quarters clustering will become a much bigger thing too, the adjacency bonus is very strong.

They gave us 19 "armies" to play around with exploration. Considering that Romans bonus is +3, I believe the cap will be much lower in the actual game. In the press build it was 11, but I think it would be lower than that still. Plus they removed aggressive animals like bears, which would totally decimate single scout armies.
Fair point. In fact, I think the addition of other players to the game will change things a lot in this aspect too. There won't be anywhere near as strong an incentive to leave animal sanctuaries standing on the map as it just means one of your rivals has the ability to hunt the same animals as you. May as well just take the 22 gold in that situation. Without mammoths spawning all over the place constantly there will be way less incentive to build a ton of units early.

I'm actually really looking forward to the early game interactions between players. There's a lot of potential for really interesting gameplay there.
 
I've left a final post on the Games2Gether Humankind opendev forum. I'm copying it here for everyone, I titled it: OK SO MAYBE NOT A FIRST IMPRESSION AS MORE OF A SECOND IMPRESSION !!! because the forum name is FIRST IMPRESSIONS ;-)

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________


Hi all. I've already posted a message giving my first impressions. Let's have another go at this after some 7-8 runs:



+ First of all, the following comments might make it seem like I'm very critical of the game. Really, I'm not. I'm loving how this seems to be shaping up, and where it looks like likes it's headed.

Plz take all of this as 'constructive comments' from an old hand 4X player ( civ since CIV2, but also Endless legend, Endless space 2, Old world, Alpha Centauri, Galciv 2 and 3, beyond Earth and more...)



+ city and outpost banners don't give enough information... what is it doin ? how long till it's done ? i don't want to HAVE to click each one or scroll through all of them in order to know. I suppose that a 'one glance' view of all your cities and outpost will be available via the 'city view' icon top right, and if that's the plan, I suppose one click is acceptable to get all infos, but I still feel the banner should provide way more when map is fully zoomed in, even if it takes a mouse hover to get it. EDIT: Sorry, just replayed another game, and turns out that I checked on a save in which all my outposts weren't constructing anything. So at least, the banner IS telling you what the city/outpost is building and number of turns left. My bad ;-(


+ I feel it's hard to differenciate between regiment, single units and even cities/outpost on the map. icon represents the civ ? just colour shading atm to differenciate. I'm pretty convinced I'll get a better feel of this when there will be other cultures on the map, and I'm content to wait on this before making a more final opinion, but it's not bad to mention it. I also can see there's a button top right to list all the armies/regiments that is not implemented yet. But even when it will be, I feel I should be better able to sort them out visually on the map.


+ I'm having a lot of trouble visually seeing what I've constructed in my cities. There's a 'completed' tab in the city panel, but that only show infrastructure somehow, not anything else like districts etc... And unless I mouseover the tiles where I know I constructed stuff, nothing visually seems to help see it. So, my first wish would be that by clicking on the city banner, whatever I built around that city should be somehow highlighted. If not, then the 'contructed' tab should show me everything, not only infra. And clicking on an icon on that tab should at least highlight it on the map


+ This has been said before, and I'm totally convinced it will be taken care of way before launch, but I will reiterate: The game has to remember our preferences about how infos should be offered in city view and others; if there are menu options that changes what we will see (ex:view only buildable button), having to reset that same button each and every time I open city view is insufferable. Either remember my last choice, or make a way to permanently configure that. I feel last chosen option will almost always be the right way to go


+ Even if this is not a combat scenario, I've had a lot of fun with it. I absolutely love that terrain type/elevation will give bonuses or maluses. At the moment, unfortunately, you have to wait until you've moved on a tile in order to have the info about those bonuses and maluses. I would like it if you could get the info BEFORE you moved... there should be a tooltip when hovering over a tile before choosing to move there


+ I feel the 'attach' option for a territory is really obscure. First, you have to click on a city, then hover over an outpost, THEN realize there's a tiny little box appearing on the outpost banner ( I hadn't even noticed that after 3 full games, and had to read about it in the forum messages to start looking for it)... Also, the tiny little box will NOT appear if that territory is not adjacent to an already attached territory linked to THAT city. Finally, it's really not clear what you gain or loose by attaching; is it going to make it better than a simple outpost ? what are the gains/loss compared to turning that outpost into a different city ? We nee more info !


In the end, to me, this feels like a decision that will be very important gamewise. I'm sure that further scenarios will put emphasis on this, but I wanted to get it out there right away that this is really not done right ATM


+ People have been saying the curiosities get old fast and that there are too many of them. I tend to disagree ; In general, scouts in most 4x games become useless pretty fast. I think this system has a shot in making them usefull all game long, with curio stalking and animal hunting ! I hope this turns out to be real !


+ I dislike all the comments about science and gold accumulating too easy and fast. First, this is a pre-alpha unbalanced version: Second, we have no possible idea if it's linked to the fact that's it's the first era and that it's Babylon, a scientific culture. Let's wait a bit on the 'OMG IT'S SO OP', people, plz :)



thanks for taking the time to read my comments
 
Last edited:
like I'm creating these small villages and settlements in key areas to complement my big cities.

This. This so much. And I'm extremely happy to have a game that finally creates these "layers" instead of being "Full city or nothing".

We had only 30 turns, but I definitely see those lone harbors I'm placing becoming trade hubs when I start adding trading quarters surrounded by farms.
 
Just for fun, played a game where I activated Science Mode on Babylon for the whole game... So I constructed absolutely nothing in that city... but... I managed to research 4 classical tech (Standing Army, Conquest, Heavy cav and Siege Tactics) and was 1 turn away from a 5th one (imperial power). Wasn't really useful in a 30 turns game, mind you, but it shows that science mode is extremely strong, stronger than I expected really. I think it will prove really useful in certain moments where you'd really need to beeline to a certain tech.
 
I'm a little confused about all the infrastructure upgrades the tutorial pop up mentioned something about only being able to build one of each type or something? Did it litterly mean you can't keep building lumber yards or tanning mills which I would have assumed anyway or is there some total infrastructure limit?
 
I'm a little confused about all the infrastructure upgrades the tutorial pop up mentioned something about only being able to build one of each type or something? Did it litterly mean you can't keep building lumber yards or tanning mills which I would have assumed anyway or is there some total infrastructure limit?

Like civ, can only have one of each building in a city.
 
Ok that makes sense perhaps I was overthinking how it was worded I suppose they mention it to contrast it to the quarters which can be repeatedly built.
 
Since the second scenario is coming up, and since that means I have a chance at getting into OpenDev, I'm quite tempted to watch streams of the first scenario on YouTube. I want to get into the OpenDev fresh, but I want to do something Humankind related while I wait.

I don't know, I'm thinking out loud here haha
 
Since the second scenario is coming up, and since that means I have a chance at getting into OpenDev, I'm quite tempted to watch streams of the first scenario on YouTube. I want to get into the OpenDev fresh, but I want to do something Humankind related while I wait.

I don't know, I'm thinking out loud here haha
From what I have heard they will increase the opendev player count overtime so you may have a chance.
 
Surprisingly, even if it's tuesday 16h here in Canada, I'm somehow still able to play. Thought the opendev was supposed to stop on monday.

Anyways, Understanding a lot better how extensions work, and trying out @Elhoim suggestions with castle, I just played what I feel was my most satisfying game so far ;-) Had 3 nice cities, one with 2 territories, and two with 4.

20200804163028_1.jpg
 
Awesome!

Also, a very nice detail is that the map borders show the number of tiles the map has :D
 
According to Livetream today, Scenario #2 will drop tomorrow. More OpenDev invites will also go out tomorrow. Look forward to seeing some let's plays. Maybe if I am lucky, I will get in to OpenDev.

Best of luck!
 
Top Bottom