I'm only making this connection because I was looking up possible legacy traits for a Canadian culture recently, but this maps pretty neatly to former Canadian PM Lester Pearson's "Four Faces of Peace" and using soft power to promote cooperation: Peace and Prosperity (trade), Peace and Power (military), Peace and Policy (information sharing), and Peace and People (borders/ cultural exchange). Just thought it was interesting, probably not intentional.
The OpenDev/Preview Thread
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CivLuvah
Deity
So, I finished my first playthrough of the scenario. Made it to 76 turns before transitioning into the Medieval era ended the game. Not a bad score. Overall the experience was good, but there were some things I didn't understand well. I will post my full thoughts once I go through two more.
The game looks a bit crappy in Stadia, not because of the port but because of my slow internet connection. Which is one of the reasons why I doubt the whole cloud gaming trend. But I must do it for... Humankind!
Moderator Action: Edited your post to remove the inappropriate language used to fool the autocensor. Please help us keep the site family friendly by using appropriate language. leif
The game looks a bit crappy in Stadia, not because of the port but because of my slow internet connection. Which is one of the reasons why I doubt the whole cloud gaming trend. But I must do it for... Humankind!
Moderator Action: Edited your post to remove the inappropriate language used to fool the autocensor. Please help us keep the site family friendly by using appropriate language. leif
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Catoninetales_Amplitude
Prince
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"Tolerate Skirmishes" has been a staple of Amplitude's games since ES1. We used to call it "Cold War." (But that, of course, has much different implications in a historical 4X game.)
aguaacrobata2
Chieftain
Diplomacy screen!
Wow that looks just great!
Could anybody try the trade system out? I watched some first looks and gameplays of this OpenDev yesterday but none of them got into trading...
SupremacyKing2
Deity
Trade shows you the resources that each civ have. You can click buy on a foreign resource in the table and it will take you to the foreign city that has that resource and shows you the price. You can then choose if you want to buy it at that price and the game sets up a trade route for you to give you that resource.
aguaacrobata2
Chieftain
Well, that sounds nice, for what I understand if the price is not shown in the first screen (where you see the resources of each player) but in the second (the city with the resource) it would mean that a same resource can potentially have different prices depending not only on the player but also on the city...
What about selling when you want to sell? You have to make individual offers to each player (I believe in this OpenDev there were a total of 3 players) or can you just sell to something like a world market?
SupremacyKing2
Deity
Catoninetales_Amplitude
Prince
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Important to note that these trade routes can be ransacked by other players.
Yes, because transportation is factored into the price. Longer routes cost more to establish.
There's no active selling. I know some players won't like this, but I don't miss it that much, and I no longer find myself wasting ages trying to make a quick buck.
aguaacrobata2
Chieftain
Well I do really like how this is implemented... That means no more nonesense commerce with other civs at the other end of the world.
No active selling is also interesting, no more time wasted clicking on different leaders to see which one offers me more for the same resource. I guess we have to wait for an offer on some of our surplus resources and then decide wether we accept it or not... I would still like to find partners for my stuff but I dont dislike this system
No active selling is also interesting, no more time wasted clicking on different leaders to see which one offers me more for the same resource. I guess we have to wait for an offer on some of our surplus resources and then decide wether we accept it or not... I would still like to find partners for my stuff but I dont dislike this system
Catoninetales_Amplitude
Prince
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Oh, not even that. Whether somebody can buy your resources or not depends on your "Trade" treaties. You don't approve individual trades. They just pay the gold to you, and get access to the resources (but you do not lose it).
tedhebert
Emperor
Very interesting. So you'll have to really take care of what treaties/trades you allow with cultures you want to cripple in-game...
Atlas627
Deity
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Yeah you get a notification saying new Trade started, and that means someone just bought your goods. Your chance to decline was when you agreed to Trade Relations in the first place (which starts on by default). I quite like this.
Now if only I can figure out what good having multiple copies of *strategic* resources is for...
Now if only I can figure out what good having multiple copies of *strategic* resources is for...
aguaacrobata2
Chieftain
Oh, I understand, hopefully we get the chance to see a little of this in todays livestream
Yep that I don't really get... Maybe for your own production, if you want to build many Units that require the same strategic resource at the same time... I miss the point on having many luxury resources though
Catoninetales_Amplitude
Prince
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Luxury bonuses are cumulative, so having more is always better.
For strategic resources, some units and structures will require two or even three copies of a strategic resource to be available.
8housesofelixir
Emperor
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There will be an official stream later today: https://twitter.com/humankindgame/status/1319277793880862727
Thanks! And later today is apparently 3 minutes from now, great!
CivLuvah
Deity
I typed this at the Games2Gether forums and I want to post this here as well
So I have gone through three playthroughs of the Stadia OpenDev, and here are my impressions so far. Playing the OpenDev on Stadia requires some patience for me. My internet connection isn't fast enough to gain a constant decent resolution, so everything looks crappy, like I was playing a video stream or something, so I wasn't experiencing the gorgeousness of the game like I did during the previous OpenDevs. This is a critique of the platform, not the game itself. I never liked Stadia anyway, I was only in it... for Humankind!!!
Those with an asterisk* on are (correct me if I'm wrong), so I don't have to type that phrase over and over again haha
• Improvements
- UI tooltips are clearer now than the previous OpenDev scenarios
- Auto-resolve has vastly improved, which is great!
• Good
- I love how intuitive the UI of the diplomacy screen, especially in how they categorized treaties and how more advanced the upper ones are, and the later ones are in the next era as well. It makes for a sense of customization of your relationship with the other empire
- I like the diplomatic badges as well, I believe they’re the other civ’s reputation?*
- I like how your civics choices provide you with different options. Reminds me of the civics system in Civ4
- I just love how events are well-integrated into the civics system
• Criticisms
My one major criticism (more of a comment really):
Earning era stars is a mixed bag for me, mostly because it feels a bit passive. This is good in that you don’t need to micro-manage your goals and just let the stars flow as you focus on other things, making setting goals feel natural and more flexible. On the other hand, earning them seems to be a bit too fast (although this might be due to the scenario itself)*, and sometimes I feel I can’t properly control whether to aim for three stars in a single category or have one star of each category, or whether it was worth it earning stars in the first place because you’re just letting them flow. I think there should be a way to make earning stars more of a challenge, while at the same time not let ordinary gameplay be too hard for the player (since the era star system integrates ordinary gameplay). Balance is key!
Other criticisms:
- It would have been great if we would have an indicator in the UI of how much faith we have and how much we should/would reach to acquire a religion or a tenet of our religion.
- On the Society map, determining which is my territory and which is under my civilization’s influence is fuzzy. The territorial borders should be more well-defined
- It’s not obvious in the tooltip that the limit that you should reach to earn an era star within a category increases as you earn said star. This left me confused while I was searching what limit I should aspire to in order to get a star
- It’s frustrating to exit the tech tree or the Society map whenever I want to go back to the main map. It would be easier if clicking “End Turn” from one of these screens takes you back.
- I don’t like how you can replace another extension on top of an existing one to replace it – I’d want to make extensions more permanent. Or is this a glitch in the demo?
- I know this is super minor, but I don’t like the artwork notification for the ransack action – a monastery being pillaged by Vikings. It makes me feel bad whenever I ransack even though the depiction is not actually the thing I was ransacking. I hope there some extra artwork out there that would be an alternative for that. I feel there will be people who will find this a bit problematic to say the least. But otherwise, it’s nothing to fret about.
• Clarifications
- In the civics sliders, what do the highlighted sections mean compared with the small purple box within them? Are the highlighted sections supposed to represent your leaning in the general spectrum, and the box represents where you are within that small section/spectrum?*
- Are the vehicles that go along the roads supposed to be chariots or wheelbarrows?
- Where do excess era stars go? Are they wasted forever once you transition into the next era?
- Sometimes I get a notification that my population has declined but I don’t know why during that one time when both my neighbours are not agrarian.
• Impressions
- I like how Influence limits the number of outposts you can establish
- I get the sense now of how different each culture is within an era. Those Hunnic hordes are very powerful; I like nomad cultures already!
- I like how the avatars can talk and banter with each other during diplomacy.
Overall, despite the various bugs and glitches (like the dancing medallions on your avatar during the Classical era), I feel this is more or less a playable game at this state, which is remarkable, somewhat in the level of Civ5 vanilla. At release. Except with most of the systems in place already. Speaking of which, all of the systems that I had trouble imagining or figuring out worked well and integrated with each other. Hats off to Amplitude for accomplishing this! I look forward to more of this while I wait 6 months from now!
So I have gone through three playthroughs of the Stadia OpenDev, and here are my impressions so far. Playing the OpenDev on Stadia requires some patience for me. My internet connection isn't fast enough to gain a constant decent resolution, so everything looks crappy, like I was playing a video stream or something, so I wasn't experiencing the gorgeousness of the game like I did during the previous OpenDevs. This is a critique of the platform, not the game itself. I never liked Stadia anyway, I was only in it... for Humankind!!!
Those with an asterisk* on are (correct me if I'm wrong), so I don't have to type that phrase over and over again haha
• Improvements
- UI tooltips are clearer now than the previous OpenDev scenarios
- Auto-resolve has vastly improved, which is great!
• Good
- I love how intuitive the UI of the diplomacy screen, especially in how they categorized treaties and how more advanced the upper ones are, and the later ones are in the next era as well. It makes for a sense of customization of your relationship with the other empire
- I like the diplomatic badges as well, I believe they’re the other civ’s reputation?*
- I like how your civics choices provide you with different options. Reminds me of the civics system in Civ4
- I just love how events are well-integrated into the civics system
• Criticisms
My one major criticism (more of a comment really):
Earning era stars is a mixed bag for me, mostly because it feels a bit passive. This is good in that you don’t need to micro-manage your goals and just let the stars flow as you focus on other things, making setting goals feel natural and more flexible. On the other hand, earning them seems to be a bit too fast (although this might be due to the scenario itself)*, and sometimes I feel I can’t properly control whether to aim for three stars in a single category or have one star of each category, or whether it was worth it earning stars in the first place because you’re just letting them flow. I think there should be a way to make earning stars more of a challenge, while at the same time not let ordinary gameplay be too hard for the player (since the era star system integrates ordinary gameplay). Balance is key!
Other criticisms:
- It would have been great if we would have an indicator in the UI of how much faith we have and how much we should/would reach to acquire a religion or a tenet of our religion.
- On the Society map, determining which is my territory and which is under my civilization’s influence is fuzzy. The territorial borders should be more well-defined
- It’s not obvious in the tooltip that the limit that you should reach to earn an era star within a category increases as you earn said star. This left me confused while I was searching what limit I should aspire to in order to get a star
- It’s frustrating to exit the tech tree or the Society map whenever I want to go back to the main map. It would be easier if clicking “End Turn” from one of these screens takes you back.
- I don’t like how you can replace another extension on top of an existing one to replace it – I’d want to make extensions more permanent. Or is this a glitch in the demo?
- I know this is super minor, but I don’t like the artwork notification for the ransack action – a monastery being pillaged by Vikings. It makes me feel bad whenever I ransack even though the depiction is not actually the thing I was ransacking. I hope there some extra artwork out there that would be an alternative for that. I feel there will be people who will find this a bit problematic to say the least. But otherwise, it’s nothing to fret about.
• Clarifications
- In the civics sliders, what do the highlighted sections mean compared with the small purple box within them? Are the highlighted sections supposed to represent your leaning in the general spectrum, and the box represents where you are within that small section/spectrum?*
- Are the vehicles that go along the roads supposed to be chariots or wheelbarrows?
- Where do excess era stars go? Are they wasted forever once you transition into the next era?
- Sometimes I get a notification that my population has declined but I don’t know why during that one time when both my neighbours are not agrarian.
• Impressions
- I like how Influence limits the number of outposts you can establish
- I get the sense now of how different each culture is within an era. Those Hunnic hordes are very powerful; I like nomad cultures already!
- I like how the avatars can talk and banter with each other during diplomacy.
Overall, despite the various bugs and glitches (like the dancing medallions on your avatar during the Classical era), I feel this is more or less a playable game at this state, which is remarkable, somewhat in the level of Civ5 vanilla. At release. Except with most of the systems in place already. Speaking of which, all of the systems that I had trouble imagining or figuring out worked well and integrated with each other. Hats off to Amplitude for accomplishing this! I look forward to more of this while I wait 6 months from now!
Atlas627
Deity
- Joined
- Aug 25, 2011
- Messages
- 2,930
Seems like the Highlighted zone is the threshold or tier which determines the bonus, while the purple box is your actual current value.
I'm not sure I understand what your question is here?
Are your cities in "danger of starvation" or whatever it's called? If they stay like that for multiple turns in a row they will cause pop decline.
Era stars have no use beyond the requirement for the next era, BUT stars and fame are basically the same thing. Every time you earn a star, you earn some fame. The fame is the important thing here as blasting through the 7 stars on each era could land you at the "defeat" screen at the end of the game compared to someone who delayed and got a bit more of those and thus had more fame than you.
The sliders are not a spectrum, but 5 intervals. The boxes visualise the range where you get the same bonuses.
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