The things I like most about this game

[fortydayweekend]

There's a gripes thread already so thought I'd start a positive one

- I'm a serial reloader of start positions in these games but in Humankind I've only done it once. The neolithic period and the benefits of lingering mean you can almost always find a good spot to settle. The only time I restarted was a start that had no luxuries, no good rivers, and no mammoths.

- The situational-ness of most of the decisions. Different starts will suggest different strategies for neolithic (mammoth-rich vs mammoth-poor but 3 sage means your early game will play out very differently), and the map will lead you to pick an Ancient culture that can exploit it, which will lead you to pick a complementary Classical culture, ok sure you'll go Khmer next but then it's really up in the air.

- The meta-strategic game of avoiding future bottlenecks and how this influences culture choice - you have to focus on influence/food/industry/money/science at different times, based on what you'll need in the next era or 2. E.g. upgrading to modern units will suddenly make you wish you had taken the Dutch, or at least built a few more MQs in the last era. This adds loads of replayability from learning each game.

- The assymetric balancing of units and EQs. Some look obviously better than others but the more I play the more I love/hate each of the units and appreciate all the EQs. It's really hard to pick a 'best' Classical culture for example, they could all be good or bad depending on your situation. Even Celts aren't necessarily the best if you have scouts to burn and forested rivers instead of green farmland.

- There are difficult and interesting decisions to make especially when choosing a culture and which techs to beeline at the start of an era. Not as good as Civ4 but there are moments I've spent a lot of time thinking about what to do next.

- How you can use the tactical battlefield to beat a stronger AI opponent, how you can beat superior troops with numbers (to a degree), and also how the AI doesn't seem to press its advantage or send huge stacks at your capital. Also how you can convert population into troops very quickly, and while it hurts your economy the base yields mean that you will never tank it entirely. This means you can win a war against a stronger opponent, with patience and by sacrificing pop, and you're not in danger of being wiped out or having your game completely ruined by a single stack of doom. At worst you cede a couple of territories and pay some gold. It means you can be weaker and you don't have to win every war you fight to win the game.

- No infinite city spam, tall is viable (to a degree). Aggressive conquest isn't guaranteed to be worthwhile even if you win some territories or a city and pure expansion is capped by influence, which means a tradeoff with civics. (I think outposts should get more expensive and attaching cheaper though).

- I like the Fame system because it means that the early phases of the game matter too. I think the reason the AI gets ahead on fame is that it's prioritising the bonuses rather than focusing on building food/industry like most players will. (I seem to get all the agrarian and builder stars and hardly any money/influence ones). It's yet another trade off between different yields that makes it difficult to work out optimum strategies, you have to think about Fame yield over the entire game instead of just a linear progression of what to build next.

- The district placing mini-game is interesting with the importance of terrain, adjacencies and commons quarters, but it's way more interesting when stability is an issue and you're playing catchup so every decision feels consequential. When you're on 100% stability and ahead it's just clicking on the suggested placements and very boring.

- Finally the immersion in this game is amazing (aside from having to rely on colours for ID instead of names). But the terrain and the way the city blends in, the feeling of danger of seeing an enemy stack on your border and having to work around the terrain to hold them off... giving half your population spears and sending them out to fight the Huns.. the Huns suddenly becoming Aztecs with crossbows and pikes so you switch into the next era and put everyone into tech so you can catch up before they completely destroy your sword army. Sure there's a lot of squinting and counting forests initially but it doesn't take too long to get a feel for what works.

- You can pick what kind of game you want - pick peaceful AI and give everyone a continent, or put 8 players into a Normal map and spend the whole game fighting.

I feel like a lot of the disappointment people have with the game is when it's too easy or too hard. If it feels boring I'd suggest turning the difficulty way up. You can be behind in tech and surrounded by Condescending/Tyrannical AI and still manage to survive, it's very forgiving. If it's too hard, hopefully there are some good guides that come out to help - I feel like you can beat up to Civilization level just by doing a bit of maths, but I know that's not easy or fun for everyone.

 

[snakeboy]

Immersion is the biggest one for me, hk just breathes the right atmosphere. For a game this buggy, unbalanced and underdeveloped it’s still the most fun I’ve had in years & I feel pretty good for what’s to come.

 

[Victoria]

Politics,
i cannot open borders because they are whine about something I did 9 turns ago. (I like this feature)

 

[CoconutTank]

- I like the way HK handles shared projects. I definitely like that moreso than the way shared projects are handled in Civ6, for the few that they have.

- Wonders being shared projects is great, and since wonders give stability, it means I can place the wonders in new regions or regions which aren't doing so well, and all the other regions can help out.

- Having units be stacked on the world map and spread out during battles is a good way to handle unit management (while also reducing "stack of doom" potency).

- Strategic resource locations being visible right from the start of the game is good. Prevents one from doing weird things like building a National Park over some Aluminum or Uranium.

- I like HK's religious tenets moreso than Civ6's religious beliefs.

- The ideology mini-game is interesting (except for the Authority part atm).

- I can see ppl not liking this, but victory being determined by a point salad instead of hard committing on a victory path is kind of nice.

 

[NombreyApellido]

music and graphics make me cry tears of joy

and the emergent gameplay it allows make me feel i'm smarter than i truly am, so that's nice too

 

[kaspergm]

Some things I like:

• Combat armies and mini-map, while I can't really say I'm even close to mastering them yet, is exactly what I want for future civ. (The reinforcement thing really confuses me!)
• Choosing a new bonus for each era is really exciting. While there are certain choices that seem so strong that it's hard to imagine not drifting towards those each game (*cough*Khmer*cough*), I like how it allows you to develop the game in different directions depending on your needs, and the advance-now-or-stay decision is definitely a nice aspect. While I don't think the "choose a new civ" each era should translate directly into civ (I still find Babylon developing into Celts developing into Khmer a bit glaring), it would definitely be nice to have some sort of bonus choice each era, going away from the current locked-bonus form of civ.
• Using culture to claim regions, and in fact the idea of map regions themselves, is great, and something I could definitely see work for civ. Having to choose between using culture for regions, cities or civics is definitely a great strategic element, and one of the few I think are really well balanced in the game currently.
• War score - while this needs some tuning around the edges, particularly the forced-peace aspect as discussed elsewhere, I still think this is an interesting feature that could translate into civ also.
• Stability and how it ties in with regions and districts is a cool way to balance too rapid city growth, even if certain elements of the game tend to make it too easy to overcome by mid-game.
• Yields being much more dependent on citizens/specialists (at least gold and science) and much less dependent on terrain adjacencies and flat district yields is something I really hope for next civ. Buildings and features that increase specialist yields in "tall" cities is also the right way to go, even if balance in humankind seems off (see point below).

Some things I don't like:

• At least on lower difficulty, yields seem extremely unbalanced. In each game, I end up with cities that build all the buildings, have a population well above 100 and I have oceans of gold and culture.
• Buildings don't seem to have maintenance? While there is obviously a time constraint - building A means not building B until later - there doesn't seem to be much thinking about whether you should build a building or not, and if you choose Khmer at least, it seems very doable to build everything in all cities. That's a bit stupid. I know there's the pollution aspect in late game, but even that doesn't seem to be much of a hindrance (on lower difficulties at least).
• Multiple instances of each district in the same town is something I don't really like. Well I can see the sense of it as a way of pushing your city in one direction, but I think I liked the way Civ6 handled districts better.
  
• Religion seems a bit boring to me. I'm not sure I even understand the mechanics of it fully, but most games so far I find myself looking at the tenet choices and finding only one or maybe two of them even remotely interesting. There are some of them that seem directly nonsensical to me, like I think there's one that adds gold on a territory if it follows a different religion. That doesn't make sense to me at all?
  
• Game is very easy on lower and medium difficulty levels. I guess that changes if you go up in difficulty.

 

[Victoria]

I guess that changes if you go up in difficulty.

Only until you get used to it, which includes being careful in combat.

 

[fortydayweekend]

• At least on lower difficulty, yields seem extremely unbalanced. In each game, I end up with cities that build all the buildings, have a population well above 100 and I have oceans of gold and culture.

Yep, I noticed this on first game. Dial up the difficulty so that the AI is keeping pace and you suddenly don't feel like you have much of either. In my current game I'm fighting an Early Modern/early Industrial age war against a stronger opponent and the upgrade cost and upkeep on the dragoons, musketeers, and now line infantry is hugely expensive. I've been short on influence all game too and have had to skip a lot of civics.

• Buildings don't seem to have maintenance? While there is obviously a time constraint - building A means not building B until later - there doesn't seem to be much thinking about whether you should build a building or not, and if you choose Khmer at least, it seems very doable to build everything in all cities. That's a bit stupid. I know there's the pollution aspect in late game, but even that doesn't seem to be much of a hindrance (on lower difficulties at least).

I find the tier 3 buildings aren't worth it (100+ turn payback) while districts are always worth it and easy to place once lux manufactories make stability a non-issue... so in the one game I played through to a tech finish I just paved the world with research quarters. If you're at peace you do snowball eventually. I'd like to see more late-game aggression that would force you to either be isolated (and probably limited in space), or to have to maintain a large army as deterrence.

• Religion seems a bit boring to me. I'm not sure I even understand the mechanics of it fully, but most games so far I find myself looking at the tenet choices and finding only one or maybe two of them even remotely interesting. There are some of them that seem directly nonsensical to me, like I think there's one that adds gold on a territory if it follows a different religion. That doesn't make sense to me at all?

At the moment it's mainly a grievance/demand-generator, which helps a lot with war planning. If you have demands on a territory because of religion, they're a lot cheaper to get on surrender, so you can take more territories and cities. Conversely, if you're being taken over by a more dominant religion you'll find other cultures getting grievances against you. As the religious coverage changes through the game this presents different opportunities. You don't need to "win" the religious war with your own religion but you do need to think about whether and when to switch.

In my current game one religion was taking over the whole continent, so I switched and was suddenly able to get demands against the other cultures who hadn't switched yet.

Some tenets are good and again makes switching interesting - current game I went +1 influence per mountain because I was building Zhou academies. Then when I switched I got +5 science per strategic resource which timed perfectly with needing more science.

Some tenets and civics are a bit weird for sure, very situational maybe? Some of the event 'choices' aren't really choices either - do you want more industry or less stability?

• Game is very easy on lower and medium difficulty levels. I guess that changes if you go up in difficulty.

Yep, it's much more interesting on higher difficulty, and because the AI will attack you but not try to destroy you, you don't have to be ahead to survive.

 

[CoconutTank]

The yield related tenets might be boring (I wouldn't know since I generally don't choose them) but the war related tenets are excellent imo, and they definitely have no near equivalents in Civ6 beliefs.

Edit: looking at the yield tenets again, I think they're at least less conditional than the yield beliefs in Civ6. Whether that's more or less interesting is another thing, but at least they're more consistent imo.

 

[Taefin]

Yep, I noticed this on first game. Dial up the difficulty so that the AI is keeping pace and you suddenly don't feel like you have much of either. In my current game I'm fighting an Early Modern/early Industrial age war against a stronger opponent and the upgrade cost and upkeep on the dragoons, musketeers, and now line infantry is hugely expensive. I've been short on influence all game too and have had to skip a lot of civics.

This is what I want to see more than anything. I want a situation where the AI leader declares on a neighbor in late game, and I have to join the war to prevent them from taking more cities and pulling even further ahead in game.

I’ve been trying to think why I like this game so much. I think it largely comes down a few things:

- The AI is competitive in a couple important ways: fame, early military, religion, culture. So even if I am winning in some areas, I’m (hopefully) losing in others.

- The combat is just fun. Certainly the terrain, but also because the combat systems, including terrain, rear attack, ZoC, LoS (as much as I gripe) provide so many ways to make different units, especially EU, feel unique and interesting. I especially like fighting with combos of EU from different eras, as most of them stay modestly competitive against vanilla units from the next era. Using Gigir to suppress to give Huns +5 advantage has been fun, longbows shooting over a phalanx of hoplites, Khmer elephants sinking ironclads (okay that should probably change), immortals supported by one last running of the Harappans, it makes games memorable. I enjoy both how the dynamic of combat changes with era (even twice per era, ie first gunpowder is a range replacement, then a true infantry replacement, and then able to move-shoot in same turn) and how EU let cultures step outside that (conquistadors staring gunpowder with move and shoot, others sticking it out with melee).

- The pacing feels a lot slower than vanilla Civ6. I always played with pacing mods to stretch out each era, and I feel HK is designed around this playstyle. But stacks and faster movement means that doesn’t just translate to more micro.

- AI conquer each other and larger empires form and then rival you, at least for fame. I spent months getting Civ6 AI to capture a single city off each other, and even then they just refused to fight each other’s units half the time. I like when this forces my hand to intervene or cut them down before they snowball on me (fame snowball at least, even if they don’t yield snowball yet).

- The AI builds their EU not enough to matter later in the game, but it’s a start.

- I like the crazy yields, mostly because there are enough different ones that play out differently. Khmer gets a good production boost (and it’s so nice to bridge rivers without loosing those sweet double yields!) but you basically surrender the faith game to the other medieval cultures. I personally never have enough gold and influence. I buy as much infrastructure/districts as I can, and even my first Ming game I only got to merge down to 4 cities before pollution ended the game. Eventually, if Amplitude can get AI fighting like true industrial powers, mobilizing entire economies and emptying sizable fractions of their population into the battlefield, I’m hopefully the late game can be held in check by further AI difficulty the way it does early game. The mechanics are all there and ready if the AI is just given the programming.

- I’ve been pleasantly surprised every time I’ve tried a new culture. In medieval I was surprised how much the Norse unlock naval gameplay and how well the Teutons allowed me to win the religious game. Currently only stability and garrison-based cultures seem uninteresting to me, as I’ve not really struggled with late game stability or defense (America seems silly, which I don’t mind).

Now I just can’t wait for patches and mods to fix the last few issues I have. I really hope there is a way for the late game to come together. That the AI can be made to pose a fame challenge has me encouraged, compared to other games where the AI really has no pathway to victory whatsoever.

 

[Jkchart]

This is what I want to see more than anything. I want a situation where the AI leader declares on a neighbor in late game, and I have to join the war to prevent them from taking more cities and pulling even further ahead in game.

I’ve been trying to think why I like this game so much. I think it largely comes down a few things:

- The AI is competitive in a couple important ways: fame, early military, religion, culture. So even if I am winning in some areas, I’m (hopefully) losing in others.

- The combat is just fun. Certainly the terrain, but also because the combat systems, including terrain, rear attack, ZoC, LoS (as much as I gripe) provide so many ways to make different units, especially EU, feel unique and interesting. I especially like fighting with combos of EU from different eras, as most of them stay modestly competitive against vanilla units from the next era. Using Gigir to suppress to give Huns +5 advantage has been fun, longbows shooting over a phalanx of hoplites, Khmer elephants sinking ironclads (okay that should probably change), immortals supported by one last running of the Harappans, it makes games memorable. I enjoy both how the dynamic of combat changes with era (even twice per era, ie first gunpowder is a range replacement, then a true infantry replacement, and then able to move-shoot in same turn) and how EU let cultures step outside that (conquistadors staring gunpowder with move and shoot, others sticking it out with melee).

- The pacing feels a lot slower than vanilla Civ6. I always played with pacing mods to stretch out each era, and I feel HK is designed around this playstyle. But stacks and faster movement means that doesn’t just translate to more micro.

- AI conquer each other and larger empires form and then rival you, at least for fame. I spent months getting Civ6 AI to capture a single city off each other, and even then they just refused to fight each other’s units half the time. I like when this forces my hand to intervene or cut them down before they snowball on me (fame snowball at least, even if they don’t yield snowball yet).

- The AI builds their EU not enough to matter later in the game, but it’s a start.

- I like the crazy yields, mostly because there are enough different ones that play out differently. Khmer gets a good production boost (and it’s so nice to bridge rivers without loosing those sweet double yields!) but you basically surrender the faith game to the other medieval cultures. I personally never have enough gold and influence. I buy as much infrastructure/districts as I can, and even my first Ming game I only got to merge down to 4 cities before pollution ended the game. Eventually, if Amplitude can get AI fighting like true industrial powers, mobilizing entire economies and emptying sizable fractions of their population into the battlefield, I’m hopefully the late game can be held in check by further AI difficulty the way it does early game. The mechanics are all there and ready if the AI is just given the programming.

- I’ve been pleasantly surprised every time I’ve tried a new culture. In medieval I was surprised how much the Norse unlock naval gameplay and how well the Teutons allowed me to win the religious game. Currently only stability and garrison-based cultures seem uninteresting to me, as I’ve not really struggled with late game stability or defense (America seems silly, which I don’t mind).

Now I just can’t wait for patches and mods to fix the last few issues I have. I really hope there is a way for the late game to come together. That the AI can be made to pose a fame challenge has me encouraged, compared to other games where the AI really has no pathway to victory whatsoever.

I agree, I do wish there were more stability challenges late game, because by then there are so many stability buffs that it’s fairly easy to have a massive city that later stability EQs feel lackluster. Early game stability EQs are a godsend though (love the Zhou for that plus some sweet science alone). I’ll go to bat for the English Stronghold btw because it counts as a farmers quarter and exploits delicious food.

i do want there to be more with late game conflict though too! It’s there but usually the human is strong enough that they have to be the one to intervene even if a demand is made. I had to join in against the Assyro-Japanese Empire and help the Italians who had previously been the vassal of the Japanese, and I cut them down to size for their evils (never mind that I had a vassal of my own…) what’s there is great though and has me hooked. I like that neutral zones allow for conflict between nations that are “neutral” but don’t have a non-aggression pact, which is fairly historical, so late game naval incidents really spice up diplomacy

 

[fortydayweekend]

I’ll go to bat for the English Stronghold btw because it counts as a farmers quarter and exploits delicious food.

English is not a bad choice if you haven't gone Harrapans or Celts, and have green lands further away from cities. Also longbows come first-tech in the era and are even better than crossbows so can be decisive if you're at war when you switch.

 

[Taefin]

I’m at that part of the game where I’m only 1300 fame behind going into early modern, and I could get Ming or Mughals, but the ottomans and poles sure are calling. No real benefit other than fun units I don’t need.

 

[Leucarum]

Interesting that a lot of people like the combat system - that is increasingly becoming my most disliked aspect of the game.

I think my favourite element is actually the civics. They are a very RP-conducive way to customize your empire.

Buildings in Humankind feel like a vestigial limb, they probably should have been cut completely to drive home the emphasis on the quarters...

 

[Jkchart]

English is not a bad choice if you haven't gone Harrapans or Celts, and have green lands further away from cities. Also longbows come first-tech in the era and are even better than crossbows so can be decisive if you're at war when you switch.

Longbowmen are amazing, absolutely agree.

Interesting that a lot of people like the combat system - that is increasingly becoming my most disliked aspect of the game.

I think my favourite element is actually the civics. They are a very RP-conducive way to customize your empire.

Buildings in Humankind feel like a vestigial limb, they probably should have been cut completely to drive home the emphasis on the quarters...

I think it's going to vary from person to person, especially until all the bugs get worked out. Personally, I find it a nice in-between from old Civ and new 1UPT civ and i like a lot of the strategy and advantages that it offers, comparatively over the more flat terrain opportunities in Civ.

Civics are great too! It's interesting, but I do hope they get expanded on (and how to get some of them are made more clear).

Infrastructure is actually greatly important as it what gets you those scaling yields based on high infrastructure and high population (therefore specialists). It's not obvious, and not every city needs all of the infrastructure either, but it is far more useful than I originally understood from the Beta and my first full game. It's how you get true super cities. Both those in combo with quarters make for some high, high yields.

 

[Leucarum]

Infrastructure is actually greatly important as it what gets you those scaling yields based on high infrastructure and high population (therefore specialists). It's not obvious, and not every city needs all of the infrastructure either, but it is far more useful than I originally understood from the Beta and my first full game. It's how you get true super cities. Both those in combo with quarters make for some high, high yields.

Sorry, I guess I phrased my statement quite poorly. They are definitely important and they really do take your quarters from linear to exponential.

It's just that it's a counterintuitive design choice, particularly in a game where they really wanted you to see your civ develop across the map. I think the game would have benefited from cutting them out completely and compensated the yield losses by having more interactions between neighbouring districts to turn it into more of a placement puzzle. As it stands the districts are a very easy puzzle to solve, and the buildings are counterintuitively important.

how to get some of them are made more clear

This is very true. I also think the high cost of reverting them makes them feel much more consquential that Civ6's policies.