What Can Civ VII Learn From Humankind and other games?

[Boris Gudenuf]

I would hope that they learn a lot more from Old World than Humankind. Namely the part about creating a game with coherent mechanics, where player input is rewarded, and most importantly releasing the game in a full and satisfying way instead of half assing every single thing possible.

Sorry if that was posted by someone else already.

Any Civ VII can learn some interesting things and ways of doin things from all three games, but more importantly, all three games have egregious examples of what NOT TO DO:

Game Mechanics that don't work together - I think Civ VI is the leader down this rat hole, to be honest, but all three suffer from it. To some extent, this is a product of the sheer complexity of trying to have coherent game mechanics that cover everything from the Neolithic or Ancient periods to contemporary or near-future. If Old World seems to do better, I suspect that's because it is more tightly focused and doesn't even try to deal with the complexities of the Industrial and Modern Eras.

"Gimmicks" to paper over historical realities: like fixed city sites (OW), fixed 'regional boundaries' (HK), semi-fixed or fixed 'Eras' instead of real historical (or at least semi-historical) progression (HK, Civ), and fixed Civ/Factions with little or no influence from the in-game situation or map (All)

Pace. Attempting to portray 6 - 17000 years in a single game (HK, Civ) means that there comes a time when everything seems to be compressed to the point where it all rushes by in a blink: "Barbarian Migrations!" - 300 years in 6 turns. World War II! - 6 years, 100,000,000 dead in 1 - 6 turns, Development, upgrading, and obsolescence of Battleships: 25 years in 12 - 25 turns. Modern Armor/Main Battle Tanks - 75 years of development and 3 different Generations of vehicles (according to historians of technology) in a single Unit - and on, and on.

I've said it before: everybody has their own idea of what constitutes a 'good', let alone a 'perfect' game and any game would have to be customizable/moddable to the point of unrecognizability to completely satisfy everyone.

BUT if you are marketing your game as a "Historically-based 4X" game then there are certain basic things that I think you have to address and, hopefully, get right or come close: some kind of historical basis for what you are doing in the game, a pace that allows the intriguing parts of history to be represented, map, terrain, situations, Civs, Leaders and Units that people can identify with or even identify at all without mental acrobatics, and, of course, the most important factor in a commercial game: keeping it Fun to Play for the majority of gamers.

It's a Tall Order to get even most of that right, which is why I think anybody attempting it would do well to learn from both the working and well-liked elements in other games, and those elements that don't work, aggravate players, and receive the equivalent of Ignobel Prizes from reviewers. There is no excuse for making the same mistakes twice. To quote Lawrence of Arabia:

"With two thousand years of examples behind us, we have no excuse when fighting, for not fighting well-"

The same goes for making 4X games, IMHO.

 

[MistroPain]

I was being a bit of an arse, but my point more so than anything was that if it was to take something away from a recent 4x title, its to release a game thats coherent and achieves what it tries to do (from a gameplay point of view) without needing to wait several years for the complete game. Regardless of whether people like the game or not, the game was released stable (I haven't heard of or had to deal with bugs since full release), and every mechanic feels woven together well. It can indeed feel jarring to go from Civilization to Old World and see cities restricted to pre-placed city sites, but even then they've managed to implement it in a way that contributes to the game (competition with bots for sites, forcing military investment at risk of being overshadowed by everyone else, and forcing interaction with the tribes). It also offers a FANTASTIC UI loaded with every bit of information you could ever need IN GAME. Again if it was to take something away, a UI which provides you with all the information you could ever need would be fantastic, and they should NEVER take anything with regards to UI and clarity of gameplay from Humankind. To be fair the UI in Civ wasn't bad though, so this is probably something they can competently do anyway. I haven't played Civ 6 in a while so can't really remember.

If I was to take things from each game and implement them into Civ:

From Old World:
-Dividing 'Production' into different areas, giving you reason to specialise cities towards the different needs of your Empire/Civ. The way Old World does this is to split 'Production' into 'Growth', 'Civics' and 'Training'.
Growth is used to produce your civil units (Workers, Settlers, Caravans (if your city can do that), Scouts and Militia).Civics is used to further develop the City through training Specialists (essentially something that consumes Citizens and grants a buff to a specific tile where the specialist is trained), building certain Buildings (these grant an immediate gain of some sort and grant turn-by-turn yields, for example Treasury grants you gold per turn and a larger lump sum of gold when built), and perform Projects (these consume civics, and upon completion grants a lump sum of some resource; these are repeatable).Training is used to build your Military Units.
The way Old World does this smartly ensures that these 'Production' equivalents do something for when they aren't in use. Civics accumulates globally, allowing you to spend it to enact laws or perform various actions based on the characters you have in your empire such as conducting diplomatic actions. Training also accumulates globally, allowing you to spend it to Force March your units, exchange it for orders, or force promote your units before they've accrued the correct amount of xp for the level up, among other things. Growth translates into increased Citizens (Old World does this weird thing where for the majority of the early game Citizens are bad unless you train them into Specialists, until you get to building the final tier of certain districts which buff Citizens to giving yields. Otherwise they provide miniscule amounts of Orders and cost Upkeep to maintain).

Civilization doesn't need to copy paste this system, but I really think Civilization should consider creating more deliberate uses for cities, which influences specialisation of cities, whilst also not feeling terrible for not continually putting cities to use (in fact passively allowing a city to do nothing should be in itself a conscious choice made by the player, which takes this concept further). I do think distibuting 'Production' between several resources would contribute to this. How could Civ do this? I would personally make it so the yields of tiles translate into these 'Production' yields. Maybe have 3 basic yields on tiles: Food, Industry and Curiosities. Food would be consumed by the upkeep of cities, or by the production of civilian units, and translate into Growth when not in use. Industry would be used to construct your key districts and buildings, and translate into Gold when not used (IE leaving cities alone could translate into rapid development of other cities). Curiosities would translate into conducting Projects, potentially enacting Edicts or establishing some kind of Tradition to specialise the city, and translate into alternate global resources based on the infrastructure in place in the city (IE Cities with Campuses would convert Curiosities such as a local crater or mountain range into Science; whereas Holy Sites would see Monks/Priests inspect and derive faith from these same sites). Military Units would consume a mix of Food and Industry, ideally starting with a larger percentage of cost levied towards food, and then slowly transitioning towards being more Industry intensive. Obviously game devs are much more adept at how to consider and implement such systems, but I was just trying to give an example of how it could look.

-Scouting being exciting. Scouts in Old World accrue resources for you by merely exploring, as they catch sight of bonus resources/luxuries they net you either food, stone, metal, gold, or wood (not sure about wood or gold to be honest but I think they do).
Goody huts in that game always results in events (unless you use the map editor to cheat in more to the point the events get exhausted, after which they give you large lump sums of resources). These events are FANTASTIC, giving you choices you really have to consider. Many have downsides mixed in with the ups. Events in general are an iffy area when it comes to civ, and they'd need to be tailored to civ, but I really would love to see their inclusion.
Scouts can also 'harvest' certain resources, putting that tiles resource on cooldown, and netting you some resources, whilst also potentially triggering an event.
When the scouting phase is over, you can use them to keep eyes on other factions (made viable as they go invisible in forested tiles), and they can be used to infiltrate cities, essentially becoming the equivalent to spies in the late game.
All of this is an excellent use of a single unit which falls off significantly in most other 4Xs. Humankind reaction to this was that they somehow upgrade into Cavalry units, which felt weird and made an already OP build up a scout army in the Neolithic Era more powerful. In Civilization you just lose interest in your scouts (at least I do, I'm not speaking for others). I certainly hope Civilization develops each unit AND component to have the longevity they do in Old World. And I would love to see them work on Scouts to make them more exciting. Exploration is one of the 4Xs afterall.

As with dividing production none of this needs to be a copy paste system. Accruing resources by merely exploring most likely won't work in Civilization due to the way yields work (Old World treats a lot of yields more like you would see in a traditional RTS; you accumulate it and spend it to build things, the Production yields determine how fast). In fact in Civilization it wouldn't need to have this sort of system as there is no Order system to act as a limiter to your activities (IE there is no opportunity cost involved in Scouting outside of the construction of the Scout, and I suspect this is why they implemented that system of exploring yielding resources (remember when I said well woven mechanics)). However, evolving scouts to eventually continue on as a spy-like unit, and continuing the need for recon would be lovely. Heck in Civ6 I found it weird that they had this perfect unit available which could enhance artillery, but you needed a dedicated unit for it instead of using a very logical already existing alternative?

What I would not want from Old World:
-The Orders System. Its probably the best thing they added, BUT, its not a Civilization mechanic. There are huge advantages to implementing it, namely making each action more considered and loading each turn with opportunity cost, however, I can't see it scaling well over multiple eras without it becoming inconsequential by the late game. Furthermore, I do think Civilization should retain a lot of what makes Civilization... Civilization. The Orders System is a huge change to how the game normally functions.

-The Characters System. This one I think is obvious. Its an integral component of Old World, but this just won't work in Civilization.


From Humankind:
-Verticality. I think this is probably the one thing we will almost certainly see in Civ 7. That being said I hope to god they do not create a map generator where cliffs apparently form a part of the terrain every 100 or so meters. Humankind implemented this TERRIBLY, but regardless it showed it was possible. Civilization I just hope adds it, and maybe makes it more subtle. I would like to also say that I hope to god Civ 7 does not look to do anything like the garbage river system in Humankind (HOW DOES A RIVER BLOCK MY SIGHT!???). Something about rivers in Humankind feel bad.

-Civics. Again a very interesting system implemented very poorly which I think Civilization can improve on. On meeting certain criteria in Humankind (which they wont tell you) you are given a choice between two key options; for example when it comes to land rights you can choose between inherited lands or communal lands (can't remember what it was exactly). These each have an effect, but in addition to that effect they impact the affinities your society takes on.
These affinities include things like Individualism or Collectivism as an example (gold buff vs production buff). The main problem with this is that it never gives you information on how to attain these Civics, so they feel very random. The other big problem is it mostly translates into yield changes. Leave an affinity in the centre? Gain Stability. Lean towards one of the affinities, and you gain a buff to a yield like bonus Science vs Faith, bonus Gold vs Production, bonus Influence vs Vision, bonus Strength vs I cant remember.

I really hope Civilization attempts to look at this system but really push it to having more impact in place of yield buffs (which are always extremely boring). Go Collectivist? Natural Trade Flow shifts away from your Empire, you leak less Science, and Spies have a much harder time infiltrating. Go Individualist? Natural Trade Flow shifts towards your Empire, you lose a small percentage of your Industry to gold production, and Spies are much more easily able to infiltrate your society. Some of these should have disadvantages associated with them if you are playing an empire where a certain affinity makes no sense (going Collectivist and yet every city has market squares, you are openly trading with several other civs. etc. should come with some unhappiness, afterall you've modeled your empire in such a way that individualism would be sought after by the populace).
Again not a dev, just some ideas on how you can avoid it being a boring 'gain x% more of Yield'. Obviously, do so with the information in place as to what criteria triggers the events influencing your society.

-Neolithic Era. Once more a great idea, implemented poorly! In Humankind the system works by seeing you play as a tribe running around picking up anomalies. These anomalies are either representative of knowledge pushing the tribe towards understanding how to settle as a civilization, or food increasing the size of your tribe. When you gain enough tribe members or learn enough from the knowledge curiousities (or hunt down a certain number of animals) you gain the ability to progress to the next era. The problem here is two parts:
a - The system created is VERY abusable and the bots have no clue how good it is to stick around in Neolithic. Players can grow the size of their tribe to essentially immediately build a huge army of scouts.
b - The nomadic element feels like a great way to continue on as Civilizations like the Huns, but no matter how you played in the Neolithic era you are more or less the same as every other civilization. In fact weirdly enough you might settle into an immediately huge sprawling empire assuming you nab enough influence whilst in the Nomadic phase.
That being said, it alleviates an issue Civilization has always had to deal with; poor or boring start locations.

I would really hope Civilization looks into adding a pre-civilization era. Hopefully implemented in such a way that you can't abuse it, and where it impacts the future of your Civ, potentially retaining a Nomadic mode to continue on into future eras (maybe a system where they have 3 or so tech trees that you can opt to go into (Tribal Confederency, Nomadic Horde, Cities), with the tech tree defining the mode in which your civilization exists, with each having a method to transition into the main tech tree (Cities)). Such a system would likely mean that you wouldn't choose a Civilization until you complete the Neolithic stage of the game, just like in Humankind, as Civs would be locked to different tech trees, but it allows the system Humankind devised to be used to model alternative civilization styles, and it allows players to make much more sense of playing Civs like the Mongols or the Cree.

-Buying Wonders with Influence. I suspect some people see the system implemented in Civ as part of the strategy, but I don't think it is EVER enjoyable to be 1 turn away from finishing a wonder only to have it yanked away by another Civ. I would personally like to see some kind of resource that you buy wonders with, though they would have to be careful with all the buying resources, with Great People Points and Wonder Points. Maybe it'd be interesting to see them as a single unified resource used to buy your Great People and Wonders. No clue how they could approach this.
I will say that I really hope Wonders in Civ 7 are not as boring as they are in Humankind. My god are they terrible... Especially Natural Wonders.

What I would not want from Humankind:
-Changing Cultures. I really think this is something everyone else wants, but I feel like Civilization needs to retain its identity as that game where you play against a Ghandi whose Nuke crazy. The Immortal Leader is a part of the Civilization Identity, and I don't think that should change. Just a person opinion on this one. If they went the other direction thats not a 'not buying it' thing for me though. It is worth mentioning that I feel like the result in Humankind was rotating between never interesting civilizations; I would much rather see exciting Civilizations that you are stuck with, although I do dislike how gameplay defining each civ can be in Civ 6, where their perks really push you in a specific direction. Its a weird balance that I am sure the devs have a hard time trying to figure out.

-A non-informative UI and bug riddled game that focuses on shiny. Please don't.

-Turn Based Combat in a Turn Based Game. Honestly if I had a choice to see where Civ could learn a thing or two about creating an exciting combat system I would love to see a 4x game take a look at what HOI does, where you develop your units into armies and position them in lines, where the lines naturally engage one another. Sort of like a simultaneous turned combat system that sees the player focus on positioning and forming their armies correctly. But thats a SUPER wishlisty thing.
The combat system in Humankind is poor for two reasons; the impact of terrain is too favourable for the attacker, having a system where you are just waiting for armies to be positioned in the right way, I feel like it'd be even more abusable in MP; the bots are TERRIBLE at taking advantage of space or even understanding the strengths of their units. If Civ has a history of one repeated achievement, it is repeatedly poor bots, so I don't think they should implement systems where bots need to be particularly competent.


^I am personally thinking about things from a gameplay first point of view. The historical accuracy of the game doesn't matter to me as much. Apologies if its not well articulated.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

Actually, very well articulated, and I agree with a great many of your points (Full Disclosure: I was one of the early Beta-Testers for Old World and the VIP test group for Humankind, so I saw a lot of your points debated during pre-release: you are by no means alone in your opinions and conclusions!)

Will do a more complete discussion of this tomorrow (it's after 9 pm my time and I've been up since 5 am) but one thing I will note: You can set the map in Humankind for Fewer Cliffs, and that's the only way I've played it since before Release: the continent-dividing Cliffs were driving me batty! Instead of the Fantasy Cliffs, they could have had Mountain Ranges with occasional passes to divide the map the same way cliffs do now, and it would have been much, much more realistic and given the same movement and combat restrictions they apparently wanted

 

[MistroPain]

Thanks for the suggestion, that actually did really improve the experience so far!

 

[HorseshoeHermit]

Is there, perhaps, a tension at the core of Civ('s fanbase) which explains why Civ never becomes what we want?

Is that tension, between being "historical", and being a "build your own society" game ? At the very least, this is a difficulty of computation (and design) complexity, as the notion of building society in an alternative history, but still taking cues from real history, would mean proposing, and calculating, a model of social, economic, and technological evolution to make the alternate history still seem to point to our real world. Obviously, if anyone had a good model of even one of those things, life on Earth would be a lot better than [contemporary political reference expunged to protect the innocent]. It would be hugely hubristic to propose a game that was "realistic" in that sense. The farthest we ever get is proposing an eternal emperor and then you get imperialism. Every time. But claiming to know how society works would be ... bad.*

So, any designers getting into the task of meeting the demand for this nebulously defined game, they have to come, instead, with a model for game systems that just plays well and is -not- a simulation. It can be inspired by real things. And (this is a separate thing), it may be evocative of some elements of Human society, like technology, and domestic economics. As a theme. I have said, before, the Civilization series is committed to a thematic visibility of "world history". Civ's IP is that it covers Human history, at least since the dawn of settlements. So things in Civ have to , if only thematically, look like the exciting parts of history. This, I believe, is more of a commitment in Civ series than a commitment to simulate any of those things. /aside.

I want to try a game that does more simulationism. I have asked myself why that is, and don't have an answer. But I've tried harder to find out what's in the way. And I think that the evocativeness is what might have to go , to get enough room, and possibly enough daring, to make a set of systems that reflect Human conditions. If only mechanically.

When I listen to accounts of how the real facts of the matter, of engineering, and disease, and transportation, and so on, affected the emergence and transformation of "Human lifestyle" since the ancient or prehistoric, I think "Cool." And I also think "So, if we simulated those things, there would be a recognizable goal to progress to, or limiter to surpass, by finagling related factors, in a game that also nominally concerns 'Human lifestyle'." But that's "if" we simulate those things. The motive to simulate any old detail of how Human civilization used to suck, for a game, is if we think that one of TWO things (I am adding to Soren Johnson on this point): A], there are interesting decisions that get made while, and because of, slogging through such simulated difficulties, perhaps in a field with similarly-encumbered contestants. There is something interesting about what you do about not being able to send significant quantities of people or goods outside of cities without river systems until you add more than roads. But a second reason to simulate could be B], there is a worthy struggle, an outcome, a result, of you and your competitors dealing with that problem in that span of the game's resolution.

Maybe B] is just a particular of A]. But I want to point to how B] essentially, which A] does not do essentially, points to a period of the gameplay which is beyond the one we were looking at. That is, a reason to simulate some Human facet, could be because of (a relation of sequence to) another part of the game being designed. Soren's "interesting decisions" does, of course in the sense of a strategy game, implicitly point to the idea of "consequence", which is a temporal thing. These decisions sequence you into a preferable future state. But the interesting decisions perhaps never change in kind. You make the same decisions with no separate 'phase' of gameplay coming about. Old World is a uniform experience deliberately set in a small span of Human history, a choice that specifically averted the tribulations of working heterogenous systems appropriate to different eras of technology into a tight, strategic design. This is not a place we are content to rest, however successful Soren was (and he was).

Something everybody wants from Civ, not to mention the dream 4X (if Civ cannot be it), is this heterogeneity of system , to deliver a true semblance - true evocation as above - of the extraordinarily self-unsimilar trek of Human development. We don't really know what it will be in the least (unless you're a history buff and then you =know= factor WXZ should be in there) but , even to the point of contradicting ourselves, we want all the separate things that revolutionized society to be there, mattering. One point from above is that factor WXZ , just because it is in real history, and could inspire some gameplay, or be evoked by game play, doesn't mean the system faithfully simulated itself would be a good idea. And I say this as someone who literally has never heard anything that I wouldn't want to try to use as "something to throw into the soup and study what the gameplay is like as a result after the fact". But I also like abstractions and gamifications. Civ5's spies are hardly like managing real agents. They just sorta make it seem like "yeah there's espionage here." To an extent, one criticizes how it works, like stealing technology timers, or the requirements to get promos. Some of thoe criticisms point at a further facet of "real" espionage to say "how it should work". But there's a key confabulation going on here. One element of the "should" is "It feels wrong", and it can feel wrong because of how it's not simulationist. Fine. But things can be "close enough" to feel right. And one element of "should" is "this gameplay component sucks because it's unfun/other bad thing". And these critiques, though, inform themselves from simulation only, again, in the sense of -inspiring- the answer, not uniquely selecting it. It isn't necessary that the fix for an unrealistic AND unfun thing is that it should be more realistic. It's just that maybe the real system is, if you're dead on ideas, a place to go.

One final point, I'll just identify that idea, of adding systems can help you balance things. Jon Shafer made this point, so elegantly perhaps it was understated, but... you can't alter the design until you have a knob or dial to turn. So, yeah, just putting in everything will get you a hot mess (and probably an unmaintainable code base without pristine software project management), but the ability to tweak systems interacting is .. enlarged if not improved, by having more details of interaction, which you get by adding systems that care about new details. Sometimes you just get the larger-scope system wrong though. Then you gotta scrap it. I want the gold hoard gone and to have something totally different be my civ's money. And my city's wealth.


*It's best if the systems have more spotlight than the representations, so that at least, the game can be seen as a theory, one which disproves "well, since game outcomes aren't what real life is like... we must conclude real life doesn't run on these systems."

 

[Leucarum]

I think some lessons I'd love the developers to draw from humankind (haven't got around to Old World yet)

Civics/Policies are a great opportunity for RP. The system in humankind feels a lot more like you are shaping your society. Having a high cost to change them is a good thing if you want to make those feel consequential.
Builders aren't essential to make a civ game.
Stick to the exaggerated art-style. The map in Civ6 was much easier to read than the map in Humankind because of the graphics choices.

 

[Krajzen]

Stick to the exaggerated art-style. The map in Civ6 was much easier to read than the map in Humankind because of the graphics choices.

I'd never in hell expect I agree with it until I have actually played Humankind and discovered that unlike in civ6 I feel completely blind looking at the map of my cities. I have no idea at all where I have built districts, it all blends into unreadable city sprawl.

Anyway,

Things I'd like for civ7 to DO like Humankind:
- Unclutter the map. Make city borders bigger, distance between cities bigger, do something with 1UPT eternal traffic jam.
- Make more regional biomes, more variation between tiles.
- Please God give us random events, they do so much for immersion, don't be afraid to give tradeoffs and penalties.
- Not dure what you'll do with the combat system, but Humankind's, while imperfect, is both much less tedious to manage and much more fun than 1UPT.
- Please make 20th and 21st century into as few eras as possible, I hate how the least interesting eras in civ6 (1900s - science fiction) last as much as preindustrial ones (5800 years).
- Make nukes have a delay of one turn before hitting, creating an actual nuclear deterrence system so two nations can nuke each other instead of the first strike instantly wiping out another side


Thinks Humankind does I hope civ7 won't
- Disastrus balance and yields spiraling out of control to utter absurdity, caused largely by the complete lack of growth constraints in HK's cities. Their population can rise forever, their yields can rise forever, stability is non issue, and most importanty they can instantly work gigantic (potentall infinite) amounts of land. As a result, it is very easy to completely break the game with one city having gigantic yields and building/buying everything in one turn. Please keep many constraints of city yields in place, including the most fundamental one, of lamd needing pop to extract yields.
- I honestly prefer civ's 'total war' system both regarding gameplay and supposed realism than enormously frustrsting and nonensical war negotiations system of Humankind.
- Please just keep eternal cultures and leaders, the alternative is very messy for immersion.
- Trade and resource system in civ is much more engaging, balanced and realistic than humankind's.

 

[Leucarum]

I'd never in hell expect I agree with it until I have actually played Humankind and discovered that unlike in civ6 I feel completely blind looking at the map of my cities. I have no idea at all where I have built districts, it all blends into unreadable city sprawl.

Yeah, the one thing I really did not expect Humankind to be worse at than Civ was the graphics, but the choices made render the readability an absolute nightmare. You definitely don't get to see your civ grow across the map as advertized.

Good point with the events. Especially tying them in to some measure of stability. Please incorporate them!

I can't get behind 1UPT or the Humankind combat system though - probably my least liked element of the game

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

Heck, I said it almost a year ago: Humankind's maps are beautiful to look at, but not as useful as part of a GUI as Civ's.
To be 'better', Civ VII will have to find a 'sweet spot' between the two, with the variation and detail (animals roaming the map, people wandering the city streets, 'organic' housing in your districts - see the Civ VI "City Sprawl" Mod for what can be done even with the current Civ VI graphics) of Humankind but the easy-to-access information of Civ: put the Infrastructure On The Map, for starters, and make Districts graphically distinctive in some unmistakeable way.

Runaway expansion of cities is a basic part of Humankind, representing the Megalopolises of the late 20th and 21st centuries. Runaway game Factors like Production, Science, 'Stability' without any brakes, however, is both game-breaking and Fantasy: you don't have to look far in the 'real world' to see the problems associated with the massive urban concentrations, and if the game doesn't model them in some way (and a single 'Pollution' mechanic doesn't do it) then the last part of the game will be broken beyond repair.
However, look at Civ VI's Tech Tree, which after all these years can still be completed even faster than Humankind's, so that the last half of the game is nothing but endless Future Techs: Balance is always a problem in 4X, and Civ has 'runaway' problems similar to Humankind's after years of supposed 'patches'.

Any Combat System in a game with the scope of Humankind or Civ will be imperfect and 'gamey', because the scale of the game and the scale of even the greatest battle are utterly incompatible. The shortest game turn is one year: except for some historical sieges, even the most sprawling battles of World War Two (Leyte Gulf naval, Typhoon, Kursk, Stalingrad, the Ardennes, Battle of Britain aerial) lasted at most 2 - 3 months, or a fraction of a single turn. Most historical battles were over and done in a few hours, or a fraction of a single percentage of one game turn.
And yet, the majority of gamers, I suspect, want to be able to influence the battles in some way beyond throwing units into a stack and throwing stacks into a tile/region/area and watching the game engine grind out some result.

Overall, I think something resembling (but not exactly) matching the Humankind 'tactical expansion' battlefield is a better starting point than 1UPT. 1UPT makes a tactical battle too grossly out of scale in both distance on the regular game map (archers that can shoot over a city of several hundred thousand people, for instance) and time (ancient battles lasting a century or more, modern battles lasting longer than a World War IRL). But, I think the interaction and capabilities of the armies on the battlefield, the command and control, morale and tactical practices - 'soft' factors that influenced battles far more often than weapons did - need to be modeled, and the real restrictions on what armies could do (which alone would simplify the game version of tactical battles for most of the Eras!) need to be included.
For one thing, Civ's use of Great People (which definitely must be kept) allows the influence of Generals (Great and Not So Great - it would be nice to have the influence of a Varro represented as well as a Hannibal: after all, there have been at least as many merely competent or wretchedly incompetent Generals in history as Great ones) can be included where they are entirely absent from Humankind, and likely to stay absent.

Keeping the same 'empire' from start to finish is not likely to change in Civ, simply because of the resource sink that the Leaders are: they can't afford to erase the very popular Leaders feature, and with it they tremendously restrict the number of variations they can include to empires and civs in any game - until somebody comes up with a radical way to expand graphic and voice-acting capabilities without radically expanding the expense, that's not going to change.
BUT I think Civ should explore how to provide more variation within the Empires/Civs without requiring more Leaders. The difference between the characteristics of both the political entities and the people that comprised Britain in 4000 BCE and Great Britain in 2000 are simply too great to be covered with a couple of Uniques that last 6000 years. If 'Victoria' is going to lead 'England' for 6000 years, she ain't going to be leading the same 'England' except in a poorly-written Fantasy novel. Some combination of changes forced by circumstances (with choices ala Humankind's Civics and Religion choices and Civ's 'card' Civics/Social Policy system) alongside something resembling Humankind's 'Legacy Traits' that last throughout the Game (or change only with Immense Effort and possible ugly side effects) would be a good start. And with an identifiable Leader to 'front' the Civ, changes in the name of the Civ or other graphic representations shouldn't cause the cognitive disorder and confusion that Humankind's 'generic' Avatars sometimes do.

I'll repeat: Civ can learn from other games like Humankind and Old World as much about what NOT to do as what could be done, and merely copying even the best and most workable parts of other games isn't really an option (from both legal and design standpoints) when the structure of the games is so different. There are aspects of Civ like named, specific Leaders and Great People that should be kept: they are really unique and, dare I say, 'iconic' to the game at this point. But exactly how they are incorporated, and nearly everything else about the game, should be open for discussion and improvement by 'borrowing' concepts if not specific mechanics from other games

 

[Leucarum]

Heck, I said it almost a year ago: Humankind's maps are beautiful to look at, but not as useful as part of a GUI as Civ's.
To be 'better', Civ VII will have to find a 'sweet spot' between the two, with the variation and detail (animals roaming the map, people wandering the city streets, 'organic' housing in your districts - see the Civ VI "City Sprawl" Mod for what can be done even with the current Civ VI graphics) of Humankind but the easy-to-access information of Civ: put the Infrastructure On The Map, for starters, and make Districts graphically distinctive in some unmistakeable way.

The city sprawl mod is really gorgeous. That's something I'd like to see them learn from for sure

 

[Krajzen]

Heck, I said it almost a year ago: Humankind's maps are beautiful to look at, but not as useful as part of a GUI as Civ's.
To be 'better', Civ VII will have to find a 'sweet spot' between the two, with the variation and detail (animals roaming the map, people wandering the city streets, 'organic' housing in your districts - see the Civ VI "City Sprawl" Mod for what can be done even with the current Civ VI graphics) of Humankind but the easy-to-access information of Civ: put the Infrastructure On The Map, for starters, and make Districts graphically distinctive in some unmistakeable way.

Honestly, I still have an immersion/scale problem with city districts being far from cities in a game like this, and covering vast lands. I'd argue that civ5 and previous games system, where all city buildings are 'on a city tile' in a way, was more realistic. This is however a terrible dilemma, because the system of districts covering the map is much more pleasant to play with. I'd love to see a 4X game like this but with 'realistic' but still interesting land coverage outside cities - with farmlands, mines, but also simply smaller cities and villages instead of a research quarter placed seemingly 300km from major city. The way cities work in civ6 and Humankind is like IRL they only work for huge metropolies over like last 100 years.

Regarding playable cultures, I'd honestly argue that civ's very old cultures are way closer to reality that humankind's often, rapid extreme cultural changes coming out of nowhere. IRL cultures dramatically changed or ended only in some cases as a result of conquest and assimilation. They definitely didn't just randomly transform into something completely different for no reason. They weren't monolythic and unchanging of course, but honestly as I said, I think thousands of years of English culture in civ (which in game does change via religion, social policies, civics, tec etc) are closer to reality than English emerging suddenly from Maurya and then turning into Ottomans. One thousand years ago almost all modern day cultures and languages of Europe already existed, some of them having twice as long cultural roots, and Greeks are a continuity of 3500 years. Is it that weird they last a bit longer in a video game? People say 'it's weird that in civ you have Americans in ancient era'. But is it that weird? The very point of a game is to take some broad culture/civilizaton outside of its geographic and historical context and to throw it somewhere else for fun scenarios and alternate world. It's no stranger than Babylonian culture in the modern age.

So, personally I don't have problems of civilizations standing for millenia - it isn't THAT far from reality, we DO have IRL cultural areas with millenia long continuity of some sort (China, India, Persia, Maya, Greeks, Jews, Armenians etc).

What I have problems with is LEADERS remaining for millenia. This actually isn't bad for immersion itself imo, it really adds a lot of character to cultures and diplomacy, but it is a huge problem standing in a way of many mechanics - those involving governments, dynasties, and especially civil wars and revolutions. You can't model split states in civ because they wouldn't have a leader. You cannot really model dynastic stuff if you are always greeted by the same leader in diplo screen.

I have been recently imagining a 4x game in which cultures are permanent - but leaders are not. Every 10 - 20 years (randomly to simulate random life duration, not too short to not be messy) a leader of every nation changes. Most of the time it doesn't change much except aestethics of diplomacy (you can't really build huge mechanics around such quick rotation), but that system would still allow you to implement changing dynasties, civil wars, goverment changes, revolutions, succession crises etc. Everything immortal leaders don't allow. You could also reintroduce historical leaders in a way, by sometimes giving some nations superpowered leaders like Napoleon, so an empire would have those 20 turns of super boost. Implementing republics wouldnt be too hard because before 20th century 99% of cultures were monarchies anyway, and afterwards the time scale of games like this slows down enough so one elected head of state wouldnt feel out of place ruling those 10 - 20 turns. This way you have avoided identity isseus of Humankind as well as limitations of Civ engine.

But immortal leaders are too iconic feature of Civ franchise to remove them, so that will never happen. I'd just love if devs somehow managed to combine immortal leaders with civil wars, rebellions and separatisms of all sorts, these are really missing from those games.

 

[Gedemon]

Keeping the same 'empire' from start to finish is not likely to change in Civ, simply because of the resource sink that the Leaders are: they can't afford to erase the very popular Leaders feature, and with it they tremendously restrict the number of variations they can include to empires and civs in any game - until somebody comes up with a radical way to expand graphic and voice-acting capabilities without radically expanding the expense, that's not going to change.

Funny thought, imagining deep learning AI used in a civ game for the first time, but not for the actual AI, just its avatars representation/animation/speech.

 

[BuchiTaton]

Regarding playable cultures, I'd honestly argue that civ's very old cultures are way closer to reality that humankind's often, rapid extreme cultural changes coming out of nowhere. IRL cultures dramatically changed or ended only in some cases as a result of conquest and assimilation. They definitely didn't just randomly transform into something completely different for no reason. They weren't monolythic and unchanging of course, but honestly as I said, I think thousands of years of English culture in civ (which in game does change via religion, social policies, civics, tec etc) are closer to reality than English emerging suddenly from Maurya and then turning into Ottomans. One thousand years ago almost all modern day cultures and languages of Europe already existed, some of them having twice as long cultural roots, and Greeks are a continuity of 3500 years. Is it that weird they last a bit longer in a video game? People say 'it's weird that in civ you have Americans in ancient era'. But is it that weird? The very point of a game is to take some broad culture/civilizaton outside of its geographic and historical context and to throw it somewhere else for fun scenarios and alternate world. It's no stranger than Babylonian culture in the modern age.

Humankind's changing cultures certainly result on a challenge to remember "who is who" each match, have just few turns to know the world you are playing give a sensation of chaos that makes it hard to immerse. The personalized avatars are also another element that play against recognition, because they dont have enough personality to easily tell apart each player and their personalities in that fast changing world.

Apart from the above, I mainly find people saying that changing cultures is "immersion breaking" because you can do things like Assyrian>Maya>Ghana>Korea>France, the reason for that is obvious and is that real history was not that case, still many of the same people would do not have problem with a game where you can go Brittonc>Roman>Anglic>English>British, again this because real history.

BUT why they dont have problem about Romans or Angles coming from nowhere and taking over Celtic people? Why they would be happy with Greeks turning Byzantines if that means being conquered by the Romans?

This bias come from what they know not from what is logic, and on games like CIV or Humankind you dont play on the real world map (at least not always), the region and peoples that lived around your starting point would not be the same on your random match that those of the real British Isles and because that there are not reasons to have the UK as the outcome. So, if people can use their imagination to figure Turkish peoples taking over any previous culture on Middle East or Central Asia on the Medieval Era, then why do not also use their imagination for that world where Comanches are also going around as nomad conquerors and turn your nation on a Mauryan+Comanche empire?

So, personally I don't have problems of civilizations standing for millenia - it isn't THAT far from reality, we DO have IRL cultural areas with millenia long continuity of some sort (China, India, Persia, Maya, Greeks, Jews, Armenians etc).

CHINA: The base and main element is Hans but you can add the very significative elements from Khitans/Mongols and Jurchen/Manchus and many others components of China like Uygurs, Tibetans, Miao, etc.
INDIA: Harappans(dravidians?*)>Indo-Aryans>Scythian/Huna>Arab+Persian>Turko+Mongol, etc.
PERSIA: Elamite>Iranian>Greek>Arab>Turko-Mongol

Many people are used to see these and others regions as monolitic "change less" region, while have no problem with Greek and Rome beign different from Byzantines, or Romans from Italians. Cultures/Civs like a dravian empire, a non-han chinese dynasty or a muslim Persia have very low chances to be on CIV while Humankind offers a system where you can broke that misconception.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

Honestly, I still have an immersion/scale problem with city districts being far from cities in a game like this, and covering vast lands. I'd argue that civ5 and previous games system, where all city buildings are 'on a city tile' in a way, was more realistic. This is however a terrible dilemma, because the system of districts covering the map is much more pleasant to play with. I'd love to see a 4X game like this but with 'realistic' but still interesting land coverage outside cities - with farmlands, mines, but also simply smaller cities and villages instead of a research quarter placed seemingly 300km from major city. The way cities work in civ6 and Humankind is like IRL they only work for huge metropolies over like last 100 years.

Let's take your points (which are good ones worth much longer discussions) one at a time, starting with one I've posted on at length elsewhere and elsewhen: City Depiction.

First, the Historical Basis: (Full Disclosure: my sister has her PhD in Population Geography, her husband a PhD in Economic Geography: they can lay out the mathematics for where and how people occupy the landscape: there are Rules and some very precise mathematical models for how a city develops, and how it will develop - they both made very good living explaining this to city, local, county and state government agencies for fat fees!) City Size is always based on available means of transportation. In most cities from the Neolithic to the Industrial Era that was human foot, either personally or sedan-chair bearers or their local equivalent. City Planning and development was too haphazard for wheeled vehicles to be a general means of getting around until very late in the City Building process. (like, late 18th century in Europe: Civ's Industrial Era)
That, in turn, meant that until the development of efficient wheeled carriages, wagons, coaches, etc, a city could not spread over more ground than a person could cover on foot in a fraction of a day. If it took all day to get from part of the city to the market, then that part of the city was Unlivable, and would not be lived in. I can state from personal experience that classical Athens could be walked around in an afternoon: I walked the circuit of the classical city walls back in my mis-spent youth to prove it!

So to be other than Fantasy, the in-game cities have to be strictly limited in how far they can 'spread out' on the game map for most of any game that starts in 4000 BCE or earlier. A city with a line of districts/quarters straggling over hill and plain to get some gamey 'adjacency' bonus is just Wrong no matter how many ways we to try to justify it: it plays wrong, it looks wrong, it results in 'cities' that resemble no city that ever existed.

Once methods of transportation begin to improve, size restrictions begin to crumble. First with efficient personal carriages, hired coaches, horse-drawn cabs, carts, etc and the paved streets to accommodate them, then with powered vehicle systems like trolleys (first horse-drawn, then steam, then electric) then overhead railways, subways ("underground"), busses, taxicabs, personal automobiles, et al. The resulting expansion of the cities' size is absolutely huge: Los Angeles was merely the first (being built, basically, around the personal automobile in the 1920s and 30s) but only one of many cities that now has a 'footprint' on the map of over 300 square kilometers. Even the 19th century city fortifications that once were the outer limit of Paris now only mark the boundary between the 'inner city' and the suburbs, which sprawl for dozens of kilometers beyond them in all directions.

So, Civ VII, to get it right, has to start with a very limited 'radius' that a city can inhabit: a single circle of tiles around the city center would not be unrealistic, with expansion beyond that, for the most part, having to wait on better Transportation, In the meantime, exploiting resources beyond the limited City Radius has to be done by 'satellite' towns, settlements, and smaller 'cities'. - but this happened very, very early. In fact, it started as soon as the first historical cities did. Uruk by 3700 BCE had two 'industrial' towns, Hacinebi and Arslantepe, in the mountains of eastern Anatolia feeding copper products from nearby mines to the 'big city' in the plains. In game terms, they were MInes with the required smelting, casting, and metal-working industries to turn ores into useful things that were worth transporting for weeks to Uruk, and the housing, feeding, markets, temples, and other structures to keep the miners, workers and their families happy.

In other words, separate Settlements are NOT the same as City Districts, and shouldn't look like them or behave like them in the game, but they were plentiful IRL, with the landscape covered in many 'civilized' parts of the world with these smaller concentrations of humanity - far more than the Urban Centers that the Civ game has always been built around.

 

[TheSpaceCowboy]

Things that Civilization VII should steal from Humankind, in order of importance:

1. Narrative Events - Sid famously said that games are essentially a series of interesting decisions, and this embodies that in the most literal way. Especially if Civ VII could vary the narrative choices from game to game to an even greater degree. Perhaps it should also look to Crusader Kings III here; some narrative choices are in regards to your civilization (a la Humankind) and others are in regards to your Leader (a la CK III)
2. Binary Civics choices - I much prefer this to the civic cards of Civilization VI, though I definitely don't want to see Governments go away entirely either (just the opposite, actually). But adopting certain civics should necessarily exclude enacting others that are ideologically incompatible. It doesn't even need to be a binary choice, either. Maybe it could be trinary in the Modern Era, moving towards either Liberty, Communism, of Fascism; or it could be between four choices, corresponding to the four quadrants of the Political Compass.
3. Varied elevation - This is both more visually interesting and strategically so for movement and combat advantages
4. Aesthetics - Civilization's Districts, Units, and Leaders are all far superior, but one place Humankind comes out on top is its beautiful illustrations. Civ V had that fantastic art deco aesthetic, and Civ VI was a needless regression utterly devoid of style.
5. Neolithic Era - It's a huge advantage getting to move around and explore for a bit before settling your first City. Obviously, Civ VII should still let you choose your Civilization before Turn 0 instead of starting out as a nondescript Neolithic tribe, but maybe the Romans can roam before founding Rome
6. Evolving Civilizations - Randomly changing from the Egyptians to the Celts to the Aztecs is the worst part of Humankind, but there is a way for Civ VII to improve on the idea. Each Civilization could have a choice of second Unique Ability that it gains at a decisive moment, differing for each Civilization. E.g. Colonial America, when reaching the Industrial Era, could be evolved into the United States, or America, or the USA, each of which has a distinct bonus and disadvantage.

 

[Krajzen]

Humankind's changing cultures certainly result on a challenge to remember "who is who" each match, have just few turns to know the world you are playing give a sensation of chaos that makes it hard to immerse. The personalized avatars are also another element that play against recognition, because they dont have enough personality to easily tell apart each player and their personalities in that fast changing world.

Apart from the above, I mainly find people saying that changing cultures is "immersion breaking" because you can do things like Assyrian>Maya>Ghana>Korea>France, the reason for that is obvious and is that real history was not that case, still many of the same people would do not have problem with a game where you can go Brittonc>Roman>Anglic>English>British, again this because real history.

BUT why they dont have problem about Romans or Angles coming from nowhere and taking over Celtic people? Why they would be happy with Greeks turning Byzantines if that means being conquered by the Romans?

This bias come from what they know not from what is logic, and on games like CIV or Humankind you dont play on the real world map (at least not always), the region and peoples that lived around your starting point would not be the same on your random match that those of the real British Isles and because that there are not reasons to have the UK as the outcome. So, if people can use their imagination to figure Turkish peoples taking over any previous culture on Middle East or Central Asia on the Medieval Era, then why do not also use their imagination for that world where Comanches are also going around as nomad conquerors and turn your nation on a Mauryan+Comanche empire?


CHINA: The base and main element is Hans but you can add the very significative elements from Khitans/Mongols and Jurchen/Manchus and many others components of China like Uygurs, Tibetans, Miao, etc.
INDIA: Harappans(dravidians?*)>Indo-Aryans>Scythian/Huna>Arab+Persian>Turko+Mongol, etc.
PERSIA: Elamite>Iranian>Greek>Arab>Turko-Mongol

Many people are used to see these and others regions as monolitic "change less" region, while have no problem with Greek and Rome beign different from Byzantines, or Romans from Italians. Cultures/Civs like a dravian empire, a non-han chinese dynasty or a muslim Persia have very low chances to be on CIV while Humankind offers a system where you can broke that misconception.

There is one problem with the claim that Humankind in any way models process of cultures changing. In real life cultutes were changing slowly and because of intense interactions with other cultures, usually simply because of conquest and cultural assimilation. Gauls "turned into" Gallo - Romans because of Roman conquest and domination lasting for centuries, and then to French because of Frankish conquest and domination lasting for centuries. Sometimes even centuries of conquest weren't enough to drastically change ethnic identity (on video game scale), almost every ethnic group and major language existing in Europe today did exist in some way one thousand years ago, even tiny nations like Slovenes who didn't have a state for over a thousand years emerged with their separate identity and language instead of turning into Germans or Italians (so enormously powerful cultures). And we have nations like Jews, Armenians and Assyrians who remained cohesive despite millenias of foreign domination.

What am I trying to say: in real life cultures dramatically "mutating" is a centuries long process caused by very intense interactions (usually conquest). If the process doesn't occur or is too weak then you actually do end up with peoples who have cohesive cultural continuity for millenia. What does NEVER happen in real life is what Humankind does, where cultures change
1) Instantly and very dramatically
2) For no reason, out of thin air
3) Into cultures with completely different language, "affinity", ethos, architecture
4) In the same period for the entire world
5) Momentarily shedding old name and taking on a new name for themselves
6) Many times over the course of few centuries. IRL you can see almost all modern Euro cultures and languages progenitors in 1000 AD Europe. Well, too bad that in Humankind the continent should have gone through several unrecognizable phases of total mutation of everybody during this millenium.

Humankind's approach, with Persians suddenly start calling themselves Aztecs at one arbitrary point in time for no reason, is even further from reality than civ's millenia old cultures. At least the latter case sometimes actually happened in history, while the former literally never did.

4X game which really wants to simulate cultural evolution should introduce some complex mechanisms of population units, in some strict conditions, slowly hybrydising with the culture that has a great impact unto them (usually by conquest or religion). So when Spanish conquers and converts Aztecs they turn into Azteco - Spanish ('Mexicans') like they did IRL. Now that would be somewhat realistic.
Not Aztecs suddenly transforming into white men with cathedrals because they got 2000 star points and decided to throw away their entire previous identity.

 

[Lonecat Nekophrodite]

^ That's really flawed features of cultural 'deveopments'.

In truth cultures are more or less associated with not only ethnicity but also their habitats as well. the 'Middle Easterners' (or Desert People to be generic) developed distinct flat roof clay housings and face covering headwears not only because of Islamic (or Jewish, which Arabians later adopted and adapted into Islam) teachings, but mainly because of their homelands. Peoples of Menam Basin (And maybe elsewhere in Asia and other continents) prefers building two storrey housings with its first floor unwalled and without rooms until about a century later because of frequent deluge, these houses also have a high prismatic roof for better vents, allowing cool comfortable climate inside, and they wore less cloths than Chinese because of strong, humid tropical heat. These folks also have 'evolutionary paths' as well. So in case of Humankind, A player faction that began as a Nubian and shortly later discarded their ways and became Romans, and in some 2000 years later became Siamese is very wrong! HK skipped 'regionalism' evolution paths entirely. In truth. Nubians became either Egyptians or Sudanese and later other Africans. In the same token, It maybe still possible that Khmers might evolved from the Harappans, and later became Siamese. (There's a book that disagree with a 'Conquest Theory' over how 'Siamese Civilizations' began as 'Old Mon Kingdoms conquered by The Khmers' Just because a giant Cheti of Wat Arun and a Khmer style Prasat exists in Lopburi (This city appeared in Two consecutive Civ games and belonged to two different but related civs), instead favoring 'Influencings' theory (through 'Alliances and Vassalages', where King Ramkhamhaeng was actually an ally or related to Khmer Empire 'Kings of Yasothorn', as well as to those of Lopburi and Nakhon Si Thammarat. Also as 'competitions' between Lopburi 'Kingdom/CS' to build their own 'Cosmos', competing in a wonder building race with Khmer Empire (Their actual name was, I think, Yasothornpura Empire, referring to their Post-Angkor Wat era seat of power) not only results in similiarly looking Prasats (Temples) and Prangs (A style of Cheti) but also comparable differences between Angkor 'True Khmer' style arts and Menam-style Khmer ones.

Things that Civilization VII should steal from Humankind, in order of importance:

1. Narrative Events - Sid famously said that games are essentially a series of interesting decisions, and this embodies that in the most literal way. Especially if Civ VII could vary the narrative choices from game to game to an even greater degree. Perhaps it should also look to Crusader Kings III here; some narrative choices are in regards to your civilization (a la Humankind) and others are in regards to your Leader (a la CK III)
2. Binary Civics choices - I much prefer this to the civic cards of Civilization VI, though I definitely don't want to see Governments go away entirely either (just the opposite, actually). But adopting certain civics should necessarily exclude enacting others that are ideologically incompatible. It doesn't even need to be a binary choice, either. Maybe it could be trinary in the Modern Era, moving towards either Liberty, Communism, of Fascism; or it could be between four choices, corresponding to the four quadrants of the Political Compass.
3. Varied elevation - This is both more visually interesting and strategically so for movement and combat advantages
4. Aesthetics - Civilization's Districts, Units, and Leaders are all far superior, but one place Humankind comes out on top is its beautiful illustrations. Civ V had that fantastic art deco aesthetic, and Civ VI was a needless regression utterly devoid of style.
5. Neolithic Era - It's a huge advantage getting to move around and explore for a bit before settling your first City. Obviously, Civ VII should still let you choose your Civilization before Turn 0 instead of starting out as a nondescript Neolithic tribe, but maybe the Romans can roam before founding Rome
6. Evolving Civilizations - Randomly changing from the Egyptians to the Celts to the Aztecs is the worst part of Humankind, but there is a way for Civ VII to improve on the idea. Each Civilization could have a choice of second Unique Ability that it gains at a decisive moment, differing for each Civilization. E.g. Colonial America, when reaching the Industrial Era, could be evolved into the United States, or America, or the USA, each of which has a distinct bonus and disadvantage.

If Sid Meier wants to add 'Evolution Process' into his Civ7 then, consider how 'out of place' Humankind 'evolution' process is by permitting players to transcend into different civs from EVERY CORNER OF THE WORLD which they NEVER MEET IRL. But instead evolution paths should be more consistence.

Here goes
Chinese
Ethnicity: East Asian
Evolution paths: Zhou (Ancient) -> Han (Classical (Actually Qin should also be Classical as well but the Empire lasts only less than half a century while Han lasts for some 200 years or more)) -> Tang or Song (Medieval) -> Ming or Qing (Renaissance, through Qing is actually evolved Manchu which were different peoples entirely) -> Chinese (Industrial or Modern) , which possibly may also become Taiwanese to gain access to different units and different focus to Chinese.
Likewise 'Han may be branched off to become Viets (Logical???) or Japs (Logical too??) as well as Khmers could later evolved into them as well as Siamese.

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

I think that the changing cultures should stay in Humankind personally. I don't possibly see a way to implement in a good way for Civ.
There are very few that could have that approach for it to work such as China, as shown above, and India. Then you get in the problem of things like turning Gaul into the French and Iroquois into the U.S. like people have suggested, which makes no sense in my opinion.

Neolithic Era - It's a huge advantage getting to move around and explore for a bit before settling your first City. Obviously, Civ VII should still let you choose your Civilization before Turn 0 instead of starting out as a nondescript Neolithic tribe, but maybe the Romans can roam before founding Rome

I do agree with this. Probably my most wanted feature. Civs with more nomadic abilities, such as Scythia and Mongolia, might benefit from even founding cities later than others.

 

[Leucarum]

Yeah, I don't think that changing cultures is a great match for Civ - but having your civ abilities develop over time would be pretty awesome. They kind of already do due to a lot of UUs/UDs etc being locked behind techs/civics, you could just make it more explicit, and maybe have players choose between a couple of versions of their civ abilities when they do unlock.

 

[Lonecat Nekophrodite]

Any Combat System in a game with the scope of Humankind or Civ will be imperfect and 'gamey', because the scale of the game and the scale of even the greatest battle are utterly incompatible. The shortest game turn is one year: except for some historical sieges, even the most sprawling battles of World War Two (Leyte Gulf naval, Typhoon, Kursk, Stalingrad, the Ardennes, Battle of Britain aerial) lasted at most 2 - 3 months, or a fraction of a single turn. Most historical battles were over and done in a few hours, or a fraction of a single percentage of one game turn.
And yet, the majority of gamers, I suspect, want to be able to influence the battles in some way beyond throwing units into a stack and throwing stacks into a tile/region/area and watching the game engine grind out some result.

Overall, I think something resembling (but not exactly) matching the Humankind 'tactical expansion' battlefield is a better starting point than 1UPT. 1UPT makes a tactical battle too grossly out of scale in both distance on the regular game map (archers that can shoot over a city of several hundred thousand people, for instance) and time (ancient battles lasting a century or more, modern battles lasting longer than a World War IRL). But, I think the interaction and capabilities of the armies on the battlefield, the command and control, morale and tactical practices - 'soft' factors that influenced battles far more often than weapons did - need to be modeled, and the real restrictions on what armies could do (which alone would simplify the game version of tactical battles for most of the Eras!) need to be included.
For one thing, Civ's use of Great People (which definitely must be kept) allows the influence of Generals (Great and Not So Great - it would be nice to have the influence of a Varro represented as well as a Hannibal: after all, there have been at least as many merely competent or wretchedly incompetent Generals in history as Great ones) can be included where they are entirely absent from Humankind, and likely to stay absent.

Before listing 'Units' the Combat Systems, mechanics, and rules come first.
Civ5 and 6 "1UPT" system actually ported from games like Panzer General (and its 'remake'--Panzerkorps series), the system in turn ported back to "Commander. The Great War". Even in the latter settings (Which focused on WW1 on Eurasian and parts of North America). the 1UPT didn't really represents WW1 quite right. Personally 1UPT only works for era-focused wargames particulalry any Pre-Modern Era (Before 1890), it could work well for Renaissance Era up to American Civil War or even as late as Franco-Prussian War. but definitely not WW1 and WW2. As
@Boris Gudenuf made series of comments regarding to Modern Era Warfare and how unrealistic land unit rosters in Civ6 since 1890 really is (MG never has been an independent unit while movies like "Hill 203" Tries to influence game developers to believe it is in Civ6 setting

^ This is a modding headache to me how to deal with MGs without having to write them off entirely. MGs being ranged class is sorely wrong. these began as 'defensive oriented' units by its introductions at the last third of the 19th Century (Multibarreled hand crank repeaters or volley guns like Reffye mitrailleuse (Grapeshot gun), was the first such weaponry through the first continious repeaters of this style was actually the works of Richard J. Gatling which became much more successful.) even then their existence never was a separate regiment or even company but as part of Infantry (or maybe Cavalry) regiments, pretty much the same way as lighweight 3-6 pounders which were assigned to Infantry and Cavalry units and not its own Artillery Battery. In this clip clearly shown that MGs were used in defensive manner and not supporting any assaults, partly because MGs of that time were very heavy and the concepts of 'Suppressions' weren't yet understood well.

What's your combat mechanics for Civ7? @Boris Gudenuf ? What or how will you improve HK's combat systems? And what about a General / Admiral commanding an army/fleet? how should one be recruited? do you think 'Heroes of Might and Magic series' mechanics of Commander recruitment works well in Civ7?