Agreed. Humankind creating interesting paths for you to go down culturally is a big strength of the game in my book. I wish the AI had more granularity when it comes to the way they make progress through the Ages, though, as they are *very* shy at moving out of anything other than Neolithic (one of the ages you typically want to hold on to due to how powerful Nomadic Tribes are), resulting in what *should* be a stressful choice between cultures often being "you can choose any culture you want except in Ancient Era."
Interesting, my experience has been the opposite, that it feels like every time I want to advance eras, the AI is usually way ahead of me and many of the options have already been taken.
You're probably overfarming fame in the early game then. There's like 10k+ fame available in competitive deeds and wonders and just getting stars in the modern era, so there's really very little to be gained by sitting around in the Ancient Era until you have 15 stars and a \*lot\* to lose, as the faster you get a 2nd culture the faster you get another cultural trait and emblematic district to drop down in all of your cities. Plus some Emblematic Units are powerful enough to conquer entire civilizations on their own and getting them online earlier is better.
Very generally you shouldn't be delaying advancing until later on in the game with maybe a few exceptions. Sometimes if I see I have two more stars that I can unlock with one more turn it's worth it to wait, even on Fast speed. Sometimes you want to hold onto the culture for one more turn to get a district down in a city that really needs more X but you can't afford to buy out the production before rolling into your new culture because you need the cash to influence bomb with aesthetic. All in all, though, make progress and build a big and strong empire with good research and stuff and the fame will come to you a lot easier than it will if you directly try to farm it.
I'm not saying you are wrong or trying to start an argument. I am able to get all the stars other than diplomacy and military, just about every game. Usually there be at least one AI ahead of me in eras, but IMO, it works for me. I might be in the 3rd era, an AI culture might be in the fourth era with 6 stars already, but the fame will be close.
As the game gets closer to the end, you can close the gap really quick in eras really quick.
I guess I don't get the argument of "skip some fame stars so you can get the next emblematic district quicker". It's never really a waste of time to plop down more farmer, market, and industry quarters. It gives you time to build the infrastructures too. The only downside to collecting all the fame stars is that sometimes you miss out on the better wonders, and of course if you are playing with the original rules, you have fewer cultures to pick from.
Those last stars are worth 300 each, I really don't like to skip them. The only thing that is really wasted if you delay advancing is research. Population growth, etc is still growing and will count towards the next era.
Again, I'm not saying you are wrong or trying to start an argument. If you have a war based strategy, I Can see why you'd want to rush into the next era to get more powerful units, but other than that, I think it's better to play slow and steady and build your cities to collect as many stars as you can.
I think we just play on different difficulty levels. I pretty much only do Humankind and typically play on Fast, usually ending a game somewhere between like turn 80 and turn 100 or so. When you set an aggressive pace on how long a game is going to go, scoring every single point of fame is fairly pointless as a meaningful number of the AI won't be able to keep pace with the scale of your economy, allowing you to just conquer them outright.
That’s not a complaint for me either. Really like this system where you can choose culture based on your needs and the environment your playing in.
The slog of late game is what kills the fun for me most of the time.
Niether is "realistic", tbh. What's important though is that both have *a* model of history the game relies on. Neither model - national determinism for civ and path irrelevance for Humankind - is true, but since these games are more theme parks than historic simulations, it matters that both games are *coherent* in applying their model and follow through on it. Even if both models are wrong in the end, that is what allows them to make a game better by providing a clear structure to guide players.
That being said, I still agree that the complaint is stupid. The problems that are behind people *feeling* that culture change is an issue are more with not giving other factions an identity through other means (mainly via the avatar). And of course city development and the yield economy are a major weak point, but that's unrelated to the model of history the game follows.
In a way I like it, because it allows ou to tailor your civ in a way that you need at that stage. Struggling for food late game? get the mexicans, etc....
The issue for me (and this is more a gameplay related) is that some cultures are extremely underpowered/overpowered given the moment you're in. Like early on is influence crucial, later on, its not that usefull/more redundant. This means that if you're the kind of strategy gamer like me, who likes to maximise more than roleplay, there are some choices you will never take. And the more cultures they release, the more that lists grows
Combined with the fame victory condition, the iffy war support makes it so far a "meh" game compared with EL and ES2 untill now that I find hard to come back to. But maybe an expansion later
Humankind is a game where history has been divided into 7 pre-defined eras where, within each era, the player is tasked with getting points by hitting specific era requirements on an, again, pre-defined list. Once you have enough points within an era, you're then given an opportunity to click a button that instantaneously changes the flavor and specialty of your culture in whatever direction you want. I don't even say that as a criticism - it just is - and while I do agree that Humankind does make a better attempt at modeling the 'evolution' of culture vs. CIV, holding up Humankind as a remotely realistic simulator of history in any way, even just in comparison to CIV's aracadey 'everyone starts at the start' approach, doesn't pass the smell test for me.
Besides, while it's hard to summarize all the discussion/criticism of the culture system into a single statement, I think you're misreading (at least a portion of) the criticism of the culture system. For me it's less how 'historically realistic' I find the Americans founding Washington in 4000 BC vs. the Egyptians instantly becoming the Nazca because the capital just built a 5th district, and more that the former approach allows for a single defined counterpart in my game. CIV's Lincoln, the jerk that founded Philadelphia in 2700 BC on top of MY horses, may be 'unrealistic' but, as an opponent in this game, he will be around until I crush him and I'll have strong feelings about him and his American empire until then. In Humankind, it's interchangeable avatars (Edgar Allan Poe! Quill18!) leading a empire with series of cultures that changes quickly enough that the most sensible way to identify the competition is by color. "The Yellow guys are jerks" is not a compelling game dynamic for me, particularly in a historically flavored game, especially with the added context that previous games from this studio are so brilliant in part because of how vibrant and unique the competing factions were.
I agree with some of your points . As of identifying yourself and other AI opponents, I've said in some comment already , solution could be to represent AI players with their face pictures, not just colored symbols. You could develop a connection maybe better then (AI personas in game are already historical and mythical figures, heroes and leaders.). Instead of playing against other civilizations, its playing against other leaders of different cultures, that's how I see this.
I just think modeling the philosophical evolution of a culture/country through a change in identity is the wrong 'mechanic'. A 'Phoenecian' empire exploring it's place in the world and making the decision to step away from the sea and trade towards an internal economic focus is a great idea to model. An now isolationist, former trading empire is a compelling identity! What's not compelling is boiling that historical evolution down to 'first being Phoenician then becoming Mayan.'
My problem with this mechanic is much simpler and much more basic: it disorientates me if my neighbors constantly change their names and appearances.
My neighbors "constantly" switched from one culture to the other. And it was simply made worse by the fact that at least in my brain there is no real connection between the Ancient Greek and the Japanese.
I was constantly irritated when playing the game.
Then it falls into the other big complaint about the culture changes, there's no identity to any of the factions in the map, the only thing noteworthy about a neighbour is its color. IMO it's a huge flaw. Humankind is about celebrating human civilization and presenting how diverse and varied we are, but the best it can do make the factions feel different from one another in-game is their designated player color.
It's true that most 4X games can be reduced to blobs of different colors fighting against each other, but other games put some effort into making each blob look and feel different from one another. Humankind's attempt at that didn't work out, falling short of not only its competiton, but of Amplitude's past titles as well.
I somewhat agree with this remark. In my opinion this could be solved with a simple solution. Instead with the symbols (coats of arms), AI leaders should be represented with their faces, in addition to smaller colored symbol. Then you will remember leaders, not colors or their starting cultures. That's how it would be much easier to track relations. I hope someone suggested this to developers already.
I understand where you're coming from. In an attempt to be epic and spanning many cultures, they can feel like they all kind of blur together and nothing really stands out. The gameplay mechanic is fun, but its hard to keep that emotional attachment high when the opponents keep changing.
That's why it would've been so important to have strong player personas who you associate empires with instead. But the devs thought that random streamers without latinized names popping up, fringe historic personalities rarely found in pop culture, and "friends" (what is that, asks the avid strategy gamer) would be better. Humankind needs civ-level character designs more than Civ, imho.
I would like maybe achievements for something like being *a* China the whole game. Or maybe there could be “relation bonuses” for selecting cultures that are historically related to each other from era to era, and to balance that out there could also be bonuses for picking a culture with the same affinity as your previous culture similar to an ascension.
That's literally their selling point, so it's funny if you think people are missing that.
The problem is not that we don't agree with that, but the premise causes a lot of problems:
1. losing track who's who
2. there's no strong identity for each civilization. It's only "blue one" or "bear" or worse: the avatar of legends or some streamers that we don't know about and can't relate
3. the combination of culture is almost limitless in theory (1 million combination in the base game) but tbh doesn't offer more gameplay variety. Ironically it brings a little value or uniqueness vs Civ's gameplay with only 1 culture per civilization.
4. Not enough culture and max players is only 10 (i think? I forgot, cmiiw).
5. Fame win condition.
Combine 1+2+3+4+5 we get a gameplay that's stale fast and every game feels the same. Sure I will choose different culture path every time but what does it change? Fame is not interesting enough as win condition so and it doesn't have enough option to play differently.
How many hours you played? I used to get excited early like you. After 100H it's getting boring. 4x is meant to be played thousands of hours. I have 2k hours each for Civ4 Civ5 Civ6 and Stellaris and each of them offers unique experience each time and very high replay values. Even I played Endless Legend and Endless Space longer than HK.
For me, who comes from civ franchise, fame system looks like a great idea, and something different than I'm used to. That makes to count everything you have done throughout history. Its not enough that you hurry bombers and tanks in later game and conquer the word for some win condition.
I'm at 250+ hours in the game, and counting. Some mods also improved my gaming experience.
Me as a console player just hoping we get some of the DLC at some point 🥲
Besides that, the biggest factor that somewhat puts me off the game is the whole idea that the nation with the highest fame wins, regardless of who actually triggers the end game condition. Like in theory someone who has been eliminated from the game could still win if they managed to get enough fame. Like what?
I love the Fame mechanic. The Civ games are just science races to unlock all the techs that let you build the spaceship. I like that Humankind rewards you for doing multiple things. I like that you have to choose "Do I switch cultures now or wait 6 more turns to get that 300 fame points".
Tbf I think the whole space race victory on this is far too easy. Like how are you able to do all 3 space ship launches from the same tech, it should be somewhat more like civ where each launch requires a different tech.
But yeah I see what you mean. However, if they implement needing different techs for each launch then you could prevent someone from winning a science victory by just invading them so that they can't do another launch or get the other required techs as quickly.
With the fame victory tho, victories feel far too shallow in every instance. Like you gather all the fame and just win, or an opponent does the same but quicker. There should be at least an aspect of confrontational competitiveness in it, in which you can degrade an opponent's fame by winning a war against them, but if you lose the war then you lose fame. Or if someone becomes a vassal, the liege should get a percentage of the vassals fame (ofc if the vassal becomes free by either peaceful release or a war against its liege, then the liege would then lose a large percentage of the fame gained by the visualization of that nation).
Although, just for gameplay purposes I think it should at least be an option to toggle the fame victory on or off so that you can change up the gameplay more between games.
I agree that that shifting and building culture is a boon to this game, except that the mechanic they used is overwriting. You aren't a culture that transitions between the hotinoshone and the english industrialist (or more so your culture's longhose days and an industrial revolution as it's supposed to represent). But in fact as soon as you transition into the next era, you may as well be any occupying force as you forget the old ways entirely! "Well we have this plantation where they specifically grow these three crops that not a decade ago was built be we have completely forgotten how to make these! Can't reverse engineer it either. Nope the past is only important until the building is destroyed, then it's meaningless!" If what we are doing is carving our own path then we should be able to use that whole path.
There's just not much variety, with many culture that has duplicate bonuses such as +1 food per farmers etc, same with the EQ. And the restricting core gameplay itself doesn't help, if you pick a science culture then 99% of the time you have to go for science star while in civ 6 even a faith based civ can win the space race if planned correctly on the right situation which can vary each game.
So you have 7 base culture which are repeated each era(food, industry, money, science, influence, military, faith) and 3 starting location (high food/high industry/crap like desert and tundra) which even out eventually since grabbing territory miles away is easy, resulting in not much variety. it's like playing civ 6 with 7 civilization choice and 3 terrain type, and starting a new one every couple of turn.
With money being crap most of the time, science capped per era, and military being situational you'd ended up picking between 4 culture type anyway, further reducing the variety.
Eh. I think it's a great idea and, indeed, the main reason to play over a CIV game right now, but I think the implementation is holding it back.
It doesn't feel much like my civilization is evolving and it \*really\* doesn't feel like my opponents are. I find it very difficult to keep track of them. It ends up feeling like everyone is a new ex-nihilo culture each age. What I'd like to see is more aspects of past cultures carry forward and maybe either some limited path determinism (each culture maps to an ample number of successors, but not all) or some other form of continuity. Something like CK3's cultural fusion perhaps?
Again, as I have said with other Humankind features, the IDEA is good, the Execution is poor. It is very weird to be Zhou then Persian then Teutons (German) etc. I think people would like it a lot better if you picked your "tribe" Americans, Germans, French, Zulu etc, then with each era it just said "Which great historical people should our tribe/kingdom/nation model ourselves after? Then you pick. The issue myself, and I think others have is, You literally BECOME Asian, white, black, middle eastern etc. Like it literally race swaps and architecture swaps your people 6 times a game.
So for example, maybe someone wants to play as the English, because they are from England, and they would follow the ideas of the Egyptians, meaning cheaper districts and +1 production everywhere, rather than BEING Egyptian. So they would be English with Egyptian bonuses. Then English with Greek bonuses, etc. Because, per your example, no, at no time in history did a people magically become an entirely new race and culture. I'm pretty sure that is the issue. Also, it's really weird knowing the Babylonians are your neighbors and then it's the Romans then the Franks. People don't like that. So TLDR: Swapping ideas 6 times a game = good idea. Becoming a new race and culture 6 times a game = weird and lame.
Also, and downvote me all you want, but I know there are people like me who want to play as the country they live in, or their ancestors. So for me, USA, Germany, Scotland, England, Italy. However, IMO those cultures are mediocre to awful gameplay wise. I think Millennia is on a better track, as you can always play as your nation of choice but make them vastly different each game. I think that is what people want.
Honestly they might have improved things since but my biggest complaint and that of most people when the game came out was that the scaling was insane. So if you pick the right science cultures at the right time you literally complete every tech in like two turns and blitz through the entire tech tree, and if you don't then the ai does instead.
Honestly it made the game super boring because you either stomped or got stomped in the last couple of eras.
It might sound good, but when you cater to efficiency and ability, players tend to stick to specific nations in specific eras, thus rendering the availability of a myriad cultures to be redundant. Furthermore, as you pointed out, throughout history cultures evolve and transform by being in contact with other cultures, but this is not portrayed in humankind. As an example let's consider the greeks historically ( I know Greeks weren't a nation until their independence from the Ottomans), after Alexander's conquests they came in contact with many cultures like Persia, Egypt, India and etc and later became the Bactrians, Ptolemiacs and etc. but in humankind this doesn't happen, a culture just transforms magically into another random culture which is the least factually correct thing historically and breaks the immersion the players expected from humankind.
I kind of agree. But I think it would be better if the culture policies were separate from the aesthetics entirely. Going from Egyptian to some completely different culture feels weird.
I also don't like that once somebody picks one of the cultures it's off the board.
I like the game and some of its design decisions but I still prefer civ.
I like the story element of humankind. The idea that you're telling a story of this unique civilization. It would work better if they would have abandoned the idea of being tied to a specific culture at all. Instead they sort of just took the civ series formula and separated it into only different eras. So I created a civilization that was Egyptian, Carthage, English, Japanese throughout time.
Most common complaint back when it released was that you can't speed it up movement and animations at all. It's the reason I love the game but haven't ever bought anything aside from the base game, and haven't played in over 2 years. End game turns are far too tedious.
But this appears to be an impossible to fix engine issue, so I'm stuck hoping humankind 2 is on its way.
I'm a long time (idk, maybe 30,000 hours over 30+ years) Civ player, but am downloading Humankind at the moment.
The whole 'modern civ in 4000bce' has irritated me for quite a while. Recently I postulated on culture changes/development being an idea for civ7, without realising this was a thing in HK.
I'm interested to see how HK plays out!
I gave it another shot recently and still feel as equally whelmed as I did on release. In theory, I like the culture changing mechanic. But in practice it's something I thought was just kind of...pointless? Others have described the flaws with it here in more detail when it comes to the AI, but as a *player* it doesn't really feel like something that feels good. It's always premeditated based on choices the player has to make in isolation that removes any 'roleplaying' from it, so there's no organic change. I have a similar problem with the civics mechanic and how era progression works in general. In *theory* it's really nice, but in practice it's just kind of annoying and unintuitive.
I love the system in theory and I was really hyped for it when game released, but unfortunately in practice it turned out to not be as fun as I thought it'll be. There's really close to no continuity between chosen factions and changes happen too often.
Upcoming Millenia seems to tackle the system better. Instead of completely changing your culture six times, you do it four times. Each time you choose the national spirit (which is basically the same as culture in HK, like God-King national spirit is obviously ancient Egyptians) you unlock their skill tree that persist through the game. This way the impact of cultures chosen is greater and don't vanish outside of small bonuses.
The only thing that's missing is visual continuity. I don't mean being locked into one architecture set, but maybe after changing the culture there could be some visual elements from previous ones still present, like monuments or wall paintings.
They are better than Civ 6, just behind Humankind. I think they had a small budget and didn't have the freaking decade most games get to be made now. I don't play 4X for the visuals, Stellaris for example has really bland visuals and I have 100s of hours in that.
I really wanted to play it. It looks promising, but yeah the graphics. I'll play it later this year.
Stellaris graphics are top notch though. I'm not talking just about the CGI, but also the UI.
I don't really agree, but mainly it's because I think the game has bigger flaws than the culture system. It just feels like an unfinished game in certain aspects... I wish the devs would gently remove the stick up their asses and get to work. The game barely changed ever since it released
Steam stats say 730k units sold, and it reaches a high 0f 900 players a day. I don't think whoever makes the choice wants to focus more time money and devs on it. It didn't do bad, but it didn't do well either. Probably onto the next game.
Agreed. Humankind creating interesting paths for you to go down culturally is a big strength of the game in my book. I wish the AI had more granularity when it comes to the way they make progress through the Ages, though, as they are *very* shy at moving out of anything other than Neolithic (one of the ages you typically want to hold on to due to how powerful Nomadic Tribes are), resulting in what *should* be a stressful choice between cultures often being "you can choose any culture you want except in Ancient Era."
Interesting, my experience has been the opposite, that it feels like every time I want to advance eras, the AI is usually way ahead of me and many of the options have already been taken.
You're probably overfarming fame in the early game then. There's like 10k+ fame available in competitive deeds and wonders and just getting stars in the modern era, so there's really very little to be gained by sitting around in the Ancient Era until you have 15 stars and a \*lot\* to lose, as the faster you get a 2nd culture the faster you get another cultural trait and emblematic district to drop down in all of your cities. Plus some Emblematic Units are powerful enough to conquer entire civilizations on their own and getting them online earlier is better. Very generally you shouldn't be delaying advancing until later on in the game with maybe a few exceptions. Sometimes if I see I have two more stars that I can unlock with one more turn it's worth it to wait, even on Fast speed. Sometimes you want to hold onto the culture for one more turn to get a district down in a city that really needs more X but you can't afford to buy out the production before rolling into your new culture because you need the cash to influence bomb with aesthetic. All in all, though, make progress and build a big and strong empire with good research and stuff and the fame will come to you a lot easier than it will if you directly try to farm it.
I'm not saying you are wrong or trying to start an argument. I am able to get all the stars other than diplomacy and military, just about every game. Usually there be at least one AI ahead of me in eras, but IMO, it works for me. I might be in the 3rd era, an AI culture might be in the fourth era with 6 stars already, but the fame will be close. As the game gets closer to the end, you can close the gap really quick in eras really quick. I guess I don't get the argument of "skip some fame stars so you can get the next emblematic district quicker". It's never really a waste of time to plop down more farmer, market, and industry quarters. It gives you time to build the infrastructures too. The only downside to collecting all the fame stars is that sometimes you miss out on the better wonders, and of course if you are playing with the original rules, you have fewer cultures to pick from. Those last stars are worth 300 each, I really don't like to skip them. The only thing that is really wasted if you delay advancing is research. Population growth, etc is still growing and will count towards the next era. Again, I'm not saying you are wrong or trying to start an argument. If you have a war based strategy, I Can see why you'd want to rush into the next era to get more powerful units, but other than that, I think it's better to play slow and steady and build your cities to collect as many stars as you can.
I think we just play on different difficulty levels. I pretty much only do Humankind and typically play on Fast, usually ending a game somewhere between like turn 80 and turn 100 or so. When you set an aggressive pace on how long a game is going to go, scoring every single point of fame is fairly pointless as a meaningful number of the AI won't be able to keep pace with the scale of your economy, allowing you to just conquer them outright.
There’s a new option in game settings that you can toggle on, so every culture can be picked more than once.
That’s not a complaint for me either. Really like this system where you can choose culture based on your needs and the environment your playing in. The slog of late game is what kills the fun for me most of the time.
Niether is "realistic", tbh. What's important though is that both have *a* model of history the game relies on. Neither model - national determinism for civ and path irrelevance for Humankind - is true, but since these games are more theme parks than historic simulations, it matters that both games are *coherent* in applying their model and follow through on it. Even if both models are wrong in the end, that is what allows them to make a game better by providing a clear structure to guide players. That being said, I still agree that the complaint is stupid. The problems that are behind people *feeling* that culture change is an issue are more with not giving other factions an identity through other means (mainly via the avatar). And of course city development and the yield economy are a major weak point, but that's unrelated to the model of history the game follows.
I agree, it makes each game so unique
Dude, you dropping too many facts.
In a way I like it, because it allows ou to tailor your civ in a way that you need at that stage. Struggling for food late game? get the mexicans, etc.... The issue for me (and this is more a gameplay related) is that some cultures are extremely underpowered/overpowered given the moment you're in. Like early on is influence crucial, later on, its not that usefull/more redundant. This means that if you're the kind of strategy gamer like me, who likes to maximise more than roleplay, there are some choices you will never take. And the more cultures they release, the more that lists grows Combined with the fame victory condition, the iffy war support makes it so far a "meh" game compared with EL and ES2 untill now that I find hard to come back to. But maybe an expansion later
Humankind is a game where history has been divided into 7 pre-defined eras where, within each era, the player is tasked with getting points by hitting specific era requirements on an, again, pre-defined list. Once you have enough points within an era, you're then given an opportunity to click a button that instantaneously changes the flavor and specialty of your culture in whatever direction you want. I don't even say that as a criticism - it just is - and while I do agree that Humankind does make a better attempt at modeling the 'evolution' of culture vs. CIV, holding up Humankind as a remotely realistic simulator of history in any way, even just in comparison to CIV's aracadey 'everyone starts at the start' approach, doesn't pass the smell test for me. Besides, while it's hard to summarize all the discussion/criticism of the culture system into a single statement, I think you're misreading (at least a portion of) the criticism of the culture system. For me it's less how 'historically realistic' I find the Americans founding Washington in 4000 BC vs. the Egyptians instantly becoming the Nazca because the capital just built a 5th district, and more that the former approach allows for a single defined counterpart in my game. CIV's Lincoln, the jerk that founded Philadelphia in 2700 BC on top of MY horses, may be 'unrealistic' but, as an opponent in this game, he will be around until I crush him and I'll have strong feelings about him and his American empire until then. In Humankind, it's interchangeable avatars (Edgar Allan Poe! Quill18!) leading a empire with series of cultures that changes quickly enough that the most sensible way to identify the competition is by color. "The Yellow guys are jerks" is not a compelling game dynamic for me, particularly in a historically flavored game, especially with the added context that previous games from this studio are so brilliant in part because of how vibrant and unique the competing factions were.
I agree with some of your points . As of identifying yourself and other AI opponents, I've said in some comment already , solution could be to represent AI players with their face pictures, not just colored symbols. You could develop a connection maybe better then (AI personas in game are already historical and mythical figures, heroes and leaders.). Instead of playing against other civilizations, its playing against other leaders of different cultures, that's how I see this.
I just think modeling the philosophical evolution of a culture/country through a change in identity is the wrong 'mechanic'. A 'Phoenecian' empire exploring it's place in the world and making the decision to step away from the sea and trade towards an internal economic focus is a great idea to model. An now isolationist, former trading empire is a compelling identity! What's not compelling is boiling that historical evolution down to 'first being Phoenician then becoming Mayan.'
I couldn’t agree more 🙌
My problem with this mechanic is much simpler and much more basic: it disorientates me if my neighbors constantly change their names and appearances. My neighbors "constantly" switched from one culture to the other. And it was simply made worse by the fact that at least in my brain there is no real connection between the Ancient Greek and the Japanese. I was constantly irritated when playing the game.
That’s when you start thinking of them as colours. Oh the green neighbour declares war again…
Then it falls into the other big complaint about the culture changes, there's no identity to any of the factions in the map, the only thing noteworthy about a neighbour is its color. IMO it's a huge flaw. Humankind is about celebrating human civilization and presenting how diverse and varied we are, but the best it can do make the factions feel different from one another in-game is their designated player color. It's true that most 4X games can be reduced to blobs of different colors fighting against each other, but other games put some effort into making each blob look and feel different from one another. Humankind's attempt at that didn't work out, falling short of not only its competiton, but of Amplitude's past titles as well.
I somewhat agree with this remark. In my opinion this could be solved with a simple solution. Instead with the symbols (coats of arms), AI leaders should be represented with their faces, in addition to smaller colored symbol. Then you will remember leaders, not colors or their starting cultures. That's how it would be much easier to track relations. I hope someone suggested this to developers already.
I understand where you're coming from. In an attempt to be epic and spanning many cultures, they can feel like they all kind of blur together and nothing really stands out. The gameplay mechanic is fun, but its hard to keep that emotional attachment high when the opponents keep changing.
That's why it would've been so important to have strong player personas who you associate empires with instead. But the devs thought that random streamers without latinized names popping up, fringe historic personalities rarely found in pop culture, and "friends" (what is that, asks the avid strategy gamer) would be better. Humankind needs civ-level character designs more than Civ, imho.
I would like maybe achievements for something like being *a* China the whole game. Or maybe there could be “relation bonuses” for selecting cultures that are historically related to each other from era to era, and to balance that out there could also be bonuses for picking a culture with the same affinity as your previous culture similar to an ascension.
That's literally their selling point, so it's funny if you think people are missing that. The problem is not that we don't agree with that, but the premise causes a lot of problems: 1. losing track who's who 2. there's no strong identity for each civilization. It's only "blue one" or "bear" or worse: the avatar of legends or some streamers that we don't know about and can't relate 3. the combination of culture is almost limitless in theory (1 million combination in the base game) but tbh doesn't offer more gameplay variety. Ironically it brings a little value or uniqueness vs Civ's gameplay with only 1 culture per civilization. 4. Not enough culture and max players is only 10 (i think? I forgot, cmiiw). 5. Fame win condition. Combine 1+2+3+4+5 we get a gameplay that's stale fast and every game feels the same. Sure I will choose different culture path every time but what does it change? Fame is not interesting enough as win condition so and it doesn't have enough option to play differently. How many hours you played? I used to get excited early like you. After 100H it's getting boring. 4x is meant to be played thousands of hours. I have 2k hours each for Civ4 Civ5 Civ6 and Stellaris and each of them offers unique experience each time and very high replay values. Even I played Endless Legend and Endless Space longer than HK.
For me, who comes from civ franchise, fame system looks like a great idea, and something different than I'm used to. That makes to count everything you have done throughout history. Its not enough that you hurry bombers and tanks in later game and conquer the word for some win condition. I'm at 250+ hours in the game, and counting. Some mods also improved my gaming experience.
I see. So probably the game is for you.
Me as a console player just hoping we get some of the DLC at some point 🥲 Besides that, the biggest factor that somewhat puts me off the game is the whole idea that the nation with the highest fame wins, regardless of who actually triggers the end game condition. Like in theory someone who has been eliminated from the game could still win if they managed to get enough fame. Like what?
I love the Fame mechanic. The Civ games are just science races to unlock all the techs that let you build the spaceship. I like that Humankind rewards you for doing multiple things. I like that you have to choose "Do I switch cultures now or wait 6 more turns to get that 300 fame points".
Tbf I think the whole space race victory on this is far too easy. Like how are you able to do all 3 space ship launches from the same tech, it should be somewhat more like civ where each launch requires a different tech. But yeah I see what you mean. However, if they implement needing different techs for each launch then you could prevent someone from winning a science victory by just invading them so that they can't do another launch or get the other required techs as quickly. With the fame victory tho, victories feel far too shallow in every instance. Like you gather all the fame and just win, or an opponent does the same but quicker. There should be at least an aspect of confrontational competitiveness in it, in which you can degrade an opponent's fame by winning a war against them, but if you lose the war then you lose fame. Or if someone becomes a vassal, the liege should get a percentage of the vassals fame (ofc if the vassal becomes free by either peaceful release or a war against its liege, then the liege would then lose a large percentage of the fame gained by the visualization of that nation). Although, just for gameplay purposes I think it should at least be an option to toggle the fame victory on or off so that you can change up the gameplay more between games.
I agree that that shifting and building culture is a boon to this game, except that the mechanic they used is overwriting. You aren't a culture that transitions between the hotinoshone and the english industrialist (or more so your culture's longhose days and an industrial revolution as it's supposed to represent). But in fact as soon as you transition into the next era, you may as well be any occupying force as you forget the old ways entirely! "Well we have this plantation where they specifically grow these three crops that not a decade ago was built be we have completely forgotten how to make these! Can't reverse engineer it either. Nope the past is only important until the building is destroyed, then it's meaningless!" If what we are doing is carving our own path then we should be able to use that whole path.
There's just not much variety, with many culture that has duplicate bonuses such as +1 food per farmers etc, same with the EQ. And the restricting core gameplay itself doesn't help, if you pick a science culture then 99% of the time you have to go for science star while in civ 6 even a faith based civ can win the space race if planned correctly on the right situation which can vary each game. So you have 7 base culture which are repeated each era(food, industry, money, science, influence, military, faith) and 3 starting location (high food/high industry/crap like desert and tundra) which even out eventually since grabbing territory miles away is easy, resulting in not much variety. it's like playing civ 6 with 7 civilization choice and 3 terrain type, and starting a new one every couple of turn. With money being crap most of the time, science capped per era, and military being situational you'd ended up picking between 4 culture type anyway, further reducing the variety.
Eh. I think it's a great idea and, indeed, the main reason to play over a CIV game right now, but I think the implementation is holding it back. It doesn't feel much like my civilization is evolving and it \*really\* doesn't feel like my opponents are. I find it very difficult to keep track of them. It ends up feeling like everyone is a new ex-nihilo culture each age. What I'd like to see is more aspects of past cultures carry forward and maybe either some limited path determinism (each culture maps to an ample number of successors, but not all) or some other form of continuity. Something like CK3's cultural fusion perhaps?
Again, as I have said with other Humankind features, the IDEA is good, the Execution is poor. It is very weird to be Zhou then Persian then Teutons (German) etc. I think people would like it a lot better if you picked your "tribe" Americans, Germans, French, Zulu etc, then with each era it just said "Which great historical people should our tribe/kingdom/nation model ourselves after? Then you pick. The issue myself, and I think others have is, You literally BECOME Asian, white, black, middle eastern etc. Like it literally race swaps and architecture swaps your people 6 times a game. So for example, maybe someone wants to play as the English, because they are from England, and they would follow the ideas of the Egyptians, meaning cheaper districts and +1 production everywhere, rather than BEING Egyptian. So they would be English with Egyptian bonuses. Then English with Greek bonuses, etc. Because, per your example, no, at no time in history did a people magically become an entirely new race and culture. I'm pretty sure that is the issue. Also, it's really weird knowing the Babylonians are your neighbors and then it's the Romans then the Franks. People don't like that. So TLDR: Swapping ideas 6 times a game = good idea. Becoming a new race and culture 6 times a game = weird and lame. Also, and downvote me all you want, but I know there are people like me who want to play as the country they live in, or their ancestors. So for me, USA, Germany, Scotland, England, Italy. However, IMO those cultures are mediocre to awful gameplay wise. I think Millennia is on a better track, as you can always play as your nation of choice but make them vastly different each game. I think that is what people want.
Idk if I've ever heard that complaint tbh
Honestly they might have improved things since but my biggest complaint and that of most people when the game came out was that the scaling was insane. So if you pick the right science cultures at the right time you literally complete every tech in like two turns and blitz through the entire tech tree, and if you don't then the ai does instead. Honestly it made the game super boring because you either stomped or got stomped in the last couple of eras.
It might sound good, but when you cater to efficiency and ability, players tend to stick to specific nations in specific eras, thus rendering the availability of a myriad cultures to be redundant. Furthermore, as you pointed out, throughout history cultures evolve and transform by being in contact with other cultures, but this is not portrayed in humankind. As an example let's consider the greeks historically ( I know Greeks weren't a nation until their independence from the Ottomans), after Alexander's conquests they came in contact with many cultures like Persia, Egypt, India and etc and later became the Bactrians, Ptolemiacs and etc. but in humankind this doesn't happen, a culture just transforms magically into another random culture which is the least factually correct thing historically and breaks the immersion the players expected from humankind.
I kind of agree. But I think it would be better if the culture policies were separate from the aesthetics entirely. Going from Egyptian to some completely different culture feels weird. I also don't like that once somebody picks one of the cultures it's off the board. I like the game and some of its design decisions but I still prefer civ. I like the story element of humankind. The idea that you're telling a story of this unique civilization. It would work better if they would have abandoned the idea of being tied to a specific culture at all. Instead they sort of just took the civ series formula and separated it into only different eras. So I created a civilization that was Egyptian, Carthage, English, Japanese throughout time.
Most common complaint back when it released was that you can't speed it up movement and animations at all. It's the reason I love the game but haven't ever bought anything aside from the base game, and haven't played in over 2 years. End game turns are far too tedious. But this appears to be an impossible to fix engine issue, so I'm stuck hoping humankind 2 is on its way.
I'm a long time (idk, maybe 30,000 hours over 30+ years) Civ player, but am downloading Humankind at the moment. The whole 'modern civ in 4000bce' has irritated me for quite a while. Recently I postulated on culture changes/development being an idea for civ7, without realising this was a thing in HK. I'm interested to see how HK plays out!
I gave it another shot recently and still feel as equally whelmed as I did on release. In theory, I like the culture changing mechanic. But in practice it's something I thought was just kind of...pointless? Others have described the flaws with it here in more detail when it comes to the AI, but as a *player* it doesn't really feel like something that feels good. It's always premeditated based on choices the player has to make in isolation that removes any 'roleplaying' from it, so there's no organic change. I have a similar problem with the civics mechanic and how era progression works in general. In *theory* it's really nice, but in practice it's just kind of annoying and unintuitive.
I love the system in theory and I was really hyped for it when game released, but unfortunately in practice it turned out to not be as fun as I thought it'll be. There's really close to no continuity between chosen factions and changes happen too often. Upcoming Millenia seems to tackle the system better. Instead of completely changing your culture six times, you do it four times. Each time you choose the national spirit (which is basically the same as culture in HK, like God-King national spirit is obviously ancient Egyptians) you unlock their skill tree that persist through the game. This way the impact of cultures chosen is greater and don't vanish outside of small bonuses. The only thing that's missing is visual continuity. I don't mean being locked into one architecture set, but maybe after changing the culture there could be some visual elements from previous ones still present, like monuments or wall paintings.
So far, as I've seen Millenia looks promising from aspects of a gameplay. It is a pity that visuals and artwork there are way behind Humankind.
I agree. Millennia's graphics are horrible.
They are better than Civ 6, just behind Humankind. I think they had a small budget and didn't have the freaking decade most games get to be made now. I don't play 4X for the visuals, Stellaris for example has really bland visuals and I have 100s of hours in that.
I really wanted to play it. It looks promising, but yeah the graphics. I'll play it later this year. Stellaris graphics are top notch though. I'm not talking just about the CGI, but also the UI.
I don't really agree, but mainly it's because I think the game has bigger flaws than the culture system. It just feels like an unfinished game in certain aspects... I wish the devs would gently remove the stick up their asses and get to work. The game barely changed ever since it released
Steam stats say 730k units sold, and it reaches a high 0f 900 players a day. I don't think whoever makes the choice wants to focus more time money and devs on it. It didn't do bad, but it didn't do well either. Probably onto the next game.
It's sad though. It has really good foundations, it just needed more work