HUMANKIND - Amplitude's historical turn-based strategy

[flyingjohn]

Fucking finally somebody talks about the gameplay and not reddit things.

 

[spectre]

Well, when it comes to reddit things, the game does make a fucking jumble of all the cultures. Last game I played, I started as Olmecs, then switched to Greeks, at this point my empire consisted cities named - San Lorenzo and Athenai (you can probably rename them, but I couldn't be bothered) I also encoutered a nigra celt with cornrows, looked odd as fuck because the game keeps the head of the avatar you create but slaps a garb suitable to your current culture on top of it.
The end result is: everyone can be anybody, so it's not like in a CiV game where if you see Montezuma or Ghandi, you pretty much know where you stand. At least it gives you some unpredictability.
I guess it might be irritating if you're overly sensitive to this sort of things, but at this point I just laught at it, might as well be a fantasy game at this point, and the question still stands: if it's actually any good.

I'm still looking for the optimal way to do things in the first two eras, so I'll just keep restarting for a while. I think I might still be getting something fundamentally wrong, because my score keeps shifting up and down all the time. One moment I'm top of the ladder, then the AIs pull a few hundred points out of their ass and I drop to the very bottom. I'm not too keen on how the game stunts your expansion by racking the cost up, so it feels like you're dragging through mud e.g. having to pay population points to build units (on the other hand, you can dismiss a military unit to immediately get that pop back, so it sorta evens out). I'm usually stuck at two cities for quite some time, and when I can establish the third, all the land is suddenly settled by independents and other AIs as if springing out of nowhere. There's plenty of shit to build (each tech unlocks at least one or two things), and it's a bit difficult with just two building queues to work with, and the same queue is used for districts, resource extractors, infrastructure and units. They completely ditched the concept of worker units, so stuff like roads is built automatically.

Also, am I retarded or is there no minimap option in this game? You have to zoom out for some decent (but by no means excellent) view of things. They dropped the ball with this imo, because while the terrain is purdy, it's really hard to see shit on it.
Same goes for the menus. They look good when there's only a handful items to display, but once there's more options, you're in for a lot of scrolling to find the right thing. Sure, you can filter production queues, but seriously, what the fuck.

 

[Saerain]

It's funny how my first impression of the game when revealed was like the polar opposite of how it ended up. "Ooh, Civilization finally gets competition, and it seems primed for some cool cultural stuff and the art style looks better." lel kek kill me

 

[Heroic Liberator]

Well, when it comes to reddit things, the game does make a fucking jumble of all the cultures. Last game I played, I started as Olmecs, then switched to Greeks, at this point my empire consisted cities named - San Lorenzo and Athenai (you can probably rename them, but I couldn't be bothered) I also encoutered a nigra celt with cornrows, looked odd as fuck because the game keeps the head of the avatar you create but slaps a garb suitable to your current culture on top of it.

I think that the devs had a good idea that they've implemented quite poorly. Dynamic cultures and custom(izable) leaders are a plus over Civ, too bad that it wasn't done properly.

The list of names for founded cities should've been tied to the first culture that you selected as to keep things thematically sound. Perhaps adding the option for all of them to be appropriately renamed if you evolve into another culture and choose to switch cultural namelists.

As for the custom character models, they look absolutely atrocious due to the design style being a schizophrenic mix of a realistic portrayal of human physiognomy done in an airbrushy (?) style and a caricatural one which accentuates facial shapes (i.e. you end up with alien-looking characters most of the time). And don't even get me started on the various hairstyles available being an unbalanced mess (too few short haircuts in particular) and the various facial hair options looking like shit due to the low detail textures making everything look patchy (kinda reminded me of DAI). I ended up going for a bald guy, but he still looked mediocre at best due to the way in which you only get to shape the lower half of the character's face.

Overall, in this regard. Although I might still enjoy it if the gameplay proves itself to be good.

 

[covr]

I've played a couple of hours on default settings (inc.difficulty) and the balance is off or I am some fucking genius, as in 1800 BC I've entered middle ages and have approx.2500 points being the first on the ladder. Second civ has 1300 points and is way behind me in every possible area.

And I've been doing basically a blind run, just trying to be as nazi as possible+doing random shit. Maybe being aggressive on the standard difficulty level is enough to stomp enemies? I know for sure that none of my cities has been built in optimal way, my wars were sloppy and I've done really bad decisions. So yeah, AI might be ass-dumb.

Generally I can agree with almost everything that spectre wrote, UI is bad&ugly, however I liked that narrator and his random comments. Technology matters, strong army matters, diplomacy seems to be complex but it was always more optimal to attack some neighbor than trying to do anything with soft power. Amplitude invested some time to give some love to small little details and on general level it all works together. But in the end...it was not that interesting to keep me going, probably because of the lack of challenge. I need to play this again after some patches and on higher diff level.

IMO The Old World is a much better game right now, just more interesting and with better AI.

 

[Raghar]

So, it's available courtesy of FTL, so I can have a quick look-see. Played ~60 turns, so I'm still learning the ropes, but I think it's enough for a first impression.
That UI is... something else. Sometimes the close button is in the upper right corner (as Lord intended), other times it's centered, for some screens you need to click again on the button that opened it.
My biggest gripe with it is that you really have to strain your eyes to find the important information cause everything looks the same and the logic as to how it's organized is very alien to me.

Welcome to Endless legend. Now without Auriga.

 

[ArchAngel]

So, it's available courtesy of FTL, so I can have a quick look-see. Played ~60 turns, so I'm still learning the ropes, but I think it's enough for a first impression.
That UI is... something else. Sometimes the close button is in the upper right corner (as Lord intended), other times it's centered, for some screens you need to click again on the button that opened it.
My biggest gripe with it is that you really have to strain your eyes to find the important information cause everything looks the same and the logic as to how it's organized is very alien to me.

Welcome to Endless legend. Now without Auriga.

Endless Legend had cool combat and hero units and really unique factions. I doubt this game has any of that if it is trying to be a Civilization type game.

 

[Infinitron]

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/...-authenticity-nudges-the-scales-away-from-fun

Humankind review - thoughtful authenticity nudges the scales away from fun
Flat earth.

Amplitude's big play for the historical grand strategy crown is ambitious and considered, but it's missing a little magic.

Ideology's always been a part of grand, 4X strategy games. It's there in the specific, overt kind of way, as in: turning the "authoritarianism" dial up or down on your empire's ideology screen. And it's also in the layer behind that, ideology as in the ideology of the developer, the thought process, the reasoning, the thing that informs all that, which they may not even be aware of - why they went for an authoritarianism dial in the first place and why it works the way it does.

Say "ideology" too much and you start sounding like Slavoj Žižek stuck on a loop, so I'll move on. The point is in Humankind, the new, Civilization-style historical grand strategy from Endless Legend and Space developer Amplitude, capital-I ideology is handled smartly in a kind of consequential, sliding scale system, and the considered little-I ideology of the developer is regularly felt. Amplitude has wanted to make a game like this since the day it was founded, I'm told, and a desire to do things right, whatever right may be, is front and centre. Regardless of the outcome, I love it for that.

Everything else aside, Humankind plays like the most considered, most philosophical, most historically authentic (if not accurate, obviously) game of its kind. It plays like a group of very intelligent people have sat down in a room together and really thought about doing things in the most true-to-life way possible. In many ways that makes it the 4X game I've always wanted, the one that's systems work in a broadly similar manner to the way they do here in the real world, that's history is aligned, systemically, with actual humankind's. The only problem is having played it now, I'm not sure I actually want that anymore.

By far the closest parallel to Humankind is the reigning historical 4X itself, Civilization. If you've played Civ, especially a modern one, you can immediately play Humankind. You build cities on hexes and exploit the natural resources of the earth, you advance through a scientific tech tree, spread your religious or cultural influence, build and discover wonders, and balance all the many socio-economic strains on society as you compete against other civilisations, human or AI, to win the game.

In fact, Humankind basically feels like a Civilization sequel, insofar as it's following the formula right down to the series' famous rule of thirds: about two thirds of Humankind is Civ through and through, and a third - basically two big things - has been reworked with a twist. The first of those big differences is the win condition.

Fame is how you win, but painting the map your colour can still very much play a part.

There is just one way to win a game of Humankind: fame. Fame is a numerical score, earned from achieving various in-game feats along the way, and the player with the highest score at the end of the game wins. What actually brings about the end of the game can vary: reaching a set number of turns, eliminating or vassalising all other players, completing the tech tree, launching a Mars colony, collecting all of the final era's stars (more on that in a moment) or, interestingly, rendering the entire planet inhospitable for human life, are what bring about the final totting up.

Like most aspects of Humankind, the thinking behind this is admirable. First, Amplitude wants to remove the "frustration" of someone else sneaking a win against you through a different win condition, say a culture victory, right when you were close to a science victory of your own. Second, it comes back to the desire for as much historical authenticity as possible. When we think about the most renowned civilizations, the thinking goes, many of them are no longer around - but they're still famous, still known, if not necessarily admired, for what they did, and so that's the way it works in Humankind. You can win a game even after you get eliminated, if by the end of the game nobody else can match the score you managed to accrue.

To support this comes a system of era stars - literally gold stars you can earn, like a good little student, only you can opt to be a student of completely brutalising your enemies at war or expanding your territory with force, if that's what you fancy. Each era, apart from the very first, has seven categories for you to earn era stars in, and three stars to be earned in each, so up 21 total per era (plus a few more for achieving certain one-off feats, like being the first to discover a natural wonder or link two cities by rail, and a special "competitive spirit" star that creates a kind of natural catch-up system to maintain balance). Each era star you get grants you a wad of fame points to add to your score, so generally the more you collect each era the better - but that comes with a large and very clever caveat.

Spoiler

For my 'bastard' era, I chose the British.
You get more fame for stars of the same category as your current culture, which is where Humankind's second big departure from Civilization - and most other grand strategies - comes in. Rather than choosing a single culture or leader at the beginning of the game, like Genghis Khan or the Greeks, everyone starts out with the same blank slate: a single nomadic tribe, that slowly grows as you explore. When you advance to a new era, you then choose your culture for that era, and alongside the usual things like a unique unit, passive ability and building, comes a specialty. So, the Mongols' specialty is combat, which means when you earn a combat era star for defeating a certain number of enemy units, you get more fame than you would for other era stars like science ones.

Again, it comes down to authenticity, the philosophy of doing things in Humankind in a way that represents real life. Humans, broadly speaking, didn't start out as distinct cultures like Romans and the British Empire, we started as small nomadic tribes and we adapted along the way, building societies and cultures around the many circumstances of life. So it goes, on paper pretty ingeniously, in Humankind. You might start out prioritising your fighting capabilities because you settled right by some angry independent tribes, or an aggressive rival culture, and so your first culture of choice might be a combat-oriented one, granting you bonuses of that kind and more fame for doing that combat well. And even within that specialism there are nuances - some militarist cultures have more defensive bonuses than offensive, and vice versa.

Higher level play then requires you to think more proactively about how your choice of culture affects your fame, rather than just reacting to the world around you. Doing well militarily, for instance, might have meant you set yourself up with a city full of industrial districts (makers quarters, as they're known in Humankind) to help pump out warriors fast. Nearby enemies vanquished, that sets you up rather nicely for an era of building, so picking a "builder" culture next, rewarding you for simply constructing more districts, would be a smart move. And you might think further ahead than that, building a load of science districts (research quarters) to earn builder stars during your builder era then picking a science specialist for the following one, capitalising again.

Canon elephants, no-brainer.

There's also a couple of clever trade-offs that come with the system. You just need seven of the 21 available era stars to advance to the next era, and cultures are first-come first-served, so you're incentivised to rush to the next one before you lose out. But, once you move on you can't collect any remaining stars from the previous era, so the longer you stay in an era, the more stars - and thus fame - you can collect overall. There's also the option to "transcend" your culture to the next one, which means keeping everything the same and missing out on shiny new units or buildings, but getting a 10 per cent boost to all the fame you generate.

So, you have a more true-to-life start to the game, and a more true-to-life system of cultures for advancing through it, and a more true-to-life way of actually winning, victory as memorability or renown. Put it all together and you have a remarkably clever system, in theory. In theory.

In practice, there are some snags. Alongside the authenticity of it, one of the stated goals for having you move between cultures as you progress is variety. There are millions of combinations, quite literally, and so the theory is that no two games will ever be the same. But actually, adapting from one specialty to another, as the circumstances demand, means the game can turn into something of a blur, rushing you towards that soupy late-game state you find in similar grand strategies, where you might have one or two outstanding specialties but really need to be doing a bit of everything for them to work anyway - money to pay for your troops, science to keep them advanced, industry to build them fast, food to supply the population, and so on. The endgame everything-bagel state is far and away the worst part of grand strategy games as a result of this, requiring busywork and attention in every direction, and so anything that makes games feel more like that rather than less is a problem.

More than that though, an oft-forgotten part of what makes a truly great strategy game of any kind, especially the grand ones, is role-playing. This is, really, the entire point of the wider genre: be it Stellaris or Civ or anything else, you play these games in order to sit back with a character-appropriate drink and assume the role of blustering commander-in-chief, or omnipotent demi-god, or shrewd technocrat, and this is hard to do when you're actually only a technocrat for a couple dozen turns before the next era comes around. You'll quickly find yourself rushing through roles like a one-man-theatre, shoving a lab coat over one arm of your military fatigues before you've whipped off the builder's hardhat. You can stay as one culture throughout, admittedly, through the transcendence option, but it will take some considerable skill to win a game that way, especially against militaristic foes with unique tanks rolling in or special fighter jets overhead, and the implication is very much for you to chop and change as you go.

I'm terrible at character creators. I tried to go for the sort of wizened tribe elder vibe and ended up with off-brand Aragorn, who looked very odd as his era attire went from robe to redcoat to labcoat.

Similarly, the victory conditions play into that. I pick Genghis Khan or the Imperial Space Slugs or whoever because I want to go for a military victory and play that way from the off, with a bit of adaptation where necessary, and that clarity of purpose is what separates one game from the next. And the surprise of an enemy pipping me to the post is, in a way, the point. The end of a good grand strategy is tense, you holding off an enemy horde while you try to rush through the construction of a final spaceport, or buy up whatever artefacts you can find to steal some last-minute tourists from someone on the verge of a cultural win. Focusing on era stars, which are undymanic - as in once you get one you can't lose it - means the systems are largely quite insular, even if you can technically use plenty of inter-player tools, like influence-bombing a territory to make it yours or just ploughing through a city with your army to reduce the population of someone going for an agrarian star, but that's less sophisticated than you'd hope for a game of this kind.

Finally, there is just a lingering sense that Humankind feels a tiny bit flat. It's a beautifully presented game in a vacuum, with a clean and mostly well-explained UI (although there are a few bits of awkward copy, and the tutorial never actually explains how building a city works, just that it can be done by converting outposts, which seems like an oversight, but these are very forgivable in the early days of a launch). But there's a missing spark, a missing celebration, in a way, that's quite stark when compared to its peers. There's no fanfare at all for unlocking new technologies - a good, if slightly sarky narrator only popping up on occasion - and the soundtrack again is good but a little unspectacular, no Baba Yetu or Creation and Beyond. These are games about all of humanity, about the wonders and horrors and dreams and nightmares of all that humans can do. There's an obligation on the historical 4X, above all other games, to inspire fear and awe, and Humankind can often appear to think mere appreciation is enough.

It's a crying shame, because the package as a whole is great. The ideology system - little-I - is a highlight, a series of left-right axes that your civilisation is nudged between according to civics you enact and decisions you make on pop-up narrative events. The further you go towards one ideology's end, like authoritarianism, say, the greater the related bonus and the greater the hit to your overall stability, or how likely your cities are to revolt. It makes sense! A lot of sense, as so much of this game does, filtering through clever societal commentary through mechanical nuance, the strategy game's golden ideal. Religion is very simple and somewhat unplugged from other mechanics - you get to add a new tenet when you hit a new follower threshold, you don't get them if you get converted - but it's effective. Diplomacy is mostly functional, which is about as good as diplomacy's ever been in a video game, so no worries there.

The tech tree, and much of the game, is beautifully realised, but there's not enough fanfare around all the lovely art to make it pop, or feel like much of an event. The combat meanwhile is a real highlight, I auto-resolved almost nothing because it's just too much fun to watch an elephant with a cannon on its back blow things up.

And combat, in particular, is a delight. Humankind's got Civ beat there, and plenty others. It's like a lighter version of something like Age of Wonders, where an overworld clash is zoomed in to a simplified XCOM-style tactical battle, taking place over a few hexes of battlefield. There's good nuance to it - elevation and sightlines are crucial, as is positioning and, at higher levels of play, a good understanding of what all the many units are capable of. It works well, is quick and breezy and deep if you want it to be. In many ways it reflects much of Humankind as a game: a lighter touch than some others in the genre maybe, more accessible once you get past the typical new-strategy-game fog, and clean, elegant, thoroughly thought-out.

The problem is the thinking-out is where the problems arise, too. It might be trite to say, but Humankind seems to have been made on an ideology slider of its own. Playfulness on one end, authenticity on the other. Too much towards either end of the axis and you lose stability, lose the fine balance of what makes a great historical strategy sing, and for the moment Humankind's just a smidge too far to the latter. It's missing a little magic, the wildcard element of a Great Person, the human touch of named, well-renowned faction leaders as opposed to your custom, but otherwise mannequin-esque avatar. Or those villainous, caricatured opponents that stick in the memory, instead of whoever it is behind "the green faction", who's name changes every couple dozen turns.

Still. Amplitude has promised to support Humankind for some time, and these games inevitably change over the months and years after launch - especially ones built on open development like this. Hopefully an opportunity might pop up that lets them nudge things just a little further towards the fun, because if the studio does manage to strike the right balance further down the line, they'll still be onto a winner.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

Fucking finally somebody talks about the gameplay and not reddit things.

it's a mod for endless legend. quite literally. not a total conversion, just a mod, with some civ6 stuff glued upon.

 

[ferratilis]

This is the best review of this game I've seen so far, and mirrors my experience with the game. It just made me want to reinstall one of the Civs, which may be a bit unfair to this game because it brings some new things to the table. For someone who has never played Civ before, it might seem good, though.

https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561197989697823/recommended/1124300/

I get why they decided to do it this way. Mao Zhedong fighting Napoleon with war elephants in 1000BC was always a bit of a running joke in the old Civ games. So instead of playing a single civ from start to finish, Humankind has you switching to a different civ every time you advance to the next age.

The result is a complete sense of schizophrenia and alienation. You start as Egypt, then turn into Rome, then become England, Korea, then France. Meanwhile, they're all being led by the same blonde pale dude (your avatar), cosplaying and looking super out-of-place half the time. Your cities are still called Memphis, Thebes, etc. The architecture just bizarrely changes from Egyptian to Roman, then suddenly East Asian, then suddenly European again. There's absolutely no sense of consistency, theme, or ownership. Pretty soon, you're just minmaxing the abstract game mechanics, getting your numbers up, and stomping the other nondescript, schizophrenic cosplayers without any feeling of leading a people through history.

Meanwhile, the same thing is happening with your neighbors: you start next to Harrappans (ancient Indians), so you've gotten used to thinking of them as Indians. You're intuitively expecting an Indian culture to be developing next to you. But now they're Celts. And now they're suddenly something else. The idiot on the other side is Mycenean-Hun-Polish-Aztec-Whateverthehell. You feel no sense of relatability or connection to the other civs, because you don't even know how you're supposed to visualize them in your head. Pretty soon, you're only killing them or ignoring them.

Ironically, this approach also gives you less, not more freedom. Want to play England? Nope, wait until the middle ages. Want to play Russia? Wait until the game is nearly over. On the highest difficulty settings, you also have to be mindful of the bonuses/abilities each civ gives you, which further restricts you to only a couple options that are actually viable in your situation.

On that note, Humankind also sacrificed one of the main things that gave the old Civ games so much of their personality - the cast of historical leaders. You won't get to feel that gravitas and weight of dealing with Alexander Macedon, Chingis Khan, or Lenin. Instead, the aforementioned schizophrenic, faceless cosplayers periodically disturb your minmaxing, forcing you to remember who the hell they're supposed to be during this particular five-minute interval.

This is 180 degrees from the incredibly diverse, flavorful factions in Endless Legend and Endless Space 2, where you really feel that you're playing a very distinct faction with its own special character and feeling, surrounded by other interesting people. Amplitude rejected one of the main things that made their games so good.

The aesthetics also rub me the wrong way, although I have the same complaint about Civ 6. The avatars are fidgeting and grimacing like BuzzFeed eunuchs, not world leaders. The art is happy-campy-colorful, which forms a surreal backdrop to the war, starvation, industrial pollution, and tyranny that is supposedly unfolding in front of you. The game seems to struggle to take itself seriously, which doesn't exactly help the player take it seriously.

The underlying mechanics are mostly very solid, Amplitude knows what they're doing as always. There's a well-made game somewhere underneath all that. Unfortunately, that's not enough to salvage a game devoid of any immersion or sense of investment.

I have to make this a thumbs down, because these problems can't be patched out or fixed with DLC. I'm a big respecter of Amplitude and it hurts like hell to criticize them, but Humankind doesn't live up to their previous games.

I apologize for being verbose.

 

[flyingjohn]

Fucking finally somebody talks about the gameplay and not reddit things.

it's a mod for endless legend. quite literally. not a total conversion, just a mod, with some civ6 stuff glued upon.

There is not a single element of civ 6 in this game.And if there is ,it was probably first introduced in a amplitude game.
It is just endless legend civ style.
In fact it shares a lot with civ 4 instead of 5/6.

 

[Zarniwoop]

Fucking finally somebody talks about the gameplay and not reddit things.

it's a mod for endless legend. quite literally. not a total conversion, just a mod, with some civ6 stuff glued upon.

So, pretty much what I predicted from the video?

Fucking finally somebody talks about the gameplay and not reddit things.

it's a mod for endless legend. quite literally. not a total conversion, just a mod, with some civ6 stuff glued upon.

There is not a single element of civ 6 in this game.And if there is ,it was probably first introduced in a amplitude game.
It is just endless legend civ style.
In fact it shares a lot with civ 4 instead of 5/6.

Well this is interesting because Civ 6 is just Civ 5, Endless Legend style and dumbed down. Many concepts in Civ 6 actually came from Amplitude games. Specifically Endless Legend.

Specialized city districts spanning multiple tiles being the most glaringly obvious one. Clear rip-off from EL into Civ 6.

 

[flyingjohn]

Well this is interesting because Civ 6 is just Civ 5,

No.
Civ 5 is a very small empire sim city focused game. Civ 6 is ics unleashed.
Diplomacy is night and day because of the favors system(probably not called that but it is the same thing from beyond earth).
The only thing they have in common is 1upt and denouncement,everything else is different.Even the bucket filling meme has been changed into a separate tech tree.

 

[Zarniwoop]

Well this is interesting because Civ 6 is just Civ 5,

No.
Civ 5 is a very small empire sim city focused game. Civ 6 is ics unleashed.
Diplomacy is night and day because of the favors system(probably not called that but it is the same thing from beyond earth).
The only thing they have in common is 1upt and denouncement,everything else is different.Even the bucket filling meme has been changed into a separate tech tree.

So you're just going to ignore the rest of the post about the Endless Legend elements?

El "inspired" Civ 6 which "inspired" Peoplekind

 

[spectre]

Look, you guys need to understand one thing, there is no Civ after number 4. It really simplifies the discussion
and justifies why some of us keep digging to find redeeming features for GenderNonspecificPersonKind, we haven't had a civ game in a bit.

Everything else aside, Humankind plays like the most considered, most philosophical, most historically authentic (if not accurate, obviously) game of its kind. It plays like a group of very intelligent people have sat down in a room together and really thought about doing things in the most true-to-life way possible. In many ways that makes it the 4X game I've always wanted, the one that's systems work in a broadly similar manner to the way they do here in the real world, that's history is aligned, systemically, with actual humankind's. The only problem is having played it now, I'm not sure I actually want that anymore.

ROTFLing at this. Please don't use "historically authentic" in the same sentence with Humankind.
I know credibility is a foreign concept to gaym journos, and I haven't read them in a while, but it seems they still find new ways to start digging once they hit rock bottom.
Though I suppose, this is the target audience.

Now, about the game itself, watch the autoresolve button, people. It works sorta well for animals (sometimes I think I'm even getting slightly better results than doing it myself),
but I just now autoresolved a 100 vs 30 str. siege and the AI managed to win it but... lost fucking lost all my units. SMH.

 

[flyingjohn]

Well this is interesting because Civ 6 is just Civ 5,

No.
Civ 5 is a very small empire sim city focused game. Civ 6 is ics unleashed.
Diplomacy is night and day because of the favors system(probably not called that but it is the same thing from beyond earth).
The only thing they have in common is 1upt and denouncement,everything else is different.Even the bucket filling meme has been changed into a separate tech tree.

So you're just going to ignore the rest of the post about the Endless Legend elements?

El "inspired" Civ 6 which "inspired" Peoplekind

I am not ignoring anything.
I quoted the part of your message which is wrong on every single level.Anything past that is true but meaningless to the civ 6 is dumbed down civ v mod.
Civ 6 has plenty of complexity and interesting elements compared to 5(just the return to government types instead of boring buckets is a huge incline).But is never integrated properly so it is a complete failure compared to v.

 

[Zarniwoop]

I am not ignoring anything.
I quoted the part of your message which is wrong on every single level.Anything past that is true but meaningless to the civ 6 is dumbed down civ v mod.
Civ 6 has plenty of complexity and interesting elements compared to 5(just the return to government types instead of boring buckets is a huge incline).But is never integrated properly so it is a complete failure compared to v.

Didn't argue that.

I didn't like civ 5 when it came out, apart from the sleek interface. It's massively dumbed down from 4, even with all the expansions. You can still find my opinions on the Codex if you search. Civ 6 was shit on a whole other level, made me appreciate 5 more.

But that's not the point. This is not about civ 5 vs 6. The point was you said there is no similarity between Civ 6 and peoplekind. Which is not true since Civ 6 borrowed a lot from EL.

 

[spectre]

A few riveting tales from the world of Personkind.
Met my first black, female, pacifist hun. Guess that was inevitable.
Played as Greeks this time, built a Horseman. The new "unit" was named Phalanx. I understand now why they sometimes called it the rolling thunder.
I think someone at Amplitude assumed my phalangitude. If I am a Greek, then I must Phalanx? Bah.

On the third game, I had the same thing as covr. Did a bunch of random shit, then suddenly I am at the top of the ladder,
racking up points and stars like there's no tomorrow (that's on medium difficulty). Not sure what exactly happened, maybe I just started to grok it, or it may be so that some of the cultures are utterly bonkers.
In particular, I'm thinking about the one that gets upgraded scouts for its unique unit and Huns.

 

[Lone Wolf]

I get that they're being woke-ist cunts and all, but the whole Peoplekind joke might be barking up the wrong tree; Mankind was a multiplayer RTS released in 1998 by another French studio. Its servers only shut down in 2015. Might be the reason they went with 'Humankind'.

Or maybe they're just woke-ist cunts. Either or.

 

[Cyberarmy]

Played a bit yesterday night (Gamepass really paid off) but it didn't "captiveted" me. Never had this problem with 4x games before (even with Civ 6,at its release) Something is off putting. Fucking ugly UI and ever changing avatar doesn't help either.

 

[spectre]

Thus far, compared to a typical Civ game, I really like two things about GenderNonspecificPersonkind. First is the expansion system with its various intricacies of building outposts, merging and unmerging cities which I talked about earlier.
The other thing I really liked is how the system allows for quite a bit of skirmishing between factions in the early game without triggering an outright war. I always had this problem in most Civ games, because it would devolve into
two extremes, you either went with the war business all the way, or you just turtle up and the AIs are too scared (or incompetent) to touch you.

Is it enough to carry the game? The 8-ball says: probably no, but ask me again later.
I'm starting to have a similar problem as Cyberarmy. Just can't make the game stick. But I get a lot of this with recent games, so perhaps I'm getting senile.

Usually, the game feels decided by the time I reach the medieval period, I am either so far ahead there isn't any point, or I fucked up something early and can't hope to catch up with the rest.
On the other hand, I keep finding random bits all over the place:

Coastlines are weird, I often see ocean tiles generated right next to the coast (sometimes it's a small pocket of ocean surrounded by shallow waters), which means they trigger a "lost at sea" status, which can kill early naval units on the next turn.
A nice mechanic overall, but in practice: 'kay, so you're lost at sea, but the coast is right there, you silly thing.

I also was rather surprised to find hammer and sickle among the list of built-in faction icons.

If you're used to the "goody hut" mechanic from Civ, this is not the same here. The stuff seems to be generated every turn whenever hexes are obstructed by fog of war, so you don't really need to explore,
just shuffle back and forth between seen and unseen tiles,

Also, I'm fairly convinced the AI pulls units out of its ass to make it semi-competitive. One time I went out of my way to wipe out an AI during the neolythic stage cause I got super lucky on the RNG,
but somehow razing one outpost and killing three scouts wasn't enough to put them down.

I quite like the main menu music, reminds me of the Expanse.

Also, the narrator keeps ticking me off randomly. So, this one time I pick Franks, the in-game descriptions are all fine, "Guided by their faith and strengthened by their codes of honor, the Franks aim to restore imperial power and leave their mark on the world."
or "To do what is right, we must know what is right.", but the the little shit just chimes in with random crap like "King of the Franks? Sounds like something you'd have at a ball game." Not very nice of you woke people to randomly shit on an entire culture now is it?

Does anyone know, is there actually a point to the in-game AI editor? I've seen that you can unlock some bonuses and behaviors which would theoretically be fun to play with, but these do not seem to work at all with your avatar
and I can't seem to modify or even add characters to the list of AI players (not to mention, the default list seems awfully short, there's just enough to populate the largest maps. Some of the AIs are labelled as
"novice" and "expert", not sure if it's a way to further tweak the difficulty. I'd like to fuck around with that, e.g. try a whole world of homicidal maniacs that just attack everyone on sight, but doesn't seem we can have nice things.
Oh, and I'll spare you the rant about how idiotic the interface for picking and tweaking AIs, because y'all probably gotten the point by now.

Also, nobody asked, but I tried so you don't have to. Yes, it appears you can slap a dude head on a female dress.
The game doesn't ask for preferred pronouns, but I'm sure it's coming in the next update.

 

[Gerrard]

Is there modding potential here at least?

 

[flyingjohn]

Is there modding potential here at least?

For now very limited.
But the devs have promised there will be more modding tools released later.
And considering the state of modding in previous amplitude games i believe them.At least you will have access to to ai modding unlike civ 6.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

Is there modding potential here at least?

unity.
modding is going to be *HARD*, if even feasible at all, and subject to the already present issue of long loading times and memory leaks. don't expect anything on the likes of even realism invictus, short of a miracle no one expects even less than the spanish inquisition.

 

[jackofshadows]

Fucking finally somebody talks about the gameplay and not reddit things.

The problem is when "reddit things" start to affect the gameplay. I've read some review when dude is saying that he did a test scenario 1x1 where he couldn't manage to win by a war. Not that he couldn't manage to win a war (multiple wars to be precise since the game had forced him to make a truce each time he conquered a city) but in the end only 1 enemy city has left and he needed 80 war points to win but that last city provided only 75. I'm pretty sure he's accurate. It's bullshit of such high order that I don't even know. Why even call your game a "strategy" where you cannot in practice wage wars? Yeah, those clowns delivered an important message though. Ten years ago I would be 99% sure it's a bug or an oversight but not today with those posters, trailers and everything.

Civ 5 is a very small empire sim city focused game.

What the hell are you talking about, a small "high" empire is just one possible line of development, nothing more. With the right approach it's possible to build dozens of tiny cities and vastly benefit from it. It's also possible to conquer the whole world there. In fact, I don't know any other way to win against AI on Deity tbh (perhaps there's). Not to mention every MP game that I've played was boiling down to many wars, even if after science race.