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2 days ago Jan 23,2025, 19:04:40 PM

Beta - Achilles Update

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​Hey everyone, 


We’ve got a nice surprise for you today: A playable beta for the upcoming Humankind update, Achilles. 

 

Since the release of the game, we’ve received a lot of feedback about War Support, War Score, and surrender, and with this update we want to address some of the big frustrations. We want to avoid players feeling surprised by a warm ending with little warning, and create a clearer connection between demands, occupied territory, and available surrender terms. To achieve this, we made the following changes: 


  • All surrender proposals can be refused now, even if you are at 0 war support 

  • Both parties reaching 0 War Support no longer forces White Peace 

  • While at 0 War Support, empires take a Stability penalty scaling with era and number of turns spent without War Support 

  • While their enemy is ready to surrender (at 0 War Support), empires will take a penalty to their own War Support 

  • Centralized Power unlocks an empire bonus that reduces the impact of lost and destroyed units on war support, so wars can last longer. 

  • War Score now only depends on demands and occupied territory, not War Support 

  • You can now always declare surprise wars 

  • (Together We Rule) The Placate action is now forbidden during war 

  • Several new historical personas, like Alexander the Great, Napoleon, or Sun Tzu 


Achilles.jpg



With these changes, you can keep fighting even if your enemy or your own people are ready to give up. You may have to deal with a few rebels if you push things too far, though. 

 

If you want to see these changes in action, you can already try the beta for this patch through the update_preview branch on Steam

Just go to the properties of the game, open the betas tab, and select the right branch. 


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2 days ago
Jan 23, 2025, 7:14:09 PM

Finally! All my stability stacking has a use!

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2 days ago
Jan 23, 2025, 7:41:08 PM

exciting! Do you know if this solves this scenario which I’m 99% confident I’m describing accurately:


I’m at war and winning, I win some battles which will drop their score to zero, i move troops into territories that I want to acquire during the force surrender, I hit end turn and next turn plan to make them surrender, but on the next turn they propose some type of surrender or peace that doesn’t do what I want (I want territories that they aren’t providing) so I decline their proposal, then bam they get war support and I lose some - the war continues


and this cycle repeats until they happen to not offer a surrender. 


if ur at zero war score, you shouldn’t be able to propose a surrender until after the winner has an opportunity to force you to surrender, IMO


thanks so much for investing in this game I love!

Updated 2 days ago.
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2 days ago
Jan 23, 2025, 7:42:27 PM
Looking forward to seeing what this done to game pacing and relations immediately after war if the surprise war is no longer bound by war support.
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a day ago
Jan 23, 2025, 11:21:30 PM

These changes look great. I like how having 0 war support impacts stability. An elegant solution.

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20 hours ago
Jan 24, 2025, 11:51:26 AM

This is sad.


Not every criticism is a valid one, and most of the critique of the war support system has been coming from people who only played Civ and are hostile to anything that is different from Civ.


The game is already completely dominated by conquest. There is no point in doing anything other than massing military and snowballing your advantage over everyone else by taking over everything in sight. The multiplayer scene is also already all war and nothing else, and rushing to the units that win wars faster.

Placating was the only thing that at least gave a chance for non-military playstyles to be viable. Now that's gone and the ability becomes useless.


These changes make the game significantly worse.


I personally would much prefer expanding on casus beli instead, and requiring a claim on a territory for being able to keep it after a won war, with special casus beli for Militarist and Expansionist cultures.

And if a player wants to have warfare even more broken than it was before this change, they should actively work for it and pay opportunity cost by picking civics with big downsides compensating for it. Or at least deliberately enabling it through checkboxes in the match settings.

Updated 20 hours ago.
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15 hours ago
Jan 24, 2025, 5:30:13 PM
@-deleted-136208- >Hm, interesting.


I don't personally think that this was something that needed changing but there have been a lot of threads about it, so there is a certain sense in addressing it.


A stability penalty for refusing a surrender at 0 war support is quite an elegant solution and I can certainly live with that, depending on the implementation. What frustrated me more in the few instances when I experiened it was that I didn't even get a confirmation screen. The terms just happened on me at the next turn.


What I disagree with is a penalty for the victor of continuing the war, IFF they imposed their conditions. Like, I want to end this war and I gave my terms. Why am I being punished if my crushed enemy refuses to yield? It makes no sense. I hope this is just in instanes where the "victor" did not submit an offer.


Interesting move to separate war score from war support. That could actully work well. But in that respect, is there now a separate way of occupying territories, distinct from the cities they are attached to? So far, you can just ransack them, right?


Is Centralised Power a civic choice or technology? I'd prefer the former. And I really like dragora's suggestions around requiring trade-offs in this transition to the new system. There seens quite a wealth of options for defending and attacking, eg more war score for demands/territories held (or lower cost for demanding them at resolution), lower stability penalities for keeping up the fight, maybe amplifying some of the existing war support effects like cultral or religious pressure, gains/losses for killing/losing units.


Also, yay to new historic personas! Keep them coming!

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8 hours ago
Jan 24, 2025, 11:47:33 PM

Love the change for war support impacting stability, great move.


Edit: And yeah, big supporter of the historical AI personas. I love everything about this game except the awkward, detached personas system. Historical presets at least lets us side-step the system a little bit.

Updated 8 hours ago.
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