Sneak-Peek at the Vitruvian Update

When can I add the opening era to the settings for starting the game, such as starting the game directly from the industrial age

SpacesuitSpiff wrote:
(do NOT get into a protracted war with Babylon in Ancient because they'll show up with Swordsmen).

I kind of love hearing that.  When confronted with war, AI Science cultures should consistently lean on what they do best, Research, and use it to develop better military technologies.  It's what any human player would do - Leverage your strength to win.  

One change I'm really hoping to see is the unit setup during the battle phase. In some cases, when you attack someone or get attacked by the AI, if the angle is slightly wrong, the AI will be able to set up their army inside forts within your territory, or in rare cases, right next to your city wall. Then, if they are on the offensive, they are simply able to hop into your settlement with their units, when you did not even have the chance to put your own men there to defend. This can be really frustrating if it's a hard battle. Another thing that to me is slightly weird is the fact that archers are able to shoot over a mountain top, but this is less of an issue to me.

On the plus side, I'm really enjoying this game thoroughly and absolutely love the communication of the developers with the community. Keep up the good work!

Good update, but it's hard for me to believe that this update would be released half a year after the game is released. Too late.

It still seem have a few bugs in the AI/ Combat Behaviors, but this is really very special game. Once those the last bugs are iron I will be horned to promote it as the great st city building simulation game of all time. I look forward to that day... On a side note does anyone else thing it's ridiculously hard to unlock the pacifist setting? I've been trying since the game's launch and have yet to come even close to getting. As guy who considers himself pacifist intellectual/gamer I got to say this is been the game's biggest disappointment to me. It's still epic game though!  

zeshoot wrote:

RexBellator wrote:

I'd say Humankind is already a better Civ V. Civ V was definitely not the best 4x, it was barely a 3x

At least Amplitude had the wisdom and foresight to understand people don't play 4x games to stay build a few cities and call it a day.

Yes, so true. Civ V is so bad and worse than Humankind that it has only 17,5k players while Humankind has super active community with 1.1k active players.

That must be because of it's superiority. Such a better game, more complex and less bugged than Civ V, or VI...

steam charts:

Civ V - https://steamcharts.com/app/8930

Humankind - https://steamcharts.com/app/1124300

Civ V released - 2010

Humankind - 2021

Perfect logic form RexBellator.

Totally agree with you, zeshoot, people who say Humankind is way better than CIV 6 must not have played it for a very long time. If only in terms of depth and original mechanics, there is no comparison between the two games. Any slightly worse aspect of CIV is an argument that the game sucks, but how many basic mechanics are missing from Humankind? How many parts of the gameplay are poorly done or have no interest?(religion, civics,...). I'm sorry, I participated to all the opendev, I was enthusiastic for Humankind but I have to admit that it still doesn't come close to CIV 6. 

RexBellator wrote:

I'd say Humankind is already a better Civ V. Civ V was definitely not the best 4x, it was barely a 3x

At least Amplitude had the wisdom and foresight to understand people don't play 4x games to stay build a few cities and call it a day.

Yes, so true. Civ V is so bad and worse than Humankind that it has only 17,5k players while Humankind has super active community with 1.1k active players.

That must be because of it's superiority. Such a better game, more complex and less bugged than Civ V, or VI...

steam charts:

Civ V - https://steamcharts.com/app/8930

Humankind - https://steamcharts.com/app/1124300

Civ V released - 2010

Humankind - 2021

Perfect logic form RexBellator.

USSER wrote:

In a few years this game will be on par with Civ V. One of the best 4x games imo.

I'd say Humankind is already a better Civ V. Civ V was definitely not the best 4x, it was barely a 3x. Global happiness and science/culture penalties for expanding are trash mechanics that are antithetical to 4x games. It was a bad mechanic designed to appease "tall" players, which is dumb because "tall and wide" is a false dichotomy in the genre. Since at least Civs 1-4 going wide was the standard way to play. Suddenly Jon Shafer got it in his head that no, " 4 cities is enough." It was an absurd restriction that completely upended the fun of Civ early-mid-late game expansion; expanding now had the distinct possibility of tanking your entire civilization but hey losing cities actually made your people happier!  I bet Ukraine's combined happiness shot up after it lost Crimea in 2014 (not!).

At least Amplitude had the wisdom and foresight to understand people don't play 4x games to stay build a few cities and call it a day.

60dlike wrote:

And for diplomacy? no change? because currently it's a disaster, look at the number of options available. Civilization Call to Power (1999) had far more features and depth than Humankind!

Adding more features does not necessarily make a game deeper; shallow features end up making the experience clunkier IMO.

What part of the diplomacy system is so dissatisfying to you that you would label it a "disaster"?

I think the diplomacy system is well designed, I find the grievance-demands mechanics to be innovative and enjoyable.

There's plenty of things I would like to be added to the diplomacy system, but I don't think it's a disaster or barebones at all.

And for diplomacy? no change? because currently it's a disaster, look at the number of options available. Civilization Call to Power (1999) had far more features and depth than Humankind!

I think the worst approach to balance is nerf. Instead of making Builders and Scientists useless like others, make others as useful as Builders and Scientists... 

Dayvit78 wrote:

Slashman wrote:

Dayvit78 wrote:

Guys. When something is overpowered, it doesn't mean you nerf it. It means you make the other things equally attractive - either by giving them more bonuses, or giving the OP thing more costs. If you nerf everything, there's no fun in the game.

Yes actually, you do do that. That is exactly what a "nerf" is meant to address.

No... nerf means take away the benefit. I said, you need to KEEP the benefit and add a cost OR add a buff to the underpowered parts.

To be even more clear, they said Builder is overpowered, so we will restrict your usage of it. Now you can't use it. Instead they should add a cost so when you use it, you must balance how often on use it - not artificially disable the ability. This is the same thing they did with "buy it with population" - instead of making it costly in stability or something, they just jacked up the cost so you can never use it. If that's what they do with Builder afinity, then what's the point? It would be equivalent to not having the ability at all.

I agree with you 100% percent.

Some mechanics are present in game but they are realistically useless, what is the point of a mechanic if it can not be used.

On this point of view I preferred the balance the open devs had.

Hey there! Balthazar Auger here, Lead Game Designer on Humankind.

Thank you all for your feedback, especially regarding the nerf to Builder and Scientist affinities. In general, we agree that it’s more fun for the players to improve weak abilities and make them more engaging, so we want to give some context on why we decided to place some restrictions on Builder and scientist affinities.

Firstly, these abilities were much too powerful compared to the intended baseline, and thus drastically threw off the intended pace of the game. We’ve even seen players win in less than 60 turns on normal speed, about five times as fast as intended. This of course impacts a lot of feedback we get about the economy and cultures.

Secondly, we feel that the raw, unrestricted power of these abilities had a negative impact on player decisions. From the feedback we’ve seen, for many players the decisions around these abilities boiled down to “Is it time to turn it on everywhere and rush through research/construction?” (which could in turn reduce the impact of decisions about research and construction order). We hope that the new restrictions will require more interesting decisions about when and where to use these abilities.

We know that there’s more balancing to be done, on the other affinities and the economy as a whole. This change is only a first step.

In a few years this game will be on par with Civ V. One of the best 4x games imo.

Dayvit78 wrote:

Guys. When something is overpowered, it doesn't mean you nerf it. It means you make the other things equally attractive - either by giving them more bonuses, or giving the OP thing more costs. If you nerf everything, there's no fun in the game.

Yes actually, you do do that. That is exactly what a "nerf" is meant to address.

what？restrictions？

Is your game is aimed at a micro niche for players who like to be AI Ravage?

connect in the mind that AI can buff with strength and tendentiousness, developers are sadistic i guess

Guys. When something is overpowered, it doesn't mean you nerf it. It means you make the other things equally attractive - either by giving them more bonuses, or giving the OP thing more costs. If you nerf everything, there's no fun in the game.

I do agree that it's a good step into a right directions. I also wonder:

'Early Modern Sieges: While we’ve improved the AI around sieges, we’ve also been following other feedback about them. One of the problems our players pointed out was that you could lose access to your old siege engines while at war. With this update, your engineers should no longer forget how to build a trebuchet in the middle of a siege.'

Will You also adress the issue that suddenly, when I transition to next era and research guns - my people simply forget how to build bows/crossbows and I can't build them? Kinda made my last english medieval into EM hard since I was low on gunpowder but can't build good english bowman. In endless series we could've made, for example - a basic ship with white guns - free of titanium/hyperium gears, even when we unlocked additional slots that were locked with strategic resources.

I admit - that looks like promising patch. A drop in an ocean of bugs/balances to fix. But a start nonetheless.

Hard 2nd on changing era thresholds - it's very nice to slow down the potential pace of the game

Thanks for sharing.

I'd honestly be surprised if the builder/scientist actives are salvageable with just restrictions, would be better to start over with new actives. Their passives are really interesting though (do NOT get into a protracted war with Babylon in Ancient because they'll show up with Swordsmen).

Any chance for an era star threshold setting so we don't have to rely on (fragile) mods for it?

It will be better. We eagerly await new announcements.

When are you guys going to add free left and right rotation to the game, I've always wanted to photograph my city from all angles

It would also be nice to see the others affinities get better too.

Well, you didn't make it sound as 'meaty' as I'd like it to be, but glad to see you're not forgetting about immersion aspect (AI and real life religions). Fingers crossed that alliances rework and joint wars will make it to the table at some point.

Also, obligatory 'multiple avatars?' question.

its nice to see a nerf to the builder ability, but i think the main problem is not that its overpowered, but its the fact that industry is simply the most important resource, i would love to see a buff to buyout with gold or a rework to forced labor, or to make citizens more valuable so that playing agrarian is more useful

This update is a step in the right direction.