Together We Rule Expansion Announcement

Alright can’t wait, especially for the culture cards

I count on agent units and that in the future we will get more non-combat units to give the game more depth than just combat + building.

I also hope that the World Congress will be available only from a certain era of the game, and not immediately in the early stages as in Civ6. Not only that it would be witless to do something WORLDwide before times of passable transport and communication technologies, but also to diversify and vary the gameplay so that you don't feel that the same thing is being done in every epoque.

From the free part, the most I look forward to is the fragment about independent states, let them finally get their own original pictures as in Endless Space 2 <3

Incredibly happy the Swiss and Singaporeans get added.

Since sharing emblematic units becomes a thing I wonder if the Swiss will have a bonus to that since they were well known for mercenaries.

Hope their eu is named Gevierthaufen / Gewalthaufen or something like that (at least not just Swiss Pikeman).

Curious (and hopeful) if adding the diplomatic focus (and presumably new stars and abilities) can make staying at peace a more viable strategy.

Someone said that there might be too much micro managing. Personally for me, I'd like to do at least 3-5 extra mechanics during a turn. This would make Humankind much more fun and less where you just click next turn every few seconds or so.

Also, please add at least 2 more cultural wonders in ancient era! The current 4 ones are getting claimed way too fast.

Nice ! I haven't played Humankind as much as the Endless games but this will be the opportunity for me to get back into it

Shadowhal wrote:
Without seeing any detail on how the mechanics will work, I'm not yet convinced that another currency was the best way to do it.

It's a DLC, i.e. optional content. IMO, it's better for it to have its own currency, rather than trying to balance existing one in a way that it works well with and without the DLC, especially if it's supposed to be a major feature.

Ryansinbela wrote:

I’m still confused on why Scotland and Bulgaria are Diplomatic. Could someone explain

saxogrammaticus wrote:

As for the Bulgarians, the Bulgars managed to ally with local Slavic tribes to compel the Byzantines to recognize their state by treaty. This alone calls to mind the diplomatic maneuvers possible with the new leverage resource.

Right! The First Bulgarian Empire foundation is marked by a peace treaty with the Byzantine Empire, signed in 681, and the consolidation of the Bulgar nomads with the local slavs. Very fitting for a "diplomatic kingdom" 

Overall a very welcome set of features as I like diplomatic and peaceful play. Colour me excited!

Without seeing any detail on how the mechanics will work, I'm not yet convinced that another currency was the best way to do it. It would have seemed a great opportunity to give the "influence" currency more uses and introduce additional trade-offs between expanding (adding territories), exploiting (adopting additional ideologies) and external relations. After all, some of the diplomatic uses could be similar to how influence was used in EL and ES2 and I think that worked quite well there.

I am intrigued by the Agent class as perhaps rightly or wrongly I am under the impression Humankind usually downplays the individual in gameplay (aside from the player), reserving more individual character for flavor events. While we have the Settler unit, its upgrade is the Construction Team. There is also the Saboteur, but diplomats and much more so spies usually excite high romance and heroism. At least for diplomats and embassies, I hope Amplitude consults the corps for a dose of realism.

I also cannot quite express my delight at the studio's subversion of the gun barrel sequence! Along with the Mesoamerican Sistine Chapel, it leaves me looking forward to more playful surprises from the artists.

The-Cat-o-Nine-Tales wrote:

Jkchart wrote:

This looks great! But uh, are the cultures in order of era they’re supposed to appear in? It looks like it based on how the list is organized in which case Scots being in the Industrial era would be weird since they were part of the British Empire, EM is perfect for Scots and Ind for Switzerland which is the era when it actually became known for its neutrality and diplomacy.

other than that I’m excited and definitely want to see both, but…those two are wrong eras for what makes sense based on history

saxogrammaticus wrote:

Jkchart wrote:

This looks great! But uh, are the cultures in order of era they’re supposed to appear in? It looks like it based on how the list is organized in which case Scots being in the Industrial era would be weird since they were part of the British Empire, EM is perfect for Scots and Ind for Switzerland which is the era when it actually became known for its neutrality and diplomacy.

other than that I’m excited and definitely want to see both, but…those two are wrong eras for what makes sense based on history

I suspect they refer to the roots of Swiss neutrality and the socio-political dimensions of the Scottish Enlightenment. Early Modern Swiss point to the Peace of Westphalia, whereas reversing the two would instead direct our attention to the Congress of Vienna--not likely for Amplitude :)  Industrial Scots notably can coexist with the British and suggest possible representation for other sub-state cultures.

Saxogrammaticus basically got the gist of it, yes.

Ryansinbela wrote:

I would like to see a design doc explaining every detail behind the cultures

Maybe some of the scrapped art for Industrial, Contemporary and Postlaunch cultures

As mentioned in the post, we'll talk more about details in the coming weeks. There's too much to talk about all at once.

Josean wrote:

wangxs wrote:

Josean wrote:

Frankly speaking, there is still a fundamental difference between incorporating an ally's unit into command and actually joining the battlefield as a third party.

I agree. I hope more player fighting in the same battlefield

Yes, this is the common vision of the players for a long time, players prefer to have multiple games in the battlefield

We looked at many options. Unfortunately, all of them come with edge cases, potential exploits, and often griefing possibilities. We settled on this as the most suitable compromise.

It sounds like we can now borrow units from our allies, which is great, but one of the shortcomings of the human race that has been repeatedly mentioned in my community is the poor interaction, and they complain about it: we can't even give direct economic or resource support to our allies. The current game mechanics are very bad in terms of player-player interaction, with no diplomatic restrictions to prohibit the export of a single resource, no direct trading of cities or money to an empire, no multi-player games in diplomacy, and no staying in the same room in war. TOGETHER WE RULE EXPANSION ANNOUNCEMENT is a welcome development that will improve the situation to a certain extent, but as far as it was revealed, it is not enough to borrow units from allies in warfare, in multiplayer situations, allies also want to control their armies independently so that they have a sense of participation, and the impact of diplomacy on the battle The impact of diplomacy on the battle is also important. I would like to ask, is it possible to improve the third party entry and diplomatic trading system in the future? If so, what is the direction of improvement?

Ryansinbela wrote:

Thanks for telling me

Sumerians and Han made sense but I don’t know why

Swiss and Singaporeans definitely have reasons

Since I seem to have done OK with the Scots, I will take another crack at it. Apparently, Sumer has among the oldest documented treaties in the world. I mistakenly thought the Treaty of Kadesh was the oldest, but evidently there are earlier records surrounding the Umma-Lagash war. More generally, conflict among regional city-states and then later expansion would seem to play into leverage and possibly reworked Independent People.

As for the Han, need we say more than Zhang Qian? The Han dynasty oversaw a growth in diplomacy, trade, and conquest bringing them exchange and contact with broader Asian cultures. I will leave the questions of Sino-Roman relations and the relationship between Han and later Chinese diplomacy to those who know more!

Ryansinbela wrote:

Alright can’t wait, especially for the culture cards

Me neither!

The-Cat-o-Nine-Tales wrote:

Jkchart wrote:

This looks great! But uh, are the cultures in order of era they’re supposed to appear in? It looks like it based on how the list is organized in which case Scots being in the Industrial era would be weird since they were part of the British Empire, EM is perfect for Scots and Ind for Switzerland which is the era when it actually became known for its neutrality and diplomacy.

other than that I’m excited and definitely want to see both, but…those two are wrong eras for what makes sense based on history

saxogrammaticus wrote:

Jkchart wrote:

This looks great! But uh, are the cultures in order of era they’re supposed to appear in? It looks like it based on how the list is organized in which case Scots being in the Industrial era would be weird since they were part of the British Empire, EM is perfect for Scots and Ind for Switzerland which is the era when it actually became known for its neutrality and diplomacy.

other than that I’m excited and definitely want to see both, but…those two are wrong eras for what makes sense based on history

I suspect they refer to the roots of Swiss neutrality and the socio-political dimensions of the Scottish Enlightenment. Early Modern Swiss point to the Peace of Westphalia, whereas reversing the two would instead direct our attention to the Congress of Vienna--not likely for Amplitude :)  Industrial Scots notably can coexist with the British and suggest possible representation for other sub-state cultures.

Saxogrammaticus basically got the gist of it, yes.

Ryansinbela wrote:

I would like to see a design doc explaining every detail behind the cultures

Maybe some of the scrapped art for Industrial, Contemporary and Postlaunch cultures

As mentioned in the post, we'll talk more about details in the coming weeks. There's too much to talk about all at once.

Josean wrote:

wangxs wrote:

Josean wrote:

Frankly speaking, there is still a fundamental difference between incorporating an ally's unit into command and actually joining the battlefield as a third party.

I agree. I hope more player fighting in the same battlefield

Yes, this is the common vision of the players for a long time, players prefer to have multiple games in the battlefield

We looked at many options. Unfortunately, all of them come with edge cases, potential exploits, and often griefing possibilities. We settled on this as the most suitable compromise.

Thanks, Cat!

Any idea how the stealth/spy thing will work in the game? I imagine something similar to Covert Ops from Xcom 2: War of The Chosen, where you assign agents/soldiers to do various things on various parts of the world.

You guys are a scam. Once again creating a trailer with the Stadia logo in it and probably NOT publishing it to Stadia. Although we all paid the same money as PC players. 

Pathetic. We should start telling websites about this.

Cizm wrote:
Amplitude make stadia players feel like idiots.

Ironic

dieeasysteve wrote:

Will you also not be releasing this on Stadia?

Wondering the same. The constant denial has now largely turned into a scam and if this one is again unavailable, it should be considered to refund stadia player. I mean I'm willing to pay for all of the DLC , if it was an option. Amplitude make stadia players feel like idiots.

Not the expansion I’d have liked to see as the first, but I knew that beforehand and I’m still willing to be surprised :) 

World Congress and diplo victory in Civ6 were terrible, so I expect you came up with a better system.

Leverage and agents sound interesting but I am also a little bit worried about too much micro. Although having visibility in an enemy city is high on my list. 

All the new cultures and wonders are great though, so I am always looking forward to that. 

Mostly I am interested in the free updates, especially Independent Peoples and Third Party reinforcements.   

Since most of the improvements on the roadmap come with this expansion, I am also hopeful Maritime Gameplay is next on the list and this roadmap is really only for the rest of 2022. 

Finally, I’m curious for the price. I estimate this will cost around 20 euro’s, so in general your expansions seem less beefy than Civs. 

I hope this means the development for xpacs will be less than Civs cycle of 2-3 years. Having two dlc’s and an expansion a year would be a nice pace. 

Since you explicitly mentioned pollution and religion as the next candidates, I hope for pollution as late game is in dire need of gameplay improvement. But personally I would love to see a proper Trade expansion before anything else. Really hope this is on your radar too. 

Anyway, happy to finally see the first expansion! Excited for the future of Humankind. 

Jkchart wrote:

This looks great! But uh, are the cultures in order of era they’re supposed to appear in? It looks like it based on how the list is organized in which case Scots being in the Industrial era would be weird since they were part of the British Empire, EM is perfect for Scots and Ind for Switzerland which is the era when it actually became known for its neutrality and diplomacy.

other than that I’m excited and definitely want to see both, but…those two are wrong eras for what makes sense based on history

saxogrammaticus wrote:

Jkchart wrote:

This looks great! But uh, are the cultures in order of era they’re supposed to appear in? It looks like it based on how the list is organized in which case Scots being in the Industrial era would be weird since they were part of the British Empire, EM is perfect for Scots and Ind for Switzerland which is the era when it actually became known for its neutrality and diplomacy.

other than that I’m excited and definitely want to see both, but…those two are wrong eras for what makes sense based on history

I suspect they refer to the roots of Swiss neutrality and the socio-political dimensions of the Scottish Enlightenment. Early Modern Swiss point to the Peace of Westphalia, whereas reversing the two would instead direct our attention to the Congress of Vienna--not likely for Amplitude :)  Industrial Scots notably can coexist with the British and suggest possible representation for other sub-state cultures.

Saxogrammaticus basically got the gist of it, yes.

Ryansinbela wrote:

I would like to see a design doc explaining every detail behind the cultures

Maybe some of the scrapped art for Industrial, Contemporary and Postlaunch cultures

As mentioned in the post, we'll talk more about details in the coming weeks. There's too much to talk about all at once.

Josean wrote:

wangxs wrote:

Josean wrote:

Frankly speaking, there is still a fundamental difference between incorporating an ally's unit into command and actually joining the battlefield as a third party.

I agree. I hope more player fighting in the same battlefield

Yes, this is the common vision of the players for a long time, players prefer to have multiple games in the battlefield

We looked at many options. Unfortunately, all of them come with edge cases, potential exploits, and often griefing possibilities. We settled on this as the most suitable compromise.

Ryansinbela wrote:

Sumerians and Han made sense but I don’t know why

Swiss and Singaporeans definitely have reasons

The expansion is focusing on diplomacy.

Switzerland has historically been neutral, it's not in the EU, yet is the heart of Europe.

I think even for many years it wasn't even in the UN (but UN's European HQ was Geneva).

Singapore is the Switzerland of South East Asia, in that it has multiple official languages (multicultural), has private banking like Switzerland and is at the heart of South East Asia.