If you are writing directly to the devs, it might be a good idea to write in French. But here is the community, writing in French makes us unable to read your article. In my sense, this platform is more about players discussing with each other, rather than the devs. As you can see devs seldom reply.

Honestly we would love to reply more, it's just that we are not fully aware of the communication plan, what is already announced, what is to be announced and what is still 100% secret, so to not spoil everything we let our community guys (Cat and Martennson) answer most of your concern. I hope that after the release we will be able to answer more and discuss of the game with you guys !

Vyks wrote:

DrunkenChoko wrote:

Honestly we would love to reply more, it's just that we are not fully aware of the communication plan, what is already announced, what is to be announced and what is still 100% secret, so to not spoil everything we let our community guys (Cat and Martennson) answer most of your concern. I hope that after the release we will be able to answer more and discuss of the game with you guys !

After the release is already too late, once the core design of the game is there, it's there to stay and we have to either accept it or leave it.

Changes to core gameplay aren't going to happen at this stage anyway.  Anything outside that remit can be altered in post-release updates.

I also really despise huge cities, as represented in civ6 for example. I don't like it, although it could make sense historically, depending on scale. Tenochticlan was described as huge, as was Rome or Beijing. In this game, a huge city could be explained as the city core, and the agglomeration of people taht would slowly gather around it. But a city spreading over half a continent is a turnover for me.

MOREOVER, I hope Nomadism is a full part of the game systems, because nomadic civs (civs that hadn't discovered "Urbanism" for example... I know, I am pushy :-) ) are a huge building block of Humankind's History.

As far as tactics/strategy are concerned, it should be in line with scale. A battle would last a few hours, two days at most ( except siege, of course). If a turn represents, say, 10 years, a battle should not last two turns of course. As for tactics, hopefully, Amplitude will use them, but it is again a matter of scale. If a unit represents an Army, in this case, tactics are "included" in the battle resolution, if a unit represents a tactical unit (heavily armored and long pole equipped riders (you could call the cataphracts, or knights, or whatever, or unarmored, unshielded, light throwing weapons equiped foot infantry ( call them as you want, they were so common...), specific tactics should be included to better define the unit training (well, if you researched the "training" and or "advanced/legendary... training". I know, I am pushy), like tortoise formation (legionnaries), wield charge (crusaders knight), hit and run (any light troop, really), harrassment (any light ranged troop) shield wall (Vikings...), buffalo horn (more of an army strategy actually) (Zulus impis), salvo fire (any trained 18th century army), berzerk charge (most barbaric civilisations), spear wall (phalanx...), caltrops/traps laying (romans, boers..), volley throw (romans again....), "parthan" shot (well, parthes...), caracole (trained 18th century ranged cavalry), mass overhead shooting (english longbowmen at crecy, agincourt... Norman bowmen at Hastings...)... among others...

As for me, the big cities are not a problem until they spread for less than half of a region.

I will be really interested in seeing how the city sprawl is actually implemented... I would hate for the ultimate goal of a city to be to cover its territory completely, kind of a Quality over Quanity/Tall vs Wide scenario. To be fair though, in our current time there are parts of nations where large metropolitan areas are slowly merging together, such as the US North East and some Chinese cities. The clearest example though is Budapest, which was the unification of 3 cities: Buda, Pest, and Obuda in the 1800s. I'm sure we will see a Feature Focus video on this in the coming months.

I translated my message in English for that everyone can underestand it.

Hello.

I admire Amplitude but there are two features that scare me in Humankind: the gigantism of the cities, and the combat system.

The gigantic size of cities:

I know these are just screenshots from a pre alpha game.

I know that screens are there only for aesthetics, not to reflect the reality of the gameplay.

But I would like the devs be in excess, in the quantitative.

Cities that are too big have a lot of disadvantages: it can be boring to manage, it can break the natural aspect of the world, it can make a mess.

In comparison, on the screenshot below, we have a small town there but I find it more pleasant to see:

Remember that the districts in Civ VI are interesting, in that they are limited by the population of the city. Suddenly a big city has in the 4 districts maximum, + some dwellings. It's smarter than having fifteen identical districts in my opinion.

However, Civ VI allows and encourages the Infinite City Spawn (found the maximum number of cities to occupy all the space), and this forces players to found and manage 20 almost identical cities, with no real feeling of city uniqueness, and a lot of repetitive micromanagement. And that is a design failure of course.

I would like the excess of falling in quantity and the gigantism which these screens give the impression to be avoided in Humankind.

The combat system:

It seems obvious that Humankind will use a combat system derived from Endless Legend. It has its advantages and its disadvantages.

On the surface, the tactical complexity of the EL system is there. In reality, it is not. I wrote a guide on Endless Legend and I have 4000 hours of play so I can compare to other 4X: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=635764665 

Main disadvantages:

- The terrain characteristics are binary: choke point zones, favorable to archers, and open zones, unfavorable. Basically, that's it. On the other hand, in Civilization IV, an army which takes position on a wooded hill, is very difficult to eliminate. This allows him to control a limited area of the map even in large numerical inferiority. Something totally impossible on EL.

- The EL army system is a real problem in Multiplayer, because fighting resolution takes a long time, especially in mid-late game. This affects the enjoyment of other players' play. This problem is probably unresolvable, unless the fights are shorter and more decisives in a limited time (which would be preferable, although requiring more intense design work).

In summary, I will find really well if Humankind could make the environment more impactful, the tactical decisions too (army composition, equipment) but by making the fights be shorter and decisive than on EL.

With the hope of being useful,

Jojo_Fr

I think the combat system from EL is a little bit more nuanced than the OP gives it credit for, though I accept that in practice not all of these may matter as much as it seems on paper.

For instance:

- In addition to choke points, I think elevation also matters. Not in terms of how far ranged units can hit, but I do seem to think it impacts morale or chance to hit.

- Similar for forests. I seem to recall that forests give some extra defense, though it may be just specific to Wild Walkers who I played more recently.

- Futher, building on the first point, there is a (rudimentary) morale system. For instance, ranged or support units (can?) get a debuff if next to an enemy unit. Not sure how many other influences there are on morale, e.g. friendly/enemy units killed in battle, odds of winning/losing, being close to friendly units.

- Several units have special abilities that influence how you position your units or sequence your attacks. Broken Lords' Stalwarts and Dust Bishops are case in points, Wild Walker units in forest another one. Arden Mages' flyer can rebirth. So that all leads to different tactics.

- Lastly, some weapons have AoE properties, e.g. claws or hammers. That influences how you want to fit them out and how to deploy/use your troops in battle. And whether you have/want the necessary initiative to make good use of those AoEs.

All in all, I felt it was a good system for giving the player *some* tactical control, while keeping the pace manageble. I got into AoW III a bit recently and fought a single 30 minute battle there (granted, it was late game, fairly large, and tight enough to require careful thinking). It's a great, detailed system and a lot of fun. But combining that with a full-on 4X Civ is just too much of a time committment for me. (And I am not such a huge combat focused player). With that in mind, I hope Humandkind keeps those principles in mind and won't go too crazy on tactical combat. Many players want it, want lots of detail. I am less keen. But let's see what comes of it. Very excited about more news.

The EL Combat system is rather complex as already stated. Morale depends btw for most units mostly on the number of enemies and/or allies around them. The damag- range, critical hits, aoe, linial dmg, evasion and so on are not typical for 4x games in my experience. In e.g. civ V it is mostly about higher ground and less visible/more fortified places if I remember correctly.

The newest post of HK already gives us the information that unit placement on the map seems to matter.

DrunkenChoko wrote:

Honestly we would love to reply more, it's just that we are not fully aware of the communication plan, what is already announced, what is to be announced and what is still 100% secret, so to not spoil everything we let our community guys (Cat and Martennson) answer most of your concern. I hope that after the release we will be able to answer more and discuss of the game with you guys !more sa

Tis statement scares me ! I joined games2 gether becaus I thought that some of the TOGEHER contend woul be created right here, but each passing day I get and more the impression, that the input of this commuity  is worth nothing to the devs.

The EL combat system is well thinked but badly applied I think.
I know him fully, every unit, every piece of equipment.

He has big problems:

- The same units are always used. 1/3 of units are too weaks, or too expensives, to be used.

- There is no complementarity between the units. For example, archers do not need to be protected by infantry. Except in very rare map with narrow choke points.

- The army reinforcements allow to bring too many units. Up to +4 units per turn for each camp. This creates clutter and slow fights, where tactics disappear.

It would be important that the combat system of HK fix these problems, if you please respected devs.

Zaubberer wrote:

DrunkenChoko wrote:

Honestly we would love to reply more, it's just that we are not fully aware of the communication plan, what is already announced, what is to be announced and what is still 100% secret, so to not spoil everything we let our community guys (Cat and Martennson) answer most of your concern. I hope that after the release we will be able to answer more and discuss of the game with you guys !more sa

Tis statement scares me ! I joined games2 gether becaus I thought that some of the TOGEHER contend woul be created right here, but each passing day I get and more the impression, that the input of this commuity  is worth nothing to the devs.

I also find the together part a bit lacking. There is also nothing that we can vote about...

I really hope they have plans to chance that. 

Jojo_Fr wrote:

The EL combat system is well thinked but badly applied I think.
I know him fully, every unit, every piece of equipment.

He has big problems:

- The same units are always used. 1/3 of units are too weaks, or too expensives, to be used.

- There is no complementarity between the units. For example, archers do not need to be protected by infantry. Except in very rare map with narrow choke points.

- The army reinforcements allow to bring too many units. Up to +4 units per turn for each camp. This creates clutter and slow fights, where tactics disappear.

It would be important that the combat system of HK fix these problems, if you please respected devs.

But isn't the fact of morale determined by adjacent units exactly why you'd want to protect your ranged units? Besides, I seem to recall ranged units are less effective attacking targets right next to them.

Also, some units do have specialist roles. For instance, I found it quite effective at times to use high-iniative, high-movement units to block enemy reinforcement points either directly (by standing on them) or indirectly (by engaging an enemy standing on them). That said, you are right that some units just aren't worth the cost. In particular, I find assimilated units really expensive to produce until you have at least a few of their villages under control.

I also agree with your point that battle maps can be quite small for the number of units potentially engaging in it. It's not inherently a system designed for 20+ v 20+ unit battles.

Still, I like it for what it is.

I find that the EL combat system does indeed get much, much more interesting when the world generator is set to have a high density of ridges and cliffs. The system very well can encourage tactical positioning of troops, and things like formation/height advantages do matter quite a lot when all else is equal. It's just that in practice you rarely get the opportunity for stuff like that. You have to do some clever maneuvering of your troops on the overworld map if you want any sort of control over your terrain advantage in the actual fight.

Let me begin by apologizing for not replying sooner. I had meant to reply much sooner but lost sight of this for a while.

Also, thank you Jojo for providing your post in English as well. While I was able to read it with my rusty high-school French, SunshineWings is correct that content posted to the main forums should be written in English so the greatest number of people can participate.

Now, let me finally reply to your concerns (within the context of what we have revealed about the game so far):

The (gigantism of the) cities:

Please bear in mind that one goal of these screenshots is to show off our game assets, so these cities are intentionally large and dense. That is not to say they are unrepresentative of gameplay, as it is possible to create cities like that in game, but they are the result of a dedicated effort in city growth as well as concetrating that growth in one area. There are limits to how many districts you can build in a single city, and you also have opportunities to spread these districts out far more than seen in these screenshots (since in these screenshots, we do have to fit everything we want to show on a single screen) and create multiple smaller "urban areas" scattered across a large region. Covering an entire territory with Quarters is far less likely to happen, though, as a territory has (by my rough guess) around 40 tiles, which would be a remarkably large city any time before the endgame.

Furthermore, the merging of multiple Territories into larger Regions goverened as a single city (even if it may contain multiple clusters of Quarters) is part of how we address the management issue Jojo_Fr mentions in one post: While you could in theory hold a large number of individual cities, this will not necessarily offer you a massive economic advantage over a player who consolidated their territories into fewer cities controlling more territory each.

On the Combat System:

As Shadowhal has already pointed out, Endless Legend had boni for High Ground (+30% Attack), Forests (+50% Defense), Morale (+15% Attack and Defense per Point), effects that interacted with these boni (Wild Walkers Forest Resonance, the High Ground Capacity from equipment, Ranged and Support losing Morale for adjacent enemies, the Glory or Death and Shock Capacities...) While the specifics of the execution of Humankind's combat sytem are different, it will offer a similar range of combat factors from terrain, unit positioning, and unit abilities.

As far as the duration of battles is concerned, I would say they take about as long as they did in Endless Legend (which to me personally always felt like a nice middle ground between entirely stack-based combat with instant resolution, and the enjoyable but very long battles of games like Age of Wonders or Total War). And just like in Endless Legend, you are free to move away and manage your empire while the battle is happening, either because you set it on auto or because your enemy is taking their turn.

On Games2Gether:

We have some ideas for this, but we are not yet at the stage where we can kick those off those, so please be patient with us.