Hello everyone!The existing system of military affairs in Humankind, in my opinion, does not fully convey the process of evolution of weapons and the evolution of military affairs.

Why I don't like the existing system:

1) The difference between the warriors of the same time is not noticeable. An example is the difference between the cavalry of Ancient Rome and Parthia.

2) The difference between troops with the same equipment1, but different types of formation3 is not shown. Example: Battle of Newport, where old-style Spanish troops and more modern Dutch troops clashed.

These two points can be achieved by upgrading the unit customization system with Endless Legend. Limit the number of platforms2 and enter the characteristic "formation3".

With this, it is possible to implement such historical types of troops as, for example, horse crossbowmen and dragoons.

3) It is possible to produce more modern equipment in old factories. The ability to produce machine guns in forges sounds absurd)

To prevent this, it is necessary to make sure that before training new units, it will be necessary to build an industrial enterprise that produced the necessary equipment. For example, to produce spears and shields at a sawmill, swords and armor at a forge, cuirasses and muskets at factories, etc.

However, there is a need to somehow highlight unique units. In my opinion this can be done in two tutorials:

1) Fix certain combinations of platform and equipment.

2) Introduce unique equipment and formations. For example: hoplon (round shield) for the Greeks, tercio for the Spaniards.

1) Equipment - weapons (sword) and protection (cuirass).

2) Platform - foot warrior or horseman.

3) Formation - this term better combines "line-up" (conveys the difference between the phalanx and linear tactics) and "organization" (conveys the difference between the militia and the regular army).

Thanks for attention)

Considering how well arms races were captured in their other games, especially Endless Space 2, I'm surprised Amplitude totally did away with unit chassis, resource-specific equipment upgrades, and battle tactics cards. I'd love for Humankind to implement all of those in its own way. Hoping they had to go with something simpler for launch and are planning on upgrading that side of the game in future patches or DLC.

For your third point, you could argue that researching the required tech and gaining access to the required strategic resource(s) represents everything that goes on behind the scenes to make fielding that unit possible. The build queue already gets cluttered and they need to be careful about adding more fuss there, especially if they eventually add some of the other fussy systems we want.

But yeah, upgrading a fleet with cutting edge equipment in Endless Space 2 and shredding the first couple enemy fleets you run into is really satisfying and hopefully Humankind gets something comparable.

As much as you are correct, I disagree with need for implementing this level of detail into the game.

At its core Humankind is highly abstract. Excluding Settlers unit every unit effect is a passive one, outposts are made by anyone, additional actions are only unlocked via cultural decisions and even these are rare. Why bother with high fidelity in a game that streamlines little decisions into few big ones? In my opinion it'd only add meaningless clicks that bring nothing to the gameplay except for making things historically accurate? Unless games are micro management heavy they must make a lot of simplifications.

This is my vision of weapons and armors.

Optional equipment is marked in orange.