I love Amplitude's mechanic for city=province. This is because I hate Civ's city spam. I literally can't play Civ without having mods for min city distance and sometimes settler limit. It's just too annoying to play.

So I hope the province mechanic is implemented well in Humandkind. I'd like to open discussion on what people have observed from the Lucy map.

For me, the main positives of how province borders are made are:

+In some cases, the province makes sense, in that it's mostly the same terrain type. I noticed this very clearly in Endless Legend, but less so here. It's ok - each province doesn't have to be one terrain type. But it is nice to see a logical area. For example the northwest part of the first continent has one province that is mostly rock and mining materials. There are many real world examples where a region is basically all the same terrain type (think Siberia or Cyrenaica/Libya)

+In several cases, a province is given access to the ocean even if the general shape of the province wouldn't make it so. Why is this nice? Well, it's like the Danzig corrider. It gives a fairer chance - at least you have one spot to build a harbor and access the wider world. Note, not all provinces have to have ocean access, but I like that sometimes inland provinces are given a small extension to the sea.

Some of the parts I'm not yet pleased are:

+The rivers.

++There are too many rivers which weave in and out of multiple regions. Usually a river either defines the region (think Amazon=Brazil; Nile=Egypt) or it's the border of two regions (think Rhine and France-Germany). There's not to many cases where a river leaves one region to a second region, then comes back to the first region. But in this map there are many cases.

++There are too many major rivers which empty into a lake (a small lake!) All large rivers eventually empty to the ocean. There are large inland lakes, but they are generally fed by glacial melt or small rivers. Any large river which empties into a lake will overflow the lake and then continue down to the ocean. But in this map, there are several cases - even one where 2 large rivers empty into one lake.

+The mountains. This is a bit better. But just like rivers, mountains should either define the region (think Tibet) or be a border between regions (Alps, Andes, every other example in the world!)

But overall, I'm very happy with most of the current system of province borders. Hope to hear other's thoughts!