I am very excited to play Humankind!

There is so much promise here. I have played all Civilization games (1-6) and here are some thoughts for humankind:

The AI in Civilization 5 and 6 was terrible. The computer had no idea how to handle combat, with artillery units randomly spawning and not tactics or strategy at all. I hope the combat system in humankind will be much better. The stacks of doom in Civ4 were tactically better. Oh, and the AI would send land units over water without naval protection. Terrible

I love the idea of culture switching. Great concept. Still, will we be able to name our civilization? There should be an option to name our civilization or nation, rather than switching from Egyptians to Romans without any control what our civilization is called.

The mid-game of civilization often felt stale. Just a race towards more production (especially building lots of industrial complexes in Civ6 gave an inevitable advantage, as everything else would be easier to build eventually, outcompeting the AI). Maybe lots of random events, like natural disasters, plagues, ethics shift changes, dynamic wars and skirmishes .... united nations decisions, military pacts .... there are so many things that can happen and make the game more dynamic.

Balance was always an issue in Civ. I think Civ4 was well balanced and then it all went downhill. I hope humankind will be more balanced.

I love the army system you implement. It will be fun if there are a lot of different units, unique to players, and also units that evolve (so they basically change depending on the cultures you have adopted, and not just defined by the culture you're in) ... civ was always very limited with the units.

Little videos when wonders are built were fun in civ, I missed that in Endless legend 2. Would be nice to see that in humankind.

it would be nice to give some control over the territories. It would be nice if there is a mechanic to annex parts of enemy territories (not just the whole territory), to basically split them ... 

Will there be a colonization mechanic of a new continent? Colonies splitting off to form powerful nations and new players (such as the USA for instance)?

I personally love detail and if the game has an epic length. Obviously, technological progress increases with time, but it would be good if all the eras are balanced, so that one can stay for a long while in the renaissance, the industrial eara, the WW1 era, the WW2 era ... and that units do not become obsolete too fast in the later game.

In the modern age, it would be nice to see some human rights issues (suffrage, gay rights, appartheid ... you name it) ...

Thank you for developing this game.

It already looks amazing

I cannot wait to see the final product

Sebastian

SebParis wrote:
Oh, and the AI would send land units over water without naval protection. Terrible

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but this occurred several times during Lucy which I shamelessly took advantage of. Not once did I see the AI in lucy construct or purchase a proper naval unit but this may change before release. 

SebParis wrote:
There should be an option to name our civilization or nation, rather than switching from Egyptians to Romans without any control what our civilization is called.

I find this part of the charm in historical games where a player can take a big name in history and guide it through troubling and tumultuous times with their own hands. Maybe renaming or customizing a culture's name could become a feature with mods, but most players would honestly use superficial, gimmicky, or uninspired names. So I'd rather not see that feature present in the base game... and consider it in a further expansion or DLC if there is enough community support around the idea. Otherwise... Humankind thumbnails on youtube will have odd, weird, and meme culture names. Yeah, best to just leave that one alone for now...

SebParis wrote:
The mid-game of civilization often felt stale. Just a race towards more production (especially building lots of industrial complexes in Civ6 gave an inevitable advantage, as everything else would be easier to build eventually, outcompeting the AI). Maybe lots of random events, like natural disasters, plagues, ethics shift changes, dynamic wars and skirmishes .... united nations decisions, military pacts .... there are so many things that can happen and make the game more dynamic.

Humankind already had quite a number of event in the middle eras to provide something fresh for players to experience in the middle of a game. Unlike Civ, each era in Humankind allowed cultures to engage in timed attacks involving emblematic units. Civ's civilization only had access to one or two unique units throughout an entire game to base such attacks with. 

SebParis wrote:
I love the army system you implement. It will be fun if there are a lot of different units, unique to players, and also units that evolve (so they basically change depending on the cultures you have adopted, and not just defined by the culture you're in) ... civ was always very limited with the units.

I believe Humankind handles units better then Civ 5 & 6 with its army stacks on the world map yet unstacking them in actual combat. I believe this discrepancy in modes will allow the AI to make better strategic and tactical choices for units based on the situation instead of managing both at once as seen in Civ 5 & 6. 

SebParis wrote:
it would be nice to give some control over the territories. It would be nice if there is a mechanic to annex parts of enemy territories (not just the whole territory), to basically split them

Splitting or fragmenting an existing territory is unlikely to occur in humankind. It is a neat idea, but I believe many mechanics rely on territories remaining whole to function. 

Overall neat ideas... but before adding more Civilization to Humankind... I would like to see how Humankind evolves before becoming civilized.  

RNGZero wrote:

SebParis wrote:
it would be nice to give some control over the territories. It would be nice if there is a mechanic to annex parts of enemy territories (not just the whole territory), to basically split them

Splitting or fragmenting an existing territory is unlikely to occur in humankind. It is a neat idea, but I believe many mechanics rely on territories remaining whole to function. 

Overall neat ideas... but before adding more Civilization to Humankind... I would like to see how Humankind evolves before becoming civilized.  

from my understanding, being able to fragment territory would require to overhaul the territory system it has probbly be designed in a way that its not supposed to change, and merging /attaching territories was a way to offer more granularity than in Endless LEgend. 

Althouth iirc they were looking into the possiblity of splitting "super territory" into their former territory before they merged. So we might be bale tosplit them to the way they wre at the begining of the game but no more, probably for balance and performance reasons

It couldbe intersting to have some special outpost you can place on ennemy terriroy to substract it from their terriory, turning it into a contested area of like a circle of 1 or 2 of radius, it wouldnt attach it to your territory but could steal strategic location/resources and refuse exploitable land from your opponent and this would be destroed if you gain the region (maybe a possible militarist/expansionnist ability if they want to add something like that)

About other things, balance is currently one of the thing that need work let see what they will have achieved on thison the next openDev

There could be a stab penalty about distant cities, especially if they are big and connected to other cities but it should still be intersting to built those colonies. i dont remember what happen if rebels spawned by low stab tak your city (or even if they are strong enough to do this, never had them personnally)

I think ther eill be something about universal suffrage in Civics, and maybe some event about sexual rights, in openDev there was an event where we chose wethen men, women or both could be priests, sliding the ideologies axis toward tradtion or progress (progress only if both is chosen) and i think there was some civic about how you treat your conquered territory and minorites (mono vs multi culturalism for example)

SebParis wrote:

I love the idea of culture switching. Great concept. Still, will we be able to name our civilization? There should be an option to name our civilization or nation, rather than switching from Egyptians to Romans without any control what our civilization is called.

In the OpenDevs Empires had names like "Empire 1," "Empire 2," and so on and so forth, that stayed constant for each Empire. I think we will be able to rename that on full release.