As far as I know, one map for everyone was made so that the players' feedback was on one map. Therefore, I do not expect a map generator in the next OpenDev (+ map generator is not included in the list of what will be tested). However, developers can add 2-3 standard maps for everyone.

Zumwalt wrote:

As far as I know, one map for everyone was made so that the players' feedback was on one map. Therefore, I do not expect a map generator in the next OpenDev (+ map generator is not included in the list of what will be tested). However, developers can add 2-3 standard maps for everyone.

Thanks for the quick reply, I'm really wanting to start testing the map generator.

If they don't give us access to that, Multiple maps sounds good.  I felt like having only one map hindered my ability to test the Neolithic era.

They need controlled environment, so most likely map will be predefined.

Sublustris wrote:

They need controlled environment, so most likely map will be predefined.

Thanks for replying.  You’re probably right.   I guess random maps kind of go against the purpose of OpenDev.

The reasons I wrote this post are:

I’m worried HK’s map generator will have the same problems Civilization 6 had at first.  I remember having and seeing some, let’s say, interesting games in the first few months of that, and I would really like HK to avoid this problem.

I’m also worried we won’t be able to extensively test, and as a result, find problems with early game exploration with only a handful of maps.

With that said, I really, really, hope they are doing extensive internal testing.

I’d definitely like to see the map generator in action.  Maybe they could do a future stream, where they start a game and play through the Neolithic period, a couple of times.  Let us get a rough idea of what random maps will look like.

It would be nice to have a mechanic that takes into account languages. Each civilisation should have a language belonging to a language group, and languages develop. This could have effects on stability for instance. When you conquer a city of a different culture and different language they might resist assimilation longer. There could also be a mechanic where you can impose langages (like the French did during the French Revolution in France) or vote (like the famous vote in the United States that favoured English over german). This could be embedded into ‘cultural assimilation upon conquest’. It’s totally bizarre in civilisation 5 and 6 that you can just conquer and rule cities without taking all of this Into account. In addition, language is such an important factor in culture ...

SebParis wrote:

It would be nice to have a mechanic that takes into account languages. Each civilisation should have a language belonging to a language group, and languages develop. This could have effects on stability for instance. When you conquer a city of a different culture and different language they might resist assimilation longer. There could also be a mechanic where you can impose langages (like the French did during the French Revolution in France) or vote (like the famous vote in the United States that favoured English over german). This could be embedded into ‘cultural assimilation upon conquest’. It’s totally bizarre in civilisation 5 and 6 that you can just conquer and rule cities without taking all of this Into account. In addition, language is such an important factor in culture ...

I'm not sure what is the relevance in this thread, if you want to talk about this i think you should make another thread except if I'm missing the point

and i dont think it should be a mechanic, maybe some event, it didnt really pose major problems in multilinguist medieval societies for example

if such a mechanic should exist it should be a "culture" thing, like in civ4 iirc where each of your pop culture & ideology should be taken into account (there is a similar mechanic in Endless space for example with races instead of culture and ideologies being empire wide not so much pop based

Owlexander is right that the generated map can have a big impact on your experience with the game, but that's precisely why, as others have already speculated, the OpenDev (including the next one) happens on a fixed map: So we can remove that variable from the player feedback.

Arkalis wrote:

Owlexander wrote:

The-Cat-o-Nine-Tales wrote:

Owlexander is right that the generated map can have a big impact on your experience with the game, but that's precisely why, as others have already speculated, the OpenDev (including the next one) happens on a fixed map: So we can remove that variable from the player feedback.

Thank you so much for answering my question.  Since it won't be in OpenDevs, would it be possible for us to get some kind of look at the map generator, perhaps in a stream or feature focus?  I feel like maps are one of the most important parts of any strategy game, and I would really appreciate the opportunity to see what kind of maps this truly special game will have. 

Also thank you, to everyone who has posted in this thread.  I have sincerely enjoyed this discussion!

There is a Feature Focus that dives into some of the considerations of the map generator that you can check out if you haven't already, which is this one: https://www.games2gether.com/amplitude-studios/humankind/blogs/722-humankind-feature-focus-02-reimagining-terrain

Thank you very much for the reminder, I had forgotten about that feature focus.

Owlexander wrote:

The-Cat-o-Nine-Tales wrote:

Owlexander is right that the generated map can have a big impact on your experience with the game, but that's precisely why, as others have already speculated, the OpenDev (including the next one) happens on a fixed map: So we can remove that variable from the player feedback.

Thank you so much for answering my question.  Since it won't be in OpenDevs, would it be possible for us to get some kind of look at the map generator, perhaps in a stream or feature focus?  I feel like maps are one of the most important parts of any strategy game, and I would really appreciate the opportunity to see what kind of maps this truly special game will have. 

Also thank you, to everyone who has posted in this thread.  I have sincerely enjoyed this discussion!

I'll see what we can do to share more information about the map generation and show it off. We get a lot of questions about game settings in general, so maybe we will find an opportunity to talk about all of that: Map generation, game speed, difficulty, etc.

The-Cat-o-Nine-Tales wrote:

Owlexander wrote:

The-Cat-o-Nine-Tales wrote:

Owlexander is right that the generated map can have a big impact on your experience with the game, but that's precisely why, as others have already speculated, the OpenDev (including the next one) happens on a fixed map: So we can remove that variable from the player feedback.

Thank you so much for answering my question.  Since it won't be in OpenDevs, would it be possible for us to get some kind of look at the map generator, perhaps in a stream or feature focus?  I feel like maps are one of the most important parts of any strategy game, and I would really appreciate the opportunity to see what kind of maps this truly special game will have. 

Also thank you, to everyone who has posted in this thread.  I have sincerely enjoyed this discussion!

I'll see what we can do to share more information about the map generation and show it off. We get a lot of questions about game settings in general, so maybe we will find an opportunity to talk about all of that: Map generation, game speed, difficulty, etc.

That would be amazing; I would love details about these systems.

Also, I’m curious, are any changes being made to islands?  I’ve loved Humankinds maps, but islands didn’t seem to have much in the way of resources.   Maybe it’s something only I experienced, but I felt like the towns I made on islands, rarely had enough production to make any meaningful impact on my games.  While I was able to spam certain districts such as harbors to outgrow this problem, with the changes being made to district stability cost, I’m now worried that islands will be more of a decoration than a place with meaningful towns.

I don't think the answer to higher stability cost per district is to significantly increase resource generation of things like ports and such, as that--from my perspective--makes mute the whole point of raising the stability cost.

From my experience, small-multi-Island regions in Humankind were mainly there to be used as money generating fisheries for the overall empire--being that you give up the industrial economy in exchange for multi-island regions running on the money economy. Raising the the Stability cost for districts does not detract from that strategy, as the stability cost is there to make a consequence for spamming districts, and players end up spamming districts when doing so is a powerful thing in order to raise relative numbers as quickly as possible. And that's omitting how much range ports have to begin with, and how they synergize extremely well with mult-island regions with single tiles spaced out just the right amount from each other. 

Best thing, I think, that can be done to help out island regions with limited District space, is to make sure there are Infrastructure that the player can research in order to significantly raise the amount of population the region can have working things out, as ports really helped boost the food production of multi-island regions, but overpopulation thresholds for them tended to be much lower than the large regions on the continents.

Changlini wrote:

I don't think the answer to higher stability cost per district is to significantly increase resource generation of things like ports and such, as that--from my perspective--makes mute the whole point of raising the stability cost.

From my experience, small-multi-Island regions in Humankind were mainly there to be used as money generating fisheries for the overall empire--being that you give up the industrial economy in exchange for multi-island regions running on the money economy. Raising the the Stability cost for districts does not detract from that strategy, as the stability cost is there to make a consequence for spamming districts, and players end up spamming districts when doing so is a powerful thing in order to raise relative numbers as quickly as possible. And that's omitting how much range ports have to begin with, and how they synergize extremely well with mult-island regions with single tiles spaced out just the right amount from each other. 

Best thing, I think, that can be done to help out island regions with limited District space, is to make sure there are Infrastructure that the player can research in order to significantly raise the amount of population the region can have working things out, as ports really helped boost the food production of multi-island regions, but overpopulation thresholds for them tended to be much lower than the large regions on the continents.

I’m sorry I think I mis-communicated.  It was not my intention to ask for a buff to harbors.  I definitely agree with you, that would make the change to stability cost mute, which I think would be bad for the game.

What I was wondering is, since we are no longer going to be able to build districts en masse, are there any changes being made to islands, such as increasing the likelihood of them having production tiles like forests and mountains, since it felt like islands needed high population before they could be useful given their relative lack of land tiles.

You bring up a good point, island towns could be thought of as a trade off from production to money.   With this in mind, do you think they should add special money generating resources, such pearls, to the game that only spawn on these territories?

Owlexander wrote:
You bring up a good point, island towns could be thought of as a trade off from production to money.   With this in mind, do you think they should add special money generating resources, such pearls, to the game that only spawn on these territories?

I certainly see the potential of having island and continent specific resources, as that would make collecting such regions to exploit those resources more in line with real life. So, yeah, I do. 

In real life, Island territories in the colonial days were used as foreign resource exploitation outposts for the mainlands in order to take advantage of having their entire economy revolve around the selling of luxury items like Tobacco, Sugar, and the like. So seeing a building or infrastructure that gives bonuses to islands with special resources not found on the continental mainlands would help raise their importance--especially if the map can generate resources in such a way.

The other aspect I'd like to see for islands, deals with tourism bonuses. Tourism in this game, so far, does not seem to exist. And if it were to exist, I would think Tourism would serve as a means to generate more money, and expand culture, religious, political influence through trade routes. So having luxury hotel resort buildings and infrastructure that help serve to amplify cultural and religious influence exportation of islands that receive trade routes would be something I'm interested in seeing. But I'll stop there before going into a long post about the potential I see in this game's trade system and how it blends in with cultural/religious pressure.

Changlini wrote:

Owlexander wrote:
You bring up a good point, island towns could be thought of as a trade off from production to money.   With this in mind, do you think they should add special money generating resources, such pearls, to the game that only spawn on these territories?

I certainly see the potential of having island and continent specific resources, as that would make collecting such regions to exploit those resources more in line with real life. So, yeah, I do. 

In real life, Island territories in the colonial days were used as foreign resource exploitation outposts for the mainlands in order to take advantage of having their entire economy revolve around the selling of luxury items like Tobacco, Sugar, and the like. So seeing a building or infrastructure that gives bonuses to islands with special resources not found on the continental mainlands would help raise their importance--especially if the map can generate resources in such a way.

The other aspect I'd like to see for islands, deals with tourism bonuses. Tourism in this game, so far, does not seem to exist. And if it were to exist, I would think Tourism would serve as a means to generate more money, and expand culture, religious, political influence through trade routes. So having luxury hotel resort buildings and infrastructure that help serve to amplify cultural and religious influence exportation of islands that receive trade routes would be something I'm interested in seeing. But I'll stop there before going into a long post about the potential I see in this game's trade system and how it blends in with cultural/religious pressure.

I love your idea of special buildings only islands can build.  I think they could add a lot of flavor to islands.

Another thought I had is they could add food resources, such as fish, whales and crabs to vastly increase growth for certain islands.

As for your idea of tourism, I think it could be an interesting idea for expansion content.   You should make a thread with your thoughts about it; I think I would enjoy reading it.

Owlexander wrote:

Changlini wrote:

Owlexander wrote:
You bring up a good point, island towns could be thought of as a trade off from production to money.   With this in mind, do you think they should add special money generating resources, such pearls, to the game that only spawn on these territories?

I certainly see the potential of having island and continent specific resources, as that would make collecting such regions to exploit those resources more in line with real life. So, yeah, I do. 

In real life, Island territories in the colonial days were used as foreign resource exploitation outposts for the mainlands in order to take advantage of having their entire economy revolve around the selling of luxury items like Tobacco, Sugar, and the like. So seeing a building or infrastructure that gives bonuses to islands with special resources not found on the continental mainlands would help raise their importance--especially if the map can generate resources in such a way.

The other aspect I'd like to see for islands, deals with tourism bonuses. Tourism in this game, so far, does not seem to exist. And if it were to exist, I would think Tourism would serve as a means to generate more money, and expand culture, religious, political influence through trade routes. So having luxury hotel resort buildings and infrastructure that help serve to amplify cultural and religious influence exportation of islands that receive trade routes would be something I'm interested in seeing. But I'll stop there before going into a long post about the potential I see in this game's trade system and how it blends in with cultural/religious pressure.

I love your idea of special buildings only islands can build.  I think they could add a lot of flavor to islands.

Another thought I had is they could add food resources, such as fish, whales and crabs to vastly increase growth for certain islands.

As for your idea of tourism, I think it could be an interesting idea for expansion content.   You should make a thread with your thoughts about it; I think I would enjoy reading it.

In addition to bonus resources, developers can add additional coastal luxury resources: seal fur, walrus tooth, anchovies, purple and others.