I am not a good strategy player. When I play a grand historical strategy game, I would always go pacifist, and play in such a way that I would want to make my own story/narrative in the game. Basically, that's what constitutes as fun for me in a strategy game generally. However, I like competition too. I always want to optimize the resources I have as much as I can so I can be ahead of the rest. I have a tendency to lag behind in production, not making enough units to go to war, and generally not being able to optimize what's in front of me.

In short, I would fit a vague definition of a "casual" player of 4x strategy. The minutiae of numbers or units or what have you doesn’t usually concern me when it comes to the experience of playing a game. It’s the playing experience that I focus the most on.

I have played with the Victor OpenDev several times, and the Closed Beta at least twice-ish (the first one I raged quit for reasons that I'll outline below). So I guess what follows is my experience of the open builds so far, and I assume my experience reflects those who would consider themselves as “casual players”

Narrative Experience - Positives

One of the things that I admire about Humankind in general is that it allows more room for narrative gameplay and encourages the player to use their imagination (i.e., roleplay). The events really help add to the flavour of the game’s story. Because the Fame victory condition allows me to be more flexible with what I’d want to focus strategy-wise, there less stress on me as a player to make sure that I am on the right track toward a certain victory condition (like in Civ). A more general victory condition allows me to role play more, and worry less about, say whether I am on track for a science victory. There is the challenge of optimizing resources and fulfilling micro-goals, but I don’t feel pressured pooling my efforts towards one overarching goal among many.

Obstacles - Negatives

That said, I do believe that there are some (more accurately, two) obstacles that hinder a more enjoyable experience of the game for me as it stands with the Poe (Closed Beta) OpenDev.

• Stability Penalty

The stability in Poe is just punishing. I did not have this kind of experience in Victor. Every time I want to improve my production by plopping down maker’s quarters, I get a large stability hit in my city. I want to prepare a strong army in the event that I defend myself from my rivals, or build infrastructure easily so that I wouldn’t need any more districts. It almost feels like a loop in which the negatives outweigh the positives. 

In order to maintain my stability, I build as less districts as possible and build infrastructures to improve the ones that I already have. However, the infrastructures take too long to build, and I’m well behind my fame score, so I have no choice but to build a district that lowers my stability, which prevents me from building more than I already have, and so on. There is less incentive for me to place districts. I could just build a lot of garrisons and commons quarters, but there can be instances when even that isn’t enough.

I know some people have complained that the quarter placement system as it stands allows you to “carpet” your territories with districts. However, my experience has been the opposite. In fact, if you ask me, I would rather carpet my territories with districts so I can get ahead of fame. I understand that the stability cap is there for people to be challenged while playing. So, if that stays, I would suggest lowering the stability cap to about -2 or -5 than to -10 as it stands. Or have a proportional system, like it should be in proportion to how fan the district is to your administrative centre. 

• Science Pace

I think this was a problem in Victor as well, but only small hints as far as I can remember. In Poe, the science pacing is still a bit off. I am well aware that you don’t need to complete a tech tree era section. However, it is expected that a player would complete more than half of the techs in a particular era by the time they are ready to transition to the next era. That wasn’t the case in my Poe (and Victor) playthrough. I think mostly because it relates to the first problem, in which the stability penalty is so high that I can’t make enough research quarters, or build research infrastructures, enough to keep up with my science pace.

I am also aware that there is a medieval “science wall” in which research takes more science in the late classical/early medieval era. I understand that this is another challenge for players, but I think the wall is a bit “too high”. It still feels off having just researched gunpowder when you’re close to the Industrial era. It would be best to tweak the wall a bit so that it would be less high. In addition, I believe this is the case even if you choose a science-affiliate culture. In fact, I did try out mostly science-affiliate cultures in one of my Victor playthroughs to test whether the science wall was consistent or was mostly just my lack of strategy. Despite picking science cultures, the science wall is still there  

Conclusions

I was able to overcome the obstacles that I described whenever I picked a culture that had an EQ that added to stability, or if I picked a science culture. However, I know that there isn’t supposed to be just one or a few cultures that you have to pick each era in order to get ahead of fame. Every culture in the game should, that is part of the game encouraging the player to be more flexible in their strategies. As a casual player, I feel that the stability cap on districts and science wall are obstacles to my overall experience playing the game. They hinder me in improving on areas and resources that I’d want to improve on while playing, thus making my playthoughs less flexible. I agree with many people that in the game’s present development state there needs to be more balance, specifically on stability and research cost.

I know some people might say that I’m in two minds here – that in 4x games I get most of my enjoyment when I want to chill, relax, and immerse myself in the story, but at the same time want to be more competitive. Isn’t that normal for anyone who’s playing a game in general to be able to participate in meaningful competition, and normal that falling behind makes a game less enjoyable? I feel that the way feedback from 4x games is being given, it's the most experienced players who are the most vocal in their feedback, and they mostly complain about things that affect micro-experiences like the minutiae that I mentioned at the start. Personally, I think it is important to recognize feedback from casual players who get most of their fun from the overall experience they are getting from the game from start to finish. I know that you can’t please everyone, and it can be hard to balance the expectations of casual players vs. experienced ones. But I don’t think it’s entirely impossible.

Regarding stability - I think that -10 points for every district is not good solution. Districts should be balanced by their stability cost - those that give more vonuses should be penalized more, those that are less important should be cheaper. And few generic ones (Farmers/Makers/Research) should be allowed without stability penalty.

Dayvit78 wrote:

Personally, I think it's a fair assessment.

"I know some people might say that I’m in two minds here – that in 4x games I get most of my enjoyment when I want to chill, relax, and immerse myself in the story, but at the same time want to be more competitive."

What I would say about this is: I prefer to do as good as I can without doing something that breaks my immersion. I have to be able to explain it to myself in real world terms. Min-maxing doesn't need to; it just goes with whathever is objectively better mathematically. For example, making one city a hundred science districts - well yeah, it may be good to win the game, but I can't explain it in real world terms, so I won't do it. This is why I play historical 4X, rather than fantasy.

Edit: Just to be clear, I am not saying min-maxing is bad. I am saying people have different play styles. I enjoy watching streamers who "break" the game. But in my own games, I focus more on what historically should be done.

You raised a good point there. I was a bit hyperbolic, I have to admit when I said I wanted "carpets" of districts. Of course, in all seriousness, carpets of districts are unrealistic. It was a way for me to convey how restrictive the current stability penalty is.

Waykot wrote:

As a casual 4x gamer as well, I very much agree with the above overall. I felt Victor's build was on the right path regarding districts spamming and stability, but I'm a bit worried on the stability path taken in Poe's OpenDev.

I like the suggestion on reducing stability for districts, in fact, after thinking about it, I've also come to this conclusion and I'd wish that generic districts (farmers, makers, research, etc ...) would be lowered to say -5 stability, while Emblematic Districts remain at -10 (in any case, their stability cost is less important since they're bound to 1 ED/territory).

I'm glad several of us don't feel natural/realistic/fun at all that, to prevent stability losse, one "easy" way right now is carpeting your cities with garrisons (+ City Watch infrastructure) and Commons Quarters to gain/restore stability. Not to mention that AIs are using the garrisons mechanic extensively, from what I could see while playing. I also feel that Commons Quarters were nerfed pretty hard in Poe OD. So, another solution (instead of reducing generic districts stability cost) could be to buff Commons Quarters to +5 stability, while keeping +2 stability per adjacent Commons Quarters.

On research, I also felt a huge gap between eras progression and research progression, that's particularly true on higher difficulties. On my Humankind difficulty playthrough, I didn't managed to reach Industrial Era techs ; my research progression felt more appropriate on Empire difficulty, though I remember filling about half ot the Industrial techs tree on that playthrough.

I'm a little more hesitant on research pace though, since both Victor and Poe OD were limited to 150 and 200 turns. We'll have a 100 turns more in the full game to reach Contemporary Era and research Industrial and Contemporary techs.

My overall feeling is that the main constraint currently is stability, preventing the player to develop its cities, and thus impacting science production down the line.

Somehow, I forgot to mention that I was technically stuck at Metropolis difficulty because I wanted to ascend difficulty levels as gradually as possible as a way of learning each one. But I'd assume that higher difficulties would mean more stability penalties, and with the game as it was in Poe, I think that would be too much for me to handle.