I'd like to disagree with a lot of what is said here.

1 Game length:

I agree the game length seems completely unbalanced on the extreme modes, but I feel the pacing is done quite well on normal speed, although I do agree that having more options for when the game ends couldn't hurt. I did enjoy 2 of my games where I was behind until the last 3 turns, it made the end game quite tense, although I didn't really focus on fame until the later eras.

2 Gameplay:

If you don't like the genre then maybe you just won't enjoy this game at all?

But in terms of project times, they felt quite good to me (again on normal speed) when I had cities that I focused on production, every unit would take 1 turn, I could even create multiple units a turn. I quite enjoy the warfare, although on metropolis difficulty I don't know why you'd expect the AI to be competent, on Nation and harder they seem to actually make units. The AI is pretty shit at the actual battles and it just suicides troops though.

3 Modding:

 I don't have experience modding so nothing to say here.

4 Diplomacy and warfare: 

I like the diplomacy that exists although I do find it a bit lacklustre, there could definitely be more options/treaties.

You previously said you won every war but here you are saying the loser can force a surrender, which is just a complete lie, so either you don't understand the war support system or you were lying about winning every war. I quite enjoy the way the war support works although I think you should get/they should lose more war support for ransacking their outposts/admin centres.

In terms of relations, I have not really had any issues with being able to create alliances. It seems to me, for the most part, they don't randomly break alliances even if they have 100% war support, if they are my ally they will usually forgive all grievances although it does depend on their character traits a bit. As I said previously it is a bit lacklustre though.

5 Cities and the number of cities: 

I disagree with a lot of what you said here, although I would like the option to burn cities down, at least in the early game before you can absorb them. I like that you can't mindlessly create cities and take over others without having some downtime to properly administer/integrate new territories and if you need/want to expand more, that's what vassals are for, although I would like to have more vassal options such as integrating one or multiple of their cities over time if they have your culture/religion/sphere of influence.

6: Map size.

Personal preference really but I don't see why more options wouldn't be beneficial.

I stopped at the first paragraph. 

If you can't get the 'Send a mission on Mars' end game condition in 600 turns, you're doing something very, very, very, very wrong. Maybe do some reading in the Encyclopedia or go watch some youtube videos. With half an idea you should be able to reach the Mars mission by turn 450, EASY.

EDIT: So I read the whole thing. It seems like you don't understand a lot of concpets in the game. 

Some of the Diplomacy stuff is weird I agree, but how can you win the war and have to surrender? There's so many conditions that determine this, not because they have no units left. Look at your war support, if you delcared the war you will lose war support every turn, especially if it was a surprise, unjustified war. They're tough to win unless you have LOTS of war support to begin with.

With the number of cities... this made me LOL. Maybe don't take other cities? You do realise there is a city cap indicator up the top right of the screen? But I do agree that we should be able to Raze cities or something similar. The only other option that I've discovered is to liberate the city. I haven't done this yet as I haven't needed to. To do this, go into the "ALL CITIES AND OUTPOSTS" page next to your CITY CAP indicator. In there, you can liberate cities you no longer require.

All this, and you want a LARGER MAP?! Man c'mon. The large map is HUGE.

Do yourself a favour. If you want to improve at this game, you need to do some reading (encyclopedia) or youtubing.
This is the most unreasonable post I've read on here thus far.

I tend to have a different view on all of the points. There are balance issues but the game is currently playable. Let me go through them :

1 - A total of 600 turns is not enough to reach your win condition.
From what you wrote I think you like to bid your time and probably not really focus on your win condition. After discovering Patronage you should be upgrading your Luxuries for extra bonuses. Most of those bonuses are percentage based so they can really get you off the ground. This will also make you want to trade for more copies, both of Luxuries and Strategic resources. There are a total of 4 technologies that give +1 yield per all the 4 types of quarters per strategic resource of that type.

So if you have 4 Charcoal, all your quarters will have +4 to their yields. You really want to research those, along with technologies that give a passive boost.

If you do this at the end of the Industrial Era you should already be researching technologies within 2-3 turns each and having a hard time taking advantage of them before researching the next one.

2 - There is an issue with gamespeed different than Standard. Blitz is too fast, for example in the Neolithic era you only need one curiosity to get your first star. Endless is too slow, especially on the build times. You can counter this with gold buyout and Forced Labour but this requires you to set up your civilization to take advantage of those.

Also if you want the AI to actually build units and use them, play on Nation and above. On the lower difficulties the AI tends to be quite passive.

3. Modding is not yet open but judging from Amplitude's previous games, there will be quite a few options. :)

4. You need to pay attention to both your and your opponent's war support. If you want the war to last for longer, raise the one that is lower - you can simply attack and retreat to give your opponent some support. If you have declared the war, you want to be on the front foot since you will be losing some war support as the aggressor.

5. You do know that once you conquer a city you can simply ransack it thus burning it to the ground, then make an outpost ? This also helps you avoid the -4 war support per turn the enemy receives for an occupied city. Once the outpost is done, simply attach it to the nearest city you own there.

You can also ransack any of your own cities this way, if you have received it by assimilating Independent peoples for example. If you do not have the Influence you already have the option to get rid of it - send a few units to raise the city and you are done.

6. Map sizes have been optimized for performance. If you want a bigger map you will need to wait till modders start working on the game. It was the same in the Civ series as well - the game's official map sizes have always been limited to have a playable performance, even in the end game.

ws9200 wrote:

I'd like to disagree with a lot of what is said here.

1 Game length:

I agree the game length seems completely unbalanced on the extreme modes, but I feel the pacing is done quite well on normal speed, although I do agree that having more options for when the game ends couldn't hurt. I did enjoy 2 of my games where I was behind until the last 3 turns, it made the end game quite tense, although I didn't really focus on fame until the later eras.

2 Gameplay:

If you don't like the genre then maybe you just won't enjoy this game at all?

But in terms of project times, they felt quite good to me (again on normal speed) when I had cities that I focused on production, every unit would take 1 turn, I could even create multiple units a turn. I quite enjoy the warfare, although on metropolis difficulty I don't know why you'd expect the AI to be competent, on Nation and harder they seem to actually make units. The AI is pretty shit at the actual battles and it just suicides troops though.

3 Modding:

 I don't have experience modding so nothing to say here.

4 Diplomacy and warfare: 

I like the diplomacy that exists although I do find it a bit lacklustre, there could definitely be more options/treaties.

You previously said you won every war but here you are saying the loser can force a surrender, which is just a complete lie, so either you don't understand the war support system or you were lying about winning every war. I quite enjoy the way the war support works although I think you should get/they should lose more war support for ransacking their outposts/admin centres.

In terms of relations, I have not really had any issues with being able to create alliances. It seems to me, for the most part, they don't randomly break alliances even if they have 100% war support, if they are my ally they will usually forgive all grievances although it does depend on their character traits a bit. As I said previously it is a bit lacklustre though.

5 Cities and the number of cities: 

I disagree with a lot of what you said here, although I would like the option to burn cities down, at least in the early game before you can absorb them. I like that you can't mindlessly create cities and take over others without having some downtime to properly administer/integrate new territories and if you need/want to expand more, that's what vassals are for, although I would like to have more vassal options such as integrating one or multiple of their cities over time if they have your culture/religion/sphere of influence.

6: Map size.

Personal preference really but I don't see why more options wouldn't be beneficial.

I didn't say I don't like the genre, what makes you think that? I've played all Civ games except Civ 1, and other games in the genre too ;)

Warfare:
Yes, I have won every war. Perhaps there was a misunderstanding here due to the translation from DeepL. I was not forced to surrender. The enemy surrendered, but I wanted to keep fighting. It cannot be that an inferior opponent can force me to end a war that I have won but whose goals I have not yet achieved.
Imagine if in WW2 the Germans had been able to dictate an end to the war to the Russians and the Western powers before their troops reached German soil.... "Oooooooohhhh, please dear enemies, I have no more war support, you must stop now and make peace!" The Allies would have laughed themselves to death and marched on....
Such a surrender was unthinkable, the Allies had decided to defeat Germany COMPLETELY.... That's what I would do - and eliminate a threat forever.

Cities:
Cities are the centres of a state. Of course I want to conquer them. That's what they're for, provided you have a war. And if possible, I want to conquer cities INTACT. And not drag them behind and kill millions of people, that's barbaric!

Map sizes:
Compared to Civilization 4, the map sizes here are mini... Come on, we're talking about a whole planet here, there are more than just 20 cities.

EDIT:
@Melliores
Thanks for the tips. Now I'm tempted to give it another try. My problem was certainly also the research. I always had the feeling that I could do more, but in most cities I never had the (perceived) opportunity to send citizens to do research, because either food, production or gold was more important. Because of the possibility of giving war support to the enemy by retreating: To do this, however, the opponent must first have units... *g*

1. Game Length

I agree the game length is a bit off on other speed than normal. But your problem seems to be rooted from the way you play it or the lack of understanding of the mechanics. For comparison, I play on Empire and it's still feel I snowball too fast. Everything is too quick and I leave everyone behind.

2. Gameplay

That's not the problem of the time frame, that's AI problem. The AI is indeed dumb, I really hope Amplitude fix this. About the time frame, it's not "to build a single musketeer". Imagine it's the time to train a battalion of them. It needs years to make a combat worthy battalion of any unit. It took years for the Germany to build panzers. It's not one panzer, it's whole lot of it. The buildings too, it's not just one single building, but imagine building the whole infrastructure. In my country, we can't even get the tax right, after 60 years.

4. Warfare & Diplomacy

War support is a nice war condition. Like it or not, war can be waged by enough support from the population. This prevents the war going too long or becomes injustice.

Except when you become warmonger/dictator, which can be done in-game by certain civics that gives you more war support.

Can this be improved? Absolutely. But I think Humankind does the mechanics the right way.

5. Cities

This is the good way of doing it. Instead of giving you hard cap, Amplitude give you soft cap, with penalty if you go beyond it. But it can be improved. Right now the penalty is too small (-10 influence per city while I get hundreds per turn) and I would like an option to downgrade a city without razing it.