Until they resolve the severe FIMS imbalance after you hit medieval, and war resolution/surrender, the game is junk.

Dale_K wrote:

the game is junk.

You must have an impressive hateboner, to dislike game so much yet regularly visit forums and write about it.

The main new element of the game (changing cultures throughout history) was a great idea and I loved it from day one.

You can tell it was rushed due to the huge amount of bug fixes we keep seeing in every patch notes post, and that's a shame because it stopped many players from really enjoying the game.

For my personal taste, they only need to balance the game better, so that we stop having some cultures that are way stronger than others in pretty much every possible map. I can see they are going in the right direction (some Khmer nerfes, for example, have already been done), and hopefully they'll get it right eventually (it took CIV 6 a long time to fix Georgia, Khmer, etc.). Apart from that, the vassal system needs some improvement so it's actually worth it to get a vassal, and the war resolution score might need some adjustment too. 

Overall the game is good right now, but it has the potential to be great very soon, with just a few adjustaments here and there.

The game has some very good new elements. I like most of the new concepts, and it was really refreshing to play such a civ-like game like Humankind.

Unfortunately, there are some points that makes me dislike the game:

- Culture and religion: basically, you just need to build 1 religious temple to convert every other civ. Pick up 1 cultural civ to convert all other civs to your culture. Both concepts needs refinement.

- Combat: very cool combat system, but once you reach modern era, most fight zone can cover the whole of the map, which is a total non-sense.

- The adjustments made to the cost of building new quarters. For me, the new solution still looks like a small bandage that doesn't improve the initial solution.

- Playing against "pink" or "yellow" civs. They have created Avatars, but the change of civs during the game makes us lose track of the overall history within the game. Every game, we are always like "hm, yellow player is getting strong" instead of "Greeks are getting strong, or Gilgamesh Greek empire is getting strong".

- Releasing the game with a space victory condition that doesn't work on release is a total shame. I had played 2 games trying to win the space race, every time I thought I had done something wrong. I then went on forums to find out that "yeah, its normal, the space race is bugged and doesn't work". I lost a few dozen of hours, and I will never forgive the developers for this. To release a game with win conditions that doesn't work on release is unacceptable from my point of view.

- I don't like the achievements system. I don't do them. For me, they look more like "we are aware our game has some serious calibration problems, but keep playing it by trying to reach the achievements". If a game is really good, it doesn't need all those achievements to push players to play the game. I know some players like to get those achievements, but they are a minority.

- Multi player.... Im not even commenting.

- Diplomacy and win conditions on war. Good attempt, but total fail.

- with latest version, I got 2 games where I was stuck on non-ending turn. No matter which save I reload, it always block. This is the point that makes me stop playing humankind...for now.

I really hope the devs will be able to calibrate this game. As many said, it has a lot of potentials. But it needs serious testing and refinement.

Sublustris wrote:

Dale_K wrote:

the game is junk.

You must have an impressive hateboner, to dislike game so much yet regularly visit forums and write about it.

How I choose to spend my time, is my business, not yours. But if you MUST have an answer, I spent good money on this game. Spent good time in the opendevs, betas and release version of the game. I have submitted reams of suggestions, game reports, bug submissions and design ideas to the team over the last year or so. I am very invested in this game, and I really do want successful alternatives to Civ, which will encourage much better games in the genre of game I love playing (including Civ).

I also feel like I need to provide a counter-point to the fawning fanboi echo chamber that exists here. If all Amplitude get is fawning and pats on the back, then they will believe their game doesn't require fixing. Yet the fact that 95% of players have left the game already after a few short months is immense evidence of a colossal game failure.

Weird choice on how to invest your time and energy, but ok. What is the severe FIMS imbalance after you hit medieval? How does it play out?

JerryDrake wrote:

What is the severe FIMS imbalance after you hit medieval? How does it play out?

Single focus on production till end of medieval, then single focus on science. Results in severe snowball and science ballooning.

I had fun when it first came out (and open devs) and still having fun now.

As others have said, there are some issues, but that doesn't prevent me from having fun playing it.

As others have said, there's really only one strategy to win, BUT YOU DON"T HAVE TO DO THAT. Play how you want. If you focus on science early, you'll be nerfed. Who cares? You can still do it. You don't always have to min-max everything. It's a single player game, there's no monetary rewards. So the only benefit to playing is to have fun.

speaking of the sience victory, I always turn it down as a victory condition in my runs, and that's it, problem solved, if someone wants a legit scientific run? go to mars, but forget the "make every sience to win" run

Sublustris wrote:

I understand your investment, but that attitude isn't going to help. Just because game deserves criticism (and it does) doesn't mean you should scream louder then others, or went out in rude way. You'll be left severely disappointed in the end.

I think you'll find that rather than be rude, I have explained issues, answered questions, and even supported certain parts of the game (ie: the first phase is great!). Yes, I'm an abrasive Aussie who speaks his mind. Yes, I speak passionately and colourfully. But I've only ever discussed the game and how it functions. And believe me, I have not been "screaming louder than others" as you put it. There's plenty of other people here who could fill that position. :)

On the other hand, I have regularly had personal comments directed at me in response to my posts. I've been told to shut up, go away, and even that I play the game the wrong way (though I don't see how "wanting to play comp-stomps which I find fun" is playing the game the wrong way, since that is how I have fun with these types of games). Oh, I've also been told my opinion is irrelevant because that's not how the other person believes the game should be.

But you know what? Rather than whinge about those posts I pull up my big boy panties, because I'm an adult, and ignore them. And keep saying my feedback and what I find flaws in the game design. :)

I was hesitant to return to it, after the initial hype and spending almost whole days playing it, I ended up buying soundtrack and blasting that through speakers more often than actually playing the game, but after last patches I think the spark that got me replaying the OpenDevs until I just couldn't stand those maps is back. For the first time since release I'm once again playing one more turn until my laptop is no longer capable of handling it and narrator turns to eldritch screaming, rather than closing the game after ~30 turns thinking 'all right, that's enough for today'.

That being said, the game is still rough around the edges and I'm glad to see it being actively worked on, maybe less glad that it means the ES2 patch won't be around anytime soon. It's still a long way to go, though, they really need to patch things up to serviceable status and then take five, six months to roll out proper fixes and rebalancing, with its own assets, rather than keep trying to shuffle stuff around. Really seems like a decision to keep some things under the carpet until release was sound from marketing's perspective, but the game suffered without a late game OpenDev and then another, full 300 turns one, so that people could get a feeling for a whole playthrough.

I like the culture combos and the easy city management (no need to manage too much cities).

With mods, the game is very good.

Dev team make regular updates about bug fixes and add some other improvements, so it's nice and slowly get better and better.

Sublustris wrote:
You must have an impressive hateboner, to dislike game so much yet regularly visit forums and write about it.

Yeah, nobody is allowed to post on the forums unless it's to praise the game. That's exactly how games improve.

Scheneighnay wrote:

Yeah, I find pacing to be pretty bad as well, definitely needs a patch to keep everything even.

Standard mode is a bit smoother, but on Endless as well you get era stars significantly faster than you can progress scientifically or build anything.

You can easily reach medieval cultures while you're still in the bronze age technologically.

Totally agree. Pacing need serious improvements. Right now, it just break the immersion level when your opponents are in industry era but they attack you with swordsmen.

Main theory really is that poor pacing in Endless mode is also responsible for other AI problems like producing an impossibly high number of troops.

Anyone familiar with how 4x AI typically works would tell you that the system is usually "spawn x after y amount of turns", so it's probably spawning them quicker than intended on Endless.

Personally, I'm very much torn between wanting to like it - but not being able to enjoy the game.

Some of the things I thought I would enjoy, turned out to be the main reasons I don't.

I liked the idea of being able to swap cultures - up until I realized that if you aren't the first to reach the threshold, you can get locked out of certain cultures.

So I start a new game, and again, the same culture is taken before I get there.

So I start a new game, and again, the same culture is taken before I get there.

So I start a new game....

It's boring. It's repetitive.

I have yet to ever experience some cultures because I simply cannot reach them before the AI does.

Case in point: The current Dia De Los Muertos event.

How can I complete the challenges related to a specific Culture - if I can't ever choose that culture because the AI rushes before I get a chance to?

So when I finally reach the part to choose my next culture, the one I need is already taken so I resign that match and start a new one from scratch, while crossing my fingers hoping I can actually land the culture I want next time.

dustwhit wrote:
I've come to realize that Amplitude really isn't a 4x studio. I mean, yeah they make those games, but they probably would be a lot better in a different genre. They're definitely creative, but these bigger games are too unwieldy for them - they've never really stuck the landing on any of these titles (ES2 is probably their best). I think they would do much better focusing on smaller games (like Endless Dungeon) that aren't as sprawling. Their creativity gets the best of them, and they lose track of fundamentals. That or they constantly have a bad lead designer who doesn't keep the team focused on a core vision. 

ES2 was a really fun game for me to play. My only problem with it is I don't care about fantasy or sci-fi stuff, so I was hyped when they announced Humankind. I'm still having fun playing Humankind, but I do feel they need more elements from ES2 (tech wheel was nice for example - easy to see, and actual reasons to pick different things instead of just a race down a linear path)

The first game I have tried from Amplitude is HUMANKIND. In all honesty, it shows a lot of promise. I know that the game at release will present some balancing issues and bugs, but if done right, HUMANKIND may have the potential of going up against the likes of Civilization.

The game is not nearly polished enough. Bug exploits reported on the forum like the one that allows you to create an infinite number of cities, have still not been solved. Or the fact that the cost of upgrading a unit to a modern unit does not change regardless of the unit (upgrading a warrior to a musketeer does not cost more than upgrading a heavy swordsman to a musketeer).

Because of these multiple problems described on the forum, the multiplayer game has largely ceased to exist.

It's nice to release DLC content, but these problems should be solved first.

What is worrying is that Amplitude is taking so long to release fixes for this. I don't understand why it's taking so long. Either they don't have many people invested in this work, and it's scary for the future success of Humankind, or fixing these problems is taking longer than expected.

Jojo_Fr wrote:
Or the fact that the cost of upgrading a unit to a modern unit does not change regardless of the unit (upgrading a warrior to a musketeer does not cost more than upgrading a heavy swordsman to a musketeer).

I'm not sure that one is an issue, five boxes of rifles will always cost the same, doesn't matter whether the guys you're giving them to were walking around with bows or muskets. I would agree that there needs to be an additional cost to make up for additional population, though.

I'm more annoyed by this being yet another Amplitude game in which combat experience means nothing because it's so easy to train units spitting distance away from max level, if not outright three stars. Serious flashbacks to ES2, in which there was a relatively difficult to get, wondrous building giving massive XP boost, but it was absolutely redundant due to stuff that you unlock just with tech allowing any system to spit out Legendary (max level) ships. Veterancy-schmancy, at least give us access to fourth and fifth levels, so there's some value behind keeping your units alive throughout ages.

This reasoning based on logic has no place here. It is a problem of balance. It is extremely profitable to build dozens of old units and then upgrade them. This is very bad for the gameplay. Upgrading is not an expensive way to recycle old units, it is THE most efficient way to get advanced units.

In addition, population costs are ignored. Upgrading a spearman to a pikeman is not only very interesting in terms of industry cost, but it saves two population points!

No, direct production of advanced units should be the normal and efficient way. It implies to have the tech, then to produce the units, then to bring them to point B.

This is MUCH more difficult (especially if you attack) than pre-building dozens of scouts, and then instantly upgrading them at the desired point, surprising the enemy and crushing him under the number.

I've played like 100 hours in the first 10 days (i was on vacation), loved the art, sound music, early gameplay, city building, luxury mechanics. Reached the point where the design flaws became more frustrating than the fun i had playing. So now like others I havent touched the game since, i'm waiting and reading patchnotes, until it seems the game is fixed or more realistically the first DLC. The main issues are like others have pointed out : snowballing after medieval, the fact that one single ressource is needed to build everything else, combat strength calculation design, the godlike archers, culture, religion, etc.

Jojo_Fr wrote:

The game is not nearly polished enough 

[...]

What is worrying is that Amplitude is taking so long to release fixes for this. I don't understand why it's taking so long. Either they don't have many people invested in this work, and it's scary for the future success of Humankind, or fixing these problems is taking longer than expected.

I'm on the same boat. I played ~30 hours when the game released, then stopped because of balance issues (pacing between eras and techs), bugs, poor UI (managing trades is a nightmare) and frustrating stuff (diplomacy mostly, forced peace).

4 months later, very little has been done to improve the game, and new game breaking bugs have appeared like the peace forced by opponents with non-zero war support.

Amplitude have always been slow to release patches, but this time I hoped for some intense and fast post-release improvements, Humankind being their so-called Magnus Opus. In the end I can't even enjoy the game during the holiday break because of the bugs and balance issues. 

Love the game, it’s a little unbalanced but they’re working on it and it’s getting better. It’s also very pretty and aesthetically pleasing. I didn’t like the patch though, I thought the choice to make tech cost after medieval scale based on the number of researched technologies instead of having it scale based on empire size like in other 4x games was strange. It also made it harder in general to research techs, especially in the late game. You can tell they tried to make science cultures less obvious choices but by making tech cost so expensive in the late game but it made it so you have to make at least half of your cultures science to even reach contemporary techs. I also don’t think they’ve quite got what they want cultural affinities to be. My understanding of affinities is that they were just meant to give cultures an edge in a certain area but other cultures can still relatively keep up, but particularly with research if you don’t pick science cultures it’s very difficult to keep up and part of this is because research quarters are pretty much useless relative to makers and farmers quarters. I think there’s a similar problem with money after the patch, it’s so expensive to upgrade/buy out units you have to save up pretty much the whole game for the last 30 turns. 

DrCron wrote:

The main new element of the game (changing cultures throughout history) was a great idea and I loved it from day one.

You can tell it was rushed due to the huge amount of bug fixes we keep seeing in every patch notes post, and that's a shame because it stopped many players from really enjoying the game.

For my personal taste, they only need to balance the game better, so that we stop having some cultures that are way stronger than others in pretty much every possible map. I can see they are going in the right direction (some Khmer nerfes, for example, have already been done), and hopefully they'll get it right eventually (it took CIV 6 a long time to fix Georgia, Khmer, etc.). Apart from that, the vassal system needs some improvement so it's actually worth it to get a vassal, and the war resolution score might need some adjustment too. 

Overall the game is good right now, but it has the potential to be great very soon, with just a few adjustaments here and there.

Rushed isn't quite the whole story. There was a very dramatic ... 2020?

Also speaking of balance, I wanna say vikings are absurd.

I get they're raiders, and being able to attack without a declaration of war makes sense, but not generating a grievance for it is complete nonsense.

Being labeled the aggressor for killing the units that just attacked your territory is a slap in the face.

So far the game is quite OK for me, not that great but I have played it for 200 hours, so I can say it is worth my money, it just that I hate the starvation notifications. Why do cities keep on producing pop when they're not have enough food? Can we make it slow growth instead? It doesn't give much effect since the pop only lose one at a time, but it's bit annoying.

nuyu wrote:
Why do cities keep on producing pop when they're not have enough food?

that's humans alright

Scheneighnay wrote:

nuyu wrote:
Why do cities keep on producing pop when they're not have enough food?

that's humans alright

I was scratching my head here too, because people don't just stop having kids because you find it inconvenient. Its like they do the opposite.

It's okay. Not great. Horribly balanced. Late game combat is ridiculous. Religious is jank. The game length is way too short. Balance is set for min-max gameplay instead of for people to simply "play and adapt".

Honestly, Endless Legends is a VASTLY superior game in almost every way.

I want Endless Legends 2 already. :(

Dayvit78 wrote:

As others have said, there's really only one strategy to win, BUT YOU DON"T HAVE TO DO THAT. Play how you want. If you focus on science early, you'll be nerfed. Who cares? You can still do it. You don't always have to min-max everything. It's a single player game, there's no monetary rewards. So the only benefit to playing is to have fun.

The problem is, with how short the game length is (even on Endless) unless you're min-maxing, you're unlikely to be able to achieve most things. You can "win" but you likely won't win organically by simply having fun playing and adapting. And that's the problem.

The game should be balanced so that it's winnable (as long as you're playing smart, based on the difficulty) with any play style. But right now it's balanced to be won a certain way, and everything else is just hoping you get lucky while you have fun.

Just wanna echo some of the other sentiments here.

The game is okay. Hopefully it will get better. Might be a good $70 CAD game in about 2 years.

My favourite part about the game is the UI. Much better than Civ VI but not as good as Civ V imo. Wish menus that I minimized in the production menu would just stay minimized. 

USSER wrote:

The game is okay. Hopefully it will get better. Might be a good $70 CAD game in about 2 years.

Well, the opposite might be happening, after the Autumm sale boost that rocketed the recent reviews to 77%, the game has been falling in recent ratings quite fast this week, and is now 57% last I checked, threatening to go below Humankinds lowest recent review positivity of 55%, it does not bode well for Humankind to go from 77% recent review rating down to almost record low in a single week.

I play this game almost daily with my brother, when there is a bug the load button is almost automatically. Unlike civ when a game crashed it would take an eternity to set up again. I'm pretty much waiting for expansions or updates that add more depth. Happy to pay extra for something that is so beautiful and has a lot of potential.

It's amazing how samey the game plays out, even with 60 cultures to choose.

dustwhit wrote:

It's amazing how samey the game plays out, even with 60 cultures to choose.

It's because ultimately, the cultures do not matter, they are completely irrelevant. The game shoehorns you down a certain path, and the culture benefits gives you a little nudge this way or that.