Schneals. That was a great fuckin response, all-around exactly what was needed to be said. 

Md1957 wrote:

I don't think anyone's abusing anyone here.

If anything, however, I'll say this much: the desire to want Humankind to be better and "push the genre/industry" forward as certain critics rationalize in their scathing critiques can be incredibly counterproductive, when anything short of "innovative" or nigh-perfect would be brushed aside. 

Especially when, as some have already brought up, it devolves into constant wringing on what the game isn't, rather than the game as is.

Sorry, but I don't think what I'm asking for is "innovative" or "night-perfect". All I want is to be able to identify with the civs on the map, and not be forced to give everything back when I completely annihilate an enemy.

These two things have been at the core of MANY peoples complaints about the game.

Tryford wrote:

Reicha wrote:
War score is not a bad idea, but when your war comes to a sudden end and it's nothing you can at all control or alter, don't be surprised people tend to dislike this game mechanic. Nothing to do with Civ 7, just with desing choices not playing out for paying customers.

Thank you for your comment.

As for the quoted part, I'll admit I have issue with this common complaint as I'm one of the "weird" players that actually like this mechanic. See, it *is* a problem with how Civilization set expectations for the gaming community and most doesn't look at what the game actually is and tries to do; they'll just notice the game is not behaving the way they expect and see that discrepency as a fundamental flaw in the design and a massive blunder. But that expectation wasn't set by the game, the dev, the hype... it was set by Civ and other wargames.

What if the point of a war is NOT exterminating the opponent? It rarely was in real life history, after all. Wars in this game are (usually) triggered by the wish to enforce a demand, generally after gaining enough popular support from your own people. So, one would reasonably expect that once those demands are enforced (aka you have the minimal war score to get them in a peace negociation), negociation would start with only the defender left willing to fight to try to take back the losses (or give in and cut their losses) OR the attacker might be even more angry than at the start of the war (maybe a city was raze and now "vengence" is involved). But when you reach the max score for a war, it usually mean that peace was long overdue and you can't expect to gain anything any longer; you were expected to sue for peace long before this point afterall. And, again, you almost never see one state fully annexing a large empire in one war in real history. While it does happen, you'll also notice said empire tend to collapse rather quickly (stability problem, this is "modeled" in the game too!) so it might not even be desirable to even attempt (also why vassalization is an interesting options if you actually can't afford to annex everything your war score allows).

All in all, this mechanics SHOULD push player to modify their behaviour to fit the game, but what I'm seeing is people stubbornly demand the dev change the game instead to suit their civ-driven expectations. For devs sekeing innovation as you said, it must be disheartening to see. I'm not a dev and I'm a bit saddened that peopel don't even try to build their strategy around this fact. I got the pacifist achievement, meaning that I had a big incentive to put an end to any war declared against me ASAP and you can get a nice diplomatic bonus for offering a white peace while ahead in war score.

Only thing I'd add to this warscore mechanic is something I've seen in at least one Paradox game that used a similar system: add war goals mid-war. Maybe the specific act of adding a war goal would cost war score, "artificially" extending the war and potentially leading to the total annexation of the enemy. This way, you keep the majority of the mechanic and make it possible to "control" the duration of the war a bit more. You could even add some specific options, like expansionnist having a special war goal related to territories, maybe another affinity would add a war goal that requires a one-time tribute in population (slaves?) that would be spread in your empire, maybe ideologies put constraints on what you may ask as additional wargoal (maybe some ideology wouldn't like this whole "tribute of slave" stuff). But I honestly would like to keep the forced surrender option (at least to force a defender to accept a peace; it was beyond annoying to have Civ AI fight to the death every single time... which is hat prompted me to use more "sneaky" ways to expand (like culture swapping in Civ4&5) ). [Edit: I haven't played the late eras enough yet (lack of free time), but you could also add "conflict escalation" to the point where if you get to "total war", you basically have to occupy every single enemy city to put an end to the war, and then force a regime change (ideology?). Could also liberate any conquered city ceded in the treaty as it was done in the aftermath of both world wars. On the other hand, maybe have a "cold war" status with new "treaties" associated with it. I'd also change the term "Forced surrender" to "Capitulation" or "Unconditional surrender". If your enemy does an "Unconditional surrender" or "Capitulates", it means you've won as much as you could and the enemy gives up. Sure it is a form of forced surrender, but the player seem put off by the "forced" term. Maybe even add the option to claim more than what your war score allows and put a penalty for it (money, influence, stability, etc potentially depending on ideology/affinity).]

Just my thoughts, but I do think the expectations set by the Civ series and the stubborness of some gamers do contribute to the loads of what I see as unconstructive criticism. War is fun in 4X games, but it should not be the only focus of every game. Sure people tend to talk about combat system a lot and say it's the main draw, but that just tell me that a lot of 4X fans are actually looking for wargames. I get that itch too and enjoyed WH40k Gladius as it feels like a turn-based RTS where there's only permanent war and no diplomacy possible (it is WH40k after all), but *that* game got torpedo'd in the reviews because..... it wasn't civ 7! There was no culture, no faith, no diplomacy. The (almost) same crowd keeps complaining that the AI can't do diplomacy properly but they'll still comlain if a studio tries the "Why not remove this broken part entirely?" route for a change. I've also seen Sid Meier's Starship game get torpedo'd because it wasn't a 4X game and people expected a Civ-like game since there's "Sid Meier" in the title.... forgetting that other titles, which are not 4X nor Civ, also existed long before (Starship is basically Sid Meier's Ace Patrol in Space). I'm sorry if I sound harsh at times against those who provide so-caled "unconstructive criticism" as my patience has been "tested" over the years on this specific topic.

Sorry, I completely disagree with your summary here. The issue with forced surrender is NOT "expectations from civ and other war games". You say "that expectation wasn't set by the game, the dev, the hype... it was set by Civ and other wargames". You cannot get further from the truth.

The issue is that the DEV has removed a choice from the game. Strategy games are all about the choices the player can and does make. The dev has decided how the player will play the game and removed those choices that the player should have available. This is so wrong for a strategy game. Instead of putting in things to discourage full annihilation, the dev instead simply decided "I will remove it from the game completely".

This is what the core of the complaints about forced surrender are about.

Scheals wrote:

Reicha wrote:

- Which brings me to open dev - probably an overkill in terms of admin and feedback for amplitude. Helped with the hype, was an interesting idea, and certainly fun! But I am not sure that some of the feedback really has been addressed prior to release. Some of the most often reoccuring criticism has already been voiced in these open dev feedback rounds, but seemed to have gone under the radar sadly.

I think there's plenty of truth here. While I think everyone agrees that HK came out couple of months too early another thing is that Amplitude just didn't have the manpower/time to iterate over feedback given in OpenDevs. So this made for an even harder fall in regards to the game coming out too early because people can look at issues from OpenDevs still not addressed in full release.

Reicha wrote:

- I personally find it laughable if any sort of criticism is always put into the category that people looked for civ 7. That's simply not true, especially when you read reviews of folks who spend 200 hours plus on the game, and have had more exposure to the civ series. The theme is not to look for Civ 7 but that the atmosphere / engagement with what you are building there does not come across.

I've never been able to feel engaged/immersed in historical 4X games due to the obvious fact that playing set cultures with set leaders just doesn't make sense. It's a game mechanic and you have to take a nice, deep dive in suspension of belief to get immersed and that's a dive I've never been able to do when playing Catherine of the Russians in 4000 BC meeting Tokugawa of the Japanese. While immersion wasn't there there was a very strong point: familiarity and identifiability. I know who Catherine was historically and in my game I can refer to the Russians as Catherine for the entire game. They never change, I know who they are, no confusion.

Meanwhile before HK made AI be called their culture with colour-coding it was pretty unclear who I am referring to. It was a very necessary change and I welcome it, heck, one of the things I'd recommend Amplitude to include in HK is the ability to view other player's progress through the ages (the menu that shows you earned stars and picked cultures). Maybe it'd be wise to actually call AIs by their persona names with culture in brackets colour-coded, like: [icon] Horatio (Goths) instead of current [icon] Goths.

The persona system, as many things with HK is amazing and the implementation players would like to see is just a smidge away from us. We see it, but it's not here and that makes it hurt a lot more than if the system was a lot more basic/different. Obviously I am talking about not being able to design multiple personas that you can choose to play against,  currently you have to rely on other player's personas. Such a potent system that lacks this groundbreaking single-player feature!
With this, you could play against familiar and identifiable leaders. Their culture changes would be less jarring because you can always understand who is undergoing them. If you meet a new player from another continent, you can retrace their steps in culture evolution. Suddenly, everything makes sense. People that Catherine represents have gone through sea-oriented Phoenicians to war-like Goths, then trade-oriented Ghanaians and finally you meet them as the Poles.

Of course if people thought that the cultures will have a more lasting impact than Legacy Traits, leftover Emblematic Units and Emblematic Quarters then I understand their disappointment. There's a huge problem though: they've never had any more of a lasting impact that this. This has been known for the entire development of the game. It was there out in the open to read. To watch. To hear about. Entire demo to play through. So if you expected Goths + Poles to result in special Gothic Winged Hussars, well, you had an unrealistic expectation. You can't critique a game for not delivering on your unrealistic expectation that it never set out to realise. But then there's a combination that'll give you better Winged Hussars - Hun Winged Hussars, due to their LT giving +2 CS, heck, there's a civic that'll give you another +1 CS, so Aristocratic Poles that once were Huns now have +3 CS Winged Hussars.
Maybe I approach Humankind too much as a card game where you gather bonuses and such. Maybe I had realistic expectations of the game due to following gameplays, playing the game itself and so on. But you know what's great? That due to modding tools we can imagine those unrealistic expectations be met in the future. Humankind gives us designs and mechanics to support that. Civilization on the other hand, does not (yet).

Reicha wrote:

- This brings me to the second last point - as a paying customer for any product you are unhappy about, why wouldn't you even have a right to moan about the quality of that product? I don't find moaning about a paid DLC as the first thing instead of fixing core basics particularily helpful for the further development of that game, but I can cetainly sympathise with the many folks who don't find that sort of conduct appropriate.

Absolutely, moan about the product. Moan about what it is, not about what you unrealistically expected it to be. Civilization V started without religions. While I might say that it is sad, I can't say the game is bad because of this lack. Criticize what is already here, not what is lacking *unless* it is lacking things that were promised. If some mechanic is lackluster at the moment - point this out, talk about how you want it to improve, where you want it to go. Moan that DLC came out before game was mostly fixed just realise that in the current world this DLC was probably in the works before HK was even shipped. That it was planned and part of the deal that it has to come out by X date.

My point about people treating HK as Civ 7 / dream game / game in a genre they thought it wasn't is that they levy criticism that is not applicable to the game.
HK's thing is not Catherine of the Russians. HK's thing is change. Is change too confusing right now? Yeah, refer to what I've written above. Is changing from Akkadians to Greeks wrong? Absolutely not. Is it immersion-breaking? Maybe but Civilization has Australians in 4000 BC and if you can feel immersed there, you can feel immersed with Akkadians changing into Greeks. Criticising culture changes on merits of immersion doesn't make much sense. Criticising culture changes for being unreadable by players - absolutely. But people talking about how "Akkadians turning into Greeks makes no sense in my video game" are just... off the mark.
Fame system is not a score system from Civilization games. Those who can't understand have no leg to stand on when they criticize it.
This game has plenty of strengths over its competitors but in those strengths plenty of small weaknesses/lack of polish makes those strengths look painfully wrong/bad.

Take for example war:
An amazing attempt at making wars less of total wars from the get-go and rationalizing gains/losses which fails to deliver because of obtuse systems and unpredictable behaviour from player's point of view - like being forced to make peace for lump sum of gold because the enemy lost enough battles. Sure, sometimes this might be what you've been looking for. But sometimes you have to travel through the ocean to get to your enemy and not being able to take cities because the war is already done before you land on the shores makes for a bitter experience.

Civics are another example:
WHY THE TRIGGERS FOR THEM HIDDEN? WHY ARE THE BENEFITS HIDDEN? It's great for first playthrough, maybe, but for next ones I want to plan around those. I want to check out civics that I've missed out on! While it is currently possible to view what other players have chosen I believe some separate screen would help a lot, especially given how civics and ideologies influence diplomacy and osmosis events.

And so on and so on. Let's criticize what we have, let's talk about what we want to have in Humankind but let's not entertain talking about what Humankind should be if it were my dream game or if it were Civilization 7. Let's take what there is and push it into the direction of our dream game. Let's not compare it to the dream game but compare it to what it could be based on what it is and what it set out to be. To me, HK has absolutely blown other 4Xs out of the water thanks to combat system and the culture change mechanic. If someone doesn't want cultures to change in-game, then they aren't interested in HK. I won't criticize Civilization for not having culture changes. I will criticize systems present in the game and I will signal as a fan that I want to see culture changes.

I find it really interesting that you don't feel "engaged/immersed" in previous games playing set leaders as they don't make sense, then praise HK for using set personas. It is exactly the same thing. Just instead of playing against Catherine, Alexander or Elizabeth, you play against Lucy, Neanderthal or user376. Instead of non-changing leaders for 6000 years, you have non-changing avatars for 6000 years.

The culture issue is that the player loses identity and connection with the civs, because they change so often and so fast. In real history, if I say Egypt people instantly think of that north African country that build Pyramids, had Pharaohs, the Nile, chariots, and other stuff. If I say the English people instantly know that island off the west of Europe that has Stonehenge, medieval battles with castles, King Arthur, colonising half the world, and redcoats.

This doesn't happen in HK. You even identified the issue yourself, saying you're glad they made the AI civ nations their colour too. You identify with colours in HK, not civs. This is the issue with culture swapping in game. If you kept the same culture name all through, but swapped your cultural traits, then that would be a simple, yet elegant solution to the identification issue.

I appreciated the responses and also the constructive feedback. I would like to clarify a few things: 1. I am not against a war score system that prevents steam rolling. EU4 has an intelligent system, and generally faction interaction in a game like Total War 3K is richer than HK. You could take a lot from these two and make a great war scoring system. The reality is like what Dale_K exactly said - as it stands now this system is taking choices away from players, exactly not what this project was promised to be. I stated elswhere that the board gamey approach is welcome in my eyes, such as keeping parties in the game and not necessarily leading to extermination at all costs (although that is part of 4X as in one of the X...). Fine with me if this is a 3X instead, to make it clear it's not Civ. But in the end imposing decisions on players that are hard to understand or impossible to alter will always lead to frustration for some players. I don't play for extermination, but maybe it is a nice option to have. In the end amplitude reworking this shows, it's large enough an issue for players. 2. While I find the culture swapping not totally intuitive for my personal play-styles, that might be slightly role-playing oriented, it's never been something that bothered me. It's true it bothers some, to an extent that they never play this game. Perfectly fine decison for them and nothing really to feel sorry for. Either way the culture changes are not the reason why engagement with what you are building there is lacking - it's to do more with the endless disctrict plopping and chasing of ever more percentages. Understandable design decision to structure tech and infra/quarter tree like this, but overall turns the civilisation building aspects of cultures into technocracit boni hunting. Units and battles in my eyes are done well, but that's one dimension of cultures only. 

I am not saying that these are points that are overly constructive feedback for the future development of this game, but at the same time some shouldn't just box others feedback into imaginary corners, a la 'you wanted a civ game and are surprised you didn't get it, hence your feedback is invalid'. That's a fanatical stance simply.  

Reicha wrote:

I don't think it's "you wanted a civ game..." so much as the negative feedback is in no small part due to the precedent set by Civilization and games like it, or even the likes of Paradox's titles. For better or worse, they've helped shape expectations of what gamers ought to have for 4X works, which is further exasperated by the relatively small size of the genre compared to others.

Combined with how there's little real agreement on where the criticisms lie and what those expectations actually are, it can mean a zero-sum game. Even if Humankind were to retool warfare to be much more in line with what you'd expect from wargames and Civ, something else would emerge as being at fault or absent due to the precedent set by Civ. 

...Perhaps it's no wonder Civ is nigh-associated with 4X: it's become so genre-defining that it's unavoidable.

After all, it's all about "What the players imagines he/she could do" vs "What the game actually allows the player to do".

If the player has an army, he/she might think "Well, I guess I can wipe out that dude and raze him from the map completely at my will, if I play good enough".

Turns out, no, you can't, unless you meet several OBSCURE prereqs which are NOT communicated transparently to the player. I still don't understand how to manage my warscore and prolong the war to make it the value I want to be. And I don't want to look through 10s of encyclopedia pages to learn it. Nor I want to grasp it through 10s of hours of playthroughs. It's like an obstacle put between me and fun for unknown reason. I want to see the rules "how do I do X", even in some kind of unimmersive form. It's still a game, and my wish to wipe out neighbors is gamey, and if there's a limitation to it, let me play it as a game within a game! But in order to play it, I need to know the rules, which you don't tell me, so...

Another such thing is civics. Another example where unimmersive might be better than unknown. I still don't know what triggers most civics. And those often give game changing bonuses. Why not let me plan ahead? Why hide this information in encyclopedia instead of communicating it all from civics screen? Okay, maybe seeing all civics in the game at the very start isn't that great, but at least let me see prereqs for civics that I'm nearly done with! So that I can see that I have a progress in unlocking a particular civic and I need to push in direction X to unlock it.

Next stop, notifications at the bottom of the screen. They're overwhelming and annoying. They need a color indication to distinguish between them quickly, and the ability to quickly scroll through them. Some of them are very helpful for navigating you to where smth happens, I'm really glad that I don't have to look for epicenter of events myself.

And finally, map view. The zoomed out map is not very readable, nor it is playable. Meanwhile, it could be a decent alternative to civ 6's 2D mode. Just make it more readable, add more contrast between things, make borders of zones within players' territories more readable and district icons more noticeable. There's a lot to do here.

kotpeter wrote:

Turns out, no, you can't, unless you meet several OBSCURE prereqs which are NOT communicated transparently to the player. I still don't understand how to manage my warscore and prolong the war to make it the value I want to be. And I don't want to look through 10s of encyclopedia pages to learn it. Nor I want to grasp it through 10s of hours of playthroughs. It's like an obstacle put between me and fun for unknown reason. I want to see the rules "how do I do X", even in some kind of unimmersive form. It's still a game, and my wish to wipe out neighbors is gamey, and if there's a limitation to it, let me play it as a game within a game! But in order to play it, I need to know the rules, which you don't tell me, so...

The ~2 minute in-game tutorial video on grievances, demands, and war support is quite helpful to understand the basic mechanic. It doesn't show the exact formula though (as for some obscure reason the devs don't seem to like publishing formulas and exact numbers). The formula is quite simple though (except for the cost of vassalage). The video doesn't show how to prolong the war directly (presumably because the sabotage your own army to prolong the war approach is not intended by the devs) nor does it tell you how to prepare for a war in which you intend to take 10 territories (which may involve some context-specific strategy). But these things can be figured out by each player themselves once the mechanic is understood, I guess - the execution is much harder than the plan.

The war score/forced surrender mechanic was discussed to death already - often in combination, which I find the wrong approach, as they are two very separate things. For me personally, I quite like the war score mechanic (but I'm spoiled by games that use it, as all our expectations are indeed formed by the games we have played before), and just wish it would be a tiny tad more flexible (missing 1 or 2 points for some unlawful demands can be painful). The forced surrender on the other side could do with a lot more flexibility, i.e. prolonging the war for a hefty cost should be possible. I'm curious how the announced rework will look, but I doubt that the negotiation with war score will just go away.

I agree with your civics issue: yes, please show the conditions to unlock them. But on the other hand, I really like that, right now, fulfilling the conditions doesn't mean an immediate unlock, as other civics or events can postpone that for several turns (depending on game speed). For me, it's more interesting with this small random element than for example civ VI's strict eureka/era score requirements that often feel so 'gamey' to unlock in the 'optimal' moment. Again, expectations fostered by the games we played before.

Fully agree on notifications (easiest would be turning them off type by type).

For the zoomed out map view, I wish that the color coding district overlay is toggled on automatically.

Regarding immersion, I (for professional reasons) always like to discourage the use of that word when discussing game mechanics and the like. What we find believable in games or not is entirely subjective in any case, and not too related to actual immersion. And again, it has a lot to do with expectations and familiarity. Over decades, we have learned to accept the (often ridiculous) fundamentals of, for example, civ games, such as symmetrical civilizations (although they got slightly less symmetrical over time). You can say that going from Aztecs to Japanese is unbelievable for you - accepted. But for me, I don't see why having that Egyptian Knight army led by Hannibal fight next to the Australian Great Library which hosts the writings of Goethe is more believable per se. I'm just more familiar with the latter and don't question it that often anymore (although I still regularly feel put off by the overly symmetric civs). I think for arranging oneself with the novelty of the first example, it is helpful to play on slower speeds and to 'get the most' out of some cultures/ages before rushing through the game, for example - at least it helped me. And of course, I think Amplitude could enhance some presentations and UIs to help with getting used to the concept.

recent developments like the roadmap and new DLC point to a good future.
the game definitely launched half-finished, and while the white knights have been out in full force regarding that, Amplitude isn't drinking the kool aid and actually want to fix the main complaints about it.

What if the point of a war is NOT exterminating the opponent? It rarely was in real life history, after all. 

Fine, so let's have game systems for that kind of warfare, but other types as well. For one thing, it's not true that wars were rarely about exterminating the opponent. Or the lesser case of totally subjugating the opponent in a nonstop scorched earth war, until they're forced into being a vassal. The most recent major war in modern memory of that type was World War 2. 

WW2 was Total War by the Allies after they were attacked by the Axis powers. The Allies never stopped until they got unconditional surrenders and had Allied boots occupying all of Japanese and German soil. No magic hand came out of the sky and said "No, STOP, you can't continue this war even though you're winning!" This is what feels so off about HK at the moment. You can't even model the most recent major world war in the game.

Because Paradox games have more nuanced warfare systems, this can be modeled in games like Stellaris. Normal wars of conquest involve Casus Belli, claims, and settlements much like the simplistic HK system. But if you're attacked by one of the more aggressive alien factions like a Determined Exterminator or Devouring Swarm, your Casus Belli becomes "Containment." This means you can just end the threat with no forced peace, no negotiations on who keeps what territory. You end the threat as in WW2. 

And of course players can also be one of the aggressive faction types in Stellaris if they just want to consume their neighbors without end. But there are consequences. Everyone else hates you and might join up in Containment, and you can't engage in diplomacy or trade. The penalties are severe enough that it's not the easiest way to expand in the game, but players have this option, and options are good in 4X games

So it's not that the warfare system in HK is flawed in concept. It's that it doesn't provide nearly enough options for different play styles. And again, I'm not playing now, but will keep an eye on any improvements going forward, both in the warfare system and in ways to make factions more unique and identifiable over time.

Hey,
As some of you have talked about  the force surrender. We include that as a point in the "What´s next",
I understand the frustration for those players that wanted to continue with the war (me for example), so the only thing I can say is > the team is working on that!

Daarkarr0w wrote:

Hey,
As some of you have talked about  the force surrender. We include that as a point in the "What´s next",
I understand the frustration for those players that wanted to continue with the war (me for example), so the only thing I can say is > the team is working on that!

It's reassuring, to be sure!

I hope you guys aren't being demoralized by the divisive reception.

Daarkarr0w wrote:

Hey,
As some of you have talked about the force surrender. We include that as a point in the "What´s next",
I understand the frustration for those players that wanted to continue with the war (me for example), so the only thing I can say is > the team is working on that!

Personally I don't mind the forced surrender in itself, but one major problem is that my armies can get stuck in awkward positions deep in enemy territory after a forced surrender and they can't get out before some units die from trespassing damage.

I'd be very grateful for a solution of this particular problem, even for players that will keep playing with forced surrender enabled.

Daarkarr0w wrote:

Hey,
As some of you have talked about  the force surrender. We include that as a point in the "What´s next",
I understand the frustration for those players that wanted to continue with the war (me for example), so the only thing I can say is > the team is working on that!

As I've mentioned a number of times previously, forced surrender isn't so much a problem by itself, AS LONG AS there is the option to continue the war AT A COST! Kill our stability. Form rebels in our occupied territories. Something to "discourage" the player from long protracted genocide wars, as per your original intent.

Also, allow the player to take a fully conquered enemy without giving 3/4's of it back, again AT A COST!

Removing the option to continue a war, and to "take all", is what killed this game. I could live with the cultural de-identification, but I cannot play this game when continue war and take all were removed as options.

Dale_K wrote:

As I've mentioned a number of times previously, forced surrender isn't so much a problem by itself, AS LONG AS there is the option to continue the war AT A COST! Kill our stability. Form rebels in our occupied territories. Something to "discourage" the player from long protracted genocide wars, as per your original intent.

Also, allow the player to take a fully conquered enemy without giving 3/4's of it back, again AT A COST!

Removing the option to continue a war, and to "take all", is what killed this game. I could live with the cultural de-identification, but I cannot play this game when continue war and take all were removed as options.

Devs have said "No mandatory surrender", not "Adding game option to remove force surrender mechanic entirely". They may consider same idea to yours. So we should wait until they talk their plan how to change this, or talk your idea yourself in more detail (in "game design and idea" subforum).

In my idea, it's very hard to find how much "cost" would be good enough. If it costs too less people can choose eradicate other empires almost freely, and it would be best strategy in most cases. On the other hand it costs meaningful (a.k.a. "too much") people would keep complain. Even after capturing 80% cities of enemy they gonna say "This haven't change anything! Why I cannot choose to continue war more!?"

Poge wrote:

In my idea, it's very hard to find how much "cost" would be good enough. If it costs too less people can choose eradicate other empires almost freely, and it would be best strategy in most cases. On the other hand it costs meaningful (a.k.a. "too much") people would keep complain. Even after capturing 80% cities of enemy they gonna say "This haven't change anything! Why I cannot choose to continue war more!?"

I think that 'over-stretching' yourself in a war is relatively easy to implement with currently available game systems, such as stability, diplomatic stance, influence or events. -5 stab per turn on all cities for prolonging an already won war could be such an automatic penalty, but maybe a quadratic formula would be the better choice with regards to the late game. Another idea is to add the penalty after the war, for example that cities/territories conquered without a demand are unusable and spawn rebels until you paid influence similar to founding it (which would at the same time be a good influence dump and the sometimes hilarious civic costs could be brought down again a bit). 

My idea was to add a war support ticking down per turn, so that you may attempt to besiege particular city you want to take at the cost of maybe not being able to take it in the end. I really wouldn't like for the current system of war score to go away, the game encourages having petty conflicts over couple of territories which... isn't bad way to represent how wars played out, imo. At the same time, the war of conquest should also be implemented in some way, but I'd love to see it being restricted in some ways, maybe in early eras it could only be declared at followers of other religions at risk of other believers joining in on defender's side? And then in Industrial/Contemporary Era it could open up for FFA so we could have a Great War/WW2 scenario playing out.

We'd really need joint wars and battles for that, though, that's my main issue, HK does a first step at preventing the big fish from eating smaller ones whole, but they can still nibble at them until they're gone, and other big fish can't really do much about it, even if there are alliances in place. Even being able to carve up enemy that lost a war (i.e. choose who the conquered cities will go to, rather than taking them yourself) would be, imo, a step in a right direction.

I think Humankind has a potentially rich future, should its devs forge a careful, deliberate path ahead.

I think the current reviews and gripes are a matter of three things - multiplayer, depth, cooking time

First off all - from my perspective at least - multiplayer is terrible. It's difficult to play a lot of turns because it takes so long to even start a game let alone play through any amount of turns. I don't know what the issue is but I do know that my computer and internet connection is not the issue and I don't think it is for my friends either. Add this to the fact that this is not a jump in, jump out game like a first person shooter and it just adds to frustration around the whole thing. I mean - unlike Civ V you can play mods with friends (I think?!) but if the connection is so bad so as to make normal playthrough difficult, that point is moot. I know that the majority of players choose to play this game alone (I'm one of them), but if the multiplayer functioned better that might change.

As for depth - this game does a lot of things differently by putting a fresh spin on them. The military combat is excellent, the culture selection and mechanic is excellent, and I really like diplomacy. But the initial joy wears off after four or five playthroughs when one realizes that Humankind has mechanics that are a mile wide but an inch deep. There's not much new with combat after you go through fighting on a "minimap" or using artillery or airsupport on a battle far away or to open up on an advancing column. There's no information warfare and not much going on for positional warfare. Veterancy is extremely simple, there's no promotions or generals, and strategic resources are quite binary which makes them boring and brainless in the long term. At least in Civ V the strategic resource deposits had various values so that some were more important than others. Or take a look at the trading part of the game. Assuming you have enough money you can trade for all the resources for all time and buff up your civilization to ridiculous levels which in turn can cancel out features of the game that are meant to gate expansion, research, and construction behind eras, techs, or resource limits.  Trade is all benefit and no downside, ultimately, and that makes it boring too. Religion is a very incomplete feature with an unintuitive map mode and very little player influence over its spread, aside from picking certain civics, building religious monuments, and build certain districts. There are no missionaries, there are no inquisitors, there's no religious hierarchy (is there a head of the religion? are there ranked members? Is there a penalty for declaring war upon someone of the same religion?). I could go on.

The last part is cooking time. This is related to the previous point. It often feels like this game is halfbaked where it's features were either not fully thought out or one scratches ones head at how features from previous games didn't make it into this one. Like how come the resource market in Endless Legends 2 didn't make it in this game? How come strategic resources in the ancient, classical, and medieval era didn't get implemented in a similar fashion to this game where each strat resource node has a a value ranging from low to high, which then translates into how well or poorly one can equip one's troops? I mean, I know that the stone-bronze-iron-steel armor/weapon system wouldn't translate well to other eras, but each era doesn't have to be the same. How come aesthete cultures don't have an edge in diplomacy? If one had cultural influence over most of an enemy's territories, would that not also correspond to a higher war score during wars or more favorable trade terms? Or perhaps they'd have an advantage in creating and spreading a religion? I'm surprised the strategic resource system/armor system from Endless Legend 2 has not been incorporated in some fashion and am surprised that Endless Space 2's ship customization didn't enter in the WW1/WW2 era equivalent.

Ultimately, the main frustration with the game I think boils down to the fact that so many people see such potential in Humankind and it just isn't there yet. I'm certainly one of them.

Wald

Walderschmidt wrote:

I think Humankind has a potentially rich future, should its devs forge a careful, deliberate path ahead.

I think the current reviews and gripes are a matter of three things - multiplayer, depth, cooking time

 

First off all - from my perspective at least - multiplayer is terrible. It's difficult to play a lot of turns because it takes so long to even start a game let alone play through any amount of turns. I don't know what the issue is but I do know that my computer and internet connection is not the issue and I don't think it is for my friends either. Add this to the fact that this is not a jump in, jump out game like a first person shooter and it just adds to frustration around the whole thing. I mean - unlike Civ V you can play mods with friends (I think?!) but if the connection is so bad so as to make normal playthrough difficult, that point is moot. I know that the majority of players choose to play this game alone (I'm one of them), but if the multiplayer functioned better that might change.

 

As for depth - this game does a lot of things differently by putting a fresh spin on them. The military combat is excellent, the culture selection and mechanic is excellent, and I really like diplomacy. But the initial joy wears off after four or five playthroughs when one realizes that Humankind has mechanics that are a mile wide but an inch deep. There's not much new with combat after you go through fighting on a "minimap" or using artillery or airsupport on a battle far away or to open up on an advancing column. There's no information warfare and not much going on for positional warfare. Veterancy is extremely simple, there's no promotions or generals, and strategic resources are quite binary which makes them boring and brainless in the long term. At least in Civ V the strategic resource deposits had various values so that some were more important than others. Or take a look at the trading part of the game. Assuming you have enough money you can trade for all the resources for all time and buff up your civilization to ridiculous levels which in turn can cancel out features of the game that are meant to gate expansion, research, and construction behind eras, techs, or resource limits.  Trade is all benefit and no downside, ultimately, and that makes it boring too. Religion is a very incomplete feature with an unintuitive map mode and very little player influence over its spread, aside from picking certain civics, building religious monuments, and build certain districts. There are no missionaries, there are no inquisitors, there's no religious hierarchy (is there a head of the religion? are there ranked members? Is there a penalty for declaring war upon someone of the same religion?). I could go on.

 

The last part is cooking time. This is related to the previous point. It often feels like this game is halfbaked where it's features were either not fully thought out or one scratches ones head at how features from previous games didn't make it into this one. Like how come the resource market in Endless Legends 2 didn't make it in this game? How come strategic resources in the ancient, classical, and medieval era didn't get implemented in a similar fashion to this game where each strat resource node has a a value ranging from low to high, which then translates into how well or poorly one can equip one's troops? I mean, I know that the stone-bronze-iron-steel armor/weapon system wouldn't translate well to other eras, but each era doesn't have to be the same. How come aesthete cultures don't have an edge in diplomacy? If one had cultural influence over most of an enemy's territories, would that not also correspond to a higher war score during wars or more favorable trade terms? Or perhaps they'd have an advantage in creating and spreading a religion? I'm surprised the strategic resource system/armor system from Endless Legend 2 has not been incorporated in some fashion and am surprised that Endless Space 2's ship customization didn't enter in the WW1/WW2 era equivalent.

 

Ultimately, the main frustration with the game I think boils down to the fact that so many people see such potential in Humankind and it just isn't there yet. I'm certainly one of them.

Wald

 

I have to admit that I would like a deeper religion but not the way CIV introduced it, I hate micro managing every single thing and unit, I don't want to manage my missionaries and religious units, more in depth mechanics about tenets and how they bled with the cultures that's enough and also events related to your religious decisions.