I'm coming here to write this after my third attempt of playing this game, this is the third and last time I'm playing it because I won't give it another chance.

Here are the problems, as they appear while the game progresses.

1. Cost scaling and resource output scaling.
   The most notable cost increase is from districts. I don't know why and how the hell they become INSANELY expensive to build as you make more of them or as you attach more territories to your city, but the time, in turns, to build them is felt very heavily when managing what to build next. Either districts become insanely expensive to build or we don't get enough industry per turn to build reasonably fast. Improvements, which are not districts, also become much harder to build, but not as hard as districts.
   There's and exception to that, when you're an AI player that difficulty seems to not exist, as they build, expand and create armies very easily, even at lower difficulty levels, I don't remember correctly but I believe my game was on difficulty level 3.
   The way I found to circumvent that problem is to only choose Industry cultures, so you can get enough industry to eventually build anything you want in few turns and surpass your enemies, for me it seems the only correct way to play the game because industry can basically get you anything needed.
2. AI seems to be cheating very much even on easy difficulty levels.
   In the game I've played, very frequently I would find myself far behind 2 or 3 AI players, I felt like they were cheating way too much when I struggled to build armies, districts and expand my territory.  As I can't measure how much of it was really cheating or just luck, this item is more of a personal opinion.
   Even after struggling for many turns, I managed to overcome, mostly by stacking many Industry culture effects, the AI and conquered an entire continent.
3. Bugs frequently make the game load for long minutes.
   I've experienced 4 times in playthrough a combat action take over 10 minutes to finish, load, execute or whatever function is being done that makes it stuck.
   If it wasn't very patient I'd easily ragequit and never play it again, but my patience was rewarded when pollution came in and destroyed my experience completely.
4. Pollution makes the game unplayable.
   I just exit the game when I saw the stability meter go to 0 when the pollution levels became high after a turn ended, I wouldn't be able to keep it stable again because pollution will rise more and fuck up things again so I just gave up. When it's not me making the game end early due to pollution it's the AI who took an entire continent and started the industrial era the good way, building tons of factories.
   Whoever created the concept of pollution in this game and put it into implementation never played the game, because pollution just fucking ruins the game completely.
   Forget this thing, just remove it from the game. A game should be fun, not something to force your ecological ideals upon. I don't care if pollution is bad, good, allowed, banned, I just want the game to be fun.
   I ask myself how the United Empire in ES2 made it to space if pollution in the Endless universe is capable of decimating humankind just by building a few factories.

I have played Endless Space, Endless Space 2, Endless Legend, Civilization V, Civilization VI, Old World, Stellaris, Age of Wonders: Planetfall, Civilization: Beyond Earth and Warhammer 40,000: Gladius - Relics of War but I had never seen such stupid game mechanic as Pollution is in Humankind. 

I like the idea of the game, Humankind is beautiful, immersive, well designed art and UI/UX, but the flaws completely ruin it.

Hope this helps the game improve and become fun as ES2 and EL were very fun to me.

inb4 "AI doesn't cheat, any player can pump out full stacks every other turn like them"

"HUMANKIND IS THE WORST 4X STRATEGY I HAVE EVER PLAYED"

I would rate Interactive Magic's 1996 disaster "Destiny", and Stardock's 2010 debacle "Elemental: War of Magic" as worse than Humankind.

But only barely worse.

lbasil wrote:

1 - On this First point I agree with you. The scaling is completely off not only on industry cost but also on buyout costs with money and population (the latter is so high to actually appear hilarious). The only way to build cities effectively is to get an industry culture indeed (preferibly egyptians) which I think is a design choice, a poor one in my opinion. A solution could simply be to drift a reasonable amount of industry from industrial cultures to the others or to rebalance costs in a way that makes sense at least.

2 - on the second point I have to disagree. I mean.. if you played other 4x games you should know that the AI usually likes to overwhelm the player with a carpet of units, at least with higher difficulty levels. Humankind makes no exceptions so up to the medieval era is more a survival challenge (i play at civilization difficulty level). It is very fun, I would say that is what i love the most about this game. The secret is to exploit the terrain in your favor: fortified chokepoints, elevation etc. If you build tour cities in a big, flat area you wont survive long.. try to change strategy.  The real problem here is that after you survive the first half of the game, you will be able to steamroll everyone so the game is pratically over.

3- this is strange. Are you sure your game is up to date? Im not having this kind of bug for such a long time at this.

4- again pollution was recently patched, but I cant give you an opinion on this because my games always ends before pollution even starts to get accumulated...

That's why I said on the second point it is more of an opinion than a problem, because the AI doesn't seem to struggle as a human player does to grow their cities.

Also, just found out there are balance mods and now I'm only playing this game with mods, never going back to vanilla.

I would say it's not the worst 4x historical game I've played but it certainly is the most disappointing given the studio that made the game. This isn't the first 4x game Amplitude has made so it's shocking how weak it is. There's a good framework there but it needs another year of intensive reworking.

I wonder why Amplitude has had such trouble pulling this off. Look back at the team that made Call to Power. This was their first foray into the 4X genre and they pull it off. It was innovative and it really pushed Civ. It wasn't a Civ killer but it was really good.

I have seen they are releasing Endless Dungeon now. I wonder now if Humankind is going to be tossed aside as a failed experiment as they focus on the new game. That would be very disappointing and I would be reluctant to buy any early access titles from Amplitude again.