In regards to researching new technologies, I'm a fan of the tech web design (e.g. Civilizaion Beyond Earth).

Buildings construction availability should follow a prerequisite system (e.g. population level/city size)

IcSo wrote:
A civilization strategy game should allow the player, to define the kind of civilization it wants it to become and not start the game with a pre-selected Civilization with perks/attributes along with a notable leader.

Ironically this change is probably inspired from games like the Endless series and the renaissance of the Master of Orion 2 genus of 4X games.

There are almost as many people still playing Civ5 as Civ6 on steam because of this kind of thing I think. They're almost like diverging branches of the same core game.

The-Cat-o-Nine-Tales wrote:
We've got an Events system that usually presents you with several choices, as well as the civics system, both of which impact the Ideologies of your civilization.

Bear in mind that this mechanic was one of the core reasons Beyond Earth wasn't replayable and Elemental failed where Fallen Enchantress was comparatively successful. I was actually just about to add a little spiel about this topic here so here goes:

Sid Meier has said, "interesting choices". I would say, don't give the player a false choice or tell them when to choose. Worry about making things interesting after you've eliminated every hint of those 2 problems.

Beyond Earth's tech quests became inspirations in Civ6. Because Inspirations can be popped at any time without consequence, tech research can be partially completed while waiting for the inspiration. This "juggling" is a critical skill progression for pushing past emperor.

Endless Legend's quests were bloody awful from a gameplay perspective but so great narratively that I just accepted them and played an RPG with a 4X minigame. Instead, we could've discovered the elements of the quest organically on the map, ultimately opening up an extra victory condition. There is ultimately no difference except that the player doesn't feel like their game is gated by something unrelated to the core gameloop and it's optional - i.e. not a false choice or forced timing.

I would personally extend this reasoning into the UI and graphic design. Many 4X games end up with lots of popups like this:

+5 science per population

+5 dust per population

+5 industry per population

If it were me (and I'm not a designer), I would do:

+5 ⚛/?/⚙ production

"production" would be an unambiguous per population term, "yield" referring to the end result (for things like % bonuses/maluses). Civ6 has clear language like this and it really simplifies the interpretation of the game without decreasing the depth.

Endless Legend frequently felt like it had an overwhelming level of detail in its presentation. Both gameplay-wise and in the art on the map (which was wonderful but a little too high detail for the height of the camera - only a little though).

It's been years since I played Endless Space but its cards are a great example of a fantastic system hampered by poor communication. What the cards did was actually spatial and probabilistic but it was explained using large amounts of esoteric text and little sense of the overall concept or picture. Sorry if that sounds harsh - I really liked it, it was fantastically innovative and I can also tell when something would confuse a client  :)

Stardrive, interestingly, is a fantastic example of a system that is easy to understand and clearly communicated with lots of organic choices. It's just that it has an intractable time complexity problem. If you turned the scale way down and quit the game halfway through, it was actually great  ;)

It would blow my socks off if the screens in the game were treated as context for choices rather than an epic in JIRA too. My personal opinion is that Conway's law extends to JIRA and that 4X screens suffer greatly as a result.

My first encounter with the modern notification based 4X was Civ5 and it is a great innovation. However, it dumps you in a context that's missing a critical part of why you went there - the map.

I would love for the notifications to be on the map and when off-screen to give some indication of which direction they are in and how far away they are. I don't know that having them ring the edge of the viewport like in a first person game would work but I'd definitely try that out.

This would also allow you to sit at a specific place on the map, sort it out, move on. I feel that this is a fundamental improvement to the gameplay loop. At the moment, things feel quite disconnected in most 4Xs and the natural way to play the game on the map usually involves changing obscure UI settings (e.g. cycle next unit automatically) and fighting the UI. Keep us on the map please, we like looking at your art. You could even make it so that there were immersive sounds for pending notifications (idle units etc) and they went quiet as you gave orders. It would actually be nice to be able to achieve quiet. The endless hammering in the background can, unsurprisingly, cause us to turn ambient sounds off.

Bottom line is that you'll forever have a B-tier 4X if you make it an RPG and that numerous games have demonstrated this, including Firaxis' own work. Overwhelming presentation and bitsy mechanics will also do this - you only have to look at Age of Wonders to see that. I personally like, buy and play these games but I don't know anyone else who does and I regularly play multiplayer games of Civ6 with my RL friends.

Hi there going to piggyback to this thread here I’m also a veteran 4x player with over 1000 hours logged into civ 5 and civ 6 and while in not sure if these have been mentioned before here are my ideas

MODDING SUPPORT

This is essential for the longevity of almost any game now.

Allows you to create a more balanced game while still addressing people who want crazy options.

The more ability you give to the modders the better, 

It would be cool to actively try to engage that community by hosting design challenges or having special prestige in-game items or steam achievements that you can get by modding/contributing to the community. 

CUSTOMIZATION

Ability to customize map, scenario, civilization as much as possible

The more ability we have to change the “game” we play the more replayability has. 

Some suggestions 

Era gate

Extreme world generation

• Hot/cold
• # of continents
• # of civilizations
• Victory conditions

SCENARIO CHANGES

Scenario changes like

Modifiers (X% more research or production or culture)

Aggression level of AI 

The ability to spawn an advanced civilization that snowballs giving the player a mid to late game opponent who isn’t snowballed 

Some more scenario suggestions come from rimworld. They have one of the most robust scenario editor out there with game long events that completely change your playstyle. I don’t know if this would be possible to add to Humankind, but it would be interesting to be able to turn on an option like.

Overgrown Fauna (Fauna takes twice as long to cut and regrows if not used in 20 turns… or something similar)  

Global Ice Age (colder map biome, less food, more food costs and more blizzards) 

Aggressive World (Civ AI are 4x more likely to go to war with each other and 3x more likely to team up with each other to go to war with others.) 

Challenge mode (you can only have a max of X cities)

Zugg_zug wrote:

First of all let me say how excited I am for Humankind. I loved a lot of the mechanics and design choices in Endless Legend and Endless Space 2, and I'm very much looking forward to the fresh ideas that you guys at Amplitude will surely bring to the historical 4X genre. And from first impressions, it seems most of the hardcore Civ community is excited, or at least quietly optimistic about this game as well. 

Inevitably HK will be compared to Civ 6 and its predecessors, so I feel HK has a great opportunity to excel in some areas where those games are lacking. 

As a long time Civ and 4x player I totally agree with OP. CIV 6 was definitely a mixed bag. 

I think diplomacy is currently the biggest untapped mechanic in 4x games, here are some mechanics I think would make it a truly engaging and interesting mechanic. 

1. True embargoes (that require me to intercept their trade vessels or vice versa)
2. Threaten - (i.e. do this or I will do this) - if they refuse I get a mission to follow through on my threat and deal with any consequences that result.  
3. Different levels of diplomatic co-operation (Stellaris has great mechanics on this)
4. Sanctions and multilateral agreements that target an enemy
5. I should also be able to enter territory despite being told not to (this may lead to war, but should not be a declaration of war itself). 

I also totally agree with OP's comment on a deeper economy and I think the mechanics could fit really nicely in here too. 

 Here are the things I think CIV 6 does well:

1. War: Civ has always created interesting war mechanics that require strategic thinking (landscape, ranged vs mele, technology etc)
2. Espionage: Variety of options although can start to feel quite repetitive, it does, however, add a flavour to most of the other mechanics in the game which is a massive win. 
3. Global warming: a totally unique an interesting mechanism it is a big shame that it does not meaningfully tie into any other mechanism in the game.

As someone with 700-ish hours sunk into last two Civs (and some playtime in EL) I'd like to add my three pennies too.

Unstacked cities in EL were annoyance, I always built one long snake of boroughs to maximize their lvl asap, and the fact that I didn't understand a lick off the tech tree didn't help at all.
In Civ 6 unstacked cities offer real nifty puzzle to solve for optimal gameplay, but compared to the map these cities seem like towns of giants built in world of lilliputs.

I'd totally love to see 4X game when there's a lot more of a lot smaller tiles that allow for much greater fiddling with districts and buildings, and I am happy to see that in HK you can add territories to cities to expand the size they can build on