Hi there, I love these types of game, the scale of it is incredible and to relive your own version of history is great and Humankind looks really good and I can't wait!

I have one huge problem with Civilisation and other games of this genre that i tried though.  this is my personal opinion but i want to know if and how Humankind plan to combat this.

problem

To me the biggest strength of these games is multiplayer, going together and playing through an alternate history with friends. arguing about world affairs, forcing religious beliefs about Marmite upon each other. its all great but since you set yourself up for a very long game time and i have never felt like there is many ways to come back and feel like you are not really playing after losing out in the early eras. since we dont want to make the next hours bad for our friends this leads to us rarely using the combat systems at all and we rarely wage war as an early war just makes the game misserable for the loser in my experience. (im no pro though)

you lose cities, food, production and that stuff tends to snowball for the winner. the losing players feels like they barely have anything to play for or any reason to continue and our sessions usually ends there, sadly.

so my question is will humankind include any systems to either making it fun to play as the small country? and/or include combat mechanics that makes the competition heated until the very last turn?

Questions for the community

How would you like the game to handle this issue? do you agree that this tend to be an issue for multiplayer 4X games?

My Thoughts

Whenever i thought of this myself. I do like the idea of Eras working as a light reset but the points from earlier eras still remain.

so maybe one player got out ahead in the ancient era but in the next era the loser of the ancient era could be given a shot to reclaim the lost Fame. building some systems for that would at the very least be interesting to see what it would result in. but it could definitely depending on balance result in a worse game. early wins of course still need to matter.

obviously in Humankinds you could have Cultures that work better from behind and it would certainly help. But to me ultimately i think the biggest importance of a game like this is making losing fun.

add systems which is only possible to play with for players which civilisation lies in poverty that is fun. so that you can together with friends just form an alternate history of the world without caring about really winning.

Make poverty fun! 

if you made it to the end thank you for the time! can't wait to hear the thoughts of the community and i certainly do look forward to finally getting my hands on Humankind!

As Eulogos said, you could still earn fame even after loosing some territories. Also, on Civfanatic (I believe) Cat O Nine Tales has said that wiping player out will not be so simple. I don't really know what he meant by that but from the looks of it they already have an idea on how to prevent people from instantly loosing after failling to protect some territories. 

As for my personnal opinion, I don't like when making war is by far the easiest path in a game like in civ, but when war is hard, especialy for the invader, I find it pretty normal that you would suffer a lot from loosing this kind of war. After all your opponent is also putting himself at risk ! 

Ezumiyr wrote:

Eulogos wrote:

Some of the stars aren't really related to your size, for example be the first to circumnavigate the globe or build some things in your Capitol. You can lose a war but if your people are better remembered to their science and art you will win. If I remember correctly the devs said that it's even possible to win a game where you are defeated if you accumulated the most fame. They also said that there are come back mechanics, but they didn't say what yet and they said that they aren't very strong.

Ideally yeah it would work like that, but let's be realistic for a second.

In Civ it's the same thing, you can remain small (or "tall") and aim for a science victory or a religious victory for example.

But the thing is that more is generally better, simply because in order to make achievements, it's better to have more production. Science is still king no matter what victory you're aiming for. And if you're lagging behind, you're just lagging behind and there isn't much you can do about it. It's also much harder to be successful if you're losing wars...

I just don't see how it would be different in Humankind. To build super computers or circumnavigate the globe, it's also better if you have more cities, because you can just do that as side projects while you continue to make units or whatever you want, and you can probably "produce" more science as well. Meanwhile, that small civilization will be forced to use a more important part of its ressources on just one project. Sure you can focus on building a nice boat to circumnavigate the globe first and even beat other civs - meanwhile, more powerful and advanced civs will build wonders and make wars. You're get some fame but they'll get more.

Ultimately this is a debate about playstyle availability and anti-snowball mechanics. I've seen hints that some kind of stability mechanic exists in Humankind, but I didn't really see hints about radically different playstyles allowing to have fun while staying "behind". And I agree with the original post that it's a problem in this kind of game. I hope that the ability to choose a different civ with each era will mitigate this to some extent, but I don't think that's enough. I feel like we kinda need a "rise and fall" system.

According to the interview with the production team some time ago, I personally think the rise and fall of the mechanism has been reflected in the core play of the game. But we don't know how it works.

I have always wanted the ability in a 4x game to be completely conquered, at which point you control the "Resistance"  working to undermine whoever took your territory, with hopes of getting some of your independence back in the future (think i.e. of the Balkans, which we essentially turned in a Soviet satellite, and now have divided into many smaller countries; of France in World War II).

Hi !

4X games have always been about balancing snowballing but still having decisions you made matter. In fact, many 4X Games have positive feedback loops because they are intuitive and work well :

- If you have a lot of Production, you can produce more things that increase your Production.

- If you have a Big Army, you can destroy your opponent's army, so that makes your Army even bigger comparatively.

- If you have more Science, you can discover Science-Producing Techs faster, so increase your Science.

etc.

That's not a problem per se. If you say to a player that won a lot of Science "Screw you, we're giving free science to everyone but you" then it feels like your decisions didn't matter. What you can do is make Counter-Strategies :

- If an opponent has a lot of Science, you should be able to get some Techs with Espionage and Diplomacy.

- If an opponent has a lot of Production, you should be able to Sabotage his Factories.

- If an opponent has a bigger Army, you should be able to do Guerilla Warfare and foment Unrest.

That way, you don't take away another player's achievement, you just give other players ways to counter them. Futhermore, you should be able to use any strategy to undermine any other strategy. Any Mechanic in the game should be able to counter any other Mechanic, in a fun way.

The problem, effectively, comes into play when a Resource (looking at you Production and Science) makes every other Resource a second thought. It's useless to focus on Influence if, for example, a player with lots of Production can just produce influence and outpace me, even though I focused on Influence the whole game.

I agree with v4nraven. Rather than explicetly nerfing players who are doing well or giving free bonuses to players who are behind, there should be counter strategies which work better on players who are further ahead.

I'd suggest that being 1st requires a lot of support to maintain the lead.

Let's say that a player has a large army. It should be expensive to have many permanent units, and even more expensive to send them into another player's territory.

For science or production, there should be hefty costs to maintaining a network of labs or factories.

As I recall, a lot of achievements depend on how well you were doing when an era began. If you have a lot of territories and your neighbor only has a few, you have to settle or conquer a lot more area to get the same amount of fame your neighbor does, and it's the same for techs, unit destruction, gold and influence production, and other things.

Dinode wrote:
As I recall, a lot of achievements depend on how well you were doing when an era began. If you have a lot of territories and your neighbor only has a few, you have to settle or conquer a lot more area to get the same amount of fame your neighbor does, and it's the same for techs, unit destruction, gold and influence production, and other things.

You're absolutely right. I can't go too much into details though, as we mays still change things for balancing purpose.