One thing I think need to be taken into consideration is that Humankind offer way more adaptability than other game of the same genre. By that I mean that even if you spawn in a "bad" location you can do a lot, but before touching on that, what is even a "bad" location ? 

Taking Civ 6 as an example a bad starter location would be a place with little to no luxury or bonus ressource and no obvious access to iron or horses, but I feel like it's really different in Humankind. In Humankind a bad starting location would be to spawn on the edge of a region or in a snake like region, both situation can probably be handled with 2/3 turn (max) given the mobility early units have. Another point is the question of biomes, in Humankind every biomes are the same in term of what food, production, science ect they offer, the only thing that change from biome to biome is the % of chance of getting a certain type of tile, for example forest are less common in the desert, it does mean that on average some biome will be worse starter location than other (probably) but with good scouting chance are that you can at the very least find a place in your starting biome where you get a good mix of everything you need to get started. 

Not only that but as said previously, Humankind give to the player a lot of agency and choices. Even just 3 to 5 turn should give you (in my opinion) enough information to choose your first era culture given how generic the first few culture seems to be, I mean, stop me if I'm wrong but we only know Egypt, Babylonians, Harappans and Myceneans legacy trait and the 4 of them are pretty darn generic. Even if there was more specific legacy trait for the first era they would be few and it's up to you to adapt.

As for the Warmonger vs Peaceful, the thing is that warmonging during the first era SHOULD be a niche strat and SHOULD only be used as a cheese or when you know you're nextdoor to another player, after all warring should put a strains on your economy and as we know 4x are pretty exponential, the advantage you get early can snowball out of control really fast so it's rarely the best option to bring war to a neighbor super early in a game unless you can somehow create an economy around that (like maybe having a legacy trait that give you gold per ennemy killed).


All in all it doesn't seems to me like we should have more than 5 turn before settling but that's the kinda thing we will judge once we get our hand on a more polished version ! 

Excellent points about terrain, resource generation and how unit mobility is handled in humankind compared to other 4X.

I would consider a starting location "bad" as the environment not suiting the needs of the chosen civilization or play-style desired before starting a game. Of course instances were Mali starts on two desert tiles (Civ 6) or Montezuma not having a neighbor (Civ 5) can be overcome; that is not what every player desires to do when they click start. Humankind unchains players from a set starting culture/civilization is already a huge improvement to preventing restarts. 

From what I gather from other Humankind videos, players need to grab one curiosity to unlock their first culture than maneuver their hunting party to the desired starting location. This lead me to believe the earliest cities and claims could start turn 2-3 when a suitable location is in close proximity to a curiosity. If splitting the hunting party is an option, players could both find a curiosity and stage a unit on a good location quite quickly. I am a proponent for hunting parties needing at least two curiosities before acquiring their first culture to adequately buffer instances of a "bad" start. 

Players traversing away from the poor territory are still able to collect the needed curiosities while find a suitable settling spot. At the minimum I could see this adding 1 turn but would likely average around +2-3 turns before opportunity costs start mounting. The first curiosity could be treated as event/choice/story moment or provide a nominal boost in preparation for a culture.  

For example the lackluster territory left of the first city from Opendev Scenario 1. I apologize for the picture from a youtube video without the yields as OpenDev has closed. 

The majority of tiles yield 1-2 food or 1-2 production each with only two good tile in the entire zone would not make a decent first city. Extra leeway from a marginally longer nomadic era would provide just enough time to find a suitable (not perfect) start. 

I fully agree the starting cultures (to my knowledge) do not need specialized biomes (deserts, tundra, etc.) with only the Harappans desiring a few tile specific features (rivers). This would really simplify where players start compared to Civ.  

I'm sure I am not alone when starting a 4X I'll have a predetermined strategy to carry out where a close neighbor or isolated start is desired. A bit of leeway in the nomadic era could assist making such circumstances a bit more consistent to a point. 

The nomadic era providing additional forms of leeway, flexibility and consistency to early setups is exciting yet shouldn't narrowed into 1-3 turns. 

Those are good point, I failed to think about people that would rather play a pre-choosen strategy instead of purely adapting. 

Another thing that come to mind thanks to your explanation is the fact that Militarist aren't the only one that might wish proximity to another player, Merchant, Aesthete (if influence is the currency for diplomacy) and Faith-oriented cultures (such as the Olmecs) might want an early proximity to other players.

After reflecting on it for a bit there's a strong argument for extending a little bit the Nomadic Period, or using another solution which would bring the same result. One that come to mind would be to have temporary units during the Nomadic Period, by that I mean units that would disapear once the first city of your culture is founded, these units would act like scout and would allow player to scout a sizeable amount of land in just 2/3 turn if you send them in different location, and obviously, once a curiosity is discovered any of these "Nomads" could found the first city. This idea might be a good solution but it still have some potential problems such as making the exploration of the map a bit too fast and therefore devaluating early scouts. 

Metacomet wrote:

For what I've read, and if I've well understood, this nomadic era will last much more than 3 or 4 turns. We should have enough time to discover most of the continent, hunt several animals, discover several curiosities.  To be confirmed... 

Yeah you need to gather food by hunting before changing era, probably take around 10 turns at least

Of course it shouldnt be too long either

Maybe we should limited to how many territories we can discover during this era so that there is still exploration to do if this era last longer

Tainted wrote:
From what I gather from other Humankind videos, players need to grab one curiosity to unlock their first culture than maneuver their hunting party to the desired starting location.

I'm just going to chime in quickly in this discussion to clarify this: The B-roll that was shown in the videos after the press-tour was provided by us and very specifically only shows the last turn of the Nomadic phase. The focus of this B-roll was on the Ancient era, not the nomadic phase, but we started it at the end of the Neolithic to show the culture choice and founding your first city. A single curiosity won't be enough to enter the Ancient era, and there are ways other than Curiosities to progress.

It'll definitely be quite a bit longer than the single turn we showed, but we're still tweaking and tinkering and thus not ready to really show the neolithic yet.