Okey, usually in games, changing the difficulty level is equal to changes in the strength of enemys, the number of health points of the enemys or changes in enemys ai.
But what if change of the gameplay difficulty will add mechanics? like seasons, happiness in the city, weather, additional negative events and so on....

And what if the player gets additional bonuses for playing more and more difficult gameplay?
Like: when city happiness is added in the city it will be possible to build additional buildings to meet these needs, seasons? better methods of storing food and so on....

In this way the game will be easy and for young players who cannot understand everything AND it will also give an opportunity for players like me who are looking for a complicated and beautiful game.
What do you think about it?

I think it will be too difficult to balance and a bit sad to add mechanics that will only be played by a few players

I think the best is to have a progressive gameplay, like here we start with neoloithics, to dsicover a few things, then we have city management and later planes and so on

This and a good tutorial/ui is good enough to not overwhelm a player a still let him enjoy the full experience

Disabling mechanics should be reserved to a few one maybe which are not major mechanics, like ability to transcend or extra rules like one city challenges which are easy to implement and  just altering gameplay to make it more difficult 

Hopefully the game is challenging but on easy difficulty you get good bonuses and kind ai and rng, but 4x ai is hard to make match humans, i hope there can be some triggers to check snowballing

This could be an option, like a competitve mode where ai will actively try to win and bash the winner

Or a harder mod only via a trough extreme events, no new mechanics just some major floods, civil war and sutff

But this kind of thing can be added post-launch imo

MasterPaw wrote:

I think it will be too difficult to balance and a bit sad to add mechanics that will only be played by a few players

I think the best is to have a progressive gameplay, like here we start with neoloithics, to dsicover a few things, then we have city management and later planes and so on

This and a good tutorial/ui is good enough to not overwhelm a player a still let him enjoy the full experience

Disabling mechanics should be reserved to a few one maybe which are not major mechanics, like ability to transcend or extra rules like one city challenges which are easy to implement and  just altering gameplay to make it more difficult 

Hopefully the game is challenging but on easy difficulty you get good bonuses and kind ai and rng, but 4x ai is hard to make match humans, i hope there can be some triggers to check snowballing

This could be an option, like a competitve mode where ai will actively try to win and bash the winner

Or a harder mod only via a trough extreme events, no new mechanics just some major floods, civil war and sutff

But this kind of thing can be added post-launch imo

the player plays on the easiest level, reaches the end, and puts the game on the shelf...
this way you give the player more interest in the game AND the same way you learn in school. You learn the basics, you repeat the basics, you learn enlargement, and so on
so please dont say it will be too hard. Because now you act like after buying the game, you set gameplay too the hardest level immediately. Yes, I agree it is discouraging.

About AI, it would be cool if it could do things that a regular player can do rather than cheat

I would say that the best way to increase difficulty levels should be related to the intelligence of the AI, like in chess. However, many people dissuaded me arguing that it would be way too difficult, once in chess the move options are statistically fewer than in a game like HK. Civ utilizes the strategy of handicapping players and giving bonuses to the AI. I'm not a fan of this system. Your proposition would somewhat fit in this, even though it is not quite what I described here.

wiktator wrote:

MasterPaw wrote:

I think it will be too difficult to balance and a bit sad to add mechanics that will only be played by a few players

I think the best is to have a progressive gameplay, like here we start with neoloithics, to dsicover a few things, then we have city management and later planes and so on

This and a good tutorial/ui is good enough to not overwhelm a player a still let him enjoy the full experience

Disabling mechanics should be reserved to a few one maybe which are not major mechanics, like ability to transcend or extra rules like one city challenges which are easy to implement and  just altering gameplay to make it more difficult 

Hopefully the game is challenging but on easy difficulty you get good bonuses and kind ai and rng, but 4x ai is hard to make match humans, i hope there can be some triggers to check snowballing

This could be an option, like a competitve mode where ai will actively try to win and bash the winner

Or a harder mod only via a trough extreme events, no new mechanics just some major floods, civil war and sutff

But this kind of thing can be added post-launch imo

the player plays on the easiest level, reaches the end, and puts the game on the shelf...
this way you give the player more interest in the game AND the same way you learn in school. You learn the basics, you repeat the basics, you learn enlargement, and so on
so please dont say it will be too hard. Because now you act like after buying the game, you set gameplay too the hardest level immediately. Yes, I agree it is discouraging.

About AI, it would be cool if it could do things that a regular player can do rather than cheat

You're saying all that as if there was no incentive to play more than one game ? With 10 cultures per eras the games will never be the same, you should see different mix of culture every game and that's not counting terrain generation, random event ect. Games with much less "replayability" like Civ manage to have a high playerbase and one that stick to the game.

Your base assumption is that people only want to play one time because the mechanic are the same, but it's not always the case, when the mechanics are good and have depth people will play time and time again even without being introduced to new mechanics. 

"the player plays on the easiest level, reaches the end, and puts the game on the shelf... " As someone who plays usually on easy, not really, it makes the game more replayable if anything.

The point of difficulty levels is to allow different people to play the game at the challenge they want. If some difficulties get their own mechanics, it'll just make the rest feel like they're missing out on the fun. After all, you're not really playing the game anymore, just a watered down imitation.

Something to modify which mechanics are in a game could be fun, but it shouldn't be tied to difficulty. The easiest settings should also get seasons, happiness, negative events, etc. Because that's the game. That said, toggling the mechanics on and off individually might indeed be too hard to balance.

wiktator wrote:

MasterPaw wrote:

I think it will be too difficult to balance and a bit sad to add mechanics that will only be played by a few players

I think the best is to have a progressive gameplay, like here we start with neoloithics, to dsicover a few things, then we have city management and later planes and so on

This and a good tutorial/ui is good enough to not overwhelm a player a still let him enjoy the full experience

Disabling mechanics should be reserved to a few one maybe which are not major mechanics, like ability to transcend or extra rules like one city challenges which are easy to implement and  just altering gameplay to make it more difficult 

Hopefully the game is challenging but on easy difficulty you get good bonuses and kind ai and rng, but 4x ai is hard to make match humans, i hope there can be some triggers to check snowballing

This could be an option, like a competitve mode where ai will actively try to win and bash the winner

Or a harder mod only via a trough extreme events, no new mechanics just some major floods, civil war and sutff

But this kind of thing can be added post-launch imo

the player plays on the easiest level, reaches the end, and puts the game on the shelf...
this way you give the player more interest in the game AND the same way you learn in school. You learn the basics, you repeat the basics, you learn enlargement, and so on
so please dont say it will be too hard. Because now you act like after buying the game, you set gameplay too the hardest level immediately. Yes, I agree it is discouraging.

About AI, it would be cool if it could do things that a regular player can do rather than cheat

I didnt said game would be too hard, I said having lot of additional mechanics which are optionnal are hard to make from technical point of view (from the devs) because then you have several versions of the game to balance.

My point is that I think every mechanics should be in for everybody, not depending of dificulty, because as Alice said, you could feel that you miss part of the game without it. I think she tells my point in a better way that I did :)

Also about AI, yeah it would be really cool that AI can beat a very good human player without cheating, but expecting that is just unrealist. Even in simpler game like Poker AI only recently managed to be better than humans. 4X can only be approximate, and difficulty has, to some extnet, to come from different sources, like cheats (even if i quite dislike them), or adaptative environment (for example, if the player is building is empire alone, then some ai will come to attack him to give some challenge)

wiktator wrote:

Okey, usually in games, changing the difficulty level is equal to changes in the strength of enemys, the number of health points of the enemys or changes in enemys ai.
But what if change of the gameplay difficulty will add mechanics? like seasons, happiness in the city, weather, additional negative events and so on....

And what if the player gets additional bonuses for playing more and more difficult gameplay?
Like: when city happiness is added in the city it will be possible to build additional buildings to meet these needs, seasons? better methods of storing food and so on....

In this way the game will be easy and for young players who cannot understand everything AND it will also give an opportunity for players like me who are looking for a complicated and beautiful game.
What do you think about it?

No. I am all up for AI getting smarter as difficulty progresses, but but not locking gameplay content on difficulty. Collectibles and achievements for finishing the game on the highest difficulty can be there, but definitely not content. This is like WoW raids locking out a massive portion of the casual playerbase from seeing the "canon" raid ending as it launches and reserving it to the highest difficulty "mythic" fights.

3ldr1g0 wrote:

I would say that the best way to increase difficulty levels should be related to the intelligence of the AI, like in chess. However, many people dissuaded me arguing that it would be way too difficult, once in chess the move options are statistically fewer than in a game like HK. Civ utilizes the strategy of handicapping players and giving bonuses to the AI. I'm not a fan of this system. Your proposition would somewhat fit in this, even though it is not quite what I described here.

What I mean by this is, yes AI boost is easiest and applicable everywhere
BUT, This game is very different from all games of this type. It is CV + what if the history was 50% wrong (there are the same things worthy of history but they are not historically arranged)
I know, this is a very innovative approach, but when half-life was born, has break through more then 1 wall of innovation,  pouring foundations for today's games.

KurouRingo wrote:

wiktator wrote:

MasterPaw wrote:

I think it will be too difficult to balance and a bit sad to add mechanics that will only be played by a few players

I think the best is to have a progressive gameplay, like here we start with neoloithics, to dsicover a few things, then we have city management and later planes and so on

This and a good tutorial/ui is good enough to not overwhelm a player a still let him enjoy the full experience

Disabling mechanics should be reserved to a few one maybe which are not major mechanics, like ability to transcend or extra rules like one city challenges which are easy to implement and  just altering gameplay to make it more difficult 

Hopefully the game is challenging but on easy difficulty you get good bonuses and kind ai and rng, but 4x ai is hard to make match humans, i hope there can be some triggers to check snowballing

This could be an option, like a competitve mode where ai will actively try to win and bash the winner

Or a harder mod only via a trough extreme events, no new mechanics just some major floods, civil war and sutff

But this kind of thing can be added post-launch imo

the player plays on the easiest level, reaches the end, and puts the game on the shelf...
this way you give the player more interest in the game AND the same way you learn in school. You learn the basics, you repeat the basics, you learn enlargement, and so on
so please dont say it will be too hard. Because now you act like after buying the game, you set gameplay too the hardest level immediately. Yes, I agree it is discouraging.

About AI, it would be cool if it could do things that a regular player can do rather than cheat

You're saying all that as if there was no incentive to play more than one game ? With 10 cultures per eras the games will never be the same, you should see different mix of culture every game and that's not counting terrain generation, random event ect. Games with much less "replayability" like Civ manage to have a high playerbase and one that stick to the game.

Your base assumption is that people only want to play one time because the mechanic are the same, but it's not always the case, when the mechanics are good and have depth people will play time and time again even without being introduced to new mechanics. 

You forget that this game will touch upon a very difficult topic
Create history
In case the CV you mention You know what will happen next because you've played more than once. For some of the group it is boring and I was talking about it 
Besides, the CV is NOT a cultural mix because, you cant build the special buildings from Germany by playing Greece. You have straight lines of development.
In Humankind, you are your culture and you take the game wherever you want. You don't have a ready-made character with a cultural background to choose from. After introducing such a difficulty level, you (as a player) are subjected to constant new decision,which you are wondering about. Curiosity drives you because you never know what's around the corner.

Alice99 wrote:

"the player plays on the easiest level, reaches the end, and puts the game on the shelf... " As someone who plays usually on easy, not really, it makes the game more replayable if anything.

The point of difficulty levels is to allow different people to play the game at the challenge they want. If some difficulties get their own mechanics, it'll just make the rest feel like they're missing out on the fun. After all, you're not really playing the game anymore, just a watered down imitation.

Something to modify which mechanics are in a game could be fun, but it shouldn't be tied to difficulty. The easiest settings should also get seasons, happiness, negative events, etc. Because that's the game. That said, toggling the mechanics on and off individually might indeed be too hard to balance.

Please note that talking about balanced gameplay doesn't make much sense. I'll try to explain it. Balance makes sense when you have many players and each of these players chooses their own weapon. To minimize frustration in multiplayer, these weapons must either be equal in dealing damage or have pros and cons. When it comes to Humankind, the Pros and Cons are very useful for changing the culture (This is the core of the game). and now we add various types of branches to this core, such as seasons. The core won't change, but the player's behavior will. This sudden change is like discovering a new map.

It is possible that I slightly exaggerated in separating AI from the environment. However, maybe there should be 2 sliders to assess the difficulty level

Salterius wrote:

wiktator wrote:

Okey, usually in games, changing the difficulty level is equal to changes in the strength of enemys, the number of health points of the enemys or changes in enemys ai.
But what if change of the gameplay difficulty will add mechanics? like seasons, happiness in the city, weather, additional negative events and so on....

And what if the player gets additional bonuses for playing more and more difficult gameplay?
Like: when city happiness is added in the city it will be possible to build additional buildings to meet these needs, seasons? better methods of storing food and so on....

In this way the game will be easy and for young players who cannot understand everything AND it will also give an opportunity for players like me who are looking for a complicated and beautiful game.
What do you think about it?

No. I am all up for AI getting smarter as difficulty progresses, but but not locking gameplay content on difficulty. Collectibles and achievements for finishing the game on the highest difficulty can be there, but definitely not content. This is like WoW raids locking out a massive portion of the casual playerbase from seeing the "canon" raid ending as it launches and reserving it to the highest difficulty "mythic" fights.

I understand your opinion but you are forgetting that the AI will have the same troubles as you do to the player. Bonus rewards for players can be ... boring because they are introduced everywhere. If we subtract the entire list of achievements from humankind, we will be left with the question of how to interest the player to play.
Are you suggesting that you take pleasure from predicting artificial intelligence movements?

as for the difficulty: Entering one of the mechanics is natural. In game Portal, immediately after starting the game, you are introduced to the mechanics of the portal YOU CAN PASS THROUGH THEM. In the next room you have a button, you discover that you can stand on it and put the cube (this is the next mechanic). Note that you learn one mechanic in one room.
It will be the same with the difficulty level.

"as for the difficulty: Entering one of the mechanics is natural. In game Portal, immediately after starting the game, you are introduced to the mechanics of the portal YOU CAN PASS THROUGH THEM. In the next room you have a button, you discover that you can stand on it and put the cube (this is the next mechanic). Note that you learn one mechanic in one room.
It will be the same with the difficulty level."

It wouldn't be the same for the difficulty level.

You're working on the assumption that people start on easy then gradually work their way up to the hardest difficulties to learn the game.That's true for some, but not for others. Like I said, I usually play on easy even for games where I have learnt the mechanics, because I'm not the best strategic thinker and easy is usually enough of a challenge to keep me entertained but not frustrated. But if I'm playing on easy, I still want to play with the mechanics that are available in the game. I don't want to be punished for playing at the level I prefer by missing out on content.

Difficulty levels shouldn't be one really long tutorial to learn how to play the full game. They should be what it says on the tin, a setting that allows people to tailor the level of challenge they face while playing the full game. The portal approach to teaching people how to play did that: you learnt those things gradually within the same playthrough, not through the difficulty levels.

Alice99 wrote:

"as for the difficulty: Entering one of the mechanics is natural. In game Portal, immediately after starting the game, you are introduced to the mechanics of the portal YOU CAN PASS THROUGH THEM. In the next room you have a button, you discover that you can stand on it and put the cube (this is the next mechanic). Note that you learn one mechanic in one room.
It will be the same with the difficulty level."

It wouldn't be the same for the difficulty level.

You're working on the assumption that people start on easy then gradually work their way up to the hardest difficulties to learn the game.That's true for some, but not for others. Like I said, I usually play on easy even for games where I have learnt the mechanics, because I'm not the best strategic thinker and easy is usually enough of a challenge to keep me entertained but not frustrated. But if I'm playing on easy, I still want to play with the mechanics that are available in the game. I don't want to be punished for playing at the level I prefer by missing out on content.

Difficulty levels shouldn't be one really long tutorial to learn how to play the full game. They should be what it says on the tin, a setting that allows people to tailor the level of challenge they face while playing the full game. The portal approach to teaching people how to play did that: you learnt those things gradually within the same playthrough, not through the difficulty levels.

I have to agree with @Alice99 here. The difficulty in a game like Humankind (turn based strategy) should simply be the challenge one wants to set to one self. The enemy becoming harder to beat. Yes it can be with AI becoming smarter and be able to use their resources at hand better (which most ai's are bad at) or the easy deisgn and simply givbe them mnore stuff to start with (which becomes boring after a wehile and feels like ai cheating, but I guess that is easier to implement than to have self learning ai, plus that fewe processors could probably handle a self learning constantly evolving ai). Either as a way for players to start easy and learn and over time play more difficult setting, or stay on the same setting if that is the way the person enjoys it.

It's a game. A past time enjoyment. Not a job. No features should be locked of  and create some type of 1337/l33t vs n00b/nab atmosphere. I'm so sick an tired of that coming from having played alot of MMO RPG's for over 2 decades on and off. That some content is simply locked off for some people that can not dedicate their entire life to raid and play 8 hrs per day. They will never get to see what's in those instances, still they pay as much as all the others for the game. In MMO RPG's I can somewhat understand it being like that, as it's so inter twined now with how people expect MMO RPG to work. However I don't see a place for it here and would not want it to become standard for Turn Based Strategy Games. It's enough that games often get stripped off content on release to be sold back top us as DLC's after a while. Making people having to recah a certain level of "skill" to access certain content or mechanics would just make it worse. It's enough that if You are not that advanced You simply won't be able to beat the AI on the highes settings and have to play it on lower difficulty, but still experience the whole game and all of it's content that You paid for.

We all pay equal and should also get eqaul access to what we pay for based off of that. If those that want's a challenge have the need to compete with each other, then play multiplayer or even add score boards on the forums here for those that wants the competitive side of it. Don't get me wrong I understand that side too. Coming from the time of arcade games where we competed to have our 3 letters on the top of the high score list on for example Asteroids and "dethrone" our competitors. However the game itself should not have something locked off based off of difficulty setting or how well a player plays. The only difference in that regard should be the score achieved at the end, or the joy of being able to beat it on the highest setting. Achievement titles in Steam and such.

Yes a tutroial campaign whith progressive mechanics unlock seems the best for me. This is imo the best way to use the same approach as in platform/adventure games where each level add new platform/ennemies/way to fight and so on.