I want to start off by saying my experience in victor was overall enjoyable. This is a game I would definitely play.

However, I think it is vastly inferior to the Endless series, or Civilization itself. There's nothing really going on in terms of systems. It feels as vanilla as civilization 5 was at release (yes 5, not 6).

Sadly I don't know if there is enough time until launch to add any of these features, but I think the below would help set this series apart from competitors:

1. I loved customizing units in the Endless series and it is something I expected to see here, especially with all these cultures being present. I think it would be fantastic to start with a Greek Phalanx that then evolved to equip items from an Asian culture. I think this is a huge opportunity that was missed based on the game's signature feature.
2. A marketplace like the Endless series, or a variation of it could add some more interaction in terms of trade. Hiring mercenaries could be done via this.
3. Neutral cities could have some unique feature about them. In my playthrough they felt very generic, like just another city to conquer or deal with. Assimilation was great in the Endless series, the passive bonuses were very interesting
4. Endless space's government system is definitely something I would expect to see here. Civics kind of covers this, but again, it is so basic and binary that it ended up being an afterthought during my play. Perhaps as we gain more experience we will realize the choices here are more meaningful
5. I understand that heroes/governors are harder to implement, as thematically this game spans through millennia. Civilization doesn't seem to care about this, but I understand if players here wish to maintain the immersion. At the very least, cities could have a "generic" governor slot, and armies as well. Think of it as a profile the candidate would need to have. "I want my generals to be trained in March 2" "I want the governors of this city to have a boost in Research". The game could assume that as each governor/general dies of age, a new one with a similar profile just takes over.

I

1. I personally think that repeatedly producing a similar cookie cutter unit builds was not overally exciting, I do support the counter play via unit types over via spending minutes in mini windows to produce counters on demand, which was time consuming and perhaps even unnecesarily powerful.
2. It does seem feasible, but rather than a marketplace, an actual diplomatic channel with other empires should feel more flavourful. When played against AI there would be little difference though. Hopefully with no ES2 AI diplo deciding times.
3. Yes, passive bonuses would bring an interesting flavour, if they were not too overwhelming, it's definitelly an interesting thing to carry over.
4. Samesies, civics so far are quite underwhemling, ES2's govs did bring strong distinction among with them maybe too much, perhaps there could be a middle ground to keep civics "subtle" yet impactful achieving strong bonuses/maluses via specialization. So far it does create that impression to some extent, but maybe the numbers are not quite high enough to hit the mark. Something like planetary specializations of endless space 2 not quite worth the effort, although those were also a hassle to click through.
   I suppose the classic "society growth tech tree" is so overused because it works best, there might be some value to changing that concept into something fresh.
5. I would back to point 1 with EL's cookie cutter 'in-depth built' heroes are a lot of extra work for not that much value, I would second that with hero skills and hero availability RNG ruining the balancing of ES2 to noticeable extent. As in 'lol vodyani guardian in my shop, ok gg'
   To find a middle ground, Stellaris 'leaders' come to mind, but that is mostly just a chore of 'oh no, the -least useless ability of the pick- hero died, I get to replace him with pretty much the same guy. I just do 5 clicks around the business to achieve painfully little.'
   'Boost in reserach' is easily replicated with specializing a city in a particular area of production, it's just not created via another menu and magic of finding a hero in an RNG pool of heroes with what you want.

So here my opinion on these:

1. I agree with koxsos on this one. I think that units get outdated too fast anyways for this to be an option.

2. Definitiely agree that some addition to how trading works would be nice. The proposed marketplaced could be a solution.

3. Neutral cities could indeed be a bit more interesting than they currently are. Just hopefully not to the extent where the playthrough is too heavily influenced by the bonus of the independen people near you (or the dependency on luck to have any near you at all)

4. Completely agreed on this one. The politics system of ES2 is one of my favourite mechanics in Amplitude games so far and often a deciding factor when I choose which 4x to play. The current civics are a bit too binary (also not balance at the moment and at the speed they are earned they ended up being a "please click this button as soon as possible to get a bonus" mechanic rather than an interesting decision to make)

5. On this one I actually disagree, while the army leaders were at least somewhat interesting the governors were very much just a button click to provide your city with a yield bonus for the rest of the game. IMO too boring of a mechanic and while it made some sense lore-wise in the Endless Universe a generic governor / general would feel very plain to me

After reading your points (and some objections), I have to say you 've convinced me that perhaps some of the features I mentioned can be unnecessary.

I will mostly stand on the customization part. Personally I loved it, even if it was "too much trouble for the value you get", it helped me feel more immersed. Perhaps a lighter version of heroes would help? I don't know about you guys, but in the endless series I had this moment where I said "wow I like this hero I have here, I'm gonna make him the vanguard of my army" or "this hero can do miracles for my economy". They stuck with you.

You had a very strong point with the unit customization though. I agree that sometimes it felt that the upgrades became obsolete too fast, so it kind of ruined the whole point of upgrading. This of course does not mean there is something fundamentally wrong with the feature, I believe that with a little work it could be done correctly. Perhaps in Endless Legend 2? :P

Unit customization doesn't exactly fit Humankind with many many units and different army compositions throughout all of history, unlike in Endless Legend where it's a fantasy setting and you can expect dudes with swords still fighting dudes with swords be it early game or late game, and it just fits it more, sure the quality of equipment changes, but its still dudes with swords.

Humankind combat is a more simplified version of EL one, and there aren't many numbers you could change around to customize your units with, further more with how cultures work, getting all generic units + 60 emblematic ones (+ imagine all the dlc units) equipment system is quite out of scope imo.

But that does not mean Endless Legend 2 cannot have unit customization, I think it most certainly will, it was a neat system and something I like in both EL and ES2.

I feel like you're coming at this from the point of view as an endless player, not a Civilization one like their going for. Honestly, I thought the Lucy OD was a perfectly fine Civ style game. It could've used some refinement, AI almost always used groups of four unit armies that where easy to beat for example.

I feel like the Victor OD is just such a different experience. Walls where, in the Lucy OD, an actual hurdle for armies. No longer in VOD. Just as an example of how much the mechanics where changed for it. As a person who personally disliked Endless Legend and refunded it but loves Civilization games execpt for 6. I feel like the Victor Open Dev needs lots of refinement and rethought out not to mention rebalanced mechanics, but many of these are not one of them.

I feel like, for example. The culture mechanics are worthless and could be mostly ignored. There's no reason to stick with a culture, you loose out on better bonuses. But, you also have no reason to switch, sense if you built a uneqe district it disappears. It's arguably better it ignore it entirely at that point. The legicy mechanics are just not enough to really add the kinda flavor in mechanics required for anything to be anything more than superficial.

Sorry for the rambling rant.

KatherineFtw wrote:

I feel like, for example. The culture mechanics are worthless and could be mostly ignored. There's no reason to stick with a culture, you loose out on better bonuses. But, you also have no reason to switch, sense if you built a uneqe district it disappears. It's arguably better it ignore it entirely at that point. The legicy mechanics are just not enough to really add the kinda flavor in mechanics required for anything to be anything more than superficial.

I am fairly certain that emblematic quarters will stay when you enter the next era. When you change your culture, you will lose the ability to build your current emblematic quarter and emblematic units, but you still keep any that you still have. As such, switching cultures is almost always going to be an upgrade, since you'll gain access to new emblematic quarters, a more recent emblematic unit, and also a legacy bonus to keep. I also have to disagree with your opinion on the power of legacy bonuses. While some of them are weaker than others, there are still plenty of bonuses that are major, and even game-defining - Cyrus' Shadow, Hard Bargainers, Shogun's Authority as examples. 

However, there is a good reason to stick with your current culture. If you ascend, you'll be getting more Fame, and it is likewise an upgrade. Ideally, you should ascend as much as possible to get as much Fame as possible. As such, there's now a decision to make: do you ascend and get some more Fame, or do you take a new culture and get a lot of new bonuses?

KatherineFtw wrote:

I feel like you're coming at this from the point of view as an endless player, not a Civilization one like their going for. Honestly, I thought the Lucy OD was a perfectly fine Civ style game. It could've used some refinement, AI almost always used groups of four unit armies that where easy to beat for example.

As far as I know that is not true, only something spread by people not involved with the development of the game, who like to make comparison between civilization and humankind. I have played endless legend and civilization from III to VI and I can for sure say that Humankind is more similar, much more so to endless legend than it is to any of the civilization games. It also do several things neither endless legend nor any civ game do, like the neolithic era start.

I don't agree with the OP that the open dev version was bare bones or wastly inferior to the games mentioned. Yes things can be improved but that is always the case.

1. Would not really work, like should you be able on an instant to swap out your sword for spears if you see enemy cavalry, should you still be able to train archers when you have access to machine guns. Most units are generic but use the apperance of the culture you are playing as so your egyptian warriors will look different from Shang warriors and if you go with rome your swordsmen will look like legionaries.
2. While the game don't have a global marketplace it still have systems like resource trade between players and recruitment of neutral city states units as mercenaries. I'm not sure a global marketplace make much sense for the game.
3. Yes they could be more developed, but they are not all the same either. 
4. Maybe, given the large time period the game cover, it would not be as easy to make governments as in endless space, the game is right now designed for slower but permament civic changes with revolution being able to change those.
5. I feel more permament things may be in order here, like a city could for example become famous for science and thus produce more of it or something.

I see some of you mentioned that the game is more closely related to Civilization than the endless series, and that's probably what the devs should be aiming for. Personally I am indifferent, I love both series equally so I am really happy regardless which "path" they choose to take.

However, even if compared to civ, I don't see how you do not agree that this is a barebones experience. If you are to compete with CIV, what exactly is your unique differentiator? The most advertised is the selection of different cultures at each era. I personally never felt excited about picking a new one, but I dont think I qualify to have an opinion on this topic yet (very little experience) and its also not the point of this thread.

So to remain on my initial point: I just felt that even compared to the CIv series, there wasn't anything new or different going on. I was selecting buildings as usual, assigning pop and expanding my territory. I sort of did it on autopilot. There weren't any "fun" systems. 

1. The tech tree is the typical tech tree
2. Trade is IMO done better / more fun in CIV
3. Policies are IMO done better / more exciting in CIV
4. Districts IMO are done better in civ / they require more thinking due to opportunity cost

Totally agree with haritos point of view. 

Actually, between humankind, endless legend or Civ, i dont chose Humankind. The game is quite standard, what are the salient innovations bring by Humankind compared to Civ or Endless Legend ? I just see culture switch.

I see more innovation than civ in humankind battle system is great and if your strategy is great we can defeat a huge army, great population distribution system and good diplomacy system.