First off, I would like to say that it seems as though the devs read through these forum posts, take almost all criticism seriously, and try to implement changes that make the experience of playing Humankind better for as many players as possible. This is why I'm making this thread, not because this is a complaint about the game, but because I think the community truly has a voice in the development of the game. I'll share my experience playing through games so that players can take this into consideration and maybe improve my words and make their own posts as well as hoping that the devs can read this and make the kind of changes they have made in the past.

*Note: playthroughs are on Humankind difficulty, Endless pace, and Huge map with only domination as the win condition*

1. Pollution was overcorrected

    On the outset of the game, pollution was broken to the point that many people could barely reach the contemporary era without the game forcibly being ended. Not only that, but pollution devastated the world so badly that one of the best strategies to win was to build as many factories as possible and watch the world fall apart while you steamroll them. Now, pollution has been fixed to a very high degree--so much so that it now doesn't even exist in the game. Over a few games I chose to be the Germans and/or the Australians on purpose to try out the new pollution mechanics and the only thing I was faced with was a food nerf that was quickly cured with my 15k engineering points per turn. Also, it took quite a long time for the entire world to reach the low pollution marker. It took so long that at one point I just got tired of waiting, stopped playing strategically and built as many factories as possible and only researching the infrastructure that adds pollution.

     I say this as the only faction in the game that had built any sort of factory anyway, with the next highest polluters numbers as low as 50/turn at most, just to turn around and make that negative the next turn with what I assume would be them wasting turns building forests. There was an overcorrection in the pollution overhaul because now during the industrial and contemporary eras, the computer just does not want to pollute and will do anything to avoid doing it, even though we are 500 turns away from the threshold, leading to their quick demise. 

    As a fix, my recommendation would be to keep the threshold, but to force the computer to build factories and infrastructure to combat an obvious rising threat (the player emitting the most pollution). I believe that building forests is an utter waste of time, and is easily replaced by just building the sanctuaries which create a lasting reduction to pollution. I'm not sure what the AI is doing exactly to combat pollution, but to see them emit 50/turn one time and -10/turn the next and back to 50 a couple turns later suggests they are wasting precious turns on forests. 

2. The AI researches technology inefficiently

     In every single game, there comes a point when the number one AI has at least one military unit that is significantly more powerful (Great Swords when I'm still researching Standing Army/Mounted Warfare) than what I have leading me to assume they are far ahead, in which case of course I will avoid conflict for a while leading me to catch up and eventually win. Well, once I look back at the charts, I see that I had the same number of researched technologies if not more throughout most of the game (up until the snowball). 

     Now, I could chalk this up to the purpose of their research is that they purposefully chose to go full military, but in these cases the AI *never* attacks me without provocation (something I do only when I'm prepared for war). One thing I did notice is that the AI will notice a build up of military at their borders and will respond accordingly--I applaud the devs for that--but these militaristic factions that do not research anything else are not militaristic at all! 

     The fix: Force more balanced research on the AI, stop the rushed military research. It seems that the AI does not like to attack unprovoked, so their military research is wasted 100% of the time. Since there are some AI who do tend to attack more often and under less provocation which is by design of course, I would say that redesigning that aspect wouldn't be the correct solution. I believe that if these militaristic factions still backed up their mostly passive military with some science/food/production it would lead to more efficient gameplay.

***I want to point out that there has been a couple games where I chose factions such as Huns, researched military, blew away the AI and won incredibly quickly so I understand militaristic is a gameplay choice, I'm pointing out that the AI just never, ever uses this to their advantage***

3. Snowballing still exists for the player

     In some of the patch notes, it was written that there were preventative measures to stop the end game snowball effect players inevitably run into. I still run into this issue every single game. Of course the argument could be made that this is an issue in every game and players are naturally going to do better than even the hardest AI, so what I want to point out more is that in almost every game I'm relatively behind where one might think in many aspects of the game up until late in the early modern and then all of a sudden grow exponentially regardless of whether I turtled, expanded, or even sometimes lost a city to the AI. There's a point in the game where you can clearly see the players' chosen civilization take effect, but the AI can't seem to take advantage of any of it. If the Green AI was doing well in the beginning, they did well in all factors of the game (research, food, etc.) consistently but never broke out exponentially. If the Red AI did badly, they always consistently did badly, never using factions such as Joseon to grow their research. 

     The fix: Force the AI to use their factions abilities frequently (aside from the food one which they do use). I'm not sure if the AI's code is to weigh the options of whether stopping production for research will turn out worse for them, but it really seems as though they never take chances or do anything that would cause them to break out. Forcing a faction that is behind to cancel their science to produce 20 military units would be detrimental to their culture in the here and now, but maybe they'll end up taking 3 territories! The top AI just coasts along as the top AI, still having issues with the next two highest when they could be using their gigantic lead to their advantage the way the player does. 

I say all of this as someone who has never, ever coded any AI or any game for that matter in my life and probably never will, so I'm not sure how viable my suggestions are, but I put them here because the dev team has proven to read criticism like this and act upon it in a way that fixes the issues to a large degree. Pollution was dealt with in a very welcoming way. The AI's combat was vastly improved in battles. These such changes show that they care, so here are my biggest points that I run into every single game. Any criticism to my post from other players is more than welcome as I want the game to be improved, not catered to my needs.

Regarding AI progression, I fully agree. This seems to be an AI problem and I'm not sure what can be done to fix it.

But yes, there is always at least 1, sometimes 2, AI that are doing great and you feel the need to progress to at least keep up. But then all the rest of the AI are stuck in Classical era. In my most recent game, I avoided deliberately avoided attacking anyone to see if it's the player who is causing this but the same situation occurred (I also allied with who I could to save them from getting attacked, though it doesn't really prevent that). Even the AI that managed to expand a bit still seemed stuck.

To me it seems if 1 AI can do well, the others should be able to do well too?

Hello @giygas89,

First of all I wanted to thank you for your feedback :)

In the recent patch we have touched the AI, so perhaps you can see an improvement. Also, if you have a specific suggestion or situations in which with the AI that doesn't "work" as it should be, I would appreciate if you can post it there. Example: The AI have research a lot of military tech + it is a military/expansionist culture but doesn't use that fact (like being more aggressive), also if you can illustrate it with some screenshot or saves it would be really nice, as we can replicate the behaviour.

Im having major problems with the turn indicator in almost all my games. it isnt speed or space. I never get passed like turn 180 without some kind of interruption or breakdown occuring. This has happened more than 2 or 3 times