On the whole, I thought that the Holi Festival was an improvement over the prior "community" event:

• I liked seeing my own progress
• I liked the "chapter" structure, where you focus on just a portion at a time
• I like how this event, and one of the prior ones, encouraged me to play Humankind in ways I normally wouldn't and try out mechanics I haven't.

• Shrewd General:  Force an Expansionist empire that has vassals to surrender.
• Smite the Wicked:  Earn a level 3 Hero badge while playing as the Mughals.

• Shrewd General:  Load the file, and on Normal Speed one of your opponents has vassalized 2 others.  Wrinkles could be thrown in such as...they're your ally, and your biggest trade partner.  And/or, you're an era behind them in tech.
• Smite the Wicked:  Load the file, and you start off as the Mughals, you have troops, and one of your nearby opponents has one or more Traitor badges.

ppretorius wrote:
One idea:  Amplitude makes save files available for the event

Here’s what that ends up doing: Having save files for each difficult challenge will end up providing experiences similar to the very first opendev of HUMANKIND, being that there was three challenge saves everyone was invited to complete and see how high their score was. I really like this idea, as the challenge save files help avoid a lot of the time wasted on tedium and placed players in a position that they can just pick up and go solve the challenge.

The challanges are not that hard. You just need to understand that your alowed to swap the slot that your playing.

I wouldn't call them difficult, because they weren't. Defeating an AI isn't that much harder just because they have a vassal (though because of how wonky the system is, fighting their vassal tends to generate grievances for whatever reason granting them more War Support) or they potentially screwed you out of lucrative trade deals to get the Traitor badge. They were tedious instead, because after hours of gameplay you could end up in a scenario in which you can't complete those challenges, not due to error or poor skills, but purely because game said 'no'.

And the kicker is that even the idea of providing players with savefiles wouldn't make that kind of challenge a skillcheck. Enemy Empire can still be so battered that their vassals will decide to liberate themselves robbing you of a victory over Empire with a vassal, not to mention them fancying a culture swap. That's my main issue, I don't have anything against challenges that force you to play certain way (that's why Holy Sites one was entertaining, just a shame that it bugged out), but those were challenges that made you cross your fingers that AI will play a certain way, after they did, you weren't really leaving your comfort zone to attack and defeat them, unless you play purely as pacifist. The only remotely gamechanging one was the player-suggested way to get the Smite the Wicked by 'farming' the Traitor with declaration of war, immediate surrender and building up your War Support by spamming them with treaty propositions, but I wouldn't really call that a playstyle.

Now, I wouldn't mind if they were giving out savefile scenarios as part of a challenge, but I'm pretty sure we already got told that's a bit too big for the scope of the events and I'm not surprised, it's just something they want to pump out relatively often to keep community engaged.

DNLH wrote:
They were tedious instead, because after hours of gameplay you could end up in a scenario in which you can't complete those challenges,

Agreed.  Tedious is probably the better word.

My intent with this post was really to stimulate a discussion around what folks would like to see in future challenges/events.

I think devs just need to think from player perspective, there's a lot of enjoyable ideas that would work well as difficult achievements, when you have all the time you want and can accomplish them at any moment, but are poor choice for time-limited challenges.

Even those two wouldn't be major offenders, though a bit bland, if they weren't surrounded by additional conditions. Defeating a Traitor with specific culture (glad they acknowledged it was poor culture choice, same as with Lunar Year issue, they should look into allowing whole culture groups, even ones vaguely fitting, rather than specific cultures for those things) would be an interesting hunt, defeating Traitors many times and having at most two eras, as a culture you may not be able to get first to in late game, for a final victory while on a timer from your Hero badge was just too much. Defeating an Expansionist by itself is not enough, though maybe you could be then just asked to defeat Expansionists a couple of times within single game, but defeating an Expansionist, who played well enough to get vassals and then managed to keep their vassals reigned in despite getting their teeth kicked in was too much.