This is more of a feedback thread than anything, but I have a few ideas too. And inquiries :) Still, sorry if that's not the appropriate forum to post this, but I really want to share my thoughts. The reason for that is that this game is obviously a fruit of love and passion for mapping the cultural and technological development of humankind onto a gameplay canvas, and that is no small feat. Yet there are things that are kind of ... perplexing to me as a player, and I'll try to list them below.

The main thing that I enjoy in this game is the variety of cultures, art styles and information that's given to the player. Sure, the feeling of having to balance a spreadsheet with FIDSI is there (like in most Amplitude games), yet it's so vibrant and so interesting to look at and interact with, that I find it interesting every time to explore new bits of land, scroll through cultures and I find myself wanting to pick new things just for the sake of variety and not gameplay purposes. Yet for all that value, the fame system as a way to gauge a player's performance (and directly impacts whether you win or lose the game) looks like something that's been lifted off a board game. Collecting stars, having cultures picked before you are comfortable in advancing to a new era -- those things are really frustrating. If anything, it feels like it cheapens the experience a little bit -- though I completely understand the intent behind it. I mean, it's like an equivalent of currency -- you are rewarded for both exploration, war, expansion and other things. Yet the notion of score is present in many titles, including Endless Space and Endless Legend; yet in Humankind the score is actually the main driving force of your gameplay. You can go to space, sure, or kill everyone, but I can imagine a scenario, where you could lose to a player after conquering them, just because they diligently collected era stars. Not to mention that having to pick a "leftover" culture is very frustrating to me. On one hand -- sure, progress waits for no one, and humanity didn't exactly "choose" to advance in eras, and those are not well-defined. Well, "choosing" the cultures is similarly puzzling from a real-world point of view. "I can't be Zhou, so I'll choose Olmecs, because I want an Influence game" -- that's something that I personally have to deal with (and I acknowledge that this might be my personal quirk, and not a universal issue).

The cultures themselves are not very different from each other -- so there are no differences in gameplay, unlike in Endless Legend, where you have, say, the Mikara, or the Cultists, which are very different from other races in terms of gameplay. I mean, cultures affect the way you focus your efforts, yet it's your efforts and game plan that dominate the game, and not really the cultures you pick. I mean, you can steamroll the opponent with any culture -- be it the Ottomans, or the Celts, or whomever else. You can also be a wonder builder with Egypt as well as, say, the USSR. So while the cultural aspect is very interesting and insanely diverse (I thoroughly enjoyed getting to know certain cultures I never heard about, such as the Haudenosaunee), it isn't really impactful. On higher difficulties, I guess, the choices of culture stack and matter, but on lower difficulties (I play on Metropolis) there seems to be no difference. I am still able to generate enough influence to get wonders in later eras, still able to build or buy all the districts I want and go to space, regardless of the cultural bias.

The last expansion also adds a mechanic that can be "farmed" -- e.g. if you want to get a stable influx of leverage against people, you can just offer them deals they would not take, and then withdraw demands. War support works in a similar fashion. While the idea is interesting, it has some quite peculiar consequences -- for instance, I once had a guy beaten in a war, next turn after the war ended he announces that he wants my territory on the edge of his empire and uses an international vote to force me to either give it up or declare war. I refused, and he won the war immediately, even though both of us had 0 war support, so he instantly forced me to give up that territory. I mean, that was some Vladimir Putin level annexation technique, but it's an edge case that mostly taught me to always keep high war support by consistently offering people deals they won't accept.

My biggest grip with this game is the pace, though. If I wish to linger in an era to avoid switching cultures (yet I want to switch cultures eventually for a richer experience, as Transcending gives you nothing except points, which is pretty sad in terms of experience), I might miss a culture I wanted. On the other hand, I want to build all those special districts, just because :) On the third hand, I also don't want to kill units or expand in order to fill in the "star" requirements in the next era. On the fourth hand, I want to hog all the wonders to myself, so I'm stuck without them, while the era didn't progress. On the fifth hand, I just need one more tech for a science star and 5 more turns to get a merchant star, that's not too much, is it? And on the sixth hand (hello there, Shiva :) ), you seem to get more points for stars in later eras, so all the hard work you did hunting deer at the start of the game doesn't really pay off.  So going for the score is, in my opinion, countering the immersion and actual enjoyment of the game. The one aspect, where it's not that visible, is combat -- and I must say that Humankind, IMO, has the best and most comprehensive combat in all of Amplitude's titles. Same can be said about the tutorial :)

There are also multiple bugs. I would file bug reports, but I'm just too damn immersed when I play this game! :) But things that really peek out are the "city-state" mechanics, where there are some placeholder strings that aren't properly imported in the game (to see what I mean, try buying a resource from a city state, or have them ask you to join them in battle -- there will be a missing string in the popup). Also "the city state is in decline" and other mysterious notions are not really clear. The action to "clear ruins" doesn't have highlighting, so you have to hover over multiple tiles to perform such an action. Ambushes by spies sometimes cause the battle screen to get stuck "waiting for the opponent". From the experience of other Amplitude's titles, I tend to think these will get fixed over time, so I'm not too worried, yet these bugs can annoy from time to time.

Last but not least is my gripe with the style chosen for the Contemporary era. Both the music and most of the outfits are... repetitive. Once I reach the final era, I'm just stuck listening to the same track (which gets shuffled with a "flavor" track of my culture, but nothing else), and I kid you not -- I can't get it out of my head for a week now. I don't even like it that much, I just listened to it way too much :( Same goes for the outfits -- jackets of different colors with flags aren't really that impressive, when compared with the style vibrancy of other eras (so, I guess, this makes Nigeria very unique :) ). All of this is, obviously, very subjective, but I felt I had to say it.

I don't really want to be non-constructive, so I want to offer some suggestions:

1. Replace fame with a system that is less evidently resembling a numeric score. Like some kind of "chronicle" that gets filled in as you complete various deeds, or some kind of building that you can build to move to a new era; or even an event-based trigger for era advancement. Score can still be calculated in the background, but there will be much more immersion this way, I think.

2. Have some kind of "culture bias" setting for your whole game, and have "culture pools" for different players. Some cultures may overlap in those pools, but that would shape your playstyle and preferences at least a little bit. You'd need to add more cultures, though :) (but I'm guessing that everyone would want more cultures in this game :) )

3. Make the pre-historic era different based on your starting choices (using the game settings, or events). For example, you can bias your tribe to be aggressive, with stronger or different warriors, or creative, with the ability to leave "sites" that could be somehow used in later eras (through archeology, for example), or naturalist, with the ability to capture or even ride various animals, or religious, with the ability to focus their efforts on constructing huge worshipping sites and nothing else :) There are multiple possibilities, but ultimately it could lead to interesting in-game stories.

4. Similarly, replace the science victory (I'm not counting the one to fill out the tech tree, since I really don't like it). Presently, I'm able to go to Mars while not having researched some techs from as early as Early Modern era. It's a bit awkward, and feels a little shoehorned, to be honest. I really like the notion that I can avoid winning after building the Mars colony, though. Contemporary era is, actually, very enjoyable, because I stop worrying about stars. Anyway, I propose something similar to (3) -- make different Future eras. Something like branching paths -- you can be a Space Explorer, or focus on human augmentation and building cyborgs, or gene manipulation and cloning technology, or gamble and try to encounter aliens, which could be either benevolent or malevolent, or non-existant, or become a ruthless mind-controlling tyrant, or focus on AI, binary consciousness and mind uploading, or even on robototechnics. The possibilities, again, are endless, and it meshes well with the theme of the game (though it does require a lot of effort to implement something like this, I understand).

5. Have the same culture provide different playing biases (e.g. Rome can be expansionist, but it can also be militaristic and build War Camps, or be Aesthetic, and build Colosseums etc). Basically, this can add variety to the cultures themselves, and multiply the existing options by a lot.

6. Have more religious options. I never abandon my religion, because the bonuses, IMO, are too helpful. On the other hand, Secularism or Fervent Atheism (and Agnosticism too, for that matter, although it's not represented) are fair parts of our modern culture. The way things work now, the final Religious choice just has you throwing out all previous Religious choices out the window. It might represent progress, true, but gameplay-wise it's a little frustrating. I never use it, even to spice up the game. Might I suggest Secularism as a logical evolution of the Religious Tolerance branch, that doesn't outright cancel your religion, but instead grants you multiple bonuses depending on the number of different Religious districts in your territories? In the meantime, Atheism could just gradually reverse the pressure of all religions on your cities, while substituting Faith for a resource of your choice (such as Science, Food or Industry).

If you are seeing this -- thanks for reading through my post! I really sympathize with this game, even though I just can't have fun when playing it :( I hope it gets better with time, and, knowing Amplitude Studios, it most likely will :)

P.S. A small inquiry would be to add Ukraine to the list of cultures. As a Ukrainian myself, I often see it overlooked in multiple modern games, so having Kyivan Rus', the Hetmanate, the Cossack State and the Ukrainian People's Republic (or modern-day Ukrainian state) would be very nice to see, especially since they have cultural flavor to add :)