The culture change mechanic tries to:

1. Be more culturally inmersive.
2. The fantasy of building your own unique civilization each game and how your game play shapes it. 

But it fails to deliver.

1. Be more culturally inmersive

If Cleopatra with nukes is weird, going from Mayans to Bulgarians is as weird.

And adds a new problem, you just lost the avatar representing the players. 

When you see Cleopatra’s tanks attacking your city you don’t think “oh that’s historically inaccurate”, you think “that’s the player I’ve been playing with for 200 turns”. You have an history with that player. Without player avatars you are literally playing vs color blobs. 

So humankind tries to fix this. It creates a system of custom 3D avatars. The results are pretty lackluster. And it doesn’t solve the main problem either. Instead of playing against neolithic Abraham Lincoln you are playing against neolithic generic mishap of 3D assets. By the end of the day your opponents become their color, nothing else remarkable. 

2. The fantasy of building your own unique civilization each game and how your game play shapes it.

This is the core of all the other bad decisions. Picture a bunch of squares of different colors. One red, one blue whatever. They are easily distinguishable.  Divide those squares into smaller pieces, mix them and rebuild the squares. What colors do you see? All the squares look the same. Each one might be an unique combination but they look the same. 

In humankind this is a mix of cultures each game that end up playing mostly the same. The culture mix has to be balanced, players shouldn’t have an advantage or a disadvantage for picking a set of cultures. So all cultures become generic to be able to join them and to be easier to balance.

Its really hard to remember what set of cultures your opponents have. Each opponent is making his own and you have to keep track of all their traits. A better UI wouldn’t hurt either. 

Bonus Point: the player always chooses first. 

In a fighting game you choose first. Why? Because you might be in the mood to try another playstyle. Or because that playstyle is your favorite. It’s cool if there is a random button. But this game forces the player to play in random mode, and that is something bothersome for a lot of people. 

In short, the thing that makes each player in a game unique, with their unique set of strength and weakness and easily recognizable is lost. And a ton of compromises have been made that hurt the game. 

1) Not an issue for me. You are imo too hung up on the virtual avatar tied to a specific culture you have known and played with the last two decades in Civilization. The counterpoint to this: If you, as a player, is known to play Civ x, you are never allowed (as a player) to play anything else in MP because that specific civ is what you are known to play with. The identity other players remember you by is lost. In this case, the tied avatar does not count, because you are not the AI Ghandi which does not do a peaceful game.

Will you do that?

2) even if you just play one single Civ, like in Civilization, they all play mostly the same. For what specific reason do you need to know the history of other players? In the grand scheme of things only very few things will influence you:

- affinity

- CS bonuses (which can be viewed)

- some civic choices (though they are not tied to a specific civ... so this is aside from this point)

- maybe some other stuff I cannot think of

What does it matter to you if another empire has a LT which grants +1 Food on all tiles (as in why would it define your gameplay choice)?

shakee wrote:

What does it matter to you if another empire has a LT which grants +1 Food on all tiles (as in why would it define your gameplay choice)?

Humankind's cultures are generic, as you say they give +1 in something. You just have to go to Endless Legend to see how unique and different they can be and how they can shape your playstyle and your opponents playstyle. 

Humankind's cultures MUST be generic to allow the culture mix. And that's the point. 

And if they just give +1, why don't pick one from the start and forget it? Why does a good portion of the game revolve, in one way or another, about changing cultures if they are almost meaningless? 

Humankind cannot be compared to Endless Legend because those cultures' uniqueness have no analog in human history...or can you point out to me which human culture does not need food and lives by stealing the lifeforce from others?

There is no way to make human cultures so diverse that they stand out from one another with completely unique playstyles that actually make a difference in the game. That is a fundamental thing about human cultures...all different but essentially all need the same things. Food, shelter, protection and order to thrive. So of course you have some cultures having +1 to something and +2 to something else. 

The actual playstyle of each culture is based on what they specialized in. That's why its broken down into things like science cultures and builder cultures etc

What exactly were you expecting? There are no aliens...only one human race that itself is divided by cultural diversity which has to exist within a spectrum that lets the culture get enough food, protection shelter and order to grow.

Slashman wrote:

Humankind cannot be compared to Endless Legend because those cultures' uniqueness have no analog in human history...or can you point out to me which human culture does not need food and lives by stealing the lifeforce from others?

There is no way to make human cultures so diverse that they stand out from one another with completely unique playstyles that actually make a difference in the game. That is a fundamental thing about human cultures...all different but essentially all need the same things. Food, shelter, protection and order to thrive. So of course you have some cultures having +1 to something and +2 to something else. 

The actual playstyle of each culture is based on what they specialized in. That's why its broken down into things like science cultures and builder cultures etc

What exactly were you expecting? There are no aliens...only one human race that itself is divided by cultural diversity which has to exist within a spectrum that lets the culture get enough food, protection shelter and order to grow.

I think that Atsurecachure is looking beyond the historical aspect of the cultures (and the themes of the games in general) and is focusing on the gameplay mechanics.  Of course there is not a real-life culture that steals lifeforce and there aren't real-life aliens (well, according to most people anyway), but in the context of analysis of the gameplay mechanics, who cares?  Things like "human history vs. Auriga history" and/or "diversity" have nothing to do with this analysis.  If you look at it from the standpoint of comparing the mechanical differences between EL's factions and HK's cultures, then Atsurecachure is pointing out that EL's fine-tuned factions actually feel more unique than the marginal stat boosts offered by HK's cultures.  The factions in EL always have very clearly-defined strengths and limitations which force a certain asymmetrical gameplay style where HK's cultures are just adding another set of +1's to the minmax spreadsheet which makes for a far less varied gameplay experience compared to EL.

What I'm saying is that Humankind was never meant to force an asymetrical style like Endless Legend. If you like Endless Legend...it is there for you to play. There was never going to be the stark differences between factions that EL had in Humankind. How could there be when there are so many and they are all human? 

Why are people expecting a similar kind of game to EL in Humankind. You can of course be disappointed with Amplitude for making a historical 4x. That is valid...but it is going to be similar to other historic 4x games in fundamental ways that are hard to change because it is hard to represent a culture and emphasize a certain thing about them while acknowledging that they all require the same things to grow.

How would you represent the different cultures if not by numerical differences in their traits and emblematic units?

SpikedWallMan wrote:

Yeah, HK was never meant to have the asymmetrical style of EL, but it's still interesting to compare the two approaches and their benefits/drawbacks from the viewpoint of game mechanics.

Is it really though? A lot of people have rose colored glasses on what EL was like when it released. I was there and I know that many of the races didn't even know that they were different from the other races. That aside, HK is a 4x that for better or worse is grounded in human history...not a single culture history, but one that evolved by having cultures mix and mingle together to create a whole that we can look at through "history" to see what they have created.

To answer your last question, I would argue that HK could have still done the asymmetrical faction thing if they would have taken a Civ-like approach and let you play and entire game as the same culture.  I do not agree with your viewpoint that "there is no way to make human cultures so diverse that they stand out from one another" because historically there have been cultures who have stood out significantly by focusing on things like science, trade, manufacturing, diplomacy, conquest, and more.  With this in mind, it would have been possible to do something like making Egypt a Builder faction that focuses on Industry-related goals, the Huns a Militarist faction with combat-related goals, etc.  So I do see a way to have EL-styled unique/asymmetrical factions in HK instead of basically saying "human cultures are basically the same so +1 Food for the Celts" and feeding the minmax grind.

So you mean that Egypt would gain more from building things than from war...it does that already in the game though. The Huns already gain more fame from military actions than from any other thing they can do. I don't see your point. Do you mean you want all cultures to have a totally unique way to gain fame? Because that would be messy and it would severely limit the cultures we have represented in the game.

Slashman wrote:

SpikedWallMan wrote:

Yeah, HK was never meant to have the asymmetrical style of EL, but it's still interesting to compare the two approaches and their benefits/drawbacks from the viewpoint of game mechanics.

Is it really though? A lot of people have rose colored glasses on what EL was like when it released. I was there and I know that many of the races didn't even know that they were different from the other races. That aside, HK is a 4x that for better or worse is grounded in human history...not a single culture history, but one that evolved by having cultures mix and mingle together to create a whole that we can look at through "history" to see what they have created.

In my personal opinion, I find it interesting to discuss game design concepts and compare approaches.  Really, I don't care about the historical aspect of HK at all because it's just a "coat of paint" on a set of gameplay mechanics.

So you mean that Egypt would gain more from building things than from war...it does that already in the game though. The Huns already gain more fame from military actions than from any other thing they can do. I don't see your point. Do you mean you want all cultures to have a totally unique way to gain fame? Because that would be messy and it would severely limit the cultures we have represented in the game.

Yes, so Egypt could have been more of a Builder culture like the Wild Walkers which would have opened up opportunity for Wonder victories, and the Huns could have opened up the opportunity to focus on Elimination victories even more, etc.

SpikedWallMan wrote:

In my personal opinion, I find it interesting to discuss game design concepts and compare approaches.  Really, I don't care about the historical aspect of HK at all because it's just a "coat of paint" on a set of gameplay mechanics.

Fair enough. I do care about the historical aspect and I think that it adds to the game immensely. So I would seldom find myself discussing game mechanics without the context of actual history and how much it influences things. Endless Legend had no such constraints and was a great game...I'm just not sure we should expect the same kind of gameplay from both games. And I'm equally sure that the developers do not want the same kind of gameplay from Humankind.

Yes, so Egypt could have been more of a Builder culture like the Wild Walkers which would have opened up opportunity for Wonder victories, and the Huns could have opened up the opportunity to focus on Elimination victories even more, etc.

Your main issue seems to be that you don't like the current victory conditions that are present in the game (feel free to correct me if I'm wrong). That's a valid point of view...but I think that the developers intended for them to be this way...for better or worse...and it is their game.

The problem with avatars, imo, isn't that they're not as well tied to the factions they lead, but that they're keep being booted to the margins. Say what you want about AIs spamming you with messages in Civs, but they were building up characters of the people you were playing against, in HK they're present in a single menu and you can complete your business in it before they're even done with their first voice line.

I just can't fathom why they didn't built events around our avatars interacting with each other, not all of the events, of course, but feasts, hunts, at the later dates official meetings, hell, even facing each other on the battlefield, I already have my favs and foes, poor dude Poe just wants to be left alone, fuck Gilgamesh and Agamemnon, Lucy is friend-shaped. But that's just not enough.

But we're playing against streamers, so likely any more interaction is out of the picture, not just because of necessity of recording additional lines, but because devs need to play it safe, they can't risk someone famous being a bit upset about random event portraying them eating babies. It was a nice gimmick, but the further we go, the more I regret they went for it (lacking ability to just disable all streamer avatars aside).

DNLH wrote:
...poor dude Poe just wants to be left alone, fuck Gilgamesh and Agamemnon

This garden-path sentence went places I wasn't expecting.

Enjoyed reading this thread. I agree that each playthrough struggles to remain memorable and distinct from each other. 

1. You're incentivized to get all types of stars in all eras, no matter what culture you pick - so as the huns you want builder stars instead of burning everything down

2. It's hard to remember exactly what combination of cultures you picked in a particular past game, let alone what the AI picked

2a. The AI doesn't really feel like it's playing as a particular culture in each era. When they go from the harrapans to the huns they are still friendly etc. 

3. The cultures/eras go by so fast

4. Most of the choices you make (tech, city layout/design etc.) are only minorly different between cultures - the best choices are generally the same for all cultures

5. Relatively few of the cultures have a relationship with the terrain features that change how you play

I have a few ideas kicking around in my head (ranging from minor to major game changes), what do people think of these? (Apologies if they have been suggested before elsewhere)

1. Make your specialist fame worth significantly more than other fame and/or stop accumulating other fame once you hit three stars in your specialist fame (to reduce temptation to min/max)

(I'm personally very guilty of hanging around in an era until I run out of research, in order to farm stars, which always feels gamey but I can't/won't stop myself)

2. Tie era progression to getting your three specialist stars only (but I agree the eras always feel too short) 

3. Only 1 or 2 stars available in non-specialist fame

3. Only get to keep your LT if you get three specialist stars

4. All diplomacy gets reset at culture change (eras need to be longer for this to work)

5. The whole world switches eras on the same turn (when 50% of leaders reach the threshold?) - pick your next culture in order based on fame earned in that era 

6. At game start (or after 10 turns to see terrain?) - everyone picks (or random?) a single culture from any era. When you reach that era, you are guaranteed that culture and you have a 'golden age' with significant additional fame. You and the AI are consistently addressed/labelled as that culture all game (i.e. you would talk to Horatio, leader of the Soviets (Huns) )

6a. Faction icons could be tied to the single culture for additional visual consistency

6b. Instead of the current personas, you could then give the AI a leader associated with that single culture (i.e. you talk to Stalin, leader of the Soviets (Huns) )

7. Your normal units acquire any special ability permanently as a LT (e.g. Alpini cliff scaling) allowing you to build combat hybrid monsters in the late game. This would obviously need a significant rebalance!

dongliz wrote:

Enjoyed reading this thread. I agree that each playthrough struggles to remain memorable and distinct from each other. 

1. You're incentivized to get all types of stars in all eras, no matter what culture you pick - so as the huns you want builder stars instead of burning everything down

2. It's hard to remember exactly what combination of cultures you picked in a particular past game, let alone what the AI picked

2a. The AI doesn't really feel like it's playing as a particular culture in each era. When they go from the harrapans to the huns they are still friendly etc. 

3. The cultures/eras go by so fast

4. Most of the choices you make (tech, city layout/design etc.) are only minorly different between cultures - the best choices are generally the same for all cultures

5. Relatively few of the cultures have a relationship with the terrain features that change how you play

I have a few ideas kicking around in my head (ranging from minor to major game changes), what do people think of these? (Apologies if they have been suggested before elsewhere)

1. Make your specialist fame worth significantly more than other fame and/or stop accumulating other fame once you hit three stars in your specialist fame (to reduce temptation to min/max)

(I'm personally very guilty of hanging around in an era until I run out of research, in order to farm stars, which always feels gamey but I can't/won't stop myself)

2. Tie era progression to getting your three specialist stars only (but I agree the eras always feel too short) 

3. Only 1 or 2 stars available in non-specialist fame

3. Only get to keep your LT if you get three specialist stars

4. All diplomacy gets reset at culture change (eras need to be longer for this to work)

5. The whole world switches eras on the same turn (when 50% of leaders reach the threshold?) - pick your next culture in order based on fame earned in that era 

6. At game start (or after 10 turns to see terrain?) - everyone picks (or random?) a single culture from any era. When you reach that era, you are guaranteed that culture and you have a 'golden age' with significant additional fame. You and the AI are consistently addressed/labelled as that culture all game (i.e. you would talk to Horatio, leader of the Soviets (Huns) )

6a. Faction icons could be tied to the single culture for additional visual consistency

6b. Instead of the current personas, you could then give the AI a leader associated with that single culture (i.e. you talk to Stalin, leader of the Soviets (Huns) )

7. Your normal units acquire any special ability permanently as a LT (e.g. Alpini cliff scaling) allowing you to build combat hybrid monsters in the late game. This would obviously need a significant rebalance!

Those are some good ideas imo. For instance, I like the harder (but still soft) nudges to keep to your play style (suggestion 1 and 3a and 3b).

I was thinking of requiring at least 2 era stars to be able to pick a specific affinity e.g. 2+ military stars to pick a military affinity. Not sure that matches any of your points. But it would provide more narrative in how your civilization moved from being e.g. a scientific culture to a mercantile one, and so address the immersion factor a bit.

Also to note that the recent patch gives visibility on the culture trajectory of other players so that can mitigate some of the criticism raised here.

IMO the change of cultures randomly changes civilizations you compete with. In the middle of the game. And it is completely unrealistic in alsmost all cases. For me, this destroys all fun, I stopped playing a while ago. 

However, I understand some players like it as it is. 

But what I do not understand: why is there no game setting to turn this off? Or at least a mod? Technically, that should be an easy thing to do. Or is there a way and I haven't found it?

The main obstacle for it's RP potential is that while the current selection of cultures can let you make alternate timelines for nation or civilization, it doesn't allow you to somewhat accurately retrace a given civilization's history through out the ages as not every nation has a culture that represents in each era or even the culture of a nation that ruled it at that time (e.g. the Timurids for Persia in the Early Modern Era). This limits RP and only provides one option, alternate history. Another problem is that the mechanic isn't really grounded in the world, it's very artificial and require the use of imagination and players' interpretations to not feel gamey. For me the culture shifting mechanic is supposed to represent how cultures and civilizations changed and evolved over the course history, but many others picture it as one day your Ethiopians waking up and deciding they would like to become Japanese today, and thus the culture shifting looks very unrealistic, ridiculous and gamey to them.

I've been thinking a lot about this. It would be very nice if the cultures available for you to pick from in each era were actually tied to how you played. Early on, it's fairly easy. You need to achieve X science stars and Y battle victories before you can progress to the next era as culture Z. Have your civics choices affect which cultures you can pick, or have a certain civic a prerequisite for a culture, or have a culture lock you into certain civics until you progress. Have your choices on all those civics axes affect more than just losing or gaining a bit of FIGIS.