I understand the mechanics of it, and I think I like the idea, just maybe not in the "naming of it". The idea of that I am French in 1 era but then Japanese in the next just doesnt sound right. Maybe the game needs another naming layer, ie.. I pick to be French, but then I can pick the french ideology in 1 era, and then the japanese one in the next. But throughout the game, I am French.

or maybe the whole concept of the humankind game is what I am not understanding and I am stuck in civilization land.

I think it would be easier to handle if they weren't given real world labels, but then the market for the game shrinks drastically, on one side you'd have people that are no longer interested, because it's not historical without Roman Legions, on the other people that would turn their nose up at it, because it wouldn't be an interesting low-fantasy setting, what with not being intended as fantasy at all.

that is why i said that maybe what they need is another layer in the naming scheme.. because i think the concept still can work, just they need to work on the "wrapping" a bit so that it does not feel so weird.

In the streams, I see people just becoming their empire and not being so wrapped up in each era's individual culture. This is natural, since you are basing your culture selections on your immediate surroundings and needs. You don't say "I want to be the Romans," you say "I want to be militaristic because I need to go to war, Romans give good bonus for that." So the empire becomes you - your empire. You are not just following the Romans. Also the AI just are referred to by their color or maybe their avatar name, not their culture. Honestly, I think the districts need a bit more branding to differentiate themselves because graphically they are not much different.

In conclusion, I think when you play the game, you won't feel weird. 1 more day and we'll know for sure.

Yeah, that's something that confused me, it seemed like the whole system was created for messages to address each other through the names of the civ leaders, but ultimately it was not done that way. Especially that everything seems to be set so that we'd form a 'relationship' with avatars outside of single playthrough, remember who crossed you and who was good friend - of course it's just bunch of code and I know that, but it won't stop my brain from forming an attachment the same way I did through years of playing Civ and coming to conclusion that Montezuma should be wiped out at first occasion.

Frankly I don't see any problem here. In terms of realism, I wouldn't mind switching into and out of the Roman culture (that is the term that they use, not "Civ") because I am also clearly not in Italy, but playing on a randomly generated map.

In my opinion it'd be much better to have a Civilization like "civs" (you pick one from the list of 60 the game already has) which then you can customize by adding "cultural flavors". It would keep the fun of changing cultures but also fixed something I find the most annoying - city names.

In this case there would be greater variety of city names (no more Memphis, Babylon etc as capitals in EVERY GAME, up to modern era) because every civilization would follow the civ-like naming (you pick Germans as your civ - your cities are German since the beginning). Some may say it'd be bad to have Berlin as city in the ancient era - and I would say it's even worse to have Russian empire with Memphis as capital in the contemporary era. 

All cultures would be merely "flavors" you could pick in specific eras. You would be a German civilization with Babylonian phase in the ancient era, Greek in classical, Aztec in medieval etc (mandatory German in industrial since it matches your "civ") and so on. You wouldn't be literally switching from Greeks to Aztecs, but be Greeks evolving into something resembling Aztec culture.

Dayvit78 wrote:
This is natural, since you are basing your culture selections on your immediate surroundings and needs. You don't say "I want to be the Romans," you say "I want to be militaristic because I need to go to war, Romans give good bonus for that." So the empire becomes you - your empire. You are not just following the Romans.

This is my approach after my first (slightly abysmal) run. I started in a region that was a lot of flat land and plains with some horses in an adjacent region, and my brain immediately went "yeah we're specialising into whatever's analogous to Scythians/Huns/Mongols as soon as humanly possible".

I got Hittites but someone else beat me to Huns >_<

If I'd started near some peninsula or archipelago, I probably would have gone for Phoenicians

Valmighty wrote:

Because it's hard to track who's who. I didn't care if English were Olmec or Nubian became Norse. The interface was not ready for this (the notification was wrong in the era part).

It's made worse by the addressing problem. On gameplay screen, it's civ A vs civ B. But civ A and B always change. Mongol declares war to Umayyad, but when I decided to get into the war, they are already changed to a new era and culture! Only in diplomacy that it's addressed using avatars.

Yeah... this is probably the biggest issue I see with the way cultures are represented, aside from how it's incredibly awkward to check their current cultural perks/legacy bonus since you need to use the ingame encyclopedia and can't just hover over them in the diplomacy interface.

Valmighty wrote:

The problem is the (lack of) identity. Humankind has avatars, but it still confuses what identity to display, the avatar? Or the culture?

Because it's hard to track who's who. I didn't care if English were Olmec or Nubian became Norse. The interface was not ready for this (the notification was wrong in the era part).

It's made worse by the addressing problem. On gameplay screen, it's civ A vs civ B. But civ A and B always change. Mongol declares war to Umayyad, but when I decided to get into the war, they are already changed to a new era and culture! Only in diplomacy that it's addressed using avatars.

It's making me confused.

And to tackle this, the community address the players by calling them the color. Green people, purple civ, brown nation.

It erases the personality, hence it's a bad narrative.

It would be much better if we -as a spirit of a nation or immortal leader- care that other avatar who is now British was Edo, and was Greek before, survived a famine, recovered to become rich, then declared liberation war to stop Mongol.

The simple fix would be to address every player as the avatar, and fix the notification as "Sabrina, the leader of Celt, advances to medieval era as Bizantines", or "John (Umayyad) declares war to Victoria (Teutons), or something like that. What better is that if they put the avatar into a big pop up when important things like this happens just like a random event pop up.

I hope Amplitude fix this on the release version. If not, they should.

this describes my problem exactly. i also start to just look for colors and that realy takes away much fun of the game.

I'm not really clear on what the culture shift actually represents, given that the civic system is already about crafting a culture. Aestheticism?

It could be cool in a "post-history" setting where these cultures already existed and after humanity is wiped out the next humans that emerge borrow aspects from the ancient cultures they unearth. That would open up some funny anachronisms too. Probably less of a market for that sort of game though.

1. Address "empires" as avatars

2. make previous cultures of a civ easily visible (So you have the German-Ming, the Edo Japanese-Mongols, etc. with a full list a click away.... Lucy (Celt Egyptians) became the (Aztec Celts)) 

I like the idea from Neolithic peoples to name their culture after a totem, usually animal but it could also be natural phenomenon or location, which is their avatar symbol too.. So I could be "Sam, leader of the Elephant Clan" or "Joe, leader of the Green Valley People." Those monikers could persist through the ages no matter what cultures are evolved. If one wanted to include the era culture in there, you would see things like "Anna, leader of the Blue Porpoise Egyptians," who might evolve into "Anna, leader of the Blue Porpoise Huns."