Let me put a disclaimer that I very much enjoy the game so far. I've only played one match so far, but I really enjoyed it and look forward to closely following Humankind's development going forward. That being said, it crystalized one of my favorite aspects of Civilization which is missing in Humankind: for lack of a better term, "alt-history". 

That is, the ability to see extinct or historically repressed peoples (such as the Phoenicians, Cree, Ethiopians, etc) rise as Great Powers and live on to the modern day, complete with imaginative and interesting modern vernacular architecture and unit designs. Additionally, the ability to easily see their civics (in the case of Civ 5, their policy trees; in Civ 6, their form of government) let me assign a lot of character to their empire and grow more immersed and attached to any given game. It's just a magical experience to see Cree People's Republic rise as a major power, or the Zulus become crusaders for democracy or something. 

I don't have any concrete suggestions right now, but some way to let lesser-known cultures survive viably to the Contemporary Era would be very welcome. I know this isn't very easy, since those cultures seem to be based exclusively off of modern (or almost-modern, in the case of the Soviets) sovereign countries with widespread recognition. The only thing I can think of would be making it plausible for a player to repeatedly transcend without being trounced for a lack of powerful uniques and era bonuses, but making it possible and interesting to stay as a single culture for most of the game seems like it completely invalidates the entire gimmick that they focused most of their marketing on as the main thing differentiating Humankind from Civilization.

Sorry this post wasn't more productive. I'd love to hear other players' opinions and ideas on this though!

michvangod wrote:

I don't know if you have just missed that or it doesn't suit your expectations, but when you're changing the era you have an option to stay with your current culture f.e. Phoenicians. You can repeat that choice in each era afterwards, and you get (if I remember correctly) fame bonuses to compensate for lack of better faction traits, units and buildings. It's called ascension, and you should be able to quickly check how it works.
If it's not what you're looking for, my comment is useless and you can disregard it.

Yep, saw that feature. I address that towards the end of my second paragraph. The issue with trying to transcend with an old culture is that it just gives you a measly 10% bonus to fame and you miss out on loads of bonuses, which I imagine makes it extremely difficult for most players to actually transcend as a single culture for more than an era or two. For ancient cultures to survive to modern times regularly, there would need to be some method of making transcending for multiple eras at least situationally worthwhile, but I'm not sure how to do that without defeating the purpose of the culture system entirely.

bellum_wst wrote:

I like the idea that if I want to take the initial culture (which has disappeared by our time) I will experience difficulty (due to the lack of special buildings and units). After all, it really must be difficult to preserve the ancient culture and carry it through the centuries. 

It may be worth adding some additional perks (in addition to the bonus to fame) for the culture if you are moving into a new era without changing the culture. That is, you will still not have unique buildings and units, but there will be a new perk in each subsequent culture. A very small bonus, just to encourage the path to modernity with one culture.

I agree, the main gimmick of the game is changing cultures every era, so it should be somewhat challenging or pretty situational to transcend for several eras. Adding era bonuses but no uniques seems like a decent compromise. Ultimately, it might just be that this sort of storytelling and immersion is incompatible with Amplitude's vision for the game, which is honestly fine; there are other games where one can find it, but I enjoy Humankind's gameplay a lot so seeing ways to create interesting and diverse outcomes would be great.

Vorvadoss wrote:

bellum_wst wrote:

I like the idea that if I want to take the initial culture (which has disappeared by our time) I will experience difficulty (due to the lack of special buildings and units). After all, it really must be difficult to preserve the ancient culture and carry it through the centuries. 

It may be worth adding some additional perks (in addition to the bonus to fame) for the culture if you are moving into a new era without changing the culture. That is, you will still not have unique buildings and units, but there will be a new perk in each subsequent culture. A very small bonus, just to encourage the path to modernity with one culture.

I agree, the main gimmick of the game is changing cultures every era, so it should be somewhat challenging or pretty situational to transcend for several eras. Adding era bonuses but no uniques seems like a decent compromise. Ultimately, it might just be that this sort of storytelling and immersion is incompatible with Amplitude's vision for the game, which is honestly fine; there are other games where one can find it, but I enjoy Humankind's gameplay a lot so seeing ways to create interesting and diverse outcomes would be great.

I did have similar thought trains though, trying to extrapolate on your first hand experience, maybe fueled by forum posts explaining what culture would be most beneficial in era x. As it happens in my current game i did opt for the transcend option every era with knowingly foregoing any extra point bonusses since expansion wouldn't be on the head of my mind first. As it happens, i belief ton village difficulty, this is perfectly handled right to the point of not really endangering my first place fame score atm. It would be nice to discover in later games that even the a.i. happens to stick with the transcendence path now and then. In the end it would be probably easily to see if this game happens to gather personal playing hours in a higher rate then a civ game or how extra DLC will add both on the races available for choice or game mechanics. There's of course already the statement that this system allows for a very high variety of different cultural definitions though if this ultimately will allow for the feeling of encountering a unique opponent that is both visible and spectacular unexpected remains yet to be seen  

The issue with trying to transcend with an old culture is that it just gives you a measly 10% bonus to fame and you miss out on loads of bonuses

Im not sure this will make it better in your eyes, but the fame stacks per era, up to 50% i believe

Yeah the 10% fame is nice, but I feel they should have some system in place if you do want to stay a certain civ for the whole game their should be a system in place to give them something a little special over time. That 10% fame is good, but you are missing out on passives, units, and buildings. It's not a good trade off and it sucks cause personally I would play as Babylon all game, but everything I'm missing out on is awful.