Wasn't sure where to ask, so I am askign this here: is the new scenario only available on Stadia or will previous OpenDev participants also be able to play it on their local machines on Steam? Stadia is not offered in my country (which is dumb since one of the biggest Google headquarters in Europe is literally down the street from where I live)...

mobster_san wrote:

Wasn't sure where to ask, so I am askign this here: is the new scenario only available on Stadia or will previous OpenDev participants also be able to play it on their local machines on Steam? Stadia is not offered in my country (which is dumb since one of the biggest Google headquarters in Europe is literally down the street from where I live)...

Same in here. Hope people in non-Stadia serviced area can enjoy the Stadia OpenDev through Steam or any other ways too!

Wonderful scenario as always ! I've been expecting to play two eras in a row, this day has finally come ! I can't be more happy.

The overall ambiance is great (can't wait to have the entire Humankind's soundtracks), graphics are wonderful as previously seen during OpenDev, the reshaped UI is great, the tooltips and tutorial seems to have been expanded, a big thank you for the efforts you put in them !

Waiting until April 2021 will be hard ;)

[Update] :

Well, after several playthroughs, as the Mayas, the Romans, the Carthaginians, the Mauryans, this "demo/beta" scenario (whatever it is supposed to be) is really promising for the final version of the game.

- Graphic, artwork, animations (wildlife on the map, buildings, battles) are wonderful. I'm really super happy about the interface toggle, allowing us to make wonderful screenshots.

- I really like the reshaped/refined UI for battles. Only flaws were some weird mouse/unit movement behaviors when trying to engage in battle (battle wouldn't engage, I would have to find another path to engage battle), and there's still this "not clear enough" delimitation between the two sides of the battle area, when engaging in battle (first phase, should be the battle "confirmation phase"). The "blue" line sometimes just doesn't appear, you have to deselect/reselect the unit(s) for it to appears.

- A lot of people have noticed/talked about the pacing of the game. I also felt that progressing towards Medieval Era especially was pretty quick. But as others have mentioned, it surely has to do with the scenario, so I'm not worried about it for the final game.

- Diplomacy is really interesting and quite well designed/implemented. It really gives a strong immersive feeling. Trade is, for me, the least interesting in this scenario. But I guess it will be as much important as other mechanics with the full version of the game. Morale would need to be better explained too, depending on the tab and situation, tooltips weren't clear enough on the outcome of your actions.

- Patronizing Independent Peoples is quite fun actually, but somehow would need a better explanation I think. I had to play several times before understanding that you don't only need to be their patron, but you also have to be their main influencer, in order to assimilate them.

- The event system is really impressive and immersive, I usually try to deal with it in a situational way, which so far worked quite well.

- I very much like the narration throughout the game (civics, moving through eras, meeting other players). Very enjoyable as for immersion and the cheeky/witty text is funny to hear/read.

- Affinities are very interesting, my favorites so far are Builder, Scientist and Expansionist. The Aesthete one is very interesting as well, but harder to figure out its mechanic.

Overall, as earlier said, I'm super hyped by the game, you guys are making something that will surely be remembered !

Best of luck, and see you in April !

Hello all,

i spent 4 hours tonight to play to the new Open Dev and there are positive and minor misunderstands :

+ The scenario is great because the occasions of fights ( or not ) are here with independants peoples. 

+ Fighting has been improved, the animations during figtht have a good speed now.

+ Siege system is brilliant and very interesting.

+ The world is very immersive and fascinating to be discovered.

+ I finally found the way to grow up my cities as i thought and the "help mecanisms" to choose the perfect location for every constructions is fantastic.

+ The Civics screen works perfectly and it is very clear and easy to understand eveery choice i made.

+ The Religion screen works well, i understood the choices i had for the TENETs and their effects. TAOSIM was my state religion and i had tenet on each level. 

+ The Diplomatic screen looks many options and seems to work well.

+ I built 3 wonders and they looks impressive on game, effects are greats also.

- The religion screen is not clear on the fact that we can or not have multiple tenets on the same levels for the same religion ?

- I was able to buy luxury resources from AI and make trade routes. But AI was not able to buy something from me, i think because AI has no money. By extension, i never find how to exchange resources with AI : is it possible to do that ?

- I do not understand how to make treaties ... 

- It is still somplicate to understand how to engage fight without having any units as reserved. And it's much more complicate to understand how to engage reserve unit after the fight has started.

- I paid a lot to be the PATRON in patronage screen but i was never able to assimilate one independant city even if the bar level was close to the maximum.

-  I took ROMANS culture and i never was able to buid the specific unit.

Here is my first impressions.

Thank you amplitude for this Open Dev who gave me a very good moment of gameplay.

Never played on Stadia before, but everything worked well and I was able to get right into it quickly. 

I enjoyed how food and super-growth mattered with each unit costing 1 population. Although I didn't lose many units, I could see how population growth and industry were both important to protecting outposts and boards. As players/AIs are not carpeting the map Civ style, gaps and opportunities for ransacking were plentiful. Keeping a larger empire's "things" in tact is going to take a lot more effort, population, and industry once independent cities learn how to raid. 

I absolutely loved how trade worked automatically without the constant nagging or micro management. Instead of haggling, paying a flat price based on item and distance made it streamline. Resources bought by others still gave the owner the benefits (+food, stability, etc.) but also some money which doesn't need to be re-traded every 30 turns (in addition to the buyer now getting the resource's benefit). This made making peace, extended treaties, and not pushing grievances actually enjoyable if your going builder/trader/etc. 

- Building adjacent to Luxury/Strategic extractors felt strong and scattered quarters everywhere. Clumping up quarters didn't feel worth it till much later scenario. 

- With Artisan Quarters exploiting luxuries at Calendar, Nubia's Meroe Pyramids exploiting just money tiles felt lackluster. However, its unassuming +2 faith seemed to ignite events that mattered. 

- If the goal of Stability is to limit expansion... it was not impactful. The starting influence per turn did a much better job, but I could see difficulty settings adjusting the amounts required.

- Fulfilling Expansionist Stars ("Territories within your cities") is absurdly difficult due to classical independent cities. Expansionist stars didn't seem to count territories with cities on them, thus swinging a independent city (patron, war, etc.) would just net another territory which didn't count. 

- Bears & independent scouts are not dangerous enough to dissuade lone scouts. 

- With the multitude of ways to obtain or give grievances, so many per turn can clutter the notification bar. I love how each matters to sway your population to support a war and stack-up nicely, but maybe a little number inside the red mark for each culture. 

- Whenever a culture claimed a "Competitive Deed," it was hard to identify which one it was. A turn number achieved next to the winning culture would help tons. 

- Disbanding a unit to "transfer" population from city to city felt great. It really lets players feed population into site specific projects with forced labor.  

I really enjoyed the steam OpenDev and I continue to be impressed with this scenario! Religious mechanics made it in and I appreciate them being more passive than Civ6's system.  

Copy and Pasting my reply to the major thread on Reddit here.

Alright, played through a good chunk of the cultures available in the Stadia Demo and I've got some opinions.

I presume that we are playing on specific, unalterable settings, like the AI being set to the easiest difficulty, gamespeed to something faster than normal, we've been given the ability to build more districts than we are allowed, and that some diplomacy has been gutted. Additionally, I was able to play in the OpenDev, so I like to think I have a bit of a better grasp of the game because of it, but we'll see.

Additionally, I'll try not to harp on about glitches, as I encountered very few gamebreaking bugs. The narrator occasionally makes the wrong comment, like how I've been out religioned yet Gothic Judaism is practiced in a majority of the continent, among other things. After totally conquering my neighbors I'm unable to peace them in a way that lets me keep their stuff as I can only offer White Peaces and my own surrender, but I presume that's part of the barebones diplomacy we were given to work with. Additionally, I think the splitting of armies was glitched, as during later parts of the game I was unable to split up my armies to get units into one that had just lost units in a big fight. 

What I liked:

• And here I thought that the avatar would just be a sort of static figurehead, no, they've got voices and are quite animated! I'm a big fan of that. I personally wish there was a bit more variety between the outfits, but it's not that big of a deal for me. Can't wait to play around in the finished Avatar Creator.

• Events are fantastic. I like them a great deal. Got a Celts specific choice on one while I wasn't playing the Celts though. Loved the "My Circles! My Circles!" one. Very very excited to see the ones in later eras.

• Since it seems be can build way more districts than we're supposed to, I got to see giant classical city sprawls, and it looks wonderful. I especially adore the people and animals and whatnot, even if they are a bit derpy and walk into rivers sometimes.

• Auto-Resolve is great. While I revel in the occasional battle, the fact I don't have to do every single one is great.

What I'm concerned about:

• I'm not sure if it's just me, but Agrarian seems the better culture to play militarily now that units also cost population. Not only do they get their affinity abilities that grant free population, because they're Agrarian, they will likely have high population cities anyway that aren't hit as hard when creating military units. Compared to the fact that Militarist's special ability seems to just grant them fairly weak partisan units in exchange for population, I'm not really feeling it.

• When an Independent People sets up shop in a territory that I wanted to eventually attach to my city to and I take it over, I'm stuck with the city. I can't seem to raze it so I can set up my own outpost to adjoin it to the city. I think there is a tech later that I noticed as the Greeks that allows you to "absorb" cities into other cities, but never got to use it. I think this could be alleviated by giving us an option once the city is taken and appropriate techs are unlocked to either "Capture" the city for ourselves, "Ransack" the city to not destroy it but loot it and it's tiles for money and whatnot while not capturing it, and "Raze" to destroy the city and it's tiles over time until it's all gone. Let me be the Scourge of God should I choose to be.

• The Commons Quarter granted at the end of the Classical Era seems to be some sort of "entertainment/theatre" quarter based on the fact it has the comedy/tragedy masks, but the name doesn't really bring that to mind?

• I don't like the narrator snarking me for some of my civic choices and wonder constructions. I really hope that the narrator is more tied to the voice the player chooses to give to their avatar so we can get some variety.

• I never got the AI to give into any of my grievance demands, despite having armies on their doorstep and all that jazz. I don't know if it's enabled that they can do it in this build, but I really hope it isn't that difficult to preform.

What I hated:

• Holy shit Independent People are little pricks aren't they? Nothing is more satisfying than wiping the little jerks off the map. Additionally, I find it difficult to keep track of which IPs are which, because I can throw all my money at patronizing one of them on my border who I'm pretty sure is the little shit randomly fighting my scouts and whatnot, only to find out it's a completely different IP. The fact they're all gray doesn't really help. A splash of maybe pastels or maybe stripes would go a long way.

All in all, I'm very excited for the release, or a chance to play the game on more proper settings in future OpenDevs or other Betas.

This open dev actually restored my faith in Humankind (the game, I never lost it for real people). The previous open devs made me think it would be a tedious slog, especially with the battles. I also didn't see enough of the city management to think it would be worthwhile. Even now I found myself skipping the vast majority of the battles because I didn't want to go through with that. Seeing everything else together though, including some new systems that I either finally got to see in action or learned of for the first time, made the whole thing come together.

First, seeing fame in action was a treat. Gathering stars was a pretty fun experience, and I liked that earning 3 stars in a single category is both pretty difficult but gets you more bang for your buck. It encourages specialization in a natural way. At the same time, if you find yourself with 3 stars in a single category (especially science, I got 3 stars without even trying in the first era) you'll want to transition even if you could get more stars to keep from wasting them. Getting fame for making certain discoveries or even getting certain techs first (I invented writing) was also satisfying. It also felt like a meaningful decision when determining what new culture to pick. In my case, I had gotten 3 stars in science and was behind on influence, so picking the greeks because of both their science ability and the Unique Quarters providing more influence seemed like a good pick. Since I was always the first one to switch I felt like I was ahead, although I had no way of knowing. The only real issues I had were that some stars seemed plain easier to obtain than others (if I'm a trade culture, I shouldn't fail to get 3 stars in money despite putting a lot of effort into it while getting 3 in science without even trying) and that other than seeing who made the switch first there was no way to know who was ahead. Even having a range that shows what the minimum and maximum fame they could have based on what I've seen or what I've heard them do would give me a bit of a handle on how I'm doing.

Now, the minor cities. Those were inspired. Roaming peoples that you could just take out like animals (especially if they were hostile) that will eventually claim territory themselves, the ability to get visibility on them through patronage and if you get enough influence absorb them, or just plain conquer them? Even though I never felt the need to hire their mercenaries (I was mostly peaceful, only attacking one city state near the end, and with good relations with the giant group to the north) I had enough money that in a pinch I could have easily done this, and the roads meant I could get them where I needed quickly.

Now, influence. My favorite part about that was using it both to get new civics, which were a cool piece of both roleplaying with meaningful impacts. While being overshadowed by my neighbor's influence wasn't exactly fun, being forced to decide whether to switch my civics to match theirs was an interesting experience. I rarely had to actually worry about stability (the perks of being a small culture) so it came down to whether I thought the new choice was worth going with, and if I was ambivalent on the choice before it often made sense to go along with it. I'd like to see what it's like on the other side, because it seems like a good way to force your opponants to play sub-optimally, either taking a stability hit or getting bonuses that don't match their overall strategy. I also enjoyed the "wonder claiming" system, as well as building them using multiple cities (I had a lot of production). The only thing I'd suggest there is including a notification when you get enough culture to claim a wonder. I'd also like it if influence didn't seem directly correlated to the number of territories you have, since that meant I got overwhelmed and couldn't recover even with an influence boost because sheer numbers took me down (same with religion).

Now for diplomacy. THANK YOU for finding an alternative to the old "here's what I'm offering, here's what I want" trade system. A meter indicating how likable those deals are helps, but having everything be either directly purchasing resources from them (although I couldn't figure out if that meant they no longer had those resources or not, especially since no one ever bought anything from me for some reason, were the trade routes how they were spreading influence so well?) or asking to change the treaties with the only possible counteroffer a lump sum of money. You even kept the "cold war" status from your Endless games that I loved, even if I always got a non-aggression pact as soon as possible due to being mostly a trader. Getting additional options when forming an alliance was also neat, especially when we started sharing vision and thus both got credit for discovering a natural wonder. That said, I wish it was clearer what some of the AI personality traits meant (what the heck does casual mean?), and I wanted to see what the reputation section did. Since I never went to war, I never got to see what the morale did, so I can't speak to how effective it was except the method of gaining it did seem pretty interesting. I also never got anyone to buy anything from me, which was annoying, and I couldn't tell if having more than one of a luxury resource provided extra benefit (unless you resold them, and even that I don't know).

With religion, I just want to know how to build religious sites after I converted to the religion of my neighbor, since I know those are how you take over the leadership of a religion. The option never showed up afterwards though. :( I'd also have liked a way to close notifications when I was done with them, the ability to press escape to close the influence, religion, and science overlays, and if it was made clearer that the administrator count was how many administrators you had left, not period (it's why I didn't claim as many territories as I could have). It would have been nice to know what great deeds my rivals did when that popup showed up. I'm glad you no longer have animals wandering the cities as people roam the countryside, and that later eras have more people in the cities, but some of the paths along cliffs still act weird. There were also a few typos in the text, and the tutorials sometimes covered important items that I had to click to continue.

So, overall, I think this went well. It's still got a ways to go, but it's an excellent start, and I look forward to seeing the final product.

Edit: Also, the district fraction seemed to go above the maximum without explaining why or what any penalty was, I'm guessing it has to do with the resource extractors. Were generals done away with, because I never saw anything about the numbers of armies I could have.

I do think the UI which is genally a good apsect of Amplitude needs a bit of polishing - I agree with you that I find my real estate a bit too overworked with things about units and stuff that don't really matter so much. I mean I don't have a 40 inch display, yet, but really I think the ratio between map and specific information has to improve. The button to build an outpost or ransack something it doesn't have to be that big because I am sure I will find it.... same like some other aspects.... I want to see more of the map.... even on a  24 inch screen..... just saying.

Zahn wrote:

Hi,

i loved the Civ series until Civ5 wich i played a lot but left me fed up, so i didnt even play Civ6.

It seemed to me that the gameplay was just not deep enough when it came to mechanics, so i put the whole civ building genre aside and wasnt much intrested in Humankind when i noticed the first Articles. Until now.

With Stadia (which runs great for me) i thoght "ok, lets try it" just because there was no download time and i could instantly get into the game. And omg i really like Humankind!

I will definitiv play another or multiple playthroughs of the scenario.

After my first Round i found these Points.

- The UI is a bit chaotic. Some Windows can be closes in the upper right corner, some in the middle above the window and the diplomacy screen is closed with a button a bit left of the upper right corner. And so on.

Some Windows are imho a bit to big for the amount of information they present.

- Its not clear how trade works, there are Traderoutes, but there is no clear Map Mode where you can see where they go and what they Transport.

- I did not understand the concept of cultural and what happens when another culture gets dominant in your Territory besides the Grievance Mechanic.

- Cities / Territories should show their whole production more clear (faith, culture, influence, food....) with additional tooltips offering informations on these resources.

- You start as a Merchant and get boni for buying and selling Goods. Buying strategic Resources worked but ot was unclear how to sell these or other luxury goods to another Empire.

- Switching the Age offers the option to Trancend and keep the Nubian culture for a 10% fame Bonus and a legacy trait? whats that? one of the Nubian Modifiers? 

Switching Cultures is a option but what happens to the old culture specific Buildings and Units? can u still build them? The Game is a bit unclear on that.

These are just some Points i noticed and i guess some things will be more clear after my next Round but i wanted to share my first impressions.

I like the different mechanics like Religion, Territories, combining City Production, Independent Nations, Diplomacy, Grievance System and Moral and so on and hope they get really complex and offer different strategies.

(Trade Wars, Coordinated Attacks and Targets with allies, etc)

Stadia related im hoping for Crossplay.