Hello, after live streaming my gameplay over the last few days(YT@Inevitable Space - Stadia) and having time to create a personal scenario in humankind i can honestly say i love it and am eager for more. I created this reddit post detailing more: https://www.reddit.com/r/Stadia/comments/jgx7gs/humankind_opendev_demo/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share

In short, please open this up for updates as they are available, keep this in the stadia store as invite only or something! I dont want to wait

I had such high hopes for Humankind.  Unfortunately playing this scenario quickly turned me off.  The different game mechanics did not mesh well, and the graphics were mediocre at best.  

Was diplomacy a joke?  I didn't understand it at all.  Also the culture stuff -- I felt like I could have ignored this and religion. The era transitions were clunky and picking a different civilization just didn't feel good.  And the combat was terrible -- was that supposed to be fog of war hiding units two tiles away??  

I will DEFINITELY NOT pay $60 for the full version of this game on release.  In fact I will probably remove it from my Steam wishlist.  I'm actually a little sad, because I have been looking forward to the release of this game for some time.

Scholastico wrote:

-    Where do excess era stars go? Are they wasted forever once you transition into the next era?

They don't count towards entering the next era, but whenever you earn a star you get a large amount of fame. The more stars in that category you've collected, the more fame each additional star gets you. Thus, you get more fame collecting 3 stars in one category than you would getting 3 or maybe even 4 in separate categories. You also get more fame when collecting stars that match your own culture's affinity.

1st impressions You asked for:

I just finished my 1st playthrough in turn 41 with just 1700 Fame but  having a powerful empire.

So now my 1st impression "out of the belly" - I will less focus on "strategy", "mechanics", "formulas" ... but focus on "FEELING" I have now.

1) Feeling of Respect and gratitude - THANK YOU Amplitude for Your great effort creating a masterpiece. Fantastic IDEA (and twist to the 4x civ genre), great visuals, beautiful music, streamlined play and friendly UI, and Your willingness and braveness to share the opendev with us for active feedback ... so even the 1st open dev I had the honor to participate and now every minute was a good minute spend ... BUT

2) Feeling of being unchallenged – not once I felt a threat:

- 1 scout easily defeats 2 bears or some other “wandering threats”

- AI neighbors were slowly expanding with small armies

- Independent cities were easy to conquer even with just 2 scouts - even with their own mercenaries!

- never needed to build stronger or even “unique units”

… nothing of the above is a critique as I assume that it was Your intention not to scare new/potential players away with harder settings,... but still You asked for honest feedback, so lets focus on the next "feeling":

3) Empty feeling of meaningless decisions

- I did not feel that any decision really mattered. Never I had to “wait” for a specific scientific discovery or beeline towards something I really need to make a difference. 

- Not once there was a territory I needed to claim (because of some resources) but could not, due to lack of funds or already claimed by a “strong force”. 

- never I had to plan to get a star – they just dropped, much too fast

- FAME, supposed to be the heart of the game, was JUST A NUMBER. I had no feedback of its “value”, no comparison with the other empires. Just a number with no real meaning I could relate to.

- except for more grinding I could not find a reason to prolong advancing in the next era 

In SUMMARY I was just intuitively playing my game, exploring, expanding, building the empire. In other words, I was rolling an overpowerful snowball downhill. All decisions, and “challenges” added “something” to the size or speed of the snowball, but did not add any drama any feeling of crucial moments nor did they change direction or stop the moving snowball. All discoveries, stars, fame, just dropped by anyway.

The GOOD part of the summary above is that Humankind opendev creates such a beautiful ambience for intuitive gameplay. THE FUTURE of strategy gaming does not need huge civilopedias, "external guides", or overcomplicated rules that the AI is not able to follow or understand and at the same time the human player is tricked into “hard work” every turn, instead of enjoying gaming – so intuitive gameplay is a big success.

I fully understand that by 10x10x10x10x10x10 there are ONE MILLION of CULTURES for us to create – so it is a clear invitation for creativity, for imagination, and for a positive attitude that “anything goes” and that there are NO wrong decisions ?

BUT again, from the bottom of my heart I hope that till April, Your great team, with the help of players (even like me) WILL find the right BALANCE and imprint some real drama, and real decision-making... an by doing so giving us the "one more turn feeling". 

At the END, before jumping into a 2nd or 3rd ….  playthrough some QUESTIONS to myself:

• As my FAME was very small, just 1700, am I motivated to go back, slow down, keep playing till turn 100 and GRIND the number to become BIGGER although there is no in-game feedback or mechanism inviting me to do so.
• Out of respect - as this was a “learning” scenario, with Nubia inviting us to play friendly – I played friendly. Shall I now go for a “Conquer the World” run??? ? 

There should be a way to track completed quarters/infrastructure/buildings

I know this Opendev is focused on feedback about Fame and Diplomacy, but I really missed "construction" complete notifications while playing it. Also there is no buyout button on the list of cities, so it's harder to track where can you spend your money on, you have to switch each individual city manually.

I LOVED IT ! i pre-ordered right away on stadia thats because i own over 50 games on the platform and ive asked for these type of games on the platform since day one. The UI SUCKS but i know its a demo of an alpha its cool, also why not release early access on Stadia???? Balders Gate 3 does and we all know that game isn't going to be finished for another year. Unpopular take, but i would pay to play this in Early Access seriously! it's easy with stadia to pop right in play and give feedback, most of the screenshots and 30-second clips get saved to your Gmail account so its easy to just post them up anywhere. I just think there is tons of advantages to early access. I do hope Google expands to more countries, but they're trying, their listening to our feedback, and adding games like this! i wish you guys the best, especially with stadia.  

I could not play it on Stadia because of internet speed issues and not being able in my country, but that's ok i'm accostumed, but i saw some people streaming their gameplays, i was really surprised about one in particular, bluebobz stream, i noted 2 things, in case you want to check them out:

1. It was really easy for him to take over the independent people's territories and that actually gave him an insane advantage against the AI very early on, i thought the stability mechanichs will penalise him for expanding so fast, but he seemed pretty ok, he didn´t even focus that much on chosing the + stability events.
2. He chose the Celts as his second culture, and i have to say those nemeton / sacred groves seemed really OP, he rushed for like five of them and they paid for themselves relly quikly, they have insene yields.

I realy enyoyed the dev stream lasth thursday, hope your all doing well.

Metfan4e wrote:

Some questions: outpost (solo) vs combining to city vs own city-what is the benefit? 

Turn 67 religion/influential culture-how to combat it/protect against it? What makes a culture more dominant than another? 

Stupid question-are trade routes like Endless Legend? I need to poke around the UI more. 

From what I have gathered in the OpenDevs (I'm not a VIP)

- Attaching outposts versus creating a city deals with tall vs. wide empire choices. I answered that in this thread.

- Culture influence deals with the overall Stability of your cites. The more stable they are individually the more influential they are to other cultures. 

- Religion was covered in a Dev. video. 

- I didn't play much EL, but trade seems more streamlined without the haggling or micro. Players are not bothered every time another empire sets up a trade route with your cities, but the benefits are very worth it. Overall it feels like shopping in another city for something you can get yourself with the price clearly displayed.  

Diplomacy - general

+ Overall, I liked the system a lot, as far as I could understand it. In more detail

+ The structured view of treaties was great to see things quickly

+ The system allows for quite nuanced relationships, rather than “just” global diplomatic states.

+ There seems to be a good variety of treaties available to make peaceful relations worthwhile

+ I liked the avatars talking to each other, it added flavour. It could get a bit old, so a variety of phrases would help. Better yet if they change over time to reflect differences in language. Overall, it’s more of a gimmick for me, so I wouldn’t want it to divert resources from other important areas.

- I’d like an option to specify what or how much I want to ask on top as part of a counter-proposal. Right now, it seems fixed at certain money levels for each kind of treaty.

Relations with the AI

- The role of the AI archetypes (casual, violent, …) wasn’t totally clear to me. Are these fixed traits that will stay in place over  time? If so, what exactly are the effects – the descriptions are quite vague. Should we have all this information from the outset or should some of it be revealed over time/by diplomatic contact? Civ VI and AoW: P did handled this quite nicely in my view (though the way Civ VI AI agendas worked is a different matter).

- I was slightly confused by the cultural proximity meter and the stance/opinion? Which of those two primarily determines AI actions? I assume the later? What exactly does the culture do? Merely influence the morale meter? If so, that would seem a huge wasted opportunity. I think it should definitely feed into AI stance/opinion and form a major component of it.

- I’d like more transparency on the factors that influenced AI stance/opinion. Ideally, I’d want the numerical values sitting underneath these items, e.g. -4 from grievances, -2 from cultural difference, etc. If the design philosophy is that too many numbers would break immersion of become too game, we could have qualitative increments. For instance, Civ V differentiated serious and less serious impacts with bold and unbold/normal text. Something similar, or weak/medium/strong would go a long way to structure information. Also, consider colour coding to differentiate positive and negative effects. Most games deploy red/green. That can be problematic from colour blindness perspective some colour coding would be great.

- As indicated, I like the tolerance meter, but I wasn’t sure whether it was purely heading in a direction or to a point.

- Also, does this tolerance meter consider only ideology or also civics chosen? Two empires can have the exact same ideology alignment, but with different civic choices. Arguably, civics seem more important in defining what a culture is like, so it should ideally be both. Which will be tricky with my next point.

- Continuing that train of thought, is there a way to see the opponents’ ideology positions? All nice and fine to incorporate the tolerance meter. But without knowing where we’d need to go to improve relations - if the player regards this as important – it’s hard to make informed decisions.

- I’d like a way to see the opponents’ opinions of each other, in addition to peace/war/alliance status? It would be very useful to anticipate future diplomatic developments. Such information could also be linked to espionage or other requirements, but it should be accessible somehow.

- I’d also like an overall diplomacy screen with all empires’ relations with each other. The classic diplomacy spiderweb/network chart. It’s just handy to have at a glance.

Grievances and demands

+ I think I love the system of grievances, demands, and morale. I say “I think”, because …

- I’m not yet sure I understood it 100% it. The tool tip text was actually decent, but the system is so complex that I need to play one version through at least one to the end to confirm my understanding.

- Equally, it took me a while to discover what the actual demand was. I saw the icon representing the grievance, but it wasn’t immediately clear what would happen if the demand were accepted.

- The other aspect I initially struggled with was: I moved my demand over and insisted on it, but it was rejected. I thought, based on the tool tip, that if I now wait for my morale meter to fill up to 100, I can ask again and the demand must be met. Only what I had 100 and couldn’t do anything further, did I get that you can only really demand once.

* I initially misunderstood that you get a flat morale bonus when earning the grievance, but that you need to make it into a demand for it to earn further morale points.

* Is there a way to make a demand or request outside of grievances? Maybe I am vastly more powerful than my neighbour and want to squeeze them a little. Is there a way to do so? Or ask an ally for some help.

Trade

+ I tentatively like the idea behind the trade system. It seems less micro-heavy than in other games.

- But I’m not sure I understand all aspects of it. For instance, I see some trade routes on the strategic map, but not all, in particular the first trade route I established.

- It’s also not clear to me why resources have such different base prices. Is it distance? Wouldn’t that be affected by the second component? Is it supply and demand? Diplomatic relations?

- I also found the “Free trade” agreement a bit confusing. It said trade is free (i.e. doesn’t cost anything). But after I had agreed one, I found that all resources still had both cost parameters, base and transport cost. Does the treaty just offer a cost reduction? If so, the description should be improved.

Quarters and economy

+ Even though I had been following the game closely, only upon playing did it really dawn on me how cool but also complex the system is. It will take a bit of practice to make full use of it.

* Man, there a ton of things to build in a city. Way more than will likely be built. Maybe that’s the intent. Don’t build everything everywhere, but specialise. Will still take time to get used to.

+ I like how unadministered currently moves a city a whole food growth tier down. As mentioned below, it looks like other effects of unadministered don’t currently work as intended.

- Still not sure I am that on board with the way growth works.

Fame

+ I still think I like fame as a singular victory condition, because it gives a lot of strategic flexibility even late in the game and is nice thematically. It didn’t feel as impactful in this scenario, mainly because of the lack of challenge. The AI empires were far too weak to present a threat militarily or in terms of overall development, as far as we can tell from observation (see later).

- That’s essentially, because I would not see myself as a high score player. The objective would be to get more fame than other empires in a given session, not the most fame across sessions.

- If fame is the singular victory condition, it seems essential that we have some information on how other empires are doing. Ideally, a fairly accurate fame rating. Otherwise something a little vague, like a range, relative, qualitative statements (much higher/lower than you), or a ranking. It also makes sense thematically – if your empire has a lot of fame, it will be widely known what it is famous for? Those are deeds for the history books, so they better be public and the word on them spread.

- Era stars were pretty easy to get, many without really trying. That’s especially true for science. Maybe that’s ok for the first level ones, but I feel like later ones should be a bit more challenging.

- On the flipside, other era stars seemed quite (adequately?) hard, like the merchant/money ones and the agrarian/population ones. Interestingly, the most successful strategy for agrarian ones seem to me conquest. Far quicker than homegrown talent.

+ However, I like that higher-tier stars are worth more fame. In that way, the game rewards specialisation and planning.

- I would like to see a fame breakdown – where did I get my fame from? The fancy version would emulate Civ VI’s era timeline, but even a basic list would be neat.

Combat

+/- The battles were too small-scale and unit variety used by the AI too limited (practically only scouts) to say much about the tactical AI.

+ Overall, I think the battle system is excellent. It is clear and provides meaningful depth without going overboard for a game with this level of macro layer. I still think it might get a bit out of hand in late game, but it also depends how many wars there are and long extensive these are.

+ I quite like the way retreating is handled. No immediate loss, but you can’t do it all the time and you don’t have much control where units are going.

- I think the retreat status should last one turn longer. If the opponent doesn’t immediately follow up, it’s still easy to get away.

- A small item, but I find it the pause between moving and being able to attack a bit annoying. The unit is already there. Let me attack already!

Independent peoples

A good system sits here, but it’s not quite there yet.

+ I love how you can “rent” armies from IPs, but only for a time. I imagine very attractive for merchant players and I’d see some fun interactions with civics or cultures. Does any culture have a bonus on that direction?

+ I love how they gradually appear, start settling outposts, then cities. It’s great they have real names and cities.

* In this scenario, IPs felt almost too prominent. By the time I first finished my first session around T50, the were almost everywhere. Maybe that’s just me coming from other 4Xs and in real life people actually did live everywhere.

+ The symbology of which are peaceful and which are violent is clear.

- I have now idea what patronisation does. What are the benefits? What are the benefits of more developed levels? Vision seems to be one. Patronising supposedly makes peace, so I’ll need to check that.

* Also, making a case here that benefits of patronisation or assimilation should be a little special. A unique unit would be a dream, but likely unfeasible. But something other than % more of x. Maybe a special resources not attainable otherwise?

* Relatedly, it would be nice to have a few more types of IPs, like merchants, religious, scientists, etc. Kind of like in ES2 or Civ V and VI. The benefits received could then be differentiated by type, so that the game doesn’t need insane levels of unique items.

* I agree with another poster that different shades of grey or symbols would be nice to differentiate the (many) IPs, but it may not be feasible.

- I could not yet figure out how to buy resources from IPs. It seems to work differently from main empires. Ideally, clicking on a developed resource should give me the option to be, all prerequisites being fulfilled. That would be consistent and logical.

* I’m also not sure where the assimilate option works as intended or described. When I had the majority influence and was a patron, I still didn’t have the option. Do I need to reached some patron level first? Is there a tech/civic requirement?

Civics/ideology

+ I like the system – it feels very natural how event choices shape your culture.

+ I like the civic choices most that do something special, like allowing to build outposts with money. Ideally, more of those and less of +20% of x.

- It’s implied but never made explicit whether events always move us exactly one box along ideology axes. Would be good to be explicit.

- I’d like to see my current ideology alignment both when resolving an event and when deciding on a civic. Will that event move me into another category? Do I want that? How does ideology change with civic choices? It’s hard to tell, as the window only shows the future state. I’d have to go out, go to the mid-civics section, memorize that, and go back to the civics selection. Very cumbersome.

- Legitimacy applies “celebrating”, but it’s not clear within that screen what this status does. This should be explained within the dialogue to allow informed decisions with minimal jumping between windows. Similar to other cases of effects bestowed upon civic choices.

- I’d like to see the number crunching behind the civic point attainment calculations, if there is one. If it’s something like Civ V’s culture points, that would be easy to convey. Gain x amount of stability each turn, need y threshold for next point. Display. If it’s more complicated, maybe a less good idea.

* I’m a bit iffy on the vagueness of what unlocks civic options. Should it be kept hidden as is or should there be a hint what starts the choice e.g. start a war, have x population? The unlock conditions only really stays a mystery for the first few sessions before serious players will make notes or consult external sources what unlocks civic choices and proceed to do so efficiently. Or maybe an option to view/hide?

Balance

- I guess (hope) the AIs are hard-wired to go easy. They built practically no units other than scouts which made them pushovers. The final version should be a lot tougher. ELCP and Civ V Vox Populi are good inspirations for competent AI in similar settings.

* It’s of course hard to say at this stage, but Cothons seemed very powerful. Maybe it was just those particular spots near Ha Long (?) Bay.

* I feel like I got too much science in this playthrough. I went through techs pretty quickly, without having particularly invested in science output.

* That said, by the time I reached the end of an era, a lot of techs were still undiscovered which again points to era stars being too easy to earn in this build.

* It also seemed way too easy to expand. By the end of the game I had 4 cities and stability barely made a dent. That feels off, as something needs to stop ICS. I built very few outposts for those cities, though. By the time I wanted to, most territories had IP cities which I proceeded to conquer instead.

- A lot of the early infrastructure seems very underpowered, compared to quarters. +1 or +2 of a given resource per population or special quarter seems much lower than tile yields you get. To me that suggests that for a city’s first few dozen turns, it will focus on building quarters. Only when there is a reasonable base, will it make sense to add central infrastructure. That’s not a problem, but is that the design intent? Why give us so many infrastructure options so early, if we don’t really need them? Also, they can’t really be that much stronger, because otherwise the will snowball too hard later. Maybe make a few more early infrastructures flat bonuses, independent of population or tiles? Similar to era one buildings in Endless Legend?

Interface

- Notifications show give more details. You earned an era star. Great, which one? World deed achieved? Which one?

- Similarly, the rewards for curiosities disappear way too quickly to notice what we actually get. Maybe they can be a notification on the map, similar to the after-battle report? That way it doesn’t clutter up the main notification window.

- I’d like an option to expand/collapse all cities in the city list.

- While the tech tree is beautiful, especially once a tech is researched, some of the researchables’ icons blend with background and become indistinguishable. So, before researching, it’s hard to tell at a glance whether an item is a square (infrastructure) or a hexagon (quarter) or a unit. I initially thought there was no symbology at all, but once I started completing items I noticed it’s a colouring problem.

- It would be nice to have a breakdown of total empire science. This could sit in the tech tree/screen where there already is a summary. That way, we could see the impact of science agreements easily.

- I’d like to be able to shift the priority of techs around, similar to the buildings queue or how the tech queue was handled in ES2.

- Others mentioned that the close window button isn’t always at the same place for different screen. That creates some confusing inconsistency. Also consider that right click to close isn’t standard across these games, so you may want to include a general tool tip to that effect. Apologies if it’s there and I missed it.

- An indicator how long the retreat status will last would be nice.

- In the diplomacy screen, the reply from the other side to treaty proposal is quite small and near the top. I needed to search for a few moments whether there was anything. I suggest making the font bigger or making the reply more prominent in some other way.

- It would be nice to double confirm the path for units. First click gives a preview, second click confirms. If I am hasty, I sometimes see that my armies take an unexpected route and they start marching before I can change that order.

* Does “settlement” mean cities and outposts? My outposts had stability which benefited from ideology. The only applicable stability effect from ideology was on “settlements”, so I concluded that outposts are settlements. Is this intended?

* Why are unclaimed wonders in the city list? It’s not the worst place, but certainly not where I’d have looked for them.

- I think the number and/or size of structures in quarters should be increased. I find it hard to tell from a glance which tiles are exploitations, which are quarters and which are unused. The quarters lens helps, but only works when selecting the city. The information should ideally be readable from the map. Civ VI actually did this quite nicely via colour coding the structures’ roofs.

* In the final build, I’d like a large interface option as in EL. My eyes were never great and aren’t getting better. Being able to read text comfortably will make play more pleasant.

* An option in the strategic view to remove the icons for resources would be helpful to focus on cities or armies.

(Possible) Bugs

* Unadministered cities: first, unadministered cities could still build units, contrary to what the description says and what I know of the design intent. Secondly, it seems that assigning and administrator decreases output, rather than increases it. This happened in two separate cities. I can file a proper bug report in the sub-forum.

* I encountered erroneous visual clutter after starting to ransack an enemy outpost and having the “show districts” lens active.

* In several (all?) instances, my troops’ combat values were higher than suggested by the components’ sum. Do we get some kind of difficulty bonus in this scenario? If that remains, this should be separate sub-component. It can be very explicit “+5 from difficulty level” and a bit more flavoured “+5 from beginner’s luck”.

* The maximum population indicator in the cities list shows the current population. It will always show “2/2” or “6/6” instead of e.g. “2/8”.

* The first expansion era star didn’t immediately trigger when I had 2 territories i.e. my starting one plus one attached to capital. But I think it fulfilled later without me gaining any further territories. I also wasn’t sure about the description. I guess the formulation means that unattached outposts don’t count?

* The description for harbour says that it takes in territory bonuses from 2 tiles away, but it actually worked on just a one-tile radius. Still strong, so not sure whether the problem is with the description or the effect.

* I think I conquered one IP city without defeating all the militias in the process. Is that possible/intended? I think I occupied the city hex, so maybe I just need to conquer the centre or the flag to win the battle and ergo the city itself?

Seems like my monster post swalled the intro.

Thanks for making this available to us. The above relates to one playthrough ended around turn 50 but with lots of notes. Still a few things I want to keep exploring, pending time and device availability.

I really enjoyed the overall atmosphere of the game.

I like the music.

I love the graphic style.

I like the diplomacy screen/interface.

I like the treaties.

I like the wildlife.

I like the way the indendent people feel. (not a gameplay comment)

I like the narrating.

The world feels alive and vibrante.

It is hard to say what the gameplay will be like because this pre-alpha and it is opendev.

I want is to be able see the other nations ideology and laws bucause that make each nation have more personality and will interaction between the nations more meaningful.

After a couple months of silence due other obligations (RL work and modding), i'm back, as i plan on streamin OpenDev tomorrow. So i started the game today, and played out the Nubia scenario. My post won't be as long as some above... never been one for long texts (got me in trouble at school :P ).

I really love it, and sseing how it is turning out, i'm not regreting pre-ordering it. I love the city building and the battles.

Regarding battles, i would echo what was said above: fighting independent troups or roaming animals, i never felt worried (apart from teh first battle where i didn't know what to expect): one archer shooting on every turn, scouts in front waiting for them to come at me... didn't lose any units... even when attacking independent cities.

Regarding building cities, i never figured out how to claim porcelaine or other resources in my territories. Next time i load the game, i'll try the tutorial on beginner.

Diplomacy, treaty building looks great. But to be fair, i'm basing myself on a treaty a neighbour proposed, i didn't try my own diplomacy this time.