I want to say how much I enjoyed playing this, and I'm a lot more excited after the difference between this and the earlier steam demos. However, I would really love this to be the first Amplitude game that is clear right from when I start playing it and not after the countless 100s of hours I end up putting into it. So, here are my suggestions for making things clearer (some more granular than others!):

1) In one of the first tooltips you encounter it tells you can build one infrastructure per city. It's one of EACH infrastructure per city. Come on guys! This is fundamentally different and would totally change the game.

2) Era stars - I thought these made kind of intuitive sense, but I always seemed to be gaining stars unexpectedly and wasn't sure if the goals kept moving or if it was to do with getting, say, to a third of the main goal. What gets me one star and what gets me 3 stars?

3) Civ focus - I could kind of guess this, but why isn't it listed when you're picking civs?

4) Is there meant to not be a way to track other civ's fame? Did I just miss it? If you want to leave it mysterious, at least giving a word description so you could hazard a guess would make the game feel more competitive without making it feel too gamey. Would it be fun/easy to implement if the more famous another civ was the more info you got or the earlier you heard about them? Perhaps this could tie into influence in some way (now I'm just pitching DLC)

5) Independent tribes - really love the idea but there's a lot that isn't clear. What does Patronage actually do? (apart from STOPPING decline - I realised you really don't want to patronise people you want to assimilate. I think. Probably) Is there any way to guess when decline will happen or hasten it? If I conquer them is there a way to add them as a teritory rather than as a city?

6) Religion - I did another thread on this because I just didn't understand any of it.

7) I tried to improve the various river infrastructure thinking it would affect any river tiles I was exploiting a la Endless Legend. But... it didn't? Was this a bug?

8) I still just don't understand Natural Wonders. What are cultural traits? Do I get the bonuses when I build an outpost in the territory or do I have to make it part of the coty or is it something else?

9) Trade messages - I got occasional messages saying I had done a trade but couldn't ever see what had happened. It appeared to be with minor tribes? Also a bit weird to give us a civ with a trade focus when none of the AI civs ever got more than 1 luxury so I couldn't trade with them. Or could I? Again, pretty opaque.

10) Retreating - I understood that I just ran away full pelt in a (random?) direction, but I wasn't sure if next turn I only got half movement. Is that right?

11) Wonders - I wasn't really sure why or when I got offered a chance to make them exclusive. It seemed like a fun system though, and one that takes away the frustration of wonder stealing in Civ which is a pretty bizarre concept if you think about it.

12) Civics - I really enjoyed this system, but it wasn't clear to me what earned me the civic points. Was it that one tech gave me another kind of civics point that I earned each turn to get to the civics points you spend on civics? Or just once that tech was earned every civ would acquire civic points at the same regular intervals throughout the game?

Sorry, this list got a bit out of hand. I'm really excited and this demo really showed me the potential for Humankind, but if anyone thinks they totally get any of the above points I would love to hear their explanations.

I was going to type up something very much like this post myself after my first play through, I encountered almost all of the same issues. The other few big ones for me is that certain popups especially the goody huts would fade before I really got to find out what benefit I received. So I agree with all of these complaints and they are all issues that need to be resolved.

Having said that I loved my few hours of time spent with this game so far and fully intend on buying it. Hell I'd buy it in its current state assuming I could go through all the ages.

2. Each listed goal is how you get 1 star, at which point it lists the next goal. Having a list of what the higher thresholds are would be nice.

3. There is, it's based on the ability. The trade one gets a focus on gold, the science one on science, etc.

4. Personally, I would like it to list the minimum and maximum fame that the civ has based on what you've seen of them and what era they are, with maybe some espionage tech allowing you to get more accurate info.

9. I think they were "available to trade" instead of actually traded, meaning you were listing them for sale.

10. So far as I could tell, yeah, but it would have been nice if they'd said that before.

11. You have to save up enough influence.

12. I'm not sure, but I think the rate you got them had to do with your influence income.

Played again, and thanks to everyone's help most of it made more sense now.

I think most of the problems could be alleviated if the events at the bottom actually gave you more information about what happened.

If a trade happened, who with, for what and for how much. When I get a bonus from a Natural Wonder, then let me know what it was.

One other thing came up - what penalties to I get for having an unadministered city? All I can see are bonuses...

punkass wrote:

If a trade happened, who with, for what and for how much. When I get a bonus from a Natural Wonder, then let me know what it was.

One other thing came up - what penalties to I get for having an unadministered city? All I can see are bonuses...

Trading with other empires is a good thing. The resource they bought will continue giving you benefits while your still receiving money.

Unadministrated cities need +1 growth stage (+50 or more food/turn) to start growing populations at the normal rate. Assigning an administrator will bring the growth rate back down to normal (Growing: 10-50 food/turn; Super-growth: 50+ food/turn).

With a high Liberty culture, your unadministered cities will gain massive yeild % if you have more cities than administers. 

Tainted wrote:

Unadministrated cities need +1 growth stage (+50 or more food/turn) to start growing populations at the normal rate. Assigning an administrator will bring the growth rate back down to normal (Growing: 10-50 food/turn; Super-growth: 50+ food/turn). 

Strange how you can let me know that with one sentence, yet the 'helpful' messages really don't make that clear.