Here are my OpenDev feedback.

Before I begin, I need to say that I think the essential information for playing a game should be included in the game.

However if the amount of information is to large, it would be harsh to show all the information through user interface.

This is why a 4x game needs provide in-game encyclopedia for providing information for those who seek for.

Humankind OpenDev does not provide in-game encyclopedia. If there is one in official launch version, several things below may be solved naturally.

Now please let me begin.

User interface & convenience

1. We cannot see available movement range for a unit in current turn. We need to drag in order to see the available movement range in either world map or battle map.

2. When an army is split, original army is selected not the newly generated army. Most users would expect that newly generated army be selected intuitively, which might makes unwanted army to move.

3. When making an outpost, we can see expected FIMS gain for given position of the outpost. However, if we are lack of influence to plant the outpost, we cannot see expected FIMS.

It would be better to show expected FIMS even we are lack of influence.

4. When making a quarter in city production, recommended tile to plant given quarter is shown which is great. I hope the same works for making an outpost.

5. We cannot see upgrade tree of common and emblematic unit. This may be solved naturally if in-game encyclopedia is given.

6. Brilliant to see detailed breakdown of each city FIMS sources. However 'exploitation' is still does not show the detailed information of sources. We need to see what buildings or bonuses made how much exploitation output.

7. When a specific building is about be constructed, it would be nice to show the number of related tiles (For example, I'm going to construct a building provides +2 food for each tile containing a river. I hope to see how may related tiles currently I have so I can imagine how much additional food I can obtain after I construct the building.

8. The change of the stage of food production affects to stability and population grow gauge but the change is not updated in real time.

9. Surplus food is converted to stability but we cannot see on what formula the surplus food is converted to stability.

10. We cannot see the detailed factor of population grow gauge (n%/turn). (food production, stability, current number of population determine n but which one contributes how much?)

11. Surplus industry after construction is transferred to the next turn. Please let me know the amount of the transferred industry.

12. Similarly surplus science is not shown. Endless space 2 showed it.

13. In technology screen, we cannot see the cost of unit and building unlocked after specific knowledge is obtained.

14. In technology screen, we cannot see emblematic unit of culture before choosing the culture. Please show all  the emblematic units of all cultures in technology screen. There are not that many of them.

15. We cannot see how war score is calculated.

16. Unlike FIMS of each city, breakdown of influence and faith is not given.

17. We cannot see how much money we got after other player bought resource from us.

18. We cannot see what era the other player is under currently. (We can see the culture but it is too harsh to remember what culture belongs to what era)

19. We cannot see the condition of unlocking civic.

20. When choosing a civic, we can see final ideology stage but we cannot see the current ideology. It will be great to see both so we can see what change is occurring.

21. When a cursor is on a tile, we can see civilization bonus, exploitation, culture bonus. We need to see detailed information of exploitation. (base outcome and building effect specifically)

22. We cannot see the amount of tribute from vassal before vassalisation is made.

23. We cannot see what type of FIMS the emblematic quarter of culture exploit when choosing the culture.

24. We need to see the cost of emblematic quarter and emblematic unit when choosing the culture.

25. Some emblematic quarter can be installed even when it is not adjacent to city, mine or quarter (e.x Egyptian pyramid). Some emblematic quarter has specific condition. Please let us know the condition in UI.

26. The cost of quarters vary. We need to see the factor of the variation.

27. The cost of quarters increases when the number of quarter increases. We need to see the criteria of that increase.

Error & Problem

28. Remaining turn for certain construction frequently shows incorrect information (It says 1 turn left until completion but when next turn comes still says 1 turn left). 

29. When there is additional army that belongs to me nearby, they join the battle compulsively as a reinforcement when a battle is set. All of the main and reinforcement army's movement points are lost even if the battle is not really begun (e.x. opponent army retreats but the lost movement does not come back). This is a critical problem and need to fix foremost. First, nearby army should be able to choose whether to join the battle or not. Second, the movement points should be gone after the actual battle occurred.

30. Generally, when hostile melee unit attacks my unit, both units' health point diminished when the attack animation occurs. However, when hostile unit appears where my vision was not provided and attacks my unit, the health point of hostile unit are already diminished before the attack animation. So it is minor animation bug.

31. Sometime when the battle is set and UI tells me auto battle is 'off' but actually it is 'on'. It occurs when I save the game with previous battle with auto battle 'on'. After I load the saved file, it says auto battle 'off' but it is not.

32. Sometimes my army disappears from world map. They are not actually lost but only their appearance is gone.

33. Sometimes I can see other player's army appearance but not the icon. If I have vision on them, I should be able to see both their appearance and icon. If not I should not see both of them.

34. When I have open border treaty with other player and declare a war with my army still in his border, my army be still there and I can attack his city immediately.  My army should be moved automatically after I declare the war or I should get a serious penalty for my betrayal or loss of confidence.

35. Sometimes I see incorrect information about expected value when I construct a specific quarter. (e.x. when I constructed a harbor it showed +5 science, but it is irrelevant to science. Believing the information, I clicked the next turn button. science output did not change.

36. When there are too many building in the city, bottom Icons of constructed buildings in completed tap are blocked by next turn button.

37. Sometime with my administrator assigned to unassigned city, the city still shows unadministered.

38. Some emblematic quarter is not shown on the list of construction under certain condition (e.x. Khmer Baray is shown on the list only when the city is settled on the river tile. Otherwise, I cannot construct it even if I have river tile in my territory.

39. Sometimes, in the battle, my unit is stuck in certain tile. After my unit is stuck, he neither can move nor attack. Hostile unit neither as well.

40. When I declare a war to other player, his or her avatar's reaction subtitle sometimes shows an error message starting with %blahblah

41. When I see stability information in city UI, stability from luxury is represented as unknown.

42. When I click f9 to quick load the quick saved filed, last auto saved file is loaded not the quick saved file

43. After I conducted a trade route with other player and conquered the city containing the luxury resource with the trade route I conducted before, the trade route still exist 

(I was trading with me after the war)

44. Sometimes after I declare a war to other player and in the next turn our relationship becomes peace without any notification as if I have never declared a war.

45. After I make a peace treaty or end a open border treaty with my army inside other players border, my army cannot move. Actually my army can move toward outside of the border, but it is hard to notice that I can. Therefore there must be some guide to prevent such confusion

46. At the late game, bgm breaks seriously.

47. Sometimes I get a message that AI triggered a grievance but there is nothing I can see in grievance list

48. There was an alliance AI with me and I made free trade agreement treaty but I lost my money after I bought a resource from the AI

49. Sometimes combat power debuff on the river tile is ignored.

50. Sometimes trade route is not destroyed after the war began.

Balance

51. In neolithic era, it is too much overpowered to postpone advance to next era and repeat hunting mammoth gaining a large mount of food and influence, which grants the player a number of population and outpost. So there must some balance adjustment or restriction. For example, there can be a kind cap for population (5 at most )or the number of outpost (1 at most) in neolithic era or nerf mammoth hunting bonus from 40/40 to 20/10. I believe the dev will make a much proper adjustment for this issue.

52. There is a difference of FIMS output among the types of tile. I can understand that the river and anomaly are kind of bonus. But for example, forest is superior to woodland for any situation. There should some adjustment for more balanced game. For example, forest -> 2 industry, woodland -> 1 industry and 1 money. There are much imbalance among the types of tile, for example, dry grass is almost useless tile. Please take care of those imbalance with more concern.

53. Market quarter is totally meaningless. Basically in current version of Humankind, FIMS output of tiles consist of food and industry, which makes the players gain almost 1 or 2 money additionally after the market quarter is built compared to maker's quarter which may wield more than 10 industry.

54. I have never built defense quarter but the explanation made me feel less attractive. It would be better have more attractive and powerful option

55.  Conversion ratio is too high for example converting industry and money into science. The scaling of industry and science may differ but the conversion occurs in 1:1 ratio which is quite irrational.

56. I have experienced less than 15 cultures during OpenDev so I am going to restrain myself from talking about balance among the culture, but at a glance I am able to see huge imbalance among the cultures. For example Hun culture is very very overpowered because there emblematic quarter can be installed at any tile exploiting all FIMS from adjacent tile. Hunnic horde can have action 2 time a turn and their proliferation speed is so high that no one can stop them conquering. please take care of the balance issue with plenty of time.

57. Surplus food is too useless. It is converted to stability but the ratio become low after some threshold I guess. Therefore after I build some quarter and buildings related to food I can reach to the stage of food required and leftover is almost meaningless. There is no need to choose agricultural culture for current version.

Additional improvement suggestion

58. There are various options for friendly diplomacy but hostile diplomacy consists of only war. Interesting hostile action including trade embargo, rival declaration (worse diplomatic relationship but grants some bonus), war instigation can be added for more exciting game.

59. There is not any kind of diplomatic option for war deterrence. Even in allied status, a player can break the alliance and declare a war in a single turn. It would be better to add an option for war deterrence. For example, nonaggression treaty that strictly restrict declaring a war for any situation or gives high level of penalty for breaking the treaty.

60. We cannot see diplomacy overview. For now we have to click AI button one by one to realize the current status of diplomacy.

61. Current non-aggressive treaty which restrict the battle in neutral area is quite meaningless because if someone wants to attack he or she just needs to declare a war. This may be because declaring a war does not require any cost. Furthermore surprise war gives traitor badge to attacker but for now, it does not seems to be a harsh penalty. Instead it seems to be a little bonus for attacker. Thus, declaring a war should be felt like heavy and considerable decision more than now.

62. Please make an option to change movement animation speed of army on world map

63. Please make an option to make movement animation speed of unit on battle map faster instantly. For now it is impossible so it makes me to set the battle speed highest in order to avoid inconvenience.

64. In reward after a war tab, there are multiple items of city with the same name. This might be because the city consists of multiple territories. In order to make the winner choose the specific territory of the city, it would be better to make the winner realize which item indicates the wanted territory easily (e.x. put a simple tag aside of item)

65. Similarly in reward after a war tab, outpost items are listed as just 'outpost' which causes a confusion.

66. In reward after a war tab, items the winner have demanded before the war is already checked and cannot be unchecked. For this case, it should not require a war cost or very low amount of war cost. In extreme case, the sum of war cost of demand items are bigger than the total war cost the winner can request for reward, which makes it impossible to accept the reward. It is ridiculous.

-> Overall, it seems that Dev tried to put several function and implement a concept of diplomacy but it also needs more improvement and compensation.

67. Hit satisfaction of units especially range unit is desperate. It feels like shooting a water gun...

68. Emblematic quarter cannot not be demolished in city tab and any army should ransack the quarter to demolish it. Please add an option to demolish any quarter if wanted

69. The suzerain cannot develop luxury and strategic resource deposit which is located in vassal's territory. Because of this, we need to conquest all the territory rather than make a vassal.

70. We can declare a war right after the peace treaty. There must be a restriction or granting additional penalty for this kind of action.

71. It would be awesome to see a history of culture which the civilization have chosen.

72. After quick saved it would be much great to show a instant message 'quick saved'

73. Some unit have hidden trait which is revealed after the unit is constructed.

74. We need a function that can heal, upgrade or destroy multiple units at once.

75. There is filtering function for construction tab but not in completed tab

76. Battle map is too small even for 3 vs 3 battle. Base battle map size should be much larger than this. Moreover battle map size should be adjusted according to units involved in the battle including reinforcement armies.

77. In arrangement phase of battle, there are too less space for initial arrangement. I had 3 units and the available initial tiles were also 3 units so the arranging was quite meaningless.

78. Independent people is quite less influential for current status of the game. Moreover they are too moderate so most player can ignore them.

79. Influence encroachment is quite less influential. Is it just meaning for having event that makes me choose some civic adoption?

80. Religious struggle is less influential this could be because AI's religion power is too low that the player may not feel any struggle.

81. It would be great to see an overview of total power of each civilization. Even rough information would be enough.

82. Global modifiers list would be great. It will much greater to see the breakdown of modifiers including detailed information about factors

83. Is it possible to add a diplomatic function to suggest other player be my vassal or suzerain without war?

84. Cultures list of each era needs to be provided in game, for example through encyclopedia.

I have not mentioned of performance and AI issue. Performance optimization is what the dev need to concern until the last minute of development.

AI is also significant but it must be done after the game is completed or nearly completed. I believe the dev will do their best for it.

Here ends my Humankind OpenDev feedback. I am not sure if the devs have enough time left until the release to take care of all these issues.

Some might be trivial. Some might be critical. Anyway I have mentioned all I have felt about the game. I hope this would help for developers.

Thank you.

57. Probably, the problem is not in the excess of food, but in its use only in population growth. It is possible to increase its need by introducing the maintenance of armies and districts for food (+ money). And in order for the army to be able to be recruited without food, to modify the civic into a professional army (maintenance only for money) and a conscription army (maintenance only for food).

It would be interesting if food had a global pool like money where all excess food would go to in order to facilitate the concept of feeding your armies, it would also allow the concept of cities sharing food as they trade it with each other in order to help prop up cities that can't feed themselves. I could see sharing population between cities in the future, a sort of migration system but this entire food expansion is something else. Hope it gets implemented though.

Unfortunately, I just missed out on playing with the OpenDev Lucy.  Looks like interesting feedback on improvements, however I have just one question...

What do you actually think of the game and should I be getting excited?

Scar wrote:

Hello, 

I would like to thank you for writing this up ;)

I won't go into the detail of each point : you have encountered some bugs, you dislike some features as we have designed and implemented them and you have made some good suggestions. 

I will pass to the rest of the team your feedback!

@scottles69 : you should be excited for the game of course (but I may be a bit biased !)

Can you include some of my grievances?

Bugs:

while using the expansion affinity, loading the game from any point that is not an autosave resets the entire action, losing all the gold I spent on it and having to restart the turn count. In addition to this reloading the game at any point while there are war spoils in a battle causes those spoils to disappear. Also the charge ability of cavalry doesn't seem to work, I tested it with Franci milite and no bonus was had.

QoL:

Include the cost of future Districts when you perform certain actions, like merging cities and such.

Provide a notification when a province is being ransacked as there currently is none

Add a section to the diplomacy UI that shows ALL of the current transactions and effects at a glance

scottles69 wrote:

Unfortunately, I just missed out on playing with the OpenDev Lucy.  Looks like interesting feedback on improvements, however I have just one question...

What do you actually think of the game and should I be getting excited?

This is a problem I encounter with some feedback posts, thus leaving people to still ask whether or not the game is in general actually more or less than the sum of its parts.

I'm not really against this way of presenting feedback, but two things I find personal pet-peeves in some others:

1. If people do give out a list of criticism points, at least give your overall general impression in the end.

2. I've been seeing this kind of attitude towards criticism of games in which small bite-sized points of specific mechanics are enough to pass judgment on an entire game, thus conflating specifics with the general. I'm not saying the original post does exactly that, but I've seen it done with some games in some places.

"15. We cannot see how war score is calculated. "

It isn't that bad actually. I prefer some things to be shrouded with mystery than being simple mathematic formulae. 

"19. We cannot see the condition of unlocking civic."

Same here. Civics should be more tied to specific gameplay than a pre-planned path with player knowing all steps and planning them in advance.