My first impressions can be found in this thread

Hello and a big thank you to the entire Amplitude team, we are really close to reaching the top !!! But there is still work to do :). 

Test on 5 difficult parts 

1 - The system of diplomatic pressure on culture (point of influence) or religion is superb, because the major part of the interactions / demands revolve around these aspects. But, we noticed a big AI starting bug on the SAME continent as the player: 

IF and only IF you don't meet her at the start, they are stuck in the neo era, they don't arrive evolved, don't set up an outpost, nor create a city and therefore the whole game is skewed. ... Example: I played with the Egyptians without meeting the AI (north east of the map), I was at 1000 Celebrity Point and the AI got stuck at 20 Point in difficult level .... As of that I met the 1st IA, BOOM they all "started" to play very well, install the outposts, create cities etc ..... Except that I was necessarily too early for them to catch up with their delay on influence, essential element for the diplomatic continuation of the game. 

So, I think that it is absolutely necessary that all the AI start playing from the 1st round (installation of outpost etc), this problem is really essential for all the rest of the game, I think it is really a bug. 

2 - I had a contrary case during my 1st game, I played in the center of the map, I quickly met the 1st IA (which therefore started to play / settle in), I was slow when starting outpost creation and I saw a REAL game. 

AI has been excellent in everything! Logic in its interactions, cultural / religious pressure, demand for an outpost, desire for war, war (excellent) alliance etc ... 

And there the game was excellent and difficult :). 

3 - Regarding stability, the concept is very good but there is no real penalty, I was at 21% with the Egyptians at the start and I had no penalty anywhere ... .Idem for the abundance of food which improves the stability (logic), it is too easy to reach it and the stages to pass to reach the abundance remains blocked at 50, even with a large population .... C is a bug? Sometimes for some unexplained reason, some small towns would ask me 150 of food to reach abundance. 

Do not hesitate to put "penalties" on stability, for example: 

between 45 and 50% = - 25% in all areas of the districts (food, produce etc) 

between 40 and 45% = - 50% 

between 35 and 40% = 1 district is on strike and no longer functions (or lose 1 population?) 

between 30 and 35% = 2 districts (or lose 2 populations?) 

below 30%, revolution? If your city is attached to a region, the region becomes an independent people? 

These are just examples, but we really have to feel the real penalties that impact your city (and therefore your way of playing). Otherwise, the game becomes much too easy and above all does not make us want to play an agricultural civilization :( 

In addition, people clearly do not consume enough food. Last point, on one part I had 24 population, I sacrificed 22 populations to build a wonder in 1 turn, I had zero stability penalties, no negative events etc ... really not normal and logical, we need MALUS friends :). 

4 - Regarding the fact that science goes too fast, having played several different games, I do not think that the points to unlock the sciences are too low but rather the science stars are not high enough, it is not It is normal that in all my games, where I have not played a scientific civilization, I have all the time unblocked without doing it on purpose the 3 star stars in science in the ancient and classical era. 

Ditto, it doesn't make us want to play a scientific civilization :(. 

Conclusion: Overall, there is not enough penalty in stability, the abundance of food is not proportional to the population, our celebrity is cheated by the AI which does not or does not start its 1st round and the eras stars science far too easy to unlock. 

Good luck Amplitude because the rest is really fantastic and beautiful :) :) :). (apart from the great mosque, why is it all gray? Ahah ^^

Bye !

My first impression was, "Wow!" After several partial playthroughs and one full playthrough, my impression is, "Meh."

By the third era (counting neolithic as #1), I felt like I'd seen all the important game mechanics. The tech tree opened up new units, infrastructure, and districts - but they didn't change my gameplay. They were just bigger numbers. If the game balance were better, I'm sure the choices for placing city districts and choosing techs would feel more meaningful, but even so, I think that the core game loop would quickly begin to feel repetitive. I struggle to imagine myself wanting to play through 10 eras, unless there is some more expansiveness to the game, with new mechanics being introduced in later eras.

This issue of "it's just bigger numbers" is common to 4x games, and they all suffer from it to some extent.

1. EL and ES2 both suffered from this, though it wasn't so bad, as they only had six eras. On this subject, I feel that Civ tends to do a bit better than Amplitude games, in general.
2. In Civ 4-6, the transition to seafaring (as opposed to coastal navies) feels meaningful, as it opens up new areas for exploration. In Lucy, I didn't quite get there. I did discover the second continent (east of starting continent) using coastal ships. That discovery didn't change my gameplay much. So I'm not sure that oceangoing vessels would feel much different.
3. In Civ 4-6, the transition to flight also feels a little meaningful, as it introduces a new military/combat mechanic. Lucy stops well before flight, so I don't know how Humankind will handle that change. Hopefully, it'll be interesting.
4. In Civ 6, the Archaeologist / Museum mechanic creates a nice incentive to re-explore the world in the late game (though that mechanic is IMHO not well implemented).
5. In Civ 4, the coming of corporations feels like a new mechanic in the late game (even though they're not so very different from religions).
6. In the Caveman to Cosmos mod for Civ 4, there is a mid-game tech that opens the ability to build on mountains. Tooltips in Humankind hinted that this might be the case. I hope it will turn out to be so.
7. There was one 4x game (I forget which) where you could launch geosynchronous satellites that would then create area effects. Which was a solid idea.

I just finished my first OpenDev run with Lucy, and i loved it.

Here are a few things i noted down:

1. Navy movements, especially for cogs, should not take the shortest route, but take the safest route. It was frustrating to be left between  either risking losing a ship or having to give instructions every other turn.
2. Settlers should have the opportunity to settle in a city with  to 3 population for a starting boost
3. I played my campaign in two streams. When loading the save, i got all the tutorial tooltips again. would be nice if game remembered the tooltips i've tagged as understood.
4. Empire 1 (or whichever number) is not clear... so it's hard to so see who we get a notification about. Would be simpler if we had the leader's name.
5. A tooltip indicating what some options like "Defusal" would avoid having to save, check and potentially reload the game.
6. Minor at this point, but please check some of the localisations... some missing commas were off-putting.

coloneluber wrote:

7. Harbor placement is counterintuitive

Major harbors have often developed because of an advantage given by the terrain with an inlet or natural harbor. The current harbor design incentivizes putting harbors in weird places that jut out into the ocean rather than in locations where harbors actually would develop naturally given the layout of the terrain. I think adjacency bonuses with harbors for other districts would go a long way to remedying this (and perhaps limiting harbor districts alongside to prevent spamming them).

Oh, yes, agree so much on this and the city centres. It felt wrong that games incentives placement of a harbour as far into the see as possible. I love that you can build city flexibly, but there have to be incentive to keep proximity to a city centre or a regional sub-centre.

I own too many civilization games, why 1 more?  Cause Amplitude has the oblique angle on progression and Humankind still does this well.  The switching of cultures is really exciting.  I hope they become more balanced and allow for real choices and possibility of the AI exploiting combinations as well.  The game is beautiful and a solid civilization game.  

Here are my suggestions for UI and gameplay:

UI - City

1. The construction queue is not quite long enough, and I don't think it can be easily compressed any more.  I put buildings in list mode to help. Solutions follow.
2. Move the header and status above the FIMS window.
3. Stretch the income / resource summary across the top.
4. Keep the construction queue fully expanded (yes -it's counter to point 1).  While selecting multiple buildings or units, the window moves underneath the cursor, causing a misclick.
5. Make the scroll wider or make mouse wheel scrolling move a page at at time.  It is currently too slow. 
6. Make the construction queue filter persistent when moving from city to city and when coming back from placing districts. (Or at least have a game preference for this). 
7. Provide current bonus total for infrastructures in flyover hover.  I hate having to look for all of my forests over and over again. OR have the regions that are affected highlighted (with currently non-exploited areas indicated, but shaded differently). 

UI - Map

1. Keep curiosities faded in fog of war.  I can't remember where those things are and sometimes didn't even see them.  It's OK if someone else took them and you can clear the marker. 

2. Have a find X.  How many districts do I have?  Where are all my holy districts, etc.  Many times when trying to make a selection, I had to go carefully look at the whole map. 
3. For the popups in the notification section, the search button was too hard to see.  Please make that a button above the acknowledge and have it go to the item as well as acknowledge it.  If there are multiples, have it cycle through each until you are done.  Please remove the feature that right clicking clears these.  I thought I was right clicking for a city and I think I was clearing out notifications.  Didn't realize this until I had lost some boats. 
4. After a battle, if auto was off, there is no need to post the summary popup 

Gameplay

1. You're right-click-ology really has never made any sense to me.  Most of the time it's cancel, unless you are moving a unit when it's move.  Then when you split a unit off, you are supposed to left click instead of right click, which then cancels.  After hundreds of hours of playing your games, I still get it wrong.  Could you please setup an option to allow <esc> to cancel in all cases and for right click to be either dead or do something else?  In the case of splitting the units, right click would then move the unit as it does with... movement. Also, <esc> currently cancels some screens and not others.  I'm always guessing. 

2. Allow an 'end turn' force or build nothing in cities.  After a while, trying to get to turn 150 was tedious. 

3. Religion. The one affect per territory blew things through the roof.  Great idea, but unbalanced.  
4. AI. AI? AI!  The AI needs to know how to exploit all of the crazy combos in this game.  Instead of staring the AI with crazy bonuses, give them catch up mechanics which makes the mid and end game harder. Go play AI Wars at level 7 or 8.  Obviously, they completely focus on the AI in that game, but one thing that makes it stand out is the once you get so far advanced in conquering 'resources', the AI is able to properly respond.  

coloneluber wrote:

7. Harbor placement is counterintuitive

Major harbors have often developed because of an advantage given by the terrain with an inlet or natural harbor. The current harbor design incentivizes putting harbors in weird places that jut out into the ocean rather than in locations where harbors actually would develop naturally given the layout of the terrain. I think adjacency bonuses with harbors for other districts would go a long way to remedying this (and perhaps limiting harbor districts alongside to prevent spamming them).

This is especially annoying. One builds a harbor in a sheltered cove (especially in earlier era's), not at the end of a peninsula exposed on all sides.

First of all, I would like to state that what I am about to say may be a little harsh, but comes from a place of love, because I really think the concept of the game is great.

Overall, I haven't had a lot of fun with the game and I have to say I'm fairly dissapointed with what I have experienced so far. I haven't managed to get myself past the classical era because I am not getting the sense of completion and progress that you ususally get from 4X games (I will try to push myself through, since reading through some of the comments, looks like the game gets a lot better in the later eras). I will try to organize my thoughts to try to provide constructive and helpful feedback:

1. eXploration: A large part of this component takes place in the neolithic, leaving little room to enjoy it in further eras (I made a post in the neolithic era feedback thread relating to this point). There's also not much to discover besides a very scarce amount of resources and a couple of natural wonders.

2. eXpansion: I feel the ratio of territories to map size is very small and things get real cramped real quick. I think everyone enjoys a bit of territorial tension between neighbors, but I feel the level that I have expereinced so far is too high for my taste. Because (peaceful) expansion is not really very viable, I found myself focused mainly on the management of my single city, without much else to do. I have some suggestions regarding what I think would make the expansion aspect of the game more fun: (a) Reduce the size of territories. This would decrease the amount of land claiming a territory would give to a certain player and would likely reduce territorial tension early in the game, the map would also have room for more cities and since you can attach territories to a city, you would still be able to create a city with a large area. (b) Make the create outpost action consume the unit. I think this would make expansion more realistic, since you would need to consume population in order to expand, it would also decrase the rate at which empires expand, once again reducing the huge amount of territorial tension early in the game.

3. eXploit: I would personally like to see more diversity/availability of resources. The AI offers trade terms, but takes ages to have resources of their own, which makes diplomacy a bit uninteresting (at least in the early game). I also don't think I have seen coastal resources and the sea looks pretty barren. Abundance status for food seems too easy to get, even without any farmers quarter or an agrarian culture. I also feel attaching adjacent territories to a city buffs it way too much, given the free exploitation you get from the outpost district. Even if the stability cost is relatively high, I don't think it is enough to offset the huge benefits of added FIMS from the exploitation. A possible suggestion would be lowering or eliminating the stability cost of attaching territories, but eliminating the exploitation benefits from the outpost and instead, allowing a district to be placed on top of the outpost (effectively allowing the outpost to exploit only one of the FIMS). I think the abundance of FIMS is what removes that sense of progress and reward I yearn for the most, as instead of slowly developing from your small ancient era city, you can have a colossal, super-prosperous, hyper-productive city in a matter of 10 turns (after reading other comments in this thread I see a lot of people agreeing snowballing is a problem, which I guess is the issue I'm trying to point out here).

4. eXterminate: Even playing on normal it was very easy for me to destroy another player. I invaded with only 2 warriors and an archer and conquered the capital which was only defended by the garrison (two peasant units). I wasn't even aiming for the capital, but it was the only way for me to generate pressure against the AI, since you don't appear to be able to occupy or even ransack an outpost. Once I captured the capital, it took a couple turns for the AI's war desire to go to 0 and to my dismay, the contested outpost, which I was planning to attach to one of my cities, turned into a city of its own. This was a huge inconvenience, since, while I was able to get the contested territory, I had three cities in a very small amount of space, two of which were unadministered and no way to merge the new (unwanted) city with any of the other two, or to raze it in order to place an outpost of my own an attach it to my other cities.

5. Fame and Eras: I didn't really like the fame system as designed. I think the era star system is fine as a way to measure progress towards the next era, but I don't like that they passively provide fame just for progressing through the game. Era stars should only grant fame if you are the first to get them (this might be how it works already, but it is not very clear to me). Regardless, I think fame should be more focused on deeds, which should be more clear for the player. I don't know if its just that I'm bad at the game, or haven't played it enough, but I think the biggest letdown was that I didn't feel I was playing the story of my empire, but rather advancing through a bunch of goalposts without any grand objective in mind. I also don't like that you lose your EQ (and not sure if your EU as well) when you change cultures, as you're usually only able to build a couple before advancing eras, if any at all. I get the design choice behind this, but I think it would be cool if they could perdure at least for an extra era, to feel that you're transitioning a little more smoothly.

6. Other: Overall technologies feel very lackluster, with only a couple of unlocks each. The opportunity cost of choosing one technology over another feels very small, making the choice fairly inconsequential. Some of the systems are pretty unclear, like religion; I have no idea what triggers the opportunity to found a religion and build a holy site. Getting world wonders is also somewhat odd, I believe the one I got in one of my games was because I accumulated influence due to the lack of room to expand (In which case I don't think the trade-off between expansion and wonders is a good idea).

A couple more observations that I think are very important:

1. The AI seems to use all its pop and turns building units

The AI seems allergic to building districts and instead chews through pop to build military. My most recent game involved me invading the other continent around turn 110, and all the AI cities were between 0 and 2 population. This would probably explain the AI's absolutely terrible performance.

2. Commercial cultures need an incentive for other people to trade with them

At the moment, some of the commercial empires are pretty good (looking at you, byzantines), but a lot of this has to do with the fact that the AI is just dumb. They are more than happy to ally a byzantine (or former byzantine) player and create trade agreements. When we eventually have multiplayer, other players will just... not trade with commercial cultures. There needs to be an incentive to want to trade with commercial cultures, and this could potentially be as simple as giving the benefits of free trade in alliances to all trade with commercial cultures. Furthermore, because a current commercial culture may change to a non-commercial culture in a later era, any player trading goods with that empire may lose trade routes based on the re-selling of resources, which further serves to disincentivize trade with commercial cultures.

Hi!

I'd like to share my impressions of my two first playthroughts. First, let's say that I am a fan of 4X games, mainly the Civilization franchise as well as Endless Space 2 (apart the "pending turn" bugs that were never fixed!), so i somehow compare HK to this game (haven't played much Endless Ledeng though, i heard HK looks more like it). I hope this is not too harsh (I'm here to help!) and understandable (English it is not my native language ;) ).

So here it is:

A - Overall Impressions

Overall, the game shows great potential, i liked the way you can shape your playstyle picking different cultures and adapting to the course of the game. I did not encounter many bugs during my two playthroughs, and that's also great. Battle mechanics are enjoyable, and the artwork is beautiful! That being said, there is a lot of room for change and improvement, as I found the UI unclear and clunky, many game mechanics somehow confusing (influence, religion, force surrender...), a lack of strategic choices in city management, imbalance between discricts, army units, and so on.........

B - The UI

1) Buildings placed on tiles are difficult to identify: We should be able to see easily and quickly what buildings and districts are present in our cities, and not have to hover the mouse over every tile and look on the production tooltip. There needs to be some kind of tooltip/icons to see where are the farmers districts, makers quarters, etc.

2) City production panel is a bit clunky. It is at the same time too small (having to scroll down every time is annoying) and the icons too big ? District requirements also should be shown (if they need to be next to another district or not).

3) Combat management and especially reinforcement need more information and clarity: Which units are part of the reinforcements when the battle starts? How do I chose which ones to bring into battle or not? Where do I place them before the battle starts? And when the battle does start, how do I know what units is gonna "get out" first of the "reinforcement army" ? This is important since I have to carefully place my units, and I place them differently if it's a crossbowman or a swordsman! Maybe automatic numbering of the reinforcing armies (or hlighting the currently selected reinforment army) should help, as well as hilighting the first units that will come out of it.

4) "Idle" notifications can't be dismissed: This is actually a huge deal. Like other 4X games, there should obviously be a way to "force end turn", so we don't have to fill every research/building/queue in order to end turn. There also should be a "sleep mode" on units.

5) Buildings/Luxury/wonder/Holy sites bonuses: tooltip should tell if bonuses are based on/apply to empirewide production or only the city's production. For example, it is well explained that a luxury applies a bonus to all cities. But some buildings show "+Y production per horse" and don't tell if it takes into account the horses in the city territory or empirewide.

6) Outpost shows no "Idle" notifications: there is no notification telling you that an outpost can train units, build infrastructures, develop into a city..... Many times I noticed that I had an outpost producing nothing for several turns.

7) Construction time of buildings actually is not what is shown: not sure if I missed something or if it's a bug, but in the building queue some units/buildings are supposed to take a certain amount of turns to complete, but in reality they don't take the same amount of turns than expected (usually less).

In other words, I think there should be a lot more tips and tooltips to understand the game and consequences of our actions. Even for a 4X fan, I had much trouble understanding what was going on. Some "overview screens" like in Endless Space 2 would help a lot (city status and production, diplomatic relations, trade and market...).

C - The Gameplay

1) Unit combat strenght seems imbalanced: I noticed that, a lot of times, a small difference in unit combat strenght leads in totally one-sided battles. At the middle of my first game, even when using strategy (terrain, friendly unit support and such), i was getting wrecked by units that only had like 1 to 3 more combat strenght. At some point, I was losing battles with 4 or 5 more overall army strenght that my ennemy, but the latter kept winning because every time he attacked he almost killed one of my units and my units did only hurt him by 10% of his health. I believe scientific and military technology should put one player ahead, but a small unit combat strenght should not have such consequences. Later in the game, tables turned and I was the one killing his units with one-sided battles even if my units had only 2 or 3 more combat strenght.

2) City capture is too easy: Basic fortifications and levies do not allow to hold a decent fight against any invader, not at the first attack, and even less after a few turns of siege. This means you actually have to have some units garnison, otherwise any city could fall in one turn, and if you don't pay attention any couple of scout passing through could claim your capital. This led to, in my first game, situations where cities were taken when unguarded, then taken back as soon as the empire's army - which was one territory away - came back to put an end to the invasion. I think cities should have more "basic" ways to defend.

3) Districts are unbalanced: I read that in other parts of the forum and I totally agree. Industrial districts seem way more powerful that other districts, and especially market districts. In many cases, it is more profitable to build infrastructures that to build districts. And it seems that market districts are not even worth building since they produce so little, priority goes to luxuries and infrastructures (buildings in the city). Also, districts which don't necessarily need to be built adjacent to another districts seem overpowered. Being able to build a district almost where you want in your territory gives you access to a lot of new tiles to exploit, while having to build next to an pre-existing usually brings you much less yield, sometimes even reducing existing yields.

4) Food thresholds: it is an interesting idea, but it feels like the threshold can too easily be exploited, I think the threshold should be shorter or have more associated benefits (other than food surplus = stability increase), in order to consider putting more farmers even if that does not make us reach the next threshold.

5) Citizen growth and production: This is just a personal feeling though: even with good food production, cities grow quite slowly. Moreover, the benefits from having citizens working (farmers, traders, scientists, etc.) seems a bit weak to me. I do like the need to chose between growing cities and producing units, but I think you can have much more success using people to build armies than using them for city production (even when buildings upgrade people's production). 

6) Many buildings, few strategic choices: Again, this has been said by someone before in this topic and I totally agree. There are a lot of different buildings and districts and few seem to have huge impact on the game and the development of the city. What I love about Endless Space 2 is that you really have to think and make choices about what to build and what to research next, it has a lot of impact on the course of the game. I didn't feel that when playing the OpenDev, and at some point developing cities became somehow boring and "mechanical".

7) Maybe I'm dumb, but after these two first games, I still don't have a clue how influence and religious systems work. I mean I understood the basics (producing culture/influence allows you to claim territory, wonders, etc. and producing faith allows you to earn tenets) but it is not clear how culture and religion influence (no pun intended) your relationships with other empires, what good and bad it does to you and to them, who is converting who.... During my first game i had a lot of buildings producing faith, yet I had very few followers, I didn't know how, and at some point my whole empire became "atheist" for an unknown reason. Religious tenets effects also are not very explicit.

8) Diplomacy and war: While the diplomacy UI is quite nice, the way it operates is also difficult to understand, and there are some bugs (i'll come to that later). But the more problematic are the grievances, war triggers and "force surrender" actions. In both of my games, other empires declared war to me for unknown reasons, then I completely crush them, but when I want to force them to surrender, I have to give them one of my cities: I understand that it is because this was one of their original grievances (so I believe it is inteded), but I do not want to give them my cities! Depending on how weak and how bad the war is going for my ennemy, I should be able to decide - or at least suggest -  the terms of the truce (not only previous grievances). So, in both of my games, I "had" to completely eliminate my opponent so I can put an end to the war without giving him a couple of cities. 

Also, I think the "war desire" price to pay in order to make them our vassal is too low. In my first game, I only won like 3-4 skirmishes, maybe took a city or two, then the ennemy wanted to surrender and I could become their Liege. But they still had at least half a dozen cities active, so that seems a bit exaggerated ;)

9) Empire balance: I don't have much to say because with two games it's hard having enough perspective, but i have the impression that the Huns' special unit (Hunnic horde) is too powerful. Also, the Joseon trait (+ science for lake or coastal waters) seems overpowered (every harbour i built brang +35 to +60 science!).

D - Bugs

1) Building some districts does not always show production losses: when about to build a distring on a tile, the tooltip shows how much gain in production is expected (food, industry, etc.), but not all the time. It often doesn't show production losses also expected from constructing the district. I believe this is a bug and obviously it needs fixing as we should see how much do we actually lose from removing exploitation of the tile.

2) Force surrender: One time I was able to Force surrender to an empire and the diplomacy menu clearly showed that, in exchange for truce, the ennemy would give me some cities, but when I did force their surrender, It was I that gave them cities....I reloaded the game to check again, and this wasn't shown on the agreement, so I believe it is a bug. This kind of situation happened other times as well: there are differences bewteen what is shown on the diplomatical agreement and what actually happens. I also forced an ennemy to surrender while he had no city left, and then he got his capital back! I believe this is because he needs a city in order to "stay in the game", but the contextual menu should tell that before accepting the agreement.

3) Auto-explore units get lost at sea: Well this is self-explanatory: when the auto-explore mode is activated, units tend to get suicidal and dive into the ocean! Even when I specifically asked them not to do so ;)

4) Lag spikes/Freezes: At last but not least, I experiences some terrible lags by the end of each playthrough. By terrible lags I mean 20 seconds of the game freezing every 5 seconds of actually playing. It happend by turns 135-140 and does not seem to be related to the number of units in battle/things happening at once. I had times in the game when I had way more units fighting and I had no problem. Tried lowering graphic settings but it didn't change anything. During the first game, I actually spend 1 hour to complete the last 5 turns with these lags because I wanted to finish the game at all costs! For the second playthrough, when it happened again (turn 136), I just couldn't finish the game at all.

-------------------------------

Well, I hope this helps and I look forward to play again in 2021 ! ^___^

ps: pls fix Endless Space 2 "pending turn" bug !!!!

Hello World,

I'm a 4X fan since Civilization the first (note: I was playing the original Avalon Hill's Civilization board game in the 80's before)
I was delighted by Endless Legend (superb aesthetics and outstanding atmosphere)
And I enjoyed the holistic complexity -behind apparent simplicity- of Endless Space 2 (most mechanisms being interlaced and interdependent in a way that is not obvious at first play)

Here are then my "First Impressions" after 58 turns in a first play-through on Lucy opendev:

#5 The principles for cities growth and expansion are a bit confused at this stage, which is not helping to make strategic decisions.

A Big Thank You to whole Amplitude Team!

Still a lot of work to be done if you want to beat the king of 4X Civilization, but I am already super-excited playing this OpenDev Lucy version.

I played those 58 turns with my daughter on my knees making 50% of decisions, and she says: "I love this game".

Please,

make it Complex, not complicated.

make it Challenging, not unintelligible.

make it Meaningful, not abstract.

make it Consequential, not random.

make combats Tactical & Fun, not repetitive & boring.

provide players with a Rewarding sense of Accomplishment, not the feeling to be a mere spectator.

let players build Epic (Hi)story.

Excited and confused. That pretty much sums up my experience after finishing 3 games. 

Diplomacy makes little sense to me, especially with neighbors pretty much always agreeing to give up any outposts settled near me, even if my whole army is 4 scouts. War is even more strange as I was unable to take more that 2-3 territories at once. I have resorted to ransacking every outpost before taking enemy city in vain effort to avoid multiple consecutive wars. 

City building was interesting until I realized that well placed outpost linked to a city was much better than any district, combined with 2-3 makers district meant I could produce anything in 1 turn or less. Market districts never really seemed worth to build and for research I build maybe 2 Confucian schools which allowed me to gain enough lead in science that I often ended with nothing to research at all. I pretty much only build influence districts as that was only resource I was lacking mostly due to insane costs of merging cities. On easy it was 16k per city at one point, on normal it never exceeded 5k. 

The cultures were great, although with current food system I never saw a reason to pick agrarian ones. Even with no or one farm per city (I focused more on bigger cities, 4-5 territories big) I pretty much always stayed >50 food even with severe overcrowding (75/40 population). Production cultures were also not worth considering IMO with how easy it was to max out production. I felt that the influence or was focused were the only good pick, outside of RP. 

Faith and culture were totally baffling, I painted whole map blue in both and no idea what that gave me. I did that for faith with no faith districts as well, which felt not worth at all especially that faith didn't seem to give anything worthwhile. 

To sum up, loved the idea of the game but balance wise it has long way to go. After turn 50-60 I was just winning harder, so as of now I wouldn't really want to play again. It also needs much more information given to a player or a good tutorial. Even after 3 games I feel like there are entire chunks of gameplay that are totally obscure to me. 

This is going to be a long reply, but I think it is worth noting all the things that I felt worked and, similarly, all the things I felt did not work. 

Note: I have played a lot of Endless Space 2, Endless Legend and Civilization 6, so my opinions/thoughts may be clouded or influenced by these games

Summary

• Humankind clearly has a LOT of potential to be a truly great game. There is so much to like about it already. The visuals are incredible, the culture choosing mechanic adds a lot to the 4X genre, and I am excited to try the battle system with more complex siege battles and advanced battles in later eras.
• However, in its current state it has some severe balance, UI and Gameplay features that need refining. Some of these changes need to be fairly drastic to make them interesting (e.g. Independent Peoples) 
• The OpenDev has some major bugs that need to be addressed ahead of the full release
• Battle Initiation is awkward, and retreating is too powerful 
• Natural Wonders do not feel wonderous. 
• Below is a more in-depth list of things I think need to be addressed to help make Humankind one of the best 4X games around.  

Bugs:

• There were many instances where visual bugs occurred, where unit stacks became invisible. I do not mean opponents entering fog of war, I mean my own units becoming invisible, but still usable. Save-Quit-Reload (SQR) fixed this each time it happened.  
• Pathfinding seems odd on rare occasions, and if I micromanaged movement I could sometimes get further because I chose a more optimal pathway. 
• Incredibly frequent game-breaking crashes or sound glitches (I have an unmodified Acer Aspire VX15 gaming laptop. It can run Civ 6 well enough, but found Humankind incredibly taxing). 
• If I declared war on a Liege, according to the diplomacy screen their Vassal empire was drawn into the war (this is correct) but I could not enter the Vassal's territory or attack their units unless I SQR. 
• Similarly, if got Peace with a Liege, on the diplomacy screen their Vassal empire is then also at peace with me, but I could still enter their territory and initiate battles. This was only resolved after I SQR.  Another related issue was that if I take cities/territories of a Vassal Empire, and peace out with the Liege Empire, then the cities remain as occupied, and they will never be able to be anything other than "Occupied", and so are effectively useless. 
• Unsure if this is a bug or an edge-case of an intended feature: When you go to war, your pre-war Crises become war demands that MUST be included in a peace deal if you win the war. I had a situation where I had developed enough crises to cause 248 War Desire worth of mandatory parts of the peace settlement... but the War Desire agreement cap was 198, and there is no way to raise this (that I can tell), so I couldn't ever peace out. I ended up having to stay at war for the remainder of that playthrough, as I couldn't untick these. There are 3 ways I can think of solving this issue: (1) Make it so that the minimum war desire agreement cap is set to the total cost of all mandatory items, (2) make mandatory items significantly cheaper in terms of war-desire cost than they would be in other situations, such that they would fit under any cap (3) remove mandatory items 
• Also not sure if this is a bug or an intended feature but it certainly FELT like a bug. If an enemy initiates a battle, your unit does not lose movement/battle initiation for that turn. HOWEVER, if an enemy initiates a battle, all of your reinforcements immediately lose all of their movement (even if the enemy retreats after initiating). If this is intended, it should be removed, as it is far too powerful a way to effectively stop any army in its tracks - split off single units, initiate a battle then retreat to immobilise any of the reinforcement stacks. In the game I played, this also had the consequence of killing a unit that was lost at sea. It effectively started its turn with 0 movement due to an enemy immediately initiating a battle with a nearby unit, then retreating such that the reinforcing unit that was in open water had 0 movement and couldn't get back to the coast.  
• "Current Era" on the loading screen always says Neolithic, even when loading a save that is in the Ancient, Classical, Medieval or Early Modern era. 

Battle (Initiation):

• Retreating from a battle should incur a far greater penalty than it currently does.  It should mean a stack cannot retreat for a number of turns, or until it reaches a friendly city/territory, not just the following turn. 
• Forcing all units that are in reinforcement range into the fight - even if you didn't want them to reinforce - feels wrong. This makes retreating an even stronger ability that needs nerfing. 
• Flanking units ahead of initiating a battle is somewhat non-functional, (1) enemies can still retreat despite being flanked, which doesn't make sense and (2) you actually cannot deploy properly, meaning you're actually at a disadvantage if attempting to outmanoeuvre on the overworld instead of at an advantage. 
• You cannot initiate a battle from the water. This is a major issue if a city has built districts on all of the land titles, making it not only unsiegeable, but literally unattackable.   

• Line-of-Sight for Gunner-type units is incredibly unintuitive. I have had units adjacent to other units, but up a hill unable to shoot. I have had what I would assume was line of sight in real life be judged by the game to not be, and vice-versa. Please make Line-of-Sight much clearer. 
• Deployment of reinforcement units doesn't work properly. You can only deploy the first unit in the stack at a time. Clicking on a specific unit in the reinforcement panel does nothing. This is unintuitive. 
• Scouting for opposing units who are not yet visible is actively discouraged, especially as movement is all-or-nothing, and giving up high-ground bonuses is a very big strategic mistake. The issue is, not finding the final enemy unit/flag when attacking but clearly having an otherwise overwhelming victory is considered a defeat. 

• Taking cities is far too easy in the current incarnation. If a city has walls/fortifications one should not be able to enter their garrison without using siege weapons (e.g. Battering Ram, Trebuchet etc.)  to destroy the walls, or using a potentially new siege tool of a ladder (which would also need to be built and assigned to a specific unit) which can allow you to move into the territory by climbing over the walls, but takes a full turn of movement, and counts as attacking, such that you cannot climb the walls AND attack, only one or the other.  
• Trebuchets are incredibly powerful. It was impossible to lose if you built one, let alone more than one. Instead, they should deal damage to walls mainly with only small amounts of damage to units. If they destroy walls, then all excess damage can go to units, which can (and should) be devastating to a unit's HP as they currently are.

UI:

• The UI is largely very pretty, but there are some issues. 
• There is a lack of clarity on some aspects of district placement. Sometimes the bonuses you get for placing a district in a certain spot (which appear quite large) actually cover up the yields you also get from the new exploitation. Maybe combine these into a single tooltip, instead of 2 separate tooltips? 
• Rolled over/leftover science does not seem to be accounted for in the amount of time it tells you a technology will take, which can lead to confusion. 
• Please use the AI name (e.g. "Quill18", "SpiffingBrit", "Frank") instead of "Empire (X)"  when referring to other Civs/characters. Why bother giving AIs a personality/name if you won't use it in notifications/diplomacy etc. This would give much more character to the game, and feel much more like they are doing something, not some disembodied empire that is doing something. 
• Some notifications are not very useful. e.g. "Era Star Unlocked"... okay? Which one? Saying "Bronze Builder Era Star Unlocked" or "Silver Expansionist Era Star Unlocked" would be much more informative, and far more useful as a notification. Similarly, the notifications that say "Empire (3)'s opinion has changed" is not useful. It should say something like "Frank's opinion of you has changed from Hesitant to Peaceful." or something similar. The world deed notifications should be the same. At the moment it just says "Another empire has locked a world deed". This is incredibly uninformative. Instead, something like "Frank has completed the [be the first to do x] world deed".    
• The "Complete Movements" button should be a button that is earlier in the order of things to do each turn, as it may inform other decisions. Alternatively, it could be a separate button somewhere in the UI to execute the pre-planned movement. 
• "Reorder Construction Queue" should be on by default in the options. It is incredibly unintuitive for it to be off by default. 
• The 'Queue/Buyout" toggle has a visual bug, that shows it in buyout mode if you previously had it in that mode, but change to a different city.  The Buyout option shows as on, but it is not functionally on
• It was hard to determine if one of my own diplomatic proposals was accepted or rejected.
• When choosing an option on events, the symbols (e.g. Authoritarian/Globalist/Individualism etc.) should be named and show where you already are on the spectrum when you hover over the symbol in the event. 
• In general, I would argue that ALL tutorial tooltips should have an Acknowledge/Understood button to dismiss them. 
• Finding unclaimed Wonders, or how much culture you need to claim them was very unintuitive.
• Tooltips that appear when hovering over key statuses (e.g. "Celebrating") would be helpful to enable one to make an informed choice. If someone has a choice between "Gain +X of Yield for option A or gain "Special Status" for option B, but you don't know what that special status is, you will choose option A every time in case Special Status is worse and you don't know.
• The color of the Faith icon and text in tooltips blends in with the white background. This is illegible.
• The Expansionist ability is incredibly opaque in how it works. I couldn't figure out which conditions needed to be met in order to actually use the ability. 

Culture/Balancing:

• Some cultures feel far more powerful than others. Some Legacy Traits feel strictly better than others. The same is true of Emblematic Quarters. Any Quarter that does not provide some form of economic bonus (e.g. unique Garrisons) feel unbuildable.   
• Expansionist and Agrarian abilities are not very good, and feel very underpowered compared to the passive ability of the Merchants (cheaper trading) and felt much more niche than the other abilities. If something is an active ability, it should either very powerful, but single-use/have a long cooldown and niche or not powerful but have a general-use. Expansionist ability feels like it is both not powerful, and niche.
• More specific feedback has been given really well by others much better in the Culture-specific feedback thread. 
• Conquistadores are effectively equivalent to the Gunner Unit unlocked at the same technology, but you cannot upgrade into them. They should simply replace the unit the same way the Dutch Emblematic Unit replaces transport ships. 
• Hunnic Hordes are far too overpowered. I am aware they are going to lose their double-shoot ability in the final game, but it should still be highlighted here. Attacking twice with a non-melee unit is far too strong in this game. 
• Mortar units should not be able to move and attack. Their range and line-of-site are already really, really powerful. They should not be able to move and shoot given this incredible power they already have.  

• I really enjoyed it in the early game, but it felt opaque as to what faith did. What does +1 faith actually provide your empire? 
• Outside of small buffs to yields per followers/per territory following a religion, religion doesn't feel very useful. You cannot get fame for converting other empires, or having X many followers etc. and so focusing on Religion doesn't feel useful. 
• What counts as a holy site and what does not is unclear.

• The idea is really nice, and the way in which you interact with them is not unlike Endless Legend/Endless Space, but I think they should provide you with quests, resources (tributes) and other possible bonuses (Unique Units or Unique Infrastructures) to make them feel worth having around. 
• I think it would be best to make it such that you get 1 type of bonus if you are their patron (say, access to a unique unit, or unique luxury) and another bonus if you assimilate them (say, a unique infrastructure, repeatable or passive bonus). If you conquer them, you get nothing. This way, you can make the strategic decision on which benefit you want (1) the unique unit, but not own the land, (2) the unique infrastructure, the territory and pay assimilation costs (possibly even require a request be completed) etc. or (3) Just take the territory quickly by conquering them, but gain nothing else. This would make for a much more interesting way to interact with the independent peoples. 

• Natural Wonders do not feel wonderous, or unique. Finding a natural wonder grants fame, and settling one grants stability. Aside from these bonuses they feel like they are pretty much irrelevant. They should provide bonuses to adjacent terrain, territory-wide or even empire-wide bonuses for owning them. Otherwise, they don't really feel wonderous, but instead feel...meh? 
• Finding out which empire bought which good from you is opaque. All you know is a trade occurred, but not with who or what they bought, or how much money this granted you. Hidden information is not desired in a 4X game. 
• What determines the cost of trading resources is not entirely clear. There were two resources in the same AI territory, both an equivalent number of hexes away from my land, they were the same resources, but they cost a different amount to purchase. Why? 

Here are the impressions I had after playing the first game (I played three, couldn't finish any of them due to game freezes in 3rd/4th eras)

1) Natives settled a region in which I was planning to build an outpost. After I conquered them, I couldn't attach the region, as I had been planning - it was now a separate city.

That happened in one of the first two eras, so I didn't know about city absorption yet.

I now think the problem could have been solved by ransacking my newly conquered city, then building an outpost, then attaching it? But at that time I didn't know it was an option.

2) It was not clear who was whose vassal.

I now memorized that shackles below the empire's icon mean that the empire is a liege, and a colored circle below the empire's icon depicts the color of that empire's liege.

That may be related to the fact that the empires are hard to distinguish between ("Empire 1", "Empire 2", ...)

3) It was unclear how Persians' Steal Territory worked, I had to google it.

The button was inactive, there was no tooltip which said that I had to have a unit standing on enemy's outpost/administrative center.

4) One AI surrendered to another and became its vassal seemingly too easily, geographically it seemed that the AI which surrendered was stronger.

Possibly there's a problem with calculation of "war score" - which in this game is war desire.

I see how there should be a option for vassalization after a complete victory, but it is unrealistic if a small (weak) empire vassalizes a big (strong) one, even if the first won gloriously (think wars for concessions from 19 century China - no empire would think about taking over whole China).

On the other hand, it is realistic if a small but strong (economically, technologically, ...) empire vassalizes a big but weak one (think colonial conquests).

Perhaps there should be a restriction on vassalization based, for example, on the number of territories the warring empires control, and in era 5 that restriction can be lifted (ideological wars and puppet states).

My first impressions (although a bit late), as well as feedback that did not fit elsewhere, are:

General

• It runs on Ubuntu via Proton! I did not expect this, but wanted to try.
• A setting for movement animation speed would be great.
• The diplomacy voice-over is a bit too much sometimes.

• The map is absolutely stunning. It's interesting to look at, has strategic relevance and is full of small details (I had fun pushing sheep around!).
• The way zooming out changes the map to a strategic one is really nice, and makes up for a missing mini-map. I found myself using that whenever I needed a strategic overview.

Civics:

• The way civics are triggered by events and actions is brilliant and fun.

• The filter drop-down is very useful.
• The construction menu feels cluttered. I spent a lot of time scrolling, looking for specific items.
• Infrastructure items could have their respective resource group icon shown on the image. Also their names could be shown somewhere, especially in list view.

Here is my overall feedback for this Lucy OpenDev. I wasn't able to be as thorough in playing this scenario as the previous two ones because (1) I had trouble even opening the game itself for a few days, and when that was finally fixed (2) it was the day before my wisdom tooth extraction. I was in exhausted pain for five days and I did not have the energy to play the scenario for a large chunk of the Christmas week. Thus I only made two playthroughs, and therefore I can't produce more thorough feedback. The third one I wasn't able to finish, because there was this lag that came out of nowhere, and it really made my head hurt since I'm still technically recovering from the surgery.

• I like how you can queue actions within the battle, really saves time
  
• I like these additions to the diplomacy screen: diplomatic history, new trade route representation, hovering tooltips that give more information
• I really like the new info screen for the independent people
• Earning era stars and fame points feels less passive now and more challenging for me compared with the Stadia OpenDev, but I can understand how some players feel that it's too fast for them, so balance is needed.

• It seems that the response to diplomatic actions I make is quite slow. For example, when I asked for a white peace, I didn't know the other side refused the offer. It took about five seconds for the animation to properly respond. It would be better if there's some sort of notification automatically telling you the response of the other party.
• It doesn't look good that coastal and shallow ocean tiles don't correspond to land tiles when they're supposed to like in real life. There shouldn't be any gaps for ocean tiles along the coast.
• Ending your turn while in the tech tree screen (or any screen I assume) still does not bring you back to the main map.
• While I like the trade route screen, I think it needs a bit more visual refinement. I suggest making the trade screen look similar to the lines in the Society or Religion screens, with different looking likes for land and sea routes.
• Armies from an enemy that is weaker than me run off before deployment. I have no problem with that personally (I mostly play peacefully in 4x games), but I can understand why it can be annoying for most people (and it sort of annoyed me as well).