Hey everyone!

You may have read about our plans for the Independent People in our Lucy Announcement blog.

While not all of these plans have made it into the currently available version of the game, we'd still like to hear from you what you think of the independent people know, as they were an aspect of the game we received a lot of constructive feedback on during the Stadia OpenDev.

Hello,

about my experience with independent people in the "Lucy" Open Dev:

First of all the map areas are just the right size to make independent people an important asset to control but not having them block off too much of the map.

I really miss a lot of elements from f.e. Endless Space 2 concerning culture/lore/uniqueness. Without a big picture and description of culture It is hard to imagine how their city/customs might differ from mine which takes away a bit of atmosphere. Also, the way a unique assimilation effect was presented in es2 felt a bit nicer because I immediately knew what makes their population differ from mine/others through gameplay. Kind of miss this feeling of multiculturalism in that regard.

All in all so far they felt more like tokes to pump resources in to get a city. It did not make my gameplay experience worse, I just see more potential for their cultures being expressed a bit more (clearly) in both gameplay and atmosphere/Lore; especially given that the game's main theme is closely connected to multiculturalism.

I generally am really enjoying my experience with the game, and it already feels very polished. Can't wait for the final product :)

Hi,

please for the love of god let me destroy unwanted cities, there's freaking Independent People everywhere where I can't claim with a outpost fast enough.

I now got 17 territories of which 10 are cities and due to 4-6k influence cost on merging, I am stuck with unadministered cities everywhere!

ForgottenTree wrote:

I now got 17 territories of which 10 are cities and due to 4-6k influence cost on merging, I am stuck with unadministered cities everywhere!

I agree the influence cost for merging cities is too high. I wanted to relieve myself of some tedious heavy micromanagement of the ~30+ cities I head under my empire in the end game, but just didn't have the influence to do it.

The biggest problem I saw with Independent Peoples was that any one I didn't assimilate, the AI empires did. Which made keeping a bunch of unassimilated people under my patronage not a possible strategy.

There should be some reason to just patronate independent cities without assimilating them, like dealing with city-states in Civ, but currently there is no reason to. Well, it's written you can use their resources or control their army - but you will get resources anyway, and who needs that silly peasants?

I like the free peoples, but there aren't enough of them - especially in the ancient era. During a fast-paced playthrough, you and the AI might grow so quickly that there is hardly any place left for them.

I think there might be an opportunity to make independent people a lot more common and more robust in the ancient era, so that similar to hunting in the neolithic era hunting, a player has a clear theme of consolidating tribes. The initial cultural choice might have a much stronger diplomatic effect with independent people tilting the balance and making assimilation vs domination choice a lot more meaningful.

It would also be cool if some of the independents had a technology, knowledge of a resource (revealing it on the map nearby) or unique structure for a player to acquire.

In my few playthroughs with Lucy, independents appeared later in a game and almost always got assimilated immediately.

There should be a better benefit for keeping them as a vassal state.

ihrd wrote:
It would also be cool if some of the independents had a technology, knowledge of a resource (revealing it on the map nearby) or unique structure for a player to acquire.

I really like this idea. It would promote diplomatic or agressive relations with the independant state. If science was much harder to research than it is now and I could get one for free by assimilating them it would really give them a higher value to persue.

They are useful for making a landing on a new continent and that's about it, really wish there was a reason to give them outposts and babysit them in general.

My main issue is the same as with minors in ES2, if you let them stick around someone else will snatch them from you with seemingly little effort. Maybe there could be some kind of 'guarantee independence' as an alternative to assimilation, that would make sure that this particular group will remain around? Could make it cost upkeep in influence, one way or another (either by flat per-turn cost or by keeping the relationship with them a race between majors, so that you need to invest into it to stay ahead). Then we could maybe start to talk about how to balance/incentivize interactions with patronaged Independent Peoples.

I also like the idea of some form of 'special powers' for them. Maybe they could have an access to some kind of specific emblematic unit, that you could hire with a long cooldown, or ability to cooperate with single town to boost FIDSI... uhm... FIMSI? FIMRI? I'm not sure what's the shorthand in Humankind. But as I wrote, to even think about it we must first assure that they'd ever stick around the map for long enough to make it worthwile.

The Independent peoples in Humankind, to me, felt as though they were more "in the way" than contributing anything interesting to to the OpenDev scenario. The way similar things are used in Endless Space 2 or Endless Legend - with them having unique units or populations to add to your empire would be interesting. In Humankind, this could probably be achieved with Unique Luxury Resources or Unique Quarters or Infrastructures or even  Unique Units that assimilating them or patronising them grants you. What might be even more interesting would be getting Bonus A (e.g. unique unit) if you are their Patron (90+%) and Bonus B (e.g. unique improvement) if you assimilate them, where your playstyle can lead to you getting either Bonus A or Bonus B, but not both.  

I agree strongly with the below, by which I mean, in their current state, Independent Peoples just feels like a just another territory that you invest some gold/influence into for a turn or 2 before immediately assimilating them, as this grants you the most benefit: 

Xahutek wrote:

I really miss a lot of elements from f.e. Endless Space 2 concerning culture/lore/uniqueness. Without a big picture and description of culture It is hard to imagine how their city/customs might differ from mine which takes away a bit of atmosphere. Also, the way a unique assimilation effect was presented in es2 felt a bit nicer because I immediately knew what makes their population differ from mine/others through gameplay. Kind of miss this feeling of multiculturalism in that regard.

All in all so far they felt more like tokes to pump resources in to get a city. It did not make my gameplay experience worse, I just see more potential for their cultures being expressed a bit more (clearly) in both gameplay and atmosphere/Lore; especially given that the game's main theme is closely connected to multiculturalism.

I generally am really enjoying my experience with the game, and it already feels very polished. Can't wait for the final product :)

Yeah, independents just feel like placeholders at the moment.