Hello Amplitude Studios,

First I want to say Ive been very much looking forward to Humankind however even though I understand the game is still in developpment the current state of the game leaves me a little bit dissapointed in some areas.

To give you a bit of context, Ive played the Lucy OpenDev scenario for around 35hrs~ Ive also played the other OpenDev scenarios.

Im a advanced beginner game developer, 3D artist and aspiring Game Designer and I hope that I can give you my 2 cents on what I think of the game and hopefully you can find some of my suggestions useful. 

In advance, I appologize for the lengthiness of the post  and perhaps some mistaken assumptions I might make but I hope that if the devs read it they find something of value.

[Overview]

My general Consensus of the game right now is that the best 2 things about the game is the dynamic gameplay of choosing between various cultures and combining as you progress through the game and a solid Combat system compared to other 4X games. However the AI and Diplomacy systems which are very much intertwined leave a lot to be desired which turns detrimental to the combat system because it rarely ever happens in an exciting way,a shame because the combat one of the things to be excited for Humankind. In the war OpenDev scenario's it was possible to enjoy a optimal combat scenario, however that type of situation does not seem to happen naturally and that's a bit of a shame. Also the overall economic balance is way off, its really easy to get very high production and just snowball out of control.

[ BIG UPDATE: There was a patch yesterday and so I decided to play the game once again on Serious difficulty. There was a few cases where the AI would really try to fight me and even klicked my ass on one occasion but its still very easy. I wish there was more clarity to the AI's intentions followed by action, because the AI does have an attitude in the diplomacy screen but It doesn't feel like that really matters too much.] 

[Dynamic Cultures]

The Good:

- Let's get the obvious out of the way, the biggest feature and I think most interesting aspect of the game is that you can adapt your civilization through time leading for some very interesting gameplay.

The Bad: 

-  Sometimes some cultures districts feel underwhealming or a bit less engaging, for example the new Celts look very weak, i think they got nerfed too harshly. I want to see cultures changing your gameplay as drasticly as something akin to the Huns but in different ways.

The Suggestions: 

- Make the districts very strong but also not so interchangable; what I mean by this is that some districs feel like they are simply a neutral district but slightly better and can be built in any scenario without changing your gameplay much. I would like these districts to force the player to make more drastic plans and decisions that perhaps go against the regular gameplay district placement. A good example of a district that works for me is the Frank district, its strong but it forces you to commit to building those holy sites to make good use of it. Where as the new Celt district I can hardly find a justification to built it compared to what it was before. Before it was very powerful and very enjoyable; I think it should go back the way it was or even stronger but perhaps have a restriction of  1 per territory for example. 

[Combat] 

The Good:

-The combat in Humankind judged by the previous scenarios left a very positive opinion for me, the posibility of very exciting battles making use of the different unit types and bonuses as well as terrain tactics is one of the most satisfying ive played on a 4X game. 

The Bad:

- The UI, I will touch on this later but I think the Battlefield UI could use some work. 

- Map movement control, right now there's very little chance that a very epic battle will unfold mostly because of 2 things. When engaging an enemy army the AI will almost always retreat unless there's an even amount of units. Secondly its very easy for the enemy or yourself march around enemy territory without any consequence, which makes it very easy to simply go around trying to pick off some outpost or undefended cities; this is why in a lot of games they add an extra mechanic that helps with that mostly something like "attrition".

- Fortification and walls shouldn't be passable unless destroying the wall. Also maybe it would be good that only the owner of the fort can have a spawning location when deploying? regardless of position.

The Suggestions:

- Please add an Attirition type mechanic where an enemy army can only spend a few turns in enemy territory (kind of like the deep sea mechanic) which also gets reduced when retreating from battle. That way when invading or being invaded the enemy has to commit to certain actions and where taking an outpost or city has even greater rewards which is establishing supply lines. This would enhance the combat TREMENDOUSLY, especially could be great for those later modern era wars.

- Forts should reduce enemy supplies a bit more than normal in the territory built making them more valuable but should also be somewhat expensive to build compared to other districts.

[Wonders]

The Good: 

-The way wonders are implemented leave me very happy, I like that you can claim a wonder without having to worry about wether you will even complete it like in other games and they seem to have a meaningful impact to your civilization. Also being able to have various cities work together on a single project is great.

The Bad: 

-The Ui to pick wonders is so uninteresting, its tucked in to the side and feels sort of hidden away.

The Suggestions: 

- Please give wonders a bit more of a spotlight, I think picking a wonder should feel the same way as when you pick a culture, please implement a UI element that displays them like in the Culture picking event. 

- Maybe make some of the effects more impactful, maybe even add some negative effects to some of them so you really have to weight your choices.

[City Pace/Economy] 

The Good: 

- Planning what improvements to build to get the most out of your territory is one of the most unique and fun things I encountered playing the OpenDevs. Not only that but planning what districts to place where is also very fun.

- Strategic Resources are important and I love that you need them to build certain units so trading and strategic territory grabbing feels meaningful.

The Bad:

-  It feels that the balance is a way off, if you play relatively correctly the snowball effect feels a little too strong where usually a city gets to a point where it simply builds everything and choices become meaningless tedious tasks. Population is very easy to grow and the way to grow it is very very confusing to me. The threshold to reach an Abundant state of food is ridiculously easy to reach and there's little to no need to get farmers and since there's no real use to getting more food after reaching abundant (to my understanding) it also completely kills any kind of population based strategy.

- The pace of the game is also really quick and sluggish in others. I think the game has a very bad pacing problem stemming mostly from the economy. It's very easy to accelerate ridiculously fast and unlock stars by simply building districts and unlocking technology. Often there's barely enough time to build the unique era districts and even less time for any sort of interesting war. The pace at which you unlock new eras compared to the AI is also a bit of a joke, once you understand the game you'll be so far ahead that you'll rapidly feel bored because it completely kills and sense of urgency or prioritization. There's no "oh i need this tech asap so I can achieve X" type feeling.

- Luxury Resources are a little bit underwhealming, particularlly because they don't feel very impactful to your strategy or even give you that great of a bonus. Not to mention they are relativeley easy to obtain and cheap to buy. Also the AI doesn't seem to be very eager to buy your luxuries for whatever reason.

The Suggestions: 

- City planning needs something that really makes the player scratch its head, the choices are very straight foward and there's very little variation. I think there has to be an aditional layer of variation to make district placement more varied. It's hard to explain but I will try. So right now I only see 2 cases where there's a varied district choice affected by terrain. You can either go for the Farmer quarters on river with irrigation path, or the Makers Quarters on a river with hydrology path. This is nice however there's not much else besides that. I would like to see more variation district placement and city improvements.

- Make terrain features more wild and more of them. For example "Toxic Flora" in  Forest + 3 Science to Research Quarters built on this tile - 3 Food to Food Quarters built on this tile or the "Crater " feature doesn't allow to build districts on it but adds +3 industry + 2 science and +3 science to adjecent Research Quarters.

- Make Luxury Resources have stronger temporary buffs; make the effects of the luxury resources drastically aid your civilization in some sort of aspect and also make them more expensive to make the player really prioritize them and also make trading them more appealing. For example Imagine the player wants to rush to a particular technology that is important to his/her strategy, le's say  Lead  gives you 5 science per turn  and 10% per researcher; now the player doesn't have Lead but his neighbour has Lead which can be bought for 10 turns. The player now knows that if he/she spends some money and sets up his/her civilization in a way that for the next 10 turns the cities will focus on science to make a tech push. In this way Luxury resources have a more meaningful impact and can affect the short term strategy. (Of course balance will be important but this would lift luxuries up significantly in my opinion)

[Diplomacy/AI]

The Good:

- I like that you can negotiate different treaties with the AI and that they develop different attitudes towards the player.

The Bad:

- This is a big one but the AI feels practically dead to me, there's very little engagement besides the occasional asking for treaties which sometimes feel unimpactful to my strategy... if I had any, because right now it feels like the AI will just sit there and kind of do its own thing. I haven't played the scenario too many times but the lack of wars or incentive to go to war is perhaps one of the most disappointing aspect of the game right now. 

- The Crisis system to me translates into a sort of "casus belli" type of thing, but I feel like it doesn't work as intended or there's something im missing. I have very little control over what happens and since the AI feels kind of inactive, i don't really see a reason to keep good diplomatic relations. I mean you can keep good diplomatic relations to perhaps buy some of their resources but Luxury resources feel very underwhealming and since the AI is kind of a push over when it comes to fighting (unless they have rly strong units like with the Huns) you might aswell declare war and take it anyway. In general it feels like the components of a system are there but they don't quite function together very well.

The Suggestions: 

-  Add a UI element that shows what exactly the result of a particular deal will be when Accepting or Declining, because sometimes the AI asks your something and you don't know what you're accepting or declining. Additionally there needs to be a small notification when the AI rejects or accepts something. 

[UI/ Visuals]

The Good:

- The Drawings are incredible, being an artist myself im left drooling about how beautiful the cultures and wonders splash art. Very beautiful!

- The Terrain is very detailed and vibrant.

- The UI icons make sense and the space feels neat.

The Bad:

- The UI is something i hope gets changed a decent amount, as i understand it clearly wants to be very readable and clean but I feel like in turn it becomes very unflavourful and flat. The icons and the UI elements make me feel like im working on a microsoft document rather than playing an exciting game.

- Ive got some issues with the Zoomed out visuals. The terrain can be sometimes be very hard to read especially with the grey ugly overlay which is infested a slightly different shade of grey fog of war on top. It feels a bit crammed and unclear, its so bad that sometimes I want to avoid zooming out because of the different lvels of information. 

- Im not in love with the fog of war, its slightly depressing.

- The Combat Engagement UI also needs some love, I don't know exactly what it is but it needs some love.

The Suggestions:

- I would love to see those dull "Surprise war" buttons be turned into more of that beautiful splash art. Make things look EPIC! If i was in the team (*cough* pls hire me *cough*)  I would make the UI designer and the Splash artist sit together and enhance the UI's Visuals in some areas.

- The map zoom out information needs to be more functional, it needs some sort of soft snap feature that really seperates the different levels of information; like close, far and very far.

[Civics and Ideology ]

The Good:

- I like that events affect how your society is built, it really adds to the role playing aspect.

The Bad:

- Not much to say I like the civics, maybe spice them up a bit in some cases.

- The ideology system is a little bit annoying to have to check constantly, I wish it had a more readable and directly more comprehensive way to show it. Because I often forget about it or find too bothersome to have to check.

The Suggestions: 

- We absolutely NEED a tooltip on events that shows you the changes of Ideology when choosing an option. Not only on the events but also on the Idelogies tab itself when you mouse over an ideology icon.

[Miscellaneous]

- The Music is fantastic!

- Making your own Avatar is exciting.

- Advancing through eras being dictated by your achievements rather than technology is a great design choice.

- Im leaning a little bit on the thought that perhaps the Fame mechanic was a bit of a mistake.

Anyway, that's about it for me. Im sure i missed a few things or i may be wrong about others but Im hopeful that Humankind can be a great game and ill be eager to see how the game develops.

PrinceCosmo wrote:

Excellent write-up! I hope that Amplitude takes such feedback to heart and makes this game everything it can come April.

Thank you! Me too, I think the game has tremendous potential and there's still time to make it as great as I know it could be.