Greetings!

After 2 and a half sessions playing the scenario of Lucy OpenDev, I think I have my opinions:

First of all, I have to congratulate Amplitude devs for delivering such a high quality product even it is more than four months before the official launch. This opendev reassures your reliability as a game developer company, notably after the recent facts involving game industry.

The game itself is a breathe of fresh air in the genre and I hope it will be well received by 4x community and general public, enhancing competitivity and attracting more players to the genre.

That said, I have several comments about what could be better in Humankind:

1 - PERFORMANCE in general was ok, but I experienced consistent slowness and crashes after turn 120. It made it difficult to me to end my playthroughs completely in order to fill the official feedback form. If other users are going through this as well, Amplitude may be losing a bit of valuable feedback from players that couldn't reach the very end of the scenario.

2 - USER INTERFACE: for me it's the main problem with the game in this moment. And a good UI is key to attract or scare new players to the game. I suggest an extensive reevaluation from the dev team on this.
     a) In diplomacy screen, I could not know what the badges things meant to be... At war, peace agreement screen was buggy as well and the cities appeared duplicated with different costs.
     b) City production panel: occupies too much space and even after I set UI to 85% it was very unconfortable to navigate between the constructibles options to choose one.
     c) Trade screen: I could not understand what was happening at all with trade. I had to read on the forums to get a glimpse and yet for me it was very difficult to understand the effects of trade on my empire.
     d) Culture/Influence and Religion screens: I'd like to know how my culture/religion was expanding, which variables were influencing it... Don't know if it's explained somewhere else, but these screens only show the current situation.
     e) Mouse PAN on map is still very slow.

     f) Zoomed out vision on map doesnt help to distinguish map elements very well. I think territories could be slightly colored to represent the empires and icons should be a little bigger and clearer on map.
     g) I felt the need for some additional "hints" when passing the cursor above some game specific terms like the "celebrating" status or "heresy" action on civic choices screen... On ideology panels as well, I could not know what each of the symbols meant until all them appeared on events. We can't know by simply accessing the ideologies tab... and so on...
     h) Notifications should say immediately what is happening instead of needing to click on them to know. Example: "Empire X changed the position..." - It should present the relevant information immediately, that could be: "Empire X is feeling PLEASANT" or "Empire X wants to get a Trade treaty"... And so on... Hence, curiosities disappear so fast that 80% of times I could not even know what I just got from them...
      i) Fame/Era stars screen/notifications: I would like to know which one was the last star I earned as well as get a timeline of all stars and fame I got through the game.
      j) Specific bugs: sometimes notifications appeared duplicated and the "death" warning from "lost army at the sea" appeared even it was not going to die next turn because it was a "navigator" unit.

3 - I strongly believe AI is still very WIP, but it was definitely braindead even at serious difficult. In tactical battles, however, it seems to be competent. A competent AI is key for the success of this game because of two main reasons: a) It's a single player heavy game and b) It's an opportunity, once it's a common complaint among players.

4 - MAP regions can take the strangest forms and are not very intuitive. I believe map making needs some tweaking for the regions to better reflect how humanity divided the world through history. Yet, I believe it could be more variability on terrain anomalies, but I think it's a WIP as well.

5 - FIMSI RESOURCES need urgent rebalancing.
     a) Food and production are very much abundant on map. The way districts and expansion work I can accomplish high values of both with minimal effort.
     b) Food is specifically bad in my opinion because of growth tiers. I know of the administered and unadministered thing, but yet, it's very easy to get to "abundance" level. And from there, you have absolutely no incentive to invest in food unless you are a agrarian civ. I think food need to be reworked a bit to make sense. Maybe creating more tiers or increasing food consumption across the board....

     c) Science is a bit scarce but even so I was done with all research between turns 80 and 100 even when I did not picked any scientist civ.
     d) In general, resources are extremely snowbally. Despite being initially very fun, it can make the game feel dull very fast.
      

6 - DISTRICTS also need rebalancing.
      a) Harbors, even with double cost, seemed broken as hell with their feature of exploiting many coastal tiles and not only the adjacents.
      b) Market quarters, on the other hand, felt underpowered. The adjacency from farm quarter seems strange.
      c) Farmer quarters did not seemed very useful but I think it's because of how food is abundant in this game and growth tiers.

7 - STABILITY feature was meant to act as a soft barrier to player expansion but it fails in this aspect because of how easy is to get it. There is a extensive web of options to get stability and the only moment I felt I had to worry with it was the very early game. Stability is a very interesting feature but it needs to be more valuable and rare... Or demand a real effort from the player to get it. There is one specific action called "Procession" that is absolutely broken.

8 - ERA STARS: I felt science and builder stars are very easy to get. On the other hand, merchant and expansionist ones were very difficult, mainly after medieval era.

9 - AFFINITY ABILITIES: i think some of them need rework
       a) Merchant: I think this is more of a UI problem, but I simply could not know what is happening here.
       b) Military: I think this is not useful for the purposes it had to be. I think that if we could build an army with our emblematic unit would be very interesting and game changing.
       c) Expansionist: Very difficult to use... Personally I simply could not see an valid opportunity I could use it. It has to be easier to use or reworked completely.
       d) Builder: Weaker version from science one. Maybe because production is already very abundant, I didn't see the need or advantage to use it, once the other resources are more valuable. Maybe a rework is welcome or the general rebalancing of the game could solve this.
       e) The other abilities I think they are very interesting and powerful.

10 - INFRASTRUCTURES: They are still a bit uninteresting with few exceptions. They are too much cheap and not impactful. And I think once we researched the next level of one given infrastructure, we should not be able to build the previous ones. The advanced one would then "absorb" the effects of its older counterpart and its some of its cost too.
       Still, I think they should be more expensive, use more of the resources and be more impactful, encouraging city specialization.
       Additionaly I think that some "National" infrastructures would be nice. They would be built only once per empire and be extra strong or with regional effects.

11 - RELIGION: I liked how it's simple, dynamic and relevant all at the same time. But one thing is bothering me: we had access to four tiers of tenets, cool and all. But after that, nothing. I'd like that Amplitude doesnt repeat the same error from their competitor, thinking that with science advancement religion lost relevance and after renaissance nothing new happens. We know it's not true. I hope there are nice features involving religion post early modern era like schisms and the influence of capitalism and mass media on how people see religion nowadays. I trust in you, Amplitude team!

12 - INDEPENDENT PEOPLE: I liked the change you made setting different ideologies for each one, but I could not see yet the differences in our relationship with them. I think it's still WIP. But I hope IP will be important actors in world scenario all across the board. Hope they have personalities (maybe different bonus) and that great empires treat them as real nations as well, like with diplomatic relations (even if they are limited) and so on...

13 - NATURAL WONDERS: I'd like to see each one having their individual bonus. I don't know if it's already on dev road map, but I think it's a valid feedback.

14 - GAME PACE is almost ok. It's still a bit fast and very snowbally, but you will get there certainly!

THANK YOU for the opportunity to play and help with feedback! Very appreciated!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year everyone and LONG LIVE HUMANKIND!