Hello everyone !

Friendly warning : it’s going to be quite a long post (there’s a potato at the end though), I’ll try to be as clear and organized as possible.

I’ll start with my overall impressions of this scenario (what I enjoyed the most and the least), and I’ll follow with feedbacks and suggestions on various topics.

1. Overall impressions:
   1. What I enjoyed the most:
      • Aesthetically and graphically in general, the game is beautiful: be it units, buildings, terrain, artworks, animations (movements, battles, or when moving to the next Era). Specifically, differences in terrain elevations brings so much in terms of gameplay immersion. I often found myself lingering over the map, toggling off the UI, just to enjoy the view of my cities and units.
      • Music is greatly composed and performed and adds to the grandeur and epic feel of each playthrough. 
      • The reworked combat layout is much more enjoyable and clearer than before.
      • Not having a calendar, or a sense of years passing by, is actually not at all awkward or feels like it’s missing. The Eras mechanic is obvious, and allows much more flexibility than a calendar, which would obviously be centered on one civilization/culture, and thus be irrelevant for the others.
      • Clickable icons on the map for Luxury/Strategic resources is particularly useful and is a genuinely nice QoL feature. This is a great feature in Endless Legend which I was expecting in Humankind, so I am glad it is implemented here.
      • I enjoyed playing peacefully as well as aggressively, I very much like the flexibility of gameplay, should it be based on the cultures picks in each Era, or based on the player’s playstyle. And obviously, being able to pick a different culture each Era allows so many possibilities and replayability.
   2. What I enjoyed the least:
      • During almost all my playthroughs, I found that Culture’s ability was usually not necessary (except for the merchant one, which is passive and quite strong). When I used it, it was mainly the Scientific toggle option (for instance, I didn't used once the builder ability). That could be due to the difficulty level : I mainly played on Normal difficulty, and I wasn’t rushing Era Stars. I can see it useful for quickly gaining them though.
      • Game pace is quite fast right now, specifically for the early Eras (Ancient and Classical, on average 20 - 25 turns), which usually prevents from building your culture’s EQ in all your first cities, though they are powerful (at least for the ones I tested).
      • About cultures’ EQ, although I hadn’t much time to build them in early Eras, I feel that the player shouldn’t be able to build unlimited numbers of them, since they are quite strong (Khmers’ Baray, or Norsemen’s Naust for instance) -> I could see a hard limit per city, 2 or 3 max maybe, or an overall hard limit in the empire (10 max per empire maybe) ?
      • There is also no hard limit on the number of districts a city can build, except for the stability cost, which can be quite easily countered by building Wonders, infrastructures, and later on, Common quarters.
      • I also found market quarters were quite useless, even for non merchant cultures. Their adjacency bonus is quite low currently compared to other quarters ->They could gain additional bonuses when placed to adjacent luxury resources, to be worthwhile.
      • Huns and Mongols EU are really enjoyable if you want to conquer everyone around you, but they are too powerful (Free Riders trait : double movement and attack, and Nomad trait : gathering food through fighting and ransacking to multiply). I even tested Hunnic Hordes embarked on Dutch’s Fluyt and engaged in naval battles, which resulted in numerous Fluyt naval units, which felt quite broken and unrealistic. I feel that they have to be nerfed quite a bit, and I would suggest 2 options: 1 - either keep the second movement (keeping the ability for flanking, since the unit is a type of cavalry) but do not implement the second attack ; or 2 - apply the inability for a Hunnic Horde/Mongol Horde army to be transferred, in order to avoid spamming units (only allow the first unit built to grow a regiment).
      •  Additionally, there is no money cost for maintaining units and districts. Although training military units costs population and building districts costs stability, I could see a maintenance cost for both of them, preventing large amounts of money incomes, specifically for merchant cultures, which currently allows buying out almost everything once you reach Medieval or Early Modern Era.
      • Finally, while I very much enjoyed the naval units (Fluyt and Man-o-War are so good), I felt that sailing overseas and ocean tiles were a bit lacking challenge. I hope, maybe as an expansion or DLC (as proposed here), that weather on ocean tiles will come to Humankind, such as in Endless Legend’s Tempest DLC.
2. Various feedbacks and suggestions (with screenshots):
   1. UI/UX texts and readability:

• Tutorial tooltips : text is sometimes hard to read on white background, specifically with green, yellow and brown colored words -> I feel that white/grey text on black background is better for readability, but I can understand the need to differentiate tutorial tooltips from ingame tooltips -> One suggestion could be to only have the white background for the title of the tutorial tooltip.

• Osmosis Event pop-up: same as above, white text is hard to read on top of the artwork -> Clicking on the Osmosis event icon on the city panel could open a bigger window (same as Civics for instance) for better readability.
• Similarly, on Diplomacy screen, white text dialogues on grey background are hard to read

• There is a missing text for a World Deed/Competitive Deed

• Aesthete description tooltip -> I feel that the description could be reworked and condensed :

           “Gameplay orientation focused on Cultural Influence or diplomacy.

            Gains access to 2 unique actions that can be triggered once the meter is full : the meter is filled according to your Cultural Influence generation.

• Unlocks action “Influence bomb” (instantly convert a Territory to your Cultural Influence regardless of values);
• Unlocks action “Tourism yields” (increase economy gains from Cultural Influence control by 100% for 5 turns).”

• Similarly, the Expansionist ability is unclear on how it works, and should state that the player needs to stay during 5 consecutive turns on the outpost or administrative center of the foreign territory to be able to "steal"/purchase it.

• Stability tooltip: There’s an “Unknown” bonus

• Era Stars categories change order in the Era screen or in the Era Stars tooltip anytime it is displayed -> I’d suggest they should be ordered alphabetically, only switching the top one based on the affinity.
• Civic window : ornament on the right is facing the wrong side -> It would look less awkward facing left than right.

• Surrender terms : how is calculated the War Score required for the surrendering terms ? I couldn’t find the reasons/explanations why the total amount of war score was 169. The text under Surrender Terms is not clear either.

• Culture Card Screen: Emblematic Unit range icon is the same as the one for the number of turns required to build something on the selection panel -> It should be the bent arrow instead, such as on the tooltip displayed when hovering over the culture’s card.

• Similarly, cultures cards on culture selection screen: some have long descriptions for EQ (i.e Egyptians, Phoenicians, …) and hovering the mouse over the EQ icon shows a tooltip with the same info as the one on the culture card -> I’d suggest keeping the affinity’s description and EU but only the EQ’s name, and showing its description in the tooltip to gain space and avoid scrolling down on the culture card screen :

• Attack prediction panel in battle: bonuses take a lot of space -> At least, Veterancy bonuses should be summed up (+1, +2, +3, such as proposed in this post) :

Current panel :

Suggestion :

• Technology screen should highlight the tech required for the EU of the chosen culture, or at least, highlight the EU artwork in the tech tree to easily identify the tech required to build it.
• Science screen should show the Science breakdown, same as for the other yields on the city screen.
• I feel that Machu Picchu 3D model is currently looking unfinished compared to other wonders, I assume it’s still WIP ?

• Similarly, Machu Picchu tooltip is unclear about the Wonder placement requirements -> The text should state that it needs 2 adjacent mountains tiles in the city territory it is built in (it can’t be build either in an owned territory without 2 adjacent mountain tiles).

• Diplomatic badges should be explained -> hovering over should show a tooltip explaining what they are and what they do.
• Diplomacy screen : it’s unclear when AI refuses a treaty/proposal -> there should be a pop-up window to inform player of AI’s decision (or could be a quick animation maybe ?).
• Diplomacy : Hesitant attitude description text is unclear -> It should probably reads “Unsure of your intentions, so reserving judgement for the time being”

• Gained Era Stars should be highlighted in the Era Stars screen, or the notification could tell which one was unlocked (formerly proposed in this post) -> in order to know which one was unlocked (happens quite often to unlock several of them in a row, would be useful to know which ones).
• Some missing texts for Civics choices (i.e : Inherited Land for Land Rights Civic, or Secularism for Irreligion Civic)
• Irreligion Civic: adopting State Atheism locks all previous religious civics and ‘reimburse” the civics points from previously unlocked religious civics -> This should be explained for this particular Civic, in particular because you’ll lose previous bonuses and in order for the player to make an informed choice.
• Renaming a religion on the Religion screen: the text box is covered by the rename icon on the left.

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2. UI/UX glitches/misbehavior:
   • Command post/Flag keeps refreshing/rebuilding when engaged in battle and cycling through units before deployment phase.
   • City name/banner UI glitch: periodically disappear, you have to zoom out and zoom in to make it appear again.
   • UI resize setting resetting to 100% every time you launch the game -> I assume this could be a stored as a setting in user file.
   • Production completion turn calculation bugged ? (usually says 1 turn left, whereas the completion will actually be done in 2 turns).

• Some pop-up windows overload: when transitioning to next Era, and being able to select a new Wonder, the first window that pops up is the Wonder selection window, then New Era window -> It should be New Era window first, then Wonder selection window, to avoid piled windows.

• Diplomacy screen: when at war with a lot of grievances, the diplomacy screen doesn’t expand the grievances and demands list, Approval and Refusal buttons are hidden.

• Fog of war exploit: with an army selected, hovering the mouse over tiles in the fog of war can reveal opponent’s units by displaying the engagement screen.

Not exploiting fog of war:

Exploiting fog of war:

• Naval units: some transport and naval units don’t have sound when shooting/firing (i.e : Quadrireme, Fluyt, Man-o-War).

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3. Game mechanics:
   • If auto-resolve is selected once in battle, it stays active unless deactivated manually -> It should reset to “Off” after the end of the battle or for the next battle.
   • Clearing ruins could be clearer: you have to search the ruins on the map, by hovering the mouse over every hex tile to find the correct one -> the ruins should be highlighted in green once you select “Clear the ruins” from the city construction menu, or even have a clickable icon (same way as for strategic/luxury resources).
   • Player should be notified when an outpost is built, to avoid forgetting to build a city or a resource extractor for instance.
   • A notification/animation when an Empire is eliminated would also be nice, it feels a bit bland currently.
   • I was a bit surprised that naval units aren’t able to shoot/fire at ground units or cities located on shore. Particularly against IP’s cities on island, where I would first send my boarding vessels before sending units on transport ships. I would have liked them to be able to siege from water and being able to shoot at opponents.

Thanks for reading this far,

Cheers to all !