reich238 wrote:

As discussed elsewhere, it seems too easy to assimilate them. For me, different tenants focussed on influence or money often result in plenty of either or. And then it feels the ideological differences do not really matter much more. Perhaps some of the IP should resist pure cash or blue jeans for a bit longer.

I agree, I was able to easily assimilate them whenever I wanted. Maybe the actual assimilation could take a few turns instead of being instant, and have those turns also be based on your ideological distance? For example, if you're totally opposed to an IP on both axes, it might take you a base of 3 turns plus 5 turns per axis to assimilate, for a total of 13 turns. If someone else assimilates them before you can, you could get a partial refund. This could also encourage selecting the IPs you try to become close to more carefully.

You might want to block assimilating independent districts that you haven't invested in yet.
Just ran into a district that happened to be in decline, that no one invested in and that I could instantly assimilate.

Also, this might be tied to tweaking the general amount of influence points you are able to receive.
I just assimilated four independent districts in a single turn (turn 90) which seems a bit excessive...

One of the strange things I came along was that I was patron of IP and they were in decline, but I could not annex them, whereas the AI could. They didn't have any special legacy trait to it, so it cannot be that. Is that a thing that as a patron you cannot, but as a player with absolutely no influence over them you can? The same happened in reverse to me where the AI had patron status over three IP and I only got to know them by some chance to quickly assimilate all as they were in decline. Is this how the game mechanic is supposed to work? 

reich238 wrote:

One of the strange things I came along was that I was patron of IP and they were in decline, but I could not annex them, whereas the AI could. They didn't have any special legacy trait to it, so it cannot be that. Is that a thing that as a patron you cannot, but as a player with absolutely no influence over them you can? The same happened in reverse to me where the AI had patron status over three IP and I only got to know them by some chance to quickly assimilate all as they were in decline. Is this how the game mechanic is supposed to work? 

Hm, there seems to be some issue/bug with assimilating in zenith/decline situations 

Is it weird that I almost completely forgot they existed in both my games so far?

I had a long war with an opponent, and some of their conquered cities rebelled against me, becoming independent. I re-conquered them and now they were no longer considered occupied but rather my own, and the people were no longer dissatisfied at all.

It would make sense for occupied cities that rebel to revert back to their initial owner than becoming independent.

An improvement over the Lucy Opendev, the slower pace of the game leaves a bit more time to interact, trade and fight with independent factions. The snowballing issues do mean that eventually they're just another city to be absorbed in one turn but I found that point happens a little later. Honestly I don't think the option of instantly absorbing them once they start to decline helps this problem out, especially since you don't even need a good relationship to convert them this way. Perhaps scaling the new cities with the current era might be the correct solution, since for the early and most of the mid game independents fulfill their roll well before once again becoming comically easy to absorb.

Clearly improved over last open beta

Please loose the pacifist icon and use the horned helmet instead

Shield shoul be showing the ownership of the city but in this case it shows attitude and a very modern and unfitting one.

Barbarians and wild animals are not pacifist as shown when being poked with sticks :)

As for roaming animals suggest ot use the excellent pawn symbol isntead - again no need and out of place pacifist symbol

If the sore thing here is that agressivity level needs to be shown, then simply smack some arrows on the lower left corner or an olive branch for peacefull

Note: Olive branch is far older iconography, stands for peace not pacifism which is fitting as being generalyl peacefull doesnt mean the subject will not tear the attacker a new one if provoked :)

I noticed like others that assimilation seems too easy. perhaps by putting as a condition cultural domination and/or by putting a cost variable depending on the distance to the borders? I've seen the AI assimilate a city on another continent, on the border of another AI... the kind of thing that drives you crazy if it happens to you.

Ok, so here we are with plenty of new Victor feedback. I'd like to first say that HK is surely shaping up to be a fantastic game, and this OpenDev already shown a great deal of improvement over the Lucy build. I'll focus this report on the issues I found, but this by no way means HK isn't a good or fun game, just that I'm pointing to what can be made better before release. I'll also try to not discuss bugs like the various graphical glitches or the fact that many Early Modern Emblematic Quarters could be built in multiples per territory since by now I assume you're well aware of those. I'll try (key word here is try) to present suggestions to each issue, but of course, my knowledge of civics, technologies and cultures is limited by the scope of the opendevs revealed so far. So, without further ado, lets dive in:

- Independent Peoples

- Issue: While the IPs were in a much better state than in Lucy, they felt they had problems on patronizing. First, if you didn't wanted to wait until your influence passively made you the IP's patron, you had to click on a button to spend money or influence so many times you could develop carpal tunnel syndrome. Second, when you did patronize them, it had almost no effect save for letting you assimilate them. Solution:  Make the player able to spend gold or influence spending on IPs in batches, maybe with a slider or a special command (like using shift+click to "click" 10 times). Also, give more bonuses for being the patron of an IP, like gaining one or two extra luxuries, so you'll be more incentivized to stay as the IP's patron.

- Issue: After you managed to patronize an IP, you would need to spend 200 influence to Assimilate it and gain a new city. This did not scaled with the number of your cities, so it was both too expensive (at the early game) and too cheap (at the mid/late game). Solution:  Make the assimilation cost scale with the number of your cities, preferably mantaining it at the influence cost of a new city minus a fixed % discount - I suggest a 25% discount, to account the added hassle of having to patronize the IP first.

- Issue: Even easier and cheaper to gain new cities was to simply invade them. This is the strongest option of all since it costs no influence at all, requires no additional hassle to patronize, and nets you extra units killed (for militarist stars), so the IPs in Victor just became conquest targets. Solution:  Make all IP cities captured revert back to unattached outposts under your control. This would represent your empire razing the conquered city, and would let you build a city on it (for normal costs) and/or attach it to your other cities as usual. As an added bonus, this would create an emergent route to raze your own cities - liberate then conquer them. This "liberation-conquest" route would elegantly simulate the resistance the citizens' resistance to you razing their hometown.

This is a post in a series of connected posts about the Victor Opendev. You can find the posts discussing other topics below:

Economy: https://www.games2gether.com/amplitude-studios/humankind/forums/210-victor-opendev/threads/39499-feedback-economy-and-game-pace?page=3#post-315472

Naval & Air: https://www.games2gether.com/amplitude-studios/humankind/forums/210-victor-opendev/threads/39509-feedback-naval-gameplay?page=1#post-315474

Religion: https://www.games2gether.com/amplitude-studios/humankind/forums/210-victor-opendev/threads/39525-feedback-religion?page=2#post-315475

Diplomacy: https://www.games2gether.com/amplitude-studios/humankind/forums/210-victor-opendev/threads/39502-feedback-diplomacy?page=2#post-315476

Combat & Land Armies: https://www.games2gether.com/amplitude-studios/humankind/forums/210-victor-opendev/threads/39501-feedback-combat?page=2#post-315477

Civics: https://www.games2gether.com/amplitude-studios/humankind/forums/210-victor-opendev/threads/39508-feedback-civics?page=1#post-315478

Cultures: https://www.games2gether.com/amplitude-studios/humankind/forums/210-victor-opendev/threads/39500-feedback-cultures?page=2#post-315479

Didnt see the optin to hire armies: nor for neutral nor for agressiv independents

It should be available on their actual armies that roam around, iirc you can pay to hire them for 20 turns.

I have two problems with the neutrals right now:

- You get no notifications about status changes, for example when your patronage meter hits 100.

- They all kinda feel the same. Civ 6 has a very elegant way to make its city states special and useful, and even the Endless games had more flavour in their neutrals than Humankind.

Way to easy to assimilate. The cost is essentially nothing, they are basically a free city. This feature needs a complete redo; not to compare to Civ again but a mechanic where you have actual meaningful interactions would be way better, like with City States. There also needs to be a downside to assimilation other than taking up the extra city slot - either that, or have certain civics or civilizations get bonuses for leaving them alive. 

You could have bonuses given by civs/civics/religions like military strength bonus vs. independent states, or some trade mechanic, or a bonus to cities for having independent states on their borders.

Either that, or make it so the independent states don't take up an entire province but instead live within provinces you own early in the game, as the provinces are easily big enough to accommodate that early on. Then players could make the choice to leave them there as a minority group in their nation and get bonuses/maluses from that, to destroy them (at cost of a grievance or some other negative), or to slowly assimilate them over time.