Treating this as "overall impressions" instead of "first impressions" since I've posted in a ton of threads already.

Bottom line: This is already a very fun game for single player. It still has a lot of systems work to do to be up to snuff, but all it means is folks have to cool it on trying to get competitive about multiplayer. There are a few intense frustrations that really, really need to be fixed by release; if they are, then I'm sure that everyone would be okay waiting a long time post release as systems are tightened up one by one.

The best parts: Games really DO manage to feel dramatically different from one another. The fact that this difference happens on Victor when we're running the same map over and over is a great sign. The Fame mechanic is incredible the more you play; the decision to era up or farm more stars is so involved and intricate. While the war desire system has its problems (it's probably a little too easy to vassalize), it does a great job of creating defenders advantage in a fair feeling way. Combat actually manages to be tactical, which has been a huge albatross around the neck of civ games generally.

The worst parts: There are far, FAR too many notifications, especially once you have vassals. Humankind's lategame is actively unfun simply because of the amount of stuff that makes that little animated pop-up in the bottom right. Pop gain, stars, trades starting at a minimum should get little icons on the right that just pulse softly and light up without the obligation to click. Related to this, diplomacy needs to be better about avoiding highly repetitive actions that will always get the same result. (Especially trade proposals they'll refuse if countered, and demands for the same city when I literally just refused their demand for that city last turn.) Combat can be kind of unapproachable, especially figuring out exactly how things will happen from the overmap.

Super excited for the full release!

To add to my first impression, I find it very difficult to tell what my city has built. The districts are not distinctive enough. Hovering over them gives me a large popup box that doesn't have the type of district in large font at the top. This makes the game quite inscrutable. It should be clear to the player what districts they've built in any given city. I recommend making the districts more visually prominent.

Before I start: I did partake in an earlier OpenDev but was divided into scenarios, so I haven't had a real playthrough yet.

I've played once so far and that one playthrough was to the full 150 turns on default difficulty.

AI

I've read several times here that the AI is too aggressive and really can't understand it.
I played nice with my first neighbour who became my ally later on and had some minor (4or 5 skirmishes with 2-3 units) battles with the second nation I discovered.
And that's it - I pursued non-aggression-pacts with most other nations on sight or at lest in the end. I was often thinking "this one could be the nation I intend to conquer" but in the end I never had the time for that and so went fully pacifist.

But even if I want to play peacefully in all other games (Endless Space 2, Endless Legend, Total War Games, Civ 5/6) there was always at least one nation that attacked me.
Sure me and my first ally were leading the fame leader board, but I expected to build military units in defense.

In total I had about 20 units, but most of them were ships as I tried to get these deeds done (reach new continent, sail around the world).

Pace

The pace is mentioned a few times here and to be honest that is the main reason to leave my feedback here...
I enjoyed the experience overall, but I was constantly in a rush to get to that next era (and therefore collecting fame) to either stay first in the leaderboard or (in the end) to catch up with my ally who overtook me in fame. I've read someone stated a fame-score of 9k - well done I can only say - my end score was ~2500, my ally had ~2550 and the third nation followed with ~2000. After that the scores fell drastically.
If the era star requirement is increased to 9 or 10 it might be enough to make the pace feel more natural.
Civics were a nice addition, but in the beginning I had not enough points and at game end I had 7 unused civic points since no new civic choice was available.
I didn't understand though how I can do somehting about that whole influence situation. One moment my neighbours influence is all over my territory and 15 turns later I had painted the whole map with mine - a bit more explanation how to control that would be great.

City Building

It felt right to me. I was cranking out district after district and had in time every infrastructure. Though I must admit I didn't find any spot to put a money-making-district. (Though I didn't settle near a desert- or is it different from Endless Legend?)

The only thing that bugged me was the layout of the build-panel. The list-view I liked more but still the categories used so much space, maybe they can be a bit fine-tuned, so the buildings themselves get more attention.

Graphics/UI

I like the graphics overall, the map is great. What me confuses is why this beautiful map is hidden away as soon as I touch my scroll-wheel.
Please make the transition optional, and/or start the transition at a more zoomed-out-state.
Why not have an empire-view like the current zoomed-out-state available with a button at the right bottom corner like resource-yields?

Additionally my units should be displayed longer and should aso be controllable. Otherwise this leads to zooming in-out-in-out-......

As many others have already mentiooned, displaying the region name somewhere easily accessible would be great. 

Performance

I didn't notice anything bad here.

Diplomacy

At first it's a bit overwhelming and I still don't grasp everything, but I really like the concept of grievances and demands.

Please tell me though in the notifications what new attitude another nation changed to, so I don't have to pull up the diplomacy screen every time.

I began my first playthrough today and played a few times halfway through (didn't play Lucy or others) along with watching Sips' stream of it and I have mixed feelings. To give a little background, recently a group of my friends have gone back and started on Endless Legend, Endless Space, Empire Earth and all of the Civ games along with a few other 4x games to get pumped up for this. While I hate comparing this to those, you sort of need to in order to get into the mindset and even this being an alpha of sorts here's what I can say as I'm halfway through: 

Pros:

Overworld graphic texture work: The graphics are stunning in my opinion. For example when you find the Great Barrier reef and look at it upon your first glace you say holy moly this looks amazing.

Music: The music is as always great for a style of this type. Nothing super catchy yet, but it's the beta.

The Map District Layouts: Love this carry over from Endless Legend with some improvements.

Tenet system: This really made me feel like I was able to make a leap and bound in 

Cons: (This sounds like a big complaint and it might be, but it's because I want this game to be phenomenal as with other Amplitude games)

TL;DR - Needs a lot more content and more time on QoL and bug fixing. Also some of the systems just don't feel like they work or are way too convoluted at this point (granted I know this is why you want feedback).

Core Gameplay Loop: If you fall behind at all, you're basically toast even with the catch up mechanic. The AI had two characters that just wouldn't stop attacking me even on one of the lowest levels with 3 or 4 quad stacks. By the time I was ready to get back into the swing of things I saw that an AI that was on the other side of the map (Japan) had already reached two eras ahead of me and I had two large cities and 5 territories. As the score system ramped up it got nearly impossible to hit some of the tasks.

Content

- Eras: The fact that there are only 6 eras in total in the final game is sort of disappointing, but there isn't much that can be done from a design perspective I guess at this point, it just feels kind of samey in each era from what I've played thus far.

- Cultures: This falls into the same tree as eras. Nearly all cultures that I've tried play the same with very little difference in modifiers. Maybe if these were highlighted more and truly distinguished it would help, but if you look at the three or four cultures in the first three eras that are militaristic for example they have a slight variation of the same unit and a slight change in how their modifier works. (I know you have a few indicators)

- Civics: There weren't many in the tree, again alpha and not a lot of description as to what each does other than a one line phrase. Some even had the same effects depending on what you chose and if we're to infer what to do from hovering over the graph left and right it's a bit confusing.

- Units and buildings: The lack of content and variety in playstyles (especially from the unit and building front) is disappointing. Heading into each era there are more or less 2-3 types of unit types and there isn't an upgrade tree so you end up having to figure out through lots of trial and error "hey a scout turns into a horseman that might upgrade into something else" but there isn't really a good indicator for this. Infrastructure just seem like stat modifiers when using the tech tree so you don't really have much as far as a good different game options when playing as compared to other titles.

- Tech Tree: This was an odd duck. There aren't many techs in the game at the moment and I don't know if there will be more going forward, but reading a lot of the descriptions within the tree as to what each one does it was just confusing... a lot of it describes what the next thing in the family is, but that doesn't really provide much context. Also a lot references the Main Plaza, but nothing indicates what this is. 

- Religion: The religion system albeit in the game, just seems like another switch right now unless I'm handling it wrong. I built belief buildings and see that my religion spreads, but barring that I don't have religious units or anything other than faith spreading which leads me to wonders that just lead to more faith and if you select the civic (unfortunately like I did) that isn't clear about making faith and religion more or less useless you sort of lose out on that.

- Stability: This wasn't very clear at all other than when you navigated to the civics screen and see your stability it gives you a percent and you get notified sometimes hey stability is low. Even though I had countless buildings that were providing stability. (even at %100 on this screen it stated Strained)

- Influence: Other than this spreading it just didn't seem to work because on some cities that had a huge influence modifier nearby cities and it wasn't doing much of anything. Hovering over values to read the tooltip I'd see it state that i'd be converting a city to my side of the fence, but the AI would still inevitably attack me from there.

- Capturing regions: This was really a problem. In one of my sessions, I was doing a great job of maintaining a big lead over everyone and had a big chunk of the map set up. One of the AI had been attacking me right past where my ally was so I kept trying to go in to help. No rhyme or reason I just couldn't move units into the area. So I waited and wait and eventually it let me move in and take the enemy city. Now since this province was separate from my main hub the city just stood still and I couldn't manage it or do anything. I had full influence and control of it, but it wasn't serving any purpose because it stated that it wasn't connected to my main cities. So at this point my choices were to break my alliance and capture my ally's city and gather grievances or just pillage my newly captured city.

- Combat: In each session I would question how combat was working based on the numbers and where allied units were being placed as well as enemy units. In the end I also saw some things like where I could place a few archers on top of a mountain and then a group of enemy horses could just get up there and corner my archers. It led to quite a bit of frustration.

- Diplomacy: This one is huge. The system is just too convoluted. The animations look somewhat silly, the options available aren't explained very well and it all around took me out of the experience a few times when I saw my character talking to my character on both sides (I know it's alpha) but the biggest issue is alliances and grievances. I get a popup each time that someone settled next to me that says hey bug these people that they did this. I don't want to, I want to focus on working on my cities and capitals, but then inevitably it becomes so tedious that the system messages you repeatedly and makes the AI your worst enemy because maybe they don't want to follow your religion.

Example: I've been stuck in a game that's on turn 105 because one of the AI has been attempting to gank and attack me repeatedly so I made a demand for some gold because she kept just denying my trade routes to my allies. Then she attacked my ally. So I denounced her and inevitably had 100 warscore and justification because she was just attacking me left and right without me doing so much as sending a fly her way. So I declared war based on this. Immediately my warscore started to plummet because it said I had a bunch of demands that the enemy wouldn't agree with, but I couldn't even cancel the demands. The AI then somehow changed to a pacifist and it considered this into the equation, by this point I just wanted out of the war, but the only options I had available were to surrender and be her vassal or give her my capital even though I have a huge empire that's not really attacking or doing much of anything. I wanted to just give peace a chance then and the option is greyed out with a message I just don't understand. So this was just frustrating.

Sorry for the book. I know the team at Amplitude wants feedback, I just wanted to provide as much context as I could. I'm going to keep my pre-order and look forward to the next build, just right now the game feels like it needs to be fleshed out quite a bit more in the interface, content, and explanation front.

Auto-Clear forest toggle for idle units: or area around cities become naturally deforested over time due to urbanization would be better

One first impression that always troubles me: The yield view would show "-10 stability" on every district. This greatly reduced the readability of urban UI and urban development, since all I can see is "-10 stability" everywhere instead of the yield I want to check.

I would suggest, since -10 stability is a standard rule apply to nearly all the districts, district yield view can safely ignore them, and just show if there are districts with positive stability - such as Garrisons and certain EQs - since these are the real outliers and should be made more obvious.

I like the game so far, but I have been crashing on diplomacy screens sometimes.

I feel like it has improved ove Lucy

Combat is more impactful, nava exploration is interesting and diplomacy is better

Still not sure how I feel about civics, religion UI is wasting too much space and unsure about the balance of desitricts and infra

Tech progression is way to slow compared to star/culture/Era progression: a target of 300 turn games sounds prudent for balancing them with tech progression

Art is amazing just as before with one excpetion that I wish would be changed: Chariots have a very boxy look - rounded plates similar to what it in the unit card woudl be much better

Bonjour, je me permet de m'exprimer en français afin de mieux faire part de mon ressentit .

Tout d'abord merci beaucoup pour ce jeu et la possibilité de participer à un opendev ! Humankind est vraiment très plaisant, aussi je vais soulever de petites critiques mais globalement j'apprécie beaucoup ce jeu, il y a de nombreuses bonnes idées, une belle esthétique et je prend vraiment plaisir à le découvrir un peu plus à chaque partie !

Voici une petite liste de choses que je trouve un peu ennuyeuse ou encore divers bug. Je n'ai pas fait l'opendev Lucy donc je ne sais pas trop si ces points ont déjà été soulevé !

Esthétique :

-J'aimerais beaucoup un niveau de zoom supplémentaire ! Voir les gens se déplacer dans la ville, remarquer un ours chassant des rennes, un troupeau d'éléphant qui gambade, font que je me surprend à rêvasser en admirant tout ces détails, c'est pourquoi un niveau de zoom supplémentaire permettrait d'encore mieux les apprécier.

-Des images pour chaque type de terrain. A l'image des merveilles naturelles, j'aimerais voir une belle image des différents types de terrain, comme c'était le cas dans Endless legend (cratère, forêt, etc...)

-Les cases exploitées autour des districts sont toutes des fermes, j'aurais aimé une différence selon le district adjacent. Par exemple le district d’artisan ne récolte pas du tout de nourriture mais de l'industrie, c'est donc dommage de le voir entouré de ferme (je chipote mais le diable est dans les détails!). J'imagine que cela est possible puisque lors qu'une case de forêt est exploitée, le graphisme n'est plus un champ mais bien une exploitation forestière (d'ailleurs si je coupe une forêt qui est déjà exploitée, le graphisme ne change pas alors que ça devrait devenir des champs).

-Pour plus de variété dans les district, ils pourraient évoluer (ou juste graphiquement, ou avec des bonus) suivant le nombre de quartier qui les entourent ou le nombre de bonus qu'ils reçoivent. Dans endless legend par exemple c'était le cas et c'est une fonctionnalité qui pourrait améliorer l’esthétique des villes.

Affichage et bug :

-Les ruines ne s'affichent que rarement, je n'ai pu en voir qu'une seule fois alors que j'ai "ransack" de nombreux avant-poste.

-Le "naust" apparaît toujours dans l'arbre technologique à la place du port même si je n'ai pas pris la culture correspondant à ce district unique.

-Petit bug d'affichage si le bonus d'une quartier dépasse 100. Par exemple en plaçant un "V.O.C warehouse" proche de trois port,je ne distingue pas le gain d'or que je pourrait avoir.

-Cela m'est arrivé d'avoir l'écran du "preview battle" qui restait affiché, même si je n'engageait pas le combat ou que mes unités se soient déplacées.

-La notification de "ransack" devrait disparaître plus vite. Lorsque j'en fait un, si je prévoit de mettre un avant-poste à la place, je ne vois pas les bonus que j'aurais. Même remarque pour les postes commerciaux. De même si je "ansack" un avant-post et que j'en créé une sur le même emplacement juste après, l'avant-poste ou la ville est invisible.

-Je ne sais pas du tout où voir la génération de foi (plutôt embêtant lorsque je veux construire une merveille comme Angkor Vat).

-Je ne vois pas combien me rapportent les routes commerciales.

-Je ne vois le gain économique du tourisme (lorsque ma culture est majoritaire sur un autre territoire) que si j'active le pouvoir des esthètes.

-Le placement des merveilles devrait montrer le bonus apporté (comme lorsque l'on place un district).

-Le bouton auto-exploration de fonctionne pas toujours.

Choses peu claires :

-Qu'est-ce que l'osmosis event ? J'en vois parfois mais je n'ai aucune idée des conséquences.

-Comment se répand la religion ou la culture ? La pression de nombre d'habitant ? Les routes commerciales ?

-Je vois des fois dans le panneau de religion "animism", pourquoi ne puis-je pas la créer ? Ou est-ce quelque chose de particulier ?

-Je n'ai vu que tardivement que l'on pouvait changer l'esthétique des lieu saint, une petite pop-up d'information serait bienvenue.

-L'arbre technologique est beau, mais peu clair du premier coup d’œil, les lignes passent derrière les images du coup ce n'est pas évident de savoir quel technologie est reliée à l'autre.

-Le nom des régions, lorsqu'un adversaire se rend et offre une région, on ne sait pas de laquelle il s'agit.

Idées en vrac :

-Les celtes ou haudenosaunee devraient avoir un bonus avec les forêts (que ce soit permettre l'exploitation de l'industrie, un bonus par forêt adjacente, pas forcément puissant mais thématique).

-Les phéniciens/carthaginois pourraient créer un port qui fonctionnerait comme un avant-poste pour encourager l'exploration navale)

-Les traits de culture restent, tout comme les unités spécifiques (jusqu'à ce qu'ils soient obsolètes), mais pas les districts uniques ? Parfois je dois retarder l'avancée de l'ère juste pour pouvoir placer un district unique, ce qui peut être volontaire mais je trouve curieux.

-Forced labor devrait donner une pénalité de satisfaction. J'aime beaucoup utiliser les agrarians (nous sommes tous Horatio!) et je peux abuser de cette fonctionnalité, mais je trouve étrange que cela n'affecte pas mes sujets de littéralement les tuer à la tâche !

-Les bonus de merveilles naturelles sont toutes les mêmes, un peu de changement serait bienvenue.

-Certains « pouvoir » me semblent moins bons que d'autres. Par exemple les agrarians c'est très bon, mais les scientifiques un peu moins. Certes ils peuvent rechercher les technologies d'une ère plus tardive, mais convertir la production et l'or en science ne me semble pas pertinent lorsque l'on a plein de choses à construire (d'autant qu'on recherche les technologie assez vite, donc que l'on a toujours plein de bâtiments à bâtir!). Les marchands me semblent également un peu en dessous, peut-être permettre de créer des avant-postes avec de l'or ou quelque chose comme ça.

-La capture de citées. Je trouve vraiment perturbant le fait de ne pas pouvoir conquérir ou raser les cités adverses, tout du moins les avant-postes attachés. Si un adversaire s'implante sur un territoire que j'aurais voulu occuper, je ne peux que ransack l'avant-poste. Une fois que cet avant-poste est attaché ou transformé en cité je ne peux rien faire. Si je conquiert une cité par la force, je ne peux que demander de se rendre comme vassal, mais si je veux occuper son territoire je n'ai aucune option. Il semble que les cultures expansionnistes ont un bonus pour capturer un avant-poste attaché mais pas les autres. J'ai lu qu'une recherche civique permettait d'absorber une cités ennemie mais je ne suis pas tombé dessus. Je trouve que cela diminue grandement l'intérêt d'une nation guerrière. 

-Je trouve le gain d'étoile d'ère un peu trop rapide, bien qu'on puisse faire le choix de rester dans l'ère actuelle.

-Si une culture que j'affectionne est déjà prise, cela peut être frustrant, cela incite à avancer le plus vite possible dans les ères.

Pour finir les points que j'aime bien :

-L'esthétique, c'est un régal de voir les villes grandir, de regarder la carte et tout les petits détails.

-L'identité des cultures, que ce soit par la musique, les vêtements des dirigeants ou les bâtiments, on sent vraiment une identité dans le choix de la culture.

-Le choix des cultures, il y a plein de synergies possibles ! Devrais-je commencer avec une culture influente pour amasser des avant-poste, puis partir sur des bonus de nourriture pour enfin m'orienter sur la science ? Ou plutôt diminuer le coût des district grâce à l’Égypte, puis sélectionner les celtes pour grandir et les khmer pour un bonus massif en production ? Ou les francs qui augmentent ma nourriture tout en développant l'influence ? Que de choix possible et tous semblent bon !

-L'utilisation de l'influence au début, dois-je multiplier le nombre d'avant-poste sans les attacher, créer une deuxième cité assez vite ou juste attacher quelques avant-poste mais limiter l’expansion ? Voir économiser pour des merveilles ? C'est vraiment intéressant !

-Les combats, utiliser un empilement d’unités pour se déplacer et les déployer dans la phase combat diminue largement le cotés rébarbatif du déplacement sur la carte du monde. Les animations sont bien faites (particulièrement les archers), mais je trouve que l'infanterie se déplace trop loin. Utiliser une population pour faire une unité est une bonne idée.

-Les divers événements qui demandent un choix apportent beaucoup !

-Le déblocage de l'arbre civique, en fonction de ce que l'on fait est appréciable, je suis loin d'avoir tout vu mais j'aime beaucoup l'idée ! 

-Le système de victoire se basant sur le "fame" est rafraîchissant et bien pensé !

-Le système des cités indépendantes et les mercenaires.

Voilà pour mon retour après quelques parties très agréables! Félicitations pour ce jeu!

Hi! I've been a long-time fan of the Civ series and Paradox games and I was really excited to see Humankind! I have not played other Humankind betas so this is the first I've seen of it.

Overall it is a very fun game. I logged on this morning to get a few more turns in and was quite sad to see it go (for now). I really liked several systems:

1. I loved the victory conditions and the "stars" system - it felt very organic 
2. Combat was really strategic and fun. It always felt weird to me in games where you get one combat per turn - like are you saying this battle took a century!? Anyway, having 3 rounds and getting to place starting locations and move around was a breath of fresh air.
3. The civics choice tree felt great.
4. The graphics were amazing and the game felt beautiful.
5. How trade works feels really simple and clean to me.
6. The "macro" Diplomacy was awesome - I loved how other leaders reacted to skirmishes, me building up a military, them depending on me for trade/religion. Felt really real.
7. Pacing seemed about right to me.

1. Bug: Tutorial popups wouldn't always dismiss, covering up necessary parts of the UI
2. My religion was spreading like wildfire. But I don't really know what I did that influenced that, or how I could have done more. I didn't really understand the "Faith" resource.
3. Same thing with influence ^
4. Sacrificing Population for production felt overpowered. Like, overworking your people should have way more negative consequences over the medium-to-long term to get that short-term project out fast.
5. The region boundaries (the area that gets claimed when you build an outpost) felt really arbitrary. As I build my empire it feels bad to not control my borders. Sometimes I'd have an outpost 2 tiles away from a resource that I need, and I'd need to settle yet another outpost to claim it. And that territory would extend really far away from my empire even if I didn't want it to. Or if I settle an outpost/city at the edge of a territory, it can't work the tiles right next to it due to an invisible boundary? A real city would "redraw" that boundary just by the nature of settling there! I feel that this is a really core game mechanic and thus really hard to change. But maybe making them a little more compact/centralized - a bit more square/circle-ish and not quite as stretched or thin might help here. Maybe I should be able to "purchase" neighboring tiles from another region, spending gold or influence in a way that ramps up to prevent overdoing it?
6. The "micro" Diplomacy was confusing at first and overly simple. At first I couldn't figure out what "demand" vs "renounce" meant. This is strictly my own ignorance - I kept mixing up renounce with "denounce" which is very different. I wanted non-military ways to resolve demands. And I wanted more options when countering. I love that this is avoiding the "binary search" trade of Civ - where you try to find the maximum gold they will pay which is incredibly optimal and in no way fun - but I think we need a bit more strategy here. I couldn't figure out the "war resolution" / "force surrender" screen, it was like the city names listed were different from what I had captured? One of the most fun mechanics in war is capturing the enemy city - so the game should make it super clear how to keep it or if you're ceding it back.
7. Please give me an option to speed up movement animations!
8. Others made a few comments I want to +1:

First impressions are great overall!  This was my first opendev for humankind, and I'm very impressed.  Even now, it feels a lot more playable than the civ games, which I have binged heavily on throughout my life.  AI is fairly weak, but since their AI is highly dependent on core mechanics I think its a good idea to focus on those first.  That said, by and large the mechanics were great.  It felt like there were many paths to victory, but most of them involved some heavy degree of combat.  It felt pretty hard to keep neighbors happy, and gave little reason to do so.  Admittedly I didn't play much with merchants/money, as all of that seemed to be pretty self-managing.  I only played a game and a half, but both times resulted in having 2 vassals with one fairly early on.  This is probably a lot less likely to happen once the AI improves, but I'm also curious to see later on if the chance/fear of "revolution" actually matters in the later stages of the game.  Stability felt pretty manageable overall, so even as I exploded in size there never seemed to be a concern.  I'll be leaving more specific feedback on each of the boards to keep this short.

Wilderbean wrote:

I'm about five minutes into my first playthrough and I'm already considering refunding. I hate to be dramatic, but the fact that I can't change pitch/pan of the camera angle is basically a dealbreaker for me. I feel like the game is fighting me every step of the way. The yields and details of the map are way too small for me to parse at a distance, so I have to zoom in to try to see them. But when I zoom in, the game FORCES me to take this really really awkward almost horizontal camera angle, which completely goes against the entire point of me wanting to zoom in.

Seriously, am I taking crazy pills? How are more people not bothered by this? And how does this game not give you an option to change the freaking camera angle? What the heck! Nobody was bothered by this in any of the other opendevs? I feel like I'm going insane.

EDIT: And wow, I've also just realized you can't rotate the camera any more than 15ish degrees in any direction, and the camera always snaps back to the default angle as soon as you let go of Q or E. This is nuts. I was really really excited about this game too. What an absolute disappointment.

You are not alone I HATE HATE HATE the camera and scrolling functions. Also the fact that the units move like snails and are still moving as I hit end turn. It's supremely frustrating and made me quit playing the game three times from the complete frustration of sorry, sh*t camera motion and angles.

I basically just have one question and I couldn't tell which thread would be best to ask it. It wasn't really clear to me how influence works, specifically how influence pressure is calculated between two factions. In my playthoughs it seemed like whichever faction had a higher population would just slowly steamroll the neighboring factions and paint the map in their faction color.

My first impressions after playing several games is that it is a lot of fun and several of the core systems are working great. In my opinion, trade, tech tree, building districts + infrastructure, choosing cultures, choosing civics were all really solid game systems. They may need a bit more balancing and tuning, but they worked well and made the game super fun. However, the religion, influence, and diplomacy systems were either poorly explained or are not 100% there yet. I felt like religion made the most sense, and while the traits seemed maybe too powerful, it made sense. But it as unclear what faith did as a resource and I couldn't find my total faith production on any screen so I never felt like making more faith was useful. This is a problem shared with influence, where there didn't seem to be anything I could build or any abilities I could use (beyond attaching regions with influence and the aesthete ability) that cost these resources. It would have been nice to spend faith to spread religion, or at least a clear connection between faith production and spread of faith. Finally, diplomacy felt rigid. I like the trade system in diplomacy, but most times I felt like I couldn't do what I wanted. I found myself wanting to team up with the AI to declare war, or get their help when I was under attack, but there was no option for that beyond alliances. Also, I wished there were more options with grievances. Like, if someone wants me to give over a region I just settled in, I wish I instead could have the option to give money or luxury resources to resolve the grievance.

Impression 1: Where's the survey? I've searched all over the forums for an answer and can't find it. Was it in-game? If so that's going to cut off anyone who didn't have time to finish playing. Like myself.

     This is my first OpenDev play, and while I understand that this game is in development, so you don't want to put a ton of effort into the encyclopedia as things may change, I'm going to need more than 'we'll have one later.' I've played 4X games since Civ 2 (best Civ) so it annoyed me that I wasn't able to figure out such simple things as 'why should I place this district here vs there.' Does a district add up the yield of the surrounding six hexes? Do you lose the yield of the one it's on? Perhaps this was explained in an earlier OpenDev and you assume it's just known now, but this is really basic, and since it's not likely to change, perhaps you could at least add this much to the encyclopedia.

     Another difficulty in figuring out resource utilization was the map UI. If I zoom out, the numbers are too small to read, if I zoom in, I'm looking at everything edge-on, so I really definitely can't read it. I know you're proud of your graphics and want people to be able to appreciate them, but tilting the camera is such a useless thing in the course of normal play, I think you can relegate it to its own control. At LEAST keep the numbers perpendicular to the camera.

     I absolutely LOVE that there's some broad tactics in the combat system, but a lot of it feels kind of arbitrary. I only got in two combats, and my girlfriend got a couple as well. Bad AI in my first: Despite initiating combat, I didn't actually attack the first round because the terrain wasn't favorable. The AI was in the best spot it could have been, but it then retreated to a weaker position, and left its flag ungaurded as well, so that ended that. My second, they held their ground on their flag, and while I did massive damage while relatively unharmed, I didn't kill them outright, and therefore 'lost.' I was then teleported to a random location further than I could have run in one turn to 'retreat'. What? How does that work?

     My girlfriend was defending in her combat, and I was alarmed to see that she couldn't chose where to place her flag. That seems horribly unfair to me. The game chose the worst tile around to situate it on. Clearer visual indications of high-vs-low ground transitions and marking for which edges are impassible are sorely needed. Only attempting to path really made any of that clear in some cases.

Bugs: I ran into two soft-locks while playing the scenario. One where the diplomacy screen caused an error preventing me from interacting with the map, cities, or units. The UI worked and I was able to save and reload to resolve this one. The second one was caused by diplomacy in a different manner. I apparently answered a diplomatic request to quickly and the game did not register that it had been answered. This caused a soft lock that would not let me progress to the next turn as it thought I still needed to answer the diplomatic request. This was also resolved by saving and reloading the game.

Thoughts and possible improvements:

Diplomacy-Civics interactions.

The bugs aside, diplomacy worked well for me, however it was shallow and I would love to see greater depth to the diplomacy. Having just a few simple options did not give me much room to play around and act the part of my chosen culture and ideals. It made the impact of the civics seem somewhat shallow. A culture could distrust me for favoring progressive ideas but never have any interaction with that culture where those ideals showed or could be acted on. Some of the events where interesting though and could potentially build on this, rather than being insular and only impacting my own empire. This could generate new and different grievances for diplomacy, or alternatively improve relationships. Some players might use this purely strategically, only choosing what benefits them in the moment though, so benefits for sticking with the culture you're developing would be interesting and may counteract this. If you go all the way progressive, a research boost perhaps? Vs a traditional leaning granting a small faith/religious boost. This could be on a sliding scale so that a balanced culture is not without advantages as well.

Religion

On the note of religion though! I received the option in civics to choose an atheist state, which stated it would lock out religion entirely, or secular(I think it was secular?), basically separation of church and state. This one only said it would make me immune to religious grudges. I chose secular as I didn't want to be locked out of religion progression, only to find out that it locked me out as well. I was keen to explore more of religions perks in the game and didn't get to as a result. This could be made clearer. While I was using religion however, I found it difficult to decide which perks I wanted as I could not tell what the benefit would be. They usually said something about a boost based on the number of worshipers or districts, or percentages of what I already had, sure, but never displayed what that boost would be at that time if I selected it. I would love a preview added to show just what benefit different upgrades will provide, to better inform my decisions in the game. This is far from limited to religion however. A preview of the total current benefit to different structures before building them would be extremely useful.

Accessibility:

The light yellow-green color of the word food is difficult to read against a white background on some screens. This should be darkened, either the word or the UI screen! I would love the option for a dark UI, but that's just me. The last thing I can think of: It took me until half way through the 2nd age to finally find the screen with the available competitive goals for fame points. This would have been helpful to have in a more overt location, and clearly labeled. The tutorial window did not show for a very long time. However, now that I know where it is, it'll be useful for future games. There also needs to be a way to close the tutorial windows without disabling the tutorial about that aspect of the game entirely. Some of them have the option to acknowledge them, but not all of them. Most of my game was played with an obtrusive tutorial window in the way that I didn't want to remove as I didn't want to disable that part of the tutorial yet as there may be further steps I just wasn't ready to take on that tutorial path yet. From what I remember, the eye on the upper right indicated closing it that way would disable that tutorial path.

Gameplay

If I have one thing I outright dislike though, it's the outposts. They are simple enough to set up and claim territory, but I repeatedly angered the AI factions because I could not tell it bordered their territory before I did so. Then once built the outposts... didn't do a whole lot. I could chuck down some resource extractors but that was about it? Once attached to a city though, they no longer function separately at all, so attaching them to a city was detrimental prior to having built those too, if you even had the influence for it. I think either expanding what they can build so they have more of a purpose, or allowing them to continue, or at least have the option to, build separately from the city, would be nice, but ultimately I am not sure they were necessary at all.

Overall

I enjoyed the game! With some polish over the next few months it could easily replace Civilization for me. And I have hundreds of hours in those games! I tend to play an expansionist-scientific play-style the most, expanding as much as I can while prioritizing research, but the outposts and influence requirements effectively stopped me from expanding much at all, especially once I got boxed in by other IA factions. While my style worked well at first, and allowed me to reach each age except the last one in my game fully 10 or more turns prior to the AI, I got passed by on the last turn by a faction that had gotten lucky and spawned above everyone else, with free reign to expand for much longer. Part of that was bad luck, getting surrounded is always painful in a 4x game, but I do feel I'd have been better off just with cities I could develop and improve outright, or some ability to make a "tall" empire when the option for a "wide" empire is prevented. As it was I did not find a way to compensate once one of the AI factions had 3 times the space. I am not sure why influence is used for this instead of population like most 4x games either.

I played with a computer below the minimum requirements (AMD Phenom II X6 1090T, Geforce GT 1030, 8GB RAM) and it worked on a very slow FPS rate between 1 and 30. Would be nice if the game options allowed to lower the fps rate manually. In the first few turns i had nice graphics and i love the feel of the game - even later with music stutters and latencies.