Hey all!

In the Lucy OpenDev, we received a lot of great feedback about the neolithic era. While some players brought up that they'd like to see more variety in the neolithic, others discussed how easy it was to grow your tribes and enter the Ancient era with a head start.

Based on that feedback, we have:

• Implemented additional narrative events for the neolithic era
• Rebalanced food and Influence gains in the neolithic era

Let us know what you think of the neolithic now!

I found it enjoyable. I'm not a minmaxer, so it was a peaceful time to explore the map and get acquainted. I much prefer it to CIv's start.

I think this is a great phase to the game, not neccessarily because of the gameplay itself (which is fine but not terribly exciting) but because it means there is time to explore the map and find good spaces for your cities without the pressure of founding cities as fast as possible to get a head start.

I wonder whether the Legacy trait is worth spending several more turns in Neolithic. Even when spreading out my troops as soon as they grow I've never managed to find 10 scientific curiousities before unlocking the next age. Any minmaxers who can chime in on how valuable those early game turns are?

I like it a lot. While it's maybe easiest to kill 3 deer and progress fast, you'd start with few units and less knowledge of the map. Exploring for a decent amount of time whether for food or science helps make a more informed decision of which culture to choose when it's time based on the map/terrain surrounding you.

I really like the exploring aspect and getting a good idea of where to settle, what culture would be good etc. I do kind of feel like there’s supposed to be more to it then that, and if so I don’t quite get what, but I like the exploring enough that it’s not a big deal. 

I love the Neolithic era absolutely.
I imagine it would be even more interesting when the maps are generated and therefor you don't know ahead of time how it is but... well such is the Open Dev. xD
It absolutely takes a bit longer than the Lucy open-dev that is for sure. 
Which is both good and bad for sure. I THINK you could amp up the cost for just killing a bit more as it is a bit easy right now to just rush deer, but that is a minor nit-pick.

I get the "Burning Barn" event before I settled dawn.. I did not realize that nomad were building barns..

Population cost of training military units makes me delay choosing culture as much as I can. Getting above 10 units in neolitic is quite easy

Jarke wrote:

I get the "Burning Barn" event before I settled dawn.. I did not realize that nomad were building barns..

Population cost of training military units makes me delay choosing culture as much as I can. Getting above 10 units in neolitic is quite easy

Also my observation. If you wander around long enough and split up your troops, you can get so many more pops than if you just settle asap. To some extend I like that (as it gives you more time to explore), but I feel like its a bit too much.

Maybe reducing the food gain from picking fruits, etc. could help, as in contrast to fighting animals, it is not associated with a risk of units dying.

At least the game should tell new players that it is not a good idea to choose a culture asap.

Yeah, I've gotten in the rhythm of collecting the Legacy and then take a good deal of my superfluous hunting parties to jumpstart my city pops.

If you're playing on Humankind, there usually isn't enough time to get a lot of units since other players start picking cultures.

Neolithic era is perhaps the most important part of the game, the ability to snowball in this era is massive, 1 tribe become 2 tribes which become 4 tribe which become 8 tribes and so on. I have also been told outpost are cheaper in neolithic and they can produce tribes to push the snowballing even further. The removal of influence from outpost do slow it down a bit. It feels a bit strange that once you develop agriculture, your population growth slow down to a crawl compared to neolithic, thus you should get atleast 10 population in neolithic since that will give you a religion instantly on going ancient and religion is perhaps the main way to get influence early.

Things I would change:

• Increase the food needed to grow each sequent tribe, so to go from 1 tribe to 2 tribes cost 20 food, 2 to 3 maybe 25 food or something, this mean that the players that get a small advantage early don't snowball far ahead the rest, which basically mean they will stay ahead the whole game, also it encourage leaving neolithic era earlier, I don't feel it is that realistic to be able to support dosens of tribes without agriculture.
• Convert the food tribesmen hold into gold at a 1 to 1 ratio once you advance, I don't like how this food is simply wasted.
• Add a small influence cost to spawn a tribesmen at an outpost, to further reduce snowball and make this option less of a nobrainer.

Neolithic era is the most fun part of the game at the moment, and I feel it would be great if it could be expanded. I could imagine enjoying even two eras of non-city heavy gameplay, for example a second era focusing on outposts & still mostly exploration instead of city management. 

I feel neolithic era units could revert to independents if you don't combine X of them into a single "normal unit" after progressing to the next era. Or they could automatically convert in such way at your first outpost. This would lower the snowballing impact of getting tons of units early. It's quite fun to explore in the neolithic era, so it wouldn't be as much fun if you couldn't get more units relatively quick.

Also Goodluck's idea of increasing the food needed for subsequent tribes seems a good way to handle snowballing units and put a cap to how many tribes you can sustain early on.

LNQ wrote:

Neolithic era is the most fun part of the game at the moment, and I feel it would be great if it could be expanded. I could imagine enjoying even two eras of non-city heavy gameplay, for example a second era focusing on outposts & still mostly exploration instead of city management. 

I feel neolithic era units could revert to independents if you don't combine X of them into a single "normal unit" after progressing to the next era. Or they could automatically convert in such way at your first outpost. This would lower the snowballing impact of getting tons of units early. It's quite fun to explore in the neolithic era, so it wouldn't be as much fun if you couldn't get more units relatively quick.

Also Goodluck's idea of increasing the food needed for subsequent tribes seems a good way to handle snowballing units and put a cap to how many tribes you can sustain early on.

I like the idea of excess units (or even outposts, becoming independent on your first city).

LNQ wrote:Also Goodluck's idea of increasing the food needed for subsequent tribes seems a good way to handle snowballing units and put a cap to how many tribes you can sustain early on.

Yeah, I think this is necessary. Just today I scoutrushed two AIs on maximum difficulty simultaneously.

Neolithic is interesting. At first I thought it was trivial because the hunting is easily the fastest - especially since other nomads count for the hunter star - but rushing into ancient isn't necessarily great, especially if your trait/EQ isn't immediately helping you snowball. (Testing the extremes of rushing, I once went Ancient on turn 6 with the Phonecians - and then proceeded to get stomped because my terrible city took forever to get rolling.) As people have said upthread, getting population to disband into workers is monstrously strong, so staying Neolithic for a time is useful. Because of that, even though the scientist star is almost invariably the last, you're allowed to wait for its benefit just because you're killing time in the Neolithic anyway.

So the good news is that there's more to chew on than you'd think. The bad news is that it's communicated in an unsatisfying way. Disbanding your first units is intensely powerful in a way later disbands aren't, since those later units TOOK a pop to make but your firs tone didn't. And having nomads instead of scouts is incredibly useful, since they get food rewards from curiosities and hunts, and those fractions of a pop are better rewards than the piddly garbage you get for touching points in the Ancient Era. The problem with the Neolithic being interesting is that it's interesting because you have BETTER options than when you "ascend". This breaks intuition, fights the UI (which wants you to go Ancient ASAP), relies on a strategy that's hidden in an unintuitive place (the tooltip for Disbanding), and has the unsatisfying side-effect of giving you fewer Ancient culture choices that people who rush. The fact that you'll ultimately end up better than the rushers by doing it "right" doesn't stop it feeling wrong.

With that in mind, here's how I think you can make the smart way to play Neolithic become the obvious and fun way, in a way that I think would reaaallly push Humankind's early game to be more fun than anything else other there:

• No more food star. Your reward for having more people is having more people, which is an incredible reward already.
• Instead, you only have one star, the influence star. Scientific curiosities now only reward influence. Hunts give both influence and food, winning against other tribes give influence, maybe even certain discoveries of resources or wonders can give influence.
• Influence star has TWO ranks. At the first rank, you get a Neolithic trait. These can include the three options in the scientific menu, although I think it'd be coolest if they were things that interacted positively with microgeography. So stuff involving rivers, horses, certain terrain types, etc., to interact with how you think your first city will look based on what you've seen. Unlike cultures, they can be shared between civs, so you can pick whats best for you without racing.
• The second star lets you go to Ancient, as normal. And there's no incentive to slowroll, because...
• Your nomads don't automatically become Scouts, you keep them as nomads! (And maybe have them as options alongside Scouts to make more if you really want.) Hunts and curiosities continue to have their same food rewards if a nomad is involved. But this isn't broke, since...
• The disbanding rule is changed to specifically exclude Nomads. (Of all types! Screw you Huns!) You don't get a pop for disbanding them. Instead Nomads get a special action called "settling" that must be done on a city District. Settling consumes the nomad and only gives the flat value of food inside of them at the end of the turn. Making it an ability makes it more clear to players it's an option, while nerfing the gain makes it less powerful to stack to ~10 pop in the very start of Ancient.

Neolithic is definitive a great idea, a bit differentiator from Civ games that makes lots of sense.

However, there´s a couple of issues that are counter intituive:

First: Creating an outpost doesn´t consume the unit... clearly, it should have. An outpost represent a settlement of 1 population. Therefore, 1 nomad unit should be required.

Second: Totally agreed with @hito ´s feedback. Nomad should not be inmediately upgraded to scoud (It may be an option to upgrade at a cost inside a city, perhaps). ¨Definitely, nomads should be spend either to create further outpost, increase city population, or be upgraded to scoud within a city. This would make more sense, but also slowed a bit Neolithic era, which is a bit too fast for fully enjoy it.

Oh, I do like the idea of having to upgrade nomads with money to become scouts.

I like Neolithic Era I like to explore the world. so as most here I noticed the usefulness of nomad units and the ability to multiply. but I do not think that nerfing the ability to grow and disband would be a way to go it would be better to make Ai consider those units weak and not be so afraid, because even if I have 40 units they all are around the world restricted by closed borders and distance. my territory is weak but Ai sees that number 40+ and is afraid even if a nice stack of warriors/archers would take me easy out. Ai could hire more mercs if they see me as a threat near their border too. it is like I have a big bluff. you could improve your AI attitude in considering your strength to take into account distance to them and how many of my units they have met. also, nations being more aggressive about lurking near their borders if I do not have settled territory near them. that would make it scarier to spread around the world as your units can die to aggressive border and zone of influence protectors or you can lose your outpost to close neighbors

so to sum up. for exploration early and fast you need nomads and if they are spread there is a long time to get them back if you can get them back. 

so to improve on nomad abuse make so that if in one territory there is no more than a certain limit of nomads units (maybe 6 - 8 so 2 stacks) it can support. reaching that limit they start to lose food they carry or die out because territory can't support that many forgers (lore friendly reason ) that live off the land so you are forced to spread out

I believe that being forced to be spread out tribe/nomad units, because they live off the land and  are for exploring,  and established nations being more aggressive against them (those barbarians at our borders) will improve the Neolithic era without them needing to be nerfed in complicated ways by restricting changing disbanding wich not even most players now about or use in hurry to the ancient era

I like the idea of forcing Nomads to be spread out... perhaps [total population includes outposts, and other civs]

1-4 population (total) in a territory.. Neolithic nomads heal at 20 hp/turn

5-8 population (total) in a territory...Neolithic nomads heal at 5 hp/turn

9+ population (total) in a territory...Neolithic nomads lose 5 hp/turn or consume 1 stockpiled food/turn 

Neolithic nomads can be consumed to built an outpost or add food to a city... they do not upgrade.