I've played Endless Space, Legend and Space 2 and I'm really liking Humankind so far. However, I fear that at the moment Humankind is lacking in the aspect of personal motivation that the last two games did well with. Here's how:


Humankind has abolished the specific victory condition and replaced it with fame. That's not a bad thing. It encourages more well-rounded and less specialised play overall. It does, however, also take away specific goals for the players to work towards. Gaining fame is a more gradual and background activity that's abstracted further from the specific accomplishments of the player.


Endless Legend and Endless Space 2 had a lore quest for each faction, additional side quests and special mechanics both for the very distinct factions and for the world (such as the Altars of Auriga and her Seasons). Of course with the equal start and culture combinations, faction quests aren't possible. I do think that seasons would be a very fitting mechanic for the game, as the climate and geography have always been instrumental in humankind's destiny, making war in summer, harvesting in fall, starving in winter and celebrating in spring - or, of course, instead switching between dry season and storm season. The politics in Endless Space 2 with different systems, elections, representatives and available policies also don't seem too out of place. But clearly this is something Amplitude didn't want to do, since they already had these and could've implemented them easily. Still, Humankind feels a bit shallow in comparison.


I think it's the civics that should be the source of Humankind's story content. There are already events in the game which influence civic sliders (although I miss the one about saving the one injured warrior in the Neolithic from Lucy), but right now it's onesided - get an event, move the sliders. Civics and Religion in general are somewhat bland bonuses without real cost (with the one infamous exception) and the slider effects are small and not very visible. In my opinion, civics and civic sliders should trigger different events depending on your empire's ideology. There should be more of a difference between radically progressive or traditionalist empires than getting +10 science or faith. Since different ideologies and systems struggle with different problems, this seems like the ideal way of making both a bland mechanic more interesting and allowing the player to follow more short-term objectives with a more personal story without attacking the central conceit of the fame win condition.
As an alternative (or in combination), the sliders could be turned around and become prerequisites for the civics. It would make sense that if your society moves far towards freedom and individualism, strict censorship would be a hard policy to uphold. This could work in a similar way to the osmosis events, policies probably costing more Influence the further they are from your ideological basis.

I'm tempted to include religious beliefs in this, because they're not that different from civics. But I'd rather see those fleshed out through sacrifices. Most religious commandments come with a cost - don't take drugs, pay tithes from your hard-earned money, murder your children... I think religion needs to be more powerful, but also more costly - which then also makes the Irreligion choice more viable. One example I already gave in another thread would be for "Abstain from Intoxicants" to give a higher Industry bonus, but also disable certain luxuries.


Lastly, coming back to goals, it wouldn't hurt to have some less generic stars to earn.


TL/DR: Humankind doesn't have a really deep story mechanic like previous Amplitude games. Tying events to civic-based choices and ideologies could give the game more character and also make civics more impactful.