I hope this thread can serve two purposes:

  1. To catalog things that felt balanced, unbalanced, or powerful-cool in the Victor OpenDev
  2. To communicate a thought on balance vs. fun to the DevTeam


The list for point 1 I'll start below and hopefully others can add to it for the devteam. Maybe we can use polls if necessary to debate individual subjects.

As for point 2:

I feel HUMANKIND has the potential to be one of - if not the - most engaging 4X I've played. Part of the reason is because of the interplay of very powerful game mechanics which feel awesome to use: mass buy-out strategies with a merchant affinity? Science mode rocketing my progress forward with a science culture? Super-cool! Do they feel balanced? No! BUT THAT'S WHAT'S AWESOME. And as long as the other players have similarly powerful asymmetric abilities, they are balanced.
On the other hand, some values are still over- or under-powered  (e.g. infrastructure fims flat-gains and some religious tenets respectively) and need to be tweaked and balanced. It is important that this happens so that they do not fall away or reduce the space of viable decisions.
My appeal to the devs: Do not mistake these two scenarios for one another! The former sense of power and balanced imbalance is crucial to the magic I felt in the Victor OpenDev. Make sure you do not lose that magic when you make balance-passes over the game. Fine-tune the details mentioned in the latter, but do not spoil the sense of power described in the former.


Balanced

  1. FIMS felt balanced - all were important. Big improvement over 'production is king' from other 4X games.


Unbalanced
  1. Flat FIMS-gain infrastructures almost never seemed appealing to build (e.g. why build +3 money on main plaza when +1 money per trader exists?)
  2. Expansionist affinity fell far short of the rest. What if it significantly reduced the influence costs related to expansion? Or maybe granted administrators?
  3. Science- and influence-tenets for religion were WAAYYYY better than others.


Powerful-cool but not necessarily unbalanced
  1. Sweeping effects of some civics (e.g. artistic expression, irreligion)
  2. Culture Affinities (with exception of expansionist, maybe militarist too)