Overall impressions :

After 7 playthroughs, I’ve been pretty much enjoying this new OpenDev. I mainly played on Nation difficulty, and had a few tries on Empire, though I’ll need more practice to beat it !

Game pacing in general felt much more enjoyable than in Lucy, with the different changes implemented in this new build.

A few things of note on my overall impressions :

• The endgame screens, animations and graphs are really nice features. I would love to see Competitive Deeds, Wonders, Holy Sites appearing on the graphs (as marks that could be hovered over maybe ?) That would bring even more flavor to the graphs. Alternatively, it could be displayed by hovering the mouse over the Eras segments on the graphs, which would display the turn length of a particular Era, the Era Stars unlocked, Wonders, etc …
• I’d love to have the information of the difficulty level on which I’m playing, either on the title of the save file, in its description, and linked to the above, it could also be stated in the endgame screens.
• Still about game settings/UI, “reorder construction queue” is appearing twice : in UI Settings and Accessibility Settings. Could probably be just under UI Settings.
• Notifications when an AI reaches a new Era displays the chosen culture twice : “Mauryans reached Classical with Mauryans”, they were Myceneans in Ancient. “Aechemenid Persians reached Classical with Aechemenid Persians”, Hittites in Ancient. I assume it should rather say Myceneans/Hittites reached Classical with Mauryans/Aechemenid Persians.
• In the Fame tutorial tooltip, fame and its symbol are in light yellow, on a white background, which makes it hard to read it. Same goes for faith (a bit detailed below).
• I wanted to test transcendence with the new EQ mechanic to have a feel of it. While I enjoyed it with the Olmecs with the 1 EQ/territory rule applied even when transcending, it felt just a bit immersion breaking, since upon reaching Early Modern Era, models used for units and buildings switch to Mediterranean style (that of the Spanish, historically speaking). I’d wish a transcended culture would keep its own style, but I get that would require models (for later Eras units mainly) for all the cultures ingame, which is understandably not doable, or at least pretty time consuming. 
• Out of all the affinities tested, I feel that the Aesthete one is pretty strong (and I very much enjoyed it) compared to the others. I mainly used its 2 abilities with the Olmecs in Ancient Era, and later in Medieval with the Franks, both felt really strong. Olmecs in particular, coupled with their Legacy Trait, can trigger and refill them pretty quickly. On a side note, it seemed that the Expansionist ability wasn’t working in Victor OpenDev, I never managed to use it.
• On the End of Journey notification/pop-up, the colorized text is hard to read, same goes for End of War notification. Could be probably fixed by adding contrast on the pale white blurry background.
• I really liked the options for Calendar count. Though I did pretty much enjoyed playing without any sense of year in Lucy. So I’d recommend giving the player the 3 options : no calendar count, Gregorian or Holocen (or any other calendar count implemented).
• On this particular matter, I’d have to try on harder difficulties to have a sense of it, but in terms of pacing and years passing with calendar enabled, it felt a bit anachronistic to end up in Early Modern by 350 BCE (Metropolis or Nation difficulties), 300 CE (Empire difficulty). I imagine the years count per turn could be adjusted to be a bit more historically accurate.

Since I didn’t post in any of the subsections during the OpenDev period, I’ll list them below to provide related feedbacks.

Feedback Neolithic Era :

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

Generally speaking, I quite enjoy this first Era : it feels like a mini 4X game inside the grand game itself, which really is a cool idea. Staying as long as possible to grab as many Era Stars is great, it also allows you to start stalling your closest opponents, while gaining population (particularly important to create a religion on the next Era with at least 10 pop), territories, veterancy stars among others. Though I reported an issue with one playthrough, I liked the flavor of the newly added narrative events and specifically the one related to Knowledge Star. 

Feedback Economy & Game Pace :

Generally speaking, I felt the balance pass and new implementations were enjoyable. Pace-wise, I spent around 30 to 35 turns in Ancient and Classical Eras, on Nation difficulty. Medieval usually was a bit faster (usually ended around turn 90), Early Modern being the longest one since we wouldn’t have the opportunity to move to Industrial Era. On Empire difficulty, pacing felt a bit slower overall, which felt right. At least to my experience, on easier difficulties (Metropolis, Nation), infrastructures wouldn’t matter at all up until Early Modern. I could only rely on districts without any stability or yields incomes issues. I’ve started building and relying on them on Empire difficulty.

The 1 EQ and 1 Harbor/territory rule feels more balanced compared to Lucy OpenDev. Frankly, I was at first a bit bothered by this rule, especially when transcending a culture. But, historically/reaslistically and mechanically speaking, it makes much more sense ingame, since they are pretty huge and expensive infrastructures to build and maintain. So, I’m actually pretty fine with it.

One thing though that is bothering me is the fact you can’t build other districts from harbors, which we could in the last build. That would need to be further tested in later Eras, but that lead sometimes to bland and blank parts of territories, where you only have your harbor sitting alone on the coast, without anything around it. It feels a bit irrealistic in terms of city management and city sprawl. So while keeping the 1 harbor/territory rule, I’d wish we could still build around them.

[Edit] : On the subject of Harbors, not being build-off-able in game until mid-Medieval with Hamlets means they need to be defended, if located outside of city's fortifications. Thus it should incentivize players (and hopefully AI) to build fleets to defend it.

• Introduced a City Cap; exceeding the cap reduces Influence income

That’s a good way of penalizing over expansion, tooltip would probably needs to be a bit more clear as to the cost : 1 city above cap is -30/turn, you’d expect -60/turn for 2 cities above cap, whereas it is -80/turn. I assume there’s a scaling cost on influence, the more cities you have above the cap, but that would need to be explained.

A few other things on economy and city management : 

• I had wish to build Reserve district, but unfortunately couldn’t, as well as other players it seems.
• I’d wish we could speed up cities creation (Colony Model, Colony Plan, Colony Blueprint) with money or influence. Influence becoming less important in Medieval (aside from claiming Wonders), that would be a good use of it, since it seems to have lesser uses in later Eras.
• A notification when an outpost construction is finished should be displayed : several times, I forgot about it, and realized a bit later that I could have built a strategic/luxury extractor, while waiting to gain enough influence to either attach the territory or create a new city out of it (that’s particularly true in Ancient Era).
• I’d wish the stability tooltip (hovering over stability in city view) say stationing units will increase stability (+5 stability/unit) rather than “Population assigned here will increase the stability” -> the  "Assign" term is misleading as there is no assignment slot available. 

Feedback Combat :

As a general note, along with the choice of a new culture every Era, combat and its strategic layer is the second thing that I’m really digging in Humankind.

• Improved Reinforcement UI: Deploy the unit of your choice to the reinforcement tile with the click of a button 

This improved feature is great, it makes reinforcement and deployment much more clear now. Though, as others have already noted, unselecting units to be part of a battle would be a great addition too. Too often, the surrounding units are locked on the battlefield whereas you don’t necessarily need/want them. A way to counter this is simply to move them out of the battle area before engaging into battle, but often times you can’t do it (no movement points left or opponents’ units blocking their path).

A few other things noticed :

• In Ancient Era mainly, where both sides don’t have a lot of units, battles usually last 3 rounds in 1 turn (2 turns at best). I usually felt the end of the last round to be abrupt. Could be nice to have a little delay, say a second or 2 before automatically closing the battle window, and going back to general map view.
• Plundered Wages from Army Wages Civic choice didn’t seem to apply ingame : ransacking turns wouldn’t take into account the choice made.
• Instant Battle Resolution option is to be cautiously used : it is working well if the attacker is stronger overall, but when both opponents have even strength, it usually leads to either a lot of losses for the attacker, or even an entire defeat of the attacker. Whereas manually fighting in almost all the cases leads to victory, or at least less losses due to manual management.
• Vassalizing AIs felt pretty easy (on Nation or Empire difficulties), and is very powerful since you get a money tribute and have access to all strategic/luxuries resources of your vassal(s), which in returns grants you a lot of stability in your cities and in your empire in general. I feel that vassalizing should be harder to do or at least should cost more to the Liege. Right now, a War Support above 150 allows you to vassalize your opponent if he/she surrenders with or without territories annexed, depending on your War Score.

  I could see a use of influence and/or money, either to vassalize or to get access to strategic/luxuries resources, in the same way patronizing works with IPs. Realistically speaking, vassalizing your opponent usually comes with a more or less long period of distrust/disapproval from your vassal(s), thus I could also see a given amount of time (several turns, could be 5 for instance) before being able to get access to your vassal's strategic/luxuries resources.

Feedback Naval Gameplay :

• Increased number of turns ships with Navigator can survive in deep water
• Introduced Skilled Navigator for mid-game ships, allowing them to survive even longer in deep water

While those modified traits are nice, I’ve tested them with units boarded in Quadrireme and Cog, and I was quite disappointed to see units die on the next turn the ship is in high sea. I think it defeats the main purpose of those “boarding vessels” : why would you increase the time a ship is allowed in high sea, if it's empty of any units ? What’s the incentive to use these ships (and invest in their related technologies) if you’re aren’t able to sail units farther, even at a health cost ? It’s obviously really weird and useless as you get a wounded ship unit only able to sail a little further, but without any land units boarded. One solution I can think of is to apply the same health penalty (-1/3 of health per turn for Quadrireme and -1/5 of health per turn for Cog) on boarded units as well, so that you’ll be incentivized to use those ships while being pretty cautious about the path they take.

[Edit] : Linked to the comment above, I think naval gameplay and specifically early naval exploration right now is "hard"-locked until either Medieval (if you pick Norsemen), or beginning of Early Modern with Caravel ships. Revised Navigator and Skilled Navigator traits make it a bit better, but I can't help but think that Terra Incognita Competitive Deed will almost everytime be locked by Norsemen, which kinds of defeat its "competitive" nature. 

On a general note, I’m always confused by the description of “Boarding Vessel” trait : it states “no special rules”. But whenever you read the description of any of the ships having this trait, it is implied that you can board troops on them. I’d really want that “Boarding Vessel” trait states clearly that it allows boarding land units on it. The same applies for Carrack, you need to thoroughly read its description to understand that you can board your troops in it, whereas there isn’t any indication of it otherwise (no “Boarding Vessel” trait, only “Gun Platform”).

• The AI may not construct many warships yet
• Fixed gun platforms being unable to shoot at land units in combat
• Increased the range of Gun Platform ships

As it has been stated and mentioned by many others, I never got to fight against AI’s ships, though I really wish we could test it thoroughly. I wasn’t able to clarify it and test it further, but I remember not being able to reinforce the battlefield with Joseon’s Geobukseon on one of my playthroughs. While I was sieging one of the black AI’s city, I had 3 Geobukseon blocked on the edge of the battle area with this tooltip : “Cannot join the inner area of a battle”. So, for the purpose of testing, I’d appreciate a specifically focused OpenDev on that kind of gameplay : I’m thinking either a Salamis, a Trafalgar or a West Indies scenario, involving naval units, land units and garrisons/fortified ports (Cothon for instance).

Feedback Religion :

• For the Victor OpenDev, we have focused more on changes to the tenets themselves. We have rebalanced many of them, as well as moved some powerful tenets to higher tiers to make them more difficult to access.

I do enjoy the way religion works in Humankind. It is a streamlined mechanic compared to how it works in Civ 6, yet it still feels immersive and quite enjoyable. Considering how powerful it is right now, having one and being the religious leader is undeniably a must-have to win the game. I like its versatility as well, you can either use it to gain different yields, specialize it on a yield your culture is not so good at, or use it to maximize a yield you’re particularly good at. Though, as mentioned elsewhere, Tenets involving X yield per State Religion fellowers on Holy Sites are probably too strong since they apply the same yield income to each individual Holy Site. 

A few ways I can think of to reduce these effects could be :

• Applying the yield bonus to the city depending on the number of fellowers : since this number is directly linked to city’s population and religion’s spread/influence inside the city’s territories, this would scale with city’s population growth.
• Modify the tenet’s yield to X yield per group of Y (5 or 10 for instance) of fellowers on Holy Sites.

On a side note, as mentioned earlier, yellow text for Faith on tutorial’s tooltip is really hard to read. The tutorial white background could be changed to a light grey background, that would surely enhance legebility.

Feedback Civics :

• Balanced ideology axes now grant a bonus to Stability

Overall, I liked the changes made to Civics yields. My main point would be about events and related Civics UI. It has been already mentioned elsewhere (some events choices actually displayed the Civic change when hovering over the choice) but that would really help to have it displayed on all choices, in order to prevent closing/minimizing the event window and open the Civic screen to hover over each axis and have a preview of the yields modified by the event choice.

A few Civics didn’t seem to work properly, as said above in Combat feedback : Plundered Wages from Army Wages Civic choice didn’t seem to apply ingame. And, in one of my last playthroughs, I triggered International Trading Civic which allows selecting Isolationism. Yet, upon selecting this choice, I had an osmosis event on one of my cities, though the civic choice states “Prevents the spread of other Empires’ spheres of influence from non-allied Territories”. I was a bit confused and not sure it is working as it should be : I’d assume that osmosis events wouldn’t occur if this choice was applied.

Feedback Independent People :

• While we have not implemented major changes to the mechanics of Independent People in the Victor OpenDev, we have made some balance tweaks to them, and the changes to the overall game balance may also affect how they fit into your game experience.

I mainly used IPs as cannon fodder, since by Classical and Medieval, you really want to save your influence and money to be spent on more useful things than assimilating those short-lived minor factions. I find that conquering them is much more rewarding than investing in them : you usually get Expansionist/Militarist Stars from them, as well as good settled cities, potentially allowing Builder Stars as well. On a general basis, I feel their short lifespan prevents from investing too much for them (though, that could be due to the difficulty level I’m playing on, and probably also due to the map configuration, they mainly spawn south of each starting continent, and I usually settled up north).

I could see it being a good investment on larger maps, with more space between players, allowing IPs to spawn in between. That would probably incentivize the player to use his/her influence and money to patronize them.

Though, about trading with IPs, I’ve noticed in one playthrough that buying resources from IP doesn’t display the correct price to pay (obviously, an oversight) : the trading window displays base price (15 Money) + transportation price (which is set to 0). Yet, purchasing the resource counts the transportation price.

Feedback AI :

• Does the AI play in a way that feels consistent with their Archetypes and Biases seen in the diplomacy screen?
• How did the AI evolve throughout the game? Did it feel equally challenging at the start and end of your game? Does increasing the difficulty increase the challenge as much as you expect?
• Does the AI commit any grave strategic missteps? What is the AI doing and what do you think it should do? 
• How does the AI perform in battle? Does it make any obvious mistakes it should avoid? What would you have done in that situation?

Well, since I’m not a skilled or experienced player, I mainly played on Nation difficulty. But I felt AI’s archetypes and biases were consistent throughout the game.  Though I’ve noticed that the AI does not siege even when there’s no units stationed in the city.

On Empire difficulty, AI has a good behavior overall, and tend to reinforce when being sieged, and sortie whenever possible, preventing building further siege weapons. That felt quite right. I don't remember being sieged by an AI on Empire though.

Feedback Map generation : 

• Continent size (i.e. land to water ratio)
• Continent shape (regular or more chaotic)
• Number, size, and location of islands

On those specific settings, I did enjoy the map as it was set up in Victor OpenDev. I felt heights, cliffs, rivers were well distributed, reducing movements of units or providing great choke points and strategic placements of units or cities/outposts. The stretch of land and forests tiles up north, leading to the brown AI empire has been a constant fight throughout all my playthroughs, specifically for that Iron !

We add 2 options to go on the second continent, either by land, or sailing along the islands on the east. And later on, by unlocking Caravel (if you hadn’t chosen Norsemen in Medieval) you could reach the 3rd continent and claim Terra Incognita Competitive Deed, which triggered a very nice musical animation. That felt really enjoying.

• Strategic and Luxury Resource distribution 

As said above, Iron felt (for me at least) the hardest strategic resource to get enough of in Classical. I usually had one in my territories, and had to fight for a second one, either by claiming/ransacking the territory up north, or by vassalizing brown AI to have access to it. I have mixed feelings about luxuries distribution, since on Nation difficulty, getting a lot of them is quite easy and gives so much stability. On Empire though, I felt the distribution and the pace to get access to them felt right. I guess on harder difficulties, their distribution fits as well. 

• Food and science curiosities in the Neolithic 

The starting location had a lot of food curiosities, and fewer Science curiosities compared to starting locations of yellow and green AIs, to the south of the starting location. Though it was fairly easy to grasp every one of them and have all 3 Neolithic Era Stars. Again, probably a bit too easy on Nation difficulty. I’m getting the feeling I need to scale my level up !

• Map size relative to player number
• Distance to other civilizations and Civilization clustering (evenly spread, or close together?) 

Given Victor OpenDev is a preset map, I wouldn’t judge further the starting locations. Overall, it gave really cool interactions with AI, either to stall them, or invest in good relations. Personally though, I do enjoy to expand early on, so I’d enjoy more evenly spread starting locations and a larger map. That’s usually how I set the map on Civ, EL or ES2.

A few other things noticed on the map :

• Already mentioned a lot, but territory names (while a great addition) were unclear on diplomatic screens : a clickable/zoomable glass icon in front of each one in the surrendering terms screen would be great to find the mentioned one. Still on the same screen, cities would be called by their territory name instead of their city name, which made it impossible to know which is which in the diplomatic screen.
• When claiming a territory/constructing an outpost on the tile of a trade post, both tooltips would overlap, making the outpost yield tooltip not legible.

• While sieging and conquering an IP (and even after owning the city), south of starting continent, a river tile between 2 mountains had to be crossed twice (sorry for the bad picture edit, and picture was taken without the IP city settled, yet had to be crossed twice) : once to enter the tile, and twice to get out of the tile, on an adjacent river tile. Could probably be due to the map being handmade.
  

Thanks again Amplitude for this really enjoyable opportunity, hope we can test more things before release !

Cheers,

Waykot.

Waykot wrote:

While those modified traits are nice, I’ve tested them with units boarded in Quadrireme and Cog, and I was quite disappointed to see units die on the next turn the ship is in high sea. I think it defeats the main purpose of those “boarding vessels” : why would you increase the time a ship is allowed in high sea, if it's empty of any units ? What’s the incentive to use these ships (and invest in their related technologies) if you’re aren’t able to sail units farther, even at a health cost ? It’s obviously really weird and useless as you get a wounded ship unit only able to sail a little further, but without any land units boarded. One solution I can think of is to apply the same health penalty (-1/3 of health per turn for Quadrireme and -1/5 of health per turn for Cog) on boarded units as well, so that you’ll be incentivized to use those ships while being pretty cautious about the path they take.

 

On a general note, I’m always confused by the description of “Boarding Vessel” trait : it states “no special rules”. But whenever you read the description of any of the ships having this trait, it is implied that you can board troops on them. I’d really want that “Boarding Vessel” trait states clearly that it allows boarding land units on it. The same applies for Carrack, you need to thoroughly read its description to understand that you can board your troops in it, whereas there isn’t any indication of it otherwise (no “Boarding Vessel” trait, only “Gun Platform”).

You can't "board" land units on these ships. If you're referring to combining transport ships with normal boats, you can do that with any ship, but it's not advised.

Boarding vessel just means that it has 1 range and that it has some melee traits. For instance, they can't attack land units.

You actually can, I tested it myself, with Quadrireme and Cog :

But, that confirms that "Boarding vessel" trait is not clear at all to everyone. I figured it quite lately as well actually.

To be more specific, my Great Swordsmen boarded or embarked on the ship from the adjacent port.

What docktorkain is saying is correct. Those units are in their own little ships. it would be fantastic if units could be put inside ships, since dedicated ships have much more movement than embarking ships in every single era. It would also help the issue some have of ships moving too slow if you could garrison units in them.

For this exact reason I think the different times ships can stay in deep water is fine, if anything I think increasing the available time spent in deep water for cogs is too much and would prefer it being 4 turns.