I’m going to start by talking about my favorite part of Humankind Battles, then talk about my least favorite part of Humankind the UI, and then talk about a few other things.

So my favorite part of the game, battles!  I love combat in Humankind.  While it takes some time to learn the mechanics, once it clicked I was happily surprised by it.  The simple yet game changing terrain modifiers, such as plus combat strength when uphill, and combat strength loss on a river, really change how battles play out.   All of a sudden I’m thinking of ways to maintain the high ground, ways to cause my opponent to get stuck in a river, ways I can surround my opponent to get the rear attack bonuses.  The sheer strategic depth battles have is rivaled only by the enjoyment I’ve had playing them.  Throughout the OpenDevs, including this one, I often found myself getting into wars I strategically shouldn’t be getting in, simply because I enjoyed combat so much.

In my opinion, Humankinds combat is the new gold standard the entire genre should look to when deciding how to implement combat into future games.

This brings me to what I believe is the worst part of the game.  These next few paragraphs will be brutal so I want to preface this by saying:  I love strategy games.  I have, ever since I first started playing them when I was 8 years old.  I’m extremely passionate about the turn based historical 4x sub-genre.  From the 150 plus hours I’ve played across the past 4 OpenDevs, I can say with confidence that I believe Humankind is going to be an excellent game that has many truly wonderful and innovative concepts, and I truly believe that this could be one of the best games to EVER grace the strategy genre.  With this said, I would not be doing the job Amplitude has entrusted in me as an OpenDev participant if I said something horrible wasn’t that bad, so please brace yourselves and know that what I am about to say, I say because I’m passionate about this game and I want it to be as good as it can be.

So, 173 word preface out of the way, let’s talk user interface.   There’s no easy way to say this.  This UI is not years, but decades, behind its peers.   The tooltips actually act as a hindrance to me, rather than the discreet helpers I wish they were.  They are constantly covering the information I need to make an informed decision rather than giving me insight on how to best use said information.   Here is a screen shot that perfectly shows this.

Notice that the tooltip that explains how population works also covers the difference this extra person would make to the city’s growth.  This is an extremely useful tooltip with good information that I want to use in conjunction with the information it buries.  However, due to its presentation, it effectively negates itself.  I find myself having to quickly move population and check the difference they make before this tooltip covers the relevant information.

This problem of tooltips covering relevant information they are supposed to work with is a constant throughout the game and is especially bad when it comes to the game’s tutorials, which I fear will be extremely damaging to player retention and, as a result, the long term health of this game, since the time period when tutorials are turned on is typically when people are deciding if they like a game or not.

The next UI thing I need to talk about is the construction menu.  I know Amplitude said that they are working on the city UI, so I’m not going to go make a separate thread with my treatise describing why it is in my opinion the worst designed concept to make it in to the OpenDevs.  However, it was also said that we will not be able to mod the UI. Here’s a quote from a dev reply in the OUR PLANS FOR MODDING TOOLS IN HUMANKIND Devblog;

“I'm afraid UI falls under "code" rather than "game content," so it won't be moddable.”

Unless this policy is/was changed, the UI that ships with the game is the one we will all use, so I at the very least need to point out that the 4x2 build menu design is needlessly time consuming, and extremely frustrating to use.  This design style is beautiful and functions extremely well in games that only have a few things you can build.   The original Warcraft 3 comes to my mind.  It is a terrific game that has an art focused, picture based UI, just like Humankind.  It’s great in that game.   You get to see all the gorgeous artwork; there’s no scrolling.  In that game, there are just not many problems with this approach, and it shows off all of the beautiful art the artists have worked so hard on.

I want to stress this point; an art focused, picture based UI works very well in an environment where there aren’t that many things you can build.  However, in a massive game like this that features so many different things you build, from units to districts to buildings to wonders and more, this 2x4 style just doesn’t keep up with the plethora of things you could build in most stages of the game.  At present it involves huge amounts of scrolling, and it is very difficult to navigate through, even when you know exactly what you are looking for.  There’s a sort feature that’s actually more time consuming than scrolling, for me.   The list mode just generates a jumbled mess that’s really hard to read.

Please re-evaluate the design philosophy used in your cities UI, or make it moddable, because what is present in Humankind is one of the worst user interfaces I’ve ever used in any game, period.

Another UI inconvenience I must point out is in diplomacy, specifically the War Resolution screen.   When making a peace treaty, the names of territories are shown, not the names of cities.  I know in this war I want to take the city of San Lorenzo screen, shot below.

Now let’s look at the War Resolution screen.

If you compare the two photos you will see San Lorenzo is not mentioned at all, cities are instead referenced by the name of the territory the city is in.  This makes it difficult to get the exact peace deal I want.

While, I can find the territory names of the outpost’s by either directly selecting them, or if they are attached to a city I can find them by clicking on said city.  However, I’ve yet to find a way to see the territory name a city is in.  As a result of this, the way I’m forced to conduct peace deals is:  quick save, select the high cost items (presumably cities), see what I get, and if it’s wrong, reload.  This is frustrating, and feels like a waste of time.

So negatives out of the way, let’s talk about the parts of the UI I liked.

I did like how easy and natural it was to absorb outposts into cities.

Also, I really like the tech tree!  One suggestion I do have referencing science is, would it be possible to show the total science per turn on the top right with your resources?  This is a number I’m constantly checking, and it would be nice to have it easily visible at all times.

tl;dr for the UI:  It is very disappointing that a game that’s gotten so many core concepts right fumbled in this area.

Alright so huge negative out of the way, let’s talk about keybindings and QOL!

It’s really nice just how many things are keybindable, it’s also really nice that you can change default keybindings on so many things.

I’d like a way to adjust the camera pan speed, navigating with wasd felt way too slow for my personal taste.

Some things I would like added are:

Add a keybind for upgrading a unit.  It would be so nice to be able to select an archer, and press “U” to upgrade it to a crossbowman.  I’d also like a button to upgrade an entire army.  Ideally, this would also get a keybind, like “shift-U”.

Another thing I would like is a search feature.  It would be so nice to be have a menu where I could use to search:  “Where is Assur?”  “Where is the nearest coffee resource?”  “Where is Lake Baikal?”  Instead of the player having to spend several frustrating minutes searching every corner of the map trying to find them, ideally, this too would have a keybind, possibly “F” for find.

Music:  This game has some terrific music.  That said, it also has some songs that I simply didn’t like, to the point where I played with music muted.

I’d really like a setting to have all of the game’s music playable at anytime, regardless of circumstances, instead of having music play based on current culture.  Perhaps, you could add an in-game menu, so the player can choose what plays.  It would be nice to be able to change song, replay a previous song, and ban certain songs from playing entirely.

Maps, let’s talk about the map.

The first thing I want to talk about is islands.  I liked that there were some fairly large islands out there that had a good amount of resources on them.  In an ideal world, I’d play on a map setting that has several large islands, say, 10-20 of them, along with one massive continent everyone spawns on.  I’d really like a map setting for this.

Resources, I found there to be too few strategic resources.  I’m assuming this is a design decision to force actions from players, but it did feel kind of bad, just how little Saltpetre there was, when almost all early modern and many industrial units cannot be built without it.  This is made even worse by the fact that most units require multiple copies of it.  In this OpenDev it was almost impossible to build Ming’s unique unit because it required three of them.

Cultures and balance:

I don’t want to talk a ton about balance, but I do need to talk about the Romans, specifically their Legacy trait.  In my experience, the fact that reinforcements exist, (which are unlocked in the previous era) almost completely negates the benefit of extra army size.

I’m not sure what should be done with the Romans LT, as there are so many different directions you could go with such a famous Kingdom/Republic/Empire, but in this OpenDev, their LT was basically useless.

Difficulties:  As of the time of writing this, I’ve played one game on Metropolis, multiple games on Empire, one game on Civilization and two games on Humankind.

Overall, the difficulty levels felt good to me.  I definitely enjoyed the challenge of higher difficulties.  There was this one moment in the Civilization difficulty game where two computers warred me at once, and I had to make some tough decisions just to keep my nation alive.  It was fun.

The biggest problem, for me, with difficulty by far, was the fact that the AI units received combat strength bonuses.  I’m completely fine with computers getting production bonuses.  Fighting a battle when you’re massively outnumbered can be fun.   I’m completely ok with the computers getting some science bonuses.  Fighting a culture that’s a little ahead of you can be a fun challenge.  What I’m not ok with is computers getting combat bonuses.   Fighting super soldiers is just not fun to me.  Sending one swordsman to fight another, knowing you’ll lose for no reason other than the fact that you’re playing on a high difficulty just feels absolutely terrible.  I understand and agree with you, computers need bonuses to present an adequate challenge, but please, not combat strength.  Give them things that indirectly effect battles.  AI combat bonuses just feel terrible to play against.

Also, I would like someplace to see what difficulty I’m playing on once a game is started.  Maybe in the pause menu, or maybe when I load the save file.

The last thing I want to talk about is the end game sequence.  This was a huge surprise to me, when I first saw it.  I just smiled through the whole thing.  It reminded me of the ending to an old Mario party game, and I just loved it.  I do wish there was just a little bit more pizzazz when the winner was announced, perhaps some confetti.

Also, would it be possible to add a replay of the game that you can watch at a quick speed?  This is a feature I’ve always loved in games like EU4 and Civ4.  I definitely think it would fit well into this game.

That’s about all I have to say after spending about a week with the Victor OpenDev.  I’m sorry if I was a little bit brutal, but I’m extremely interested in this game, and I want it to be a great game I can happily play for the next decade, if not longer.

Thanks for reading, and congratulations to you, if you made all the way to the end of my post.

Good write-up, and fun to read ! (pizzazz, confetti, hehehe !)

About the UI, since Lucy OpenDev, UI settings has a "apply stylesheet" or something like that, which was greyed out on both builds. I've been wondering since then if that could imply a modification of the UI layout (other than say, font family and size, font color, etc ...).

Oh, and I like the idea of a song list. I'd also really like to be able to select or skip a particular song during a playthrough.