Hello! I just finished my first game of this closed beta.

I fear the same problems as in the previous opendevs still apply - some cultures are just outright superior to the rest.

The superior cultures are luckily quite easy to point out - it is whatever cultures whose emblemic quarter gives ressources per population and/or disctricts. They are simply waaay too strong. When I chose Khmer in the medieval era, placing one of their quarters granted me +60 production and +40 food - that's worth 3-4 Maker's quarter and 2-3 Farmer's quarter, which are well placed - 5-7 districts in one! And khmer aren't the only ones, with the Dutch's emblemic quarter granting me 145+ gold per quarter, while a single market quarter grants around 10 gold.

I find this problematic of two reasons: 

1) Whenever I receive these districts, I steamroll every other culture 

2) It heavily discourages building normal districts, as they simply are inferior, while taking quite a toll on stability. What I LOVED when I first saw Humankind was the idea of building beautiful, sprawling cities - all of my cities look puny, with only emblemic quarters sprinkled around, as anything else is inefficient, when weighing the gain of building normal districts with their building time and stability cost.

Therefore I highly encourage reworking those, and perhaps boosting normal districts' yield!

general game design problems

first of all, i will write out some basic rules as theses, if you agree with them.

first rule: an emlematic unit/district should always be better or equally good in all aspects than a comparable base unit/district.
second rule: all emlematic districts should have the same unlocking requirements.
third rule: an emlematic district upgrading an existing one should only add things but not remove basic necessary functions.
fourth rule: an emlematic unit should not be so strong that it can defeat its counter under the same conditions.

if you now agree with all these rules, i will now list everything that does not apply to these rules.

- Assyrians emlematic district: Dunnu - first rule
- Phoenicians emlematic district: Haven - second rule
- Huns/Mongols emlematic district: Ordu/Orda - third rule
- Mauryans emlematic unit: Saṃnāhya and probably most if not all war elephants - fourth rule

these are all i have found so far there are probably more.
I will add more as I notice them.

Egzon230 wrote:

Builder: The active, like the scientist one, is perfectly fine. However, the passive feels utterly useless. The stability seems to last for a turn! When I first read the ability, I thought it would give you permanent +10 stability, making districts cost 0 stability as a builder. That is also not desirable since it would be totally broken. However, temporary stability is just really useless. Unstable stability numbers aren't worth anything and the fluctuation simply doesn't work. Instead, I propose that the passive should give +1 stability on all districts built as a builder. In essence, this makes it so that districts cost 1 less stability as a builder. Alternatively, it could give +10 stability on EQ. The name "pride" still makes sense with this rework. Magnificant buildings of the past can continue to inspire people in later eras, hence the permanent stability boost doesn't feel out of place. 

Agrarian: Again, the active is great, but the passive faces the same problem as the builder one: Unstable stability levels. I would suggest that instead of giving stability, gaining population should give influence. We already get influence per pop, so it makes sense gameplay-wise. I would propose something along the lines of "Gain influence equal to 3 times the population number when gaining a new point of population". The multiplier can definitely be tweaked, but it really should scale, providing a lot less early on and more later down the line. The active ability also costs influence and this way it can easily sustain itself through growth like it kina used to, while still being balanced by the fixed cooldown.

I like all these suggestions, but these Builder and Agrarian ones are the most important to change IMO. Temporary stability bonuses are simply not very helpful and, as others in this thread have mentioned, tend to make switching away from playing as a builder a very dangerous choice.

In game, how are we supposed to know about these passive bonuses? They aren't shown anywhere that I can see.

As for activated bonuses, only two mattered in my entire game. First, other players kept sending units into my lands because I couldn't close my borders. This was annoying when they stood next to my units and exerted zone of control, or when they were just generally in the way. Second, another player kept taking 2 population from one of my cities and there was nothing at all that I could do to stop him short of declaring war and killing him. Not fun.

I never used the activation bonuses at all. They seemed weak and not worth the cost. Boring.

Harappans ability bugged "+1 food to district" gives +1 food to district and exploatation

Kwami wrote:
Second, another player kept taking 2 population from one of my cities and there was nothing at all that I could do to stop him short of declaring war and killing him. Not fun

I wasn't the biggest fan of this ability either. Sure it gives grievances when used, but it seems poorly designed when there's no real counter to it besides wiping out the nearby Agrarian neighbor.

CristataC wrote:

Kwami wrote:
Second, another player kept taking 2 population from one of my cities and there was nothing at all that I could do to stop him short of declaring war and killing him. Not fun

I wasn't the biggest fan of this ability either. Sure it gives grievances when used, but it seems poorly designed when there's no real counter to it besides wiping out the nearby Agrarian neighbor.

I wasn't even getting grievances when it was used against me. Maybe that's bugged, too?

TheZuma wrote:

Hello! I just finished my first game of this closed beta.

I fear the same problems as in the previous opendevs still apply - some cultures are just outright superior to the rest.

The superior cultures are luckily quite easy to point out - it is whatever cultures whose emblemic quarter gives ressources per population and/or disctricts. They are simply waaay too strong. When I chose Khmer in the medieval era, placing one of their quarters granted me +60 production and +40 food - that's worth 3-4 Maker's quarter and 2-3 Farmer's quarter, which are well placed - 5-7 districts in one! And khmer aren't the only ones, with the Dutch's emblemic quarter granting me 145+ gold per quarter, while a single market quarter grants around 10 gold.

I find this problematic of two reasons: 

1) Whenever I receive these districts, I steamroll every other culture 

2) It heavily discourages building normal districts, as they simply are inferior, while taking quite a toll on stability. What I LOVED when I first saw Humankind was the idea of building beautiful, sprawling cities - all of my cities look puny, with only emblemic quarters sprinkled around, as anything else is inefficient, when weighing the gain of building normal districts with their building time and stability cost.

Therefore I highly encourage reworking those, and perhaps boosting normal districts' yield!

I'm inclined to agree. I wanted to play Khmer for roleplaying purposes, but anytime I've chosen a different culture, I've had a much more difficult time. They really are the superior culture in Medieval Era. Food and production are very important since buyout can't really get going unless you choose Carthaginian and then Dutch.

High population doesn't cause stability loss, but districts do, so it's better to have more population than more districts.

I think that either your tutorial needs a boost or this needs to be displayed better because I had no idea that the culture type-abilities were a thing when I played. I liked playing as the Huns, but their unique mechanic confused me to the point that I thought the game was broken since I wasn't allowed to build new cities. Once I realized what was happening though, I really like that addition to the game! It makes the Huns and Mongols act very similar to their real-world counterparts in terms of gameplay which I really appreciate.

It would have been nice to know the advantages and disadvantages of vassals earlier. I made all of my neighbors into vassals after running them over with the huns, though before I could claim all the new land that I had freed up, my new vassals came in and stole it all. I just kinda let them keep it since they were helping me fight my wars and stuff. This was fine until I needed Saltpetre and my vassals were sitting on it unable to improve it since they didn't have the technology. So I eventually freed my vassal and declared war on them to get the saltpetre, which was frustrating since they were the only vassal that actually liked me.

Also, it was really frustrating to me how limited my diplomatic options were. The options were to accept a deal, counter with a ridiculous price, or reject a deal for non-military arrangements. And during war, my options were only defeat them completely, surrender, or have a "white peace" which is apparently a terrible idea to propose because proposing one makes everyone lose respect for you. I want to be able to make a deal with people that doesn't involve giving them all of my cities and land to even get to the table for a peace talk. When one of my vassals declared war on me to get their independence, I would've loved to just stop the war and give them independence since I didn't want to deal with it, but that wasn't an option. Also, I should be able to request land from my vassals if necessary.  

When playing as the huns in the battle screens, I realized that I had essentially 20 movement points unless a river or body of water was involved. Is that supposed to happen? This made staying alive in combat easier, but I feel like that it was balanced by the water effects and lowered strength of the units relatively well.

When playing as a scientific culture (I did this after basically ignoring tech while playing as the huns), I realized that I was heavily incentivized to build whatever science cost the least in order to maximize my fame for that level. Is that behavior that you want to encourage? Also, I completed only one early modern tech by the time I completed the game (turn 149), so with the exception of the huns I never used a culture's unique unit while that culture was active, which I found very disappointing. And this was while I was producing over 700 science a turn for the last 50+ turns.

I think that there should be a way to fortify outposts and administration centers since that could happen in actual wars. You would probably only get one unit and one space to defend with for outposts and 2-3 for admin centers, but it would make defending a bit easier. I think this could be a worthwhile addition if its cost was similar to that of adding it to a city in terms of outpost or 2x that of building the fort improvement.

Also, I found stability to be kinda confusing since the UI didn't communicate to me what stability level I should aim to have. Sometimes my cities would complain, but there didn't seem to be a specific threshold to cause this. Also, when something effects empire vs city stability was unclear to me, as was how empire stability worked.

And what is the point of having influence over another city or outpost?

Is being friends with the AI even possible? In my game, I was either at war with people or they were my vassal so I am not the best case to determine that I guess.

I really liked the wonder and religious building system.

"Aesthete

• Active: Can spend money to instantly convert an owned territory and gain influence based on neighboring territories under their cultural influence; ability is on a fixed cooldown"

Egzon230 wrote:

Expansionist: The abilities are both great on all levels. My only hurdle is with the gold cost. I think it would make a lot more sense if the active cost influence instead. Influence is a more fitting resource for expansionists to begin with. Several EQs of expansionist cultures give influence, and annexation of territories feels more related to the influential aspect of culture rather than its economy. Also, as I mentioned, affinity abilities costing influence just feels more appropriate to me. Moreover, influence gets a lot more abundant than gold, and creating another way to spend influence would make this ability slightly better.

Aesthete: First of all, I don't think the active should be a gold-to-influence converter. It should work the other way around. I like how you can only use it on your own territories now. However, it should feel more like a culture bomb. So, it should also affect adjacent territories, both owned and otherwise, to a certain extent. It definitely shouldn't completely convert these territories, but it should still increase your influence there. Then, it should give you gold based on neighboring territories under your cultural influence. Essentially, costs influence instead of gold, and gives gold again, and has a slight impact on adjacent territories. The passive is totally fine.

These are great suggestions!

EffAMES wrote:

general game design problems

first of all, i will write out some basic rules as theses, if you agree with them.

first rule: an emlematic unit/district should always be better or equally good in all aspects than a comparable base unit/district.
second rule: all emlematic districts should have the same unlocking requirements.
third rule: an emlematic district upgrading an existing one should only add things but not remove basic necessary functions.
fourth rule: an emlematic unit should not be so strong that it can defeat its counter under the same conditions.

if you now agree with all these rules, i will now list everything that does not apply to these rules.

- Assyrians emlematic district: Dunnu - first rule
- Phoenicians emlematic district: Haven - second rule
- Huns/Mongols emlematic district: Ordu/Orda - third rule
- Mauryans emlematic unit: Saṃnāhya and probably most if not all war elephants - fourth rule

these are all i have found so far there are probably more.
I will add more as I notice them.

Even though the implementation of the Huns/Mongols ability is confusing, I think that it is a fair balancing counter to their military prowess and think that it shouldn't be changed. Though I also think that the UI should explain why the outposts can't be upgraded or attached to cities instead of just saying "unavailable" or whatever for the attach option and not showing the upgrade to city icon at all. The upgrade to city icon should be greyed out and the reason for it should be stated when the player attempts to make a city.

Tormex wrote:

EffAMES wrote:

general game design problems

first of all, i will write out some basic rules as theses, if you agree with them.

first rule: an emlematic unit/district should always be better or equally good in all aspects than a comparable base unit/district.
second rule: all emlematic districts should have the same unlocking requirements.
third rule: an emlematic district upgrading an existing one should only add things but not remove basic necessary functions.
fourth rule: an emlematic unit should not be so strong that it can defeat its counter under the same conditions.

if you now agree with all these rules, i will now list everything that does not apply to these rules.

- Assyrians emlematic district: Dunnu - first rule
- Phoenicians emlematic district: Haven - second rule
- Huns/Mongols emlematic district: Ordu/Orda - third rule
- Mauryans emlematic unit: Saṃnāhya and probably most if not all war elephants - fourth rule

these are all i have found so far there are probably more.
I will add more as I notice them.

Even though the implementation of the Huns/Mongols ability is confusing, I think that it is a fair balancing counter to their military prowess and think that it shouldn't be changed. Though I also think that the UI should explain why the outposts can't be upgraded or attached to cities instead of just saying "unavailable" or whatever for the attach option and not showing the upgrade to city icon at all. The upgrade to city icon should be greyed out and the reason for it should be stated when the player attempts to make a city.

first of all, i have a question: did you play the game at the highest difficulty level?

why are you probably wondering, because i am.
on that level you can best see what is better and what is worse because it stretches further.

so now i will tell you my story

i reached the ancient era around round 15.
i could have chosen a culture earlier but i wanted to get the other stars which i did.
half of the cultures were already taken and i chose the assyrians because i wanted to expand my country
then i found out that the dunnu is just a worse version of the garrnison which can also build on outposts
my next neighbor then declared a surprise war after i got hold of a natural wonder in front of him.
which i won and made him my vassal.
i conquered an independent people city and chose the romans out of the remaining cultures and made an alliance
with my other neighbor who was loyal as an archentype.
I was doing well and was able to climb high in the fame and even reach the first place for a short time.

and then came the turning point
my vassal declared war on me and shortly after my alliance partner who was supposed to be loyal.
so i fought a two front war which i could win,
but lost a region to my former vassal who destroyed the outpost and built his own.
after that i was able to suppress my former vassal quite well,
my former alliance partner, on the other hand, only had my destruction in mind.
every attempt to build up a new relationship failed.
in the face of a renewed war situation i chose the mongols out of the remaining cultures
because they are a military culture and i heard that their unity is very strong
only to find out that if i put all my efforts into building up an army myself
it would take me far too much time, plus the fact that I could not attach my outposts
hindered me even more.
after many demands of my former alliance partner it came to the renewed war.
I lost the war due to the overwhelming number of Saṃnāhya that the enemy threw at me.
i lost some terretories.
I was now lagging behind everything and just trying to survive somehow.
when the first AI reached the industrial era on turn 100 and couldn't catch up with the fame, i gave up the game.

TLDR: when you are leading the mongols are really strong when you are behind you are just nerfing yourself.

EffAMES wrote:
third rule: an emlematic district upgrading an existing one should only add things but not remove basic necessary functions.

EffAMES wrote:
- Huns/Mongols emlematic district: Ordu/Orda - third rule

This one, I don't agree with (the rest are quite accurate). Huns and Mongols are very strong solely by there Emblematic unit, and the Emblematic District is a well deserved penalty that helps represent their nomadic nature.

EffAMES wrote:

TLDR: when you are leading the mongols are really strong when you are behind you are just nerfing yourself.

To be honest, I was under the impression that the Huns and Mongols were closer to a catchup Culture. To get the Mongol Hordes, you don't need Science (the EU are unlocked immediately), you don't need Industry (you can buy them with Influence in your Outposts), you don't need Population (or at least, not Population in your Cities - once again, you're getting Hordes in your Outposts). You don't even need all that much Influence, since the costs to buy Units in your Outposts are rather cheap. 

The end result is a catchup Culture. Anybody can take the Huns or Mongols and run off with them, because they need very little prior resources to do anything. Even a person that's well behind everybody else can use the Huns, run over their neighbors, and slingshot themselves back into the competition. 

However, as your experience shows, it's a bit of a gamble. The Huns and the Mongols give you a huge amount of bonuses right now, but when it comes to the long-term, they aren't the greatest. Both of their Legacy Traits aren't extremely useful - for the Huns, Cavalry completely disappears once the Early Modern Era comes, outside of two EUs. For the Mongols, their Legacy Trait honestly sucks. The fact that they cannot attach Outposts also means that it's difficult for them to make significant economic gains during the Era, which can cripple them in the long term. 

But this is for a desperate player who is looking to bring themselves back into the game. They don't care about the long term. The Huns and the Mongols allow a player a chance to shoot to the stars if they manage to crush their opponents, and snowball to victory. However, if they fail, then they lose out on an entire Era's worth of economic development, and they are even further behind. You can either win everything and get ahead of everybody, or lose everything and fall behind. 

As such, the Huns and Mongols are inherently Cultures that are suited for players who are behind. They have fewer things to lose, and more to gain, so they are better off with taking that gamble. While it is true that a well-off player may have better chances in the gamble - they have strong, productive Cities that can contribute to getting the conquests going - they can still lose the gamble and lose an Era of development, and therefore losing their place as first. It's usually going to be far safer to simply take a not-so-risky Culture, since there's no reason to gamble to win when you're already winning. 

With this reasoning in mind, I think the reason why the Huns and Mongols are so powerful is that there's very little risk in this gamble. The AI is honestly not the greatest at Combat - they're fairly good at maximizing damage, but when it comes to defensive plays, they don't seem to be the greatest. They also appear to enjoy spamming out a single Unit, which also weakens the usefulness of their army somewhat. Therefore, the player can take the Huns and steamroll the AI without that much risk of them fighting back. Of course, there'll be some risk, as if you fight against a prepared opponent (like one who's planning on declaring war on you), you'll find a lot of difficulty with defeating them. If the AI proved to be a difficult challenge regardless of how prepared, and they fought back for every tile of land, then the Huns and Mongols will become much less viable Cultures. 

I mainly played scientists, so my thoughts on affinities are limited. But I do gave two thoughts

1. These abilities really need to be communicated more

I didn't even know there were passive abilities until checking this thread. Furthermore, I didn't see what the other abilities were in game.

2. The Scientist Active seems not that useful

I might be missing something, but the pacing in the game is quite fast. I hardly I had time to build any infrastructure. So why would I make my cities unproductive for some science?