Generally I do think there needs to be much more clarity or player control to triggers civic choices, otherwise it feels hard to plan around, and I feel like the civic choices don't really matter that much a third of the time (but that's okay). Ideologies could also use better tooltips during events as I find myself exiting out of the event popup and going to the civics screen to find out what each axes does. The events themselves also feel kind of underwhelming on their impact and choices, but that's probably okay? The combination of lack of clarity on when civic choices pop up and how do they impact your ideologies, the relatively small impact on ideologies from events, and also generally the lack of my ability to figure out how big of an impact the ideological differences are on your current civ, makes it hard to really optimize those systems to minmax them. 

For example, if I already build my cities around my current stability values, the relative lack of control on how I can influence my ideology civics (other than going back and canceling old civics and then figuring out how each of them influences my ideologies), makes me tend to keep my current ideologies as is rather than aim for a specific extreme on an axis. 

I've been thinking about the Idealogies and have come to the conclusion that they are pretty underwhelming in their effects.

As others have mentioned here and in other threads, since stability is so important, staying in the middle of the bar is often the best choice for the higher stability bonus. As stability drops off as you go into the extremes in either direction. I don't think this is necessarily a bad design decision. The bonuses provided for hitting the extreme end of each idealogy just needs to be more enticing and have a more dramatic affect on gameplay and diplomacy.

For me personally, just bumping up some numbers isnt going to be all that interesting. A +10% to city food income for focusing on the Homeland idealogy is hardly even going to be noticible.

Instead, why not give the player access to unique mechanics? For example, if I hit the far extreme of the Progress ideology, instead of a +10% science boost, how about I now have a chance of getting random Eurekas (to borrow a Civ mechanic for a moment) in which my progress on my current research is instantly boosted. This is a noticible positive effect for leaning into a specific idealogy at the cost of empire stability for being more balanced. You can also actually add specific negatives for doing so as well. Maybe leaning too heavily towards Tradition would give you a different bonus but at the same time might randomly trigger 'Heresy Banished!", an opposite affect of the Eureka in which science progress is set back a bit.

I don't know all of the mechanics available in Humankind currently to figure out specific bonuses and negetives for each ideology right now, but I can forsee some more emergent gameplay and decision making arising from such a system if implemented.  Perhaps being on the opposite end of an ideaology bar compared to another civilisation can cause negative relations (Extreme Liberty vs extreme Authority).

Can anyone else think of some mechanics or abilities that could be tied into the idealogies?

What unlocks the Freedom of the Press civic choice, by the way? Concerning my last playthrough, I saw it pop up while I was still in the medieval era, with an era star count far ahead of every other faction. Given that the image representing it is a newspaper front page, it was an unexpected development and somewhat immersion breaking! But it's part of a larger pattern with the closed beta version of Humankind, I suppose, where pacing seems out of whack across the game.

FinalFreak16 wrote:

I've been thinking about the Idealogies and have come to the conclusion that they are pretty underwhelming in their effects.

As others have mentioned here and in other threads, since stability is so important, staying in the middle of the bar is often the best choice for the higher stability bonus. As stability drops off as you go into the extremes in either direction. I don't think this is necessarily a bad design decision. The bonuses provided for hitting the extreme end of each idealogy just needs to be more enticing and have a more dramatic affect on gameplay and diplomacy.

For me personally, just bumping up some numbers isnt going to be all that interesting. A +10% to city food income for focusing on the Homeland idealogy is hardly even going to be noticible.

Instead, why not give the player access to unique mechanics? For example, if I hit the far extreme of the Progress ideology, instead of a +10% science boost, how about I now have a chance of getting random Eurekas (to borrow a Civ mechanic for a moment) in which my progress on my current research is instantly boosted. This is a noticible positive effect for leaning into a specific idealogy at the cost of empire stability for being more balanced. You can also actually add specific negatives for doing so as well. Maybe leaning too heavily towards Tradition would give you a different bonus but at the same time might randomly trigger 'Heresy Banished!", an opposite affect of the Eureka in which science progress is set back a bit.

I don't know all of the mechanics available in Humankind currently to figure out specific bonuses and negetives for each ideology right now, but I can forsee some more emergent gameplay and decision making arising from such a system if implemented.  Perhaps being on the opposite end of an ideaology bar compared to another civilisation can cause negative relations (Extreme Liberty vs extreme Authority).

Can anyone else think of some mechanics or abilities that could be tied into the idealogies?

I would second this, and also would add that even from the perspective of just being bonuses, most of the ideologies have a clear "winner" that makes them even more uninteresting. Individualist/Collectivist is the only one that makes you want to choose between the two. Homeland and World both give you food, but Homeland is more stable, usually gives more, and is equally viable despite how many players there are. Liberty, by giving you Influence, prevents your territory from being converted, on top of converting other's territories and getting you more purple to spend, while Authority merely delays your territory from being converted. Progress gives a percentage (and therefore scaling) bonus to a resource that is needed to move forward in the game, while tradition gives a small bonus to faith, which only has value as pressure relative to neighbors.

Even if it's too difficult to change away from a bonus focused system now, the bonuses ought to be far more competitive on both ends. I would say they were better in Lucy, though I do like the "stability in the center bonuses at the ends" idea that's been in since Victor.

I don't remember what the event is specifically, and I don't know how it is triggered, but there is one that allows you to get ferocious +14 on all your soldiers for 10 or 15 turns. Now, in this build I'm basically never ahead in science until near the end of the game, so it is possible that it only triggers if you are technologically inferior. But +14 is an insane combat buff, regardless of circumstance.

The civics system is very interesting and realistic. Though, I believe it could use some improvements:

• Ideological shifts sometimes produce HUGE impacts on the empire, especially stability. One turn I could be having 100% stable cities and the next turn, having made an event choice and crossed a threshold, all my cities are suffering from stability issues and a few are mutinous. My suggestion is to remove the threshold system but make it gradual. e.g. instead of +10 stability after reaching a certain threshold on the scale, increase 1 stability for every scale "unit" you move in that direction.
• Some civics still feel inconsequential and/or a bit game-y. One civic allows adding +5 influence. It feels a bit odd to spend influence for more influence later. Same thing with the civic that reduces outpost absorption cost. That also deals entirely with influence. I think more complex and varied effects would make the system more engaging. And the ransack combat loss vs. gold loss feels a bit punishing, and I always skip selecting that civic. Perhaps increase the bonus and decrease the penalty for each case?
• later events don't quite scale with my resources. I could be producing 1k gold per turn and the event would award me 150 gold. I know tuning this is difficult, but one way might be to scale the amount of gold with your income, with a fixed upper and lower bound.
• Influence cost of civics still become very little in the late game when I have a lot of territories and am earning a lot of influence. I suggest making the civic cost scale more with your number of territories (and/or instability).

Also, I feel that a huge narrative incongruity is the use of sacrificing population. Even in the early modern and the industrial eras, I can kill like 30% of my city's population and suffer no stability penalties or ideological shifts. I think sacrificing population should impart an increasingly harsh penalty on the empire, and at some point empires would be forced to ban it (through an event or something) or: 1) be stuck on a hyper-authoritarian ideology, and 2) suffer stability/influence cost and diplomatic penalties (as well as cause grievances).

I mean also, even in the ancient and classical eras, it seems that killing half the population of city, probably mostly citizens, through forced labor would cause some serious problems.

The biggest problem with civics right now is that you are very limited in using them most of the game.

Since you loose lots of stability if you don't stay centrist. What you get for going left or right doesn't compensate at all for what you loose.
Like if I go science focus I get +2 science per pop on max and in the other direction +2 influence per pop. (or first +1 influence and then +1 influence and faith)

Another option would be to totally loose the stability from the social axis and come up with something else instead.

I think it’s interesting that there is a trade-off between stability and certain bonuses with the civic system as it is currently. However, stability comes too easily in the late game and makes extremist ideologies more optimal in most cases.

Narrative events are cool, and I enjoy the fact that they are contextual and won’t be the same every game. Their effects are small enough to keep things balanced, but large enough to make you stop and think for a moment at least.

Civics are OK, I guess. They feel like fairly minor choices. I feel that Amplitude meant these to be very substantial decisions about the direction of our empires, and they simply aren’t right now. So I suppose I feel lukewarm about these at the moment.

There needs to be a narrative events keeper listing completed events and the choices the player made with those events, as well as active events where a consequence decision was chosen but has not yet triggered.

At the moment it is difficult to see where your empire has come and some of the stories that have been told, or are still being told through the narrative events as there is no means to keep track of them. From a lore perspective giving the player a compendium of events they've gone through or that are still active makes events feel more apart of the fabric of your empire than simple passing stories.

All in all I like the changes to civics.  I hated spending influence on them, but that was a good thing!  It meant that I had to choose whether to unlock civics or build outposts, at least until I could spend money on outposts.  Ideologies still feel like the stability the center provides is way too good compared to the extremes.  That is especially true early game, and many civics are chosen based on how they affect the ideology (which, in a way, is good).  Maybe the % bonuses scale better in the long term, which could allow modern eras to become far more ideological than early eras.  I just know that typically, for the price of a % gain, I could have built a district.  Usually, the % doesn't win out.

I'm not saying any of that even needs changing in the end.  After all, that may be the flavor of the game, and prove to be a distinctive difference between early game and late game strategies.  Just please continue to allow us to change the ideologies at a later date!

P.S.  I love the events that can force a civic change!  That really felt like a turning point in my empire's development when they swapped from a close-minded "condem heretics" faith to open-minded "multi-cultured" religions during their Joseon (scientific) era in order to allow a foreign scientist to join.  Events like that really help create a narrative to the game!

Narrative events:

I like the narrative event system a lot and I'm looking forward to even more events being added after release. I have to agree though that the costs and benefits of narrative event choices become too small later on. Also, most choices lead to only small shifts on the ideology scales. I'd like to see a couple of more gamechanging events sprinkled in.

Enacting and revoking civics with influence:

Great change. It makes for some interesting choices in the early game on where to spend your influence.

Ideologies and civics:

Early on, I feel that getting more influence is almost mandatory. If I'm not maximising influence gain, I feel like I'm doing something wrong because I'm not expanding as fast as I could. Therefore, the Founding Myths civic becomes a nonchoice for me. Similarly, I always use the first opportunity to shift my ideology towards Liberty. The alternatives are just not interesting enough right now, particularly since I also don't understand how good +5 faith or extra turns before cultural conversion actually are. Influence allows me to do things, religious and cultural conversion just opaquely happen in the background.

Perhaps civics and Liberty shoudn't provide influence at all, so you avoid the "spend influence to get more influence" problem.

I want to say that:
I do like the idea someone had on the humankind discord, where the conscript civic choice would actually give players the ability to do what militarists can do with their special ability. If only because that seems more fitting for the civic choice with the word Conscription in it.

Of course, doing so would take away one of the best things unique to the militarist civic.

I don't think ideologies should give/cost stability, instead if a territory is under influence by another player with a different ideology from yours, the territory should lose stability. 

For me, I feel that a lot of the civic bonuses aren't good enough. So for a majority of my games I didn't purchase a lot of the civics available, and only did so to keep my ideological axis balanced. I would like to see stronger bonuses, and while it may be too late to make this change, it be cool if choosing civics gave more asymmetric abilities or restrictions on the player, kind of like stellaris. (Something to consider for a big change in an expansion post launch, I think right now the devs should focus on bug fixing for release.)

Narrative events seem kind of RNG dependent on when they occur, which I'm generally fine with so long as the consequences from them aren't too drastic. The most unbalanced and unfair narrative event I experienced was during a war with the AI. We were generally evenly matched and I slowly gained the upper hand. I was about to finish the war, but then my opponent got "The only game in town" event and picked the choice that gave his units the "Ferocious" modifier which gave all of his units a whopping plus seven combat strength! I suddenly lost so many units and had to retreat. I was very frustrated by this extremely unfortunate timing. These are the kind of narrative events that I think need to be toned down, and I hope to see less of.

Issue: Several Idelogies are almost a no-brainer to pick. You either go for the stability or to one side of the slider, never to the other. The Collectivism vs Individualism pick feels fantastic, but all others have problems:

Solution: Homeland (+% food) vs World (+% food per alliances) is a pretty bad one IMHO. Both focus on the same resource and homeland, due to its reliability, is simply better than world in most circumstances. I'd change that to Homeland (-% unit upkeep) vs World (+% trade routes income). This would pivot this choice into a money related pick for different gameplay orientations - either the homeland one helping you with maintaning large armies or the World one helping trade-oriented players. It would give other players a more concrete reason to choose one or the other depending on their playstyle.


Liberty (+ influence per territory) vs Authority (+ turns before being culturally converted) is another one that is heavily skewed towards one side - Liberty's effect is much stronger than the Authority effect (+influence even helps against cultural conversion) so there's no reason to go Authority at all. I'd change it to Liberty (+ faith per territory) vs Authority (+ %food). My proposal for it to play with the religious game helping you to grow it either by exporting it to other places with the faith bonus or by growing strong with your own populace. The religion already have a strong synergy with food and population growth, so having the player need to choose between faith or food can make for a more interesting scenario. Thematically, I'm neutral to which should be which, so IMHO Liberty (+%food) vs Authority (+ faith per territory) would be an equivalent choice.

Tradition (+ faith on territory) vs Progress (+%science) is another that is skewed towards one direction, favouring Progress in this case. While I do think it is the most balanced of the three problematic ones, science outputs are much more important than faith outputs overall, so I'd change it to Tradition (+% influence) vs Progress (+%science), similar to how it was in Lucy. This would make this decision much harder, as both resources are crucial, and put it on a similar dilemma to the Colectivism vs Individualism choice.

Issue: On Civics, there also a heavily imbalance on a few of them, which skew towards one solution. Here's some suggestions to change them and the reasonings:

Founding Myths: Natural Right is way more strong than Divine Mandate, and gaining +5 Faith on Holy Site can't compare to +5 Influence on Main Plaza early on. I suggest changing Divine Mandate to "+3 Faith on Territory"

Religion Minorities: Both options are quite weak. Instead of +1 Money or Stability per territory under foreign religion, I think +1 Money or Stability per Foreign Religion follower in your Empire would be a stronger and more interesting bonus.

Cultural Blessing: Monoculturalism does not compete with Multiculturalism. Making it affect both Influence and Religion conversion would bring it to a power level closer to Multiculturalism.

Slaves: Criminal Slaves' +1 Industry on Commons Quarter is nowhere near War Slave's bonuses. Changing it to "Commons Quarter also count as Maker's Quarter for adjacencies" would retain the same spirit (giving industry to Commons) while letting it scale with the industry infrastructures in an organic way.