I see now how religion can be powerful and important if you focus on it (Civs like the Teutons, high tier tenets)

But there is still a lack of identity to religions. There is no sense of flavor to how a religion begins or develops. It’s simply a bundle of boosts that have little impact on the narrative of our empire.

Some of the techs you can unlock late game, such as early modern/industrial feel underwhelming when compared to early game techs which makes progressing through the tech tree feel less rewarding the further you go in game. There are some amazing techs late game which felt great to unlock, but then you have techs like playhouse, which give luxury manufactory, which is really good, but then it also gives playhouse, which gives you +2 influence on main plaza. That would be a really good ability in the ancient era, maybe, but by the early modern era it just feels underwhelming compared to the other infrastructures you can build.

On the speed of population growth, i felt that it was pretty good. it felt like it appropriately progressed, and even when I went very agrarian focused, it slowed down in later eras due to food consumption. The big issue with population growth for me was how slowly you get specialist slots. If I am 20 population over my population limit, getting a single farmer's slot or trader's slot feels a little weak. Also, a lot of emblematic districts don't give slots (which is totally fine) but it feels really hard to get enough slots to keep up with population growth. Especially after forced labor is removed (I do like that forced labor gets taken away, but it makes over population harder to deal with). I feel like there should be more ways to get 1 of each slot, for example, such a slum district or infrastructure which could give you more specialist slots. Or just some other way to combat over population.

workswithdragons wrote:

magilzeal wrote:

I feel the pacing is mostly a problem because I feel very limited in what I can build due to stability nerfs from Victor and the reduction in effectiveness of sacrificing population to speed construction. Further, the map was resource-starved, with more cramped territories compared to Victor (at least, it felt that way, maybe it wasn't actually). I played at Nation and smashed the AI in every area, though it sounds like Empire will offer a good deal more challenge. The problem is everything is so slow to build now, and we are so limited in the amount of districts we can construct due to resources scarcity and the reduction in effectiveness of luxuries compared to Victor, it creates a "snowball" effect where building is much slower, so resource accumulation is also much slower. I was pretty consistently at least one era behind, sometimes two, in infrastructure and units, compared to my "cultural era".

+1 I think the nerf to population sacrifice went too far in the other direction and now I need 14 pop for one infrastructure so I can't even use it to get rid of my extra population who will die in two turns anyways :(

Seems like a good solution would be that you can only sacrifice 1 population per X turns (maybe one per turn?) and it would only add a set amount of Industry (1 pop sacrifice = 4x current 'industry per pop' value?).

Re: Pacing

The game seems to really push you to advance into the next era as soon as you reach 7 stars.  I am not certain if this is what the devs intend to reward, as this means you'll almost never get silver era stars, and def never get any gold era stars.  Perhaps something more subtle or somehow make clear that advancing right away isn't always the best course.

As it stands, I was ALWAYS advanced further in era than I was in science, even when I went and focused on science production for a while.  Era stars are just too easy to earn from just 'growing' and they are far too easy to earn through conquest.

Ludovide wrote:

Some of the techs you can unlock late game, such as early modern/industrial feel underwhelming when compared to early game techs which makes progressing through the tech tree feel less rewarding the further you go in game. There are some amazing techs late game which felt great to unlock, but then you have techs like playhouse, which give luxury manufactory, which is really good, but then it also gives playhouse, which gives you +2 influence on main plaza. That would be a really good ability in the ancient era, maybe, but by the early modern era it just feels underwhelming compared to the other infrastructures you can build.

On the speed of population growth, i felt that it was pretty good. it felt like it appropriately progressed, and even when I went very agrarian focused, it slowed down in later eras due to food consumption. The big issue with population growth for me was how slowly you get specialist slots. If I am 20 population over my population limit, getting a single farmer's slot or trader's slot feels a little weak. Also, a lot of emblematic districts don't give slots (which is totally fine) but it feels really hard to get enough slots to keep up with population growth. Especially after forced labor is removed (I do like that forced labor gets taken away, but it makes over population harder to deal with). I feel like there should be more ways to get 1 of each slot, for example, such a slum district or infrastructure which could give you more specialist slots. Or just some other way to combat over population.

There is the Brazilian legacy trait that gives a lot of slots and the Chinese unique district.

Playing on empire.

First about AI. They feel like they have flat bonuses instead of percentage based (I don't know the actual numbers, it just feels like it). In the early game they are way too fast. After turn 50, maybe 100 they just fall of. That breaks the AI pacing, because it can go into medieval era as fast as turn 35, but in different (or even the same) case it cannot progress to early modern even at turn 150 (had both those things happen in only few games).

I really like the pacing of technology. It feels like the "technology eras" last just perfect. I would like a wider tree with more connections to have more choice here. I really liked those situations in a tree where I could get to a technology by more than one path, and I could skip the other path. That made my culture distinct, and the choice interesting. But those choices are a rarity. Especially the first two eras feel like almost everything is mandatory. Most of the interesting choices (that are actually choices) come at early modern and industrial era. So I'd like to see a wider tree with alternatives, and alternating paths. Like for example I need to be able to extract iron, that technology is almost mandatory because trade is unreliable, so to get there maybe make like 3 different technologies that aren't crucial to one another, and aren't that important overall. That would make me choose the path to get to that iron. I could also chose to spend time and turns to discover the other technologies, but that is also a choice, not a requirement. That feels very nice in the few cases that are already in the game.

About era and culture pacing it's way too varied. Most of the time it's way too fast. Also threshold for stars seem to be a static number every era. That makes transcending almost useless, course you can just hoard your progress, get into new culture, one turn later receive like 3-5 stars at the start and end that culture era in like 5 turns, just because of those requirements. Yes you cannot advance the tech tree without transcending, but in early game you're slow there anyway, and if you build your cities well enough you can recoup that easily with any science base culture later.

In the long run also, getting the stars all the time for the same things seems a bit stale and boring. If what we need to progress is FAME (so being famous for something) maybe introduce more (like WAY MORE) competitive deeds that give stars, and push the star requirement higher. I don't think changing the values of each standard deed is the way here, maybe make them start from fresh each time (example: this era you need to get 12 more population than you started with, not just flatly have 56 etc.), If it works that way already, then there is a bigger problem here that I don't know off, but really in one of my games I could advance to new era like after 8 turns (it was from medieval to early modern if I remember correctly), because I stayed in the previous era too long (just to build culture special buildings btw.). Also, I didn't like the double dip competitive fame/stars like Symposium. It basically gave a fourth technology star for that era. But even if I don't like it, maybe the game need more of those if we need more competitive stars.

About population growth - don't understand it almost at all, but still can abuse it building almost no costing scouts, waiting few turns for population to recover, and then disbanding those scouts back. I actually like that system. But it makes farmers useless. Farmers generally even without that feel useless. Farmers quarters and some tech buildings are way better, to a point its easier and faster to put everyone on industry and build farmers quarters that tu use actual farmers.

I agree to someone's idea that buyouts are way to costly, and instead of bigger flat cost you could introduce some penalties to buyouts (stability for population, maybe income or something else for money), maybe severe but timed ones (like -10 stability per population sacrificed for 10 turns or something?). The money prices also inflate too much, but production staying the same, makes money useless or obsolete/afterthought after few eras.

About neolithic era, it still feels too fast to overpopulate. Maybe introduce +1 or +2 food needed to spawn new unit for every population you have in your nation? Also I don't know if something like this exist or not, but please make it that unused, leftover food that is left after you switch eras translates to anything when switching to next era. Maybe just money or influence. Right now it really feels like a waste, and is punishing wide exploration. To counter that (going too wide) being too much of an issue maybe make a rare aggressive animal in neolithic so players cannot spread themselves too thin. Other than that, neolithic era pacing feels fine.

Bridger wrote:

workswithdragons wrote:

magilzeal wrote:

I feel the pacing is mostly a problem because I feel very limited in what I can build due to stability nerfs from Victor and the reduction in effectiveness of sacrificing population to speed construction. Further, the map was resource-starved, with more cramped territories compared to Victor (at least, it felt that way, maybe it wasn't actually). I played at Nation and smashed the AI in every area, though it sounds like Empire will offer a good deal more challenge. The problem is everything is so slow to build now, and we are so limited in the amount of districts we can construct due to resources scarcity and the reduction in effectiveness of luxuries compared to Victor, it creates a "snowball" effect where building is much slower, so resource accumulation is also much slower. I was pretty consistently at least one era behind, sometimes two, in infrastructure and units, compared to my "cultural era".

+1 I think the nerf to population sacrifice went too far in the other direction and now I need 14 pop for one infrastructure so I can't even use it to get rid of my extra population who will die in two turns anyways :(

Seems like a good solution would be that you can only sacrifice 1 population per X turns (maybe one per turn?) and it would only add a set amount of Industry (1 pop sacrifice = 4x current 'industry per pop' value?).

Ooh! Yes! I think this would be a good way to balance it, since you'd no longer be able to buy out whole wonders by completely depopulating your city but you also won't be hindered by buyouts requiring you to depopulate your whole city.

• How does your progress through the eras feel? Is it too fast or too slow?

• Do you feel your research progress roughly matches your progress through the eras? Does it match what you would expect for a game meant to last about 300 turns?

• How do you feel about the speed of population growth?

• How do you feel about the value and the growth of the different resources (Including Influence)

• Are religions still to powerful, or are the bonuses at a more appropriate level now?

• How does the neolithic era feel now? Can you still grow your population too quickly?

I felt religion just did its job on its own, i didn't really interacted with it (except for narrative events) and it provided quite good bonuses so it felt too easy. I think the religion gameplay can be complexified a bit.

My technology was always 2 eras behind my current era. I think it's a bit because i didn't focus science early, but mostly because I progressed through the eras to quickly. I think the era stars goals are too common, so you don't have to really try to achieve them you just unlock them by managing your economy.  Maybe have more specific and diverse goals (why not linked to the era history) to reward some specific gameplay styles (or maybe replace the era stars by the deeds or something similar ?).

In the city the last type of production (ceremonies, games...) is totally useless and not worth it.

Also, at some point, Influence become totally useless.

The Influence bank gets full, and nothing to spend it on:

Bridger wrote:

workswithdragons wrote:

magilzeal wrote:

I feel the pacing is mostly a problem because I feel very limited in what I can build due to stability nerfs from Victor and the reduction in effectiveness of sacrificing population to speed construction. Further, the map was resource-starved, with more cramped territories compared to Victor (at least, it felt that way, maybe it wasn't actually). I played at Nation and smashed the AI in every area, though it sounds like Empire will offer a good deal more challenge. The problem is everything is so slow to build now, and we are so limited in the amount of districts we can construct due to resources scarcity and the reduction in effectiveness of luxuries compared to Victor, it creates a "snowball" effect where building is much slower, so resource accumulation is also much slower. I was pretty consistently at least one era behind, sometimes two, in infrastructure and units, compared to my "cultural era".

+1 I think the nerf to population sacrifice went too far in the other direction and now I need 14 pop for one infrastructure so I can't even use it to get rid of my extra population who will die in two turns anyways :(

Seems like a good solution would be that you can only sacrifice 1 population per X turns (maybe one per turn?) and it would only add a set amount of Industry (1 pop sacrifice = 4x current 'industry per pop' value?).

I completely second this, one problem I had is that when I wanted to sacrifice population to build a wonder or holy site it wouldn't let me distribute the sacrifice among my cities. The current build forces you to sacrifice 29 pop or so straight from one city which is bonkers. Being able to sacrifice pop 1 by 1 would allow the player to distribute the population loss more evenly.

Duthrach wrote:

At the same time, trascending or choosing a civ with the same focus as your previous one does not get any significant benefits. It feels like the story telling aspect of the game is broken due to this. Except for food, where by going full agrarian you can get insane amounts of food throughout the game, there actually no benefits from following a storyline with your civ, especially with science cultures.

@Duthrach That is not entirely true. If you use the industry districts wisely you can get to a point where you can build a district every 2 turns (or even quicker with the builder active ability. Then you can ignore stability completely thanks to the passive builder ability. That becomes so insane that you actually run out of land at some point and since there are no buildings left to build, the only thing cities can build is projects and units :D

There is a similar strategy with gold. The gold bonuses stack quite well so you can get quite cheap buyout. It worked really well in Victor, not so much in the current closed beta on higher difficulties.

What I am trying to say is that Humankind offers a wide variety of play-styles: indutry-focused, food-focused, and gold-focuses, and of course military-focuses. I think that is a really good thing and I think it is important that these different strategies as well as a mix of those remain roughly balanced so that there is not only one way and every player can chose whatever they prefer.

But I fully agree with the fame and deep comment. I was thinking the same thing. Deeds don't make a real difference. They need to be come more valuable.

I played two games on Empire difficulty. In the first one Vlad went Myceneans -> Huns and destroyed me, because I wasn't prepared. In the second one I made sure to pick off all of his stray units, which made him afraid of me. I was never at war throughout this game and finished on turn 139. I think that's earlier than intended and it definitely felt too early.

I picked a scientific culture once - the Joseon. I claimed as many territories as I could - enough to get 3 expansionist stars in the industrial era and I was focusing on science in the last two eras. I had a very strong religion with two scientific tenets, harbors in every territory and all available scientific infratructure in my oldest cities. With all that I still didn't complete a single indutrial tech before winning the game. Science needs to be faster.

AI seemed decent, especially in that game where it wrecked me. In the second one the black AI was a bit scary - she was slightly ahead of me until I reached early modern. Then she fell off hard. When I won she was at industrial era 0 stars and I had a lead of about 1500 fame.

Infrastructure seems imbalanced. Science infrastructure is necessary to research anything and food infrastructure is also very important, Industry infrastructure is more situational, but it can be very good. Money infrastructure seems way too costly for its effect and I barely built any of it. Military infratructure was useless because of my completely peaceful play, but in the Victor opendev I was aggressive and this infrastructure still felt useless.

Era stars also seem imbalanced. I was getting aesthete and agrarian stars left and right, but admittedly I was generating a lot of influence and food. I went Olmecs->Carthaginians->Franks. What felt wrong was that I was also consistently getting Builder stars. I think I built very few districts compared to the size of my empire, but these stars also count resource extractors, harbors, outposts, holy sites and wonders. I got some militarist stars from bullying Vlad and several Sicentist stars throughout the game - that was about right. Trader stars were absurdly hard for me. I only got one and it was not as the Carthaginians. Yes, I ignored market quarters and money infrastructure, but that's because they give low value compared to other options. Money is expected to come from trade and I was trading a lot of luxuries. Also construction buyout felt pretty expensive, even though I had a 50% discount.

One last thought about legacy traits vs ED and EU. I think that legacy trait is the main reason to pick a culture, EU is irrelevant except maybe in ancient era and ED sucks for most cultures. I picked Olmecs, Franks and Joseon only for their legacy traits, especially the Franks. I didn't even consider building a scriptorium. The only ED I really made use of was the cothon, but that's because I prioritized building harbors and was planning to go Joseon. Since scientific progress is so slow, I didn't unlock any EU past the Frank knight. The only culture I didn't pick for the legacy trait was the last one, Russians. I just wanted to steal land from my nieghbours. The ED also seemed to combo well with my religion, but I didn't have the time to build any.