wanted to support everyone else saying the pacing for AI is way off, and i'm definitely finding it to be way too fast. Playing on empire difficulty and somehow an AI has hit the classical era on turn 32... i just entered the ancient era about 15 turns ago, and i was one of the first civs to do so. Whatever bonuses they're getting, they can't be properly tuned for the difficulty just above normal.

My few thoughts:

1. The pacing is off. My science could never keep pace with the eras. 
2. The AI was either way behind or ahead in all areas. Also dependent on difficulty. But even on higher some cultures just didn't move fast.
3. With eras advancing so fast, cities had a very large amount of things to build.

I think it would be cool if you got a research buff in earlier era tech if you re in the next era. Its an easy fix to sync them and to nerv research rush.

Then it would make more sense to play for era stars because the tech you will somehow get if you reached the next era and if you balance that properly it could lead to very cool decisions which way you want to research because you cant research everything until reaching the next era.

Ok maybe thats to much but i could imagine that it could feel natural

My era progression was way ahead of my techprogression. I was roughly one era behind(but i am noob so i belive if you play that right it could be ok)

The-Cat-o-Nine-Tales wrote:
How does your progress through the eras feel? Is it too fast or too slow?

Compared to science and to building speed it feels too fast. In Victor Opendev it was even faster and now it's better, but still the research progress is 1 era behind the fame pacing. As for building speed, with the stability and construction buyout nerfs I was able to build the Emlematic Quaters mostly in my cities when I was already managed to go into the next era. I think that stability and buyout with gold and population are overnerfed a bit, and in terms of city management you are always in some weird race with stars progressing. You want to build some good stuff but you are already in the end of the current era and you don't want to go futher. I want it to be balanced more properly.

The-Cat-o-Nine-Tales wrote:
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?

Exactly. And I don't honestly know is it something wrong with research progress or with era pacing, or both. But it feels wrong. I was able to stabilize my research speed with picking at least 2 science cultures and one of them was mosly Joseon.

The-Cat-o-Nine-Tales wrote:
How do you feel about the speed of population growth?

I think it is in the right place now, it feels good.

The-Cat-o-Nine-Tales wrote:
How do you feel about the value and the growth of the different resources (Including Influence)

I like the idea with influence cost for diplomacy and civic choices. You really need to manage it well in the begining of the game. But there are two problems:

1. Natural wonders that give you +5 influence give too much advantages. In multiplayer game if someone has +10 influence income with a lucky map generation, he will expand faster and reach the next era faster too.

2. In late game I mostly had a tonn of influence that I could spend easily on everything without even picking special cultures. The difference between early and late game in terms of unfluence necessity is too much. The influence cost or its growth must be balanced more properly with era pacing.

The-Cat-o-Nine-Tales wrote:
Are religions still to powerful, or are the bonuses at a more appropriate level now?

Religion for me was a nice bonus but I didn't feel that it influence on my game somehow really. And I still can't undersand how it works. It grows with a population progress, but  I can't feel how Faith numbers affect on it's progress.

The-Cat-o-Nine-Tales wrote:
How does the neolithic era feel now? Can you still grow your population too quickly?

I think that neolithic era is pretty fine now. In Victor Opendev I could grow my population faster and it was the fastest way to reach the next era. Now I feel like it's pretty balanced, I like that.

• How does your progress through the eras feel? Is it too fast or too slow?
  • Overall I enjoyed it, although it felt a bit too quick on some occasions.
  • The fame system however might need some adjustment as, in its current state, it kind of forces you to focus on expansion and build wide rather than tall. In addition it makes it a bit hard to play a dedicated/specialized civilization and kind of forces you to play a generic/average one.
  • One potential solution could be that the current cutlure's affinity could grant more than 3 stars and that those stars could be gained a little faster. This way we would really feel the impact of affinities and specialization.
• 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?
  • My research progress usually didn't match the eras at all. Even with selecting several scientific cultures I had a hard time keeping up  with the eras
  • The research progress speed did feel ok though, but the eras seemed always ahead of it.  
  • For example, I almost never managed to build the unique units in the current era and sometimes I didn't even have time to build them at all.
• How do you feel about the speed of population growth?
  • very good.
• How do you feel about the value and the growth of the different resources (Including Influence)
  • Food: very good
  • Industry: good
  • Gold: not sure. I tend to not focus on gold, especially since the cost of buying things seem to have been drastically increased since last beta, to the point where they felt like I could never catch up. It's still better than the Lucy open dev where players could buy everything too easily.
  • Science: good (except if you take the Joseon culture and then it skyrockets beyond reason.)
  • Influence: good (I like most of the new changes, it brings some interesting strategic choices in the early to mid game. The only problem is that where it feel better balanced for the expansion part of the game there is now a lot less opportunity to get wonders. Maybe wonders shouldn't be tied to influence or their cost should be reduced).
  • Stability: average. It's mostly good except that sometimes it seem to decrease without much warnings. There are a lot of things that can impact stability that need to be put forward a lot better through the UI.
• Are religions still to powerful, or are the bonuses at a more appropriate level now?
  • seemed mostly fine.
• How does the neolithic era feel now? Can you still grow your population too quickly?
  • Good but Yes. It is still possible to have more than 10 units by turn 14 and, unless you're aiming for a specific culture, waiting for the last minute to go to the ancient era is definitely a valid strategy (which makes it fun but maybe slightly overpowered).
  • A solution could be to add a (higher) maintenance cost to the scouts or a population threshold above which the scouts will cost a lot of money.
  • Except for that I really really enjoyed this era and would enjoy it even more if:
    • the food/research bonuses were placed randomly
    • the "goody huts" were not just about food and science/influence but had more variety like the curiosities of later eras. For the neolithic there could be more unique events and some very rare things like gaining a unique neanderthal warrior unit or something like that.

So I've only been able to finish 3 full playthroughs this time, on Humankind, Empire and Nation difficulties respectively. I started my first playthrough on Humankind difficulty, having still in mind Victor’s build … that was a big mistake ! The changes made to growth/food consumption and commons quarters’ stability in this build were pretty punishing actually, if not managed well. I felt Empire difficulty was the right difficulty for my playstyle, which I pretty enjoyed (Nation felt less challenging overall).

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

On Humankind difficulty, I felt that my progress was quite slow, with 2-3 AIs 1 era and half ahead of me during all the playthrough. Competitive Era Stars are a nice mechanic though in this situation, that will help you keep up with the overall eras pace. On Empire difficulty, it felt much more appropriate, I was in the lead and advancing with 1 or 2 AIs throughout the whole playthrough.

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?

On all my playthroughs, I invested on growing my cities population to take advantage of science infrastructures and prioritized building farmers, makers and emblematic quarters rather than building science quarters, due to stability management being more essential now. I’ll have to optimize better for sure, but generally speaking, on Humankind difficulty, I was really lagging behind on researches. On Empire difficulty, research pace felt more in line with the eras pace, though I couldn’t enjoy the industrial techs as much as I would have wanted to. 

How do you feel about the speed of population growth?

The change in food consumption from 6 to 8 makes population growth quite slow if you’re not investing early enough in farmers quarters and food infrastructures, specifically in Ancient and Classical Era. Those constructibles are almost mandatory now if you want to grow your cities to build units or fund your money and research incomes. I’ve also noted on all my playthroughs that the first AI that advances as soon as it gets 7 era stars usually picks the agrarian culture of the next era, which gives him quite a big advantage at growing pop, enabling him to snowball on city management and units production.

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

Overall, my main issues were with food and science, at least at early stage (Ancient and to some extent Classical). I like the changes made to Influence, I feel it’s more valuable now on Ancient and Classical Eras. Though, once you reach Medieval Era onwards, influence start getting accumulated without much use of it. 

I’ve also noticed some weird behavior on Main Plaza where some of my cities would count +2 influence/pop instead of +1. 

Example 1 :

Babylonians Turn 29.ctr

Example 2 :

French Turn 200.ctr

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

I feel Tenets bonuses are more balanced now, with the removal of “per fellowers on holy sites” bonuses.

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

I felt Neolithic to be more balanced now than in previous OpenDev.

The issue with late game is that the player is solving issues, by the time late game comes around a lot of issues are solved - war tends to "unsolve" these issues and so theres always a period of rebuilding afterwards but if you're not warring very often you find yourself clicking next turn again and again because everything is pretty much where it should be Later eras need to add more things to manage that the player doesn't even have to consider in the beginning, to replace the fact settling and building cities is now far less frequent. Electricity is a good medium sized addition that would give something else the player has to solve in the industrial and contemporary era. Politics is something else that in the beginning would be a small mechanic, by the end game politics is how the game is ran.

Simply put you can't keep pushing the problem back by increasing yield requirements because then managing problems becomes unsatisfying as problems feel unsolvable. But by allowing players to solve problems you need mechanics that "unsolve" those problems or add more problems for the player to have to consider and solve as the eras progress.

Corgiwealth wrote:

The issue with late game is that the player is solving issues, by the time late game comes around a lot of issues are solved - war tends to "unsolve" these issues and so theres always a period of rebuilding afterwards but if you're not warring very often you find yourself clicking next turn again and again because everything is pretty much where it should be Later eras need to add more things to manage that the player doesn't even have to consider in the beginning, to replace the fact settling and building cities is now far less frequent. Electricity is a good medium sized addition that would give something else the player has to solve in the industrial and contemporary era. Politics is something else that in the beginning would be a small mechanic, by the end game politics is how the game is ran.

Simply put you can't keep pushing the problem back by increasing yield requirements because then managing problems becomes unsatisfying as problems feel unsolvable. But by allowing players to solve problems you need mechanics that "unsolve" those problems or add more problems for the player to have to consider and solve as the eras progress.

I think creating new different kinds of problems is what would make the late-game more fun. The requirement for electricity could be one of them (having to secure coal / oil or otherwise having to wait for the renewable energies). And then we need power plants that to make it more interesting, would also need population to work there. So there would be a power-slot in the city that is required to be filled in order for the power plant to work. It could be like 5-10 people who are needed for a power-plant or something like this.

Another idea would be some game-wide migration mechanic for the late-game. If your neighbors have more humane policies, your population just go there. So you have to "undo" some of your civics (e.g. slavery). Otherwise you will lose instead of gain population. That might be too big of a change for the initial release in August, but if the game would get delayed it would be nice to have a mechanic like this.

I feel like there are few aspects of the game that would end up working better if they were made to have more synergy in what benefits they provide, which also solves the issue of some things seeming underwhelming or too linear in how interesting they are while playing.

Religion is a very core thing here in this statement, because I believe the framework for how the tenets are set up is a great idea to build on, while I think it doesn't have a very openly noticeable effect on the game; the impact it has is there, just it is hard to notice unless you fall into a situation of being under the religion influence of another empire and start following the religion they are the leader of (which is tenets being decided by them and you having no control over any benefits you may or may not get compared to you being the religious dominant empire).

Suggestions:

1. An empire view like in the dev's other games like EL not only would give us a more detailed scope of how we are doing compared to the other empires than just the fame scoreboard, but would also allow us to see who is under the influence of what religion and what tenets those religions offer.
2. Give something of other game mechanics a tool for choice of religion type and historical religion to decide or influence. For example, civics can have unique ones based on which religion you follow, or could have enhanced benefits to certain civic choices that coincide with how that religion would view that civic historically (being compatible with religion and civic choice, such as judaism may be partnered heavily with tradition, could lead to more of an effect on that civic, where having the opposite could reduce the effect.

1. Look at baseline economy numbers, as there should be no resource that feels nonexistent without getting cultures that will specifically boost that. This is why science was so strong with its ability in prior opendevs, and similarly influence early game with olmecs; the difference between their bonus and the baseline amounts were too great. Adding to this, it feels like there is almost 0 science production from ancient era start, which boils down to a few things: too few tiles producing science (and exploiting it with districts is low) even with resource extractors and a later era district, population yields tend to be too small for a huge impact and feel like they need to be food-focused first in order to actually grow population quickly to increase other yields more, and it feels like science economy is being balanced around science cultures being the strong point instead of baseline numbers being workable and science cultures being advantageous.
2. Era stars need goal numbers adjusted. Consistently, I hit influence and population stars much faster and in higher numbers than anything else. Getting certain stars too fast will lead to jumping eras too fast, this is a main cause for eras turning very early on and other things lagging behind it.
3. One thing that needs to make an impact going forward is the unique traits mentioned that players will get by playing and building playstyle patterns. Use these to not only bring forth specialization in playstyles, but also provide small buffs to what are usually weaknesses or necessary complements to those playstyles. For example, if I decide to greatly focus industry as a player so I can have that as a major building block for my empires I play, maybe one trait I should get gives +2 industry per population, +1 industry on exploited tiles, and because industry often needs science to fuel it with things to build +1 science per district.
4. Build more on mechanics from other games that give unique benefits to empires chosen while also supporting them through a secondary focus. For example, Endless space 2 has an empire mechanic I absolutely adore for how simple it is yet how much benefit it provides to just that 1 empire's economy: United Empire gets influence generation based on production done when completing a construction. Mechanics like these should be present more to help cultures' economy shortfalls, while being unique features here and there, and balanced in a way that is a small benefit that helps most during the era you would adopt that culture but not scale to an overbearing level later in the game.

Here are my answers to the questions proposed and other considerations:

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?

I think the problem lies more in the AI, in how fast they advance, dismissing all that precious fame it could harness. Personally, I played in civilization difficulty and despite being behind in era, I could collect many stars and eventually surpass the first AI in fame points. With this in mind, I still think research is a little bit slow, but I like how the game give us this sense of scarceness with its resources sometimes. As the tech tree is pretty rushable, I could maintain a certain level of technological correspondence with my current era even though at the cost of ignoring some parts of the tree. It's not perfect, but I don't think it's so bad as people are saying in this thread.

Someone else suggested on this forum a simple solution to science lag: cheaper science if most other players already have it. Osmosis events helps too. Maybe the more players already have that tech, cheaper it gets, or something like this...

How do you feel about the speed of population growth?

I think it's fine on its own. But I have a critique on how pop stars (and some others) incentives wars and conquest as they count total number rather than internal growth. Moreover, the military affinity active ability is exploitable for growth too.

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

In general, I think it's fine.

Specifically, there are some issues:

a) Changes on influence are nice but now It's too scarce on early game and remains too abundant on late game. I think the cost increase curve of influence things needs to be adjusted and someone gave an idea that I think it's brilliant: Drop city cap mechanic and make cities cost influence per turn according to distance from capital. So, that administrator techs could diminish those costs or even try something more creative like boosting influence per pop or improving defence against other cultures as well. This mechanic should lead to interesting scenarios where liberating a city could be a feasible choice and even set the bases for some colonization period based future content.

b) Money is in a strange place and I don't know how to tackle it. My opinion is buyout cost became prohibitive and trade routes are not very impactful. Moreover, the fact vassalage is utterly broken hinders me from making a reliable evaluation as well.

c) Forced labor changes were welcome, but I still think there should be a temporary cost on stability when using this action. Beyond this, I think this perk is better suited for a civic than a tech.

d) Chopping forest is still very weak and take too long. I think it should be a relevant choice the one about chopping and maintaing or planting forests. Even then, I found me using this mechanic on early modern era when the values become a bit more rewarding, but I think it's still a bit low.

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

Now religions are balanced, yes, but uninteresting too.

I personally agree with some people that said religion needs a rework.

Firstly, the game needs to be more clear how faith works. It's so difficult to understand whats happening...

Secondly, religion should be strictly binded with the cultural domination thing, maybe giving some new flavors and effects, complementing it. How? I have some ideas:

The 4 tiers of religion tenets should be reworked as 4 classes, where each religion could develop only one tenet from each class, but with no partlcular order, because the player may use their religion as they need. The thresholds for unlocking them are fine as they are today, in my opinion.

Anyway, the classes:

1 - "SEEDING" TENETS: these should focus on how the religion spreads, and it'd give more faith based on how you play, like: "oh we believe that our faith should be spread by sword" - so pick a tenet where you gain faith everytime you kill a unit... - or no, we believe that people must seek faith on meditation and self reflection, so more faith to holy sites... Other examples are: faith per researcher, per culturally influenced territory, per market quarter, let's be creative! But it's important that the options should reinforce some playstyle and be linked to specific actions or directions of the player in the game.

2 - SOCIAL TENETS: these should focus on how religion affects the governance of your society and their effects should be on stability issues. Like former class, the tenets have to be linked to the other resources but on how we play with them. Examples: the traditional stability per holy site, but we could get as well stability per harbor, per farmer, per administrative center or else. The sky is the limit!

3 - CULTURAL TENETS: these should focus on how the religion affects your relationships with other cultures and other religion followers. These may be a bit like civics but I think it's worth it. They could give bonuses related to influence production or cultural conversion defense and even things that affect diplomacy and war like default war score, influence costs discounts on diplo actions and etc. Example: a crusader tenet could give +10 default war score if someone follow another religion. On the other side, a pacifist tenet could give some influence when your empire is at peace... Maybe that tolerance civic could be transformed on a tenet from this class too... Something like that. But I think there is sufficient space for cultural tenets and some different civics about religion too.

4 - ECONOMIC TENETS: this is the class reserved for the ones we have today. Tenets that affects FIMSI production directly, depending on how we practice our beliefs in our day to day life. The game is already full of them so I don't need to get more detailed on this.

I think that something in line with this brief structure should make the religion system more engaging without a huge effort from the dev team in terms of doing this rework and maybe it could be feasible to do before the launch, but I don't know, it's just my 2 cents on this matter.

How does the neolithic era feel now? Can you still grow your population too quickly?
In my opinion it's fine as is, but I'd like to see that perk we used to get when completing all three stars back.

OTHER CONSIDERATIONS:
a) Some infrastructures are still pretty uninteresting like the influence ones or some money ones that cost like 600 production to give a mere +2 influence on main plaza... Like what??

b) I still don't get how the ransack mechanics work. The money values and turn timers seem to fluctuate randomly, I didn't think it's a very reliable feature.

---

At last, i'd like to thank you all again for the opportunity to help with the game. I think it's full of potential, but it still need some work to get there. Despite this, it's already a very fun game! 

RaphaelMart wrote:

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

Now religions are balanced, yes, but uninteresting too.

I personally agree with some people that said religion needs a rework.

Firstly, the game needs to be more clear how faith works. It's so difficult to understand whats happening...

Secondly, religion should be strictly binded with the cultural domination thing, maybe giving some new flavors and effects, complementing it. How? I have some ideas:

The 4 tiers of religion tenets should be reworked as 4 classes, where each religion could develop only one tenet from each class, but with no partlcular order, because the player may use their religion as they need. The thresholds for unlocking them are fine as they are today, in my opinion.

Anyway, the classes:

1 - "SEEDING" TENETS: these should focus on how the religion spreads, and it'd give more faith based on how you play, like: "oh we believe that our faith should be spread by sword" - so pick a tenet where you gain faith everytime you kill a unit... - or no, we believe that people must seek faith on meditation and self reflection, so more faith to holy sites... Other examples are: faith per researcher, per culturally influenced territory, per market quarter, let's be creative! But it's important that the options should reinforce some playstyle and be linked to specific actions or directions of the player in the game.

2 - SOCIAL TENETS: these should focus on how religion affects the governance of your society and their effects should be on stability issues. Like former class, the tenets have to be linked to the other resources but on how we play with them. Examples: the traditional stability per holy site, but we could get as well stability per harbor, per farmer, per administrative center or else. The sky is the limit!

3 - CULTURAL TENETS: these should focus on how the religion affects your relationships with other cultures and other religion followers. These may be a bit like civics but I think it's worth it. They could give bonuses related to influence production or cultural conversion defense and even things that affect diplomacy and war like default war score, influence costs discounts on diplo actions and etc. Example: a crusader tenet could give +10 default war score if someone follow another religion. On the other side, a pacifist tenet could give some influence when your empire is at peace... Maybe that tolerance civic could be transformed on a tenet from this class too... Something like that. But I think there is sufficient space for cultural tenets and some different civics about religion too.

4 - ECONOMIC TENETS: this is the class reserved for the ones we have today. Tenets that affects FIMSI production directly, depending on how we practice our beliefs in our day to day life. The game is already full of them so I don't need to get more detailed on this.

I think that something in line with this brief structure should make the religion system more engaging without a huge effort from the dev team in terms of doing this rework and maybe it could be feasible to do before the launch, but I don't know, it's just my 2 cents on this matter.

I think this is a really cool approach to reworking religion! I think it would help make religion more variable between playthroughs, too :D

ritchiaro wrote:

Some thoughts on religion:

- It is somehow unclear what exactly faith does, maybe the game should do a better job at communicating that. My current working hypothesis is that it is used to convert population, but the mechanics are not fully clear (e.g. does it matter where a faith-generating district is placed? Is it somehow accumulated or is only the faith per turn relevant? Do existing believers impact religious conversion or is it just faith?)  

- Once a religion is fully advanced, it seams like faith becomes somewhat obsolete. Since there are some late game cultures that generate faith it seems like this is somewhat useless. Maybe there could be a final additional tenet to make faith and religion still remain useful.

- The tenets seem more balanced now but feel a bit boring. I think religion has the potential to create some super funny combinations. I would love to see something where I can choose a bonus (e.g. additional science, influence, stability) and then combine it with where that bonus should be applied. Of course territories, cities, and holy sites make sense. But it would be interesting to also pick resources, buildings, districts, unit types, or terrain types. Since Humankind is all about combining different elements to create a new version of history, it would be so much fun to have a religion that is believing that you can read all truths from the structure of salt thrown down from a tree (adding science to salt), that the cultural progress of is happening through the exchange of goods and services (adding influence to money family buildings), that coastal water is holy (adding faith to coastal water tiles), or that military needs to go to work during peace time (units stationed in the city produce industry for every turn at which they are not fighting). Of course those need to be somehow manually balanced, but if done well, the game could offer basically two drop-downs for each of the two parts and then a table created by the devs determines how much of it would be added. But each part of the two can only be picked once to still make it competitive. If someone else thinks salt is holy, then you can't add you two cents to salt. If someone uses religion to gain science, you can't. Maybe that would be a fun idea for the final tenet. I generally think these kinds of more custom decisions that feel less generic than just "adding science to holy site" is what Humankind is missing a little bit. Some of the civics go into this direction, but since they only have two choices each it feels a bit less creative than having a broader space to explore. The space there is basically endless ;)

I think that would be super interesting for a future DLC (I doubt they can completely rework religion in 6 weeks) expanding on religion. It could be dressed up as adding gods to your pantheon (or other religious figures that fulfill that role of local / profession-specific divine figures in case of monotheistic religions, for example the Catholic faith has Saints). Adding on your examples, we could have for example a god of war and the oceans that gives units +1 combat strength when they are in a deep water tile, goddess of rivers and fertility that gives %increase in population generation speed per river tile in your city, and so many other options. This combination of 2 drop down menus would give a lot of replay value to religion and would be very immersive as well. I hope they can add it some day.

One "exploit" if you could call it that which i discovered was a way to spam out an army of a newly researched unit incredibly fast. The best example of this I found was getting

Arquebusiers.

You can get the gunpowder tech without researching Crossbowmen, meaning Archer units are not obsoleted for you. At the time you unlock the Arquebusiers, basically every city you own should be able to build an Archer in a single turn. Archers are WAY cheaper in production, and only cost 1 pop instead of 2. You then pay a cost of about 500 gold or so to upgrade the unit when you get the tech, which should be easy if you did at least a minimal investment into money generation.

Now, the "exploit" comes from the fact that units queued up do not upgrade in the queue, even if they turn obsolete. You also do not pay the pop cost until they are built. This means that the turn before you get Gunpowder tech (or any other tech that gives an unit upgrade) you can queue up a bunch of the old unit and just leave them there. When you need more units for your army, simply pop a few of the cheap old unit and pay to upgrade them.

I can see some sitiations where you don't want to pay the gold cost, but this seems like an easy way to get a faster powerspike with new units. Sure, you may also have an exisiting army you want to upgrade first, but remember that those units where likely built at a time where their production cost was set based on their era.

roger212 wrote:

ritchiaro wrote:

Some thoughts on religion:

- It is somehow unclear what exactly faith does, maybe the game should do a better job at communicating that. My current working hypothesis is that it is used to convert population, but the mechanics are not fully clear (e.g. does it matter where a faith-generating district is placed? Is it somehow accumulated or is only the faith per turn relevant? Do existing believers impact religious conversion or is it just faith?)  

- Once a religion is fully advanced, it seams like faith becomes somewhat obsolete. Since there are some late game cultures that generate faith it seems like this is somewhat useless. Maybe there could be a final additional tenet to make faith and religion still remain useful.

- The tenets seem more balanced now but feel a bit boring. I think religion has the potential to create some super funny combinations. I would love to see something where I can choose a bonus (e.g. additional science, influence, stability) and then combine it with where that bonus should be applied. Of course territories, cities, and holy sites make sense. But it would be interesting to also pick resources, buildings, districts, unit types, or terrain types. Since Humankind is all about combining different elements to create a new version of history, it would be so much fun to have a religion that is believing that you can read all truths from the structure of salt thrown down from a tree (adding science to salt), that the cultural progress of is happening through the exchange of goods and services (adding influence to money family buildings), that coastal water is holy (adding faith to coastal water tiles), or that military needs to go to work during peace time (units stationed in the city produce industry for every turn at which they are not fighting). Of course those need to be somehow manually balanced, but if done well, the game could offer basically two drop-downs for each of the two parts and then a table created by the devs determines how much of it would be added. But each part of the two can only be picked once to still make it competitive. If someone else thinks salt is holy, then you can't add you two cents to salt. If someone uses religion to gain science, you can't. Maybe that would be a fun idea for the final tenet. I generally think these kinds of more custom decisions that feel less generic than just "adding science to holy site" is what Humankind is missing a little bit. Some of the civics go into this direction, but since they only have two choices each it feels a bit less creative than having a broader space to explore. The space there is basically endless ;)

I think that would be super interesting for a future DLC (I doubt they can completely rework religion in 6 weeks) expanding on religion. It could be dressed up as adding gods to your pantheon (or other religious figures that fulfill that role of local / profession-specific divine figures in case of monotheistic religions, for example the Catholic faith has Saints). Adding on your examples, we could have for example a god of war and the oceans that gives units +1 combat strength when they are in a deep water tile, goddess of rivers and fertility that gives %increase in population generation speed per river tile in your city, and so many other options. This combination of 2 drop down menus would give a lot of replay value to religion and would be very immersive as well. I hope they can add it some day.

If the game core is implemented the way I think it is (with the use of the Decorator design pattern or variant of that pattern for adding bonuses to any kind of game object) then it would be super easy to implement most of them. Besides that it would be just a UI issue. But yeah maybe 6 weeks is a little short, though a free update a month later would certainly be possible. It would give a significant boost to a game mechanic that is currently feeling a bit dull and that has been a main focus of humankind and its history around the planet.

"+1 combat strength when they are in a deep water tile" also sounds fun! I like that one. There can only be one that negates the river-penalty :D

MaiFlow wrote:

One "exploit" if you could call it that which i discovered was a way to spam out an army of a newly researched unit incredibly fast. The best example of this I found was getting

Arquebusiers.

You can get the gunpowder tech without researching Crossbowmen, meaning Archer units are not obsoleted for you. At the time you unlock the Arquebusiers, basically every city you own should be able to build an Archer in a single turn. Archers are WAY cheaper in production, and only cost 1 pop instead of 2. You then pay a cost of about 500 gold or so to upgrade the unit when you get the tech, which should be easy if you did at least a minimal investment into money generation.

Now, the "exploit" comes from the fact that units queued up do not upgrade in the queue, even if they turn obsolete. You also do not pay the pop cost until they are built. This means that the turn before you get Gunpowder tech (or any other tech that gives an unit upgrade) you can queue up a bunch of the old unit and just leave them there. When you need more units for your army, simply pop a few of the cheap old unit and pay to upgrade them.

I can see some sitiations where you don't want to pay the gold cost, but this seems like an easy way to get a faster powerspike with new units. Sure, you may also have an exisiting army you want to upgrade first, but remember that those units where likely built at a time where their production cost was set based on their era.

This is the case of any sort of upgrade, you can ignore inbetween unit upgrades, like scouts can become knights without you having the ability to build horsemen. What I think should be done is to base upgrade cost on the industry cost difference between units, so upgrading from archers to Arquebusiers should cost more than doing the same upgrade from crossbow to Arquebusiers.

MaiFlow wrote:

Now, the "exploit" comes from the fact that units queued up do not upgrade in the queue, even if they turn obsolete. You also do not pay the pop cost until they are built. This means that the turn before you get Gunpowder tech (or any other tech that gives an unit upgrade) you can queue up a bunch of the old unit and just leave them there. When you need more units for your army, simply pop a few of the cheap old unit and pay to upgrade them.

I can see some sitiations where you don't want to pay the gold cost, but this seems like an easy way to get a faster powerspike with new units. Sure, you may also have an exisiting army you want to upgrade first, but remember that those units where likely built at a time where their production cost was set based on their era.

Yeah I have noticed that too. I did not think it's an exploit since you could also just have finished building those units and kept them in the city and both versions are somewhat equivalent in power. The maintenance of units is fairly low anyways and units give a stability bonus and generally prevent AIs from attacking you. So a standing army also has its benefits.
I would say this has probably a lower priority in getting fixed since the real impact of this only happens in like the few turns when the era changes. The problem with auto-upgrading unit production in the queue is that they end up consuming more pop than you initially planned for when you queued them up. So that would probably lead to a lot of player being confused that their cities lose pop more than they thought they would. And you could only auto-upgrade those that have not started to be trained (since those ones already have one pop in training and you can't just assume that you can add the additional pop to it since the city might be on 0). So there are a lot of corner cases that make auto-upgrading the queue really really complicated not only to design and implement but also for players to understand.

If this issue becomes a really big problem in multi-player because experienced players start misusing this mechanic, then it might be worth addressing it, but I personally feel like the current mechanic is probably the best one for the average player because fixing it would probably annoy a lot of non-competitive players, which are most certainly the majority of players.