Hello.

Thanks very much to bring me such an exciting beta-test. I’ve been fascinated by this game since open dev, and I’m very glad that you’ve done great improvement. Praise is beyond words. Nevertheless, I would like to make the game better and give my advice. This advice will be divided into 5 parts. Which are the issue about the map, incidence, cities, diplomacy and research.

Firstly, more content can be added to your picturesque map. You do seemly have a latitude system presented by the land of the far north is covered by snow and has a low productivity. Therefore, I would like see that you can well utilize the system, say give a geographic predisposition of different landscape, or just simply, a lower latitude will more likely to give rise to a desert if it’s in the hinterland or tropical forest is it’s near the cost or great river. Or on the foot of a high mountain facing the sea or hinterland, will show remarkable difference in landscape composition. Then is the second content to the map, more resources should be added to your map and also allow farms or crop fields to be built on to agrarian resources for example, honey (bee). And workshop district to be built on manufactural resources such as incense. The improved in collective facilitate on these resources should give a larger yield. Also, the types of resources should not be restrained in strategic and luxury resources, bonus resources like rice and caw should also be included. They should comprise of the foundation of the trading system, which I will discuss in detail in diplomacy sector. It’s natural me that stark land has little to no productivity (food and productivity), if there happens to possess natural resources, especially in the early stage of civilization, like that of nomadic tribe, the resources should have a larger impact. Because the game is started from an ancient era, most of the corps and household animals are not domesticated, subsequent technologies should give us to research to represent the process of domestication. If you accept the concept that civilization need to invest time and efforts to domesticate corps and animals, it’s natural that those corps and animal should give buffs to the civilization who create and adopt them. This is also true for luxury and strategic resources; they are useful in ritual formation and the bonus to productivity, respectively. Resources are also intertwined with the latitude and position of a fist city, which kind of corps or animal is readily available for domestication. The complex system of mutual interactions among resources, technology and productivity may require a great amount of work, and it’s highly impossible to implement the system before the final release in August. So, if you are willing to make this system, I’d be very glad to see it in DLCs. But I think, at least, you should make good use of your positional and latitudinal valve with bonus resources.

The second one is technology tree. I’m mot concerning about the exact content of the technology but rather the arrangement of the technology tree. Development or technology or science is far from steady, specific paradigms are dominating in each stage. Between them, are jumps and explosion of inventions and theories. They are far from a linear straight trajectory. My recommendation is you should rearrange the technology tree to mimic the actual process to research. Firstly, there should be some critical technology, say the wheel, the finding of bronze (the most famous era before the iron shall you to ignore?), formulation of basic mathematics. Each of them should give rise to multiple technology that required the invention of this basic technology. For example, if you haven’t found the technology of bronze (not be constrained by actual copper resources because mines only represent the great quantities of copper but doesn’t mean that no copper can be found besides those mimes.), massive stone work is impossible, basic army composition is also basically impossible, iron may not be found until the bronze and other technology. So the first two technology are subsequent or small branches derived from the many branch of the bronze, and Iron is the next critical branch for technology procession. The technology chains should be presented like a tree, but not railway connecting each station. However, this could be tricky because by presenting the tree, the technology interface will be complex and hard to comprehend, so you should try to give two to three layers to fully present the hierarchy. The first is composed solely of the critical technologies (main arteries), the second is the subsequent technologies of a specific critical one, the third can be a perquisition page that point out the connection and required technology for the targeted research. 

The second issue of this part is the explosion of productivity and scientific procession. The linear requirement of refinement and productivity is just like that of CIVILIZATION 6, no innovation. Not only the culture is improved, I would like to see great improvement in scientific breakthrough and productivity improvement. So far, I have not found any games that can simulate this process (except some of the manufactural games), if you can make this first in 4X games, I will call that a second prominent innovation besides from the combat in HUMANKIND. I’m also looking forward to enjoying this refinement in DLCs.    

The third aspect that I call a great refinement is the diplomacy system. I can tell that you have a lot of novel and interesting idea in diplomatic interactions but they are not cooperated into an organic system. Some of the ideas are disjointed and conflict with each other. Like the vassals, the vassal nation automatically become my ally if the master is my ally. It’s indeed natural. But when I sign the advance open border treaty with its master, the vassals will not give his permission for trespassing. And also, I can’t trespass the land actively, because I cannot declare war. The second confusing thing is the war support. How could my war support rise to 100 when I my ally accept by proposal for advancing our treaty? And as a nation, I cannot artificially use propaganda to spread hatred among my people to raise war support? Why low war support cannot start a war. It’s strange that starting a war with a high war support are not called a surprise wall. If it’s true, then Japan attacked the Hawaii is not a surprise wall. You should give us an excuse system just as the games made by PARADOX. It will be better if you can study the idea of diplomacy of EU4. 

The second main problem is the trade system, why is system didn’t allow us to transact goods with goods but only allowing us to trade with money? And also, because of the low value of luxury resources, I myself never try to buy things from others.

Some other questions in this section are: when will a nation surrender? Can they surrender just at the beginning of the war, in the next turn? And can the vassal countries earn its freedom with foreign support, etc.

The next aspect is the city itself. You allow army to ransack cities and refinement to acquire money. But I want the game to allow us to ransack resources and people. The slave should be a kind of special pop or even resources in the cities. And we are allowed to demolish a city completely, in order for a place ready for setting another city in another location. Or just we can rearrange the cities within the empire, but with a great expanse. I can see improve in the stability system, but now I’m still confused by the gradual increase or decrease of the stability. You’d better explain why the stability fluctuation in detail like if I move my mouse to “the stability to decrease 5 per turn until it reaches 65” It should tell me why it’s 65 or instances that influence the number in the specific turn. Even I haven’t built any district or connect any cities or outposts, and no incidence for stability, I can still see the stability fluctuate in my cities and I don’t know why? And the benefits or negative effect of high or low stability is not given.

The incidence system is one of my favourites. However, it’s becoming boring because in each game it gives the same incidence (in majority). I want different one in accordance with different cultures and missions.

Lastly, still some small bugs:

1. When the army are designated to a combat, the preview interface somehow remains through turns, and the model of army involving in the war that never happens is disappeared on the map but can be still found on the unit list.
2. The automatic exploitation will sometimes sail itself to death on the deep sea
3. After a unit is designated to a remote location, the turn ending is continuously telling you that the unit still need to moved.

That’s what I think so far, thanks again for bring an excited test version of the game.