In a game like humankind, a change affecting one thing can dramatically effect everything about the game. I believe we have seen several changes that have had this impact, and I find it difficult to talk about all these factors separately in the megathreads. Instead, I am making a single post of my feedback for the developers so that I can thoughtfully consider the impacts of different mechanics on each other without cluttering the threads.

Before providing specific feedback, I do want to say to the developers something that may sound harsh, but I think is really important to hear: the closed dev is the least fun I’ve had with any version of the game. The pacing is totally off, and the cultures seem much less distinct than they have previously. Where I was able to grow specific advantages based on my cultures and EQs in previous versions, many of the picks now end up feeling “samey” in city development. The impact of focusing on builders/industry is taking a couple turns off a very long production queue, or focusing on science a few extra techs before the end of the game. Outputs just don’t seem to scale appropriately for the amount of effort you put into growing them.

That said, here is my specific feedback. Like previous opendevs, all my feedback is on the Humankind difficulty.

Game Pace

Yikes. There is a serious mismatch here with the game pace. Without hyperfocusing on technology, the techs you unlock are about in-line with what you saw historically. However, eras were moving far too quickly for both the player and AI. I had a game where the AI entered the Early Modern at turn 72 – which is 2042 BCE! Most games saw at least one or two of the AI enter Early Modern by turn 80, and I had AI reaching the industrial era a little after turn 100. Based on the “50 turns per era” standard – the game is moving at over twice the speed it should be for era progression when it comes to the AI at this difficulty.

Human players can also progress quite fast. Classical by turn 35 and medieval by turn 60-65 isn’t out of the question if you know what you’re doing. In old builds I felt like I could linger in the eras for longer though – I’m not actually getting stars faster than I had previously, but my ability to really flesh out the era no longer exists because I feel like I’m in a constant rat race with the AI to the next era.

 Some of the stars are also quite a bit more difficult now due to changes. Specifically:

Militarist Stars

Because the rate at which AI accumulates technology is insane relative to the player, you are always at a tech disadvantage. I’ve been rushed by a full stack of Hunnic hordes at turn 30 – completely impossible for the player. I’m lucky to even have spearmen by this point. The result is that militarist stars are hard to come by because you can’t really aggress against opponents that completely outclass and outnumber your military. If you’re in a defensive war, you can two or three star this – otherwise it is not happening.

Expansionist Stars

Basically the same problem as above. You might be able to get an early expansionist star or two, but impossible to fight anything but a defensive war against the AI right now except in a very narrow set of circumstances. The AI seem to be able to expand to claim territories much faster than you are able to, and it is very difficult to take them because of their advantage in both military size and technology. This also has later effects of slowing some of your era stars like growth and builder because you don’t have as many cities to contribute while your existing cities have reached a soft cap.

Builder Stars

This one is something I didn’t expect. I can now get one star pretty consistently, but two stars is a struggle in beginning around medieval and three is usually outright impossible after the early game. A lot of this has to do with stability changes, which allows you to build fewer quarters in each city, and what seems like increased production costs for quarters. Builder cultures have really been hit hard by this imo. Also - the increased cost of quarters has really hurt quarters that benefit from adjacencies like  the Great Obelisk, while EQs that have per pop effects are mostly unharmed.

Science Stars

I don’t think I need to say anything about this one. I think I’ve had one era in one game where I’ve managed to get two science stars.

Neolithic/legacy trait

There seems to have bee a reduction in both the amount of growth and the number of curios. However, the growth reduction has also reduced the capacity of players to locate curious because there are fewer tribes running around. I could usually hit the growth and hunter star by turn six or seven, but would consistently take until around 11 or 12 to get the curios. Because the legacy trait seems to be bugged in this build, it absolutely isn’t worth it anyway. I want to emphasize: do not underestimate the effect that a fixed legacy trait will have on the game. Anything that grants per pop bonuses can be very powerful, and fixing this trait may substantially affect balance.

I think the general turn target for Neolithic to ancient should be turn 10 with one or maybe two stars, and a couple extra turns for all three since curious grant a powerful legacy trait, normally at least, but potentially at the cost of losing the culture you prefer). At 6 or seven turns I felt like I hadn’t sufficiently explored the surroundings to give a true alternate settle to my starting location on my first play (which is the only one that truly matters for exploration – on later runs I knew where to go to settle).

A lot of the pace of growth was also dictated by fairly unfriendly terrain to both the north and east of the starting location. If you started in a flatter location, I suspect this would go much faster.  That’s the thing about only having one map to play with: the terrain can have significant impact on your play and we don’t know what it is going to look like in different scenarios. But for the moment at least, Neolithic is slightly too fast for me on the hunter/growth stars (perhaps because of the sanctuaries giving 20 food?). Curios would probably feel about right if it took one or two turns longer for growth.

Another note: it is extremely frustrating that after you pick a culture, your next turn you are required to place a city if you have an existing outpost. Sometimes you don’t get the culture you want and your original outpost placement is no longer as suitable as another location. Don’t require me to place the city immediately.

FIIMS

Food and Growth

Growth has obviously been reduced in this build, and it is probably for the best. This has had carryover effects on other items (more at the end of this section). The result is that it can be quite hard to grow cities. I’ve included a late-game example from one of my games (one in which I didn’t get any of the agrarian cultures). In this shot, I have all the food infrastructure available to me, two harbors, a river, a few agriculture quarters exploiting food, and half of my population has to work food to maintain the city. I think this comes back to tech problems: although I’m in the industrial era where pop should really start to boom, I don’t have most of the technologies that would allow me to reasonably support that population.  Further, a river is basically a requirement now with reduced food. I think this is probably fine, but I think the developers should be aware of this if it wasn’t intended.

I will also note that by decreasing food, agricultural civilizations have also risen in stock quite significantly. Pops are power, and in the early game one or two extra pops on science makes such a massive difference to how the game plays.

Growth stars seemed to be in a reasonable spot for parts of the game. You could get one, maybe two, with a little investment, and more serious investment with an agrarian culture would yield three.  However, the tech pace meant that early growth locked you out of later growth stars. Population really stagnated in medieval and industrial because you were effectively at a soft cap on the population you could support, and you didn’t have the technologies to increase your food production/stability for more agriculture quarters.

Industry and City Growth

Industry seems to have slowed quite substantially compared to Victor and Lucy. I’m not sure what was specifically changed behind the scenes, but also contributing to this are a combination of: fewer pops overall, more pops required to maintain existing pops, greater need for stability (more production going to stability instead of expanding production) and slow technology progress hindering ability to build critical infrastructure that support production. It seems like there is also an increase to base cost and/or cost scaling.

A civilization/city that focuses on industry should really be rewarded for doing so, but for the most part it was a struggle to get over 400 or 500. In the screenshot I included above where my city had a decent slant towards production, I still had sub-400 production and it was taking me 14 turns to build one of my industrial emblematic units. The location of craftsmanship in the tech tree also was a serious problem for production this build. It is a dead end, which in this build means you are wasting your science. The only techs you can afford to unlock are ones that progress to more techs.

Influence

Influence production is very slow but very vital at the start of the game, but falls off later. There are a few impacts.

1. Founding myths- natural right is mandatory every game
2. Shamanism is superior to polytheism because there really aren’t alternatives to generating influence
3. Natural wonders are an insane advantage. +10 influence is completely overpowered at the start of the game.

I’ll also note here that the influence cost to combine cities is pretty outrageous. Contrary to much of the feedback here I actually felt like influence at the start of the game was pretty reasonable if you know what to focus on. In fact, I found I would three-star aesthete in every era without ever picking an aesthete culture. The issue is that the choice between “more influence” and “more faith” isn’t really a choice – particularly now with the state of religion.

Money

Late game costs actually feel in a decent place. One game I was able to pick the Dutch, get a bunch of VOC Warehouses, and get 2 or 3 merchant stars, and have gold to purchase things at a reasonable pace (every several turns) without any prior gold infrastructure.

Early game felt like a different story. I was basically only able to use gold to rush something that had one turn remaining, or perhaps panic purchase a single unit near the end of ancient. Maybe this is intentional?

Science and Pacing

Science is in a really, really bad place at the moment compared to the rest of the game. Or perhaps the rest of the game is in a really bad place compared to science? I think it is the latter, personally. At this point I think the devs are well aware of the science issue.

Closing Thoughts on FIIMS

There are some issues with FIIMS, but not everything needs to be adjusted here because a change to one affects all the others. For instance, reducing food upkeep allows for more pops, which lets you maintain higher output of Industry, Money, and Science.

The key component here for the developers to consider, really, is science. Science pacing is the most important thing that affects your outputs of FIIMS through unlocking additional features that increase those FIIMS. I suspect, however, that the rest of the game needs to be slowed down. This may come from it being harder to get stars, or requiring more stars to advance.

Diplomacy

The AI in this build seemed a little schizophrenic. One turn they’d be happily trading with me and enter into a non-aggression pact, then a few turns later they decide they hate me and declare war. I think perhaps there may be some traits involved here that make them opportunistic – but at the Humankind difficulty the opportunity is pretty much always there to get bullied by the AI because they produce an outrageous number of armies relative to the player and are just magically an era and a half ahead on tech for the entire game.

I found lack of proximity to most other civilizations made it harder to get trade going. And even once you met them, quite a few didn’t want to trade with you. I’m not sure if this is specific to the map and/or AI personalities in this particular scenario. However, it did make trade significantly more difficult than in previous versions and for luxuries that are not as impactful as they used to be.

War

Population is King

When it comes to war, particularly early in the game, the primary limiting factor is your population. Ironically, this makes the Harappans and Celts the best warmongers in the ancient/classical because they can actually support proper military production without completely hamstringing their cities. Further, they can steal pops from enemies which simultaneously increases their ability to wage war while decreasing their neighbor’s.

AI tech advantage dictates conflict the entire game on high difficulties

The AI is ahead on tech 100% of the time in every era for the entire game. They will be at arquebus while you are unlocking pikemen. They will have a full stack of hunnic horde while you’re still working on the very first tier of technologies. There are very very limited windows in which you could press an advantage in the classical era and sometimes medieval – and even then, it was only against your southern neighbor who was hemmed in by geography.

Now, this is still something that can be overcome with clever tactics and strategy, but it isn’t particularly fun to always be behind with no chance to catch up. However, the biggest tech hurdle is actually organized warfare. There is a window in the game where your enemies will be able to bring several armies to bear while you are still limited to one. You have to fight in a siege defense to have anything resembling a chance, and you’ll still need to hope the AI commit some tactical errors to have a chance (thankfully they often do). The window where this is dangerous is around turn 30 or so.

AI seem to have unlimited pops/armies

Look, I know the game needs to be challenging at these difficulties, but the ability of the AI to absolutely pump out massive numbers of armies needs to be tuned. It is just nonstop, and the lack of population should really hamper their cities, but it doesn’t do so to nearly the extent it does for the player. I shouldn’t have to defeat three full armies at turn 35, march on their only city, and discover that they have conjured yet another stack.

This doesn’t really fit into a category, but the AI being able to raid in two turns when it takes the player seven is the absolute worst. Games need to at least pretend the AI is playing by the same rules.

Terrain Generation and Geography

The territories in this build are not good in my opinion. There is a lot of snakeyness into other territories that end up cutting off critical locations between multiple territories. River systems are cut between multiple territories at critical junctures and there are long windy pieces that stick into other territories that are difficult to make effective use of. Rivers are basically essential now to maintain decent growth and pop. IMO terrain chokepoints are a little too frequent. Too many places where there is only one way up or down.

I also noticed that there were a lot of breaks in shoreline to deep ocean. It made having a seafaring civilization quite difficult and felt a little unnatural. The coastline was also broken up between many territories, making it difficult to fully utilize.

Stability

Stability actually feels in an ok place overall now, I think the main issue for stability is that because tech pace is well behind era pace, getting the commons quarter takes a really long time. This hurts builders quite a bit who really need the stability to get their primary era stars. I did find though that I was using garrisons for stability, which is more than I used them for before this build. However, ideologies were basically an illusion of choice. The best play is to always stay in the middle of the sliders for as much time as possible. The only time you drift is when there is a particular civic that is really important to unlock, but then you drift back towards the center of the slider as much as you can.  Perhaps the one exception towards this is a slight drift towards liberty at the start of the game when you don’t need stability as much and the influence is extremely important.

Natural Wonders

Natural wonders are cool but overpowered for anyone who can settle one in the early game. I’m cool with giving buffs to people who settle them, but +10 influence is game-changing in the early turns.

Wonders

Wonders were basically impossible to get at Humankind difficulty. I managed one across several games. This is because of the rate of era advancement for the AI – they were so far ahead that you don’t have a chance to claim wonders. Even if they don’t have great influence later in the game, there isn’t much else to spend it on than claiming wonders.

I also wish I had been more explicit about wonder impacts in earlier builds. The primary impact is that one of the best ways to get stability for a city that is already well developed is through building wonders. This is no longer possible. Instead, the AI is the one building megacities with stab buffs from holy sites and wonders. For higher difficulty players, I think this is one of the key factors as to why you seem very stability limited and your cities aren’t able to develop quite as effectively.

I am glad the AI competes for wonders now, though I wish I had a realistic opportunity to actually get a couple. Pre Modern wonders get claimed before turn 100-110.

AI

Here’ the short version: some of the AI bonuses are just not fun to play against. In particular, the tech advantage is pretty outrageous and you never catch up. They have era-appropriate techs while you’re always an era to an era and a half behind. They also seem to have virtually unlimited pops with which to spam military and seem totally unchained from the need to produce food to maintain their cities. In the game I provided an image of with a 35 pop city needing 17 farmers, the AI had a 30 pop city with no agricultural quarters, only two river tiles, and no agrarian culture picks. And this AI, with its single city, was on par with me on technology for most of the game (and ahead at the start before I subjugated them). On the rare occasion I managed to take a city, it was largely research quarter spam.

Based on my observations, it seems that the AI may be getting to start with the colony model on all their cities or something like that.

By far my best games were when I got Harappans to start - though later agriculture civs were pretty much impossible to get given the AI’s progression speed and how a couple seemed to favor agricultural civilizations.  I also noticed that when I picked the Harappans in ancient, the AI progressed to classical at a slower pace. I had one game where the black AI did not pick celts – instead the Green AI did which I had already subjugated and had one city, so had limited growth potential. This is the only game where the AI and I kept reasonable pace with each other in fame for most of the game – until someone got the Haudenosaunee and the AI absolutely exploded once again. I’m not sure how coincidental this is, but I think looking at the interactions between the AI bonuses and agrarian cultures warrants some investigation.

Religion

Picking shamanism was extremely relevant at the start. However, the holy sites are now mostly useful for the stability and influence after that. The exception is if you manage to get the stability tenets, which are much better than their counterparts now. Like +25 science/production/food on the capital at… tier 2? Not very impactful. The flat bonus of, say, +50 science per holy site was alright, not good, not bad, just ok. Though the value of this has decreased since you can’t get the wonders that act as holy sites most of the time.

With the removal of per pop bonuses, there isn’t much incentive to care about spreading your religion beyond wanting to maintain religious leader.

Cultures

Aesthete

Olmecs are pretty damn good. Zhou are better with changes to stability, though their EQ makes them pretty situational with terrain requirements. Mauryans are meh. Franks are probably one of the best cultures in the game overall, giving you bonuses towards several important outputs. Ming trait isn’t useful, and EQ isn’t that impactful since influence doesn’t matter much at this point in the game. I’m also uncertain why you’d ever pick austro-hungarians when you can pick Italians. +10 stab on commons quarter is insane, plus you get 50% off the commons quarter, and the EQ is going to produce more influence than the AH trait and EQ combined.

Agrarian

Agrarians are god-tier in this build almost universally. More pops means more everything, and you really need it in the game’s current state. Lower base growth means that without an agrarian culture you’ll struggle to maintain larger cities without having large numbers of farmers. The active ability, which I touched on earlier, is probably the strongest in the game. Much too powerful now that growth has been slowed so much – it wasn’t as bad in previous builds where pop growth was much more sustainable.

Celts are still overpowered. English are the exception to god-tier imo, being a culture I would pretty much never pick.

Builders

I actually think builders are overall in an ok spot at the moment. Some are obviously better than others, like the khmer, but the culture also comes at a time where you are severely stability limited which makes it hard to achieve builder stars for that era. I was a little disappointed though that even in cities where I focused production and took one or more builder cultures, my production output still seemed pretty damn slow. This probably goes back to population and stability changes, and increased quarter costs. It was quite difficult to get 3-star builders. This may also be related to it being very difficult to take enemy cities with their massive science/military advantage.

I will note that due to changes in growth and increased food need, the builder ability has been effectively nerfed because you are going to have fewer pops on gold/science and more pops on food.

Expansionists

My opinion of expansionists has improved overall with the addition of freely trespassing. Ottomans need some love still, they’re pretty bad. Trait may as well not exist, the EQ producing faith and influence is just not worthwhile for the point in the game you get it, and Janissaries are in a spot in the tech tree where there are rapid upgrades to infantry. Spanish are mostly useful for their trait.

Merchants

Merchants took a hit, and rightfully so. Perhaps a little too much? The map was really unfriendly for Phoenicians/Carthage as well. I’m withholding judgment on merchants for the time being, I find it hard to judge. As mentioned previously, I found trade quite a bit more difficult in this build due to uncooperative AI and relative distance of civilizations, which hurt merchants more than others.

Militarist

There is a lot of variation here. Huns and Mongols are very good. Goths are probably the worst culture in the game. Hittites and Mycenaeans struggle a bit because they don’t have the means to maintain population early in the game and create sufficient units to take advantage of their bonuses.

Scientist

Scientist cultures range from “decent” to “really good.” I don’t think there is a science culture that I am unhappy taking, which is a good place to be in. I will note that like the builder, the scientist ability has been effectively nerfed because you are going to have fewer pops on gold/production and more pops on food.

This review seems pretty good. I also felt that although it has its good points Close Beta seems to add game crashes, saves don`t load problems, new bugs, things that were not in Victor. Also the ability to see what cities produce when in zoom out view was also removed when it was so useful in Victor, also color coded districts are not visible in zoom out view (enabled by bottom button) and that is also bad to hide that important info if you play to see more of the map at once. I`m a little scared for the final release when i see these steps back but i hope for the best as i love Amplitude games.