I know I'm going to piss some people off with this post, but I have to get it off my chest: I currently thing that Humankind is a beautiful but shallow 4X game.

In other words, I fell like this game is a dumbed down version of vanilla Endless Space 2, favoring style over substance.

A little bit of context first: As a big 4X fan, I played all Amplitude games and support them since the very first playable version of ES1. 

However, I lost faith in them after the first DLC of ES2, riddled with poor design choices and balance problems. The subsequent DLCs were even worse.

Now, regarding Humankind, I played 25 hours total over all "free" Open Devs and the current Closed Beta. I only played one game with the Closed Beta build, but after turn 70 I got bored and I can't help to think: where is the complexity in this? It is surely a balance issue (pace is a mess), but I feel the game is on auto-pilote, I don't manage anything appart from building stuff in cities, moving armies and creating some outposts at the beginning of the game... In order to evaluate the fun part of managing an Empire in a 4X game, I always ask myself: could the game still be fun even without AI opponents? The answer is NO in the case of Humankind, because War is at the center of the gamedesign (just take a look at the Tech Tree) and cities cannot fall under their own weight: no malus linked to population, no internal politics, no challenging interactions with the environment, exploration is lacking... Stability issues could destroy your Empire, but Civics are not even mandatory and fun and you just have to wait before unlocking the proper buildings to solve the problem (the important word here is "wait").

I mean, compared to other 4X games and previous Amplitude games:

- Where is the Empire screen showing me all my cities, what is currently built, the Stability for each city, the population distribution, the list of all my bonuses... ?

- Where is the Economy screen showing me all my resources, all the resources to buy, all the trade routes the I have in one place... ?

- Where is the Diplomacy screen showing me an overview of all relations between the Empires? Where is the possibility to actually negotiate things by trading ressources/techs/cities to obtain peace/agreements/techs at the cost of Influence ? No casus belli (War support is fine but still) ? No economy/science agreements (tech exchange due to influence is nice but we have far less control on this) ?

- Where is the Politics, the actual feeling that we manage People and not just symboles in a spread sheet? The Civics stuff would have been nice if the bonuses were not boring (only small numbers here and there) and if the way we play would shape the political orientation of the Empire. It doesn't feel organic like ES2, if feels arbitrary and binary. Don't get me started on the absence of Governments and Laws (hello ES2 and CivVI)

- Where are mid-endgame crisis or other events that can give life to the game?

- Where are Heroes or Great People, allowing to change the course of the game because of their power affecting the world and other mechanics?

- I appreciate innovations like Fame and Culture change/transcendance, very nice ideas. But as usual with Amplitude, the implementation is not ideal. Fame in itself is not enough to motivate me to push forward, specially in the case where game mechanics feel too shallow to engage me. In addition to Fame, it would have been great to have the standard Big Goals of other 4X, like science/culture/trade/wonder/etc "victory conditions". Achieving one of these conditions could grant a truck load of Fame, which could give a chance for smaller Empires to shine. Regarding Cultures, I feel that they are not different enough to make an impact on gameplay, as it just consists of FIIMS bonuses, unit variants and shared Abilities. I would have loved to see actual gameplay differences, like being able to create cities on top of mountains or force peace or something.

To be fair, the current implementation of War is really great. Tactical battles are fun and engaging, the War Support mechanics has a nice depth to it and the variety of units is impressive.

For this reason, I have the impression that Humankind if a glorified War Game with 4X elements and really nice graphics and music.

I want to love this game, so please if you think that I missed the true substance of the game feel free to be harsh on me if you think it will change my mind.

However, if you are like me, maybe provide 1 or 2 suggestions to improve the game in order for this thread to be more constructive that just a rant.