A touch of background: I am a Civilization veteran, having played the game since Civ2 Gold Edition, and have logged way too many hours in Paradox Interactive games including Stellaris, EU4, and Vicky2.  I've been playing grand-strategy wargames on tabletop (Twilight Struggle, Paths of Glory, Twilight Imperium, Etc. Etc.) and 4x games (Master of Orion, Age of Empires series, Total War series, etc.) for a very long time. I also did very little, if any, reading on Humankind game mechanics, impacts, or meta-discussion before my first time playthrough.  For a less-rambly take away, feel free to scroll down to the bulletpoints.

I just logged my first Beta build game of Humankind, and I have both positive and negative feelings. I like the general 'feel' of the game, and most of the core systems. Exploring is basically fun, battles are fun in terms of raw mechanics, and the economy, while not complicated, is comprehensible and has some depth. This is a game I am not disappointed with my purchase of, and look forward to playing it with randomized maps and more room to spread out into. The bones of this game are extraordinarily solid, which is often the hardest thing. I want to emphasize to the Devs who might read this: I enjoyed my time with the game. But there are improvements that absolutely need to be made.

The problem is that the game's systems are not in tune with one another in terms of how they are paced. 

During my game, I finished in 164 turns and scored a more-or-less killer victory (I was playing on the just-above-standard difficulty. I wanted to see how the AI's bonuses helped it at this level) By games end, my military was leagues ahead of the opposition not due to tech, but due to actually building better combat units. By game end, I had literally just discovered Alchemy as a tech and I was not, I should note, making any significant efforts to force the game to conclusion. I was just starting to scout the uninhabited continent with Cogs and try to circumnavigate the world, and I had been forced into several wars wherein I vassalized my opponents for massive gold income which, combined with the civic that turned all influence costs into gold costs, trivialized most of the game management. I had built tons of tech buildings, and yet by the end of Era 5, I wasn't even up to gunpowder warfare. 

This is the first systems-balance issue: The amount of effort it takes to get Era stars does not increase enough with each era in order to allow for that era's tech tree to develop, for cultural events to drive civics, or for there to be much in the way of narrative events. This especially true for the AI. The AI, due to the back-end money and production boosts, were pushing era-changes along very quickly. (Only one other Civ was not at Era 5 when the game ended.) This necessitated a greater investment in military, which itself pushes era-stars along very quickly. As Fame is the only dictator of victory, this leaves the player with no choice but to rushdown the easiest to get Era stars instead of perusing their own goals - Namely, killing enemy military units and expansionist stars, followed by the Gold-earning star due to the long-standing bugbear of vassalization income being too dang high.

The second biggest problem here is the amount of tech required to complete any given technology does not scale well to the realistic amount of tech points a given city can produce (Assuming the 200 turn limit is not a Beta-only thing, and is in fact, a natural game-end progression.  Additionally, nearly none of the tech-culture bonuses are of a sufficient size to deal with the increased technology costs over the course of the game.  I do know other players have not had this experience, but as a first-time player, my experience with the tech tree more-or-less boiled down to "It never really mattered." that I was hyper-focusing tech advancement. I never got appreciably further than my opponents, and I never fell appreciably behind.  Once again, I reached the endgame before I even reached Gunpowder warfare. 

The Third biggest problem is in warfare: And in this case, it's an AI problem as old as time. Namely, that the AI places no significant emphasis on the production of ranged units. Indeed, the AI's preference for military units was almost entirely Cavalry, with occaisonal sprinkling of melee units and spearmen, right through the entire game. Rarely were archers produced more than a one-or-two off, excepting one of the 'minor nations' which produced a boatload of them that I hired. Time and time again, the simplest path to military victory against the AI was the production of Anti-Cavalry units, which more-or-less wrecked enemy forces time and time again.  

Additionally, the AI has a problem with forming actual combat groups. They tend to form 4-stacks and send them off to do a task, allowing me to defeat them in detail with very little strategic input on my own part. The AI seems to prioritize Ransacking over nearly any other tactical or strategic concern.  The sole key to warfare in this game seems to be - Concentrate your forces, wait for the AI to split up, then run them down one unit at a time. 

To summarize, my first impression of the game indicates the following critical list;

* Rebalance tech-tree costs and technology generation. It should be both feasable and useful to reach further in the tech tree than the 3rd era by the game's end.

*Rethink Era-star costs, and how fast both the AI and the player can acquire them. Consider exponential increase in star-costs after the first in order to keep Era's from flying by before they can be appreciated. Alternatively, require a certain tech level or number of fully researched techs before you can pick up a new Culture. This is the number one problem with the game as it stands right now, and absolutely needs fixing before a full release.

*Rethink Vassalization benefits: Instead of basically their entire gold income, some kind of tribute of all four major resources, but only a fixed percentage. Include more diplomatic ways to turn vassalization into alliance, or make vassalization a much more expensive and difficult process.

* Reconsider the game's pacing within the core systems. How long does it take to research / build / gather / grow. How does this impact the enjoyment of other parts of your systems? How often do narrative events occur? I often felt like Era Stars were coming far too easily and far too quickly to think of the game in terms of a narrative beyond the 2nd era. Why does it feel like the AI's resource bonuses just let it play a different game entirely than the one I am playing? 

* Work on teaching the computer AI the glories of combined warfare, and the importance of ranged units in combat. Encourage them to build a variety of units, and mob together in the way a player will do so. 

* Consider removing all fame bonuses for finding Natural Wonders first. Instead give short-term bonuses to your cities, units, or some other effect. One of the Civ's in this Scenario started with a massive fame bonus over everyone else, and I spent most of the game chasing them down by committing conquests (The only quick and reliable way to get fame). 

*Consider adding more Cultural Wonder Buildings, and limiting them to one per civilization. By the time I had saved up 250 influence (Which up to that point I had been spending like water,) One Civ had built 3 Cultural wonders, and there were none left to build. 

*Religion as a system feels like it needs a lot more work. My game had precisely one religion ever generated: Mine, and I didn't control it, because I didn't understand I needed to build the Obolisk thingie to interact with the system.  I can see where it would be interesting, but it's also highly dependent on building a world-wonder and the game doesn't do a good job of explaining that.

* Lastly, I feel like the cultures felt less like playstyles or narrative choices than they did dares for the player to try suboptimal things for nonspecific purposes. Just glancing over the cultural lists, it seemed that Production and some specific growth cultures were almost universally just 'the better choice' in 99% of circumstances. The ability to  produce units and buildings being key to generating all other resources. It feels like the era's 'good choices' are, right now, roughly balanced, and need a second look-over to make the Science / Growth / Expnasion bonuses on-par with each other.

I hope this criticism is useful. I will likely give the game a second go-around before the end of the Closed Beta, and look forward to the work the devs do on balancing issues. If you have any further questions of me, I'll be happy to answer them.