They said "this is the game we always wanted to make" and we all loved the idea, the graphics, the music. But to release as the final game a OpenDev that is nowhere near close to Endless Legend (features/mechanics/systems wise = 4x wise), where save games don`t load, where game has crashes to windows and so on and make the first Amplitude fail that is something i NEVER imagined Amplitude would do.

They said they will take all their experience building games until now and make "the game they always wanted to build" but unfortunately features/mechanics/systems wise Humankind is slim compared to the previous titles right now

Endless Legend has:

Unique races each with their different units, traits, skills. This one has 1 unit reskin per Civ that plays out mostly like normal units, no unit skills, no other abilities just simplistic rock/paper/scissors ranged/cavalry/anti-cavalry

Unique bonuses per neutral factions. This one has nothing just bland neutrals that slow you down (and ONLY YOU on Humankind difficulty levels as they all spawn near you)

When in peace time you could customize armies, buy/sell on global market, do interesting quest with narration. This one has just an endless building queue that never gets done and minimalistic narration with choices that almost always don`t matter and pick Civics that are not that engaging and bland

Unique fortresses at sea and you build boats to get them and their resources. This one has 0 incentive to build boats

Has weather system local and global. This has no weather/seasons system

and so on

Vassals are easy to get and you have almost 0 way to interact with them. I needed oil and there were like 8 Civs on the map and my vassal had 2 of the 3 oil that existed on the map (but has no extractors on them). I could not tell him or build for him a oil extractor (or to give him the tech if he does not posses it) so i needed to declare war on him to get some oil. This is so funny.

You can`t produce food stocks and redistribute them in other cities like in Endless Legend

There is no way to request tech or money or a territory from allies or at peace Civs, you can only counter proposals by gold an nothing else like tech or access to resources and so on. There is no way to coordinate war effort with an ally (or peace or expansion effort). This is just a good but alpha build barebones system, nowhere near a complex 4x system

Diplomacy is so barebones and in the end game EVERY TURN you have to forgive grievances to your friends and allies while gaining war support in doing so even when they are your ally and there is 0 way to avoid this plus is so annoying to do this every single turn

If you do not go war path every time in harder difficulties you just loose and on Humankind difficulty on Poe you just loose no matter what (in Lucy and Victor was hard to start and in endgame you had everything, now you just loose) and THERE IS NO PEACE victory in harder difficulty, except war nothing else matters. You can`t just play only peace and win by science or culture or something else while just defending your land successfully. You just get better units tech and fight. The AI is so far ahead cheating and if you don`t do war you loose. That is not fun. Basically instead of a 4x game is a 1x eXterminate game that incentivize just war 

And a ton of other bugs and things that are not engaging and fun that other players reported in this forum. 

BUT THE GAME HAS SO MUCH POTENTIAL. PLEASE FINISH THE GAME BEFORE RELSEASE and at least make it as good as Endless Legend if not better in it`s own way

The game was doing great and was evolving but this move to release it in it`s OpenDev Cyberpunk 2077 way nobody expected especially since Amplitude has a great record for doing fantastic games and said "this is the game we always wanted to make". Is this the way the game they always wanted to make looks like? A downgraded Endless Legend full of bugs? I hope they release a finished game as it has such a big potential if they make it amazing like their other games. Please take you time and release the game when it`s finished and not like this. Loosing trust and reputation is not the way to go. And by the way i love Amplitude and have all their games, i hope it stays this way and thank you for the effort put in the game and keep it up until it`s done

I unfortunately have to agree with you a bit there; I was very hyped for Humankind since the very first announcemt. But everytime I play a new OpenDev and Beta,  I find myself more and more disappointed each time.
 Don't get me wrong there's things I really like about the game, like the 2D art and the Music not to mention the amazing potential that the combat has and the amazing concept of picking different cultures each era. But there's huge elements that I dislike, such as the UI, the Civics and Religion are uninteresting, the Economy is also kinda bland and boring not to mention it feels unbalance and lastly the diplomacy feels very bare-bones and kind of confusing and annoying to deal with, and finally the AI is really bad except on battles. The game suffers from the same issue as Civilization VI which is that the AI doesn't build intelligently and to compensate they simply get a ton of ridiculous bonuses to keep up with the player. I get that AI on a 4X game is probably the most difficult task but it's a bit saddening that it's not getting closer to a be at a good spot (atleast from what I can see in the ClosedBeta). 
Like you said there's still time to work on the game, the bugs are not so much my concern as are the design choices made by the team. I hope for the best and let's see what August brings for us. I know the team listens to us and wants to make the best job they can. 

I would like to thank you for participating in a dev closed beta and bearing with performance issues games at a beta stage can often present.
To adress couple points. 

• Yes, EL is more costumize heavy. It is also a different game. You want EL2, but you are playing HK in beta.
• Actually yes, certain emblematic units DO have unique abilities, although it might not be obvious, read up, hunic hordes, the roman units...
• Neutral faction buffs are a double edged sword, OP buffs? Great, lost out to RNG, cause my neutrals are worse. Sure, as of now they look mass produced and they are, also why not just assimilate them? Free cities. More power to you.
• Peace time does feel like that sometimes, I would agree there, that if you do not do conflict, you just fill up queues and press end turn, but why would you customize in EL during peace time as you will just have another upgrade around the corner? Overally the game should run smoothly along without any "hol up, imma gonna go and spend 2 minutes per unit in a window" which can offer faster games.
• You can buyout deposits for anyone, including vassals, with merchant affinity.
• Food Stocks for me were such a ridiculous nuisance of min maxed micro management and one extra reason I actually skip on EL.
• You can annex teritories 'peacefuly' via expansionist affinity.
• Diplomacy is somewhat menacingly spammy in this build, would agree on that.
• Yes at the moment humankind difficulty feels overtuned and if you do not get overpowered gains through vassals you are likely to fall behind at least in Eras, not neccesarily in stars and fame though, consider holding on to an era and farm more stars, AI kinda likes to jump ahead.
  Also you are free to use a different setting. Just keep eyes on the prize, it's about fame, not world dominance.
  Sure there is no "Camp in single city with drakken and win diplomatic victory at any difficulty" playthrough, but this again is not EL.
• Bugs happen, especially in betas, the very purpose of this exercise is to report and eliminate them, thank you again for providing valuable structured feedback in bug report forums, where it matters the most.
• What kind of potential do you see in the game as it is? What does good mean? It is going to be different from EL, it has a different focus it will never be EL.
• EL runs on communtiy patch and ES2 still remains buggy and unfinished, I wish I could agree about great record as it remains less and less so. But perhaps the HK could be a turning point. Also Cyberpunk 2077 on PC was ok. Perhaps a bit overhyped as a cure to cancer, but PC release was ok.

koxsos wrote:

I would like to thank you for participating in a dev closed beta and bearing with performance issues games at a beta stage can often present.

Thank you also for your post and opinions, i am also glad that i could participate as i like to see more good games from Amplitude and that is why i am also taking my time to share my feedback here

To adress couple points. 

• Yes, EL is more costumize heavy. It is also a different game. You want EL2, but you are playing HK in beta.

• Actually yes, certain emblematic units DO have unique abilities, although it might not be obvious, read up, hunic hordes, the roman units...

• Neutral faction buffs are a double edged sword, OP buffs? Great, lost out to RNG, cause my neutrals are worse. Sure, as of now they look mass produced and they are, also why not just assimilate them? Free cities. More power to you.

• Peace time does feel like that sometimes, I would agree there, that if you do not do conflict, you just fill up queues and press end turn, but why would you customize in EL during peace time as you will just have another upgrade around the corner? Overally the game should run smoothly along without any "hol up, imma gonna go and spend 2 minutes per unit in a window" which can offer faster games.

• You can buyout deposits for anyone, including vassals, with merchant affinity.

• Food Stocks for me were such a ridiculous nuisance of min maxed micro management and one extra reason I actually skip on EL.

• You can annex teritories 'peacefuly' via expansionist affinity.

• Diplomacy is somewhat menacingly spammy in this build, would agree on that.
• Yes at the moment humankind difficulty feels overtuned and if you do not get overpowered gains through vassals you are likely to fall behind at least in Eras, not neccesarily in stars and fame though, consider holding on to an era and farm more stars, AI kinda likes to jump ahead.
  Also you are free to use a different setting. Just keep eyes on the prize, it's about fame, not world dominance.

• Sure there is no "Camp in single city with drakken and win diplomatic victory at any difficulty" playthrough, but this again is not EL.
• Bugs happen, especially in betas, the very purpose of this exercise is to report and eliminate them, thank you again for providing valuable structured feedback in bug report forums, where it matters the most.

• What kind of potential do you see in the game as it is? What does good mean? It is going to be different from EL, it has a different focus it will never be EL.

• EL runs on communtiy patch and ES2 still remains buggy and unfinished, I wish I could agree about great record as it remains less and less so. But perhaps the HK could be a turning point. Also Cyberpunk 2077 on PC was ok. Perhaps a bit overhyped as a cure to cancer, but PC release was ok.

Half the points are sort of "EL2 please" but I would recommend not to dwell on it, if you welcome a fast paced experience where less is sometimes more I would say HK is great, if you want to nitpick stuff and spend hours in total just waiting for other players in MP to finish their turn, EL is the way.
I personally don't like CIVs all that much, but HK makes it work for me.

Light_Spectrum wrote:

Ludovide wrote:

What confused me the most when I actually got down to playing it is why they decided to go with a completely different diplomacy system from their other games. I like a lot of the new features that humankind offers, and I hope some of them, such as unique bonuses for luxury resources, make their way into other 4x games going forward. But the diplomacy systems worked perfectly fine in endless legend and endless space 2 and were actually fun to use. same with laws/government in endless space 2. Humankind brings a lot to the genre, but in some regards it feels like a step backwards from their earlier games. That being said, I have had a lot of fun with the open devs so far and I am looking forward to playing it on release

Did you play in EL in multiplayer game with human players like you? Diplomacy system in EL doesn't work at all in multiplayer and in game with AI you can simply abuse him with that system.

The best way to win a game in EL is to kill your opponent in war, it's just too simple.

in Humankind diplomacy can really finally work in multiplayer game.

GlorySign wrote:
Unique races each with their different units, traits, skills.

Good luck fighting Treants versus Mysts, dude, or even Treants versus Phoenix. Also customasing units breaks the balance hard. Units with adamantium/palladuim weapon from era III can easily crush any unit with a gold weapon from era IV and it's a matter of luck will you get those resources or not. EL has A LOT of RNG starting from anomalies ending with heroes in market. At the same time we have a perfect RTS game called Age of Empires II where we have a simple and well balanced unit system with "just simplistic rock/paper/scissors ranged/cavalry/anti-cavalry".

EL is a good game, really, I have 2k hours in it. But you can chose your favorite fraction and get crushed cuz someone has better anomalies, heroes, units, weapons, regions, resources etc. and it's random. I want to play 4x games with humans and I believe that Humankind is pretty good for it.

So now what? you are saying Humankind`s main focus is online multiplayer and that is what they are going after as a main feature? Also that any unique ability, skill or unit gives unfair advantages and breaks the game? That is why good balancing was invented. I thought that is the fun in those 4x games making variation and uniqueness and balancing it as much as possible. I find it a lot worse to have same stat units and no variation just so everybody has the exact same faction, stats, skills and 0 variation and it is fair in this way for multiplayer. If you think a bit about it even the map generator generates randomly and you may or may not have perfect symmetry, also each era you have a new Civ with different stats (even if all the units were the same the different Civs will "break the balance" but that is the fun and the unique experience), also this is not a 1x eXterminate war only game but a 4x game so not only units and their stats count. But 4x games are about variation and balancing not about deleting variation, skills, options, customization just to have perfect multiplayer online PvP balance, that i never ever saw achieved in a 4x game.

LateNightTelevision wrote:
Lotta doomers in here :P

I don`t know what this means in your way of seeing things but i would not call "doomers" the devs for asking for people`s honest feedback or the people that take their time to give the feedback with the hope we can all have a better game and the company to have the profit they deserve

The game does a lot of things really right compared to their old titles and titles in the genre that have come before.

That is true and if you would have read the threads above the good things about this game are highlighted but also their older titles did lot of things really right compared to this one and same for the other titles in the genre

Game development can take longer than anticipated and it definitely seems like a snag in production was hit at some point in the last year. Still, I think they're going in the right direction and the game in it's current state still more than earns it's own place within the genre

I also agree that the game would be amazing if they would work more on it as we can see till now they have a great foundation to build on and if the release would be in 12 month from now or so i am sure they would have enough time to work on the problems and features to deliver the great game they promised. But this is the main issue now, there are only 7 weeks left and it seems impossible to finish the work leading to the "right direction" that you also mention

Honestly this game is a victim of it's own hype imo.

I absolutely agree on this one, they promised "they will gather all their 10 years of experience to build the best 4x they can build in the game they always wanted to build" and this comes from Amplitude a company with great 4x games that have high standards in refinement and a community that loves them and i am part of that and said it loud with every occasion.

Now, you have played the Closed Beta, does that feel to you and all the other players/testers that this is "the best 4x they can build" compared to the other games they made, to the potential of the devs and company and compared to other titles in the genre? because the price surely is AAA as in a great game. So we all hope to get a great game as they promised and surely want to deliver. We as a community we just want to give the feedback both good or bad so we can all win by having a great game and the company having the profits and love they deserve.

So nw what? you are saying Humankind`s main focus is online multiplayer and that is what they are going after as a main feature? Also that any unique ability, skill or unit gives unfair advantages and breaks the game? That is why good balancing was invented. I thought that is the fun in those 4x games making variation and uniqueness and balancing it as much as possible. I find it a lot worse to have same stat units and no variation just so everybody has the exact same faction, stats, skills and 0 variation and it is fair in this way for multiplayer. If you think a bit about it even the map generator generates randomly and you may or may not have perfect symmetry, also each era you have a new Civ with different stats (even if all the units were the same the different Civs will "break the balance" but that is the fun and the unique experience), also this is not a 1x eXterminate war only game but a 4x game so not only units and their stats count. But 4x games are about variation and balancing not about deleting variation, skills, options, customization just to have perfect multiplayer online PvP balance, that i never ever saw achieved in a 4x game.

That sentence cracked me up, ah yes I remember it like it was yesterday it was a the 7th june 2003 when finally humanity invented good balancing in games. :P 

Sorry to poke fun at you a little bit but the way you said it is kinda funny, as if you can just add "good balancing" into the game like its a plug-in or an asset.

Wolvski wrote:

So nw what? you are saying Humankind`s main focus is online multiplayer and that is what they are going after as a main feature? Also that any unique ability, skill or unit gives unfair advantages and breaks the game? That is why good balancing was invented. I thought that is the fun in those 4x games making variation and uniqueness and balancing it as much as possible. I find it a lot worse to have same stat units and no variation just so everybody has the exact same faction, stats, skills and 0 variation and it is fair in this way for multiplayer. If you think a bit about it even the map generator generates randomly and you may or may not have perfect symmetry, also each era you have a new Civ with different stats (even if all the units were the same the different Civs will "break the balance" but that is the fun and the unique experience), also this is not a 1x eXterminate war only game but a 4x game so not only units and their stats count. But 4x games are about variation and balancing not about deleting variation, skills, options, customization just to have perfect multiplayer online PvP balance, that i never ever saw achieved in a 4x game.

That sentence cracked me up, ah yes I remember it like it was yesterday it was a the 7th june 2003 when finally humanity invented good balancing in games. :P

Sorry to poke fun at you a little bit but the way you said it is kinda funny, as if you can just add "good balancing" into the game like its a plug-in or an asset.

No, it`s cool, everybody is welcomed to say their opinion as i do believe we are on the same side in hoping Humankind to be a great game. 

Well it`s not something you invent on 7th June 2003 but it`s something you pay for when buying a game or a service and if the one selling the product is interested in that, they will do the best balancing they can from the data they gather in time. It can also be like a plugin if the community can make mods for that game and try to balance it themselves. But as i said above there is no such thing as perfect balance especially in a 4x and balancing a game through deletion of features is a bad way of balancing something, especially when even doing so the product is not very balanced. Still 2003 is 2003 let`s see what happens in 2021 as the company said they will gather all their experience since then for this project

Now, you have played the Closed Beta, does that feel to you and all the other players/testers that this is "the best 4x they can build" compared to the other games they made, to the potential of the devs and company and compared to other titles in the genre?

Sublustris wrote:

Yes

I am glad to hear that at least 1 person thinks this is the best there can be in the current state. I hope the rest of us who want a more finished product will be as happy as you are when the game will release and truly be the best they made also for us as in a memorable game that we keep playing

Wolvski wrote:

Oof, then you must not have much faith in the devs then.

I understand that we are living in an era where everything is at fast forward speed and people don`t take time to read whole threads and just pick up on bits and pieces, but if you will take the time to read in more detail the thread you would see that it`s not about a lack of faith in the devs that already did the other great games that i give as example here, but more of a time constraint (game releases in just 7 weeks) it`s possible they can`t solve everything in that time frame, more details above. 

And speaking about trust and faith also above it says that i bought all their games till now including this one no matter how it turns out also because of trust and faith in Amplitude as I NEVER EVER preorder anything from anyone else, i saw how industry goes these days. That is trust! and i hope they also keep their work within the quality promised by them initially so i can do the same for the next games they release. That is also trust and faith. And so i am giving my feedback, as i and others saw that there were some problems in the latest build we got to test and letting the devs know about them as they invited everyone to do so

Sewata wrote:

I would just like to remind you that when they stated that they are trying to develop the best 4x ever made by them, this didn't just refer to the launch day, but referred to the whole process and lifespan of the game, so year and years of added mechanics and dlc, developed with care and the community in mind will deliver their best work in the genre. Obviously the best game can't be delivered right away at launch, it will take work throughout the whole lifespan of the game to make it the best of their production.

Constructive feedback, realistic ideas and passion for the game they are producing will deliver a great product, remember though it's a journey not an immediate result.

I feel you and i understand what you are saying but to launch a game with less stuff in it than previous ones, that also has to compete with other big names in the genre and price it 60$ as in AAA quality seems a bit odd and not what i would expect from Amplitude. Paradox does that, launches unfinished games at 60$ AAA price and than adds 350$ worth of DLC in the years to come just to make the game as it should have been on launch. I hope we don`t go that route as it was not the case till now

And even in the current form we saw except war, that is very well done for the most part, the other mechanics are vague, not well explained and not impactful. I don`t feel the game is ready to launch in this state

Sewata wrote:

GlorySign wrote:

Sewata wrote:

I would just like to remind you that when they stated that they are trying to develop the best 4x ever made by them, this didn't just refer to the launch day, but referred to the whole process and lifespan of the game, so year and years of added mechanics and dlc, developed with care and the community in mind will deliver their best work in the genre. Obviously the best game can't be delivered right away at launch, it will take work throughout the whole lifespan of the game to make it the best of their production.

Constructive feedback, realistic ideas and passion for the game they are producing will deliver a great product, remember though it's a journey not an immediate result.

I feel you and i understand what you are saying but to launch a game with less stuff in it than previous ones, that also has to compete with other big names in the genre and price it 60$ as in AAA quality seems a bit odd and not what i would expect from Amplitude. Paradox does that, launches unfinished games at 60$ AAA price and than adds 350$ worth of DLC in the years to come just to make the game as it should have been on launch. I hope we don`t go that route as it was not the case till now

And even in the current form we saw except war, that is very well done for the most part, the other mechanics are vague, not well explained and not impactful. I don`t feel the game is ready to launch in this state

When it comes to the price tag, I'm honestly not sure who decides it, or who has the last say on it... Sega maybe?

But think about it, most modern games are a bit overpriced for what they offer, especially in such a niche market like the 4x where the variants are few, so they kind of have a monopolium, I agree though that the videogaming industry got greedier with the years, but is also true that when a very good game gets released with quite a cheap price, the possibilities are two: either the team of developers are very good at what they do, or someone in the chain process has been exploited and not payed accordingly, this unfortunately happens with every product in the market, there is a reason why fairtrade bananas are more expensive, the workers probably get paid a better amount of money for the job they do compared to some other employees in other companies, who might get exploited and as result the bananas you see in the supermarket are cheaper.

Besides civ VI at launch was very shallow, at least in my opinion, only few civs were worth playing with and many mechanics really needed to be improved, still because of the monopolium factor they charged AAA game price tag for it.

Regarding the price subject yes maybe Sega has a big saying in that but it can never decide by itself if the companies that partner with them don`t agree with them so in the end everyone agrees for sure for a price to be picked

Also if you look at the problem from a company standpoint yes it takes resources to make a good 4x that we want, yes companies got greedier, yes with more money you can pay more the employees or keep them for bigger profit margins or make better games. But as well you could look at the problem the other way and say the buyer also had tough times, prices got higher for him too, taxes got higher, the price of living got higher and during the pandemic for some the income dropped so let`s make a great game and get smaller price to also take the buyer`s situation into consideration, especially if you don`t deliver the quality and standard promised initially for the game. Both points i feel are valid

But as i said i paid for the preorder, i`ll gladly pay more just to get a finished game, with nice mechanics that work, make sense and are refined, where not only war is viable and some of the points i touched in the above threads and other people are saying in this forum are mostly addressed to get a great refined game in the Amplitude style

Well Sewata that is a very broad question and it takes a lot to answer that fully, i will give you some highlights in as a short reply as I can regarding that but you can also see some in the above posts and also throughout the entire forum as there are players that also highlighted the issues very well

First i would like to say that i saw the people involved in making the game in Amplitude streams from the guys who started the company to lead designer, lead artist, historian specialists and so on and they all seem like very nice people, passionate about what they do and with a lot of ideas and know-how. Also I am watching their regular live streams with the Community/PR team Rogan and Cat-o-Nine-Tales and I also find them funny, nice persons that know their stuff and also Cat-o-Nine-Tales seems a very technical person who is very well-informed and well-read. I am sure the other members of the team that are not in the streams are also very good in what they do. Overall their team seems like a big family from outside and also more than capable and with the know-how in how to add features refine a game and deliver a great product

Now I don`t know what happened with Humankind as Poe Closed Beta seemed like a technical build before Lucy as had save loading problems, game crashing to windows, turns that process forever and never finish and so on, basic build problems that you should not find in a almost finished product that lunches in a couple of weeks and I also had none of these issues in Lucy or Victor. But it had it`s good parts like a more refined interface than Victor with buildings and districts now color/symbol coded as science/food/stability and so on, with filters (that unfortunately don`t remember their setting and always reset) and other stuff

Also bugs like sound lagging/cutting out, units that go invisible, big system resource consumption (like one person said in this forum the difference between Cyberpunk 2077 and Humankind on his older machine is that Cyberpunk 2077 runs better and with less resources) and other bugs are in the builds since Lucy and were never fixed till now (in months) and now there are only weeks left. That also sounds alarming for an almost ready to launch product.

Now to answer your question

Graphics and Music

Very well done, the music team is just so amazing as always, sounds are also great, maybe Avatar lines are sometimes lacking but a lot of them are very good. Visually the game also is so beautiful and immersive

I would like to see they add weather either local or global or both that also impacts gameplay, that would be so nice. I remember in EL how an eclipse event not only changes the lighting of the game for a few turns but also the entire feeling and rhythm of the game as winter does. Imagine how wonderful it would be to have that in this engine. Like a sun eclipse for a few turns with impact for all Civs and maybe Religion and Culture or ash from a volcano eruption with gameplay impact or other things like that

Combat

Seems very well done for the most part. I love the animations the sounds and I always zoom in on the units to see how they shoot, it`s almost that you feel that you are there (except when the big large damage showing UI covers half of the screen and you have to reposition to see the units shooting/fighting). What is not that great in those OpenDevs regarding combat is that terrain in most battles makes half of your army useless (can`t reach, can`t shoot). I like the mechanics of that but it seems too much. Either make it less of a problem in most battles or make like just a few where the terrain is so rough. It`s not fun to go 5 rounds around the mountain or through rivers to reach the enemy with half of the army. Still the idea is good

Units

Very basic and underdeveloped compared to their other games, they have just 1 stat: “combat strength” that matters. I was hoping for a lot more. Or at least from the faction specific units. Like Hunic hordes are soo cool. When I first saw them I was "wow" that is such a cool ability for a unit to replicate like in the start of the game as tribes do. I want to play 2-3 more runs just to try them out. Why can`t all units or at least special units have cool abilities like that? Maybe "poison" abilities or "capture" to steal a unit for 2 turns or whatever else just make them remarkable and good

Eras/Changing Civs

Very well done love the concept and implementation

Fame

Sounds good in theory, in practice is like another game in this game that you don`t see while playing the regular game (like in visual queues or a way that make you feel you are involved in it while playing) and have to pull out a different window to see how it`s going if you are curious about it. It feels very disconnected and usually you forget about it while playing the game. You are reminded about it if you don`t actively focus to remember it just by the visual progression bars when you are almost achieving an era star, that`s it

Religion

What exactly is religion is this game? You just build Holy Sites (or Wonders or faith special buildings) and they give you Religion and that`s it? You also get Followers, why you get followers?, why they multiply? At what rate? Is there a limit? How can you counter the enemy's Followers and slow them down? How can you multiply yours faster except building faith structures? How fast and why enemy cities convert? Like there is no graph, panel to show you all these stuff in detail, there in no info about this, it`s so barebones. It feels it`s a game that plays by itself and you just get some numbers and don`t know why and that`s it. It needs more explanation/graphs info about how things are happening and why and so on

Influence spread

Like Religion you don`t have info exactly why and how things are happening how many influence you need to start converting enemy cities and how many you have now. And why the enemy starts converting your cities? Do you need more influence buildings/structures to stop that? How many? Or you need something else also? Again no graphs, detailed info, clear explanation of how and why things are happening you just have to guess and guessing in a game is bad design. Again a game that plays by itself and you just watch it unfold.

Stability

I like that you now have to work more on the stability issue than before but still there are so many parameters that affect stability. I like that if you hover over the stability bar it shows you all the parameters affecting stability but now you don`t get a total for them. For example: I absorbed a city that had it`s own districts and now are merged in the city that absorbed them. Stability dropped to 0 and I was building stability buildings but it kept being 0 as it was not 0 in reality. If you hover over stability you see more than 30 parameters that affect stability and if you add all the positive ones and than subtract all the negative ones you have the total of -130 stability (not 0). I should JUST SEE THE TOTAL not having to manually calculate 30+ parameters to know my stability and see how many buildings i have to add to get stability overall into positive numbers. That is such bad user experience

Guessing game/Incomplete info/Hidden information

So this is the trend, a lot of information is hidden, unexplained and you have to guess about it. You should never guess about info in a game, that is bad design. I remember what a streamer that I love watching and has great content and plays strategy games, named Shenryyr said: In Humankind you have sometimes to guess what things do, I told chat I believe what the game describes here will do “x” and chat said no, it will do “y”, when we tried it it seems in reality it does “z”. Man it should not be like this in a good designed finished product. Like what is coreligion? What does redistribute food from a city to the other mean and how does it calculate? show us, make the math for us and so on

Also there are a ton of stuff that the game does not calculate for you. There is a wonder that says it gives you bonus 1% science per technologies researched but never said what is the bonus in value for you now or how many tech you researched till now, you have to do all that math. That is not cool or good experience. Stability I talked in stability section also not calculated for you as total, and a lot of other things that need guessing/manual calculating

Diplomacy

You can only interact with other Civs in the most basic and barebones way. Just ask/accept treaties and only counter proposals with gold. Can`t share tech, can`t request/give cities territories, can`t coordinate war (like ally please attack this army/city or defend that city or area), can`t coordinate expansion (ally let`s expand in this area), and so on

Allies that you give them all that they want during the entire game out of the blue start not accepting your treaties nobody knows why, and there is no explanation why and they keep doing that for the rest of the game

Vassals are pretty easy to get and you can`t coordinate with them at all. Like I wanted oil from my vassal and he had 0 oil extractors on that. I could not tell him: Hey, build an extractor so we both profit or if you don`t have the tech let me give it to you so we can both profit. 0 interaction. I had just to declare war to get oil

Grievances can be so annoying. You forgive all your ally`s grievances and still you get wars support, it becomes upset and there is 0 way to avoid this. Also you have to EVERY SINGLE TURN forgive them and that is so annoying and a bad experience

Also why is there no willingness score for requesting/accepting things. Like a Civ refused a treaty because it has willingness -10 but if I add to that treaty offer 300 gold now his willingness becomes +5 and he accepts. Let us gauge why or why not things happen and what should we add/subtract for them to happen

Cities

Pretty well done, I like them and I like to manage them

I don`t like that there is no planning tool with pins/colors so you can plan how to build the districts in the future to get best bonuses and stuff

I don`t like that if you play the game from zoom out view you can`t see what cities build and also the highlighted color coded districts that you can enable from bottom right button (near view grid button)

Science

Always lags behind eras no matter what you do especially in higher difficulties where if you don`t focus on war and units you just loose (so science gets neglected even more)

Peace/Defensive war runs

When you go to war you have to manage and upgrade armies, position them, siege and fight with them. 

During peace or in peace/defensive runs there is almost nothing to do, there is no compelling story to follow and discover, there are no quests, there are some mini games that play by themselves and you just watch them with minimal intervention (like religion minigame, influence spread minigame), you put in cities endless building queues that never finish and that`s almost it. From time to time you get 1 Civic choice that arguably it`s not always useful and than some 1 max 2 steps story prompts that almost never have a major impact on what you pick and don`t evolve during your gameplay.

If war in this game would be similar to peace mechanics (like watch numbers grow and circles take over other circles with almost 0 interaction from you) I guess war will be as bad as peace is.

Why can`t peace be as exciting as war and do science stuff and culture stuff and religion stuff that really matter and can win you the game and plots and whatever, just make peace as cool and interesting as war is.

And in higher difficulty if you don`t do war you just loose as the bonuses the AI gets make him skyrocket and you can never defeat him by peace mechanics

AI

AI is pretty bad overall maybe except combat. Factions hate you for no reason, long lasting allies turn against you for being nice to them, allies great you with cursing language and so on.

Another example: AI declares war although he is 1st place and is on an island (black dude) and than sends ships 1 by 1 to get destroyed by my armies and so becomes my vassal for no reason, and he did that because randomly he requested 1 of my territories because of a grievance and no other warning or interaction. And so on

AI gets absurd bonuses on Humankind difficulty in Poe so you can never play that without war, I remember also streamer Shenryyr that I enjoy watching his content was in turn 34 and had like 3 districts in his cities due to stability and AI already had 11 districts in their cities, good luck wining that by peace (or even by war)

Maybe buying some machine learning stuff or partnering with some companies that do that can improve the AI in future 4x games

Storytelling

I absolutely loved the Endless games storytelling/quests feature. There were stories about you being on strange planet and species that don`t look like you, why could that be? And you find a starship that can reveal more about your faction`s past, where are you from?, what is really going on? Or about people that plot to kill you and take your reign as emperor of the stars, will they succeed? You could not stop wandering and always wanted to find out more. I was hoping with this one they will upgrade to a new level to get random events/plots in stories so you can replay them a lot of times and don`t get bored after you played them once and know everything already. But the system seems it got deleted and overly simplified. You just get a one step notification story that sometimes can be a 2 step and after you read it once you never read it again as it is the same. There are no more stories for the same trigger also there are no random choices that differ for the same event. Also the choices you make are insignificant (you could easily close your eyes and make any choice and the run would not differ almost at all by making one or the other choice). It`s like: Hey you have cities with 540 industry production, would you care if you get +10 or -10 during the next 10 turns? Well…no! You don`t have events like you can loose a city or gain one, fight major instability due to some foreign or internal plot, there are no companies that bring you surplus food that you can add for a couple of turns in a city due to an industrialization event and so on

Also there is no story event tracker to see what happened in the past and how it relates to what happens now

One great thing though is that story events are not at specific timeframes but happen only if you take your gameplay in one direction and are specific to that (that is a very cool implementation)

Civics

Civics are a good idea but you never seem that they really impact the game in a way that you can feel. Some of them give you good bonuses, some you never want to take and the Society scales are so hidden and so little explained that you can easily just ignore them with almost no repercussion. It`s not like you become a monarchy and the game playstyle reflects that or a communist rule or a democratic one or nothing happens in the game to feel that Civics and Society difference. It`s just some scales that you can easily ignore

So these are some of the problems that I believe should not be in a final refined product, and in reality there is so much more to say about those and other things but already the post is pretty long. I hope this is helpful and answers your question