I just wanted to make this thread because I feel like most of the feedback I'm seeing is negative. I know this beta had issues with balance and bugs and performance and the UI, and it's absolutely important to give feedback on those so that the devs can fix them; trust me, I've given my fair share of "please change this" feedback in the official threads. But I had so much fun playing it during the Closed Beta and I think it's unfair of people to completely dismiss the game as a failure before it's even released. I assume it's also important that the devs know what we like so they can keep those systems or focus on them, so here are some things I really like about Humankind in its current state:

• The tactical combat. I always dread war in other 4X games and typically only participate when I'm forced to (with an army of only ranged units because why not). But the terrain and the various unit types/traits make combat actually interesting. The weakness ranged units had in melee meant I was encouraged to make mixed armies and discover new tactics. I actually played an all-militarist culture game because I was enjoying the combat so much.
• Non-mandatory militarism. On the flip side of my previous point, I had games where I was able to completely avoid a full war throughout all 200 turns. There were fun little skirmishes here and there, but I avoided a full-on invasion through alliances and being enough of a threat. I know I played on Metropolis and therefore didn't have it as rough as people on higher difficulties, but I thought this was the perfect level for that difficulty. It wasn't an issue of the AI simply not declaring war on me; it was an interesting source of pressure on me. I had to actively recommend treaties, accept counters, and maintain trade routes. I had to win one or two skirmishes to prove my strength. The peace felt well-earned but not impossible to achieve.
• Evolving cultures. I assumed I would always choose my favorite cultures that fit my favorite playstyle every game, but I ended up never taking the same culture past the Ancient Era (where I took the Olmecs twice of my six or seven games). It's incredible how many interesting combinations you can find and how much fun it is to adapt to changing situations. I know some might seem more powerful than one another when compared in this static scenario, but I think this system will really shine in a randomly generated game where the player will have different terrain and yields and opponents to deal with.
• Unlocking and revoking civics with influence. Ten times better than civic points! Using influence meant it was a real choice now: outpost or civic? I never unlocked a civic and thought "oh it doesn't matter, I don't have a point yet"; instead, I had to look and decide if I wanted to prioritize the civic or if I could leave it for later. Plus, I no longer had the issue of having too many civic points for the available civics. Once I unlocked them all, I could simply save my influence for wonders. And revoking them was just a nice QOL change.
• Wonder claiming and shared projects. Allows me to set aside wonder building for a few turns when something more important comes up. Plus, now my industry-focused cities can help and it doesn't take all 200 turns to place a wonder in a newer city that is a better spot for it.
• Fame as the victory condition. I've read some opinions against Fame so I just wanted to throw my voice in as support for it. Fame is actually the system that first got my attention and got me interested in Humankind. It always sucked to be playing a game of Civ and doing well on my chosen track but then someone else won through religion and suddenly the game was done. It made me feel like I needed to be doing everything at once, even the things that didn't interest me, so I always ended up playing for a score victory anyways. Now, with Fame, I can ignore the military if I'm not in the mood or I can set aside expansionist/agrarian if I want to try being a single-city merchant or something, all without suffering too much in Fame score. It means the game can be played however I want it to, instead of forcing me to choose one style at the very beginning and sticking with it all the way through, even if I suffer a setback.
• Competitive deeds. As much as I love the more generic Fame and era stars system, I'm glad the game has these little achievements to aim for. I'd love to see them fleshed out or made more significant. And I'm incredibly curious how they're decided. Are they the same every game? Are they randomly selected at the beginning of a game? Will there be a rule to select which ones are included in this game or not? There's so much potential here.
• The avatar system. I know we haven't had the chance to make our own avatars yet, but it's been really cool seeing the default and streamer avatars. It's super neat that each avatar has their own personality and way of talking, and that I was able to tell how their personalities impacted the game. I really hope we're able to make more than one avatar to use or we're able to make avatars to play against.
• Art and music. Can't mention the great things about Humankind without mentioning the art, can I? The map is absolutely beautiful and I love seeing the style of the city evolve over time. Plus, it's incredible seeing the different outfits made for each culture. I can look at the avatar and get a feel for which culture they might be playing at the moment. Clearly so much love and time have been put into making each culture have its own outfits, units, cities, and music.

I agree with a lot of the feedback that many of the most disgruntled players have given, and I certainly do not want to excuse or downplay the importance of those concerns. That being said, I also think it's a bit of an exaggeration to say that this game in its current state and trajectory (at least design wise) is a traitorous disappointment on par with Cyberpunk 2077. I'd go as far as to say this game will be a solid 8/10 at the very least. (provided they fix the remaining bugs).

And while I feel that they haven't fully landed some of their goals to improve the game, I think its important to remember that pretty big steps for improvement have still been made through these open devs.

@Socracle I did have one declare war on me pretty early (I had just switched to Classical) in one of my games. It really helped drive home how important my efforts to avoid war had been in my other games lol

@kakujahawk Exactly! They're very important concerns and there are some pretty gamebreaking bugs, but the game has come so far since the first time I played it in the Stadia OpenDev! Some of the systems might not be as fleshed out as they could be, but if the devs can fix the bugs then Humankind will be a solid game that I'll enjoy playing :D

I did not manage to do a lot of game playing sadly because of other commitments, but I realised that I felt the game and the way I interact with it changes with peaks and lows. For instance, the early eras feel interesting as you explore and claim territories with some skirmishes. After that though it feels like the task become more mundane: there is not much to do really instead of clicking on notifications and end turn. I understand the game approach and philosophy vs civ 6 where you are constantly busy with some at times annoying game dynamics (i.e. religious units, etc). But it felt to me that once you have yourself boxed in a corner of the continent and start building your economy, it becomes a few turns of just clicking as stated above. It only starts to become again more interesting as you get better naval technology and settlers, which takes time. Surely players could simply fill out the 'void' in between by doing wars, but perhaps that's not necessarily my playstyle as I am running at the city cap level pretty much all the time and find combining cities too costly in terms of resoures and managing a bunch of small ones a bit tideous. So I guess these points are not necessarily new, but the tech tree progression (even with tech focussed cultures) and the city combination cost make exploration and extermination somewhat unviable imho starting maybe from turn ~60/80 to turn ~120/130. And given the beta has a turn limit I find myself just clicking end-turn from 185 turns onwards as I feel any initiative will not really help me getting fame up vs just building more districts / science infrastructure. Maybe that's just me, but this feels to me more of an issue than some smaller bugs and UI issues that folks mentioned.    

I think it's very good to also give positive feedback on the game. It sure does have its positive notes, in fact because of those positive notes I think that's why a lot of people are concerned with how the game is turning out to be because (atleast for me)  we want this game to be amazing. I do feel its important to let the developpers know that we appreciate aspects of the game too, beacause it lets them know what they are doing right and that way it can help push the things that we dislike towards the positive side. 

I will agree with most of the things you said, I dont think non-mandatory militarism is quite a positive due to 2 things. The first one is that, well non-mandatory militarism should be kind of a given because otherwise its just a war game and not a culture/civilization building game. The second is that I would say that in the Closed Beta build  it's VERY difficult not to be militarist, particularly on higher difficulties. So If you would consider that point a positive point at all, it's a very miniscule one because it barely works like that. It's difficult to be passive, which actually is pretty interesting but it shouldn't be always the case. Although to be fair that's just because of the scenario. 

Other than that I think a lot of your points are very much positive aspects of the game, I wish some of them would get pushed a bit further though; like the civics can be a bit dull but i think adding the influence cost was a good change. I would also like some more clarity on how those civics are unlocked and perhaps even a different way to unlock them such as buildings and so on. 

@reich238 I had that issue too, with the game having less purpose in later turns. But I also think a large part of that is the pacing for eras is too fast, since you could reach Contemporary at turn 150 or sooner. The devs have had plenty of feedback on that count and I think once they tweak the pacing it will really help with those later turns. I'm sure this is something they can and will fix, since they have an entire feedback thread dedicated to pacing. It's clearly a concern of theirs and something they want to get right. And maybe once the era progress and tech progress line up better, there won't be so much of a void before getting naval tech. Maybe it's naive of me, but I remain hopeful.

@Wolvski Just because non-mandatory militarism should be a given doesn't mean it always is. I always end up having wars declared on me in civ, even when I put all my efforts into diplomatic relationships (and I play on very easy difficulties because of this). If you don't like the civ comparison, I can say the same about Endless Legends. To me, being able to play multiple games without going to war once means that they've succeeded in including this "given" where other games don't. Even though it's small and it should be a given, making war avoidable is still a positive and still something the devs deserve to know they did right. And I know I can't speak for higher difficulties and that there might be significant balance issues with them, but I thought the Metropolis difficulty was well-balanced. I won most of my games but I never felt like it was too easy (one I won by about 6 fame after just managing to squeak in a competitive deed on the last turn) and I certainly didn't win all of them. I did win both of my militaristic games, but I also won games without ever going to war.

Also, re: civics, I'm also hoping they can make them more interesting. I've seen some great feedback on how to improve the extremes to be more tempting than just staying in the middle for the stability. But it's still such a unique mechanic that I haven't seen in any other 4X games I've played, so I'm glad they have it at all.

The game in the open devs and this closed beta was fun and interesting. Yes it can be better but I don't think the game in its current state is bad.

@Goodluck exactly! There are definitely issues and certain systems could have more depth added, but this was pretty good for a beta. Tons of fun and tons of potential :D