Humankind

[RenFengge 1,042]

Well, I know what I'm doing with my free time for the next week or so:

 

[RenFengge 1,042]

So, I tooled around in HumanKind OpenDev for a bit before I went to the gym yesterday... because I'm super excited for this game.

 

For those of you who have only played Civilization when it comes to these types of games, consider this a much more complex version. Civilization 6 took elements from Endless Legend. And, Humankind is from the same developers of Endless Legend. However, currently, it seems that not all the rules of Endless Legend apply? For example, if you start a "battle" with an "enemy" unit and you have another army unit nearby, that other army unit doesn't come to help like they would in Endless Legend.

 

Battlefield unit placements still apply here. I haven't unlocked on customizing my units yet... and I'm not sure if it's in here.

 

Districts still have various penalties when built.

 

I'm still trying to wrap my head around the game. I only had about 40 minutes with it. I'm trying to understand the whole turning outposts into cities thing and what is best course for technology in the early eras.

 

You eventually get to choose what civilization you start with, but it's not an immediate thing. You have to get a certain amount of Stars (I think) to choose your civilization. While, I tend to play as those with science buffs, I really wanted to choose the Asians (because, hi, I'm Asian), but I don't necessarily care about culture? 

 

Anyway, below are some screenshots I took:

 

 

[phil bottle 9,822]

Many many ungodly hours in Civ and I also have Anno 1800 currently lined up for a session. One day, when I'm long and gone, one of these games will give real freedom and not limit the player to market based economics 😁

But this looks interesting nonetheless, mostly because of the enthusiasm of @RenFengge  🤗 and will definitely check it out.

 

 

[RenFengge 1,042]

25 minutes ago, phil bottle said:

Many many ungodly hours in Civ and I also have Anno 1800 currently lined up for a session. One day, when I'm long and gone, one of these games will give real freedom and not limit the player to market based economics 😁

But this looks interesting nonetheless, mostly because of the enthusiasm of @RenFengge  🤗 and will definitely check it out.

 

 

 

I think Civ was the first game I introduced @TurboR56Mini  for PC games. We wasted many months playing Civ 5 haha.

 

I still think Civ 4 is the best one.

 

Humankind is going to be a fantastic game when it is fully released (I think). It's a bit more realistic on the merging of cultures throughout the ages. That's what intrigues me.

[RenFengge 1,042]

The OpenDev map sort of wants me to stab my eyeballs out... mostly because I cannot stand being so close to other AIs immediately. There are 3 other AIs are literally surrounding me, and it's driving me to anger lol. Expanding your territory in Humankind is very tempered. Again, you cannot just build outposts then cities. You have to generate enough culture to do so. So, this run, I've focused more on Culture then Science. Doing a bit better.

 

The banter with the AIs during negotiations are actually entertaining and not irritating like in Civ 6.

 

Oh, and a la Endless Legend, there are choices to be made when stumbling on encampments or whatever.

 

I definitely almost lost track of time last night while playing. I missed my normal bedtime for 5AM gym, so I skipped gym today haha.

 

 

[RenFengge 1,042]

I wrapped up the Humankind OpevDev run on Saturday. There are still things in the game that I do not fully understand... and things I wonder where they are for quality of like (e.g., where's the mini-map?). I'm sure that they are probably in the game and just not in the OpenDev.

 

In this last run, I figured out trading. In Civ, you create trade routes via traders. In Humankind, you do it in your Relations panel. There aren't trade routes, per se.. but you can still pillage a route if you stumble upon it.. I think that's what it said. You can also "buy" the commodity and sell it for a higher price.

 

Oh, and the other major difference I want to highlight is the "Wonder" building.. you know how when you play Civ, and you race to build the Wonder before another Civilization finishes? Yeah.. that's not here in Humankind. But, if there's a perk from a Wonder that you do want, you better hope you generated enough culture/influence to "call dibs" on the wonder. You can only "call dibs"/build 1 wonder at a time... and you can devote as many cities as you want towards building it faster.

 

I'll probably load up Civ 6 soon... sort of a nice mental comparison/drop down to an easier game just for ha-has... but Humankind has got some fantastic elements in it. I can't wait.

 

Some screenshots:

 

 

[RenFengge 1,042]

Stumbled on this write-up by PC Gamer:

 

Humankind gets rid of a lot of the things that annoy me about Civilization | PC Gamer

WWW.PCGAMER.COM

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It doesn't outdo the king of one-more-turn grand strategy in every respect, but the challenger is looking smart.

 

[Greboth 2,721]

I missed this thread before and the games looks interesting.  I bought Civ 5 while heavily into Stellaris so never gave Civ a proper go.  Though some of my issue with Civ was I had to make decisions on things with no real idea of what it meant or impact it was going to have.

 

I always meant to go back to Civ but maybe I should try this instead.

[phil bottle 9,822]

16 minutes ago, Greboth said:

I missed this thread before and the games looks interesting.  I bought Civ 5 while heavily into Stellaris so never gave Civ a proper go.  Though some of my issue with Civ was I had to make decisions on things with no real idea of what it meant or impact it was going to have.

 

I always meant to go back to Civ but maybe I should try this instead.

 

Do both, Civ 5 is a great game. An FG Civ 5 multiplay would be fun.

 

I'm liking the look of Humankind.

I'm definitely looking at picking this up in August 

[Greboth 2,721]

16 minutes ago, phil bottle said:

 

Do both, Civ 5 is a great game. An FG Civ 5 multiplay would be fun.

 

I'm liking the look of Humankind.

I'm definitely looking at picking this up in August 

 

I think you mentioned something around the time I picked Civ up.  I just never really played it but maybe I’ll have to give it another go to figure out controls and whatnot and we can have  an FG multiplay.

[RenFengge 1,042]

So, I dropped about 10 hours into this game, 1 completion. Just some thoughts on it:

 

While I wanted this to really compete with Civilization, I think it has strong potential. I'm just not sure it's there yet. Don't get me wrong. I love Endless Legend, and I think it's a better game than the last two iterations of Civilization. However, Humankind (which has a lot from Endless Legend) seems to have dumb down some of the mechanics or gotten rid of them. I think it vastly improves upon a lot of what bores me in Civilization, currently (sorry, but Civ IV was still better than V or VI for me), but I think Sega and Amplitude worried too much about pulling in players from Civilization that they removed some of the more complex strategy points that Endless Legend had (heros/governors/spies, multiple step quests upon discovering items, complex issues when assimilating random villages).

 

That's not to say that Humandkind is not a complex game. It definitely it. I think I went through half the game still trying to get certain parts of it down. As like the beta, you can't just "plop" cities down when you feel like it. There's a cost (influence/star cost) to it, and your empire has a limit on how many you can have based on your technology. This, along with pre-determined territory lines, does a fantastic job at controlling growth for a more competitive gameplay. So, what do you do when you want more territory but you're running low on influence because you want to bank some to properly manage your government? You figure out how to increase your influence fast enough with a random village, so you can assimilate them before someone else does. I thought this was pretty brilliant. But, I would have liked a little bit more complexity in the aftermath of that.

 

There's the other fun part of empire axis stuff. Various basic lines of thinking that help you figure out your decisions as you need to make them. My empire actually became what reflects me the most: science driven (religion dead), tolerant/accepting of other cultures and ideas, morally driven before profit, eco-conscious. The choices you make in the game dictate that epilogue speech about your empire at the end.

 

There are some "quality of life" items that I can see them adding as time goes on. Things from Civ that they could consider. Like adjusting how fast or slow a game progresses (how many turns) or actually giving me a mini-world map (if it's there, I haven't found it). Choosing how many civilizations you go up against. How big the world can be.

 

Overall, it's a solid game. My own expectations were based on Endless Legend. So, Humankind came up short on that.

 

However, the best and short way I can sum up this game... if you thought Civilization was like playing chess, then Humankind is like playing 3D chess.

 

I'll definitely be playing this for a bit before I get into Ghost of Tsushima Directors Cut.

[RenFengge 1,042]

P.S. I just started a second playthrough.. and I found the settings for map size, game difficulty, number of AIs, and game speed.

 

Now, if only I could find the mini-map.

[phil bottle 9,822]

Nice review! I was worried it would be too close to Civ and be a bit jarring in that respect.

 

I'll probably pick it up around Xmas time as I've booked holidays from work from 10 December unyil January and will have time for it. I played a bit of Civ 5 recently and I can't keep doing late nights and work the next day 😁

[RenFengge 1,042]

4 hours ago, phil bottle said:

Nice review! I was worried it would be too close to Civ and be a bit jarring in that respect.

 

I'll probably pick it up around Xmas time as I've booked holidays from work from 10 December unyil January and will have time for it. I played a bit of Civ 5 recently and I can't keep doing late nights and work the next day 😁

 

So, it's the summer lull, or rather, I have zero motivation to do much work while everyone else is on holiday. Thus, I multi-tasked by playing a bit more of Humankind while also working on stuff for... work.

 

I adjusted the game settings to mimic how I tend to play in Civ: infinite turns with the game ending if any of the objectives/situations happen, biggest map, 5 AIs, slowest progression setting.

 

This changed the gameplay SO MUCH. It's actually more difficult, or at least that's how it seems to me. But, it also might be because of different AIs this time.

 

I've gotten the hang of the manual battles, which makes such a huge difference. You can actually be weaker overall entering the battle but still win it if you play smart. This is actually what I enjoyed about Endless Legend.

 

I'm trying to carefully balance out gaining influence and science. Production versus money. But, oddly enough, money doesn't seem to be an issue in Humankind, at least for me. It's all a balancing act. One that should bring about so much more different types of strategies and fun.

[RenFengge 1,042]

Been having a blast playing this... learning the mechanics... figuring out what strategy works best for me currently.

 

Also, reading the update on the upcoming patch, I love that they are listening to the players to address some quality of life items, namely resource quantity and end game. The next patch is going to allow the player to choose the abundance of resources. The following is going to allow a true "last player standing" end. Currently, even the longest game ends at 600 turns, which for me, is too short. I like to take my time and see what happens.

 

Additional patch details:

HUMANKIND™ - October Update Content Overview - Steam News

STORE.STEAMPOWERED.COM

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Last week, we reviewed some of the improvements already made to Humankind since release and told you about the next patch coming October 28th. Today, we want to take a closer look at the content of...

 

[GazzaGarratt 11,066]

23 hours ago, RenFengge said:

Currently, even the longest game ends at 600 turns, which for me, is too short. I like to take my time and see what happens.

 

I did not know this and now I do, I wouldn't really want to invest time in it until I saw what they were gonna change it to. Tribes of Midgard is very similar in the sense it felt great to level up and try things out but before you know it the game is over and you have to restart. Not always a fan of games making you do this.

[J4MES OX4D 10,057]

100 turn demo now available.

[J4MES OX4D 10,057]

Currently 80% on Steam at £8

Save 80% on HUMANKIND™ on Steam

STORE.STEAMPOWERED.COM

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Rewrite history by shaping a civilization as unique as you are. Combine 60 cultures from the Ancient Era to the Modern Age to lead your empire to victory. Build thriving cities, outsmart rivals in epic battles, spread...