Humankind is a 4X game comparable to the Civilization series. Players lead their civilization across six major eras of human civilization, starting from the nomadic age, directing how the civilization should expand, develop cities, control military and other types of units as they interact with other civilizations on the virtual planet, randomly generated at the start of a new game. A distinguishing feature of Humankind is that within each of the eras, the player selects one of ten civilization types based on historical societies; this selection offers both bonuses and penalties to how the player can build out the civilization. Because a player can select different civilizations as a template to build upon, there exists potentially one million different civilization patterns that a player can ultimately develop.
Building out cities follows a similar model from Amplitude's Endless Legend game. A continent will have multiple territories on it, and the player will only be able to build one city in that territory. Over time, they can expand that city, adding farms and other outlying resources as well as more dense urban areas closer to the city center. This allows the creation of large metropolises within each territory. Players may also need to engage in combat with enemy forces. When this occurs, the game uses a tactical role playing game approach for detailed resolution of these battles, giving the player a chance to take advantage of terrain and special abilities of their units. Within these skirmishes, battles can only last for three combat turns before the game returns to the overworld, such that drawn-out wars can occur across multiple years at the overworld scale.
During the game, the player gains resources for their civilization similar to Endless Legend, which includes food, industry, gold, science, and influence; each of these can be spent to hurry up production, advance technology, or used as trade goods with other cultures. Humankind also adds Fame, related to being the first civilization to discover certain technologies or build world wonders. Fame remains a persistent measure of the civilizations relative success to other civilizations, and can have impacts on later decisions in the game. Unlike games like Civilization where there can be multiple victory conditions, victory in Humankind is based solely on the Fame score after a pre-determined number of turns. Humankind will include certain persons and events based on historical records that the player will interact with.
The game is currently in (OpenDev) Beta on Stadia so there is gameplay. It is expected to release April of next year, have to say this game looks amazing. So much so that is expected to redefine the 4X genre of games going forward. Think the best feature is that battles have different turns thus separating it from the overall game, terrain plays a major part. So you could literally have a major war last a few years rather than several centuries like other games.
Looks interesting, though I'm not sure how much it will "redefine" the 4x genre. It doesn't look particularly different than the likes of Civ, Age of Wonders and their own Endless games.
Redefine is a strong word but it looks pretty nice. I got into Civ 6 again and this should release once I get tired of that game. I don't normally play games for thousands of hours like some of you guys do. 100-200 hours for a game like Civ is already worth it for me.
More 4x type games is always good. American developers have largely abandoned turn-based games so I mostly play games from other countries.
Civ chain by Focus done by the Humankind subreddit. There is apparently 10 that have yet to be revealed.
Also via one of the devs:
Cultures in Humankind are chosen (among other things) for the mark they left on history, and are placed in the time period they existed in history. Their scientific discoveries have no bearing on this placement. As such “Industrial Era” doesn’t refer to cultures who were going through a process of industrialization, and is simply used as a widely-known label for this period in time.
As Narcisse said, the Zulu are placed in the Industrial Era because that is the peak of their influence as a kingdom. While the Zulu kingdom did not last, their cultural impact most certainly did, so they are worthy of inclusion. Whether or not they were burning coal, running steam engines, and building factories at the same time as other peoples, the Zulu left their legacy.
Furthermore, Humankind has a What If element to it, so the Zulu in Humankind are capable of the same inventions and industrialization as any other culture of this Era. Whether you will still build Impi if you have access to rifles and cannons is ultimately up to you as the player.
Civ gonna have to step up its game. I’m impressed just by them literally going to places to record real life sounds to put into the game. Very ecstatic for release + Show Spoiler +
That trailer is really, really good! People raging like madmen in youtube comments (not too much on the one you linked but the IGN one is crazy) makes it even better.
After a couple of games I think this game has the potential to usurp Firaxis and the Civ franchise. It has random events that range from War, Religion, Natural disasters, to even Science, and domestic events. Diplomacy is so much deeper than anything Firaxis has done in the past two games. Vassalage, even Crisis talks etc. The Civics tree is untouchable and Firaxis will never be able to match. As for War/Battles. Please no contest.
And this is still the OpenDev/Beta with hotfixes and patches.
Oh man, this is exciting! Loved Endless Legend by Amplitude, and thought that was already better than the CIV games, even if there were fewer civs overall. This looks really hype.
I'm glad they are delaying it. I played some of the early access scenarios and while the game looks like it's trying very hard to be good (and I love Amplitude studios games in general), it clearly needs more work. Rather have a better game released later than half-baked shit that needs a hundred patches to become playable now.
Yah, Civ 6 initially released late 2016. I bought the platinum upgrade summer of last year and found it to be very, very good. Total War has the same issue with a lot of their releases being half-baked at launch. I think it's better to release it in a more finished state though nothing will still compare to feedback from the general public.
Their biggest interest compared to a CIV, would be to release the game with substantial content from the outset, and not with dlcs in shovel almost mandatory to really have a good game.
Going to play it 100% , I wonder if it will work on M1 in the next couple of weeks (I saw they postponed the MacOS version) or when they say MacOS they mean Intel only ....
It will be nice to play some AAA games natively on Apple silicon !
Hoping it wont be multenVK but a native Metal implementation , but little chance for that I guess.
It's fun and chill. They also seem to work on the existing bugs. If you liked Civ you are going to like this game. I vastly prefer the combat system, territory and diplomacy/war mechanics to Civ. For war you are fighting in mini-rounds during the turns with armies that move as stacks but are split up in single units for battles which are fought in battle areas around the place the battle is initiated. And war is more like the end to a means of solving certain grievances you acquired via interacting with other empires. Still has some holes but its more fun than the usual annihilation wars. The pacing is a bit off with progressing in eras without having the tech, but those things are rather minor.
On August 18 2021 00:32 smr wrote: I might only have a small look tonight. Out of time till next monday, but I want to play so much There is a wonderful Launch trailer. https://youtu.be/nGi00HqpmS0
If they are only half as good at making games as they are at making trailers, this is one fantastic game!
Any trustworthy reviews out yet? I don't buy preorder or beta on general principle, but this is now live, so how does it hold up to civ 6?
I'm enjoying it so far, but I don't think I'll spend even half as many hours on it as I've spent on Civ 6 (1.6k hours ..ye I was kinda addicted ). Don't get me wrong, I really do like it a lot, but sadly figuring out how to min max is way easier than it is in Civ. After a few games I've noticed, that all I had to do to" out snowball" the AI was maxing out influence and production early on, while simultaniously claiming as many territories as possible. My usual pick order is Egyptians, Maya, Khmer and then I choose science or money civs, because at this point even at the highest difficulty the AI is so afraid of me they'd rather ally, than mess with me. I'm kinda sad this works so well, the Markabata is way to cheap in production, is easy to get and overall too powerful. Two regiments are enough to shutdown any expansionist Civ early on and once you've done that it snowballs out of control pretty fast. T.T
It's a decent game, but if you're good at 4x games in general, the AI is pretty easy to beat and multiplayer just drags even more than in other turn-based strategy games. Also a lot of mechanics aren't very well thought-out and just feel tacked on for no other reason than to have them in the game (cultural influence, religion, pollution are the big three offenders, but a lot of smaller things, too). It needs a lot more polish, patching, and balancing; probably a couple full-sized dlcs if I'm being honest to become a really great game. Can it get there? I guess we'll see, as it is it's worth playing for a bit if you like the genre but it feels very rushed and rough for sure.
On August 26 2021 06:15 farvacola wrote: Good AI in 4x games continues to prove elusive, it would seem.
It's so weird, some of the things that happen in game feel like whomever designed the AI behaviors just had no understanding of the game or the rules. For example, units get a bonus in combat when they are defending in this game; but AI insists on attacking with its units virtually every combat turn, even though that just means he will lose the unit and the battle. It's just frustrating.
I have no expectations of some amazing artificial intelligence that will come up with creative strategies to beat me or something, but when the AI consistently makes simple moves that put it at a disadvantage for no reason whatsoever... meh.
After 40+ hours I think I've seen and gotten everything out of this game. Any other route than domination seems boring to me at this point and domination isn't that much fun anymore either. The weak AI isn't the only factor though, it's that building wonders and reaching fame milestones just doesn't really feel as rewarding as building a wonder in Civ. I don't think it was a smart decision allowing players to lock in wonders. Because fighting for the best wonders is one of the best mechanics in Civ. Humankind is full of "tiny" decisions, which I really enjoyed in the beginning, but their impact on how the games play out is minor and they seem rather meaningless in the long run. Since they only impact the next 10 turns and only cause a minor ideology shift. And there really isn't a lot of replayability regarding the "big" decisions, considering that some civs are no brainer picks and are clearly the best option for that era, so you end up picking the same or similar civs each game. Overall it's a good game, but not a great game. Simply because it doesn't have as much replay value as other 4x games imo. I really hope future updates and upcoming dlcs will change that though, so I can give it another go.
On August 26 2021 06:15 farvacola wrote: Good AI in 4x games continues to prove elusive, it would seem.
After playing Old World (a recent top notch classical-age focused 4x game that's kinda gone under the radar), I've come to appreciate that part of having good AI is making game systems that the AI is able to use effectively.
In Old World, in terms of unit movement, units can move incredibly far in a single turn, at the cost of "orders" which are necessary for almost every action in the game (technically, by paying another currecy units can move as much as you have orders for). This means that combat is about having your units far away from the enemy then using all your orders to bring them all in at once in a large wave (while you're fighting large battles, you probably won't have many orders to effectively manage workers and your court, but that's part of the tradeoff). After the first wave, battles become this very tactical grindfest where each turn one or two units dies and each side keeps piling in reinforcements, until one sides gives up and retreats.
What does this mean in terms of combat AI? I'm no expert in AI, but I believe this all-or-nothing appoach is much easier for the AI to execute that the slow methodical unit movement of Civ, and makes for intense battles. AI in Old World, especially in battles, is damn strong, at least compared to Civ 5 and 6.
For me, empire building is a huge part of the fun in a 4x game, so I don't mind an easy to beat AI. I didn't like how gamey the victory conditions got in Civ 5.
Some of the negative feedback in this thread feels like feature creep is a major issue. A lot of modern games are too complicated with too many features. The 4x genre is one of the worst but it is not the only offender. Every Civ game from 3 onwards has had 2 expansions to flesh out the game. I think it's better to have a solid, more bare bones vanilla game and use expansions to add features to make up for the game is lacking. IIRC, Civ 6 added religion in the first major DLC and global warming/UN in the 2nd. It made for a much better game, imo, even though I got tired of the vanilla game in roughly 100 hours.
This game sounds like it tried to have similar amounts of features to a post-expansion Civ game.
Regarding AI, I agree that it’s important for them to have the capacity to be very challenging and also that the game needs to be designed to their strengths. Lately I’ve been playing mods to classic 4X games that tweak the AI to be more challenging and it really draws out previously hidden depths of those games (Alpha Centauri / Thinker Mod and Master of Magic / Caster of Magic for Windows).
The Caster of Magic mod in particular is a masterclass of redesigning aspects of the game to play to strengths more easily utilized by an AI, and it makes such a big difference. For those not familiar with Master of Magic, it’s a 4X that instead of utilizing things like governments and religion to add complexity (although there’s a basic tax system), you research spells depending on which magic school you specialize in that provide troops, aid you in combat, boost the efficacy of your cities or harm cities/resources of your enemies. The game initially had several spells that trivialized AI because there was no way they could use them as effectively (instantly teleporting your unit to any of your cities was a big culprit). Among many other things, the mod removed all those problem spells and replaced them with ones that could be coded into AI combat logic. It ends up being similar to that one gif of rock/paper/scissors/lizards/bears/etc where there’s so many interactions between different mechanics that to a player it still feels dynamic and interesting, but a programmer can make an AI work with it. Great stuff.
It’s been almost two months since we put Humankind in your hands, but that was only the beginning of our journey together with this game. The response was enthusiastic, but the enthusiastic players are often also the most critical, and we received a lot of feedback through Games2Gether, the Steam forums, and even Steam reviews in the first couple of weeks. This feedback is vital to us, not only to see what you like about the game and what problems you want to see addressed first, but also to get a picture of how you would like the game to grow in the future.
Today, we want to take a look at the improvements we have already made, the feedback we’re seeing, and what we’re working on for the next patch.
Initial Patches
After launch, a few subjects quickly emerged as frequently discussed by the community. Many players found that they were unable to fully experience the Contemporary or even Industrial era, as they could not find enough resource deposits on the map and many times pollution ended their game prematurely. We have since increased the amount of late game resources, raised the limit of pollution, and added some additional options to reduce it, to allow our players to savor the last eras, though we know many of you would like to see further improvements. We also fixed a problem with naval assaults on cities, which led to unassailable island fortresses.
In addition to these frequently discussed problems, we’ve made some improvements to other parts of the game. For example, we’ve started work on the user interface by rearranging the terms in the Surrender Screen to make different territories easier to find. We’ve also been working on the AI, particularly how it handles armies and battles. Furthermore, we’ve added better validation tools to the map editor.
Of course, we have also been working hard to improve the stability and performance of the game and addressed many of the bugs reported by our players.
Ongoing Work
However, we know we have yet to address all of your concerns, and while our team may not be able to respond on the forums as much as they’d like, we watch your discussions with interest. We’ve been following many fascinating conversations about a variety of topics, from Neolithic population growth to end conditions, culture balance and affinities to overall game pace, line of sight and unit balance, religion, and even improved quality of life for personas and the new game lobby, among others.
We have already fixed many crashes and stuck turns, but there a still some major concerns that are among our top priorities — for example the Mac version, multiplayer stability, and the reports of crashes and turns not ending properly. These issues have a wide variety of potential causes we need to tackle one at a time, and similarly, multiplayer connection issues involve a great number of variables that can make it difficult to reproduce them in our testing environment — in other words, these issues have proven more difficult to address than anticipated and as such have slowed down both the investigation and testing phases of some fixes.
We want to apologize to our fans on Mac for the long delay of the official Mac release. While we have made good progress on the Mac version of the game, creating an M1-compatible version has proven surprisingly difficult. Unfortunately, we did not have access to sufficient information and hardware in advance, so we could not start work on compatibility before release. We are sorry that we did not foresee this long delay. We’re currently finishing our examination and will update you with more details next week. In the meantime, we will continue to work on the Mac Beta currently available for opt-in on Steam, and we hope to officially release this version soon.
We hope to address these issues as soon as possible, but we cannot give you an estimate of when they will be fixed yet.
Future Features
We don’t just want to review what we’ve done since the release today, we want to take a look at the future.
We know many of you would like us to expand certain parts of the game, like religion, diplomacy, cultural influence, and pollution, with more options for the player and stronger interactions with the other game systems. While we agree that many parts of the game could be expanded, these are substantial changes and additions that require careful consideration and time to implement. We are working on various improvements we think you will be excited about, but we are not ready to share details about them yet. Additionally, rest assured we are keeping a close eye on your discussions to take into account where and how you would like to see the game grow.
The Next Update
Finally, some news we know many of you have been waiting for: We are aiming to release the next big update on October 28th. This patch will improve your options when creating your game with new settings for resource abundance and end conditions and try to address the rapid increase in the game’s pace in the mid to late game discussed by the community as well as some of the most discussed concerns about balance between cultures, among other things. We’ll talk about this patch in greater detail next week.
Unfortunately, we have some bad news to share about the upcoming “Fabius Maximus” update.
While testing it, we discovered some major issues that we are not confident we will be able to fix in time for the intended October 28th release. Consequently, we had to make the tough decision of delaying this update by a week into the first week of November, which also pushes the follow-up patch with the end condition options and unit balancing closer to mid November.
We know many of you were excited to try the improvements brought to the game by this update, but we think that delaying until these issues have been resolved is the better option. However, we may be able to provide a beta version through Steam for those willing to give it a try.
Frankly, with a nickname like “Fabius Maximus,” we should not be surprised by this turn of events, but we still want to apologize for the additional delay.
EPT![[image loading]](https://i.redd.it/fnmtqh2ds5061.png)
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There is a wonderful Launch trailer. 
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