Humankind (Civ-style game from Amplitude Studios)
- Thread starter Sebudai
- Start date
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This is the problem with most 4x games for me. I conceptually love the idea of the games, they are something that appeals to me on some level. However gameplay wise they generally all just feel like a chore, as their are a ton of mechanics that are just like why is this here.
I feel like more 4x games need to just be more interesting games of risk, instead of all the shit they try to pack into them. While I've put a ton of time into Civ over the years, the games I really enjoyed where like Age of Empires, and there was a Star Trek one back in the early 2000's.
Jozu
Bronze Baronet of the Realm
- 6,958
- 6,267
I dont think its the difficulty for me.
Its just the fact that the most exciting aspect of the game early to mid section is fighting a wooly mammoth or a random skirmish with your warring neighbor. Waiting turns to see your pyramaid be built is satisfying when it is completed and you start to slowly advance and unlock new tech options etc. But other than that I felt like the random event generator was underwhelming as most of the choices consist of small buffs to building cost or construction speed etc. I never felt captivated by the circumstances I found my civilization in.
Its just the fact that the most exciting aspect of the game early to mid section is fighting a wooly mammoth or a random skirmish with your warring neighbor. Waiting turns to see your pyramaid be built is satisfying when it is completed and you start to slowly advance and unlock new tech options etc. But other than that I felt like the random event generator was underwhelming as most of the choices consist of small buffs to building cost or construction speed etc. I never felt captivated by the circumstances I found my civilization in.
Caliane
Avatar of War Slayer
- 14,569
- 10,063
Are these complaints specific to THIS game, or this style of game? I don't play enough 4x to tell. This seems par for course for those I've tried. (and generally am never satisfied with as well.) This one kept me playing longer then most.
Replay. Im not sure how much is there. Each culture being visually distinct is neat. avatar outfit changes fun... but, I hardly see that being enough to justify replays really. its not like, each culture is RADICALLY different like Endless legend.
I'm def at the point I've basically won in the A.I. game, but am just waiting out the victory condition. doing tech/money win... although technically could declare war, and crush everyone faster. (I feel this is a genre problem) Pretty sure most of the "challenge" was me not knowing how things worked. which units were best.
I'm on "town". so it is set to easy.
Multiplayer? maybe there.
Waiting turns. yeah, happens alot. but, kindof the norm for the genre isnt it?
Maybe it could be balanced better. Like, I'm in vast led. tech, gold, industry high. but, each city has a queue of like 100 days of upgrade waiting to be made.. As, tech unlocks, require too much industry/gold to actually build. In the same sense, tech is unlocked, but blow through ages faster then can actually upgrade/build units often.
Diplomacy. felt like a few things were missing. grievance system.. but no gifts? not sure how you increase relations.
Access to goods without war. rng here I suppose. Have 1 nuclear mine in my territory. only other one is in primary enemies territory, and they don't have nuclear tech. so, cant access it. cant invest in it, etc. would need to go to war for it. no peaceful option is weird. (not sure if the invest in other cultures recource node culture feature would work, would likely make that culture best for endgame)
No idea how unit strength works exactly... not sure if there are hidden bonuses to higher tier units, or if its purely a factor of that nebulous unit strength stat.
I was really confused on how boats worked for a long time... when you unlock boat tech. you don't need to actually build boats, to have units move across water. its a passive unlock. once you have the tech for "boarding vessal" boats, you can just send your land units into the water, and they will automatically change into those boats while in the water.
"applies boarding status to targets" has got to be one of the shittiest tooltips in history.
the encyclopedia does a much better job..
300 turns win condition. on one hand, probably going to have a clear winner long before that. But, at the same time, probably also means will hit that before doing mission to mars, or finishing tech tree, or killing the earth.. If you DON'T have a clear winner, it seems the 300 turn game end, doesn't allow much time for modern combat. despite so many modern units.
Settlers are bizarrely late in the tech tree.
Is there a use for influence late game? seems only merging cities, but not sure why I would really even want to do that.
Replay. Im not sure how much is there. Each culture being visually distinct is neat. avatar outfit changes fun... but, I hardly see that being enough to justify replays really. its not like, each culture is RADICALLY different like Endless legend.
I'm def at the point I've basically won in the A.I. game, but am just waiting out the victory condition. doing tech/money win... although technically could declare war, and crush everyone faster. (I feel this is a genre problem) Pretty sure most of the "challenge" was me not knowing how things worked. which units were best.
I'm on "town". so it is set to easy.
Multiplayer? maybe there.
Waiting turns. yeah, happens alot. but, kindof the norm for the genre isnt it?
Maybe it could be balanced better. Like, I'm in vast led. tech, gold, industry high. but, each city has a queue of like 100 days of upgrade waiting to be made.. As, tech unlocks, require too much industry/gold to actually build. In the same sense, tech is unlocked, but blow through ages faster then can actually upgrade/build units often.
Diplomacy. felt like a few things were missing. grievance system.. but no gifts? not sure how you increase relations.
Access to goods without war. rng here I suppose. Have 1 nuclear mine in my territory. only other one is in primary enemies territory, and they don't have nuclear tech. so, cant access it. cant invest in it, etc. would need to go to war for it. no peaceful option is weird. (not sure if the invest in other cultures recource node culture feature would work, would likely make that culture best for endgame)
No idea how unit strength works exactly... not sure if there are hidden bonuses to higher tier units, or if its purely a factor of that nebulous unit strength stat.
- Combat Strength: defines the power of the Unit. When fighting another Unit, Combat Strength is used to define the damage dealt and received. Beware! A small difference in Combat Strength can lead to very different results
I was really confused on how boats worked for a long time... when you unlock boat tech. you don't need to actually build boats, to have units move across water. its a passive unlock. once you have the tech for "boarding vessal" boats, you can just send your land units into the water, and they will automatically change into those boats while in the water.
"applies boarding status to targets" has got to be one of the shittiest tooltips in history.
the encyclopedia does a much better job..
- Naval Transport Unit like Siege Units, Naval Transports are not built in Cities, rather Land Units transform into these Units automatically whenever they enter a water tile, allowing them to cross stretches of ocean before returning to their original form.
300 turns win condition. on one hand, probably going to have a clear winner long before that. But, at the same time, probably also means will hit that before doing mission to mars, or finishing tech tree, or killing the earth.. If you DON'T have a clear winner, it seems the 300 turn game end, doesn't allow much time for modern combat. despite so many modern units.
Settlers are bizarrely late in the tech tree.
Is there a use for influence late game? seems only merging cities, but not sure why I would really even want to do that.
faille
Molten Core Raider
- 1,833
- 425
This is really not a good game.
I wanted to like it, and think I got close after the last beta, but it's just not quite there.
The whole civ picking thing ruins any sort of connection you have with the nation you're building. More often than now I feel disassociated from the civ I'm playing. I hate when I'm in the middle of a war with the aztecs to them start getting messages about my war with the English.
I hate how I don't have the freedom to try out a certain play style because it's dependent on access to the civs. Sometimes it's fine, it's rare the AI picks babylonians early, but others like Hittites are almost always taken.
It has the illusion of multiple paths to victory but in reality you have to spread wide. Focusing purely on science or money only gets you so far, you need to be doing the others to get your stars. I guess the exception would be military to take over the world.
The wonders are pretty bland and feel so limited compared to options presented in Civ games.
More often the not, the result is determined well in advance. This is true in civ also, but not to this degree. You can see quite clearly the star / game scoreboard and you know going into era's 3 / 4 / 5 if you have a shot or not and there's not much you can do to catch up if you're behind by a certain amount.
The one are I really thought they'd have nailed, The neolithic era, is completely ruined by their retarded AI cheating system. If you're not setting your guys to auto explore then you are falling behind.
All of this is on top of the stupid shit that might be excusable for a first time companies early access game but unforgivable in one with plenty of 4x titles under their belt. The aforementioned sub par AI (though that is almost a requirement for 4x games now), the neolithic legacy bonus being hard coded at 10 sci things, regarded of pace setting, the completely lack of balancing between pace settings, unnecessary notification popups, pop ups that cover the stuff you're looking at, etc etc etc.
I wanted to like it, and think I got close after the last beta, but it's just not quite there.
The whole civ picking thing ruins any sort of connection you have with the nation you're building. More often than now I feel disassociated from the civ I'm playing. I hate when I'm in the middle of a war with the aztecs to them start getting messages about my war with the English.
I hate how I don't have the freedom to try out a certain play style because it's dependent on access to the civs. Sometimes it's fine, it's rare the AI picks babylonians early, but others like Hittites are almost always taken.
It has the illusion of multiple paths to victory but in reality you have to spread wide. Focusing purely on science or money only gets you so far, you need to be doing the others to get your stars. I guess the exception would be military to take over the world.
The wonders are pretty bland and feel so limited compared to options presented in Civ games.
More often the not, the result is determined well in advance. This is true in civ also, but not to this degree. You can see quite clearly the star / game scoreboard and you know going into era's 3 / 4 / 5 if you have a shot or not and there's not much you can do to catch up if you're behind by a certain amount.
The one are I really thought they'd have nailed, The neolithic era, is completely ruined by their retarded AI cheating system. If you're not setting your guys to auto explore then you are falling behind.
All of this is on top of the stupid shit that might be excusable for a first time companies early access game but unforgivable in one with plenty of 4x titles under their belt. The aforementioned sub par AI (though that is almost a requirement for 4x games now), the neolithic legacy bonus being hard coded at 10 sci things, regarded of pace setting, the completely lack of balancing between pace settings, unnecessary notification popups, pop ups that cover the stuff you're looking at, etc etc etc.
jeydax
Death and Taxes
- 1,389
- 851
faille
Molten Core Raider
- 1,833
- 425
really? It literally cheats. you turn it on and see your guys make a direct line to a spot and when it comes withing vision range, you see there was a curiosity or harvest spot there. So naturally it's taking the most direct path to get to those things, negating any actual exploring you're doing. You still want to do actual exploring to reveal the map and find city spots, but doing too much means other civs and getting their Stars and having first pick at civs.
here's what I mean:
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jeydax
Death and Taxes
- 1,389
- 851
Yeah I wasn't sure if you meant something beyond that - definitely noticed that but the system is shit. Especially after turn 25~ they end up just going in circles in like 3-4 hex's. It doesn't explore "fog of war" (like you said though, you want to explore on your own). The system is just completely useless for 90% of the game outside the first 5-10 turns, and then they magically fix themselves once the "new world" (3rd island by default) is found. I wouldn't use it as a crutch, but it definitely has it's uses.
DickTrickle
Definitely NOT Furor Planedefiler
- 12,936
- 14,839
jeydax
Death and Taxes
- 1,389
- 851
I've got about 1,300 hours into Civ6 and I really enjoy 4X and turn based strategy games. I think my favorite one (besides Civ) more recently would be Age of Wonders: Planetfall. That game is great and highly recommend it if you like 4X games.
TLDR: I guess my whole review would be that Humankind isn't *bad*, more that it has a lot of potential. But right now it just doesn't feel like it has heart. I love that they kind of combined Civ and AoW: Planetfall's combat system. I put about 150 hours into it now just to really feel the whole thing. I was super hyped as I'd been waiting for it for a while.
Things they need to work on:
1) Game breaking units (Promachois and Varangian Guards for example) that can complete ruin a game before it really takes shape. They're so fucking broken. Promachois especially.
2) The AI needs a shit load of work on diplomacy (and other aspects I'll get to that). There's really no uniqueness from game to game because of this. It's worse playing solo, I think, but most of my games have been a multiplayer game with a buddy of mine. The AI is just incoherently inconsistent. At least in Civ you KNOW how to make someone happy or mad. In this game literally no matter what you do it doesn't seem to have any sort of consequence to how the AI's behave.
3) They need to revamp the combat system a little bit. If you have a 6 stack and someone initiates an attack where only 1 unit can come out just really doesn't feel right. It doesn't happen often but the fact that the army set can just reattack you in the same turn and just constantly go 1v4-8 over and over is stupid.
4) Outpost turning into a city (sometimes being attached to another city) eating up units that are on that hex. Civ had the same issue for years.
5) Some of the "stars" are horribly balanced. Specifically Aesthete. The stars/fame needs some balance work done.
6) Shitting on the AI again, they rarely try to ransack outposts which means I'm never concerned until they're actually near a city tile. More combat/war related stuff sometimes I can just park a 4-8 army stack on one of my outposts near their city and they'll just keep throwing 1-2 stack armies at me. You have to be pretty close to the city but I've done this multiple times. You can just sploit it for a complete 2 or 3-star army stack and just wreck everyone.
7) Trading just feels super bland. There's no strategy behind it. By the time other civ's have 2-4+ luxuries, buying them is just so inconsequential that it has no feeling to it. It just exists, but there's no real tough decision making to decide which to buy. Could be an economy/money thing now that I think about it. It's just so easy to make money.
8) Stability is an issue for like 1 ERA. And it's the only thing I really felt in the entire game that really had any consequences. But you end up gaining so much stability that it just doesn't matter after a while. Even if you do run into it (say after absorbing another city) you can just build 5-6 common's quarters in one turn to fix it.
9) It's supposed to be "random" sort of but they AI picks the same fucking civilizations every fucking time.
10) I could list more but I don't think this game has a ton of traction in the forum anyways and this just my couple 2 cents.
TLDR: I guess my whole review would be that Humankind isn't *bad*, more that it has a lot of potential. But right now it just doesn't feel like it has heart. I love that they kind of combined Civ and AoW: Planetfall's combat system. I put about 150 hours into it now just to really feel the whole thing. I was super hyped as I'd been waiting for it for a while.
Things they need to work on:
1) Game breaking units (Promachois and Varangian Guards for example) that can complete ruin a game before it really takes shape. They're so fucking broken. Promachois especially.
2) The AI needs a shit load of work on diplomacy (and other aspects I'll get to that). There's really no uniqueness from game to game because of this. It's worse playing solo, I think, but most of my games have been a multiplayer game with a buddy of mine. The AI is just incoherently inconsistent. At least in Civ you KNOW how to make someone happy or mad. In this game literally no matter what you do it doesn't seem to have any sort of consequence to how the AI's behave.
3) They need to revamp the combat system a little bit. If you have a 6 stack and someone initiates an attack where only 1 unit can come out just really doesn't feel right. It doesn't happen often but the fact that the army set can just reattack you in the same turn and just constantly go 1v4-8 over and over is stupid.
4) Outpost turning into a city (sometimes being attached to another city) eating up units that are on that hex. Civ had the same issue for years.
5) Some of the "stars" are horribly balanced. Specifically Aesthete. The stars/fame needs some balance work done.
6) Shitting on the AI again, they rarely try to ransack outposts which means I'm never concerned until they're actually near a city tile. More combat/war related stuff sometimes I can just park a 4-8 army stack on one of my outposts near their city and they'll just keep throwing 1-2 stack armies at me. You have to be pretty close to the city but I've done this multiple times. You can just sploit it for a complete 2 or 3-star army stack and just wreck everyone.
7) Trading just feels super bland. There's no strategy behind it. By the time other civ's have 2-4+ luxuries, buying them is just so inconsequential that it has no feeling to it. It just exists, but there's no real tough decision making to decide which to buy. Could be an economy/money thing now that I think about it. It's just so easy to make money.
8) Stability is an issue for like 1 ERA. And it's the only thing I really felt in the entire game that really had any consequences. But you end up gaining so much stability that it just doesn't matter after a while. Even if you do run into it (say after absorbing another city) you can just build 5-6 common's quarters in one turn to fix it.
9) It's supposed to be "random" sort of but they AI picks the same fucking civilizations every fucking time.
10) I could list more but I don't think this game has a ton of traction in the forum anyways and this just my couple 2 cents.
- 1
Ukerric
Bearded Ape
- 7,921
- 9,572
I've yet to play. I should launch it for at least 5mn so that I can review bomb it on steam.
I play on OSX. All of Amplitude Games were always on OSX, so when they said for their first game post-SEGA purchase that it would be on Mac, but "shortly after release", I simply pre-ordered, and waited.
And waited.
And waited.
Just to be clear: it was labelled as available on OSX. You could "install" it on OSX from steam. It would "just" fail to launch with an error "cannot find humankind.exe" (which is the Windows executable, OSX executable are labelled as .app)
The refund window had expired a long time ago when they finally announced an "OSX Beta" in mid-september. To this day, all reports on the beta are universally negative. It crashes. It freezes. They swear it will support the M1 version, but they can't even make it work on the standard intel macs.
Frostpunk, by comparison, promised an OSX version during early access, but never, ever labelled their game as available on OSX until they actually had one, eight months after they initially released.
It's the last game Amplitude-slash-SEGA has gotten money from me. Even though I'll probably switch to a Windows system next year (for reasons) and that compatibility will cease to be a problem, "scam me once, shame on you. I'll never give you an opportunity to make it up to me."
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I'd think you could get reimbursed even if it's past "release date" on Steam if you contact them and explain(iirc refund had something for special refund reasons). If they technically haven't released the OSX version yet then Steam should be able to reimburse you, especially if you haven't been constantly refunding stuff before so they don't think you're wasting their time.
That sounds pretty fucking scummy, but then again OSX versions are quite often super delayed/shitty, I wouldn't preorder anything on that platform and wait until it releases.
That sounds pretty fucking scummy, but then again OSX versions are quite often super delayed/shitty, I wouldn't preorder anything on that platform and wait until it releases.