Yeah... I just made the mistake of thinking I could defend my allies against the huns.
Let's just say I've already started another game.
Humankind: A challenger to Civilization
- Thread starter tankdrop24
- Start date
-
- Tags
- strategy
Yeah... I just made the mistake of thinking I could defend my allies against the huns.
Let's just say I've already started another game.
Dream Logic
An offseason swallow
- Location
- In transit
Day two and I'm whelmed. Not sure how I feel about it really.
Buff the phoenicans. This is not a game that favors coastlines.
Buff the phoenicans. This is not a game that favors coastlines.
Duvalle
Ardent Flame
- Location
- The Hearth
You can destroy cities by ransacking them, even your own. No it's not well explained, but it's possible.
I'd also recommend increasing the number of competitors by at least 1.5 to 2 times as many as recommended by the world map size for a more dynamic experience. This was true for Amplitude's past games and it goes here as well.
As for my own impression, I've been enjoying my run of it so far. They've improved a lot over the open betas and it feels like a solid evolution on the core systems Amplitude's been honing since Endless Legend and Endless Space 2. The era mechanics are real great for adapting your playstyle to specific playthroughs and strategies you want to adopt. There's a lot of fun combinations that I feel like I'm just scratching the surface of, especially as I'm moving into the late game where pollution is becoming more of a concern.
The units are also fun to play with and pretty to look at. Here again is where they've improved the EL battle minigame to feel like less of a slog, even if battles can go on longer. Terrain feels impactful in terms of planning individual unit moves, though I sometimes find myself fighting the camera to find out where a change in elevations is a cliff versus a hill.
It doesn't have the same personality factor as the Endless Series, though. None of the leaders have the same operatic wow factor as the ones from ES2. I think that they've honestly limited themselves by focusing on human-civilizations, where an Endless Legend 2 that utilizes the same stuff would be an absolute ride. Everyone starting out as various Concrete/Virtual/whathaveyou offshoots and slowly changing themselves by adopting new affinities from various factions across the endless series would make for a hell of a game and it has the bones for that.
It also has the foundation for a lot of other interesting system add-ons. Which is my biggest criticism of the game. Maybe it's me being brain-poisoned by playing too much grand strategy, but I feel like the game is desperately craving for a more robust diplomacy system where you have more mechanics to build relationships, sow distrust, pull allies into wars, force peace among warring factions, create coalitions or broker trade deals for specific resources and gain fame from doing so. The interactions you can have with your competitors feel flat and largely beyond your control since you don't have tools of meaningfully building relationships with them beyond whether you renounce or press your grievances. Though the grievance system makes diplomacy active, it needs one more layer of politicking systems to really make it shine.
The tech system feels like a bit of a step backwards. I miss the massive tech trees from
Amplitude's past games. I understand why they did it, but I think the tradeoff to hew closer to historical accurate tech development limits the game's potential for shenanigans. Ditto with the religion and the civics tree. There's an interesting mechanic with Independent peoples where you can see their ideological affinity to your own civ, which gives you certain bonuses and makes it easier to later assimilate them. I haven't been able to find a similar system implemented for the Enemy factions/Competitors other than a vague indication on the diplo screen about your closeness. Having culture wide events
Potential is a word I keep coming back to; there's a lot of room for this game to mature in a similar way that Civ5 did with Brave New World, or Endless Legend did with the Shifters. Overall I've enjoyed the time I've had with it, and am looking forward to seeing how it changes over the coming years
Tried that. Didnt let me. Can sack outposts, couldnt do shit to a city.
Also, there needs to be a min number of turns before an outpost can be turned into a city. And a outpost being pillaged shouldnt be able to be made into a city. At all. Seriously, I doubt the order even make it INTO the outpost to begin with.
Last edited:
How the *quack* are you supposed to expand your religion?
My entire empire is completely swamped by my neighbor's faiths.
EDIT:
My entire empire is completely swamped by my neighbor's faiths.
EDIT:
Is it their last city? The game doesn't want to accept total destruction of any players until late game.
Last edited:
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Let me play Myceneans. Seriously EVERY SINGLE TIME the AI gets Myceneans before me
Nope. I never even once came near their capital.
I just wanted the city gone to allow a different city to not be shit.
... Was this a city you had occupied, or actually owed? Maybe the game stops people from just burning down all cities during a war?
blast flame
How far will we go if it means lighting the way?
- Location
- Perth, Australia
- Pronouns
- They/Them
I'm a bit disappointed I couldn't set up a game with 0 opponents. I just wanted to mess around for a bit and create a civilization, explore the tech tree, etc rather than try to beat someone at first.
Exterminatus
Tsukumogami User
- Location
- Southern California
There's a peaceful AI option where they won't aggresively declare war on you but will defend themselves if you do declare war on them FWIW.
blast flame
How far will we go if it means lighting the way?
- Location
- Perth, Australia
- Pronouns
- They/Them
But if they can still do stuff like claim cultures before you that's still less than ideal for just exploring the game.
If if works remote like the the Endless game being able to have zero AI opponents is dependend on setting the minimum number of Empires to 1 (You), which is usually done editing a lua file called something like gamedev, setup or such in the data folder.
This can and will break the game following major updates as the edited file won't be updated*, so if you want to gt rid of the edit verify game file and if warranted edit the new version again.
*At least that is how it works out in Endless games
This can and will break the game following major updates as the edited file won't be updated*, so if you want to gt rid of the edit verify game file and if warranted edit the new version again.
*At least that is how it works out in Endless games
it shouldn't be that difficult to make a mod that allows you to mess with AI weighting on culture considerations. 🤔
Protip: unlike civ series, you can just convert to another religion and then hijack it by outproducing the other followers' faith output, giving you control of the religion.
- Location
- Austria
At the first blush, it's, well, a somewhat different/better Civilization, but it lacks that special something that made Endless series better. Character (and characters), I suppose. And atmosphere. And style. It feels less like its own thing (Endless series always felt like its own thing) and more like a Civ clone - which it is, well, an improvement on the formula, but still.
Still, it's a decent enough game. Just not exceptionally memorable, like Endless Legend was.
Still, it's a decent enough game. Just not exceptionally memorable, like Endless Legend was.
Big_Blue
Hey.
- Location
- the ocean
Finished my first game today and my first impressions are that it's a good start, but it needs a couple of expansions to really flesh it out. I really liked the combat system, and it feels like a good upgrade of Legend's. Putting units into stacks and then expanding those stacks when they fight really helps reduce the tedium of lategame. Nukes are also the most satisfying in the genre, the one turn delay into the cinematic cam of all of your nukes hitting and obliterating whatever they were pointed at is v nice. The district system creates some very aeshetic cities and provinces, and unlike Civ V the map actually gets completely filled out in the course of a game.
I will say though either strategic resources are too scarce or unit costs are too high - despite controlling a decent 1/2 - 2/3rds of the map I still didn't half enough aluminium, oil and uranium to actually construct any of the lategame units. With the costs so high it feels even more like the game will be long over by the time anyone actually gets any. Pollution feels like an afterthought as well, to the point where I was looking through their version of the civpedia and I couldn't find it in there. I got to "high" in my game before I got bored and won and the effect was a pretty lackluster -50 stability and -50 food, which had zero impact on any of my lategame cities. Hopefully it does interesting things if you let it get higher.
I will say though either strategic resources are too scarce or unit costs are too high - despite controlling a decent 1/2 - 2/3rds of the map I still didn't half enough aluminium, oil and uranium to actually construct any of the lategame units. With the costs so high it feels even more like the game will be long over by the time anyone actually gets any. Pollution feels like an afterthought as well, to the point where I was looking through their version of the civpedia and I couldn't find it in there. I got to "high" in my game before I got bored and won and the effect was a pretty lackluster -50 stability and -50 food, which had zero impact on any of my lategame cities. Hopefully it does interesting things if you let it get higher.
Wanna hear something frustrating?
You are supposed to be able to switch your state religions. Some people have seen it in some YT vids or done it themselves.
The current release doesn't have that.
The devs somehow managed to cut out one of their religion mechanics from their full launch.
EDIT: new data found: Humankind: A challenger to Civilization
You are supposed to be able to switch your state religions. Some people have seen it in some YT vids or done it themselves.
The current release doesn't have that.
The devs somehow managed to cut out one of their religion mechanics from their full launch.
EDIT: new data found: Humankind: A challenger to Civilization
Last edited:
Dream Logic
An offseason swallow
- Location
- In transit
They really weren't kidding about admitting it's unbalanced.
Go egypt and you can pretty easily just drown people in production by the end of the ancient era. I won't outtech babylon (yet) nor outgrow the farmers but anyone else is leagues behind. My only limit right now is population and stability. Zhou can't spam districts on the same level because they're limited by production and geography, Olmec's are literally out influenced because of the pyramids, I thiiink nubians might be able to keep up on the money game? Haven't tried a conquest or expansionist start so hopefully they can balance the scales.
I'm honestly kind of scared to see what happens in the next eras, Worried that things will rapidly snowball way out of control when the best cultures get taken.
Go egypt and you can pretty easily just drown people in production by the end of the ancient era. I won't outtech babylon (yet) nor outgrow the farmers but anyone else is leagues behind. My only limit right now is population and stability. Zhou can't spam districts on the same level because they're limited by production and geography, Olmec's are literally out influenced because of the pyramids, I thiiink nubians might be able to keep up on the money game? Haven't tried a conquest or expansionist start so hopefully they can balance the scales.
I'm honestly kind of scared to see what happens in the next eras, Worried that things will rapidly snowball way out of control when the best cultures get taken.
I recommend either going Huns next era and snowball few units into many by razing stuff, or a food/growth civ to get more pop and then afterward go Mongols to get Huns 2.0 with +100% ransack bonus. Horses required.
Although only do this if you are actually gonna be warring everyone you can, since mongol + hun legacy bonuses help only warfare (huns give cav dmg bonus, I think?)
- Location
- Austria
They can, and there are later era civs with absolutely stupid production bonuses or buildings.
For example. industry district of Mughals can easily give you 50 Industry from a single district which takes 1 turn ish to build.
Science-focus taken twice, at least for me (Babylon into Greece) resulted in running out of tech to research in every era before I could transition to the next era.
Also,
Same. Maybe it's just a bad RNG, but there were literally only 2 oils on the entire map, also only 3 Uraniums and about 2-3 Aluminums.
I've encountered the turn pending bug. I've tried saving and loading but that only helps one turn at a time, and I've yet to break free of it. It seems other people are having a similar problem, so I hope it's fixed shortly.
That explains it. It seemed like the only way to switch state religion was to have another empire demand you convert to it. What's weird is that I can't do the same to them. I've converted my ally's cities to my religion through trade and luck, but they haven't switched their state religion yet.
That explains it. It seemed like the only way to switch state religion was to have another empire demand you convert to it. What's weird is that I can't do the same to them. I've converted my ally's cities to my religion through trade and luck, but they haven't switched their state religion yet.
Dream Logic
An offseason swallow
- Location
- In transit
Damnit. It seems less like they went 'we can't balance for every combination' and instead just decided to not even bother with parity within the eras themselves.
I thiiiink the Hessites are deliberately meant to be worse then the Myceneans but they are just *so* much worse that it feels odd to think I'd ever want to be them. Same issue for a few other civs (Zhou, Phoenicians, Olmec). Especially because they don't have a bonus that lets them start the snowball into what they want to do. Olmec wants to stack up agriculture to help with influence but egypt is getting more of both off running the pyramids. Phoenicians are stuck with a game that doesn't like water, and Zhou doesn't have enough production to actually take advantage of the stability they get.
Aaaaagh. Babylon can start the snowball because their unique boosts agriculture as well as science. Doesn't help that certain stars are far easier to earn then others. Working through agrarian stars gets you to the others much more quickly then just following science or influence.
Chloe Sullivan
Subdefective
- Location
- 1630 Revello Drive, Sunnydale CA
The culture switching thing makes me think of the boardgame "History of the World" which has a civilization drafting mechanic…
Big_Blue
Hey.
- Location
- the ocean
The ability that the science focus civs get is literally broken strong. Converting 100% of city yields to science is just so insanely strong especially when compared to the mercantilist ability of.... building 1 (one!) resource extractor for some influence, with a ten turn cooldown. Meanwhile put science focus on any halfway optimal capital city and you will literally 1 turn every technology in the current era. Combine this with the fact that the ai plays incredibly passive even on the hardest difficulty and you can just greed focus science and win the game by completing the tech tree by a least 700CE and probably earlier if you play optimally and play for that wincon at the start.
edit: I intentionally got max pollution to see what happens and
I really really want to love this game because it has a lot of interesting things that I like and that set it apart from Civ, but it clearly needs a couple of expansions and a lot of debugging before it can really compete, but that's literally every 4x/grand strat on release I guess.
edit: I intentionally got max pollution to see what happens and
... the game just ends. That's it, no crazy natural disasters, no tiles being consumed by rising sea levels - just some mediocre global debuffs , harsh (but poorly indicated) city specific tile debuffs and then game over if you push it too far.
Last edited: