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Humankind: A challenger to Civilization

This game has such good "bones" to it right now that it is a real shame it is so buggy and imbalanced. I'm definitely enjoying it quite a bit, but the imbalance between different cultures in each era is striking and the AI just isn't providing much of a challenge for me. I think this game might be really interesting on multiplayer, but then you have to deal with really imbalanced cultures in each era giving certain players a big leg up just because they got to advance first. On the other hand, I really do appreciate how each culture feels so different depending on its affinity. I hope that they'll iron out the balance some and put out good expansions that build on these base systems because the base quality is definitely there.

That said, I do agree with those who feel a lack of personality as compared to other games. In historical 4Xs you often have both a deeper diplomatic system and the weight of history to provide context and personality to what you do. In Humankind you're not playing out any historical scenario but rather painting across a random map and running into random cultures. That just doesn't have the same weight to it as games like Crusader Kings or Europa Universalis get naturally from letting you play out your alternate history fantasies.

I compare this game to Old World, another 4x I was putting a ton of hours in before Humankind's release. Old World injects a lot of personality by having Crusader Kings style dynasties and families run each nation, with you having to manage relationships with individual characters. Playing Humankind I really missed having some small but flavorful interpersonal events pop up to give more texture to being the ruler of the Bablyonians or Greeks. Humankind tries to do this with its random events, and I do appreciate them, but I almost with those events popped more regularly to provide some flavor for my nation and break up the turns.
 
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Word to the wise. I neolithic the auto explore seeks out curiousities...which kind of sucks because it removes the decision Making.
 


Did a game on nation difficulty, huge map. I won by science victory 90 turns early. After ascending to early modern, I claimed eiffel tower and statue of liberty. The statue of liberty is silly broken if you're so ahead on the culture game, which I was. Of course I started snowballing in the medieval era once my new build cities started populating the old world and since I was in a hugbox with the other two only AI on the continent I could focus hard on expanding and developing my cities. Eventually it got to the point where my city militia could probably beat everyone in a fight with no casualties. I think the most advanced unit from the AI is like some flintlock gunner surrounded by mostly medieval or older troops meanwhile here I am running around with PRC commandoes and the capability to build missile artillery. Will probably start a war with somebody in the continued game.
 
Somebodynobody10 said:
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.
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Somebodynobody10 said:
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.
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New Info gained through reddit and confirmed personally: You can still change state religions using ctrl + 5 in the religion screen.
It seems the system hasn't been dropped, but some idiot forgot to keep the code for the state religion shift button, or something as ridiculous. However, the keyboard shortcut still functions!
 
Game not advancing fights for anyone else? Every time I get into one they just don't advance it and I need to reload.

Wondering if playing on pangea would be a good idea? Right now I'm finding it really hard to justify picking a conquest or expansionist faction because even with eight players on a large map...sometimes there just isn't anyone to stab. Sometimes I get an entire continent to myself and I'm just left here pressing end turn while I endlessly maximize my infrastructure.

Also I'm not quite sure what the expansionist cultures are meant to do? Like, I can see Rome has a conquest plan but territory stars are kind of hard to earn and I'm not quite sure how much I should seek to produce more cities rather then one or two mega-cities.

Between the bugs and some moment to moment stuff it really feels like this game is waiting on it's expansion packs to get really good.
 
Good heavens, the Turkish emblematic district, the Public School is just obscenely powerful. Plus 1 science per pop in the city in every territory is incredibly powerful in the late game, especially since getting more population is Turkey's specialty in-game.
 
I need to figure out when and how to build units and create more cities. I keep ending up with a thousand and one territories but only one or two cities.

Harrapans, Babylon and Egypt seem to be the big winners from the ancient era.

Just taking Babylon itself means you can take a relatively middling ancient era for the potential to have science covered seemingly forever.

Harrpans mean you can just...populate. Egypt is production king. I keep trying to make Zhou work but their Unique seems to be too situational and without any super strong infrastructure buffs they don't seem to get the ball rolling fast enough.
 
I do appreciate the star system as a way to advance and get VP. It requires that you diversify your strategy at least a bit in order to keep advancing at a good rate. In one game was playing a science culture but ended up going on a war path against a weak neighbor both to reach my city cap and to get expansionist/militarist stars.

One thing I have noticed is that it seems really difficult to get the influence required for aesthete stars, even as a aesthete culture. Maybe this is just because I'm not yet good at the game, but I couldn't see how you would get enough influence to quickly accumulate those stars in earlier eras. In contrast merchant stars are much easier to get if you invest in them, and money is actually quite strong if you can get a high income and just keep buying things out.
 
Dromon said:
I do appreciate the star system as a way to advance and get VP. It requires that you diversify your strategy at least a bit in order to keep advancing at a good rate. In one game was playing a science culture but ended up going on a war path against a weak neighbor both to reach my city cap and to get expansionist/militarist stars.

One thing I have noticed is that it seems really difficult to get the influence required for aesthete stars, even as a aesthete culture. Maybe this is just because I'm not yet good at the game, but I couldn't see how you would get enough influence to quickly accumulate those stars in earlier eras. In contrast merchant stars are much easier to get if you invest in them, and money is actually quite strong if you can get a high income and just keep buying things out.
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Agreed. Aesthete stars only become really viable after taking a later era aesthete culture that causes some of your common things to spawn culture/more culture.

Franks + Italians combo comes to mind.
 
Dream Logic said:
I keep trying to make Zhou work but their Unique seems to be too situational and without any super strong infrastructure buffs they don't seem to get the ball rolling fast enough.
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I *think* their biggest strength is less science and more Stability. My first attempt with them I had a single city spread across four territories, and I don't know if it ever dropped below 100% stability until the next era.
 
Jim Starluck said:
I *think* their biggest strength is less science and more Stability. My first attempt with them I had a single city spread across four territories, and I don't know if it ever dropped below 100% stability until the next era.
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I'll have to try again. Felt like you wanted an explosive start but the long term gains might be worth it.
 
You should only pick Zhou for their science bonus if you have an immediate position to use the mountain adjacency - however if you do get one or two such adjacency spots, you can early game tech rush into actual military and early declare on some AI for land.

That being said, I got to agree that Babylon is more consistent for that.
 
Somebodynobody10 said:
Agreed. Aesthete stars only become really viable after taking a later era aesthete culture that causes some of your common things to spawn culture/more culture.

Franks + Italians combo comes to mind.
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Honestly though some of the aesthete cultures are good even if you can't get their stars. I'm really liking the Mauryan for the mixture of science and influence provided by their ED. Olmecs aren't as good as the top tier first era cultures but you can absolutely throw out a ton of outposts with their extra influence.

I've been trying to see if I can make the first era combat cultures (Myceneans, Hittites, Assyrians) work. You can do some early war, but I think the big advantage for them is that their permanent traits are pretty good. I don't think they're better than choosing something that can charge up your growth, but they're not entirely useless.

EDIT: Though if you're really into early warmongering I suspect Myceneans are really strong. Depends on how hard you want to commit to just fighting from turn 10 to try and stomp others out.
 
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If you can get a *really* good rush and dumb luck the harrapans can claim an opponents city the turn they create it.
 
Dream Logic said:
If you can get a *really* good rush and dumb luck the harrapans can claim an opponents city the turn they create it.
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Runners are freaking ridiculous. You don't even need to cheese people with them. If you can get like 5 tribes before going to the ancient era as the Harrapans you can basically set them to auto-explore and rake in huge amounts of influence and science. Honestly as good as the Harrapan unique quarter and ability are it's really the runners that put them over the top.
 
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