Improving Humankind Gameplay Together

[The-Cat-o-Nine-Tales]

Since the launch of Humankind, we've seen many of you eagerly dive into the game, and have received many kind words, but we have also received a lot of constructive criticism (as we expect from a dedicated community like you.) While there is much talk about quality of life and interface, there is just as much talk about gameplay. We want to know what gameplay improvements are most important to our players, so we invite you to share the improvements you would like to see in this thread.

Let us know what you think, so that together we can make Humankind a better game!

[Misha Lane]

I dunno if this goes here, but late game for me (Post turn 210ish) the game just massively lags and becomes unplayable.

[SupMellow?]

Late game goes too quick. There are too many ways to get an insane amount of science, and so you end up finishing the entire last era tech tree in a matter of a few turns. The entire last era, I had a game where I was getting 1.33 tech a turn. I knew how to get on Mars, and I still had soldiers on horses on my land. :|

[Slavoj Žižek]

In my opinion there are not enough graphical options for me to turn down. As far as I can tell I can set the 'quality level'. I think that setting is too opaque and could use some work. For example I can see that even on the fastest setting I can still see all the little citizens and random animals on the map, which I know are also interactable. I can see them pretty zoomed out as well. It pains me that I am wasting valuable computer power on these fancy visuals.

[Spacesuit Spiff]

The algorithm that splits the world into regions could use a look. Makes quite a few that are useless without merging. Having the borders follow natural landmarks like mountains/rivers would be cool.

[jonoliveira12]

Originally posted by yutterh:

Originally posted by jonoliveira12:

Improve War Support, by allowing the side that is winning, even if the War was a Surprise War, to be able to maintain control of ALL minor outposts it captured or maintained. You should NEVER lose land that was not taken from you even once.

Give a big Fame point boost to any empire that wins a War, when it is finished. At the moment, it is not very rewarding to be a Conqueror, which is exactly the opposite of actual History, which in itself is a chain of Wars, if boiled down to essence.

That would be too drastic of a difference in my opinion. The best way to get large sways of land in a war is to have some claim on the land. Like through grievances where the city/outpost is denied by grievances. Those cities/outposts you can get with a meager 10 points in war support. I was able to get a large majority of cities/outpost this way. Not only did I totally curb stomp a majority of their armies and had 100 war support at the end of the fight but I had claim to 5 of their territories and was able to grab three more territories through normal means. I took a total of 7 territories in that war and left them in the corner of the continent. It does work but you have to have the support. Best thing too is too just slowly take their territories in multiple wars.

A surprise war is only good if you plan on ransacking outpost and lay claim to the territory that way. I haven't tried it but you could probably ransack any cities they have and then put up a outpost. You keep every land they have built upon too going that way.

I like this style because it isn't just about doom stacking and has some play to it besides "my army is big and strong". Also give the ai some time to come back and mount a defense.

I do not think so. For example, I recently lost a large chunk of my territory, on a War I took the offensive on, and captured Land in, but still lost due to War Support, even though I won every battle, and the Mauryans player (I was Celts) was just camping out in his city.

This does not feel right, and is not how any War ever went down, in the History of the world.

I virtually ransacked one of his provinces, built an Outpost on it to capitalize on the buildings, then captured a Town, yet still lost and had to mysteriously give him 2 of my territories, that were never even taken or ransacked by him.

This is VERY wrong, and quite bizarre.

[jasonccollins]

It feels like coastal deep water is WAY too common. I've been trying to do a sailing themed run and it feels like I can never get a good city yield next to a shallow tile for good harbor and district synergy.

[Dolphino Egglet]

Love the game.
A few things:
1. An actual 'endless' mode. No turn limits. No win conditions. Just play and play and play until you get bored of the world you made. Why? Because the fun isn't in trying to win, it's in trying not to lose and building that head-canon along the way.

2. Reactions to narrative events.
When I chose the close boarders during a narrative event, it clearly would've impacted my trading partners. That should be a grievance? Flip side, the game clearly allows citizenry to tap into their xenophobia, so if I let the sickness flood into other empires, that should increase their War support too?


3. RENAME MY EMPIRE. The 'cultural' choice should be aesthetic and mechanical. Cultures bein game defining is a bad flavour. For example, none of these nations/empires exist in this alternate history. Neither does the Brazil flag... so why is it on my Blazer lapel? Kind of immersion breaking. Makes the work i've done feel as if it's not mine.
[It would be nice to have the chosen avatar emblem re-worked into each era flag, but that's me pushing it]

Otherwise, I really echo a lot of the other suggestions already posted.

[Claus]

We need more game/world options that allow to customize your game more in order to make it more enjoyable and to add replay value.

- Amount of resources, strategic resources you want

- One City Challenge for people that like to push themselves to the limit and beyond. (with achievement)

-Different maps as already planned since there is an option for it under difficulty. You have a map seed generator which is fantastic.

- I also recommend trying to create a random AI persona generator, you can use the same preset voices for most of them, but being able to randomize faction personas and their difficulties and traits would be amazing.

- Add barbarian and pirate options under world options.

- We need to be able to add way more than 10 AI to a game, so hopefully larger maps for that too.

[jonoliveira12]

One City challenge is impossible, as you will need to either make or capture a few, because attaching terrotories becomes prohibitively expensive, or you just get boxed in by other players that went wide.

Not to mention that overseas territory needs cities too, and often cannot be attached to your initial one.

[problem child]

The endgame has the biggest problem for me. It just feels like there's no way to really flow through this. I don't know how to frame this outside of comparing it to Civilization, but if I wanted to play a game where I am forcing a "domination" victory condition, the game isn't really set up for that well.

More options for customizing the way we can set up the game would be ideal, because I actually love the gameplay elements.

[MikeGcom]

I don't know can it be gameplay feature or math bug, but in late game, when you stack full squad of 8 high tech airplanes (without any social techs), they're upkeep highly increase (even on 70k gold)
(Didn't find a discussion of the technical side of the game so I thought to send it here :P)
Screen: https://imgur.com/a/N6x31r1

[Xenorius]

I have some problem with the population growth soft cap of 1 by turn :
when accelerating a building can cost 80+ pop, or when most nation can attain this cap withouth much effort, i think it cut most of the interest of having an agrarian economy.
I understand that simply supressing the cap could have a dramatic opposit effect (.
So, maybee making it possible to have more than 1 possible, but at an exponentiary cost? and why not , having a soft cap of city size augmented regularly by health tech/building? maybee augmented further by the number of territory of the city?
this way, an agrarian could use his pop to fast build, new city could become big much faster withouth absusing the merge mechanic, and still, their would be not much population snowball happening.

[yutterh]

Originally posted by jonoliveira12:

Originally posted by yutterh:

That would be too drastic of a difference in my opinion. The best way to get large sways of land in a war is to have some claim on the land. Like through grievances where the city/outpost is denied by grievances. Those cities/outposts you can get with a meager 10 points in war support. I was able to get a large majority of cities/outpost this way. Not only did I totally curb stomp a majority of their armies and had 100 war support at the end of the fight but I had claim to 5 of their territories and was able to grab three more territories through normal means. I took a total of 7 territories in that war and left them in the corner of the continent. It does work but you have to have the support. Best thing too is too just slowly take their territories in multiple wars.

A surprise war is only good if you plan on ransacking outpost and lay claim to the territory that way. I haven't tried it but you could probably ransack any cities they have and then put up a outpost. You keep every land they have built upon too going that way.

I like this style because it isn't just about doom stacking and has some play to it besides "my army is big and strong". Also give the ai some time to come back and mount a defense.

I do not think so. For example, I recently lost a large chunk of my territory, on a War I took the offensive on, and captured Land in, but still lost due to War Support, even though I won every battle, and the Mauryans player (I was Celts) was just camping out in his city.

This does not feel right, and is not how any War ever went down, in the History of the world.

I virtually ransacked one of his provinces, built an Outpost on it to capitalize on the buildings, then captured a Town, yet still lost and had to mysteriously give him 2 of my territories, that were never even taken or ransacked by him.

This is VERY wrong, and quite bizarre.

The american revolution was basically like this. The British kicked pur asses but we still won the war. But I see your point. How were they getting war support though? Did you start the war with little support and they had 100? Were they far from your territories and you couldn't reach their other cities? Did they have more grievances against you? If they had a grievance of needing a territory that you didn't let them take, then you baited yourself into losing that territory as those peopel wanted to join them as since you didnt do enough to earn that support you lost it or they had a lot more support before the end of the war.

I actually had a similar situation but I won the war and still had to give up a territory that was mine cause they demanded it in the surrender for soe reason. I got around it after reloading by keeping the city the outpost was attached too and since they had no territories connected to it they couldn't take it.

While I do agree we shouldn't have to give up our own territories I disagree with owning everything as it ruins the whole war support aspect. You need a lot of war support to keep cities and even then sometimes they will rebel. Which is what I like about this game cause you have to think more then jsut blindly conquering territory.

[wookster]

so at this point i'm sure you guys have read through a lot of suggestions, so i hope this one still gets some consideration.
So my suggestion is this: i'd like to see the build Que separated into three ques instead of one single one per city. I think that the speed of the game for us players would be increased substantially by doing this and coincidentally improve other issues that people have expressed, like how slow the game plays and not having enough turns to make it to the later ages by turn 300. You reward us stars for building certain amounts of things and standing army sizes as well as science, so if you split the city build Ques into science, buildings, and army units so that we could be building things at the same time i think the game would flow better, and be more realistic to how ancient empires would of actually been. The Romans certainly didn't wait for one farm to be built before inventing roads or training a military. they did those things at the same time. so if that kind of change was made i think the game would be something amazing to play. And obviously there would be worry of the player being too fast or strong, but it would
1) make people play at harder difficulties and
2) the AI would also build faster and the game would be more interesting will larger battles happening, and more trade and etc...
And because the single building Que that handles everything in each city is so slow, i think also forces us players to pick only certain cultures right now for the economic benefit so that we can compete with the AI. i don't feel like we can really choose a combat culture and really keep up on harder difficulties at this point.
Thankyou for reading this, i hope we see some solid changes. :)

[yutterh]

Originally posted by problem child:

The endgame has the biggest problem for me. It just feels like there's no way to really flow through this. I don't know how to frame this outside of comparing it to Civilization, but if I wanted to play a game where I am forcing a "domination" victory condition, the game isn't really set up for that well.

More options for customizing the way we can set up the game would be ideal, because I actually love the gameplay elements.

I disagree with not being able to dominate. I have complete control of my contentment I'm on and I even completely lamented one nation. I have two other nation with one territory and one nation with like 3 territories. It is completely possible and doable. When you start a war you have to have a goal in mind, what territories do you want to keep and which ones do you want the enemy to have. You also have to remember grievances, having a grievance in the enemy not giving you a territory is a great way to get that.

I took 7 territories from a nation recently in my playthrough. 5 of then wanted to join me and I had those grievances going into the war, I then was also able to take two more territories from them. Each of those grievance cities were 10 support each and then the last two were 80 and 40. So with having max support at the end of the war I was able to take them all. They were left with one city.

The game isn't set up for someone to just steamroll over everything. You have to plan your attack and know what your gonna get and what you want to take. Where their units and territories are and a lot goes into it. Which is why I love this game so much, it isn't just a curb stomp game you have to plan and strategies your war efforts.