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!

[redwitch]

please, add an option for movement confirmation, accidentally moving a unit happens a lot and it's extremely annoying. There should be a way either to revert accidental movement, or having the path displayed if you select a unit and hover the mouse on the map, or add a confirmation window.

[[HdF] Almut Grete]

Looks good but sorry, this game is not finished at all. So many gameplay mechanics lead to nothing (and i will not even talk about balance - that was also way of in endless games).

So here my 2 cents to "make the game better": Take the existing mechanics and make sure they actually impact the gameplay.
When at it, play the game and have a good look at the numbers of costs (seems like someone dd functions to calculate those then never play more then 40 turns to test).

And ofc: Add winning conditions and make it in a way we can choose from them. Not only All or one. Especially remove the turn limit.

[Dix]

First of all I'd like to thank you for this game. It's quite nice but as a Civ series fan I have some things that maybe could be useful. And sorry but it's hard not to compare Humankind with Civ.

1. Map size - the biggest map doesn't feel that big. Maybe because units move so fast.

2. "Endless" - 600 turns is a little bit more than a standard game in Civ 6 (500 turns). Marathon in Civ 6 is 1500 turns so it's more endless than endless mode in Humankind. It feels like 600 turns should be a standard game pace. Even so in the later eras it's going fast forward so I'm not even able to deploy too many armies because I can research the whole tech tree even before I get to war with tanks or whatever.

3. Optional Victory conditions - I really don't like the turn limit victory. I should be able to decide if I would like to have all other victory conditions or not.

4. Tech tree - completion of the tech tree as a winning condition is somewhat stupid. If I'm aiming for a conquest victory I'm not able to stop my research. Maybe there should be a tech called "future advancements" or something like that for other victory conditions? It would be repeatable, harder to research than other techs and would give you fame points for each advancement.

5. Emblematic districts - they should have a tech prerequsit. Why? Because when I jump to the contemporary era with Japanesee I can build a robo factory when I only just invented steam engine.

6. Elemination - it's a bit hard to eleminate a player if they still have one unit hidden somewhere on the map. Don't know if it was meant to be this way or not. Even if the enemy doesn't have enough influence to build a new outpost.

[lapantouflemagic]

Messaggio originale di spbeards:

thoughts on military. I think you should be able to recruit a generic warrior from the get-go, but they're weak, peasants, not a scout specialist but a run of the mill levy with minimal skill and weapons improvement through the eras. Start off as levies, upgrade to fyrd, upgrade to militia, upgrade to draftees/partisans. These are the most basic units and are considered "chaff". They're cheap and they are good against other levies or for protracted sieges or garrisons but that's about it. These units still use population to build but are cheaper. Also they only gain generic vetern perks.

Instead of researching new units you research weapon types, ie spear, bow and arrow, sword, horse riding, horse armor, gunpowder weapons, artillery, rifles, body armor, baloons, planes, tanks, tank turret types HE, AA etc, body armor. Each selected civilization would also have an allocated associated weapon and/or armor which does not have to be researched/or is an easy research option. For example Rome would be Gladius/Scutum w/ heavy armor, Mongols would be light bows and steppe ponies, England would be longbows, Khmer would be War Elephants, U.K. could be SAS training, US could be M1A1 tanks or A10's, Russia could be the Mig or Hind,

Civilizations then have to allocate building these equipment types which can be equipped on the levy units giving them bonuses and can be combined in multiple ways, (ie a heavy horse archer, becomes a carbine heavy cavalry). This would be more like creating personalized unit types in the Endless Universe.

Additionally, units with special weapons gain affinity over time towards a specific combat type, ie ranged, melee, cavalry, flight ...(snip)

regarding your first point, the military civ specific action is precisely to generate a full group of those "levies" as a regular army. it costs some influence and the appropriate amount of populaition, but no gold or production.

for the rest... sorry but that seems incredibly annoying to me. i've played endless legend, a tiny bit of endless space and a fair amount of galactic civilisation 3, and there is honestly nothing that is more of a chore to me than having to deal with individual units and weapons. If anything i'd like to have the ability to promote your first scouts to warrors or archers or whatever but that's it.
edit : also having the ability to promote those levies once they become obsolete of once they get one experience level could be nice, but that's not really important.

[Kostet]

1. Adjustable game speed. I want to choose speed of science, building and manualy set turn limit. Game always ends in industrial era in currient balance.
2. War. I want to have an option to refuse surrender and continue the war, using maybe gold or influence for propaganda
3. Navy. Transport ships power must be redused, warships is useless
4. Enemies army on my territory and nearby must be highlighted on strategy view
5. Add strategic resources production facilities, like oil refinery, uranium processing plant
6. Adjustable city limit and pollution

To much limits in this game! Make them adjusteble on start plz, thanks

[Kai]

Strategical Resources like oil do not appear on certain maps. And sometimes the worldwide capacity of such resources is still insufficient to support advanced projects/units.

[Sarda]

Messaggio originale di Kostet:

3. Navy. Transport ships power must be redused, warships is useless

I second this, a state of the art (at the time) Ironclad barely beat a group of 3 infantry from 2 era's prior. A more advanced warship should defeat undefended transports of a earlier or same era in any situation with impunity, I could understand a Galley vs modern transports losing, but not say a Man o War vs barbarian archers.

[MatusFene]

an option to randomly generate the leaders we're going to face remains to be added. The default options the game offers get repetitive very quickly, and even though I look for new personas on the Amplitude site, I still need to manually select them when creating a new match. I particularly like the "surprise" factor of not knowing who I'm up against.

[Shadowwhisper11]

1. Like many people said, I think there needs to be some extension to the game. 350 turns may be a good default.

2. I think increasing the resources on the map or adding a slider in the game set up would be beneficial to truly get to experience all of the unit mechanics. Or, maybe it would work if there was an infrastructure option that increased a resource yield from a tile from 1 Coal to 2 Coal.

3. I still find the diplomacy systems a little basic. I wish there were greater ways to develop friendships, increase war support, and possibly other forms of trade and agreements. It would be interesting if you could take loans or buy and sell territory. Likewise, there is not a good way to avoid a war ending even when I have high war support.

4. Nuclear missiles and cruise missiles do not have an option to transport and do not have the best range. I'm not sure if this is a bug or not, but it would make using these more fun if we could move them around.

5. I feel like Religion would benefit from some additional components. I think it has a good foundation now with the beliefs, but it would be cool if there were potentially religious units and or more impactful narrative events to dictate the religious game it may be more engaging.

6. Some of the civics seem difficult to obtain.

7. This may be more of a long shot, but I wish the ideology axis were more impactful. For instance, if I was on the end of the Authoritarian Axis, the bonus does not make my civilization feel as if I had an iron fist over my people. Perhaps there are some negatives that could happen on the polarizing end of all of the axis but stronger bonuses as well. I think this could be expanded on possibly in the civics tree and certainly through narrative events.

[gbfanipfw]

One issue that needs to be fixed ASAP is after you force a surrender from an AI opponent, he can immediately demand for grievances, and if you ignore/decline them...he can now declare war on you with very high war support while yours is near 0.

I had this several times and finally found a way around it, but it seems that if you force a surrender the country should be banned from grievances for a period of time.

Also, when you force a surrender, your armies are left in their territories, which causes grievances, and well the above happens again.

The second issue, get rid of the 600 turn CAP! Allow us to actually complete the game! I am barely into the modern era and have 50 turns left. This needs to be taken out.

[Mr void Dragon]

Messaggio originale di jonoliveira12:

Messaggio originale di Dr Bright:

this is good to hear its being looked at, espetially the strategic resource issue. In my opinion, pollution just needs either scaling down or there needs to be more options to counter it (say, via planting forests for example in earlier era's)

Planting Forests does not help, because it only diminished Polution for 2 turns per tile, so even if you reforest the entire map's landmass, Polution still rises eventually.

The issue with Polution is that there is absolutely no way to fight it back. Forests only work for 2 turns each.

Thats why it should be a permenent bonus...a simple way to fix it would be a counter system similar to how it works out city loyalty too.

An example: Your pollution is +12, not good. Planting 6 forests should permenently alter that back to neutral. Its still not preferable as those 6 forests are six tiles you can't use for your cities, meaning that using infrastructures like the hydroelectric dam are preferable...but have things like forests be a permenent counter.

Also, devs, if you're listening, I ask again...make it so if we want, we can completely turn off turn limit so we can enjoy the game at the speed we want. 600 max is nowhere close to enough

[ᴘꜱʏᴄʜᴏꜱɪꜱ™]

Hi there.

There isn't a way (from what I can tell) to start the game again using the tutorial; like at the beginning where you create your character and it asks you if you have played a history strategy before (which I haven't) and only makes it so you can watch the tutorial videos instead.
Could you please make it so I can do the walkthrough tutorial as a complete novice again? There is a lot to remember and watching youtube videos is clearly made by people who have played games like Civilisation, so hard to follow.
Aside from that, it is a beautiful game.

Thank you

[jonoliveira12]

Messaggio originale di Dr Bright:

Messaggio originale di jonoliveira12:

Planting Forests does not help, because it only diminished Polution for 2 turns per tile, so even if you reforest the entire map's landmass, Polution still rises eventually.

The issue with Polution is that there is absolutely no way to fight it back. Forests only work for 2 turns each.

Thats why it should be a permenent bonus...a simple way to fix it would be a counter system similar to how it works out city loyalty too.

An example: Your pollution is +12, not good. Planting 6 forests should permenently alter that back to neutral. Its still not preferable as those 6 forests are six tiles you can't use for your cities, meaning that using infrastructures like the hydroelectric dam are preferable...but have things like forests be a permenent counter.

Also, devs, if you're listening, I ask again...make it so if we want, we can completely turn off turn limit so we can enjoy the game at the speed we want. 600 max is nowhere close to enough

This has been suggested already, but may be technically impossible, as the devs have stated (maybe because otherwise, even naturally forested areas may have to give -2 Polution since the start of the game).

Another good suggestion, was a Ceremony (like Parade or Holy Day, that Cities can repeat) taht diminish global Polution for an amount, so it can still grow, but the total accumulated amount can be deducted from.

[GorramReavers]

Is there a good reason why units cannot join the battle from the outside when a city is being besieged? This seems to remove any chance of epic Gandalf last second reinforcements moments, and it also just doesn't make sense that a part of the map is off limits while the siege is going on.

[jonoliveira12]

Messaggio originale di GorramReavers:

Is there a good reason why units cannot join the battle from the outside when a city is being besieged? This seems to remove any chance of epic Gandalf last second reinforcements moments, and it also just doesn't make sense that a part of the map is off limits while the siege is going on.

They can, you just need to have Organized Warfare researched.
You can select a group of units, and march it even unto an ongoing battle, and they will show up as reinforcements, so long as the spawn point is not occupied, and you will have to deploy them.