What's the status of this game now? Good? DLC required?

[Cyrano]

With Civ VII crapping the bed I'm in the mood for something similar and have this sitting around my steam account. I bounced off after a few dozen hours at launch. How is the state of the game today? Is it worth playing? I have two main questions:

1) Did they ever make combat less onerous? The combat mini-game got pretty old after a while, especially if you were fighting a big war. At the same time the auto-battler AI was so brain dead that you would take some really ugly losses if you didn't sit through each battle. Was this ever addressed?

2) Is the DLC mandatory? I'm seeing one that looks like it added a bunch of gameplay features. How important is all that? Does vanilla still play well?

[crimsonflower]

I think Humankind is in an OK state. The worst problem in my opinion was the balance and some annoying mechanics and they definitely managed to make it right. The game and progression feels nice, wars and war score also seem nice. If you are OK with how the game progresses (score, star system) I would definitely try it.

For DLC all the culture dlcs are really nice and bring more variety and narrative events.
I would avoid Together we rule though. Everything related to that expansion is horrible and questionable by design. I don´t know who thought it would be fun.

[DNLH]

There is currently an update in the oven, so you may want to wait for that. But if you didn't like the combat in the first place and it's a major issue, then I don't believe you'll enjoy your time back. It was slightly tweaked but not reworked.

TWR is not mandatory and while I do like it, many players consider it making the game actively worse. Culture Packs are all worth it, but only if you like the game and just feel like having more. I wouldn't say any of them offers a must-have additions, but they do have some cultures that excel in particular situations, so they may shake up your playstyle a bit if you find yourself stuck with the same choices across playthroughs.

[AN]

Game's pretty good, still being worked on now that sega isn't strangling them. No DLC necessary, they're just extras for variety and a bit more of an international community/more diplomatic options when it comes to the actual expansion.

[Neastra]

Very good game. Maps are gorgeous, the battle system is the best of all civ-like i know. Swapping cultures and evolving your civilisation is cool. Issues are the balance/late game with a big snowballing effect. Diplomacy is bad. Never buy the congress ♥♥♥♥ dlc; it is that bad they put an option to disable it.
The other issue is that they don't patch the game enough.
Standalone, you have easily 100h gaming. more with mods than can add cultures (but unbalanced)

[ElPrezCBF]

The UI and some mechanics are pretty bad tbh. Unlike Endless Legend where you only click on 1 button to scroll through units, you need to scroll the unit list, find the separate zoom buttons and click to select every unit. The plus icons keep getting in the way of the FIMS boxes. Changing the expansion penalty from a happiness hit to costing influence for expansion, settlement upgrades and even claiming wonders is a terrible idea. If the intent is to moderate expansion, then you need to balance the game by providing adequate mechanics to boost influence early in the game. The expansion mechanic worked well in Endless Legend because you could access luxury resources early to moderate the expansion penalty at a fair pace with boosters that need to recharge and incur progressively greater luxury costs as you expand. Now, expansion costs a disproportionate amount of influence but there are no mechanics to moderate this insane influence costs early on. These alone are enough to put me off this game even without bugs.

[Cyrano]

Yeah, I gave it a shot and there's still the kernel of a good game here, but a lot of weird other stuff that ends up making it feel like less than the sum of its parts. Hard to put my finger on it. I really like some of the stuff they did, but other parts still seem half baked and way too easy to break the game with.

[Nats]

The expansion is very good it adds a whole new system to diplomacy which broadens the whole thing, now allowing the other factions to send grievances to the Congress for resolution, you also get embassies which expand diplomatic options, and various spies. And loads more. I am really enjoying this game I think its far better than any recent Civ game I've played and more challenging.

But not every game is for everyone. Obviously loads of people are more into the Civ games, but they just make me want to drop off I find them so boring lately. So this game wont be for everyone either.

[jfcabirol]

I own all the DLCs but I play without Together we Rule. The other DLCs bring some varieties, which is a good thing.
I find the core game to be very good but I don't like the way the World Council is implemented.
The worst of the DLC, in my opinion of course, is the Leverage system that requires the player to move units all over the map to gather this seemingly randomly appearing resource. This is a no go for me.

[DNLH]

Leverage pick-ups generally appear when and where there are unresolved grievances between empires, so you may have better luck poaching for them at the disputed borders - not only those betwen countries, but also between cultures and religions - and capital cities, where they'll pop up due to grievances like rejected offers and alike.

Your agents will be semi-competent at picking them up on their own when set to auto-explore, but that ceases to be an option once whole map is uncovered - not a big deal, it should happen late game anyway, but it does add to a general annoyance that I have to agree that picking Leverage up can be.

I do dig the way Humankind Congress works in this game, but if you're generally against mechanics like that you won't like it here either. The global ideology thing can be gamechanger, tho, but the International Crisis mechanic means that late game, which usually became a giant hugbox in vanilla, now is plagued with almost unending wars most of the time.

[Rfl]

Balance still bad, AI still basically nonexistent. They did a little bit but they were more focused on making DLCs then fixing the underlying issues. It's like Civ 7 but cranked up, so if there is something you don't like about 7 then Humankind is doing that but more of that.

[Nats]

Originally posted by Rfl:

Balance still bad, AI still basically nonexistent.

I dont agree. I am in a war with my nearest enemy who is comparable to me in fact they are often ahead of me, and its been a massive slog. We are now fighting a massive battle over 6 turns in which we both keep feeding in units. Whoever wins it will probably win the game. They are putting up a very good fight.

Admittedly then there are three factions that are a whole era or two behind, but they spent time as a vassal of my main enemy, and the last three are around 3-4 eras behind and very small.

So there is a spread.

I reckon I could have beaten my main enemy fairly easily a few years ago, now they are ahead of me and in the last age and I am struggling to get my Stars to get into the final Age. So I am likely to get beaten eventually. Its been fun, and hasnt been easy at all. But I also made rookie mistakes which I wont make in my next game.

I think the AI is decent enough and so far I havent been playing on higher levels.

[Eagle_of_Fire]

If you set up your game manually you'll notice there there is several tiers of difficulty for AIs. if you just hit random and fire and forget there is definitely going to be a spread for sure.

[Rfl]

Originally posted by Nats:

Originally posted by Rfl:

Balance still bad, AI still basically nonexistent.

I dont agree. I am in a war with my nearest enemy who is comparable to me in fact they are often ahead of me, and its been a massive slog. We are now fighting a massive battle over 6 turns in which we both keep feeding in units. Whoever wins it will probably win the game. They are putting up a very good fight.

No they are not. They are just getting bonus FCIS to cover up the lack of AI. If you had their cities you would only be able to afford 1/10th of their army.

[Nats]

Originally posted by Rfl:

Originally posted by Nats:

I dont agree. I am in a war with my nearest enemy who is comparable to me in fact they are often ahead of me, and its been a massive slog. We are now fighting a massive battle over 6 turns in which we both keep feeding in units. Whoever wins it will probably win the game. They are putting up a very good fight.

No they are not. They are just getting bonus FCIS to cover up the lack of AI. If you had their cities you would only be able to afford 1/10th of their army.

Not sure about that either. They have cities taken from several rivals as well as their own. I am playing on the balanced level so they should not get any bonuses. It is my lack of game knowledge that has caused them to get so strong whereas in our first war they had no units at all, now they have 3-4 strong armies plus several regiments scattered around. I think sometimes its worth just giving them the opportunity to provide a challenge although I didnt plan it this way.

[solops1]

The game is deeply flawed at its core and no DLCs can fix it. The handling of war and the lack of immersion due to civ changes through the eras pretty much destroyed the game at its initial release. Some measures to mitigate the flaws have been made, but they still persist. Currently another attempt is underway to fix the broken war system. Perhaps they will succeed. Until they do, there are much more satisfying games available.