Civilization turned into Humankind? Well, I'm not a fan AT ALL.

[MaxiTB]

I have played and bought every Civ game since the original and yes, I still have the hundreds of pages long manual with interesting bits and drawings of the first game (heck, I played Civ on the Amiga and avoid researching Gunpowder because a disk swapping nightmare followed every time). But I'm not going into the value discussion that's another topic.

One of the core concepts of Civ has always been of bringing a permanent identity through time to the stars. I don't call them civilizations because obviously it makes no sense for an "American civilization" to exist 500 years ago, but obviously here we go, that's just how civ worked from the start and allowed for awesome alt-history experiences. Add some generated maps and you got the full multiverse experience anchored on this one identity.

In Civilization (1) and I think also it sequel this identity was purely cosmetic; later the identity was enriched with game mechanic effecting stats. I didn't mind the change, often the stats were pretty arbiritary and mostly based on American cliches about other countries (but again, Americans 1000 years ago), it strengthen the core concept of an identity through time in an unknown space, so even if often cringe, it was for sure not a bad change.

However then Humankind came along a few years back and honestly I was interested in their concept of mixing civilizations before launch. Until I played it and boy, it's a concept that robs the game of all it's primary emotional anchor. After the second switch you basically loose all your investement and it become the chore of baby sitting this generic mishmash of random stats. In fact while I have started Humankind dozens of times, I haven't finished a single game yet - I just lost interest over time because instead of "Leading the Cree to the star" you have basically "Save slot 2".

Now don't get me wrong, I'm not saying Civ 6 is perfect - far from it. I privately mod most of my games and Civ was always a prime example and all my fellower modders know what a mess Civ 6 is sometimes under the hood of missing and sometimes worse half implemented, buggy features. But even if you are just a regular player of the game I'm pretty sure you have a couple if not hundreds of ideas to improve the existing series of games without completely changing it's core identity. Personally I didn't like the district system because it's super restrictive and after a while you really stop carrying about it. I would have preferred for the next game if maps are by default at least double the size and you place your buildings on a tile (and then upgrade them for example from workshop to factory to industrial complex). That would greatly reduce the randomness you sometimes encounter. Addtionally I would have actually like to see strategic resources being expanded - why don't you need iron plus niter as upkeep for your tanks (spoiler it has something to do with the half implemented features I mentioned) which makes more sense? But that is just two out of dozens of improvements I personally came up with that keep the core concept of mentioned intact.

So look, personally I am not going to bother this game after launch like every other game, maybe I give it a tought after I have seen some online influencers giving it a bash for a few days - heck, I think I wait till the first few expansions come out right now. While I'm all for innovation, iteration and spicing up gameplay in various ways, I think it's important the let a car be a car and not turn it into a boat named a car. And games are not different - it ain't Doom if there are no hell monsters, it ain't Baldur's Gate if you turn the city into Night City and for me it's not Civilization if I can't guide an identity through time and then look back on how far they have come.

[Slaytherine]

I agree. I can't stress how much I am unhappy with the game and the direction of Humankind they are now taking. Separating leaders with civs, ability to evolve and change your civilizations later on?

Big pass for me. I'll save money for something else. Civ 6 perhaps will be remembered as the last good civ, and Civ 5 will be the goat of civ series.

[Nonstop]

İlk olarak Finwickle tarafından gönderildi:

İlk olarak Nonstop tarafından gönderildi:

... developing a country like e.g. ROME to CHINA makes absolutely no sense for me sorry. I dont like Humankind for this.

And developing from Inca to Argentina, or Sioux to USA, or Vikings to Norway, etc. could be quite fine, and in my opinion better than starting in 4000 BC as Napoleon or nuking your opponents in 2030 as Cleopatra.

yes that would be a greater solution - something like timelines based on historical facts:

Etruscans -> ROME -> Italy
Celtics -> Frankish Empire -> France

just 2 examples/ideas

[Finwickle]

İlk olarak Nonstop tarafından gönderildi:

yes that would be a greater solution - something like timelines based on historical facts:

ROME -> PAX Romana -> Italy
Celtics -> Frankish Empire -> France

just 2 examples/ideas

Yeah, it would be great if that was possible. Great for scenarios too.

[Slaytherine]

İlk olarak Farsight tarafından gönderildi:

Been playing since Civ 3...

Leaders can lead any civilization. This is just bad. No other way to say it the civs are pretty bare bones as they were and their historical aspect gave them the flavor. Now it becomes a mix with no identity. Honestly it feels like they implemented this change for one thing and one thing alone. Mass DLC

You can milk the Turks at least twice if you sell Ottomans in a pack and Modern Turkey in another.
You can milk Americans with leaders and maybe a discovery age 13 colonies.
You can infinitely milk the Chinese by adding multiple dynasties in each age, multiple leaders too.
Milk the Greeks by making Byzantines and Modern Greece DLC
Milk the English by dividing Anglo-Saxons -> England -> Britain in multiple DLCs
Milk the Russians by making Tsar Russia / Soviets two different Modern Age civs
Want to play Ethiopia? They give you Aksum in the base game, but Discovery age and Modern age Ethiopia will be each in a different pack.
Iberians > Spain > Modern Spain? Different packs
Yamato > Edo Japan > Modern Japan? Different packs
Youre favorite Italian city-state? Different packs. And Modern unified Italy is another pack.
Don't get me started on Holy Roman Empire.


Civilizations completely morphin into another civilization at age end. This also completely kills immersion for me. Who asked for this?

The art style OF THE LEADERS is disgusting and has no soul. It's like they tried as had as possible to make Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus look like a complete whimp while giving female leaders warrior traits and actual muscles. Not gonna support this.

♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, you nail it. This is the only rational explanation. Who ask for this? Seriously. Terrible decisions, soulless designs of leaders.

[Finwickle]

İlk olarak The Gray Fox tarafından gönderildi:

https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/poll-what-do-we-think-of-the-change-to-playing-multiple-civs-per-game.691352/

What I see here is 45% of the people being positive or neutral. If you count in that disappointed people are more likely to vote, and that many gamers are not such focused big fans that they frequent the forums, it doesn't come across as overwhelming to me.

İlk olarak The Gray Fox tarafından gönderildi:

trying to handwave away the very loud criticisms as unreasonable or overblown

I don't thing the criticism is unreasonable. I just oppose people saying 'we gamers disagree' as if your opinion is the only opion out there. 45% of people who took it upon them to vote in that poll disagree with you.

İlk olarak The Gray Fox tarafından gönderildi:

PS: pointing to ... is low IQ,

And again I ask you: why the reason to (try to) insult? We've got enough opinion and argument to talk about, so why so uncivilized? Why the hatred towards someone who disagrees with you and dares to says so? Why all the anger?

[MaxiTB]

İlk olarak Finwickle tarafından gönderildi:

İlk olarak MaxiTB tarafından gönderildi:

I think you miss the point of my post even though I tried to explained it in very detail. This thread is not about a simple game play adjustments, it's about core game design vision adjustments. The change to remove the permanent unique identity of the player is not a simpe change from transitioning from a falt to a cube combat system or adding additional win decisions. I personally didn't like the district system (again as stated in the post, I recommend you read it) but that was again just a minor game mechanics change that could be iterated on.

If you don't mind me asking, how much Humankind have you actually played so far?

What is considered a simple gameplay adjustment or a core game design vision adjustment, depends strongly on what an individual gamer finds more or less important from a game. The one-unit-per-tile was by many also considered a core game design change and was burned to the ground on every forum pre-launch. Now it is just a regular, fully accepted gameplay feature. The identity issue, while I see and understand it, is far less important to me than it is to you, clearly. And I agree that it is a core game design decision, just like the one-unit-per-tile was and the cube-to-hex change. I just think that it can be done perfectly, if Firaxis takes good care of it.

You need some form of identity, especially for opponents. In Humankind I didn't play against Caesar or Cleopatra, but against the blue and red player. That is somewhat immersion breaking and should be addressed by Firaxis. They seem to understand the issue, as they stated "Having leaders in a match stay consistent across Ages helps bring a sense of 'who' you're playing as or against." Now let's hope they get it right, and implement it better than Humankind did.

I have 350 hours of Humankind in about 10 months. I finished plenty of games, got 70% of the achievements without hunting them. It's not nearly as many hours as any of the Civ games, but still a fair amount.

BTW, I did read your post before responding to it. I tend to do that.

Oh nvm, I wasn't sure, because I tried really hard to make the point it is not about game mechanics but I see we are pretty much on the same level here (blue vs red player).

[Many-Named]

İlk olarak Finwickle tarafından gönderildi:

To be honest, I'm really looking forward to the Humankind-like changes they made! The changing from age to age is a brilliant concept and really nice for gameplay.

Hopefully they will give the leaders some personality and meaningful abilities, because that was lacking in Humankind. But I still prefer Humankind gameplay nowadays over Civilization gameplay.

Extremely small minority representative. The civ swapping mechanic is loathed by most, there is a reason HK flopped and that was it.

[Finwickle]

İlk olarak MaxiTB tarafından gönderildi:

Oh nvm, I wasn't sure, because I tried really hard to make the point it is not about game mechanics but I see we are pretty much on the same level here (blue vs red player).

Yeah, Firaxis really needs to work hard to change the red player back into Cleopatra, immersion-wise. If they can do that, it might be brilliant.

[Many-Named]

İlk olarak Evrach tarafından gönderildi:

İlk olarak Finwickle tarafından gönderildi:

Why the need for insults? Why not try a civilized (pun intended) conversation. What happened to humankind (pun also intended) that we can't just disagree but always have to fight dirty?

People can be anonymous on internet so they speak in a way they'll never do in real life.

Actually fb proved that point as wrong. People dont care, anonymity or not.

But anyway, civ 6 had over 15000 daily players, HK has 150. Case closed.

[Finwickle]

İlk olarak Many-Named tarafından gönderildi:

Extremely small minority representative. The civ swapping mechanic is loathed by most, there is a reason HK flopped and that was it.

I'm not representing anyone but myself. I know my opinion is a minority opinion, though. Humankind definitely flopped and that had several reasons, and how they implemented the Civ-swapping was certainly one of them. I'm still curious though how Firaxis, with 30 years of Civ experience, can implement this feature. Because for me it was refreshing and great gameplay, and made me play much more diverse than Civ ever did.

[Finwickle]

İlk olarak Many-Named tarafından gönderildi:

But anyway, civ 6 had over 15000 daily players, HK has 150. Case closed.

Case is only closed if Civ 7 will have less than 1000 daily players in 2025.

[MaGicBush]

Once I saw this I lost interest in buying it. I have played and bought every civ this will be the first one I skip.

[Literally Me]

İlk olarak Finwickle tarafından gönderildi:

İlk olarak The Gray Fox tarafından gönderildi:

https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/poll-what-do-we-think-of-the-change-to-playing-multiple-civs-per-game.691352/

What I see here is 45% of the people being positive or neutral. If you count in that disappointed people are more likely to vote, and that many gamers are not such focused big fans that they frequent the forums, it doesn't come across as overwhelming to me.

İlk olarak The Gray Fox tarafından gönderildi:

trying to handwave away the very loud criticisms as unreasonable or overblown

I don't thing the criticism is unreasonable. I just oppose people saying 'we gamers disagree' as if your opinion is the only opion out there. 45% of people who took it upon them to vote in that poll disagree with you.

İlk olarak The Gray Fox tarafından gönderildi:

PS: pointing to ... is low IQ,

And again I ask you: why the reason to (try to) insult? We've got enough opinion and argument to talk about, so why so uncivilized? Why the hatred towards someone who disagrees with you and dares to says so? Why all the anger?

I don't want to be an ass to you, but genuinely having over 50% of your audience dislike something is alarm bells ringing in corporate lol. Like you can't just say, well 45% of my target audience is either neutral or likes it, so we'll be okay. If it were 50% true positive, not including neutral, then you could run the risk. But having over 50% actively disapprove is an immediate crisis meeting. Could they still be profitable with only 45% of the playerbase, with this pricing yeah probably. But no good business is going to decide to bank on 45% of their consumers to pay the bills vs trying to bridge the gap to the other 54%.

[Finwickle]

İlk olarak Literally Me tarafından gönderildi:

I don't want to be an ass to you, but genuinely having over 50% of your audience dislike something is alarm bells ringing in corporate lol. Like you can't just say, well 45% of my target audience is either neutral or likes it, so we'll be okay. If it were 50% true positive, not including neutral, then you could run the risk. But having over 50% actively disapprove is an immediate crisis meeting. Could they still be profitable with only 45% of the playerbase, with this pricing yeah probably. But no good business is going to decide to bank on 45% of their consumers to pay the bills vs trying to bridge the gap to the other 54%.

You're not an ass, just having a conversation. Which is welcome! Ofcourse 55% dislike is an issue, but opposers are always much more vocal, so it's unclear how representitive such a poll is. And I doubt it comes as a surprise to Firaxis (I'm sure they know how Humankind fared), so I doubt they go into crisis mode immediately. Changes will always get a load, vocal opposition. Just how much this turns into players turning away from the game is to be seen. Maybe that is the reason for such an early pre-order, six months before release. Maybe that is their way of polling.

[TyCobb]

İlk olarak Finwickle tarafından gönderildi:

İlk olarak Many-Named tarafından gönderildi:

But anyway, civ 6 had over 15000 daily players, HK has 150. Case closed.

Case is only closed if Civ 7 will have less than 1000 daily players in 2025.

Doesn't need to have less than a 1000. It just has to make sure that it stays above Civ 5's 20,000 daily peaks and Civ 6's 75,000 peaks. If any of those two games ends up higher than 7, then it failed.