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I guess no one is actually playing this game other than me, but upon playing a few more games, I seriously think it was a bad idea to give independent civs free teams of double chariots with which to chase down and murder all your scouts before ransacking you for having the gall to try to expand. Like, before I have researched copper. This is made about 30 times worse if you pick the Diplomatic starter civ, because they get absolute no resource bonuses to help them survive long enough to even think about making a treaty. You would think, I dunno, the civ type specifically all about making deals with independent civs wouldn't be horribly murdered by them in the crib, but you'd be dead wrong!
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Nov 11, 2022 07:33
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How are people using diplomats and spy's or the embassy options. They just seem to clutter my map rather than being useful.
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Nov 11, 2022 15:39
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If I genuinely enjoy the Endless games, and Civ V and Civ VI, is this game a solid pick? I've been eyeballing it for a while.
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Nov 11, 2022 15:46
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chaosapiant posted:If I genuinely enjoy the Endless games, and Civ V and Civ VI, is this game a solid pick? I've been eyeballing it for a while. I found that it didn't have the staying power of any of the Civ games, I think I've only actually finished one game of Humankind, but I enjoyed doing that, I just haven't really had the itch to replay it. Worth giving a shot if you can find it cheap, it's definitely a very competent 4x game, it's just....missing something I can't quite put my finger on. I haven't tried the expansion yet though, maybe that fixes it.
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Nov 11, 2022 15:48
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chaosapiant posted:If I genuinely enjoy the Endless games, and Civ V and Civ VI, is this game a solid pick? I've been eyeballing it for a while. I enjoyed it more than VI tbh. You'll get at least a few fun games out of it.
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Nov 11, 2022 16:08
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chaosapiant posted:If I genuinely enjoy the Endless games, and Civ V and Civ VI, is this game a solid pick? I've been eyeballing it for a while. It's fun, get it for the weekend especially if it's on sale somewhere. The start of the game is a lot better than Civ: you can't found a city on your first turn, you have to explore a little bit and get some influence and then find the right spot. Combat is more fun: the terrain actually means something instead of +25% defense, there are cliffs and canyons and actual bottlenecks to manage. It looks so much nicer than Civ too. On the whole, it's not hugely different (especially the end--you should be snowballing hard in the late eras), but it does have some nice tweaks to the formula and I haven't wanted to play Civ again in a long time. This is just about the standard version though.
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Nov 11, 2022 16:09
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I think my biggest problem with humankind is that it focuses pretty heavily on a score victory which is by far the least interesting way to play for me
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Nov 11, 2022 17:06
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chaosapiant posted:If I genuinely enjoy the Endless games, and Civ V and Civ VI, is this game a solid pick? I've been eyeballing it for a while. It's... fine? I guess? I enjoyed the games I played with it, but it's got enough annoying parts that I don't think I'll come back to it. (e.g. AI getting to siphon off your pops with no ability to respond is infuriating - even going to war isn't effective since you are usually forced to peace out before you can raze all their adjacent cities and they just rebuild them anyways. They imported Paradox style war goals and war score in the worst way possible). It's "historical" so it's missing the flair and originality of other Endless games. If you're looking for a civlike, maybe check out Old World too.
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Nov 11, 2022 17:35
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Anno posted:You're thinking of the wrong Civ designer. Jon Shafer (lead on Civ V) is who went to work for Stardock and then left to make At the Gates, a bad game. Soren Johnson led Civ IV and then went on to make Offworld Trading Company and now Old World. https://www.polygon.com/2013/3/2/4056362/civilization-designer-soren-johnson-joins-stardock-entertainment Just so there's like, a good source to point to so you're not just taking me at my word. Dunno why Moby only has it listed as a 'special thanks', though. chaosapiant posted:If I genuinely enjoy the Endless games, and Civ V and Civ VI, is this game a solid pick? I've been eyeballing it for a while. It's been a bit of a regret purchase but it's mediocre instead of awful. Has some great ideas done well, but has some amazingly bad, or really good ideas executed poorly.
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Nov 11, 2022 17:45
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LLSix posted:It's... fine? I guess? I enjoyed the games I played with it, but it's got enough annoying parts that I don't think I'll come back to it. (e.g. AI getting to siphon off your pops with no ability to respond is infuriating - even going to war isn't effective since you are usually forced to peace out before you can raze all their adjacent cities and they just rebuild them anyways. They imported Paradox style war goals and war score in the worst way possible). It's "historical" so it's missing the flair and originality of other Endless games. If you're looking for a civlike, maybe check out Old World too. Even the "historical" part doesn't really hit for me; the fact that you can change to any other civ in the world every time you rank up to the next era really takes me out of it, makes it difficult to attach identities to any of your rivals. Or yourself, for that matter. From a pure cold gameplay perspective the mechanic is pretty good, but it kinda taints the flavor of the game for me, if that makes sense There was a patch which changed it so that a faction's primary identifier is now their leader rather than their culture, which I guess is an improvement, but I'm not really attached to any of these leaders, either compare to Civ, where a lot of the leaders/cultures had more memorable and distinct personalities. For example, if you discovered that Montezuma was your neighbor, it gave you a certain feeling
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Nov 11, 2022 18:07
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This criticism sounds like something very superfluous but it really is very important. On a UI level it's still very poorly conveyed. Similar games often struggle to make you care about who are you playing against beyond Montezuma is a dick and will attack (and I do think Civ is very bad about it, all you want to know about their personalities is how warlike they are and then how strong their are, you don't care about anything else about them), and Humankind makes a step forward and then two steps back. Cultural affinity really does affect how you interact with others: expansionists ignore borders, mercantile resell resources (so even if everyone hates you it's possible to buy everyone's resources through a proxy culture) and so on. But the nature of civs changes, and not just once or twice but 5 times during the game! And then the immersion hurts too. You play not against historical leaders but against "personas". So they're like you, above it all, trying to win instead of role play? No, they still role play and they kinda have their own personalities that affect their choices. So those personalities become fuzzy beyond how friendly or unfriendly they are.
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Nov 11, 2022 18:44
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Aside from the "leaders" and their anemic personalities, the whole culture shifting mechanic does feel, to me, more reflective of history (albeit gamified). Cultures shifted. The native Britons were subjugated, colonised and in some cases assimilated by the Romans, then came Anglo Saxons, Danes, Vikings and so on, leading to England etc. It's not perfect but I feel like the genre is so heavily defined by Civilization and it makes it hard for other games to pull away from that. Conceptually the Olmecs becoming Scots isn't more wierd than Teddy Roosevelt, ruler of the American Empire 300 BC. Civ does do so well with the leaders and personality though. I can't play Civ V as Siam as I hate him so much. If he is my neighbour I immediately start building catapults. Nothing in any other 4x games comes close to how some Civ leaders incite feelings of Conquest, at least in my eyes.
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Nov 11, 2022 20:20
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mitochondritom posted:Aside from the "leaders" and their anemic personalities, the whole culture shifting mechanic does feel, to me, more reflective of history (albeit gamified). Cultures shifted. The native Britons were subjugated, colonised and in some cases assimilated by the Romans, then came Anglo Saxons, Danes, Vikings and so on, leading to England etc. It's not perfect but I feel like the genre is so heavily defined by Civilization and it makes it hard for other games to pull away from that. It would make total sense to make this in some different way. Civ-style games often allow you further to define your culture by laws and government systems. Endless Space 2 had a cool idea with quests giving you a choice of powerful traits you can add to your civilization. They could make it some sort of a branching path, like in the beginning you chose between African, Asian, American or European civ with some bonuses, and then along the way Africans can choose Mali or Egypt, and Egypt can transform into Mamluks and so on. It certainly should have been fewer transformations. Right now you look at Cubans and you have to remember not just that they're ruled by Beowulf with his own traits, but that they were also Olmecs, Mongols, Dutch etc along the way, cause these steps still give them a lot of important traits. You don't care because it isn't that important, but it's another issue with the game. It's like a very surprisingly complex and clumsy system in an otherwise elegant game. Reminds me of Endless Space 2 politics, where every action you do empowers specific political faction, and every species reacts to events in its own way. It's a simulation that Paradox designers would call too complex to put into a game, and they added it to a video game that otherwise feels like a board game.
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Nov 11, 2022 21:10
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ilitarist posted:Right now This feels like Amplitude all over. Can't help but love their games though.
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Nov 11, 2022 21:58
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Ainsley McTree posted:Even the "historical" part doesn't really hit for me; the fact that you can change to any other civ in the world every time you rank up to the next era really takes me out of it, makes it difficult to attach identities to any of your rivals. Or yourself, for that matter. From a pure cold gameplay perspective the mechanic is pretty good, but it kinda taints the flavor of the game for me, if that makes sense This is the problem with Humankind, and it's why it will never be a good game. It makes everything nebulous. Also, it's a poo poo mechanic because you can just change cultures to adapt to current situation instead of making decisions to improve your situation. In a good game, if I am navally handicapped, I must come up with some plan to use my strengths in other areas to handle the ships terrorizing me. In Humankind just push this button and you are ocean people now. Problem solved.
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Nov 11, 2022 22:57
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Actually it's good.
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Nov 11, 2022 22:57
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Other Half of Dracula posted:For me to poo poo on.
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Nov 11, 2022 23:06
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It's good but I already pretty much just ignore the flavor aspects of any given civ and they're just stat bonuses to me regardless.
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Nov 11, 2022 23:46
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Yeah, I never think of it as "I'm becoming Romans now." It's "The people of Pink Hammer and Sickle will focus on conquest now." I downloaded some custom personalities that make much better opponents than the boring default ones.
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Nov 11, 2022 23:59
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I played a bit of this lately. Even bought the new dlc which was a big meh. I dunno the game seems soulless to me. Hope they return to the Endless world in their next strategy game
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Nov 24, 2022 09:03
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The base leaders absolutely suck. Because you're constantly picking new cultures through time you need that strong personality to pull things together and they just don't. Not only are they a random half-assed assortment of mythological figures most people haven't heard of, they just don't have any personality. I think I've said this before, but they remind me of the fake people from Apple ads rather than world leaders. I don't think there's anything in game that even tells you who most of them are either. There's lots of interesting ideas but after playing through a full game I didn't feel any compulsion to start up another one and just moved on. e/ Like, as an exercise, give me a sentence that describes Tjilbruke based on your experience with the game? Ratios and Tendency fucked around with this message at 09:54 on Nov 24, 2022 |
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Nov 24, 2022 09:46
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Yeah. I came back to EL cause I feel like I didn't really play a lot of the latest two expansions or ELCP patch. And AI there doesn't have a personality too, it just has to do what his race can do. Even Necrophages don't feel particularly aggressive, it's just they never get a chance to start proper peaceful relations so you're more likely to fight them than not. After Humankind it feels less balanced and more railroaded: each race/faction has a very specific playstyle. Of course, you can expand it with research and it's affected by the random world around you (rewards from the temple, specific luxury resources, and minor factions can force you to rely on specific parts of the game). But almost all racial gimmicks seem to have very minor effects if you're not playing as a signature race. The exception is pearls and maybe naval fortresses. Trade? By the time you research all trade buildings their effect will be negligible unless you play the Roving Clans. Espionage doesn't do much stuff. Even diplomacy is extremely limited unless you're Drakken: up until the endgame prestige costs are so high for everything that you probably won't trade at all. I have never beaten the game on max difficulty and maybe I'm missing something, but it feels that you're supposed to only do basic stuff (grow your cities, build armies, research stuff that helps with it) and racial gimmick, and only delve into other directions occasionally when it's really needed - like trade building is mostly useful for creating roads for your armies. And Humankind feels like an attempt to apply the same design, but you switch your faction several times during the game and the gameplay with it. Like I strongly suspect that what I've described was on a white board in Amplitude office and faction switching was their answer. I think ES2 have balanced faction diversity and the multitude of playstyles well, so it's sad they went this way and made everyone feel homogenous.
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Nov 24, 2022 11:01
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Having played exactly one game of this, so far I like the jumping between cultures. A civ in a given game is a product of its history in the form of accumulated mechanical bonuses, territory, diplo relationships, and resources, and this is piloted by an NPC with a set of tendencies and goals. This is already how I view everybody in Civilization 5 and 6 after a couple thousand hours of play, except I have nothing but hate in my heart for the Civ civs. Humankind NPCs will be interchangeable in a few games but for now I just like the unpredictability. Man, I really stalled out in the industrial era and I never found a way to leave second place in the contemporary. In hindsight I forgot that I could spend pop to make units and farm agrarian stars until it was too late, but then I would have had to use those units for something, and late game war looks like a pain in the rear end. This is a euro style board game through and through, and I'm definitely in the stage where I'm building basic system familiarity. It feels good! I still have no idea what to do with influence after a certain point. To gain enough to gain points out of it, you have to have more than I could figure out how to spend.
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Nov 28, 2022 20:13
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Ragnar34 posted:Having played exactly one game of this, so far I like the jumping between cultures. A civ in a given game is a product of its history in the form of accumulated mechanical bonuses, territory, diplo relationships, and resources, and this is piloted by an NPC with a set of tendencies and goals. This is already how I view everybody in Civilization 5 and 6 after a couple thousand hours of play, except I have nothing but hate in my heart for the Civ civs. Humankind NPCs will be interchangeable in a few games but for now I just like the unpredictability. Territories and cities are the most important influence uses, then civics. Some of them are quite useful: -50% create outpost cost is a big help early on, +1 City Cap is good then too when being 2 over the cap really hurts, +1 combat strength is pretty much a must have in harder difficulties, religious hostility is an easy way to make some demands/start a war, +100% Fame points for cultural stars is another help on harder difficulties, etc. You also need influence to declare war, make demands or do other diplomatic actions.
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Nov 28, 2022 20:29
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I just played a long game on Humankind difficulty and it was a great experience. I was neck and neck with some of the AI until the very end. There were a lot of closely fought wars, with constant evolution of the units being used. I've never experienced that in a game of Civ. The problem is that once we got into the contemporary era, no one built tanks because there was no oil at all in our hemisphere. I'll have to set strategic resources to abundant when I set up my next game. Chamale fucked around with this message at 12:33 on Jan 13, 2023 |
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Jan 13, 2023 12:29
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The game just wanted to arouse the inner Rumsfeld in you.
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Jan 13, 2023 12:43
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Megazver posted:The game just wanted to arouse the inner Rumsfeld in you. That's the intent, but it doesn't really work when one player has all the oil, and she has tanks, and is on the other side of the world.
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Jan 13, 2023 13:15
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Chamale posted:The problem is that once we got into the contemporary era, no one built tanks because there was no oil at all in our hemisphere. I'll have to set strategic resources to abundant when I set up my next game. I thought this wouldn't be an issue in a game like that cause it's very easy to buy resources from others. And even if the owners of the land with resources did not yet develop said resources Merchant civs can do that for them.
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Jan 13, 2023 14:07
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ilitarist posted:I thought this wouldn't be an issue in a game like that cause it's very easy to buy resources from others. And even if the owners of the land with resources did not yet develop said resources Merchant civs can do that for them. Can't buy resources when there are four oil wells in the world, three belong to your enemy, and the owner of the fourth won't talk to me. At least there's a way to avoid this problem using the game setup, but as it stands they really should have made abundant resources the default. In our world, each one of the five largest countries produces at least a billion barrels of oil per year.
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Jan 13, 2023 19:53
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Chamale posted:Can't buy resources when there are four oil wells in the world, three belong to your enemy, and the owner of the fourth won't talk to me. I feel 4x games make it harder than it should be to buy resources and don't make it profitable enough to sell resources. One thing is love to see in a lot of games is that if you have a resource unlocked but another player doesn't, you can still buy it and you both get the benefit of it.
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Jan 13, 2023 20:05
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Endless Legend has the best implementation of a market in any 4x game. Agree or disagree?
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Jan 14, 2023 20:10
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Have you played Old World?
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Jan 15, 2023 00:08
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