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Apparently Humankind is available as early access for a limited time on Google Stadia. Though its probably the OpenDev scenarios again it could be something new and I'm checking it out on my end so I'll report back. Either way if you didn't get access to the OpenDev and want a hands on look at the game this might be your shot. https://9to5google.com/2020/10/20/stadia-demos-immortals-fenyx-rising-pac-man/
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Oct 21, 2020 05:03
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| # ? Apr 24, 2024 02:35 |
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April 2021 release. https://twitter.com/humankindgame/status/1318945342067478530
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Oct 21, 2020 17:46
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Update. I gave the new Stadia scenario a whirl: its a whole new OpenDev scenario, not a rehash of the old ones. You play as the Nubians and have free reign through the Ancient and Classical eras, including picking your next culture though the scenario ends if you choose to try and go to the Medieval. Lots to do and get a feel of though and I'll compile some of my thoughts after a bit more time with the game. My first run was fun though, in short, ended up generating lots of era stars through population rather than gold because I prioritized growth along rivers, and took the Persians to try and game era starts from conquering the Independent people that were around me, and racing the AI to anything that was unclaimed. Ended up gaining more era starts from tech, military victories and the gold I was producing from all my Meroe Pyramids rather than the number of territories I unlocked. Wanted to take the Ghanaians to hopfully continue the gold generation combo with all my new Satrap Palaces, but thats when I was hit with a end game. Had thousands of Fame by the end.
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Oct 21, 2020 19:03
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So I've had a lot of time replying the Stadia scenario, gonna try and hash out my thoughts. There's some stuff in here that's definitly fresh and new stuff to get a look at, and some good, some meh and some eh? feelings I've on the experience. Over all I'm super excited with this game but I'll make sure to touch on some misgivings. First some big screen shots!    
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Oct 23, 2020 19:04
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I'm looking forward to reading all your thoughts.
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Oct 23, 2020 19:09
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So a lot of the bad stuff is pacing stuff with the ancient era, some of the more bland elements of how Independent people are handled, and some obfuscated UI problems. I had a few issues with figuring out outpost attachment costs, where to cycle through to particular actions, and alot of the text is on the smaller end. Everything is real crisp and pretty to look at regardless. The demo was also buggy in that Extension limits weren't active, but I played a few runs treating them as if they were and made sure not to build more quarters than a city was supposed to be able to in order to get a feel of the games intended pacing. The scenario starts you a few techs in and with a city and some scouts, so the sense of rushing through the ancient era was partly do to this, but it definitely felt like an issue. That said, the game's handling of era progression means you can spend some time hanging back and enjoying your particular culture's traits a bit longer. This did occasionally lead to hitting the Classical era running with some era star progression overflow too and the scenario ended at 100 turnssih or when you decide to adopt the Medieval Era. Ideally this is all stuff that's paced better in the final version of the game. Some era stars I mentioned do feel easier to end up with in spades rather than the ones you might want to aim for. Merchant stars seemed pitifully out of reach in the Ancient Era in most runs and I ended up producing the production and growth infrastructure and burning through the tech tree getting me Era Progression way before I had any of them. Ideally this should be balanced a bit more. Experience with the Independent People's mechanics felt somewhat disappointing. I don't like that they have binary state of minds and it seems like it might be random which they're set to and they stay that way; either pacificist or aggro. That just feels like City States and Barbs but blander. That said there's depth to how you interact with either of these types and I enjoyed how they spread across the map. They'll start exploring, wandering and snag un occupied territories to develop into outposts and even eventually cities, giving you interesting windows of opportunity to push them away or leave them unmolested. My gripes with them feel more "meh" than deal breaker though. Diplomacy with the Major Empires, the other Civs, is way more fleshed out and follows some of Amplitudes usual trends of different levels of aggression and trade allotments. YOu can have Tolerate Skirmishes on to leave the two of you in a state of frontier warfare, able to fight each other in certain territories and burn each others unguarded unattached outposts to play control over the map. Wars are handled through a grievances system that generates issues that you can dismiss or press against the offending party. Demanding tribute usually. If they refuse, things can escalate if you so desire to war and the grievances you have work as casus belli systems to determining what the outcomes of wars are. If you capture a city and whitepeace your opponent, you end up returning it, but you can use the grievances to press certain territorial claims and other conditions against your opponents given morale, a sort've stamina track of their war capacity. My favourite quirk is offering a white peace, incurs a morale penalty against the Empire proposing it, and having it rejected incurs more. Talk about a downer! Other core gameplay elements feel great though. The world is lush and complex in a way Civ isnt, but grounded and realistic compared to Endless Legend. Plotting out cities, territories and how to manage them and expand your quarters felt rewarding. Combat is good, and while the strategic AI left something to desire on a grand scale, the AI were good at tactical combat enough that it felt challenging to crack well place cities. They tended to avoid building lots of complex armies but when I faced their Emblematic Units they were scary. The scenario has two preset AIs, the Hittites in the south and the Zhou in the north, who follow the same Classical era culture pick unless you take it from them; Aksumite and Greek respectively and if you take Aksumite the former notably takes Greek instead, as seen in my screens. The latter's Chariots were particularly tough to kill though, holy poo poo. The psychology of culture traits is really interesting, though my brain kind end up reminding me that they didn't matter as much in this scenario since the AI can't win as it were, but will be really cool and has me psyched for how it plays out in normal games given how traits get the empire more Fame, the victory condition, for certain trait related era stars. My first instinct with the Militarist Hittites was to want to remain peaceful with them, going to war literally gives them an opportunity to score extra fame even if I win my perceived wargoals, since they want to just kill units. I can see similar dynamics with weighing trade with Merchants carefully, or needing to box in Expansionist cultures. Ideally things are paced and balanced enough to give more weight to these dynamics and if so I'm really excited. I feel like what Humankind is doing here genuinely feels like it'll be a good fix to the Civ Victory Condition Malaise. Gonna pause here and come back when I've collected some more thoughts, but feel free to ask me questions if you're curious and want to jog me in a particular tangent.
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Oct 23, 2020 19:39
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Tried this for a little bit. My lovely rural New England internet struggles with Stadia. I'd get the sparkles which I guess are like goody huts, and they'd say XYZ happened but no indication of what the game effect was. I found a trove of knowledge! Did it give me science? I dunno. When they show up in the notification bar down below they still tell you nothing. Similarly I got an event where the river flooded and I paid a lot of cash for a chance at a 'good outcome'. I won that gamble and there was a popup about the land becoming more fertile or something, but no indication of the in-game effect.
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Oct 23, 2020 23:29
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Fintilgin posted:Tried this for a little bit. My lovely rural New England internet struggles with Stadia. There are little pop ups, and currently the various screen overlay is bugged in this to not show updates in tile yields when you're viewing cities etc, if you hover over a tile directly it'll show the actual yield. I particularily had this issue with building the Irigation improvement in a city. Its supposed to bring the food yield to 3 per tile but it kept showing it as 1. The former stuff is part of what I mean about some things being obscure or confusing. Definitely mentioned it in some of my direct feedback and a lot of people have similar issues. Seems like easy fixes in how messages are displayed.
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Oct 23, 2020 23:52
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Okay sorry to multipost but I apparently won a copy of this game from voting in the stupid meme context for the winner, lmfao. Digitial Deluxe Preorder and everything. If nothing else you goons can expect a review from me regardless when it finally releases in April.
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Oct 24, 2020 03:15
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Rimusutera posted:Okay sorry to multipost but I apparently won a copy of this game from voting in the stupid meme context for the winner, lmfao. Digitial Deluxe Preorder and everything. If nothing else you goons can expect a review from me regardless when it finally releases in April. Hahaha amazing. Given the numbers of likes and shares those tweets were getting you probably didn't have much competition :P Kinda wish I'd tried now... E: incidentally, the pre-purchase of the digital deluxe edition is on a 17%-off offer on Steam, £40. https://store.steampowered.com/app/1124300/HUMANKIND/
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Oct 24, 2020 09:56
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I checked out the demo on Stadia. It sure feels a lot like Civ, except maybe for the cultural evolution part. Maybe I'm missing something? What are the dotted white lines that appear on the world map, by the way?
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Oct 25, 2020 04:53
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Vivian Darkbloom posted:I checked out the demo on Stadia. It sure feels a lot like Civ, except maybe for the cultural evolution part. Maybe I'm missing something? I mean there's tactical combat, and Amplitude's approach to city management and developing them, the complex geography, and a unified victory condition. The dotted white lines mark territories. You can only place one outpost and in turn city, per territory. If they're dotted borders they show the territory is unclaimed.
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Oct 25, 2020 05:01
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Rimusutera posted:I mean there's tactical combat, and Amplitude's approach to city management and developing them, the complex geography, and a unified victory condition. Oh, ok. That's one aspect that wasn't really clear and I couldn't see where it would be explained. I hope they add enough tutorial and UI refinement to make it accessible at launch. Did you find the tactical combat AI did a good job of placing its units and fighting? The recent Civ games were pretty bad in that department.
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Oct 25, 2020 05:04
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The AI were occasionally stupid, the Independent People (the grey sort've guys who spawn into territories sometimes, some of which are hostile) would be downright suicidal in attempting to gank my scouts sometimes. Otherwise In pretty much all the combat so far the AI were real good at taking strategic ground and trying to tank me, including the IPs most of the time. They main Empire's AI is also good at raiding outposts if you're over extended though, and retreating from bad engagements. The strategic level of the AI in the scenario is set pretty low so they never really built good armies in the long term though, which made trying out warfare in the long run kinda boring but I've read good feedback from the more combat oriented OpenDevs scenarios released through Steam a while ago. They seem to be taking a lot of feedback in stride and working on everything that's confusing or bad UI to improve it as well.
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Oct 25, 2020 05:23
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I played through the rest of the scenario. Around turn 65 I finished conquering all the other civs and decided I didn't need to bother with anything else. The AI expands very slowly while I found it easy to keep expanding rapidly for the whole game. The balance is way off there. I like some of the ideas like the new city mechanics, so I hope they'll keep at it after launch.
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Oct 26, 2020 11:05
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Vivian Darkbloom posted:The AI expands very slowly while I found it easy to keep expanding rapidly for the whole game. The balance is way off there. Is that a difficulty level thing, maybe?
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Oct 26, 2020 12:50
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Yeah if you look at the diploscreen there's a personality trait list by the AI's portrait, I forget what its called exactly, that if you select provides a list of them. One of them for both AIs is "casual" with the charming tooltip of "If this was Henry the V, the French would have won Agincourt" The feedback survey at the end of this focus' a lot of the trade/diplo aspects and it seems the scenario is focus on seeing how players enjoy those or what they have issue with, and a common thing I've seen people talk about openly is the AI just not using Grievances on their end. Otherwise its a really interesting mechanic that reminds me a lot of the limitations of Casus Belli in something like Crusader Kings, the devs just need to actually flesh out competent AI further. I found the AI expands fairly quickly in my playthroughs, they're just a push over in major wars especially if you use Classical Era unique units. Roman Praetorians are beefy. But if you try and tangle with them before you're there their chariots loving crush warriors, spearmen and Nubian archers, but their armies are often still mostly scouts/scout cav too. Rimusutera fucked around with this message at 16:17 on Oct 26, 2020 |
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Oct 26, 2020 16:13
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Persia 2: Industrial Boogaloo https://twitter.com/humankindgame/status/1321150088585056256/photo/1
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Oct 27, 2020 21:37
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Went to go look at the Steam details. I didn't expect it to have a Mac version but I definitely didn't expect them to be working on a Mac version that doesn't support the current version of MacOS including basically everything sold in the past year, for a game that won't release until next year:
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Oct 27, 2020 23:31
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HOW FAR WILL YOU PUSH HUMANKIND? lmao, chill out steam blurb
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Oct 28, 2020 02:37
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Based on the screenshot to the left Rock Paper Shotgun are pushing it pretty hard.
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Oct 28, 2020 08:21
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This is so cool. Having lived in northern italy for over three years, it’s hard to describe how much the history of the Alpini influenced culture and folklore there if you keep your eyes open.
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Oct 29, 2020 03:48
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You won't be all that surprised to know the next Industrial civ is (prerevolutionary) Russia: https://twitter.com/humankindgame/status/1323671741126844423 Also they went back and redid the art for the Franks: https://twitter.com/humankindgame/status/1323301388110254080
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Nov 5, 2020 11:11
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Who could forget that classical Siamese unit, the gatling elephant: https://twitter.com/humankindgame/status/1326208558157934594
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Nov 11, 2020 09:59
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Kazzah posted:Who could forget that classical Siamese unit, the gatling elephant: I did a bit of googling to see if that was an actual thing and only came up with this  Which is from Sri Lanka 1914. The accompanying article included the following quote:It’s probably a publicity picture, not something the army would actually try to employ. The elephant would not respond well to the sound of that machine gun a few inches from his ears.
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Nov 11, 2020 11:20
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Also that's clearly just plopped on its back, not supported or attached or anything. The recoil would probably not feel great and do nothing to improve the mood of the elephant.
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Nov 11, 2020 11:57
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 This seems to be the reference pic. Seems like Siam used tripod mounted rifles on elephants for some time ('jingals'). Bit gimmicky, but I guess they wanted to splice the emblematic Siamese war elephant with early modern machine gun.
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Nov 11, 2020 12:47
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I'll still say, it's strange to me that they are pushing this so hard so long before the game launches. It's like the date slipped, but their marketing didn't realize it, and just set up the marketing cycle for the old date.
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Nov 11, 2020 15:11
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The King of Siam offered Abraham Lincoln a squadron of war elephants as a sign of support in the Civil War. Abe declined the offer.
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Nov 11, 2020 15:44
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Soylent Pudding posted:The King of Siam offered Abraham Lincoln a squadron of war elephants as a sign of support in the Civil War. Abe declined the offer. 
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Nov 11, 2020 15:52
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SlyFrog posted:I'll still say, it's strange to me that they are pushing this so hard so long before the game launches. It was originally slated for a 2020 release, marketing was already in swing when it got pushed back.
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Nov 11, 2020 16:42
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Poil posted:We could have had pictures of elephants trampling the traitorous racist slave owners and burying them in dung? Gettysburg address delivered from atop an elephant
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Nov 11, 2020 21:11
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If the game wants to have gatling elephants I'm not going to object to gatling elephants.
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Nov 11, 2020 21:25
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I look forward to killing lots of Redcoats with those things.
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Nov 13, 2020 04:24
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Rimusutera posted:It was originally slated for a 2020 release, marketing was already in swing when it got pushed back. Yeah, I know that. I just would have thought with the release delay being so far out (at least six-nine months from the original date, if I recall), they would have deferred the marketing a bit to match it. Not like it's a big deal or anything - just a curiosity to me.
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Nov 16, 2020 00:16
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https://twitter.com/humankindgame/status/1328745119592361986
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Nov 17, 2020 18:04
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I really don't think of the Zulu as an industrial era civ but ok
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Nov 17, 2020 18:52
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JeremoudCorbynejad posted:I really don't think of the Zulu as an industrial era civ but ok Its when they existed and were prominent.
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Nov 17, 2020 18:55
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SlyFrog posted:I'll still say, it's strange to me that they are pushing this so hard so long before the game launches. this is actually pretty par for the course, optimally you're generating consistent hits and engagement with the general public for at least a year before your game's street date
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Nov 17, 2020 19:44
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Speaking of which https://twitter.com/humankindgame/status/1329832203883253765
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Nov 21, 2020 04:03
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