Humankind - a Historical 4X by Amplitude (Endless Space, Legend, etc.)

I appreciate your thoughts, @Finnegans Father. I agree that the first half of the game is fun; I haven’t experienced the second half yet. I also agree that the “simultaneous move” thing is annoying, but it hasn’t really hurt me much yet. Agree about info for districts and especially infrastructure.

Also, related to your point about politics: I keep reading that AI polluters can end the game for everyone, and that alone has deterred me from wanting to reach the endgame. I’d rather just restart and play in the pre-industrial eras. I hope a pollution fix is coming.

I’m still enjoying it, though! Lots of interesting ideas in this one, and I really like the fresh take on the genre.

I’ve played several games to the end and never seen this happen. I’m not saying it’s not possible, I’m sure it is, but I wouldn’t let it put you off or anything.

Same. I so fear eco-disaster the first time that I was planting trees before and after every other build order to offset the rising pollution and never built pollution producing improvements.

Nothing happened.

In my next game, I went balls to the wall as an uber pollution producing Eastern bloc, heavy industry authoritarian monstrosity, and…

Nothing happened.

You don’t see any global effect until you hit 60k global pollution.

The game ending condition is at 100k global pollution.

That small window to do something is very “on message” politically (and I don’t think it’s a good design or reflects reality). But it can have the opposite effect where you produce 59k global pollution and conclude that the game desigenrs thought pollution doesnt matter!

Supposedly there are very severe penalties if your local pollution (per territory I guess?) goes over a certain threshold per-turn, but possibly these don’t work or you encountered them but didn’t notice because the UI is so bad.

The whole mechanic is kind of janky. Even Civ2 felt like it gave a much more reasonable decision around pollution generation (although the busywork of cleaning up pollution wasn’t a good mechanic to enforce a downside)

Humankind has received a couple of patches on most platforms. These include several tweaks and fixes to pollution (yay!), AI improvements, bug fixes, a few new minor features, and lots of other stuff. The fixes don’t seem to include my biggest wish – tooltips on what a new Infrastructure would change if built. Still, the list of fixes looks good. I’m going to fire up the game later today to give it a whirl!

My GamePass version says it’s now version 1.0.03.0256. The big patch, version .0253, was available on Steam a couple weeks ago and was released about a week ago. Here are the patch notes from that version. I don’t see any notes for .256, but I’ll keep looking. Here’s a link to all the patch releases, and I’ve pasted the latest patch notes here:

Patch Notes!

[1.0.3.253] Version Notes

CHANGES AND ADDITIONS [All platforms]

  • Added coastal Sieges.
  • Added a notion of attacker anachronism to limit the damage formula.
  • Added a notification when only one Technology is left to activate the End Game trigger.
  • Added subtitles color picker in the accessibility options.
  • Added a dedicated icon to the War Score.
  • Added a War Score breakdown in the Crisis panel.
  • Added a Select button in All Military Forces and All Cities and Outposts panels to focus the camera on those elements and select them.
  • Added information on next threshold on Pollution tooltips.
  • Added Game Speed and Game Difficulty information to game saves.
  • Added a Fullscreen option in the video settings.
  • Added tools to manage and share a Persona on G2G.
  • Added several new hints.
  • Improved the flow of dialogues/animations between Avatars in the Diplomacy screen.
  • Improved the Surrender panel.
  • Improved the pathfinding computation over the fog of war.
  • Improved the display speed of the Avatars in the Lobby screen.
  • Improved feedback for Naval transports, Militias and Siege Weapons.
  • Improved the way AI makes prediction when evaluation a battle.
  • Improved the way AI Armies will consider going through safe Territories to get closer to the target.
  • Improved the way AI Empires synchronize their Armies for an attack.
  • Improved the way AI Empire use bombardment.
  • AI Empires will now focus more on their Emblematic Districts and should be more efficient in their placement.
  • AI Empires should now properly place Common Quarter to gain Stability.
  • Updated default keyboard shortcuts.
  • End-game stats now correctly track FoodProduced rather than FoodNet (which tends to always be around 0).
  • Reduced Combat Strength effect of the “Violent Pursuits” event.
  • Reduced Combat Strength effect of the “Only Game in Town” event.
  • Stability penalty of being overdrawn in terms of Influence now scales quadratically.
  • Slightly reduced Hunnic Hordes bonus.
  • Merchant gains now scale more with Eras.
  • Aesthete gains now scale quadratically with Eras.
  • Reduced Expansionist costs.
  • Reduced the impact on Faith of the two initial Tenets, “Shamanism” and “Polytheism”.
  • Increased cost of claims for players on the high end of the Territory count.
  • Reduced the “per district” Stability impact of local Pollution.
  • Global Pollution effects now scale with District count.
  • Natural Reserves now recapture Pollution.
  • Increased Global Pollution thresholds by a factor of 2.5.
  • Balanced Local and Global Pollution effects to put more importance on Local effects. Please note that impact on FIMS, Faith and Influence doesn’t not use the right feedback on the Local Pollution tooltip on a Territory.
  • Slightly reduced Pollution impact of Airports, Airfields and other special Districts to which Pollution reductions don’t apply.
  • Some Infrastructures now reduce Pollution from Airports.
  • Sewage Treatment Plant now reduces Farmers Quarter Pollution.
  • Loosened Civics prerequisites to make rare Civics more likely to appear.
  • Added a minimum value to multiplier properties for enacting and canceling Civics, preventing some exploits.
  • Changed Midas’ Strength from Capitalist (+15% Money) to Moneymaker (+10%).

IMPORTANT FIXES [All platforms]

  • Fixed an issue where Civics cannot be unlocked under specific conditions.
  • Fixed an issue where frame rate drops in Contemporary Era, due to Trade Routes.
  • Fixed an issue where frame rate drops in Contemporary Era, due to Soviet District.
  • Fixed an issue where District’s 3D models are no longer displayed under specific conditions.
  • Fixed an issue where Army pawns disappear and combat preview gets locked.
  • Fixed an issue where retreating from a battle with an Aircraft Carrier carrying Air Units causes the Air Units to disappear.
  • Fixed an issue where a battle cannot be ended under specific conditions.
  • Fixed an issue where a battle cannot be ended due to AI being stuck itself because it has no target.
  • Fixed an issue where the end turn cannot be ended due to the war support panel being empty.
  • Fixed an issue where the end turn cannot be ended due to the battle mandatory notification being not displayed.
  • Fixed an issue where the end turn cannot be ended when Independent People starts a Crisis under specific conditions.
  • Fixes an issue where AIs are targeting Curiosities in the fog of war.
  • Fixed an issue where AI Personas are reset to the default ones when loading multiplayer saves.
  • Fixed an issue where the diplomacy log information is not retained through save/load.
  • Fixed an issue where an error is generated when opening an ongoing battle after ending a turn.
  • Fixed an issue where an error can occur when launching a Nuclear Missile against an opponent’s Capital City.
  • Fixed an issue where an error can occur when the move ratio is negative.
  • Fixed an issue where an error can occur when accessing an Air Strike aftermath report.
  • Fixed an issue where an audio error can be generated when using Missile Strike in a battle.

IMPORTANT FIXES [Microsoft Store]

  • Fixed an issue where save files sent to the cloud can be corrupted.
  • Fixed an issue where armies, cities and religions cannot be renamed.

OTHER FIXES [All platforms]
ECONOMY

  • Fixed an issue where “Power Investor” Merchant’s ability can be used multiple times by reloading a save file.
  • Fixed an issue where Harbors are not excluded from City’s main borough, meaning that opposing players can’t move their Ships onto a Harbor that is contiguous with their enemy’s main borough to block Unit creation or to trigger a ransack.
  • Fixed an issue where Cultural Wonders are reset to an “unplaced” state instead of transferring ownership.
  • Fixed an issue where Awari, Ordu and Orda outposts have a different exploitation feedback than regular Outposts.
  • Fixed an issue where Influence buyout costs scaling are not handling gamespeed.
  • Fixed an issue where Luxury Resource breakdown incorrectly described its source.
  • Fixed an issue where the National Projects tooltips do not specify that their cost is reduced when being constructed on a compatible project site district.
  • Fixed an issue where the constructions list is automatically scrolled after each added Infrastructure and Public Ceremony to the construction queue.
  • Fixed an issue where errors can occur when constructing another District on the Arms Factory.
  • Fixed an issue where bonus resources from satellite launches are not shown in any breakdowns.
  • Fixed an issue where the player is not informed about the placement prerequisites of the Floating Market.
  • Fixed an issue where the Natural Wonders’ name changes to “Exploitation” once a District is built on adjacent Tiles.
  • Fixed an issue where the Coal generators effect of the Electricity technology is not fully functional.
  • Fixed an issue where it is extremely difficult for players to mitigate Pollution when having a low Stability.
  • Fixed an issue where the Local Pollution thresholds is scaling with World Size.
  • Fixed an issue where the City Stability breakdown does not list the District Pollution penalty separately.
  • Fixed an issue where Local Pollution effects isn’t displayed in the City’s FIMS, Faith and Influence breakdowns.
  • Fixed an issue where the “End of your journey” Pollution-related important notification does not indicate who is the top polluter and that it has received Fame.
  • Fixed an issue where destroying Forests does not generate Pollution.
  • Fixed an issue where sometime the Local Pollution tooltip doesn’t update.
  • Fixed an issue where Uranium deposits can spawn on water Tiles.

MILITARY

  • Fixed an issue where the player is able to fight against Ships on land after Sieges.
  • Fixed an issue where building nomadic Units on a spawn point with a nomadic Unit already on it is not allowed.
  • Fixed an issue where the Unit creation gauge of Nomad Armies can be displayed in the Army panel of a different Army.
  • Fixed an issue where Air and Missile Units can be deployed in the same Army.
  • Fixed an issue where Air and Missile Units cannot be disbanded under specific conditions.
  • Fixed an issue where “Behind Walls” status is not removed after Siege Weapons destroyed the Fortification.
  • Fixed an issue where false information is displayed in the contextual tooltip when hovering over a Tribe with 2 or more Units.
  • Fixed an issue where Tribe gauge is displayed for Independent People Armies under specific conditions.
  • Fixed an issue where the Claim Territory unit action button can display inconsistent behaviour.
  • Fixed an issue where Draftees have an anti-cavalry icon instead of a melee one.
  • Fixed an issue where Army actions present inconsistent behavior when accessed through their respective keybindings.
  • Fixed an issue where an Army cannot cross other Empire’s Ruins in order to start a Siege.
  • Fixed an issue where assimilated Independent people’s Armies cannot embark even with the required Technology researched.
  • Fixed an issue where last Army can be fully disbanded in Neolithic Era.
  • Fixed an issue where auto-exploring Armies repeat the same path during their movement turn.
  • Fixed an issue where coastal naval Units can become stuck in an auto-explore loop if they cannot reach another coastal water area.
  • Fixed an issue where naval Units can be placed on the land Tiles during siege battles.
  • Fixed an issue where the Air Strike targeting mode is not dismissed when accessing the game’s Pause menu via the Escape key.
  • Fixed an issue where the game menu opens when pressing the ESC key while an unit action is selected.

DIPLOMACY

  • Fixed an issue where an error can occur when opening the Treaty section with a Vassal, in some cases.
  • Fixed an issue where an error can occur when accessing the Diplomacy scren using a notification for an AI proposal.
  • Fixed an issue where an ongoing annexation is not interrupted after becoming allied or at war with another player.
  • Fixed an issue where the player must re-access the Diplomacy screen in order to end the turn when receiving a counter proposal while inside that screen.
  • Fixed an issue where issuing a Demand automatically rejects a white peace proposal.
  • Fixed an issue where an ongoing annexation is not interrupted after becoming allied or at war with another player.
  • Fixed an issue where deprecated Surrender Terms are not shown and tradable for Money.
  • Fixed an issue where Demands made before war are locked when forcing surrender, and the “Money per greviance” value is incorrect.
  • Fixed an issue where the Heresy grievance is not correctly displayed.
  • Fixed an issue where wrong information is displayed in the Relations tab when the played is not part of the feedbacked relationship.
  • Fixed an issue where the size of the War Morale tooltip area is too small in the Diplomacy screen.
  • Fixed an issue where greetings would not play properly when quickly opening and closing the Diplomacy panel with different Empires.
  • Fixed an issue where the player’s Avatar is getting stucked in Furious attitude if they declare war, then meet a new Empire.
  • Fixed an issue where the player is not informed regarding the Resource sharing mechanic granted by vassalization.
  • Fixed an issue where making an AI a Vassal that was in a war against an ally continues the war with the ally.
  • Fixed an issue where the player has the ability to open the Diplomacy screen with an eliminated Empire under specific conditions.
  • Fixed an issue where diplomatic third person subtitles can display a text error under specific conditions.
  • Fixed an issue where errors are generated when using the Alt+F4 command in the Diplomacy screen.
  • Fixed an issue where no tooltip is displayed for the Diplomatic History Close button.
  • Fixed an issue where some texts can be hidden by the Log button in the Diplomacy screen.

AI

  • Fixed an issue where AI Empires don’t wait for Players Culture choice in low game difficulties.
  • Fixed an issue where AI never uses Buyout to finish Constructions.
  • Fixed an issue where AI don’t launch a Siege assault when no other options are available.
  • Fixed an issue where AI related errors are generated when loading a save file.
  • Fixed an issue where an error can occur for single Tile bombardment.
  • Fixed an issue where AI Empires cannot properly target Territories with the Cultural Affinity action.
  • Fixed an issue where AI would not behave properly when out of movement points and joining a battle.
  • Fixed an issue where AI Empires try to allocate Armies to attack Territories they cannot reach.
  • Fixed an issue where AI Empires would try to regroup Armies that could not reach each other.
  • Fixed an issue where an error can occur when besieging or capturing a City under specific conditions.
  • Fixed an issue where reinforcements are not properly taken into account in battle estimations.
  • Fixed an issue where AI Empires would disband their own embarked Armies.
  • Fixed several issues with the AI pathfinding computation.

UI

  • Fixed an issue where the game version in Main Menu is barely visible.
  • Fixed an issue where an error can occur when accessing the UI tab from the Settings screen, leaving a blank space in the Languages droplist.
  • Fixed an issue where loading a save and opening the Empire screen shows the Fame rewards as 0 for a turn.
  • Fixed an issue where the ping choice panel cannot be dismissed until the player makes a ping selection.
  • Fixed an issue where no sound is played on the “The end?” notification.
  • Fixed an issue where an error message is displayed when using the Alt+F4 command in the Diplomacy Mode.
  • Fixed an issue where the player is not informed that they does not have access to a Technology because they has not advanced in the correct era.
  • Fixed an issue where the icon for unavailable Strengths and Biases is inconsistently displayed.
  • Fixed an issue where Empires the player didn’t met are displayed as “Unknown” in the “Longuest War” section during the End Game sequence.
  • Fixed an issue where, for a couple of frames between the video and the camera sequence, the player can see the interface and initial position of the camera.
  • Fixed an issue where the District’s tooltip is incorrectly scaled if the player hovers the Districts right after they clicks on the Idle City button.
  • Fixed an issue where an inconsistent Technology cost is displayed when advancing from Neolithic Era without claiming a Territory.
  • Fixed an issue where clicking on the Technology screen Era page buttons scrolls to the Era instead of jumping directly to that Era.
  • Fixed an issue where the Technology panel is not highlighted when a Research Mandatory is interacted with while the panel is already accessed.
  • Fixed an issue where the player is not informed that they does not have access to a Technology because they has not advanced in the correct Era.
  • Fixed an issue where the tooltip window from the activated “Land Raiser” ability is bigger than the text inside.
  • Fixed an issue where the City name is not displayed in the title of an Event choice.
  • Fixed an issue where a debug text is displayed in the choices of “An Envious Eye” Event. Event description still has a debug text.
  • Fixed an issue where a debug text is displayed in the “A Surfeit of Wisdom” Event.
  • Fixed an issue where World settings are available when a player created map is selected.
  • Fixed an issue where inconsistent Technology costs are displayed when advancing from Neolithic Era without claiming a Territory.
  • Fixed an issue where the “Locate the Event” function on the “Resource Sold” notification pulls the camera to the wrong location.
  • Fixed an issue where Harbor trade nodes are not correctly displayed in the Trade screen.
  • Fixed an issue where the Empire name is not displayed on fresh sessions in the Diplomacy screen, Battle panels or notifications.
  • Fixed an issue where specific UI indicators in the Army and City panel are difficult to read when displayed in a red color.
  • Fixed an issue where loading a save and clicking the Empire screen shows the Fame rewards as 0 for a turn.
  • Fixed an issue where some minor graphical corruption with Units appears on several screens.
  • Fixed an issue where an incorrect icon is used for the “Silver Tongues” Legacy Trait.
  • Fixed an issue where inconsistent behaviour can be observed for the New Game Content tab.
  • Fixed an issue where clicking the chat button doesn’t put the cursor in the text field automatically.
  • Fixed an issue where the “Enter” key opens the game chat instead of confirming the rename action in multiplayer sessions.
  • Fixed an issue where the Hotkey function in-game is available while the Humankind Encyclopedia is open.
  • Fixed an issue where the next City or Outpost will be selected instead of the Next Army or Previous Army when using their designated keys - P and N while having an Army selected.
  • Fixed an issue where default keybinding assignment is not listed for the Game menu in the Mouse and Keyboard Settings screen.
  • Fixed an issue where SFXs do not always play when using shortcuts.
  • Fixed an issue where the “Smite unbelievers” Tier 1 tenet’s bonus is applied as unknown.
  • Fixed an issue where the Follower repartition in the Religion panel can be less than 100%.
  • Fixed an issue where background functionality is present when minimizing the game.
  • Fixed an issue where the “Close Help Layer” button is missing a tooltip.
  • Fixed several issues with the position of Help Layer items.

MULTIPLAYER

  • Fixed an issue where errors are generated after leaving the game idle for approximately 2 minutes in the Join Game screen.
  • Fixed an issue where the player cannot join a private session using the lobby ID.
  • Fixed an issue where non-host player can apply a custom map in a multiplayer lobby.
  • Fixed an issue where an infinite loading screen can happen after a non-host player applies a custom map in a multiplayer lobby.

MODDING

  • Fixed an issue where the player is unable to delete user created maps in the Map Editor screen.
  • Fixed an issue where there is no way for the player to sign the created maps.
  • Fixed an issue where the New Game screen does not list the details of user created maps.
  • Fixed an issue where World settings are available when a player created map is selected.
  • Fixed an issue where exiting the Map Editor quits the game to desktop.
  • Fixed an issue where an error occurs with the World Wrap setting.
  • Fixed several issues due to missing checks to verify the validity of user created map as game map.

MISC.

  • Fixed an issue where changes made to the G2G Persona collection are made only after restarting or re-logging the game.
  • Fixed an issue where player created Avatars are not synced back to the game when connecting with a g2g account.
  • Fixed an issue where the G2G player Persona Avatar is reset to the default one after saving AI Persona changes.
  • Fixed an issue where the downloaded AI Persona model can be updated by the creator after adding it to a collection or session.
  • Fixed an issue where camera is abruptly repositioned to the bottom of the game map when accessing the Civics, Religion and Diplomacy screens while being zoomed in on the map.
  • Fixed an issue where wrong Narrator lines and animation are played when an AI declares war on the player.
  • Fixed an issue where the Narrator line is not triggered when creating a City for the first time.
  • Fixed an issue where First City Settled Narrator line is triggered incorrectly when building the first District.
  • Fixed an issue where the Narrator line for the Mars Landing event is triggered numerous times.
  • Fixed an issue where the Narrator line is wrongly triggered for Phoenicians Harbors, Soviet Tanks, Missiles, and Greek Ships.
  • Fixed an issue where Trade Links with all other Empires Narrator lines repeat every time the player buys a Resource.
  • Fixed an issue where Narratore lines can be triggered in the Diplomacy screen.
  • Fixed an issue where the “Reforestation” achievement can be unlocked early.
  • Fixed an issue where the “Unbend the knee” achievement is unlocked when the prerequisite is not met.

That’s a chonky patch. Good timing on reading the patch notes since a friend wants to play some Humankind this weekend.

There’s a weird thing about this game that I burn out in the middle of the third age (the second choose your Civ era). I haven’t been able to power past it even once despite restarting about 10 different times. There’s just something about it that sort of repels me and I can’t quite keep going. Maybe it’s getting in a hole that I can’t get out of, maybe it’s too many Next Turn clicks with nothing to do, maybe there’s too much to do and I’m facing decision paralysis. I just yawn and shut the laptop and go do something else.

I mean, I’ve been really busy and really tired so it’s probably me. I can hardly play the console on TV for 15 minutes before noping out. I guess though it’s not interesting enough to keep me awake.

Huh. S’funny, because I’m exactly the same. I find I’m so far behind (like 4th or 5th place) and I have zero military and it just isn’t fun.

I’ve still got the game installed, but I dunno if it’ll ever “catch” for me.

I think the effort to truly shift your country from like science to war to industry to X just doesn’t work. If I want a war Civ, I needed to have aimed at this king, long ago, and if I’ve been a builder I probably don’t even have bronze being mined, much less iron found at all. So getting that war footing rolling takes a long time, IMO.

That’s why you can buy mercenaries. I built very few troops, and mostly just used the mercs.

I just got Humankind and am enjoying so far. Perhaps its just the newness and learning the various systems. But these two items were ones that immediately popped out at me.

How can anybody have test played this and said “Yep, a ginormous popup obscuring the map during district placement looks good to me.”

I have no clue how the line of sight rules work. Looking at the battle map, I am always confused by why my ranged units sometimes can’t shoot thing that look like they should be shootable.

First item from yesterday’s patch!

I hope they also patched the problem with suicidal auto-explore units. Why the hell are they so stupid as to get lost at sea and die?

Looks like a French(wo)man interpreted “feedback” as a regular verb and then used the default “ed” for past versions of verbs in English lol.

Maybe someone should tell them the verb to be manipulated is feed? :D

The game’s first DLC is out today, along with a pretty meaty patch.

Based on the roadmap they posted I’ll wait for the notification changes to get released before trying to jump back in. No mention anywhere of doing… something about religion either.

DLC scope for this seems okay for the price, so I’ll probably pick it up whenever I go back to it.

So, agrarian means

relating to cultivated land or the cultivation of land.

and the Maasai in Humankind are agrarian, even though they are nomadic, and never traditionally farmed anything…
Amusing. Not a big deal lol.

Or that 4 of these 6 cultures are East African.

Africa is…huge and diverse, I am sure they could do better than this.

In the way factions were set up in previous Amplitude this would have meant they’d have made a cool nomadic faction that played very differently from all the other settled factions. I still think there is room for them to get creative with the cultures in Humankind(although switching your civilization from settled to nomadic halfway through would be a bit much) but so far they haven’t shown a willingness to push there.

There’s also an “official” mod released today on mod.io for Humankind that adds Endless Space themed events and factions.

I wish I could add some different opponents - or even just make some opponents, like the Age of Wonders III or Planetfall. For the life of me I can’t figure out how to link this Games2Gether nonsense… I mean it doesn’t work, or perhaps, all the password resetting and using whatever iPad or iPhone or PC or Mac or whatever remembers my passwords/ID is just a low bar that’s too high for me to bother. It would be fun to link friend’s avatars but… you know, good luck with that feature being more or less existing on paper only.

Just as an aside but i hate all these stupid game-studio accounts and passwords. Bethesda, Ubisoft, Blizzard, Paradox, ect. I’m just going to lose all that information at some point, as i’m not exactly using those accounts on a monthly or even yearly basis. I know for a fact my Blizzard account has been dead for years because the email associated with it is long gone, along with all the games linked with it.

I researched bronze working which (if I understand the tech tree correctly) should allow me to build an extractor on the copper in one of my cities, but it’s not showing up anywhere in the construction menu.

What am I doing wrong?