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

Have map UI designers ever offered the ability to ‘fade’ or ‘decolorize’ select components of the map at will so that the feature you want to see stands out, while making it easy to cycle through the selections, in any game? Most of the time, the difficulty in viewing a map has to do with it being so busy without enough contrast between elements. Increase the contrast, and you can still keep it busy without it being difficult to separate the elements. But for those that want to see everything at once, they still can, all of the time or some of the time. It’s just an alternative to a toggle to turn them on/off altogether.

That may be ignoring accessibility features for those that have difficulty with colour, of course, and other solutions would be necessary for them.

OK, I got access to the OpenDev via ‘watching’ Twitch streams. Finally downloading.

After watching a YouTube let’s play by this guy (link below) I ended up buying it and playing it this weekend (on my 3rd restart now that I understand more.) Although I haven’t played Endless Legends in a long time, the game map and city development really feels like that game. Not that that’s a bad thing, I liked EL well enough. The game systems are pretty neat. I turned on the hex grid and the resource display to make the map easier to read, but I’m not particularly fond of the aesthetic (the blocky cliffs don’t look natural to me.)

It’s funny how in all three starts the AI chose Olmec as the starting culture, and I can understand why having played a game as them. Strong, easy early unit + influence which is hard to come by otherwise. There’s tension between claiming territories, founding cities and/or going after an early wonder with influence (culture) often being the limiting factor.

I don’t regret buying it and I will certainly get my monies worth after it’s released (did run into a couple bugs that were resolved by reloading the game.)

Many games do this when you zoom out. But in general it seems to me that strategy game designers have given up on the idea of readable maps. Apart from old game remakes even RTS do that nowadays - they put a layer of icons on top of a pretty map, and you’re supposed to look at those icons. Total War games have fought this idea a long time making their “icons” be a kinda in-world banners, but in Attila and Three Kingdoms they’ve given up and have replaced them with icons too. Like here: https://static.techspot.com/images/products/2019/pc-games/org/2019-05-16-product-8.jpg

I’m using this random screenshot not because it’s an especially egregious example but because it shows how wide-spread the problem is. This is a battle map, it doesn’t have to show any buildings, resources and the like. But devs aren’t even trying to make you read the map, they show you icons of troops. Without those icons, you wouldn’t be able not just to tell unit types apart but see whose side are units on.

I say that sadly apart from Blizzard no one has any idea how to present strategy games with modern graphics. Whatever Total War, Civilization, Endless Legend or any other modern strategy game shows you could be rendered with 1990 technology, cause you’re only supposed to be looking at very simple icons. EL reveals this issue by refusing to clutter the screen with icons till you zoom out (or press show resources button), as if the devs hope for user to read the actual map.

One thing that I have noticed early on is an unusually extensive concept of zone of control. On the overland map, if your unit is adjacent to another civ’s unit, the next turn you can only move one space, even directly away? And that zone of control limitations apply up and down cliffs that are not navigable?

Maybe I am missing something in the early going, but I find this a bit odd, especially in combination with the movement limitations due to the elevation differences. I got very sick of mountainous maps in Civ that clogged up movement, but it looks to me as though this is a thing here, too… Also, unless I missed something, ZOC was not explained in the tutorial. There is lots of tutorial information, but I am not sure they pick the things to explain that I would have thought required explanation.

Ran into the same thing, but I found that having two scouts grouped allowed you to get past the ZOC. So far as I could tell ZOC was not in any tutorials or tooltips (I delayed advancing from the Neolithic to get more scouts, both to add to the population for my starting city and to group them up to explore the map as the AI was fairly aggressively attacking my scouts and outposts.)

This looks so similar to Endless Legend - down to the battles, and icons for “FIMS” - Food, Industry, Money and Science. I feel MIFS would be better - or SMIF, but whatever. EL is the only 4X I’ve ever clicked with, so perhaps I’ll give this a shot sometime.

Yes, although the similarities fooled me a bit. My memory of Endless Legend was that the default action was to build a district, and that as long as you built in the proper pattern, it worked out well. But my early impression here is that overdoing the districts can get you into trouble pretty quickly. (Of course, my early impressions might be way off.)

This looks like it has some pretty cool systems. War support seems interesting. I met another Civ and they eventually proposed a treaty. The next turn one of their armies attacked mine. It looks like skirmishes are ‘OK’ even at peace at this point. but, it gave me the ability to create a demand (which I did). This is ongoing until they meet my demand (pay $100). Now I have enough war support to declare war without penalties.

I also like how a population unit is used to create a military unit. Also my unit was maimed in battle, which lowers it’s combat strength, until I can get it back into friendly territory.

I don’t have a ton of confidence they will create an AI that can play the game, but hopefully there will be enough ‘resistance’ to make these systems needed and interesting.

It looks like influence is needed to create outposts (which is how territory is claimed). These outposts can be turned into cities or linked to existing cities. Anyone know what linking to existing cities does and why one would want to do it?

Linking allows the city to expand into that sector as well.

It incorporates that territory into that of the parent city. They share all production, both FIMS and build queue. However, you’re then able to build out new districts from the outpost location in addition to the core city. It’s a pretty neat mechanic from what I’ve played so far and gives options for building tall.

My complaints so far are definitely map legibility and a whole bunch of UX stuff. I figured out how to attach an outpost once and then it took me a couple hours to find it again. Why is it a completely separate thing? Placing new districts has a nice display of what map tiles will have the best yields, but adding a new building in your city center(the name escapes me) gives no feedback on yield increases other than that you can’t build it if it wouldn’t do anything. The notifications seem all kinds of broken for different types. Curiosity rewards seem to be a blink or you’ll miss it thing. The things you can spend Influence on are kind of spread all over. Just lots of things that make learning rather frustrating.

Other than wondering if the AI will put up an interesting challenge, the other concern I have so far is that it feels like it may be a little light on technologies and wonders. Also, the techs that are there seem like it is just another small food, industry, money, science bonus. I’m tempted to grab it before I lose my Humble Choice discount when I pause tonight, but I still have some worries. Parts do seem promising and I am having fun so far.

Yes this is annoying since it’s hard to read the map well enough to tell what the effect of a new infrastructure would be.
I flailed around in one game, bailed on the second at about turn 100 when it seemed I had turtled too much and was bound for second place, and finally won the third- just made it to the industrial era as time ran out with a score of 6170. This time I rotated through civs with different focuses instead of picking a science one each time. I somehow flipped a number of enemy cities w/o trying and in some cases w/o noticing until after the fact - I know it’s based on influence, but there must be a local component, my global influence production was much higher than I saw on the influence screen. That screen reminds me a lot of the religion screen in Civ 6 but is less informative,and I have no idea at all about how faith and religion work- does anyone else understand that yet?

I think faith determines how religion will spread, whether it goes to adjacent regions and converts people of other religions - but I don’t really know the details or what kind of numbers you need for it to happen.

I got cold feet and decided not to get it right now. I’ve still got some time in OpenDev to play around with it.

some tenets let you get benefits based on the number of followers in other civs, is that the main benefit of religion and faith? Does religion help you flip cities?

Naturally, one of the key questions is whether the AI is competitive.

Two impressions so far. One is that the AI provides competition “by swarm.” Each does things to screw you over, which are probably not in its self interest. And some AI nations crash and burn totally. But somehow, one or two emerge as actual competitors. It’s almost as though you think you are playing a Civ game against 7 competitors, but it plays out more like 5 persistent barbarian clans and 2 competitors.

The other thing is that on the overland map, the AI is being given some advantages. I have tested retreating from battle a few times, and it never works. I am tossed several tiles in one direction or another, and then next turn, the AI units catch up with me and re-engage, and this time retreat is not offered as an option. However, if I attack a weaker AI unit, they just disappear, no battle, no notification of retreat, no vision as to where they went. I would conclude that, at the very least, the AI has better vision.

I think they probably do have better vision, but I’ve had retreat work as long as there were no rivers to impede the retreat. I’ve also had a retreating AI retreat toward one of my grouped units.

A number of my Civ games over the years have had one competitor on a different continent wipe out most of the nearby competition and be a serious threat to win.

I don’t think it helps flip cities, unless there is a tenant that boosts influence. I think it’s like civ in that the more you spread it the more follower based bonuses.