I tried out the free weekend they had about a month ago, but I don’t know what it is with Amplitude, but I simply can’t get into their UI/UX easily. Same thing happened with Endless Space. I quickly lost interest in both games.
Yeah, the best option seems to be to appoint a former lead AI coder as game director. That gets you a good focus on AI, both spending time on it and ensuring the game is designed to make it easy for an AI to handle.
Realtedly, I hope Mohawk can do a full history game next. I can imagine it’s a big ask for an indie studio though.
Amplitude is bad at that “last mile” balancing. Imagine you make Age of Empires 2, but every unit costs the same amount (basically), it’s like that high level subtlety is kind of missing. With Humankind there’s a bunch of small things that add up (shouldn’t early ages take longer? Why do I get achievements and level up to the next age without literally even looking at the level up requirements, ect?)
They don’t need more content, they need 6 months balancing / workshopping with hardcore super math nerds.
And make the AI as moddable as possible. Civ5 was a trainwreck in terms of AI but once the SDK was released the modding community really improved things in significant ways. It’s frustrating it gets crowdsourced to paying customers and it does rely on a critical mass of players, but at least there’s an avenue for players to try to make things better.
Ahem…
I like Old World a lot, but it’s not Civ. By Civ I meant the sweep of human history, from stone age to modern age. Old World is a stronger game in a lot of ways due to the decision to limit the timespan, but I miss the grand scope of Civilization.
Ahhh yes. I totally get that.
I played the Humankind free weekend, but it felt really backward after Old World. The unit walking animations are so slow, and you don’t realize how amazing the undo function is until it’s missing.
Those slow animations really do drive me nuts. :)
The expansion came out today along with a big free patch. Not something I’ll be picking up for awhile as I’ve got too much other stuff to play, but if somebody wants to take the plunge and then share impressions I’ll gladly read them!
How did it get to be November 9th already?! Thanks for the heads up, in my mind this one was still a ways out.
So is Humankind a better game than Civ 6?
In my opinion yes, but I intensely dislike Civ6 so take that with a grain of salt.
I haven’t watched it yet, but Pravus has a video on it.
What are your thoughts on the Endless 4x games Amplitude has done?
I liked Endless Space 2, but the AI was totally braindead and couldn’t play half the systems the game gave them.
This still has a lot of Endless DNA(particularly Legend). Mixed with Civ mixed with some new stuff. The AI is still pretty lacking, but not having different factions play completely differently at least means the AI engages with the systems more convincingly.
I think it being better than Civ 6 is going to come down to personal taste. They both have issues but are also the only games in town in their subgenre. Old World is the better 4X for sure but I think is drastically different for limiting its scope like it does. I’d love to see Soren tackle the history spanning 4X again but I get the impression he’s not interested.
I tried this a couple of times but bounced off it. Just didn’t hook me like even Civ 6 does, for all of its flaws.
The historical flavor was not so great imo. The rest was fine. Each of 4 eras you get to pick a culture and gain it’s corresponding trait. For example the haruscans gave you better food production. Then second era you can pick another civ for hammers. Then third pick something that gives science. So you are indian Australian and Canadians (for example). It’s very gamey.
Old world keeps its history factor as does Victoria and civ. That’s why I play these games beyond mechanics.
Not to be that guy, but there are 6 eras :). Also there is an era 0 that’s pretty cool for the genre. Basically it’s a drawn out nomadic step that lets you explore a good bit of your surroundings before being able to found your first city and pick your first culture.
I know jumping cultures was a big turn off for a lot of people as it just felt thematically off to be able to jump from a European to an Asian to an African to an American back to an Asian culture. But I really appreciate that Humankind does a lot to try to be different. For example, having Fame be an overall victory point score allows you to change where you are focused and avoid the later Civ problem of needing to pick your victory condition early and focus on that.
And as much as I cringe any time a 4X game thinks it should include tactical combat, I actually think Humankind comes as close to pulling it off as I’ve seen. The terrain has a big enough impact that they often play differently, and the strict round limit keeps them very snappy.