4X Humankind—player experiences

[Brian Boru]

If you're playing…

HUMANKIND™ on Steam

HUMANKIND™ is Amplitude Studios' magnum opus, a Historical Strategy game where YOU will re-write the entire narrative of humankind – a convergence of culture, history, and values that allows you to create a civilization that is as unique as you are. HOW FAR WILL YOU PUSH HUMANKIND?

store.steampowered.com

…please share your experience so far with those of us playing the waiting game.

We don't need any one-liner reactions cluttering up useful and interesting tales from our empire builders, such will be removed.

Also, no need for "I agree" posts—that's what the Like button is for. HK is a grown-up game, let's have grown-up discussions about it.

So my noble Queens and Emperors, what did you make of:
Gameplay
World & Map
User Interface
Military
Diplomacy
Economy
Religion
Technology
Opposition AI
Culture changes
Early game
Mid game
Late game
Pacing
Custom Settings
Resources—Strategic, Food, Luxury
Your personal overall impression

 

[Brian Boru]

what the more hardcore Civ community is saying about the game

Overall it's very positive. Having gone thru the reactions to 3 Civ launches over the decades, I feel HK is in good shape to develop into another icon of the genre. Amplitude took good care of their previous 4Xs, so I expect they'll do the same here—I fervently hope Sega don't interfere.

Below is a bullet point summary from a few CivFanatics reactions. Anyone who wants a deep dive, here's the HK forum on the superb CivFanatics forums from which I gleaned this:

HUMANKIND | CivFanatics Forums

forums.civfanatics.com

Highlights from a number of review threads:

• Quality is good, no bad bugs. Issues with UI and balance which need future attention.
• Graphically beautiful map, with people & wildlife wandering around. Terrain is a big deal, multiple levels on map.
• Beginning is well liked, there is time to explore and gather some resources & perks before you have to plant your first city.
• Outposts can grab resources, no need to plant a city. Outposts can be linked to a city, or not. Each city controls a region, not just its immediate surrounding—feeling is this gives game more of an empire feel rather than a city feel.
• Combat is brilliant. Its own map within the game map, a deployment phase where terrain is crucial, then 3 rounds per game turn, reinforcements can join in—in later game a battle can take multiple game turns.
• No mini-map, scarce strategic resources, slow unit movement, encyclopedia is weak but tutorial help is good.
• Diplomacy, ideologies & trade well done.
• Much less personality than Endless Legend.
• "more a RPG than a competitive multiplayer (or singleplayer optimizer) game"
• Yields snowball too much in late game, need nerf.
• Steam launch day peak of 55k players—that's a big start!
• Military AI very good, diplomatic good, economic a bit weak.

Comments by Civ6 modders, comparing the two:

• HK Pace is too fast, culture changes make your faction seem arbitrary and make it difficult to keep track of opponents.
• HK city building much better.
• HK procedural world generation & setup much better.
• Prefers HK's systems, mainly permanence of policy etc choices, but religion weak.
• HK late game is boring.
• HK looks better overall, but worse at the detail level.
• HK's UI is pretty bad across the board.
• HK music & narrator good, unit voices poor.
• "very good game with the potential to become great"
• "overall, my first impressions are very good "

 

[Brian Boru]

Darren from RepublicOfPlay has a good quick-fire review video:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gllmJh-GIgM

 

[Brian Boru]

For the next installment of my epic monologue, we have another good review from
PartyElite:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zXJmjz9wGM

 

[Brian Boru]

Novice guide is not friendly

Man Friday! At last you found me

I've seen comments that the HKopedia leaves a lot to be desired.

I notice veteran Civver PotatoMcWhiskey has done some YT videos, that's probably the best bet for picking the game up fairly quickly.

 

[Brian Boru]

"Humankind is August’s best-selling PC game … a strong performance for a game that launched August 17, halfway through the reporting month."

Humankind is August’s best-selling PC game

Sega Europe's Humankind was the best-selling PC game of August 2021 and fourth-best selling game of the month, says The NPD Group.

venturebeat.com

Humankind Demo

Forgot I downloaded this a while back, got a couple of hours into it over last couple of nights. For those unfamiliar, it's Civ-like from the devs of Endless Legend and Endless Space.

It's much closer to Civ than Endless—latter were delightfully weird games with huge variety between the different races. Looks great, gameplay is smooth without any glitches—playing 1080p on an i7-7 and 1060. Map is hexagon tiles, and units can stack—dunno if there's a max stack limit.

Combat makes a 'battle space', which you don't leave until the encounter is resolved. It caused deployment of my military stack of 3 onto 3 different tiles, and gave me the option of controlling the battle or having it resolve automatically. It tells you if you're likely to win or lose an encounter, and a battle can last a number of rounds within the 'battle space'—but that's all still within the same turn of the overall game. There's an ability to call reinforcements which I haven't used.

I founded one outpost, which I later converted into a city—haven't done much with it other than build a few basics like Granary etc, I didn't look for a 'city screen' yet. Also researched a few starting techs.

Mostly I've just wandered the map with my stack of 3. There are loads of little bonuses popping up on the map—5 Science, 10 Gold, 15 food sort of thing—which seem to be random in location and time, eg return past a tile and now there's a bonus on it. Elevation is a map feature, so clearly there'll be tactical options with that.

One thing I love is that strategic resources are signposted on the map—it doesn't tell which resource, just that there's one hidden on the tile. It annoys me in Civ that it's all too easy to plop a city down on what's later revealed as a Copper or Iron resource—you need every extra production point in the early game.

That's about it so far, just getting the 'feel' of it, which I really like. I won't try to learn the game now, as I'll forget it before I buy the full game some year soon—still unclear what course Sega will chart for the future, will there by patches, DLCs, Expansions…?