This game has huge potential, I'm sure sure the devs would address most of these problems but for now it's just great we have a legit Civ competitor ( I'm a huge civ fan )
Potential? I would argue it's already a good game! Tons of replay and flexibility. I'm optimistic for the future development of Humankind Very Exciting
I feel it also has huge potential. Diplomacy and combat seem to be all I have seen room for improvement. Had this game for just about a week now and still can not wait to play it each night.
@@scheballs7 I might have worded that badly, yeah it looks like an already good game with a massive potential for improvements that would make it one of the best 4x games eventually
I normally find your reviews a tad more negative than my impressions but I gotta say I agree with all of your points here 100%. Really started noticing the lack of polish and balance issues my second game. Very enjoyable concept, looking forward to playing more after some patches. Appreciate the content as always!
It is definitely rushed. Pollution, for example, is just broken. Religion barely exists besides the tenets, and taking atheism civic directly hurts you. As mentioned in the video, war support is abusable both by player and AI. Its a good game, but there are serious issues. Luckily, most of those can get fixed by patches or an expansion.
I appreciate how you show the faults in the war support system; it's a great indicator of a lack of polish. This along with issues brought up by other reviewers suggest it's likely best to wait 6 months or so before giving this a try.
There's plenty of fun to be had right now, despite issues. First patch resolving potentially game breaking bugs is already being tested. The responsiveness of the Humankind devs compared to the CIV devs is very impressive.
Hoping for solid support from the developer so that it can iron out all of the issues you raised, they have an amazing foundation to build upon with years and years of post-release development!!
I agree. I found the culture system a bit odd as well and not so immersive. It is a bit weird that you could transform from one culture to a completely different culture without any prerequisites (if unlocking stars counts...). I would expect something like in order to choose an asian culture, you need to at least possess silk or incense maybe
The game has many dead ends in technology and needs more technology, more units and more resources, bonus features (like in Civ6), balance the resource system. You often can't upgrade your units because the AI doesn't work the resource or he is my enemy and I have no other alternative to buy from another or declare war (especially in the last era). Maybe add unitis that don't need or don't require a lot of resources.
Not having access to all resources is what makes the game more fun. What's the point of requiring special strategic resources if everyone has an abundance of it? At that point it's the same as not requiring any special resource, since everyone has it. Besides, given how incredibly easy it is to trade with an empire in this game, getting a trade route won't be an issue, unless you've been a dick to the entire map.
@@nejcmali6246 but whats the point of having half the units locked behind that when no one can build them? I Like the mechanic too but in my games they seem way to rare.
@@warlordpro67 why do you think america can so easily crush smaller middle eastern countries ? it’s because of our access to resources that allows us to build technology that those countries can’t which makes us more powerful, so now translate that to the game, resources that are rare should be rare not abundant all across the map it makes things more challenging in a good way
Civilization used to also have many of these minute nuisances. Personally, I feel more for this playstyle than what Civ provides, and yet Civ remains one of my all-time favourite game series. I am stoked.
One strength of this game is UI. Looks modern and wont get obsolete in just a few years. I started playing Civ 6 in 2019, 3 years after it was released, but UI felt so old
I always enjoy listening to you. You had me laughing pretty hard several times. I like Civ a lot and I was looking forward to playing this however I keep getting a Unity error. I have done all the suggestions, so I will wait for a patch. Thanks again Darrin. Oh yeah, my Anno 1800 game is getting much better since I have watched your streams. Like a animated text book!
If you can, then I strongly suggest buying the game on Stadia instead (you can ask for refunds), if you have trouble installing and/or running a local version. One of the other great perks of the Stadia version is that your same game with your same saves plays on your phone like a native but gargantuan mobile game (Android right now, iOS announced). With pinch to zoom and everything.
Endless Legends had the option to change the turns to a you go they go. Hard to imagine why this doesnt have the option and locks it in at simultaneous turns (which i hate and is a dealbreaker for me)
what's wrong with a black girl being a celt in a game? that little segment where he zooms at the girl and at the title "Celt" was just wrong. AC:V have black people as vikings as well. its a fucking game people, if you want proper history read fucking books.
There are no leaders in Humankind, only avatars of the players. I assume most people will make avatars of themselves. You can then upload your avatar and give it traits for other people to play against as an AI. So if you're playing against your friends' AIs they'll just appear in game as themselves, wearing whatever clothing is appropriate to the culture. If you choose the Zulu, then you'll just appear wearing Zulu clothing. It would be weirder if you suddenly turned into a different ethnicity. In any case I think there's a lot of space for improvement and customisation of the avatar system. Right now options are still limited.
For me, the best Civ was Civ 4. After that, the successors became prettier but the gameplay became more shallow. If you want a civ game with the most content, I recommend Caveman2Cosmos, a mod for Civ 4. Hundreds of volunteers have worked on it, some of them for years, and it still gets multiple updates every week. So much has been added that it's basically a whole new game.
Civ 5 is the one when i fell in love with tye series. True ranged warfare with the hexagonal cells is where is at. Watching huge stacks just die at rolling dice doesnt seem quite strategic to me. Civ 6 was dissapointing, really, but it isn't such a sluggish boring experience as 4
@@SymeonPhronema "Watching huge stacks just die at rolling dice doesnt seem quite strategic to me." It's perfectly 'strategic'. The word you're looking for is 'tactical'. You have to understand: Civ takes place on a LARGE scale. Far too large for tactics. Civ 4's limitless stacking wasn't great, but it was sufficiently flexible to allow for wars to play out smoothly, and, most importantly, the computer could actually manage it!
About the AI conquering your outposts so fast, thats because their unique ability as a expasionist culture. Overall a great review. Im having fun with the game, but its surely need improvements. I can easly see this becoming a new franchise, it has wonderful ideas, and I really pleased with that.
I'm a huge Amplitude fan, but I just can't get past the culture swapping nonsense and the avatars looking like any random schmo, regardless of the culture you've adopted. It's an interesting idea, on paper, but it breaks the immersion for me. The asymmetrical factions in Endless Legend are amazing, memorable, interesting, etc., and I just wonder what amazing, immersive game they could have made instead of this culture-swapping "grab bag" of historical fluff. The art is great, the music is cool, it's just that the game isn't for me. And, yeah, simultaneous turns ... unless you can turn that shit off (i.e., via classic turns setting) that is definitely a deal-breaker. It's manageable in EL, thanks to options and a smaller scope; this game looks like it would have issues, due to the greater scope and unit variance.
The worst thing for me is that it also limits the players to up to ten. I love in Civ having those awesome games with like 35 players, it really feels like the world is populated and complex you know.
But isn't the culture swapping not more realistic than the "forever cultures" of civ? Like USA did not pop out in North America and founded Washington D.C around 6000 BC.
I was pretty excited to see Humankind planned tbh. I've been a Civ fan since I was younger, but it's great to see a game available that can shake things up for Civ. Civ has been a bit stagnant in recent iterations. I mean, stuff changes but it always feels like a few cosmetic things around the edges really. There is a lot of potential in Humankind, but there are definitely some bugs that need ironing out and some tweaks that need addressing. Plus of course every base edition of Civ is only so good until various DLC expansions come along and mods start to pop up. I love the idea of sectors/territories and outposts. I love the various elevation changes as opposed to Civ's rather limited set of predetermined tiles I love that you can stack units into tiles, but as pointed out in this video this needs some tweaking to avoid the obvious exploit. I'm dubious about the simultaneous turns decision. Perhaps it can be patched so all AI only can start their turn when you actually move a unit, and even AI can only move 1 unit at a time, not all simultaneously. Or scrap this altogether. I kinda hate the civilization hopping mechanic and agree with this video. Would have been so much better if you can build your own civilization bit by bit as era's progress. Like you can choose traits from various civilizations from history piece by piece. As well as aesthetic choices in each era letting you choose say roman architecture in 1 era then the next era choose japanese. Your buildings will naturally become a flavour mix of different styles etc. Anyway, its a new game, not everything will work out or be an improvement. But later iterations and expansions will hopefully make it better and better.
The mix-and-match cultures is a huge turnoff to me. One thing I really appreciated from Amplitude's previous games is the unique factions with their unique look and playstyle. This design choice makes all the players on the map seem generic. Why would you move away from your greatest strength, guys?
I don’t like how you completely change your civ with 1 click of the button. There should be things you have to do to go from a culture focused civ to a warlike civ. Eg: having hostile neighbors or have resource poor lands that warrant raids.
Yeah. Your environment and geopolitical situation should determine your cultural trajectory. The idea that people just "chose" to become a particular culture without any external influence is laughably stupid.
@@jikman681 Yup, Civ also has the same issues with civilizations being unrealistic. People should continue complaining so that Humankind can do better and better.
I definitely enjoy Humankind, The combat is easily my favorite part even though it can be frustrating at times. I like the idea of culture swapping but I almost wouldn't mind if you picked certain aspects of each culture to focus each era. Like maybe a unique unit from each and a building etc. to really make your own culture throughout the game. maybe even pick a language or something for flavor. As it is right now it can feel very jarring to go from Mexico to Japan in a turn. Another thing I really think needs work is religion. I like making your own but there really isn't anything to do with it besides watch the map change colors. There really doesn't seem to be any way to spread it either. In my games my religion becomes the dominant one on whatever continent I'm on and I never understand why. Only being able to choose polytheism or shamanism is disappointing too especially when that doesn't really mean much. The game never really mentions any gods or whatever else. I have feelings that'll get severely reworked in an expansion or something probably along with culture which has similar issues. Another thing I noticed was the music. It's not bad at all but most of it really lacks the punch a lot of civ soundtracks would have. it's a small detail but you notice it when you think back.
I love the idea and its great that theres a competitor in the market to the Civ franchise. But it does feel like theres some mechanics flaws that need to be addressed before its fully polished and ready to go.
Thanks for this honest review, I felt I got much more useful information here than any of the other review videos I've seen which mostly focus on the superficially good things about the game. Yours has the kind of depth and detail I was hoping for.
The argument about too many pops isn't a issue because it just comes down to not building enough outposts and districts, in the end I had most of my old era cities overflowing with people, the only way to make those pops useful is either build more districts or build more units, the ai might prefer units, do they need better choices sure but in a year or two I think it'll be a completely different feeling.
I never made an argument about too many pops? I said that when I took over an AI City, they had too many pops for their cities. Basically the game seems to let the AI go over the pop limit to give them extra production/science etc.
I completed 2 games, one on metropolis and the other on nation and i must say the game becomes a skip turn simulator after you get to early modern era. the yeld improvements and adjecency bonuses scale so ridiculously, it becomes boring. on the visual side the cities are also too big imo. Early game is fun tho, I also like the culture swapping - it makes you plan ahead, and adapt to current situation if needed (I was the first to find new continent, full of luxuries and decided to go Dutch which made me a lot of money) The progress, however, is much too quick. Without neglecting science I reached contemporary era, but was still developing late medieval/early modern techs.
The balance of the latter eras feels very out of tune. Your yields start scaling completely out of control very easily and it doesn't feel like there's anything that can really hold the snowball effect back from happening. The core gameplay idea and design is very nice however so I do think can make some really great out of this, but it does need some balance patching for sure
Nice video, the culture stuff seems really wonky, like you said it would be better if your culture evolved based on your actions rather than just arbitrarily. I really hope they patch the game and fix the diplo issues, I'm going to wait a bit before I play it but it does look great!
It would have been cool to see grouped culture trees with some divergence based on choices. Say you start ancient Chinese, then go Korean or Japanese. Or say African but go Egyptian, but with the Greek connections in the Ptlomeic dynasties you could go Greek and Roman into Western European cultures. Or start Celtic air Germanic, go French into American. The idea being that trees allow for more realistic transitions, keeps with the theme and flow, but allows for some cross over jumping based on specific choices (the Egyptian one is just one idea, you could go from Spanish to Mexican).
I like how you give valid criticism even though I feel it's kinda unfair to compare a new and barely released game to arguably a timeless and heavily expanded series. Moreover I absolutely despise this comment section, people are putting such high expectations on a game that is barely a 2 weeks old and comparing it to a game that has existed and expanded upon for years. Especially since the it's from a series that's been established for decades. Y'all really not gonna even give a try or the tiniest of support and "dropping it"/"passing it" while waiting for another competitor to join the scene. Isn't that hypocritical? Y'all want a game that can rival an ancient and well designed game but when someone actually tries you all don't even support it because it has flaws due to being a new game and needing polishing from player advice? You are the same people complaining about monopolies major companies have on certain genres yet don't give even an inch or ounce of support of potential rivals.
A better and more descriptive name for this would be Endless Civilizations. If you have played any of the Endless games - this is that... just historical instead of fantastical.
I agree with your point but also think games like these often get better over time with more content also considering it is constantly being compared with civilization which is a far more established series.
This is, for better or worse, just how Amplitude develops. They give the game to the community very early and then patch whatever they break and add a lot with DLC. I like that they have lots of community interaction, and they are very good at incorporating what the playerbase wants (unlike say Firaxis or CA who don't listen to fans anymore at all), but if you want a fully finished/polished game at launch (which I say is a reasonable expectation) it just isn't going to be the developer for you.
The thing is a game like this realistically needed the play testing of a full release to fully vet its systems. It has a lot of new ideas for the genre that aren't fully fleshed out but a company willing to listen to player feedback will definitely turn this into a great game.
I'd love to see a new review with the updated mechanics, as lots of the issues aren't there anymore. It has become my favourite 4x game I've played recently
I do wish they atleast would make the cultures less defining. They could atleast allow us to rename our empire instead of just naming it after the culture we pick.
I think a big deal for the longevity of the game is going to be how Humankind is supposed to have pretty beefy mod support whereas Civilization stopped supporting full on mod support back in Civilization 4. Time will tell how this all transpires but least this is intriguing for the future outside of official expansions the devs add. To this day I am super puzzled why Civ 5 nor Civ 6 allowed modders to touch the AI. The community could have fixed one of the greatest issues the more modern Civ games have since the devs never fixed it themselves. Combat AND diplomacy (I suppose the AI got at least a tad better over time in diplomacy but for combat... god no).
If orange destroyed your outposts and built their own then you really were asking for their stuff rather than simply for the return of yours. I get why you'd see it as taking back your territory but technically it was no longer yours. It's just the nature of outposts vs cities. Outposts represent a claim on territory but not hard control of it like cities.
In some ways it is, but it’s not the consumers fault. If I can play something right now that’s great, then that sets the benchmark to exceed for others.
Āmen, sistah! 🙌 RoP could at least mention what a buggy and abysmally balanced was civVI on release, while comparing both games, otherwise sounds unfair and even biased.
@@RepublicOfPlay yeah that's true, but you also have to compare costs then. I haven't checked in a while, but I think Civ VI is still quite expensive, despite it's age. Humankind is already better than Civ at launch in my opinion and a couple of tweaks and balance changes would make it quite the complete launch experience at launch and after a DLC or two, it would be much better. I'm not saying it's necessarily a good way to look at things, but I sort of see this as an investment into a solid game that can only get better, whereas you could pay the price for Civ, but it's at the end of the life cycle and still has shit tier AI and a garbage religious system.
Great review as always, but I feel like you missed something I really enjoy in the game, namely the sense of progression. Mechanics change and evolve with the eras, as well as with your personal choices. This is so great! Later eras bring new troops transportation mechanics, artillery firing from outside the battlemap, air forces emerge... And the simulation of mutually assured destruction is pretty clever. Hope they'll improve the religious aspect of the game in the future, and add espionage mechanics. As well of course of even more cultures! Gotta catch' em all
I can't say I agree - I nuked cities and nobody seemed to care? Not sure what the mutually assured destruction angle is because I never had it. And I played on Nation, got Tanks/Heli/Jets but the nations I fought against never had any armies, just garrisons. What you're describing sounds great, but sadly wasn't my experience.
@@RepublicOfPlay I get it, and it makes me quite sad to think some will not get to experience all the game has to offer. I don't know what could be done on that front, maybe raising the difficulty could help but I'm aware it's far from the best solution. About MAD, I was referring to the fact you had to wait a turn for your nuke to hit its target. It's not an instantaneous action, and it allows for countermeasures to be taken or for your enemy to launch their own nukes before their silos could be taken down. This makes me particuliarly enthousiast regarding multiplayer, as it's no longer the first to strike that wins the engagement; can't wait to see how it'll play out with human player. In a way they implemented the prisoner's dilemma lol
@@siretriste4045 I guess multiplayer might be the best way to assure you get a game where you actually get to use the mechanics to their fullest. That being said, do you know if you queue up a nuke, does it alert the world? I didn't get any notification or anything when I was doing it. For MAD to work, it would need to tell everyone else when you arm the nuke I guess. If it does, then that sounds awesome.
@@RepublicOfPlay I expect it to work this way, as it was partly advertised so in their last focus video (cf. the Humankind official YT channel). I didn't see it in the game myself, as I never got to be in this position. Can't wait to find out in multiplayer!
for the expolit with gaining war support by getting deals rejected, it should only give you war support if it is seen as a "fair" deal. for example showing a percentage of how equal in value the things being offered are maybe?
it would be amazing if in campiagn, or single player mode, they have Mini Games.. individualy battles.. or a way to choose one main character they can control and scale down the the nearly first person Level
I really like the culture-switching concept in the game. It offers so many meaningful and engaging choices. It's a bit weird, like you mention in the video, but it can also make sense if you do something like switching from Assyrians to Umayyad to Ottomans. The entire concept highlights pretty well how cultures are quite fluid throughout history. It's also weird in Civilizations where immortal Teddy Roosevelt can lead the Americans from ancient times and into the future. I agree with your views on simultaneous turns and the AI's strategic choices! Both of these are annoyances that carry over from Endelss Legends.
Great point regarding the culture switching and progression of culture through time. Hadn't thought about that. I wonder if a setting or mod might come out that'll give players the choice to have the civilisations in the game to have a narrow path through time that more closely matches reality, like your Middle Eastern example.
@@kibzie23 That would be pretty cool. Ultimately I'd say it's best to just appreciate the gameplay that culture switching provides and don't overthink it - these games are already fundamentally unhistorical - it's weird when you switch from Japanese into English, but it's also weird when Tokyo and London spawns right next to eachother in the middle of desert.
It would be much better if Civs had a culture set. Like there are Native Set, Asian Set, Tribal Set, European Set... And once you choose the Set you could only chose Civs under that set, to avoid Romans turning into Japan, then Brazil...
It's just Endless Legend that exchanges the factions for culture-swapping. It's so same-y that I don't really feel compelled to give it a try; I'd rather just play Endless Legend.
I played the game now several times and stopped as to learn. I found that at the beginning where science doesn't matter you need agressive and productive people, get land quickly, the next culture you choose is a science one, and the AI has no chance anymore to catch up. But I like the game, I agree a few more updates and will be fine. I'm also missing endless mode, all game modes are limited by turns.
Nice. Sounds like a game/series that I will want to pick up after a few patches. Have been looking for a good competitor to Civ because there need to be some new ideas in the genre.
One time I played a game where I saw a message that the Zulus had reached the final Era while I was only half-way through. So I was expecting an advanced civilization when I encountered them, but they were still fighting with classical era weapons so I completely mowed them down with my muskets and I was like what the hell?
I may be the only one that's not so much bothered with the culture switching. I get it that it can be immersion-breaking and confusing, but it does give you a lot of control of how your people would go. but i agree the game feels quite rushed.
I play over 1000 Hours+ Civ 6 and 700+ civ 5, i have 55h in humanking and i am already beating the game on dificult 6, and i agree with almost everthing in this video, this game needs time to polish a lot o bugs, and the balance of the civs, the AI is always cheating in this type of a game, its a great game to PVP.
Hard pass for me. If I could have started as say Romans, but picked up Inca culture and still been Roman with a mix of both cultures then ok sounds fun. As you say swapping civs isn't building your own unique civ/culture.
I haven't played but I would give it a try. I been playing Civ since Civ 2 and still love to play Civ 4 but am happy that the franchise has a new entry to shake it up a bit. Civ 5 became playable after Gods and Kings came out so maybe there is hope that Civ 6 will get better with Humankind on the market.
Hey Darren, awesome breakdown of Humankind! I generally agree with a lot of the concerns here and would love to see more content on Humankind as it develops in the future, especially once big content updates drop. Are you at all interested in doing an Old World video or exploration as it's been officially released?
I did one while it was in early access - the full launch wasnt *that* different and times didnt line up well for me so I just streamed it a bit. I really like Old World, it might actually be my fav between Humankind, Civ, Old World
@@RepublicOfPlay Nice. R u planning on covering at all in the future? What about Unity of Command 2? Something you talked about several months ago on stream.
@@MasterOfCybertron no plans as of right now - I always have to stay current as much as I can, but in down months or slow periods its something I might go back to (or with dlc) - for unity of command I saw it just got more dlc its something ive been meaning to play but still havent. I’m basically super busy until october right now with planned stuff so I’ll just see what happens when October rolls around
I really wanted to like this game, and while there are some things I like about Humankind, there are some major problems that I think are stopping me from saying that I enjoy it overall. I love the art style, (even if I have problems with the angle at close zoom, and the ugly grey map when you zoom out is disorienting), I actually like the sense of humor, and I like how the narrator seems to constantly chat to you about things you did ('Gosh, you have 15 campus districts now!') The things that are irking me are kind of deeper and flaws that I think are part of the core of the game. The first problem is the civilization transitions between historical civilizations with each age. Today I am the Mongols, but tomorrow my entire civilization is now the English. I can see what they were going for, but it seems like such an awkward way of achieving this mechanic. OK, so let my culture change and add new stuff each era - that makes sense. But why do I actually have to BE the Mongols, and then BE the English? It makes more sense that I am an aggressive expansionist culture that transitions to a more economic one, and I don't know why slapping actual culture names from throughout history was necessary for this. It means you start to lose track of who your neighbors are. Oh, the Aztecs just bought your tea? Who were they again? Oh they were the Babylonians like 5 turns ago... I think? The other major issue is the steamrolling. My first full game, I was neck and neck with the orange player (who were the Huns, then the Mongols, then someone else then the Aztecs or something...) and because the way the score system works by tallying all achievements over the entire game, by the time I started losing ground at the end there wasn't really any way to turn it around short of World War III, which really didn't suit my playstyle or goals for my civilization. It kind of illustrated to me why the Civilization series has these singular win conditions - you can always mobilize to try and stop the enemy from doing this thing (or they can try and stop you), but because of the slow march of points in Humankind, you can have these games that just... fizzle because someone blobbed on the other side of the world and you didn't build up as fast as they did because you got bogged down in a territorial war on your small continent. I will definitely be dipping back into the game after it has matured a bit, but for now it is a rare one that I would actually rather pass on.
@@oneofthetwobucksfansonyout2717 A friend of mine it never worked for him, he couldnt find games or see lobbies or even make one - but for me it worked fine, I played a game for a few turns to test it.
Ah, perfect, a nice review! Not so much surprise if you've played Endless Legend, which has many of these unusual features. So really it feels like a combination of the innovation of Legend with the fascination of Civ. In Legend the AI can be quite a challenge but here sounds like the AI needs some work - perhaps it is still building more on the quest/RPG focus from Legend and needs more aadaptation to a cleaner 4X? I wonder if there will be questlines and heroes possible as well on the other hand.
Can't wait for this to get polished up a bit. I love Amplitude Studios' style and previous work and I'm sure after a couple patches this'll really shine. Shame it didn't get the pre-release polish it absolutely should have, but so long as they keep working on it, I can at least live with that. That said, I wish they would have stayed true to the promises they made after releasing ES2 regarding their approach to polish, though. Shame. I suppose the game development scene has really changed for the worse in that regard, even in just the past 5 or so years.
My biggest gripe is the pacing of the game, and how turn limit is generally what finishes the game for me. Like 1/2 the time i just reach the modern era and then the game is over.
The one thing that is preventing me from buying it is the player limit (Up to ten right). Each to there own, but i just can't get immersed in a civ game unless there are at least 20 players, and ideally i need to have more than that. This player limit is obviously dictated by the culture select system... I will just wait until a mod/patch implements more players/cultures before buying.
I am very early in the video right now, but Endless Legends has a lot similar to this game. Would be worth a checkout for anyone interested in this game.
The fucking score for this game is amazing, the Japanese have some of the best music but that vocal opera style music from the beginning of the video is one of my favorite songs in this game, the music really makes this game.
@@RepublicOfPlay Okay. I'd highly recommend you give Endless Legend a go. It's probably the best of the Endless games to date. In some ways Humankind feels like a worse version of EL. The district system was introduced in EL (and then Firaxis aped it in Civ6 :-) ) and a lot of other stuff in Humankind feels like a variation on stuff from EL. Overall I'm enjoying Humankind...but still prefer Endless Legend and Endless Space 2. That said...maybe one day Amplitude will make the real sequel to Alpha Centauri we've all been hoping to get...
I literally just get maker's quarters all game (and a couple commons quarters) and dominate. And abuse the star function by not immediately switching eras
5:30 In that case, looks like I'll be giving this game a pass. I had my eye on it because, on the surface, it appeared to be addressing the very static civilisation bonuses system in the Civ games where you select a set of bonuses at the start of the game and that was what you were stuck with. Hopefully one day we get a 4X game where cultures can evolve and spread over time in a more organic way. Too bad this isn't it.
It's an interesting idea but I'm wondering how one would even implement such a system. A lot of the issues people have with the system in Humankind seem to stem from the disconnect between known history and the game. It's a variant on the same issue with Civilization really. One way would be to develop it such that culture evolution follows historical pathways, but I suspect the reason Amplitude didn't do that is because it would reduce the variability in the game down to a phased version of what you already get in Civ.
Awesome support and patch release is to be expected from Amplitude, and Sega gave them a deadline way to short to create a monster of a game meant to compete with nothing less that... Civilization 6 ! These 4x game need either time, or insanely huge devellopment team which, compared to Firaxis, Amplitude are competting withing a way smaller category. I cannot wait to see how the game will get better as time progresses ! They already have switched the teams from Dev to Post Release and bugs/exploits and balance are their top priorities ! Keep hope !
3:56 I tried surfing through the comments to see if there was someone that had already said it, but the progression isn't off of fame. It's off of a system of Era Stars, which are earned through 7 different methods with each method only earning 3 each once hitting a certain goal. Having a certain amount of districts, Destroying military units, Total researched technologies, Earning a progressing total of Money & Influence, separate Era Star categories, Total Territories connected to your cities, and a Progressing total population count. While completing these Era Stars does grant you fame, fame is not the way that you progress to the next Era's.
I explain that later on, I guess for the rapid fire I just shortened it down but you’re actually correct - technically speaking fame doesnt advance anything - you get fame for getting era stars and deeds.
@@RepublicOfPlay ah, my bad then. I got to that part, and made my comment without proceeding further into the video, and then since i opened up the game to make sure i was typing the information correctly, got distracted by my save and didn’t continue to see it. 😅
Thanks for this review. I’ll pass on this one. Hard to dethrone the King Civ. Plus the “cultural appropriation sim” aspect breaks all immersion for me. Seems disjointed too. I play these games for the historicity and the complex aspect of how cultural history interacts. Oh well…next?
Choose one: either CIV or historicity and complex cultural history. CIV is by definition a cultural mess where an immortal Ghandi fights Bismarck and both factions never change their attitude. They only have one cultural aspect and one special unit and those stay the same for thousands of years. It is much more realistic to have agrarian Celts switching to influential Normans and then the expanding British. It is not perfect (far from it) but much better than CIVs system.
Ah yes because it's fair to compare a new game to a game that is expanded heavily upon and made by developers well verse in the genre. So you're not even gonna give it a try, people like you are the reason why small companies and projects don't ever grow and allow big companies to have humongous monopolies. I do agree with the flaws but that doesn't mean people shouldn't try it and "move on" expecting a perfect game that can counter an extremely old and established series.
'' when the orange player allied with the pink player". Kinda sums up the game to me. Games like this, you want to be inspired playing as the Romans or leading the Russians as Lenin. Their a spirit of a great idea with the culture swapping. Always though it would be cool to play a civ like game as a Sparta, beat Athens/thebes become Greece in the next era , maybe byzantine as you progress through the game. A tribe, nation, empire idea. Is there any advantages to stay as the celts the entire game. I would have rage quit a poorly implemented diplomacy system. Serious deal breaker.
If you stay the same, you get a +10% fame bonus. The drawback is your unique unit will be outdated, and your building may be less powerful compared to what you could get next.
I don't get why everyone here is so negative on the "build your own culture" thing as if it's not true. You get to *keep* a single strong bonus per era depending on what culture you picked, you get to *keep* the buffs and visuals of the strong buildings you built depending on what culture you picked, and no one else can have that *unique string* of boni each game because each culture can only be picked by one player. And have people forgotten about the political axes: those things about your culture that change depending on your choices in events and laws over the entire course of the game? I understand the appeal in locking era cultures behind requirements, but that misses the intended design of the game; you're supposed to choose the Romans because you want _to be_ militaristic, not because you _have been_ militaristic. This isn't a grand strategy, it's a strategy, and that shows in the Fame system-win each era however you can. The agency is supposed to be in the hands of the immediate player, not the random map generation nor the player 50 turns ago.
I think for a lot of people it’s jarring to see a sudden asthetic change every era. You couldve kept all the gameplay effects without swapping through historical cultures. Maybe perhaps you couldve picked your theme or art style at the start of the game, and then evolved the gameplay of your culture by picking from the same list of effects, buildings and units nust without your name changing and art changing every time. Then it wouldve felt more like you were creating a culture.
@@RepublicOfPlay That's fair enough. It definitely is an inorganic/'gamey' system. A middle ground to your point could be to have a set civilization name at the start-either chosen from a list or user-written-and then chosing a "culture" (list of boni) would unlock optional aesthetics for your avatar...kind of like how some equipment worked for heroes in Endless Legend.
@@RepublicOfPlay yeah, i would like it better, if Civs had a set, like if you choose an Asian like culture you can only choose other asian like Civs when you change era.
like the game..however...a lot of confusion on certain items and when you open the encyclopedia...if you can find the item you are looking for...it just repeats what was on screen....missing item in encyclopedia...pollution (how does that work...what is level 0 -1 etc..) and the railways...very difficult to see the stations and the tracks...so a overlay would be nice...for sure balance issues,,,
Honestly one of the things I think makes Humankind better than Civ is that they don't jerk the camera around when battles take place or when units need orders, the camera just constantly panning around automatically drives me crazy
There's just something dehumanizing about this game's gimmick that I can't put into words. Like entire people's cultures and histories can just be shuffled around like cards is kind of distasteful.
I agree as well. If you're gonna shuffle cultures, at least have the decency to have the shift make some thematic sense. But to go from Japanese to British... lmao what a joke.
Instead of picking a culture to adopt, it'd be nice to see a game try a culture-crafting system of sorts, where your cultural aesthetic is built-up as a result of environment adaptation and local artistic whimsies, and you mix-and-match your culture's preferences/ethics. Taboos can be based on environment adaptation (don't eat this or that) or whimsical, too (unfounded superstition or personal preference).
Damnit...endless space 2 AI is the reason i didnt buy this game and it looks like i was right....these 2 games would be in my top 10 games with good ai and diplomacy
@@Luixa endless space 2 works like that too....some AI have 10-50% more score points than you but when they declare war or you invade them, you realise how empty and easy their territory is to take....also endless space diplo is trash having an enemy alliance declare war on you with one member wanting peace the next turn and one of your ally declaring war right after that....wich seems to match the way AI ask 1000 times for stuff in 2 turns and build up war support so quick....and endless space 2 AI never got fixed really...
@@Luixa The "normal" default difficulty (Metropolis) already gives the AI cheats in Humankind, you can see this when you take their cities and they don't even have close to the amount of Farmer slots to support the population. A culture might also be involved, some are insanely OP and can easily shoot a player ahead of the pack.
I think launch Humankind is significantly better than the launch of any Civ game, so it's definitely promising. Civ only gets good after multiple dlc's and patches because launch is always super broken, more than Humankind. I'm very happy with this game, definitely competes for the best
I've played it a fair bit now. And I wish they pushed back the release. They simply overestimated the scale of the game imho. Things like the memory leak is extreme.
you have done a great job reviewing this , actually made my mind after that vid , not gonna buy it , the first 2 things just broke the deal , having to choose new culture every time and the simultaneous turns in times of war , thanks .
This game has huge potential, I'm sure sure the devs would address most of these problems but for now it's just great we have a legit Civ competitor ( I'm a huge civ fan )
It's not their first rodeo (Endless Legend and Endless Space), so for sure Humankind will have lots of fixed and very good DLCs
Potential? I would argue it's already a good game! Tons of replay and flexibility. I'm optimistic for the future development of Humankind Very Exciting
I feel it also has huge potential. Diplomacy and combat seem to be all I have seen room for improvement. Had this game for just about a week now and still can not wait to play it each night.
@@scheballs7 I might have worded that badly, yeah it looks like an already good game with a massive potential for improvements that would make it one of the best 4x games eventually
I'd consider Old World a legit competitor as well.
I normally find your reviews a tad more negative than my impressions but I gotta say I agree with all of your points here 100%. Really started noticing the lack of polish and balance issues my second game. Very enjoyable concept, looking forward to playing more after some patches.
Appreciate the content as always!
Ive noticed hes pretty negative with all his reviews tbf
"Now I hate to focus on the negative" is a lie I've heard here many times lol
bugs as w/ any othet triple-A games
It is definitely rushed. Pollution, for example, is just broken. Religion barely exists besides the tenets, and taking atheism civic directly hurts you. As mentioned in the video, war support is abusable both by player and AI. Its a good game, but there are serious issues. Luckily, most of those can get fixed by patches or an expansion.
Humankind is the same as all the other strategy games: wait until there are 1-2 DLC and it's on 25 % the original price. Then you get a good game.
I appreciate how you show the faults in the war support system; it's a great indicator of a lack of polish. This along with issues brought up by other reviewers suggest it's likely best to wait 6 months or so before giving this a try.
I'm really enjoying it right now. Try it for steams two hours and refund if you don't like it!
@@andrewfowens better try it in Xbox Game Pass
There's plenty of fun to be had right now, despite issues. First patch resolving potentially game breaking bugs is already being tested. The responsiveness of the Humankind devs compared to the CIV devs is very impressive.
I'm loving it now. Actually had more fun than with Civ VI, tied with Civ V for me.
It's been 6 months. Is it good?
Hoping for solid support from the developer so that it can iron out all of the issues you raised, they have an amazing foundation to build upon with years and years of post-release development!!
Amplitude support their games pretty well. Endless Legend got a recent update and that came out 7 years ago.
@@trevorjames123 That gives me a lot of hope. This has the foundation to really do something great.
I agree. I found the culture system a bit odd as well and not so immersive. It is a bit weird that you could transform from one culture to a completely different culture without any prerequisites (if unlocking stars counts...). I would expect something like in order to choose an asian culture, you need to at least possess silk or incense maybe
The game has many dead ends in technology and needs more technology, more units and more resources, bonus features (like in Civ6), balance the resource system.
You often can't upgrade your units because the AI doesn't work the resource or he is my enemy and I have no other alternative to buy from another or declare war (especially in the last era). Maybe add unitis that don't need or don't require a lot of resources.
Not having access to all resources is what makes the game more fun. What's the point of requiring special strategic resources if everyone has an abundance of it? At that point it's the same as not requiring any special resource, since everyone has it.
Besides, given how incredibly easy it is to trade with an empire in this game, getting a trade route won't be an issue, unless you've been a dick to the entire map.
@@nejcmali6246 but whats the point of having half the units locked behind that when no one can build them? I Like the mechanic too but in my games they seem way to rare.
@@warlordpro67 why do you think america can so easily crush smaller middle eastern countries ? it’s because of our access to resources that allows us to build technology that those countries can’t which makes us more powerful, so now translate that to the game, resources that are rare should be rare not abundant all across the map it makes things more challenging in a good way
The lack fo Workers is something I could see as a benefit in Civ. But the Culture hopping is really weird. 10/10 comedy in the review!
Civilization used to also have many of these minute nuisances. Personally, I feel more for this playstyle than what Civ provides, and yet Civ remains one of my all-time favourite game series. I am stoked.
Me dos
I prefer this iver civ. Though I admit its mostly because I like building and lookint at a cool looking city
One strength of this game is UI. Looks modern and wont get obsolete in just a few years. I started playing Civ 6 in 2019, 3 years after it was released, but UI felt so old
I always enjoy listening to you. You had me laughing pretty hard several times. I like Civ a lot and I was looking forward to playing this however I keep getting a Unity error. I have done all the suggestions, so I will wait for a patch. Thanks again Darrin. Oh yeah, my Anno 1800 game is getting much better since I have watched your streams. Like a animated text book!
Thanks Jerry!
If you can, then I strongly suggest buying the game on Stadia instead (you can ask for refunds), if you have trouble installing and/or running a local version.
One of the other great perks of the Stadia version is that your same game with your same saves plays on your phone like a native but gargantuan mobile game (Android right now, iOS announced). With pinch to zoom and everything.
Endless Legends had the option to change the turns to a you go they go. Hard to imagine why this doesnt have the option and locks it in at simultaneous turns (which i hate and is a dealbreaker for me)
About those celts, lol... great commentary!
He's the best...
what's wrong with a black girl being a celt in a game? that little segment where he zooms at the girl and at the title "Celt" was just wrong. AC:V have black people as vikings as well. its a fucking game people, if you want proper history read fucking books.
There are no leaders in Humankind, only avatars of the players. I assume most people will make avatars of themselves. You can then upload your avatar and give it traits for other people to play against as an AI.
So if you're playing against your friends' AIs they'll just appear in game as themselves, wearing whatever clothing is appropriate to the culture. If you choose the Zulu, then you'll just appear wearing Zulu clothing. It would be weirder if you suddenly turned into a different ethnicity.
In any case I think there's a lot of space for improvement and customisation of the avatar system. Right now options are still limited.
@@luciusrex lol u right but chill
@Diversity-Approved TH-cam Handle "people play these games for immersion" advances to industrial age in 240 BCE 🙄 but please tell me more
For me, the best Civ was Civ 4. After that, the successors became prettier but the gameplay became more shallow.
If you want a civ game with the most content, I recommend Caveman2Cosmos, a mod for Civ 4. Hundreds of volunteers have worked on it, some of them for years, and it still gets multiple updates every week. So much has been added that it's basically a whole new game.
Nice! I loved Civ 4, but haven't played it in ages, and I've not heard of that mod so I'll have to check that out!
Civ 5 is the one when i fell in love with tye series. True ranged warfare with the hexagonal cells is where is at.
Watching huge stacks just die at rolling dice doesnt seem quite strategic to me.
Civ 6 was dissapointing, really, but it isn't such a sluggish boring experience as 4
@@0ovidio0 I enjoyed 4, 5, and 6 tbh haha. They're different, and I appreciate their differences.
@@SymeonPhronema "Watching huge stacks just die at rolling dice doesnt seem quite strategic to me."
It's perfectly 'strategic'. The word you're looking for is 'tactical'.
You have to understand: Civ takes place on a LARGE scale. Far too large for tactics. Civ 4's limitless stacking wasn't great, but it was sufficiently flexible to allow for wars to play out smoothly, and, most importantly, the computer could actually manage it!
@@krausewitz6786 I didn't mention that, I think you meant to reply to the person above me.
14:50 I had same problem! It felt like the ai wasn't programed for anything past medieval
About the AI conquering your outposts so fast, thats because their unique ability as a expasionist culture. Overall a great review. Im having fun with the game, but its surely need improvements. I can easly see this becoming a new franchise, it has wonderful ideas, and I really pleased with that.
I'm a huge Amplitude fan, but I just can't get past the culture swapping nonsense and the avatars looking like any random schmo, regardless of the culture you've adopted. It's an interesting idea, on paper, but it breaks the immersion for me.
The asymmetrical factions in Endless Legend are amazing, memorable, interesting, etc., and I just wonder what amazing, immersive game they could have made instead of this culture-swapping "grab bag" of historical fluff.
The art is great, the music is cool, it's just that the game isn't for me.
And, yeah, simultaneous turns ... unless you can turn that shit off (i.e., via classic turns setting) that is definitely a deal-breaker. It's manageable in EL, thanks to options and a smaller scope; this game looks like it would have issues, due to the greater scope and unit variance.
Yes, for me too. I hate this simultaneous turn also!
The worst thing for me is that it also limits the players to up to ten. I love in Civ having those awesome games with like 35 players, it really feels like the world is populated and complex you know.
those are all nit picks
Yeah... I got to agree with this one.
But isn't the culture swapping not more realistic than the "forever cultures" of civ? Like USA did not pop out in North America and founded Washington D.C around 6000 BC.
I’m hardcore banking on a mod coming out for a civilization selection overhaul, if it doesn’t I might just figure out how to do it myself.
Hoping for the same. I wanna tune and adjust the existing cultures myself once the tools are out but I wont able to completely reimagine the system :D
You’re not that guy pal,
You’re not that guy
Bruh, you had me dead when you said Mexican Samurais. Oh man... this is gonna be a fun game, can't wait to get my hands on it.
There was this christian japanese samurai who stabbed a spanish soldier in Acapulco, Mexico and the whole thing was recorded by an Aztec nobleman.
I was pretty excited to see Humankind planned tbh. I've been a Civ fan since I was younger, but it's great to see a game available that can shake things up for Civ. Civ has been a bit stagnant in recent iterations. I mean, stuff changes but it always feels like a few cosmetic things around the edges really. There is a lot of potential in Humankind, but there are definitely some bugs that need ironing out and some tweaks that need addressing. Plus of course every base edition of Civ is only so good until various DLC expansions come along and mods start to pop up.
I love the idea of sectors/territories and outposts.
I love the various elevation changes as opposed to Civ's rather limited set of predetermined tiles
I love that you can stack units into tiles, but as pointed out in this video this needs some tweaking to avoid the obvious exploit.
I'm dubious about the simultaneous turns decision. Perhaps it can be patched so all AI only can start their turn when you actually move a unit, and even AI can only move 1 unit at a time, not all simultaneously. Or scrap this altogether.
I kinda hate the civilization hopping mechanic and agree with this video. Would have been so much better if you can build your own civilization bit by bit as era's progress. Like you can choose traits from various civilizations from history piece by piece. As well as aesthetic choices in each era letting you choose say roman architecture in 1 era then the next era choose japanese. Your buildings will naturally become a flavour mix of different styles etc.
Anyway, its a new game, not everything will work out or be an improvement. But later iterations and expansions will hopefully make it better and better.
The mix-and-match cultures is a huge turnoff to me. One thing I really appreciated from Amplitude's previous games is the unique factions with their unique look and playstyle. This design choice makes all the players on the map seem generic. Why would you move away from your greatest strength, guys?
I don’t like how you completely change your civ with 1 click of the button.
There should be things you have to do to go from a culture focused civ to a warlike civ.
Eg: having hostile neighbors or have resource poor lands that warrant raids.
Yeah. Your environment and geopolitical situation should determine your cultural trajectory. The idea that people just "chose" to become a particular culture without any external influence is laughably stupid.
@@sword_of_damocle5 you mean just as stupid as the same culture survive 3000 years?
@@jikman681 Yup, Civ also has the same issues with civilizations being unrealistic. People should continue complaining so that Humankind can do better and better.
I definitely enjoy Humankind, The combat is easily my favorite part even though it can be frustrating at times. I like the idea of culture swapping but I almost wouldn't mind if you picked certain aspects of each culture to focus each era. Like maybe a unique unit from each and a building etc. to really make your own culture throughout the game. maybe even pick a language or something for flavor. As it is right now it can feel very jarring to go from Mexico to Japan in a turn.
Another thing I really think needs work is religion. I like making your own but there really isn't anything to do with it besides watch the map change colors. There really doesn't seem to be any way to spread it either. In my games my religion becomes the dominant one on whatever continent I'm on and I never understand why. Only being able to choose polytheism or shamanism is disappointing too especially when that doesn't really mean much. The game never really mentions any gods or whatever else. I have feelings that'll get severely reworked in an expansion or something probably along with culture which has similar issues.
Another thing I noticed was the music. It's not bad at all but most of it really lacks the punch a lot of civ soundtracks would have. it's a small detail but you notice it when you think back.
I love the idea and its great that theres a competitor in the market to the Civ franchise. But it does feel like theres some mechanics flaws that need to be addressed before its fully polished and ready to go.
Thanks for this honest review, I felt I got much more useful information here than any of the other review videos I've seen which mostly focus on the superficially good things about the game. Yours has the kind of depth and detail I was hoping for.
The argument about too many pops isn't a issue because it just comes down to not building enough outposts and districts, in the end I had most of my old era cities overflowing with people, the only way to make those pops useful is either build more districts or build more units, the ai might prefer units, do they need better choices sure but in a year or two I think it'll be a completely different feeling.
I never made an argument about too many pops? I said that when I took over an AI City, they had too many pops for their cities. Basically the game seems to let the AI go over the pop limit to give them extra production/science etc.
I completed 2 games, one on metropolis and the other on nation and i must say the game becomes a skip turn simulator after you get to early modern era. the yeld improvements and adjecency bonuses scale so ridiculously, it becomes boring. on the visual side the cities are also too big imo. Early game is fun tho, I also like the culture swapping - it makes you plan ahead, and adapt to current situation if needed (I was the first to find new continent, full of luxuries and decided to go Dutch which made me a lot of money) The progress, however, is much too quick. Without neglecting science I reached contemporary era, but was still developing late medieval/early modern techs.
Great review dude ! I laughed out loud at the "Get f*cked" part haha definitely caught me off guard
The balance of the latter eras feels very out of tune. Your yields start scaling completely out of control very easily and it doesn't feel like there's anything that can really hold the snowball effect back from happening. The core gameplay idea and design is very nice however so I do think can make some really great out of this, but it does need some balance patching for sure
Nice video, the culture stuff seems really wonky, like you said it would be better if your culture evolved based on your actions rather than just arbitrarily.
I really hope they patch the game and fix the diplo issues, I'm going to wait a bit before I play it but it does look great!
The UI is one of the best things in this game ,i hope WH has such a UI.specially the units and building cards,researches too
It would have been cool to see grouped culture trees with some divergence based on choices. Say you start ancient Chinese, then go Korean or Japanese. Or say African but go Egyptian, but with the Greek connections in the Ptlomeic dynasties you could go Greek and Roman into Western European cultures. Or start Celtic air Germanic, go French into American. The idea being that trees allow for more realistic transitions, keeps with the theme and flow, but allows for some cross over jumping based on specific choices (the Egyptian one is just one idea, you could go from Spanish to Mexican).
I like how you give valid criticism even though I feel it's kinda unfair to compare a new and barely released game to arguably a timeless and heavily expanded series.
Moreover I absolutely despise this comment section, people are putting such high expectations on a game that is barely a 2 weeks old and comparing it to a game that has existed and expanded upon for years. Especially since the it's from a series that's been established for decades. Y'all really not gonna even give a try or the tiniest of support and "dropping it"/"passing it" while waiting for another competitor to join the scene. Isn't that hypocritical? Y'all want a game that can rival an ancient and well designed game but when someone actually tries you all don't even support it because it has flaws due to being a new game and needing polishing from player advice? You are the same people complaining about monopolies major companies have on certain genres yet don't give even an inch or ounce of support of potential rivals.
A better and more descriptive name for this would be Endless Civilizations. If you have played any of the Endless games - this is that... just historical instead of fantastical.
The game is very rough around the edges. It needed at least another year of development. It has cool ideas, tough.
I agree with your point but also think games like these often get better over time with more content also considering it is constantly being compared with civilization which is a far more established series.
This is, for better or worse, just how Amplitude develops. They give the game to the community very early and then patch whatever they break and add a lot with DLC. I like that they have lots of community interaction, and they are very good at incorporating what the playerbase wants (unlike say Firaxis or CA who don't listen to fans anymore at all), but if you want a fully finished/polished game at launch (which I say is a reasonable expectation) it just isn't going to be the developer for you.
The thing is a game like this realistically needed the play testing of a full release to fully vet its systems. It has a lot of new ideas for the genre that aren't fully fleshed out but a company willing to listen to player feedback will definitely turn this into a great game.
I'd love to see a new review with the updated mechanics, as lots of the issues aren't there anymore. It has become my favourite 4x game I've played recently
I died with the awkward pause when discussing the Celts :-D 5:47
You can cue orders and execute them at turn start, so your units move at the same time as the AI.
But if everyone moves you might want to change your plans.
@@RepublicOfPlay so all you want is to be able to countrer the AI without have to think
@@weybye91 ...what
I do wish they atleast would make the cultures less defining.
They could atleast allow us to rename our empire instead of just naming it after the culture we pick.
Well the "Build your own civ" idea is out of the window now.
A shame
The culture swapping really kills it for me. Completely taken out of immersion. I was really hoping for a custom civilization game..
I think a big deal for the longevity of the game is going to be how Humankind is supposed to have pretty beefy mod support whereas Civilization stopped supporting full on mod support back in Civilization 4. Time will tell how this all transpires but least this is intriguing for the future outside of official expansions the devs add.
To this day I am super puzzled why Civ 5 nor Civ 6 allowed modders to touch the AI. The community could have fixed one of the greatest issues the more modern Civ games have since the devs never fixed it themselves. Combat AND diplomacy (I suppose the AI got at least a tad better over time in diplomacy but for combat... god no).
I hope the mod support is better than in Amplitude's other games
If orange destroyed your outposts and built their own then you really were asking for their stuff rather than simply for the return of yours. I get why you'd see it as taking back your territory but technically it was no longer yours. It's just the nature of outposts vs cities. Outposts represent a claim on territory but not hard control of it like cities.
Thanks for the review and your thoughts! Some great potential here. Let's hope they can utilize it.
not leting me to create my own civilization was a major turn down to me...
I was hoping for this too. Maybe a mod later down the line?
HUMANKIND is far from perfect yet, but it has potential.
Personally I like it
People comparing this game on release to Civ games with all the DLCs and years of update feels unfair imo.
In some ways it is, but it’s not the consumers fault. If I can play something right now that’s great, then that sets the benchmark to exceed for others.
Āmen, sistah! 🙌
RoP could at least mention what a buggy and abysmally balanced was civVI on release, while comparing both games, otherwise sounds unfair and even biased.
@@RepublicOfPlay yeah that's true, but you also have to compare costs then. I haven't checked in a while, but I think Civ VI is still quite expensive, despite it's age. Humankind is already better than Civ at launch in my opinion and a couple of tweaks and balance changes would make it quite the complete launch experience at launch and after a DLC or two, it would be much better.
I'm not saying it's necessarily a good way to look at things, but I sort of see this as an investment into a solid game that can only get better, whereas you could pay the price for Civ, but it's at the end of the life cycle and still has shit tier AI and a garbage religious system.
Great review as always, but I feel like you missed something I really enjoy in the game, namely the sense of progression. Mechanics change and evolve with the eras, as well as with your personal choices. This is so great!
Later eras bring new troops transportation mechanics, artillery firing from outside the battlemap, air forces emerge... And the simulation of mutually assured destruction is pretty clever.
Hope they'll improve the religious aspect of the game in the future, and add espionage mechanics. As well of course of even more cultures! Gotta catch' em all
I can't say I agree - I nuked cities and nobody seemed to care? Not sure what the mutually assured destruction angle is because I never had it.
And I played on Nation, got Tanks/Heli/Jets but the nations I fought against never had any armies, just garrisons. What you're describing sounds great, but sadly wasn't my experience.
@@RepublicOfPlay I get it, and it makes me quite sad to think some will not get to experience all the game has to offer. I don't know what could be done on that front, maybe raising the difficulty could help but I'm aware it's far from the best solution.
About MAD, I was referring to the fact you had to wait a turn for your nuke to hit its target. It's not an instantaneous action, and it allows for countermeasures to be taken or for your enemy to launch their own nukes before their silos could be taken down. This makes me particuliarly enthousiast regarding multiplayer, as it's no longer the first to strike that wins the engagement; can't wait to see how it'll play out with human player. In a way they implemented the prisoner's dilemma lol
@@siretriste4045 I guess multiplayer might be the best way to assure you get a game where you actually get to use the mechanics to their fullest.
That being said, do you know if you queue up a nuke, does it alert the world? I didn't get any notification or anything when I was doing it. For MAD to work, it would need to tell everyone else when you arm the nuke I guess. If it does, then that sounds awesome.
@@RepublicOfPlay I expect it to work this way, as it was partly advertised so in their last focus video (cf. the Humankind official YT channel).
I didn't see it in the game myself, as I never got to be in this position. Can't wait to find out in multiplayer!
@@RepublicOfPlay Avoid multiplayer, Hunnic Horde ruins the game
for the expolit with gaining war support by getting deals rejected, it should only give you war support if it is seen as a "fair" deal. for example showing a percentage of how equal in value the things being offered are maybe?
Thanks for the review Darren!
it would be amazing if in campiagn, or single player mode, they have Mini Games.. individualy battles.. or a way to choose one main character they can control and scale down the the nearly first person Level
I really like the culture-switching concept in the game. It offers so many meaningful and engaging choices. It's a bit weird, like you mention in the video, but it can also make sense if you do something like switching from Assyrians to Umayyad to Ottomans. The entire concept highlights pretty well how cultures are quite fluid throughout history. It's also weird in Civilizations where immortal Teddy Roosevelt can lead the Americans from ancient times and into the future.
I agree with your views on simultaneous turns and the AI's strategic choices! Both of these are annoyances that carry over from Endelss Legends.
Great point regarding the culture switching and progression of culture through time. Hadn't thought about that. I wonder if a setting or mod might come out that'll give players the choice to have the civilisations in the game to have a narrow path through time that more closely matches reality, like your Middle Eastern example.
@@kibzie23 That would be pretty cool. Ultimately I'd say it's best to just appreciate the gameplay that culture switching provides and don't overthink it - these games are already fundamentally unhistorical - it's weird when you switch from Japanese into English, but it's also weird when Tokyo and London spawns right next to eachother in the middle of desert.
It would be much better if Civs had a culture set. Like there are Native Set, Asian Set, Tribal Set, European Set... And once you choose the Set you could only chose Civs under that set, to avoid Romans turning into Japan, then Brazil...
It's just Endless Legend that exchanges the factions for culture-swapping. It's so same-y that I don't really feel compelled to give it a try; I'd rather just play Endless Legend.
I played the game now several times and stopped as to learn. I found that at the beginning where science doesn't matter you need agressive and productive people, get land quickly, the next culture you choose is a science one, and the AI has no chance anymore to catch up. But I like the game, I agree a few more updates and will be fine. I'm also missing endless mode, all game modes are limited by turns.
Nice. Sounds like a game/series that I will want to pick up after a few patches. Have been looking for a good competitor to Civ because there need to be some new ideas in the genre.
One time I played a game where I saw a message that the Zulus had reached the final Era while I was only half-way through. So I was expecting an advanced civilization when I encountered them, but they were still fighting with classical era weapons so I completely mowed them down with my muskets and I was like what the hell?
I may be the only one that's not so much bothered with the culture switching.
I get it that it can be immersion-breaking and confusing, but it does give you a lot of control of how your people would go.
but i agree the game feels quite rushed.
Yes it ruins Roleplay, and if you stay with your own culture you are in a disavantage, Later Era civs are much stronger then the older ones.
I play over 1000 Hours+ Civ 6 and 700+ civ 5, i have 55h in humanking and i am already beating the game on dificult 6, and i agree with almost everthing in this video, this game needs time to polish a lot o bugs, and the balance of the civs, the AI is always cheating in this type of a game, its a great game to PVP.
Great review Darren.
Great job on the review Darren!
Hard pass for me. If I could have started as say Romans, but picked up Inca culture and still been Roman with a mix of both cultures then ok sounds fun. As you say swapping civs isn't building your own unique civ/culture.
Mexican Samurai **breathes in sharply**
I haven't played but I would give it a try.
I been playing Civ since Civ 2 and still love to play Civ 4 but am happy that the franchise has a new entry to shake it up a bit. Civ 5 became playable after Gods and Kings came out so maybe there is hope that Civ 6 will get better with Humankind on the market.
Pretty sure they are done with Civ 6, lol
great review Darren
Haven't even watched it yet, but going to say great video because it always is.
Hey Darren, awesome breakdown of Humankind! I generally agree with a lot of the concerns here and would love to see more content on Humankind as it develops in the future, especially once big content updates drop.
Are you at all interested in doing an Old World video or exploration as it's been officially released?
I did one while it was in early access - the full launch wasnt *that* different and times didnt line up well for me so I just streamed it a bit. I really like Old World, it might actually be my fav between Humankind, Civ, Old World
@@RepublicOfPlay Nice. R u planning on covering at all in the future?
What about Unity of Command 2? Something you talked about several months ago on stream.
@@MasterOfCybertron no plans as of right now - I always have to stay current as much as I can, but in down months or slow periods its something I might go back to (or with dlc) - for unity of command I saw it just got more dlc its something ive been meaning to play but still havent. I’m basically super busy until october right now with planned stuff so I’ll just see what happens when October rolls around
@@RepublicOfPlay sounds good! Cant wait what you got in store :)
Being someone who didn't like the mechanics of civ 6, I'm looking forward to trying this.
The whole "every culture is just a passing choice and ethnicity is always multicolor" is just so cringe that it turns me off entirely from the game.
I really wanted to like this game, and while there are some things I like about Humankind, there are some major problems that I think are stopping me from saying that I enjoy it overall. I love the art style, (even if I have problems with the angle at close zoom, and the ugly grey map when you zoom out is disorienting), I actually like the sense of humor, and I like how the narrator seems to constantly chat to you about things you did ('Gosh, you have 15 campus districts now!') The things that are irking me are kind of deeper and flaws that I think are part of the core of the game.
The first problem is the civilization transitions between historical civilizations with each age. Today I am the Mongols, but tomorrow my entire civilization is now the English. I can see what they were going for, but it seems like such an awkward way of achieving this mechanic. OK, so let my culture change and add new stuff each era - that makes sense. But why do I actually have to BE the Mongols, and then BE the English? It makes more sense that I am an aggressive expansionist culture that transitions to a more economic one, and I don't know why slapping actual culture names from throughout history was necessary for this. It means you start to lose track of who your neighbors are. Oh, the Aztecs just bought your tea? Who were they again? Oh they were the Babylonians like 5 turns ago... I think?
The other major issue is the steamrolling. My first full game, I was neck and neck with the orange player (who were the Huns, then the Mongols, then someone else then the Aztecs or something...) and because the way the score system works by tallying all achievements over the entire game, by the time I started losing ground at the end there wasn't really any way to turn it around short of World War III, which really didn't suit my playstyle or goals for my civilization. It kind of illustrated to me why the Civilization series has these singular win conditions - you can always mobilize to try and stop the enemy from doing this thing (or they can try and stop you), but because of the slow march of points in Humankind, you can have these games that just... fizzle because someone blobbed on the other side of the world and you didn't build up as fast as they did because you got bogged down in a territorial war on your small continent.
I will definitely be dipping back into the game after it has matured a bit, but for now it is a rare one that I would actually rather pass on.
Is the game multiplayer or just against the AI??
There is mulitplayer - I think up to 8 players (not sure) and there is crossplay between steam/epic/gamepass
@@RepublicOfPlay The Gamepass versions multiplayer is unayable rn
@@oneofthetwobucksfansonyout2717 A friend of mine it never worked for him, he couldnt find games or see lobbies or even make one - but for me it worked fine, I played a game for a few turns to test it.
Cheers. Earned a new sub!
Ah, perfect, a nice review! Not so much surprise if you've played Endless Legend, which has many of these unusual features. So really it feels like a combination of the innovation of Legend with the fascination of Civ.
In Legend the AI can be quite a challenge but here sounds like the AI needs some work - perhaps it is still building more on the quest/RPG focus from Legend and needs more aadaptation to a cleaner 4X?
I wonder if there will be questlines and heroes possible as well on the other hand.
Can't wait for this to get polished up a bit. I love Amplitude Studios' style and previous work and I'm sure after a couple patches this'll really shine.
Shame it didn't get the pre-release polish it absolutely should have, but so long as they keep working on it, I can at least live with that. That said, I wish they would have stayed true to the promises they made after releasing ES2 regarding their approach to polish, though. Shame. I suppose the game development scene has really changed for the worse in that regard, even in just the past 5 or so years.
My biggest gripe is the pacing of the game, and how turn limit is generally what finishes the game for me. Like 1/2 the time i just reach the modern era and then the game is over.
The one thing that is preventing me from buying it is the player limit (Up to ten right). Each to there own, but i just can't get immersed in a civ game unless there are at least 20 players, and ideally i need to have more than that. This player limit is obviously dictated by the culture select system... I will just wait until a mod/patch implements more players/cultures before buying.
I am very early in the video right now, but Endless Legends has a lot similar to this game. Would be worth a checkout for anyone interested in this game.
The fucking score for this game is amazing, the Japanese have some of the best music but that vocal opera style music from the beginning of the video is one of my favorite songs in this game, the music really makes this game.
Out of interest, have you played any of the Endless games? From the review it sounds like you haven't but I'm not sure if that's actually the case?
I've only played Endless Space 2, quite a lot - but never the Endless Legend games
@@RepublicOfPlay Okay. I'd highly recommend you give Endless Legend a go.
It's probably the best of the Endless games to date. In some ways Humankind feels like a worse version of EL. The district system was introduced in EL (and then Firaxis aped it in Civ6 :-) ) and a lot of other stuff in Humankind feels like a variation on stuff from EL.
Overall I'm enjoying Humankind...but still prefer Endless Legend and Endless Space 2.
That said...maybe one day Amplitude will make the real sequel to Alpha Centauri we've all been hoping to get...
I literally just get maker's quarters all game (and a couple commons quarters) and dominate. And abuse the star function by not immediately switching eras
5:30 In that case, looks like I'll be giving this game a pass. I had my eye on it because, on the surface, it appeared to be addressing the very static civilisation bonuses system in the Civ games where you select a set of bonuses at the start of the game and that was what you were stuck with.
Hopefully one day we get a 4X game where cultures can evolve and spread over time in a more organic way. Too bad this isn't it.
It's an interesting idea but I'm wondering how one would even implement such a system.
A lot of the issues people have with the system in Humankind seem to stem from the disconnect between known history and the game. It's a variant on the same issue with Civilization really.
One way would be to develop it such that culture evolution follows historical pathways, but I suspect the reason Amplitude didn't do that is because it would reduce the variability in the game down to a phased version of what you already get in Civ.
Awesome support and patch release is to be expected from Amplitude, and Sega gave them a deadline way to short to create a monster of a game meant to compete with nothing less that... Civilization 6 !
These 4x game need either time, or insanely huge devellopment team which, compared to Firaxis, Amplitude are competting withing a way smaller category.
I cannot wait to see how the game will get better as time progresses !
They already have switched the teams from Dev to Post Release and bugs/exploits and balance are their top priorities !
Keep hope !
So it's civilization endless legends edition
Exactly that.
Kind of, but overall no
I wonder is it worth buying the soundtrack?
3:56 I tried surfing through the comments to see if there was someone that had already said it, but the progression isn't off of fame. It's off of a system of Era Stars, which are earned through 7 different methods with each method only earning 3 each once hitting a certain goal. Having a certain amount of districts, Destroying military units, Total researched technologies, Earning a progressing total of Money & Influence, separate Era Star categories, Total Territories connected to your cities, and a Progressing total population count. While completing these Era Stars does grant you fame, fame is not the way that you progress to the next Era's.
I explain that later on, I guess for the rapid fire I just shortened it down but you’re actually correct - technically speaking fame doesnt advance anything - you get fame for getting era stars and deeds.
@@RepublicOfPlay ah, my bad then. I got to that part, and made my comment without proceeding further into the video, and then since i opened up the game to make sure i was typing the information correctly, got distracted by my save and didn’t continue to see it. 😅
The narrator of this game is like listening to that sarcastic narrator in Divinity.
Thanks for this review. I’ll pass on this one. Hard to dethrone the King Civ. Plus the “cultural appropriation sim” aspect breaks all immersion for me. Seems disjointed too. I play these games for the historicity and the complex aspect of how cultural history interacts. Oh well…next?
These games are very prone to break immersion, I mean just look at Civilization :D
Choose one: either CIV or historicity and complex cultural history. CIV is by definition a cultural mess where an immortal Ghandi fights Bismarck and both factions never change their attitude. They only have one cultural aspect and one special unit and those stay the same for thousands of years. It is much more realistic to have agrarian Celts switching to influential Normans and then the expanding British. It is not perfect (far from it) but much better than CIVs system.
“cultural appropriation sim”
just call it tag swaping m8 ;)
@@Weltenbastler2000 I wouldn't say it is better, lol. Just different.
Ah yes because it's fair to compare a new game to a game that is expanded heavily upon and made by developers well verse in the genre. So you're not even gonna give it a try, people like you are the reason why small companies and projects don't ever grow and allow big companies to have humongous monopolies.
I do agree with the flaws but that doesn't mean people shouldn't try it and "move on" expecting a perfect game that can counter an extremely old and established series.
'' when the orange player allied with the pink player". Kinda sums up the game to me. Games like this, you want to be inspired playing as the Romans or leading the Russians as Lenin. Their a spirit of a great idea with the culture swapping. Always though it would be cool to play a civ like game as a Sparta, beat Athens/thebes become Greece in the next era , maybe byzantine as you progress through the game. A tribe, nation, empire idea. Is there any advantages to stay as the celts the entire game. I would have rage quit a poorly implemented diplomacy system. Serious deal breaker.
If you stay the same, you get a +10% fame bonus. The drawback is your unique unit will be outdated, and your building may be less powerful compared to what you could get next.
I don't get why everyone here is so negative on the "build your own culture" thing as if it's not true. You get to *keep* a single strong bonus per era depending on what culture you picked, you get to *keep* the buffs and visuals of the strong buildings you built depending on what culture you picked, and no one else can have that *unique string* of boni each game because each culture can only be picked by one player. And have people forgotten about the political axes: those things about your culture that change depending on your choices in events and laws over the entire course of the game?
I understand the appeal in locking era cultures behind requirements, but that misses the intended design of the game; you're supposed to choose the Romans because you want _to be_ militaristic, not because you _have been_ militaristic. This isn't a grand strategy, it's a strategy, and that shows in the Fame system-win each era however you can. The agency is supposed to be in the hands of the immediate player, not the random map generation nor the player 50 turns ago.
I think for a lot of people it’s jarring to see a sudden asthetic change every era. You couldve kept all the gameplay effects without swapping through historical cultures.
Maybe perhaps you couldve picked your theme or art style at the start of the game, and then evolved the gameplay of your culture by picking from the same list of effects, buildings and units nust without your name changing and art changing every time. Then it wouldve felt more like you were creating a culture.
@@RepublicOfPlay That's fair enough. It definitely is an inorganic/'gamey' system. A middle ground to your point could be to have a set civilization name at the start-either chosen from a list or user-written-and then chosing a "culture" (list of boni) would unlock optional aesthetics for your avatar...kind of like how some equipment worked for heroes in Endless Legend.
@@RepublicOfPlay yeah, i would like it better, if Civs had a set, like if you choose an Asian like culture you can only choose other asian like Civs when you change era.
like the game..however...a lot of confusion on certain items and when you open the encyclopedia...if you can find the item you are looking for...it just repeats what was on screen....missing item in encyclopedia...pollution (how does that work...what is level 0 -1 etc..) and the railways...very difficult to see the stations and the tracks...so a overlay would be nice...for sure balance issues,,,
Honestly one of the things I think makes Humankind better than Civ is that they don't jerk the camera around when battles take place or when units need orders, the camera just constantly panning around automatically drives me crazy
There's just something dehumanizing about this game's gimmick that I can't put into words. Like entire people's cultures and histories can just be shuffled around like cards is kind of distasteful.
I agree. When I first heard of this game, I thought you were creating your own civilization that would develop over time....
I agree as well. If you're gonna shuffle cultures, at least have the decency to have the shift make some thematic sense. But to go from Japanese to British... lmao what a joke.
It almost sounds like all the best bits are already present in Endless Legend!?
Instead of picking a culture to adopt, it'd be nice to see a game try a culture-crafting system of sorts, where your cultural aesthetic is built-up as a result of environment adaptation and local artistic whimsies, and you mix-and-match your culture's preferences/ethics. Taboos can be based on environment adaptation (don't eat this or that) or whimsical, too (unfounded superstition or personal preference).
Yeah, that culture thing is a no from me. I like a bit more accuracy in culture/history.
As in Paradox games, you mean?
@@zerkovic i guess
Damnit...endless space 2 AI is the reason i didnt buy this game and it looks like i was right....these 2 games would be in my top 10 games with good ai and diplomacy
I'm on the normal standard of difficulty and the AI leaves me in the dust. I'm like 2 eras behind the most advanced AI which shows how good the AI is
@@Luixa endless space 2 works like that too....some AI have 10-50% more score points than you but when they declare war or you invade them, you realise how empty and easy their territory is to take....also endless space diplo is trash having an enemy alliance declare war on you with one member wanting peace the next turn and one of your ally declaring war right after that....wich seems to match the way AI ask 1000 times for stuff in 2 turns and build up war support so quick....and endless space 2 AI never got fixed really...
@@Luixa The "normal" default difficulty (Metropolis) already gives the AI cheats in Humankind, you can see this when you take their cities and they don't even have close to the amount of Farmer slots to support the population. A culture might also be involved, some are insanely OP and can easily shoot a player ahead of the pack.
Fair review. Both good and bad points are covered. No nitpicking.
I think launch Humankind is significantly better than the launch of any Civ game, so it's definitely promising. Civ only gets good after multiple dlc's and patches because launch is always super broken, more than Humankind. I'm very happy with this game, definitely competes for the best
I've played it a fair bit now. And I wish they pushed back the release. They simply overestimated the scale of the game imho. Things like the memory leak is extreme.
5:31 honestly this feels like it kills the replayablity in the long run.
Is there a way to take off the time limit? That kills the game for me
you have done a great job reviewing this , actually made my mind after that vid , not gonna buy it , the first 2 things just broke the deal , having to choose new culture every time and the simultaneous turns in times of war , thanks .