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HUMANKIND - Amplitude's historical turn-based strategy

kris

Arcane
Joined
Oct 27, 2004
Messages
8,836
Location
Lulea, Sweden
I played it a bit. Generally speaking I have not like Amplitudes games, combat is bad and gameplay never was engaging enough. I just had two short playthroughs...

- The map is gorgerous, best looking map I remember seeing in a game like this.
- elevation is good and improve the strategic part in several ways.
- I like the early nomadic bit and that you dont need to be deperate to set down your first city like in Civilization.
- i am not as big fan of the gameplay after that. seems you just want to max production and influence.
- i did nothing to get more gold, but still bathed in it.
- game start with some kind of cold war or skirmish mode and after that it is mostly no war at all.
- It will be strange detached civilizations in a bigger map as everyone want to grab some territory somewhere.
- Battles is 70% about getting higher ground.
- I do like the citybuilding, but it is clear some ways to build is really OP.
- You kind of ignore the civs you choose in every Era, they just feel like different bonuses.
- Like every other Civ ever made you will rush through the Technology tree after the early part of the game.

i think i will probably drop it soon.
 

spectre

Arcane
Joined
Oct 26, 2008
Messages
5,382
- i am not as big fan of the gameplay after that. seems you just want to max production and influence.
Influence is crucial in the early expansion stage, but as you hit the city cap and it's no longer productive to attach territories because of stability issues and the diminishing returns on spent influence,
so it becomes secondary to other things.

You actually want to maximise production and population, stack a bunch of bonuses on top... and that's how you come ahead of everyone else.

- i did nothing to get more gold, but still bathed in it.
Might have been due to trade and just getting luxuries.
I found that once you hit early gunpowder stage, military becomes a legitimate money sink because upgrades and upkeep start costing a ton.
Funny thing is, even if you say you're swimming in it, it probably wasn't enough to get any era stars from that dosh.
Not sure if they wanted to force you to specialize, or they just pulled the thresholds out of their asses.

- game start with some kind of cold war or skirmish mode and after that it is mostly no war at all.
There's plenty of skirmishing around outposts, and getting an expansionist civ lets you do a lot of trespassing.
But yeah, after some point you basically need to start all wars yourself because the AIs get pretty docile.
Not sure how it happens, perhaps it's too easy to outgrow the AI and they know they shouldn't be fucking with you.
I suspect it is an issue with strategic resources - the AI can seize one, two at the most, which bars them from building a lot of the good stuff.

- Battles is 70% about getting higher ground.
This is true for early combat with scouts and animals, because the +4 bonus is significant when unit strength value is around 10,
but similarly, river crossing is a -3 penalty, charge, rear attack and forest defense also give the same +4, so these factors are mathematically just as important. I think we see elevation in play the most often because how the standard map resembles a Vietnam terrace farm.
It becomes less of a factor with higher unit strength values. Perhaps they didn't exactly think it through, because a % would scale so much better.

- You kind of ignore the civs you choose in every Era, they just feel like different bonuses.
That's a bit superficial. All the legacy traits you pick will stack for the rest of the game, and there are clear superior, situational and outright inferior choices.
Like, in the early game: do I grow like a motherfucker on steroids as the Harappan, or do I outbuild everyone else as Egypt.
(or, you know, the endless horde of ransacking horse archers of doom). Then you can pick another civ based on a weakness you want to fix,
(say you have no food production, so switching to Celts can fix that, and e.g. Norsemen get insane food in coastal areas).

Then there's the consideration of a Civ's affinity. E.g picking a science civ lets you convert all the production into science output, so your industry powerhouse now shits out science like there's no tomorrow.
Or, being expansionist, you can trespass anytime and annex stuff, racking up all those grievances for easier casus belli, etc.
A lot of this shit is rather obstructed by the interface, or not tooltip'd well enough, and therefore very easy to miss.

I think this system has good potential, but the balance is out of whack.
Also, there comes a point when the game is kinda decided, no matter what you do.
So yeah, a lot of the time it doesn't matter that much what you pick for the last couple of eras, or even if you just transcend into the same culture.

i think i will probably drop it soon.
Well, the game more or less unfolds in the same way in each playthrough, you find a way to setup a favorable position for yourself, perhaps use an OP civ combo, or abuse an OP wonder,
and steadily rise above every other AI, perhaps by securing an entire continent or two. At this point the game is decided, and you're basically just pushing around the outclassed AI.
So, while there's a bunch of ways to have fun by abusing the game's systems, twisting them into broken combinations, there's only so many times you can do it until it gets boring.
 

Zarniwoop

TESTOSTERONIC As Fuck™
Patron
Joined
Nov 29, 2010
Messages
18,651
Shadorwun: Hong Kong
Yeah tremble at my mighty empire spanning 3 continents and all of 7 cities
 

Eyestabber

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Jan 15, 2015
Messages
4,733
Location
HUEland
PC RPG Website of the Year, 2015
I tried it out but refunded it after an hour. Nothing major against what little I saw of the game other than that the writing was poor and that the map panning was EXTREMELY slow even when increased in the options. But it just seemed a little dull overall, will check on it again in a year.

The narrator reminded me of CIV 6, the right word is not coming to me right now but its a little snarky and too self aware. I wish the opening cinematic and monologue was on youtube, it's very bad in a way that I fear is reflective of the overall game. It talks about how the universe is just a buncha space junk, but some space junk on Earth became a little bit more interesting, and maybe there's a story to tell here but this cinematic is not going to do anything to set that up - and wow here you are.
Typical leftist nihilistic shitposting.

Here it is

I thought this was remarkably bad at setting the stage for a grand historical adventure, why did they write the narration in a way that deflates the sense of purpose and grandeur? Seems confused to me, impotent.


Wow...

"bla bla bla, snark snark" spends 40 seconds of a 1:40 video talking about amino acids :roll:

compare to this:



No narration. Infinitely better at setting the stage. Came out 20 years ago. Still gives me goosebumps.

It's like talent went fucking extinct. :decline:
 

somewhatgiggly

Scholar
Joined
May 31, 2018
Messages
169
Bantu, Garamantes, Maasai???? Swahili, Ethiopians, Nigerians.

The Maasai feel as the oddest choice, since they're most likely there just for name recognition, but their impact on anything is probably 0. I don't say this to be mean but they would most likely just be better off as a modern day tourist/culture bonus at best.

Most of the others make perfect sense but for Era 4...hmm...I would had the successors to the Nubians, the Nobatiae or so, Makuria...maybe Mali?
 
Last edited:

covr

Prophet
Patron
Joined
Sep 3, 2006
Messages
1,315
Location
Warszawa
It was not. The very first previews were rather promising. We've had many pretty good and complex systems/mechanics in EL and ES 1&2 and they've wanted to top that with some juicy Civ stuff. Too bad it did ended up as boring SJW mess. Might be fixable! With mods, unfortunately.
 

Zboj Lamignat

Arcane
Joined
Feb 15, 2012
Messages
5,523
Yeah, that one decision completely kills the game for me. What a bizarre (not in a good way) idea.
 

Fedora Master

Arcane
Patron
Edgy
Joined
Jun 28, 2017
Messages
27,819
It was not. The very first previews were rather promising. We've had many pretty good and complex systems/mechanics in EL and ES 1&2 and they've wanted to top that with some juicy Civ stuff. Too bad it did ended up as boring SJW mess. Might be fixable! With mods, unfortunately.

We knew it was going to be shit the moment they showed off the wokeness.
 

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