Humankind Feature Focus 03: Claiming Territory

How does another city contribute to wonder construction?  Is it through an internal trade route type feature (funneling resources to one city)?

If Emblematic Quarters are tied to the culture/player that built them then will they persist if the city changes ownership?

buzzkill wrote:

If Emblematic Quarters are tied to the culture/player that built them then will they persist if the city changes ownership?

Yes, they do.

I presume district leveling mechanic is gone for good? At least in the form it was present in EL.

The-Cat-o-Nine-Tales wrote:

Yes, you claim it, and then you can build it without anybody else being able to "steal" the construction by building it faster. We're not ready to talk about the details of how they are claimed yet, hence the vague "artistically inclined."

EDIT: Since I shared it on CivFanatics when they asked, let me add this information here as well, a partial list of working titles for the generic quarters.

• Farmers Quarter
• Trades Quarter

• Market Quarter

• Research Quarter

• Commons Quarter

• Defense Quarter

• Harbour

• and a few others we are not ready to tell you about yet.

Feel free to go wild with your speculation. :)

The fact that trade and market are separate makes me curious.

How do I learn how to build these districts  Quarters ? Are they tied to a tech ?

You talk about cities, but is nomadism a thing ? So many very influencial nomadic civilisations...

The-Cat-o-Nine-Tales wrote:

buzzkill wrote:

If Emblematic Quarters are tied to the culture/player that built them then will they persist if the city changes ownership?

Yes, they do.

I'm so glad to hear this is the case! No more unnecessary city destruction like in Civilization!

Well then, the video left me with questions and the response gave me even more of those :D

All of this sounds interesting, makes me impatient for, if not playing the game, then at least time when you'll be able to tell more about it.

I am not thrilled with the idea of gigantic cities which absorb regions.

Because :

- A gigantic city is a non-specialized city, which can produce everything (Science/Industire/Military/Trade). It's bad I think, it's better if EACH city have SPECIFIC kind of function.

- From the moment a player can absorb a region, is there real disadvantage to don't do it? The game has to propose decision making, not no brainer decisions which are like candies for the player (like district sprawling or regions absorption).



An advantage that I see:

- The infinite City Spawn is a horrible drift from Civ VI. Where the player is rewarded if he colonizes each km2 of land, and he ends up with 50 cities to manage.



I really like the principle of the Outpost. It is important to create early zones of conflicts, skirmishes between the players. And Outpost regions seems more wild, it's better than having conflicts only in high urbanised aeras.


The existence of multiple kind of district is very good to know. I hope that :

- There is real specialisation in cities. If a city need food/industry to do anything, that's not specialisation. Each city will have ALWAYS the same path of developement.
- These districts can be pillaged or destroyed, like an improvement (like a farm).

I guess one Quarter will be an infastructure quater enables stables, main train station, airport, etc. to speed up movement, make trade with consumable recources possible, get tourists and boost the econemy, another might be a gouvernment quater would be cool if it could bring a lot of benefits on one hand and be a wak point one the other ( a civilisation migt be dead or at least havely weekend if thar quater would be destroid).

An unique upgrade for a defence quater could be the Pentagon, for the culture quater the Louvre and Cern for a sience quater.  

Jojo_Fr wrote:

I am not thrilled with the idea of gigantic cities which absorb regions.

Because :

- A gigantic city is a non-specialized city, which can produce everything (Science/Industire/Military/Trade). It's bad I think, it's better if EACH city have SPECIFIC kind of function.

- From the moment a player can absorb a region, is there real disadvantage to don't do it? The game has to propose decision making, not no brainer decisions which are like candies for the player (like district sprawling or regions absorption).



An advantage that I see:

- The infinite City Spawn is a horrible drift from Civ VI. Where the player is rewarded if he colonizes each km2 of land, and he ends up with 50 cities to manage.



I really like the principle of the Outpost. It is important to create early zones of conflicts, skirmishes between the players. And Outpost regions seems more wild, it's better than having conflicts only in high urbanised aeras.


The existence of multiple kind of district is very good to know. I hope that :

- There is real specialisation in cities. If a city need food/industry to do anything, that's not specialisation. Each city will have ALWAYS the same path of developement.
- These districts can be pillaged or destroyed, like an improvement (like a farm).

I like big cities, they are the way to show my great work! Marvelous!

Sublustris wrote:

I presume district leveling mechanic is gone for good? At least in the form it was present in EL.

There are synergies between quarters, but I don't recall any "leveling" mechanic with a specific gameplay breakpoint.

Dinode wrote:

The fact that trade and market are separate makes me curious.

Take note: It's a Trades Quarter, not a Trade Quarter. "Trades" in the sense of "professions."

Jojo_Fr wrote:

I am not thrilled with the idea of gigantic cities which absorb regions.

Because :

- A gigantic city is a non-specialized city, which can produce everything (Science/Industire/Military/Trade). It's bad I think, it's better if EACH city have SPECIFIC kind of function.

- From the moment a player can absorb a region, is there real disadvantage to don't do it? The game has to propose decision making, not no brainer decisions which are like candies for the player (like district sprawling or regions absorption).

Absorbing regions is not free, so the decision is when and where to invest your limited resources. As far as city specialization is concerned: Yes, every city will need food and Industry, but with the way that the districts work you will have to adapt to the terrain rather than following an ideal layout as often happened in Endless Legend. The other resources are a different matter, and I haven't experimented enough to tell whether specializing or generalizing is better.

Hi there,

Thanks a lot for posting this interesting feature focus and also for answering a lot of the follow-up questions. I have some as well and hope you are able to share some insights either now or later:

1. Are territory assignments permanent or can they be reassigned later on, e.g. split off territory and found a new city there, or assign to a different city? 

2. What about conquest and territories? Can a territory be conquered independent of the city it is attached to? Could it then be reassigned to one of the victor's cities? From the comment around outposts being fragile, I guess the whole city might need to be captured or at least something more far reaching to wrestle control away.

3. In that regard, what exactly is the benefit to cities of adding territories? More room to expand physically into? Cities in EL could get pretty big and region borders could get in the way of expanding efficiently. Of course, adding a territory also grants access to resources, but I gathered that can also be achieved through outposts.

4. Are new cities only developed from outposts or does the classic settler unit still exist (and work as usual)?

5. It sounds like buildings/city improvemens will apply to the whole city, rather than be build in sectors a la Civ VI, right? Not that it makes much of a difference, if HK follows the EL model of districts not being conquer-able independently of the whole city.

I like the idea of multiple quarters and a soft cap on quarters. Seems like that could allow quite heavy specialisation. I hope that interacts nicely with terrain and avoids wanting to build the same cities everywhere all the time. It's a difficult balance which not all games got right.

Looks Great! I'd like to thank the devs for sharing this with us!

I can't wait for more details on territorial claiming and how outposts would be contested amoung different powers.

So exciting about all this features ! 

SpacesuitSpiff wrote:

Apparently there's psychological research that shows humans can only do a good job tracking ~7 things in their minds at a time. I certainly noticed this playing EL; maybe 3 of those are reserved for cities, all the others I go to it and think "alright what was the plan here again?". The big cities, not needing their component regions to be individually developed and micromanaged, is an excellent idea in that regard.

I do hope there's something in the UI that sharply draws the bounds of the city when needed. Looking at these screenshots, it's not super easy to tell which tiles are developed at a glance. EL has this problem because you want to visualize the shape to plan what districts level up, but the exploitation tiles aren't always distinct enough from the developed ones.

For me it is a good thing those games are turn-based, I can hardly track more than 2 things at once.

I suppose the visual feedback of cities will be polished and we ll be able to clearly see the districts.