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3 years ago Jun 03,2021, 15:59:40 PM

Victor OpenDev Player Feedback

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About a month ago, we hosted the Victor OpenDev to give you all a glimpse of what we’ve been working on since the Lucy OpenDev last year, and to get your feedback on the direction we are taking. Many of the Victor OpenDev players confirmed that they think we are on the right track, but as always we also received a ton of constructive feedback.


Before we dive into the details of the feedback, and some of our plans to address it, we want to thank you again for your continued support of the OpenDev program. The amount and quality of feedback we receive continue to impress us, as do the participation and excitement by both players and content creators.




Without further ado, let’s take a look at some of the most common feedback we received.

  • Eras progress too quickly and Era Stars are too easy to earn.
  • Research, on the other hand, was much slower than era progression, causing a mismatch between progression.
  • Maintaining high stability in cities was too easy.
  • All basic resource yields still grew too quickly.
  • Food in particular was easy to manage, diminishing the value of farmers quarters.
  • Money was too easy to earn through various means, including vassals.
  • Buyouts with both money and Forced Labor (sacrificing population) were too cheap and powerful.
  • Influence was difficult to earn in the early game when it was crucial for expansion, but too easy to earn later when there was little left to spend it on.
  • The War Resolution screen was difficult to understand and use.
  • War Support changed too quickly even from small engagements.
  • Vassalization was too easy and provided too much money.
  • Many players disliked being unable to conquer another player's last city.
  • Some players are worried about ranged units being too powerful and giving too much “first-move advantage” to the attacker.
  • Players disliked armies being automatically included as reinforcements and losing their movement because of it.
  • Players have once again raised their concerns that the battlefield overlay is difficult to read.
  • Gaining a large amount of population in the neolithic era is still too easy.
  • There was no good reason to invest in naval units.
  • Embarked units were seen as too slow; moving across land was often faster.
  • Independent People were too easy to assimilate.
  • Religious tenets were unbalanced, with a few far too strong for proper game balance.
  • Apart from balancing, Tenets were seen as too general to inform gameplay decisions.
  • Many Civics were seen as not impacting gameplay strongly enough.
  • Civics points were too easy to earn.
  • Cultures without a Faith-producing Emblematic Quarter had no immediate counter to religious cultures.
  • Some affinities were seen as not affecting gameplay enough.
  • Among all feedback on balancing, emblematic Garrisons were seen as too weak particularly often.




As you can see, that’s a substantial list of feedback, so let us take a look at some (but not all) the solutions we are working on now:

  • We are adjusting Era Star thresholds and Research Costs to slow down era progression while bringing scientific progress more in line with it.
  • We’re looking into diminish the rapid population growth possible in the neolithic era, for example increasing growth thresholds for neolithic nomads.
  • We will re-examine naval units and naval trade to increase the incentive to engage in naval gameplay.
  • We’re continuing to tweak the economy: Food consumption has been increased, buyout costs have been increased, tribute from vassals has decreased, stability sources will be less potent, etc.
  • We’re still improving the War Resolution screen, and will add a “Zoom to territory” function to it.
  • We will re-examine War Support, vassalization and extermination of other players.
  • Armies will no longer lose their movement unless battle actually begins, so you will not lose movement on reinforcement armies if the enemy retreats.
  • We’re exploring how to make tenets and various civics more interesting and impactful.
  • We will also replace Civics points to give players somewhere to spend influence in mid to late game.
  • Ranged units will take a bigger penalty in close combat, and we have a number of other changes planned for mid and late game ranged units that should have far-reaching consequences.
  • We’re tweaking the affinities and adding new abilities to some of them.




Once again, thank you for your continued support and your constructive feedback. We will try our best to keep you informed about our progress in addressing your feedback.


Until next time!

- The Amplitude Team

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3 years ago
Jun 3, 2021, 5:04:05 PM

I love seeing those posts, seeing what the devs take out of the OpenDev period.

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3 years ago
Jun 3, 2021, 5:22:37 PM

"Most used culture: Babylonians"

I think a lot of us got imprinted by the first open dev scenario :D


Can't wait to play the complete game!

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3 years ago
Jun 3, 2021, 6:57:53 PM

Sounds great - though making ranged units weaker in close combat will make first mover advantage worse rather than better - if you get your first click in at the beginning of the turn, your ranged units get to shoot and kill. If opponent gets first click, then your ranged units are likely dead. Of course you can retreat, but then it's a matter of wars getting decided by first click/retreating given the war enthusiasm penalties/boosts associated with retreating etc.


Why not just give defender first move or have an average army initiative to determine who gets first move (like mounted units have high initiative, pikes low, etc)?

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3 years ago
Jun 3, 2021, 9:45:42 PM
  • Players have once again raised their concerns that the battlefield overlay is difficult to read.
And you once again decided to do jack shit about it :\
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3 years ago
Jun 3, 2021, 9:48:23 PM

Thanks devs for the updates; many of our concerns about the condition of the game as in Victor Opendev are addressed here. Nevertheless, I would like to address one extra issue that doesn't seem to be covered here: Coastal Development.


As the Feedback Post pointed out, the devs are aware that players found that "there was no good reason to invest in naval units", and hope to deal with this issue by "re-examine naval units and naval trade to increase the incentive to engage in naval gameplay". This is a good direction; naval trade is an essential reason for the existence of a navy.


On the other hand, naval trade is not the only reason why people built navies. Besides the transportation of goods and armies, navy serves another important purpose - to protect cities, factories, and fields that are next to the coast or not far away from the coast, aka "coastal developments". Even for primarily land-based countries, it is very common to see over 40% of their population live in coastal regions; and many countries, if unable to build a blue water navy, will at least fund a green water navy for coastal defense, protecting their infrastructures near the coast. Basically, if you have a lot of important stuff on the coast, you are going to need at least some naval units.


Could the same logic be applied to Humankind? It could - but not currently. Currently, in Humankind there is literally no encouragement to build anything on the coast besides putting down a Harbor. Coastal land tiles don't have any benefits and only have limited tiles that a land-based quarter can exploit. "Encourage naval trade", as the devs had planned, won't help this situation, as you only need one Harbor to establish naval trade routes and building a navy, means there will only be one valuable asset on your coastlines per territory for the majority of the cultures (cultures with a Harbor/Coastal EQ are the minority).


Most importantly, even though Harbors do have an adjacency with Market Quarters - which, on paper, encourages a costal development of Markets around a Harbor - you cannot directly build off from a Harbor, or cannot use Harbor as an anchor point to build other quarters from it, currently. This situation drastically limited a player's incentive to develop the coast, as they will spend a long time building quarters to reach the coast in the first place. In addition, unable to build off from a Harbor can also limit the value of islandic regions; without the ability to build off from Harbors, one cannot put (most of) the quarters on those small islands unconnected to their City Centers. As a result - which already can be seen in many Victor playthroughs - a player often has a developed Harbor with a barren coastline behind it, which is neither aesthetically pleasing nor realistic. Imagine a New York City that only developed the tip of the Manhattan Island and doesn't have a vast metropolitan area surrounding it.


A typical Humankind city in Victor and Poe builds, which has a lonely Harbor and a large barren field between the Harbor and the City. You clearly don't really need a navy to protect this city as there is nearly nothing on the coast, despite it technically being a coastal city. In addition, it would take some time before the city can build itself onto the coast, as it cannot directly build off from the Harbor.


In any case, I would like to see the devs address this "lacking incentive to develop the coastline" issue, as it can not only deal with the "lacking incentive to build navy" problem, but also encourage a unique maritime strategy in addition to the normal land-based playstyle.

Many players, me included, have suggested that allow quarters to be built off from Harbors once again in order to motivate the player to develop the coast and building navy; it can be unlocked via a mid-game technology instead of available from the very beginning.

In addition, I would also like to add further suggestions such as "Give more adjacencies to Harbors" and "Infrastructures give additional yields to quarters on the coastlines in the late game" to encourage the coastal developments more. Infrastructures that help with coastal water yields would also be helpful, since coastal cities are relatively lacking land tiles to work with in the first place (Speaking of which - why nerf Great Fishmarkets' "+1 Money on Coastal Waters"? It is a huge hit to islandic cities, which have nearly none Industry and need those extra Money to survive).


Looking forward to the full release.


Updated 3 years ago.
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3 years ago
Jun 3, 2021, 10:01:56 PM

My suggestions about the harbors and sea are:

  • Remove the 1 territory limit, harbors is like the only non emblematic quarter that have the limit and it don't make any sense and simply feels completely arbitary, I could see something like a harbor can't be next to another harbor as a restriction but a straight up territory limit feels very arbitary. Harbors if too powerful, increase their cost rather than an arbitary limit. Certain territories like island ones are especially is hit hard with the 1 harbor per territory limit and there is cases in which you can't exploit like inland lakes because doing so would mean you can't build harbor to exploit the sea, which make zero sense and it looks very strange that alot of the coast end up unexploited.
  • Encourage costal development by giving atleast marketplaces an adjacency with the sea and even bigger one next to harbors. Right now market quarters are pretty weak in terms of yield compared to makers and research quarters and there is nearly no money terrain to exploit. By adding value to marketplaces being placed next to harbors and the sea, you will encourage costal development which in turn make naval units more important.
  • Sea Trade familiy should increase the adjacency bonus harbors get with marketplace, it make alot of sense thematically as well further encourage costal development.
If those above changes make harbors too powerful I suggest increase its price and increase its stability cost.

More changes would be:
  • Allow city centers and maybe all districts to exploit adjacent costal tiles instead of them being dead tiles.
  • Nerf land based trade and or buff sea based trade.
  • Give military ships a special marine unit, which is tied to the ship but can join in land battles in which the ship participate in. This mean military ships have some ability to attack costal cities and land units near the coast.
  • Increase the range of military ships to be similar to land based artillery which allow them to support land units greater inland.



Updated 3 years ago.
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3 years ago
Jun 3, 2021, 11:23:16 PM

Step on the right direction for sure, I hope we can test the game for the super ultra late game.
1. Naval combat and in general needs definitely a overhaul is just not engaging at all.

2. I dont think archers or any ranged unit was OP, they do get hit hard when they get attacked by melee. I dont know who said they were OP but in my case ranged units were so weak, they would tickle this armored/shielded units, knights would 1 shot them lol like ranged spam wasn't doable at all, you need a mix of spearmen and swordsmen with archers and position them well so they could do their job. 
This was my experience but everything else was spot on 100% Thank you so much

Can't wait for the next  Update I love this game

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3 years ago
Jun 4, 2021, 1:37:17 AM

My character sometimes disappears on screen and the enemy i kill off... still standing.... until I reload the game.....

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3 years ago
Jun 4, 2021, 4:40:21 AM

add cigarette smoking animation to avatar preorder bonus and i'll go ahead and buy your darn game.

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3 years ago
Jun 4, 2021, 4:42:01 AM

and i want to be able to select "Sure, whatever" as an archetype.

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3 years ago
Jun 4, 2021, 10:21:42 AM

Super retour et totalement en accord avec les sujets avancés.

Et même avec ses petits défauts, j'ai déjà pris beaucoup de plaisir à jouer. Vivement mi août. 

Bon courage à vous. 

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3 years ago
Jun 4, 2021, 1:54:39 PM

I watched the Twitch last night and despite the very impressive knowledge of Shakespeare who was quoted at length (Macbeth and Hamlet I think) my one and only criticism of HUMANKIND remains: the language of the game is a little arcane (and sometimes awkward). The terms and language needs to be simpler. More accessible.

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3 years ago
Jun 4, 2021, 7:52:11 PM

I love the changes suggested about influence and civics points. I found civic points kind of confusing to know how to use and every time I got a notification of a new civic I was excited to unlock it only to realize I didn't have any points. And I feel like once you stop expanding influence became only useful for asthete cultures, so having them tie into civics would be an amazing change.

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3 years ago
Jun 4, 2021, 9:17:49 PM

I just watched a review by a journalsit who had a newer version of the game. His counclusion was: ' Take much more time to develop the game further`. Thats what I already thought after playing Victor open DeV.This might upsep a vew people , but I think it would benefit the game allot.  One wayof justifiing it/ giving supporters a compensation is: adding a few nice feautures like an expandable zoo, which  can be expanded by sending out animal hunters, trading animals. researing dna to clone new ons / extincted ons and finaly making it Jurassiv Park.

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3 years ago
Jun 5, 2021, 7:45:33 AM

Once again, great work!

Still want to mention that Independent People were not only easy to assimilate, but to conquer too at the begining of the game. They need more protection of their cities.

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