There isn't a whole lot of information about the mechanics of the game, and I wanted to contribute to some speculation.

After watching the talk given at PAX about narrative design in 4X games I got to thinking about how else it could apply to Humankind. Something that hasn't yet been revealed is how civilizations will transition between eras (right? maybe it has been revealed). In RTSs with eras and other 4Xs this seems to be triggered typically by reaching some kind of threshold, like researching enough/certain technologies or just reaching a certain turn. I think this game has the potential of doing things in a different way that embraces how Amplitude stands apart from the competition.

In Endless Legend and Endless Space (2, not sure about 1) each faction has their questline, which is possible given that they're fictional civilizations in an alternate universe. While doing a civilization quest at that scale doesn't seem reasonable in Humankind given what we know, it could be cool to see smaller scale quests used to drive eras. This means 60 storylines, but greatly reduced in length compared to the storylines in previous games. Each storyline could be based on a significant event that was relevant for the selected real world civilization or heavily themed on their in-game strengths, and completion is required to advance to the next era.

What are people's thoughts on this? Would it rely too heavy on untraditional 4X mechanics? Given such a system should a back up for progression exist in case a player is locked out of completing a quest objective?

The method of advancing through the eras has been revealed. Each faction is collecting fame and getting stars for it.
Once you get 7 stars, you can advance to the next era. However, each era allows you to collect up to 13 stars in total, so you potentially have a good reason to not rush ahead.

As far as the game goes, the current iteration of the game does not have ES/L-like quests. They may end up in the game, but for now we're only getting the events outlined in the PAX talk, IIRC. :)

I am not entirely sure, but I think I have somewhere here in this forum read, that the first culture to advance in a different era (for example: Classical Age --> Medieval Age) takes all the other cultures with them.

Feel free to correct me, if I am wrong!

That's probably just a case of game of telephone gone wrong.

I don't remember seeing it in any actual promotional material. Plus, you could easily win the game by starving every other player that way (First to get to 7 stars and the most fame advances the age, thus requiring everyone else to have surplus fame by the end of the next era just to catch up).

tomsonhagen wrote:

I am not entirely sure, but I think I have somewhere here in this forum read, that the first culture to advance in a different era (for example: Classical Age --> Medieval Age) takes all the other cultures with them.

Feel free to correct me, if I am wrong!

No, we don't know this.

All we know is (a) 7 Fame stars lets you advance to the next era, (b) you are not forced to advance to the next era after you have 7 stars, you can stick around and try and collect more Fame, and (c) there is a limited number of Fame per era.

Everything else is speculation. 

They also mentioned that there's ways to get fame that don't get you stars. To get back on topic, are the fame stars the same for every culture? If they aren't, it can lead to essentially a narrative-like system where most of the stars are for doing things your culture was historically good at.

"Are the Fame stars the same for every culture?"

Good question.  There was a comment in an article that civs get extra Fame for doing things aligned with their nature.  I took that to mean that Builder civ would get more Fame for building, a Military civ more Fame for winning battles, etc.  I didn't take it as meaning they get Fame for doing different things.  The two are not mutually exclusive, however.

Another open question is whether the limited number of Fame per era is a global limit, or a per player limit.  If it's a global limit, it's more likely that trailing civs can "tag along" to the next era once another civ has advanced.  If it's a per civ limit, it's less likely that there will be a "tag along" or "pull along" mechanic, and that every civ will need to generate at least 7 Fame stars to move forward.

I'm also curious about why some Fame points are just Fame (for score) and not stars (for era advancement).  So many questions!! 

Maybe Stars can be generated by collecting a certain amount/reaching a threshold of Fame?

If there's a global limit to fame per era, it would add credence to what tomsonhagen said, about cultures being dragged along by the advancement of others. If there's less fame than required for all players to choose a new culture to advance it'd drive more competition and engagement.

I'm pretty sure that stars are not gained through collecting enough fame, otherwise they wouldn't have said that you could also get fame without getting stars.

There's also the question of whether the global amount of stars, if it does exist, changes when there are fewer players. That's the biggest argument I can think of for a per player limit.

Where's the source for the information about fame & stars? I'd like to read/watch it myself so my conjectures aren't entirely baseless.

buzzkill wrote:

Where's the source for the information about fame & stars? I'd like to read/watch it myself so my conjectures aren't entirely baseless.

There's a PCGamer article from back in August (labelled their October 2019 edition I think, 'cuz publishing) that discussed fame and fame stars.  Some of the rest likely pieced together from random articles, dev posts, and the like.

We could really use a Well of Souls type page like Arioch puts together for the Civ franchise, where all known features for upcoming releases are collected together in one spot.

TravlingCanuck wrote:

buzzkill wrote:

Where's the source for the information about fame & stars? I'd like to read/watch it myself so my conjectures aren't entirely baseless.

There's a PCGamer article from back in August (labelled their October 2019 edition I think, 'cuz publishing) that discussed fame and fame stars.  Some of the rest likely pieced together from random articles, dev posts, and the like.

We could really use a Well of Souls type page like Arioch puts together for the Civ franchise, where all known features for upcoming releases are collected together in one spot.

Well, we do have a discussion megathread.

Dinode wrote:

TravlingCanuck wrote:

buzzkill wrote:

Where's the source for the information about fame & stars? I'd like to read/watch it myself so my conjectures aren't entirely baseless.

There's a PCGamer article from back in August (labelled their October 2019 edition I think, 'cuz publishing) that discussed fame and fame stars.  Some of the rest likely pieced together from random articles, dev posts, and the like.

We could really use a Well of Souls type page like Arioch puts together for the Civ franchise, where all known features for upcoming releases are collected together in one spot.

Well, we do have a discussion megathread.

Not the same.  Scrolling through a thread of out-of-date comments isn't a reference the way a dedicated webpage is.