So recently, during the Unity Showcase Stream, some devs were talking about the game and answer some questions about it, while some gameplay was going in the background. The eagle-eyed members of the Discord and Reddit spotted some interesting things, which I have compiled here.

One of the more concerning things, in my opinion, is a line noted on the Mycenaean Cyclopean Fortress that reads

Placement Prerequisites

Can be built once per territory.

which seem to imply that to stem some of the overpowered EQs from being spammed, a blanket hard cap of one culture's EQ per territory is being instated.

And no, I don't mean "one EQ in a territory in totality," I mean "one cultural EQ in a territory," like I can have one Cyclopean Fortress, Nemeton, Scriptorum, and Catedral Gotica in a single territory, not just a single Nemeton.

On one hand, this stops the spam of the really good EQs, stuff like the Dutch VOC warehouse and the Hippodrome could just blanket a territory and you'd be swimming in money like Scourge McDuck, or the Baray, which was totally busted in Lucy and could be spammed on rivers for all the resources you could ever need, or the Jama Masjid which not not exploited Industry but could easily get you more than +100 industry from it's effect, among others.

On the other hand, this makes the weaker EQs all the worse. You're really going to limit the Goths to one Tumulus per territory, granting them +2 Faith and +2 Influence, while their Greek Neighbor only gets one Amphitheatron per territory that gets an upwards of +15 influence? Those two EQs are not on the same level. This also makes EQs that have an adjacency bonus for religious districts (any district that produces faith, including Holy Sites and Wonders) more difficult to get good use out of, due to the fact that there will be less overall religious districts to put them next to.

If the limited number of constructions per territory was instead based on the power of the EQ, like 1 Amphitheatron per territory and 2 or 3 Tumuluses per territory, that would feel a lot better, but would of course requiring fine tuning the numbers and deciding which EQs are weak enough to merit more than one a territory. A more forgiving, less hard cap of 1 to something like 3 for all EQs may also work, but doesn't keep the more powerful EQs (VOC Warehouse, Hippodrome, Baray, Jama Masjid) in check. Could possibly give buffs to all the weaker EQs to make them all as powerful as the powerful ones, but again, that would require a lot of fine tuning as well.

This is, of course, my initial reaction to seeing the vague change that could possibly not even be a real thing. I haven't gotten a chance to play Humankind with the adjustment, should that be what it is, yet, maybe it'll click then, but from what was discussed in the Discord previously, I'm not the only one with some concerns regarding the change.

What are your opinions on this potential single culture's EQ per territory?

I'm okay with a strict hardcap of one, if that is what ends up happening, as I find that weaker quarters feel weak due to:

1. Not completely blowing the resource production of other quarters out of the water

Which led to the problem that quarters which add, like 20 or 50+ Money, industry, everything in some cases being extremely powerful, because they made the numbers most relevant to the player go up exponentially and quickly. 

And this is also why the Industry Quarter was so good, outside of emblematic quarters, as it gained significant number increases compared to the money quarter's... I'll be nice and say measly potential to increase the city's monetary production by, like maybe 3+ per quarter for most of the game while Industry was able to jump around +15 per quarter if you played your placement right. Now, granted, I mainly relied on a money economy to finish my production on time for most of my stadia playthroughs, and in that strategy I ended up relying on placing just about every worker I could afford on the money making section of the city, which required me to add money quarters to increase how many workers I can put to work, but...

The best, most dreamy, solution to making the weaker quarters be competitive against the over powered ones that MASSIVELY boost numbers up: Would be to make it so that the weaker quarters give city or region-wide special effects unique to that quarter.

If I need to be realistic:

1. Maybe the Meroe Pyramids boost the money production of each economic quarter by +1, due to the tourism generated by the construction of such great works--which increases the bonus by +1/+2 for each era that passes--as long as those Meroe Pyramids are not destroyed.
2. Maybe the Dunnu and similar Emblematic quarters give +1 strength to units built within the entire region and/or city they are built in (They only give the +1 strength to units adjacent to the district at the moment). The +1 strength being replaced by any +strength bonus boost made by similar minded Emblematic quarters from the later era, in order to avoid Solidifying the Dunnu as an overpowered Emblematic Quarter.

Etecetera. I don't know what quarters you think are weak, so it's difficult to continue listing possible improvements under my impression on what makes a Quarter Over Powered.

RobotDoctorRobot wrote:

On the other hand, this makes the weaker EQs all the worse. You're really going to limit the Goths to one Tumulus per territory, granting them +2 Faith and +2 Influence, while their Greek Neighbor only gets one Amphitheatron per territory that gets an upwards of +15 influence? Those two EQs are not on the same level. This also makes EQs that have an adjacency bonus for religious districts (any district that produces faith, including Holy Sites and Wonders) more difficult to get good use out of, due to the fact that there will be less overall religious districts to put them next to.

Why do you have to jump to the assumption that the numbers on the weaker EQs are final? When it was stated several times that numbers are not final?

The big question I have is; does one EQ per territory mean one total, or one copy of each?  Ergo, if I’m Zhou > Carthage > England, and I have a three territory city, does this mean I can have three Confucian schools, three Cothons and three Strongholds, or does this mean that if I want to build a new Stronghold, I’m going to have to send my glorious army to ransack my Confucian school to free up the slot?

I’d really like the devs to explain this limit.

Edit:

As for my personal opinion on one EQ per territory, in the Lucy opendev you could get ridiculously high numbers in your cities from spamming certain districts; this is a solution to that problem.  I am, however, a little worried that they won’t have enough time to rebalance, and thoroughly test the cultures around this change.  

Although, looking back at one of my favorite games, Civ V, that game wasn’t well balanced. (Compare good civs like, Babylon, Arabia and Poland to mediocre civs like Morocco, Japan and Iroquois, if you don’t know what I’m talking about).  So systematically speaking, this change is probably good for the game, probably?  

FlamingKetchup wrote:

The delay announcement said it's a limit per territory for most of the EQs, not that it is necessarily 1 per territory for all of them.

Giving extra EQs per territory for transcending doesn't really make sense, as transcending isn't supposed to be a strength bonus, just a score bonus. Also, this could only work for EQs that are limited per territory.

Quite right, however, I imagine that most of the EQs will be limited to the "One per Territory" with only a handful of specific EQs being allowed multiple constructions. Here I suppose I'm talking about those specifically limited to "One per Territory" EQs.

RobotDoctorRobot wrote:
I personally think that since Transcending already feels kinda weak, I think a second placement of the EQ seems fair, since one of the draws prior to the 1 EQ per territory rule was the ability to continue building the EQs of your culture, despite the era.

I would agree to this. If you look at the mechanic newly implemented (1 EQ per territory), and leaving aside transcending for now, it's actually 1 EQ per territory and per Era.

Say I pick Olmecs in Ancient Era, I'll be able to build my Olmecs Heads in my city territory, and in 1 or 2 attached territories. Once I reach Classical, picking Mayas, I'll be able (if I want to), to place down my K'uh Nah in those 3 territories or more, and so on, as the game progresses.

Below a very rough visual representation of it :

FlamingKetchup wrote:
Giving extra EQs per territory for transcending doesn't really make sense, as transcending isn't supposed to be a strength bonus, just a score bonus. Also, this could only work for EQs that are limited per territory.

RNGZero wrote:
I don't believe they should be able to place yet another Baray within the same territory. Transcending for the additional fame is risky and should not inadvertently provide a loophole. Of course, such interaction could be intended... but that would be up to the game designers to decide. 

I think that would be too much of a punishment to be blocked by 1 EQ per territory for the whole game if you transcend. Although transcending gives you a fame boost, that's at the cost of giving up all the bonuses of the new Legacy Trait, new Emblematic Quarter and Unit.

Not only the player would lack all the new culture bonuses and rely solely on generic quarters to keep building up his cities/territories, but he would also lack some (or have lesser) adjacency bonuses others players would gain by building a second, third, ..., EQ per territory, since they don't transcend. Plus, regarding Builder Stars when transcending, that would mean loosing the ability to build a quarter for each Era you transcend. With this assumption, I'm not sure the 20% Fame boost is worth all these losses.

We'll have to see what the Devs come up with in the next OpenDev, that sure needs to be tested !

Waykot wrote:
Not only the player would lack all the new culture bonuses and rely solely on generic quarters to keep building up his cities/territories, but he would also lack some (or have lesser) adjacency bonuses others players would gain by building a second, third, ..., EQ per territory, since they don't transcend. Plus, regarding Builder Stars when transcending, that would mean loosing the ability to build a quarter for each Era you transcend. With this assumption, I'm not sure the 20% Fame boost is worth all these losses.

Having the difficulty spike when transcending because a culture abstained from new abilities, EU, and EQ is intended to occur. Perhaps the issue at hand is the additional fame % is not attractive enough to warrant transcending. 

The tricky bit about additional percentages of fame, potentially several times in a game, is the ability could compound each instance. Of course, this is based on the assumption that +20% fame bonuses are multiplicative and not additive. A culture which transcended a couple of times already would see a much larger bonus then an additional 20% fame a single transcend would provide.