Expansionist need some sort of change. Right now its ability is hard to use, you can only use it against someone that is neutral, not ally, not vassal and not enemy. You can't enter the attached territories of a neutral player without having open borders (and who would give open border to an expansionist?) so using it against anything but outposts, who disappear overtime is tricky. The expansionist era stars are just too hard to get, just controlling territories without outpost is not just enough, they either need to be cities or attached to cities. The amount of territories needed in ancient era is 5 for the first expansionist star, the amount of district needed to get the first builder star is 6, the difference in difficulty to achieve those goals are massive and it in a way get harder and harder while getting the second and third builder star is not that difficult.

So for the ability, either change it or give expansionist the passive ability to enter other players territories without needing open borders. For goal, count outpost and reduce the amount of territories needed to maybe like 3-5-7 for the 3 ancient era stars.

8roomsofelixir wrote:

With the current game pace, Phoenicians really suffers from having a slow start. Their EQ, Haven, unlocks much later than other cultures' EQ, which also needs twice the Industry to build due to being a Harbor; and their EU cannot participate in land battles at all. As a result, Phoenicians can be very vulnerable on the land due to having no EUs, while their development would also stagnate due to slow EQ.

I would suggest that allowing Phoenicians able to build Havens from the very beginning, to make the Haven being effective much earlier.

In addition, it would be better to change Bireme into a Transport Ship, made it unlocks earlier while being weaker than Triremes. This way, the Phoenicians would be able to embark on Ancient and exploring the (costal) world easier, which offers a unique gameplay style unlike other Ancient Cultures, while in line with IRL Phoenicians who explored and settled the Mediterraneans much earlier than others.

This would explain my slow start!

Actually, I think what would help is if we could build emblamatic district and units even after we evolve to the next culture. As it is now, it's a race to build cities so you can build the emblamatic district. Otherwise, you miss most of the benefit of that culture.

The other issue is that naval gameplay is not very developed yet. There's nothing for biremes to do except explore. It may have helped my trade ability, so I can't discount that. But I was also disappointed I could not colonize overseas, which was going to be my playstyle, instead of fighting neighboring cultures.

Dayvit78 wrote:

8roomsofelixir wrote:

With the current game pace, Phoenicians really suffers from having a slow start. Their EQ, Haven, unlocks much later than other cultures' EQ, which also needs twice the Industry to build due to being a Harbor; and their EU cannot participate in land battles at all. As a result, Phoenicians can be very vulnerable on the land due to having no EUs, while their development would also stagnate due to slow EQ.

I would suggest that allowing Phoenicians able to build Havens from the very beginning, to make the Haven being effective much earlier.

In addition, it would be better to change Bireme into a Transport Ship, made it unlocks earlier while being weaker than Triremes. This way, the Phoenicians would be able to embark on Ancient and exploring the (costal) world easier, which offers a unique gameplay style unlike other Ancient Cultures, while in line with IRL Phoenicians who explored and settled the Mediterraneans much earlier than others.

This would explain my slow start!

Actually, I think what would help is if we could build emblamatic district and units even after we evolve to the next culture. As it is now, it's a race to build cities so you can build the emblamatic district. Otherwise, you miss most of the benefit of that culture.

The other issue is that naval gameplay is not very developed yet. There's nothing for biremes to do except explore. It may have helped my trade ability, so I can't discount that. But I was also disappointed I could not colonize overseas, which was going to be my playstyle, instead of fighting neighboring cultures.

You can keep building the EU until they become obsolete (unless that's a bug), but I ran into the same thing with the EQ. I feel like the intent is to tactically delay moving to the next era long enough to get the EQ in your build queue (once I got it in there, it stayed even after changing eras), so I really had to weigh how important getting another copy of a strong EQ was versus moving up to the next culture I had planned.

Also agree that not being able to build your EQ after you reach the next era can be very disappointing.

Not having played the game before, I found the unique abilities that certain types of culture give you a bit confusing. Especially the tooltip for it was lacking, it just told me about missing influence, not how much... And if you don't know the cost of such an action, its very hard to take into consideration when choosing a culture.

And yes, naval EU are worthless, but that's due to the naval gameplay.

I just tried queuing up a bunch of EQ from my main city, which I had 4 attachments too. And the same in my 2nd city, with 2 attachments. Unfortunately, when I changed eras, all of them got deleted, except 1 which I think I had started constructing (and maybe another 1 in the 2nd city). So it might be that it deletes all but one EQ in queue.

Mughals are bugged atm, you can build their emblematic district as often as you like (which is VERY op),

I feel the 10 current stability for builders is too much. I hardly drop below 100% (even without caring about stability), since builders can finish a district in one turn, meaning they gain more stability than they lose. Either stabilty should drop harsher per turn (maybe proportional to how much stability you can lose) or builders should get less compensation.

The same is true for Agrarians: Sacrificing population lets them spam farmers quarters while getting more than 1 pop each turn per city, thanks to mother's milk and the natural growth. I think sacrificing pop is too strong for them, as they essentially don't need any production at all, giving them an easy way to get era stars (they build districts as fast as builders do and get population way quicker). I think putting a debuff on a city, that makes subsequent buyouts with population more expensive for X turns would fix this problem.

I'll add to this post as I get to play more Cultures (I finished the game with builders and agrarian as of now).

Another comment on cultures, Aesthetes in particular:

One thing left me a strong impression is that how having an Aesthete who is strong on Influence output as your neighbor is a completely nightmare. The cultural influence pressure from these cultures - Olmecs and Edo Japanese in particular - can let you swim in Osmosis Events and stabilities hits non-stop. In addition, besides a strong push into religion to get more Influence, there is really no other strategies to effectively counter them; as a result the player's gameplay choices can get highly limited.

I would suggest a tweaking of Olmec's and Edo Japan's numbers, to make their influence output not that punishing for others, while give some other Aesthetes (such as Zhou and Mauryans) an Influence income as well to balance things out. It is pretty strange to see Edo Japanese, a culture known for defensive isolationism for centuries, have their influence aggressively spread throughout the world.

A side note for the Aesthete affinity ability (since I didn't find a place to feedback on affinity): It would be better to let the "Influence Bomb" action generate a grievance for the Empire being targeted. Agrarians will receive a grievance for stealing other's population, Expansionists will receive a grievance for stealing other's territory, and Aesthetes should not really get away from stealing other's cultural control.

The Hun and Mongol cultures are a bit too strong military wise. Sure, they can't make their outposts into cities.
But that matters little, when the Hunnic and Mongol hordes are beyond unbalanced in combat.
Able to replenish and add numbers on the fly, extremely maneuverable and capable of attacking twice, with little to no downside.
They destroy other EU that are meant to be strong against them with little to no issue and they are absurdly cheap, only requiring horses.

The ability to (at times) spawn 4 stacks of them from outposts too don't help in making them less broken.
They are a literal case of "Oh, you got a larger army? that is cute" before trashing you, constantly tearing the army a part.
Even when EXTREMELY outmatched (we are talking 4 Hunnic hordes vs like... 8-9 swordsmen or something like that) will they be able to decimate the opponent, even if they in the end loose.

I'm not sure what correct topic is for my concern, but I dislike how game forces you to place harbors and their emblematic equivalents. In practice, harbors are made in secluded places, where landscape forms bays. It provides protection from military standpoint and safety from sea storms. But in Humankind placing rules stimulate you to place harbors surrounded by water instead of land, so that to bring more food. I'd like this aspect to receive another pass.

So far cultures feel really, imo. I don’t usually play military civs, so I’ve mostly ignored those, but all of the other types I’ve looked at for a long time on the selection screen and generally enjoyed when I finally choose one. In particular the legacy traits are some of the better decision making in the game so far. 

8roomsofelixir wrote:

Another comment on cultures, Aesthetes in particular:

One thing left me a strong impression is that how having an Aesthete who is strong on Influence output as your neighbor is a completely nightmare. The cultural influence pressure from these cultures - Olmecs and Edo Japanese in particular - can let you swim in Osmosis Events and stabilities hits non-stop. In addition, besides a strong push into religion to get more Influence, there is really no other strategies to effectively counter them; as a result the player's gameplay choices can get highly limited.

I would suggest a tweaking of Olmec's and Edo Japan's numbers, to make their influence output not that punishing for others, while give some other Aesthetes (such as Zhou and Mauryans) an Influence income as well to balance things out. It is pretty strange to see Edo Japanese, a culture known for defensive isolationism for centuries, have their influence aggressively spread throughout the world.

A side note for the Aesthete affinity ability (since I didn't find a place to feedback on affinity): It would be better to let the "Influence Bomb" action generate a grievance for the Empire being targeted. Agrarians will receive a grievance for stealing other's population, Expansionists will receive a grievance for stealing other's territory, and Aesthetes should not really get away from stealing other's cultural control.

The counterplay is to either do what they want or to invade them I guess.

Well, can Joseon compete with the tenet that gives you +1 Science per follower on each holy site?

Dayvit78 wrote:

I just tried queuing up a bunch of EQ from my main city, which I had 4 attachments too. And the same in my 2nd city, with 2 attachments. Unfortunately, when I changed eras, all of them got deleted, except 1 which I think I had started constructing (and maybe another 1 in the 2nd city). So it might be that it deletes all but one EQ in queue.

yeah I'm realizing that might have been a bug, I tried to replicate it and my EQs got deleted from queue

Laliloluhla wrote:

FreezeZ wrote:
I have found out that Celtic special building is absurd. It gives you so much food that at some point you don't care about anything. You have enough pops to do anything, your production skyrockets, science too. You can build unit after unit because you don;t care about pops. They spawn every turn either way.

Sounds pretty decent then, I feel like an agrarian Culture should be able to produce one population per turn fairly easily. Even as non-agrarian cultures it's possible to produce one population per turn on many cities depending on the circumstances. Although I can see the +1 food per population creating a positive feedback loop once you've made enough of the districts and completely negate the food consumption of population,

Yeah. Thats possible but they make it too quick. 1 celitc bulding can produce absurd amount of food and when you build districts around it it gets worse. More food mean more pops. And more pops mean moere everything. Maybe its about getting used to mechanics and civs but from my few playthrought celts felt very strong. Stronger than any other option there.

Also should Spanish EU replace arquebusier? It's odd that you get similar units from 1 research but you can't upgrade one of them.