Humankind - the Civ killer?

[Tamas]

So I just finished a small game with only two AI characters and me. Still finished second. Didn't even get to railroads.

I find there's always one CIV that does really well. It finished levelling up when I was still in Early Modern. It went war with me. I was lobbing arrows at his musketmen. I got slaughtered.

Yes snowballing seems to be a problem.

One thing I am trying to experiment a bit with is optimum map size/type and number of opponents.

Each map size gives you a total size and a max number of strategic/luxury resources. What's not set (because it's customisable in the rest of the settings) is % of land. So if you go with a 80% land instead of 40% overall there'll be the same number of resources, just much more dispersed.

What I am trying right now is using a Large map meant for 8 players, but with a Large Pangea continent of 90% land, and the max (10) number of opponents.

[crazy canuck]

For me though it's been less a resources issues as the fact that the 300 turns are up before I get anywhere near contemporary tech.

What kind of civs are you choosing?

[Josephus]

For me though it's been less a resources issues as the fact that the 300 turns are up before I get anywhere near contemporary tech.

What kind of civs are you choosing?

I don't have any pattern. I normally base it around my goals and what's around me.

In my last two games:

             Game One                Game two
Ancient: Hittites.                   Assyrian
Classic: Maya                        Huns
Medieval. Ummayad             Norse
Early Modern: Spain             Mughal
Industrial: Italian                Italian

[Solmyr]

Hittites and Assyrians are actually some of the worse ancient civs. Try Egyptians for crazy building, Zhou for science and stability, or Mycenaeans for early warfare. Or Harappans if you can beat the AI to it.

I recently got the achievement for winning against 9 AI opponents on the largest map size on Humankind difficulty. Started with Egyptians to build things up in Ancient era (their archer replacement unit is excellent too), then went on to Huns and Mongols for maximum carnage. A couple of AI were ahead of me on science, but their upgrading is very slow, so they had few up-to-date units.

[crazy canuck]

I agree with Solmyr, those are some weak combinations.

You really want to avoid going military in the ancient era.  They have no valuable civ attributes that carry forward through the ages - unlike the Egyptians, Babylonians and Harrapans.  I am not a big fan of the Harrapans but others seem to like them a lot - especially if you are going to go Hun/Mongol in the next two ages.

The ancient era is for building the base for what you are going to do next.  Going Assyrian/Huns/Norse leaves you with no synergies and you were already dead in the water before you hit Mughal - by that time it was too late and the Mughals would have nothing from the previous ages to really help them.  Same for the Italians.

Your game one selections were better but you gimped yourself by going Assyrian first - you would have been playing serious catchup on tech and so the Maya would not have much to build and so that era would have been a but of a waste.  Then you would have been too far behind in tech for the Ummayads to catch up.

See what happens if you dont go military at all.  I think you will see the game plays very differently - and unless you go with the early Hun/Mongel zerg strategy, military civs are not necessary for fighting successful wars.

[Tamas]

IDK guys. I was just looking at the Assyrians. If you are planning a military game, they give +1MP for all your units for all eternity, and a pretty sweet very-early game cavalry unit.

[crazy canuck]

IDK guys. I was just looking at the Assyrians. If you are planning a military game, they give +1MP for all your units for all eternity, and a pretty sweet very-early game cavalry unit.

I will try it next game and report back 

[crazy canuck]

ok, just 30 turns in but I can see the potential.  Having those scouts with 1 extra mp makes a difference, and the ransack bonus makes ransacking my neighbours outposts, relentlessly, makes for a decent early strategy.

[DGuller]

Is it time for a verdict?  I'm guessing that no activity in this thread for half a year means that Civ is not dead yet?

[Solmyr]

Yeah, Humankind is pretty far from killing Civ. Actually seems to be slowly dying itself.

[Grey Fox]

Yes. Civ still the king.

All I remember of my 2 games is that the end seemed inevitable half-way thru & that it was boring.

[Josephus]

Yeah...haven't played it in a while. I found I never really got to play with all the late game stuff. By the time I started to build anything modern, the game was over. No fun.

[crazy canuck]

I have not tried the latest major patch.  That is supposed to make the late game more meaningful.  I have not played or thought of Civ since the release of Humankind and if I were to go back to this sort of game I would definitely choose Humankind over Civ.

[Syt]

I see they have a major new beta out (can opt in on Steam , it runs till 30th May; release sometime in June?):

Here's what you can look forward to in the beta:

Reworked Surrender System: Forcing your opponent to surrender when they reach 0 War Support is now optional, but you will take stability penalties if you press on for too long

Rebalanced War Support Modifiers: Changes in War Support now scale with losses in battle, and cultural influence over territories causes war support losses

Surplus/Deficit Stability Tooltip: The stability tooltip in the city screen will now clearly display surplus or deficit stability

Infrastructure Yield Previews: Expected yields for Infrastructures are shown at the bottom of their tooltip before construction

Disabling Pollution Effects: Gameplay effects of pollution can be turned on or off in the New Game menu (defaults to off)

Administrative Center Renovation: You can update any administrative center to your current culture with a cheap construction project

Automatic Mod Reloading: The game automatically loads the mods used in your latest save when launching

Civics Unlock Conditions: Unlock conditions are shown in the tooltip of locked Civics

Unique Wonder Effects: All natural wonders now have a unique gameplay effect

Luxury Distribution Settings: In the map settings, you can now choose how even luxury resources should be spread

Scaling AI Difficulty: Bonuses the AI gets on higher difficulty now increase throughout the game to improve the late-game challenge. Please let us know how you feel about these changes on the forum and through the Bolivar Beta AI Survey

AI Delays: If your armies have queued orders for the turn, the AI will now wait for these to be resolved before engaging them

New Sortie Rules: Defenders cannot sortie on the first turn until the attacker chooses to "maintain siege"

Content Management: You can set the frequency of DLC content (except cultures) from the Content menu, and new content is highlighted in game 

On the scaling AI difficulty, they aim to make the AI less hyper-aggressive in early ages, and ramp up their bonuses over the course of play (I think Stellaris has a similar option, IIRC).

[Solmyr]

You can claim the new Para Bellum Wonder Pack on Steam for free until May 10th.