We have not heard much from our French friends at Amplitude Studios recently, despite the release date of Humankind fast approaching. That makes more sense today, as they announce the delay of their newest 4X endeavor, and a threat to the Civilization throne, Humankind.

Today, it was announced that Humankind would be delayed until August 17th of this year. Amplitude Studios was kind enough to send us a detailed list of what’s being worked on from now until then, so be sure to keep scrolling.

Here’s the full press release:

HUMANKIND DELAYED TO AUGUST 17th, 2021

The dev team will be working to perfect Accessibility, Pacing, Balancing, Diplomacy, AI, and much more.

Paris, March 24th – When we first announced our upcoming historical strategy title HUMANKIND™, we called it our magnum opus, and we meant every word of that. The response so far has been amazing: the community has been super excited and involved with the development at every step of the way, and we intend to honor their expectations for the game. Here’s a few words from our Chief Creative Officer & Studio Head, Romain de Waubert de Genlis about the reasoning behind the delay:

“It’s been exciting to see the community get their hands on the game during the last few OpenDev sessions and to hear all the positive (and constructive!) feedback.

Players have always been at the heart of Amplitude’s philosophy and releasing HUMANKIND™ in August will allow us the extra time to keep working with the community and polishing the game for an amazing day one experience.”

The team will be focused on improving areas of work identified by the community during our previous Lucy OpenDev, when players tested out 4 eras and 40 cultures of the game to give us their thoughts. Accessibility, Onboarding, Pacing, Balancing, Diplomacy, and AI are just a few of the key areas we’ll be concentrating on. For more detailed information, check out our dev blog available here. To thank everyone for bearing with us on this, we’ve decided to include some extra free content for pre-purchasers of the HUMANKIND™.

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The Edgar Allen Poe and Lucy avatar sets allow players to customize their leaders. They will be available free at launch for those who have pre-purchased the game.

Most of all, we’d like to thank our players for their support and patience. We can’t wait for you all to see the result!

– The Amplitude Studios team

As mentioned, Amplitude also sent over a detailed list of what they’re working on between now and its August release date:

• Pacing and Balancing: These were two of the most discussed topics in the OpenDev Feedback, and the general consensus was that the game progresses too quickly, and all basic resources are too abundant. Here are some examples of what we are working on to address these issues: 
  • The New Growth System: Since the growth model we tested in the Lucy OpenDev (based on the current population and population capacity of the city) turned out to be difficult to understand and balance, and potentially frustrating with newly founded cities, we’ve swapped back to a growth rate based on surplus food. Of course, this still needs to be tested and balanced. 
  • Food and Influence in the Neolithic Era: Since many players performed quite a bit better than expected in the Neolithic era, we’re rebalancing the food and influence gains and are keeping an eye on this with our internal tests. 
  • Neolithic Era Variety: Many players found that the Neolithic era lacked variety, so we want to implement additional narrative events. 
  • Research Costs: We will rework the research costs of technology to create a smoother progression that should roughly keep pace with the intended era progression. 
  • Stability: Stability should be a limiting factor on City and Empire growth that creates interesting situations for the player to tackle, but in Lucy OpenDev many players found it too easy to reach a point where they could ignore stability. We’re examining and rebalancing the various factors of stability to reach a point where it can create interesting challenges without being punishing or frustrating. 
  • Money and Influence: As many players found that as the game progressed they stockpiled an abundance of Money and Influence with little to spend it on, we are working to balance the income and spending of these resources.
  • Market and Research Quarters: Market and Research Quarters were often seen as not worthwhile compared to additional Farmers or Makers Quarters, so we want to improve their value compared to these.  
  • Cultures: As expected of such a test, some of the Cultures in the game emerged as particularly strong, some to the point of overshadowing other cultures. We’re working to address this by rebalancing their Legacy Traits, Emblematic Quarters, and Emblematic Units. Most Emblematic Quarters will now also be limited in number per territory to preserve their uniqueness and avoid direct competition with generic quarters. 
  • City and Army Cap: To strike a better balance between the size and number of both cities and armies, we are working on imposing a limit on the number of both, after which players would incur penalties. 
  • Sieges: Many players found that it was too easy to conquer the cities of other players or Independent People, and we are looking into how to address this. 
  • Era Star Requirements: With all the other rebalancing, we are also keeping an eye on era star requirements to adjust them if necessary. 
• Diplomacy: While a lot of OpenDev players liked the underlying system of Diplomacy in Humankind, many also found it confusing due to the interface and feedback. Here are a few points we are working on: 
  • Diplomacy notifications: We are rewriting many of the notifications, grievances, demands, and surrender terms to make it clearer who did what. 
  • Improved Dialogue Flow: We’re improving the avatar dialog flow to reduce the number and duration of pauses, so it flows more naturally. 
  • AI Attitude Changes: We are also working to clarify the “mood messages” when AI changes their attitude towards you with additional text. 
  • Trade View: We’re still working to polish the trade view in the Diplomacy screen, so you get a better understanding of your trade network, including incoming and outgoing trade routes. 
  • User Experience Flow and Feedback: We’re working to improve the clarity of the UX in the diplomacy menu, for example clearly highlighting when an AI has accepted or rejected a treaty. 
• Onboarding: Some of Humankind’s systems were difficult to grasp for players, especially new players, so we are hard at work on the onboarding experience, including: 
  • In-game Tutorial Videos: A set of short videos explaining basic concepts, accessible through an in-game menu. 
  • Tooltip Polish: We’re working to improve the readability and clarity of the tooltips. 
  • Hints: We’d like to have a better hint system to help players figure out good strategies, for example suggesting useful Infrastructures to build. 
• User Interface/Experience: We’re working to improve the interface and user experience in various areas: 
  • Territory names: To help players locate events and demands on the map, we are going to add names to territories. Trade routes passing through uncontrolled territory will also create a label showing the name and number of trade routes. 
  • Fame Objective Pop-ups: When you get close to achieving an Era star, your progress will be shown on the main screen so you can easily keep track of your objectives without checking a separate screen. 
  • Notifications: As many players found that the messages in the notification ribbon did not contain enough information, we are including more dynamic information in them, for example in which category a star has been earned. 
  • Management Screens: We’re still polishing the city management and battle menus. 
  • Ideology Changes: We’re working on a clearer display of the ideology changes and its effects in the Civics menu and events. 
  • Splitting regions: We are working on an option to detach territories from a city. 
  • Battle Prediction: We’d like to improve the battle prediction to not rely solely on the relative unit strength. 

You can read about that list and discuss it down below or on Amplitude Studios’ forums. Beyond that, they’ve included a breakdown of how the Lucy OpenDev went:

And finally, Amplitude Studios released this video, thanking everyone for their participation in the OpenDev scenarios, which can be found here:

Though we’re sad to see Humankind get delayed, we’re also happy to see that Amplitude Studios is taking into account all of the feedback from their previous OpenDev scenarios and making Humankind a better game. We look forward to learning more about Humankind as it nears its new August release date and if news of another OpenDev scenario reaches us, we’ll be sure to pass that along.

What do you guys think of the delay? Are you as excited for a fresh take on historical 4X as we are? Let us know in the comments below.

Until next time, friends: keep eXploring!