Affinities are a crucial part of the cultures you can play in Humankind. Their active abilities are meant to be powerful, allowing you to compensate for a weakness and informing your strategies. But while we want these powers to have an impact on your game, they should not be so strong that they do not require engaging decisions when using them, or harm the pace and overall balance of the game.
In the feedback we received about cultures, the Land Raiser and Collective Minds abilities of the Builder and Scientist cultures dominated many strategies and many discussions. On the one hand, these abilities allowed experienced players to complete their games much faster than intended. On the other hand, for many players these abilities were a question only of “when” and not “where,” turning them on across their entire empire when they wanted to rush a construction or research. These abilities were clearly much more powerful than the others, and much more powerful than intended.
In the Vitruvian Update, we are introducing some restrictions on both abilities:
- The ability can be used only on one city at a time
- The ability lasts at most 10 turns (scaled by game speed)
- It can be deactivated after one turn
- After the ability ends, you cannot turn it back on for 10 turns (scaled by game speed)
We think that with these new restrictions, you will need to think more about when and where to use these abilities. Should you quickly build new infrastructure in your capital, or keep the Land Raiser ability for an emergency when your aggressive neighbors come knocking? Can you afford to keep your most productive city on Collective Minds for the whole duration to get the most benefit, or should you use it on a smaller city instead so it can run its course?
Many of you have expressed some concerns about us nerfing these affinities instead of buffing the others. And we agree that it is more fun for players to improve weak abilities. This change was necessary because of how much these abilities could affect the pace of the game, but it is only a first step. With the Vitruvian Update, we are also improving the Merchant and Aesthete abilities. The “payout” of these abilities will increase more than before as you move through the eras, and the target of the abilities will have a much greater impact. With these changes, it will be easier to generate a burst of money of influence with these abilities.
We’ll continue to work on balancing the affinities.