Last week, we gave you a first glimpse at the Ibn Battuta update by telling you about the upcoming leader names and titles. This week, we want to tell you about a couple of improvements that should create a smoother, more enoyable experience: Visual updates to cities, better civics tooltips, and improved line of sight.
Beautiful Cities
We often see praise for the 2D and 3D art in Humankind, but some players rightly pointed out that large cities could get a bit repetitive. While this might have been intentional for some of the more rigid road layouts, it didn’t feel right with the more curved, “organic” tiles. Now some tiles will be rotated at random to break these patterns, and we’ve also fixed an issue that kept the game from using the full variety of Commons Quarters. And while we were at it, we also configured the “Toggle UI” hotkey to also remove territory borders, so nothing will get in the way of taking the prettiest screenshots possible.
The differences are subtle, but should make cities look more organic
Law of the Land, Part 2
In the Bolivar Update, we added the unlock conditions of civics to their tooltips, allowing you to plan your short-term goals without guessing at what you need to do, but that was only the first step. In the Ibn Battuta Update, we are adding the effects of both choices of every civic to their tooltips, so you can decide if they are worth pursuing. Between the unlock conditions and the effects, you should now have all the information you need to shape your empire’s policies and traditions according to your vision.
Civics effects are now easily visible from the main Civics screen
Let Slip the Fog of War
Speaking of vision, we’ve also overhauled the Line of Sight system. The old system favored the defender in many ways and had some quirks that were unintuitive and frustrating to many players. Why would these forests and units get in the way of your cannon on the crest of a hill? Clearly, the world of Humankind is inhabited by giants and Redwood trees... This could make it very difficult to line up a good shot without exposing your units too much.
So we’ve cut units and forest down to size to make it easier to exploit elevation to bring your full firepower to bear. At the same time, we’ve improved the Line of Sight check to be more accurate. Your frontline should interfere a bit less with your shooting now, while cliffs should have a bigger impact: You may need to get right up to the edge to shoot down at your enemies, and you will be much less safe from return fire.
Getting a clean shot is easier now, while obstacles are marked more clearly
That’s all for now, but we hope you will enjoy these visual improvements to the game. Come back next week for an early look at some of the changes we are making to cultures. We think they’ll offer some exciting new opportunities!