Humankind: Together We Rule Expansion Pack Review (Atlas)
Absolutely horrible DLC, it makes the experience far worse, and yes, I know how to use envoys, leverage and spies.
The main problem with this DLC is the "diplomacy" minigame it entails: your envoys are on a constant run around the map like headless chickens, picking up "leverage" in order to force resolutions through the diplomatic screens.
Two issues with this:
1. AI always counts your envoys as military units so they'll openly attack your units inside their territory, or at least, trail them, thus making them waste many turns on their zone of control.
2. Diplomatic leverage is either useless or stupidly broken, there's no in between. I've had games where I gain all leverage and then force all of my issues through world congress, which basically means I can outcompete all other 7-8 nations, even if I'm weaker than any or all of them. I've also had games where I was a dominant, 10 city empire and was forced to give half of it to a 1 territory empire in decay because they forced their way through leverages in the diplomacy minigame. It ruined the whole 7-hour run and forced me into another 7 hour run of me conquering my own cities back (I quit because I was so behind the first superpower at that moment).
Spies are the cherry on top of this disaster: they're almost imposible to detect even if you force the other player to reveal their hidden units (it just tells you where they were last turn, which is absolutely useless) or even if you use your spymasters to track them down. They'll go in to your cities, disable your territories and bankrupt you for 90% of your money and stability. This means a single unit has almost as much power as a late game nuke, because a 10 turn debuff that makes your population rebel against you, disables your resources and plummets you into bankruptcy, available in the medieval era, is stupid. It is so annoying having to deal with these and you have a set limit amount of spies to track theirs down, which they don't even do correctly.
Diplomacy should have been earned passively through events / trade / council of humankind. The fact it is instead earned by testing your attention span, map awareness and micromanagement skills like you're playing league of legends makes it suck ass. It's a damn shame because I have to play the game with the DLC turned off and it's suddenly ok again. That means that the new 6 civs are basically useless 'cause I'm forced to play without bs mechanics.
Do not get it until they rework the whole leverage minigame. You're going to regret the hassle it is.