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Here's the thing - 4X games are slow, plodding things. Creating any sensible coverage featuring them basically necessitates a truly impressive amount of playtime, and Amplitude Studios may well turn out to be near the pinnacle of the genre in this regard. To that end, we decided to pool our collective playtime together to offer a comprehensive Humankind starter guide.
We already have a solid idea of how the early game progression works, you see. While later eras and endgame itself could easily end up being way more complex than we expect, we can still offer a bunch of solid advice early on. So, if you're looking to learn how to get the most out of Humankind's early stages, you've come to just the right place.
Naturally, if you're in need of a more technical overview, we've got that, too. Today, we're all about progression, so we won't deal much with other features and systems. Of which, mind, Humankind offers quite a lot.
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Humankind Starter Guide - How to Get It Right?
Let's not beat around the bush. If you're interested in Humankind, there's a good chance that you've already got dozens, if not hundreds of hours of playtime in one of the Civilization games. It's a genre classic that everyone gravitates towards: there's no escaping Civ! Having said that, you'll need to drop some preconceived notions about the genre for Humankind.
As nominal as it might seem to write this, Humankind is a very different kind of beast in many respects. Yes, of course, it's a civilization-building 4X, but the progression, the win conditions, the civilizations themselves... it's all-new. Fresh, too, which we're huge fans of. So, let us share some tips on how to get ahead of your AI opponents in the early stages of your Humankind career.
We've got three big tips to keep in mind, and honestly - they'll sound pretty unintuitive to a Civ veteran. Bear with us, though!
Decide on a playstyle early on
Humankind is built from the ground up around its incredibly innovative Culture progression system. The way it works, really, is that players don't actually choose a single fledgling civilization and stick with it forever. Instead, everyone starts off on the same footing, with a band of twats as generic as they get. Where it gets interesting, though, is that you choose which Culture to develop into.
For a practical example, whereas in Civ you might choose the Mayans for the whole match, in Humankind each Era will let you choose a new Culture to add to your existing cultural roster. You can either pick a new one to add to your growing list of proficiencies, or upgrade one of your previous Cultures, instead. It's a surprisingly freeform system that opens the door to so many emergent combinations that it's hard for us to wrap our minds around it.
So, you might start off with a Hittite-based Culture, only to pivot into Aztecs next time the opportunity rears its beautiful head. With this system in place, there's always an exciting progression feature around the corner. You do, however, need to consider the consequences of your choices.
Choose the right Culture for your desired playstyle, and keep thinking about that playstyle as you progress
There are seven different Cultural archetypes to choose from:
- Scientist (Atom) - Babylonians, Greeks, Umayyads, Joseon, French
- Aesthete (Star) - Olmecs, Zhou, Mauryans, Franks, Edo-Japanese, Ming, Austro-Hungarians, Italians
- Merchant (Coin) - Nubians, Phoenicians, Carthaginians, Aksumites, Byzantines, Ghanaians, Dutch, Venetians
- Militarist (Swords) - Hittites, Mycenaeans, Goths, Huns, Mongols, Aztecs, Norsemen, Poles, Germans, Zulu
- Expansionist (Flag) - Assyrians, Achaemenid Persians, Romans, Teutons, Ottomans, Spanish, British, Russians
- Agrarian (Wheat) - Harappans, Celts, English, Haudenosaunee, Mexicans
- Builder (Cog) - Egyptians, Maya, Khmer, Mughals, Persians, Siamese
You can always switch between archetypes if you need to, and you'll retain some of your previous Cultural features and passives moving forward. So, ideally, you should think ahead a bit and consider which bonuses you'd like to keep as you progress through the eras.
Stay flexible, no matter what
Balance is the name of the game in Humankind. As early reviews clearly show, you do not want your fledgling Culture to become a one-trick pony. This, of course, puts this Humankind Starter Guide in an awkward position. There are so many ways to drive your Culture into the ground. It's not even funny - at least, not at that moment in time. Looking at things with more remove does make it seem more palatable, but it'd be good to avoid focusing too much on harbors, for one.
Don't go all-in on one feature only, have a backup ready to go
Whereas in, say, Civilization, you could reasonably easily specialize for one thing and one thing only, this is markedly harder in Humankind. There's a precarious balance in place here, and if you lean too heavily towards one direction, it's entirely possible for your former calling card to tank your Culture hard. For example, if you pool all of your resources into building a particular feature, this may lead to a massive population boom that could look like the way to go at first. Unless you've been building up your technology and infrastructure alongside it, though, this may result in a wave of depression that would affect your peoples' production across the board.
While that's going on, your more balanced opposition can easily trudge on ahead while you deal with the fallout of specializing too heavily. So, the conclusion is simple: don't dive into a particular niche too hard, to the point where you ignore other requirements posited by your peoples' progress on the timeline. Keep things at least somewhat balanced, and you're way more likely to get ahead towards the end.
This isn't as easy as it might seem at first, of course. Getting rich in Humankind is hardly an issue, you see. Getting rich without losing out in other areas of progression, though, that's the hard part. If you're smart about it, though, you can get ahead early on. Just try to build up most aspects of your Culture somewhat equally. There's still plenty of room for specialization. All you need to do is not to go all-in on one thing and one thing only.
Don't rush ahead, or else
Another thing to keep in mind is that you generally won't want to move ahead with era-tier progression as soon as you can. Coming from Civilization, this makes little sense, but in Humankind, it's a different sort of system. If you manage to exhaust all research options in a specific era, you'll have the opportunity to progress forward sooner than others could. There's a sweet spot on the timeline to do this, though. If you get to that point too quickly, you'll forego a bunch of systems and developments you'd otherwise have experienced.
So, the name of the game is - patience. Clever patience and methodical progression. Read the map and adapt. In Humankind, moderation is often going to get you further ahead than sheer min-maxing would. At least, that's the case for now, before genius community masterminds turn the game into an Excel spreadsheet. Not that we mind those, of course. Paradox games are awesome.
Whereas Civ is all about trudging ahead at any cost, Humankind is all about restraint. The fun, balanced kind. You'll need to learn how to keep your Culture safe from outside influences, but also prevent it from collapsing from within. The only way to go about that is to figure out the timing of progression. Of course, the game will let you know when the time is right to move your Culture forward, but you may not always want to rely on it.
It's Not a Civ Game, so Don't Play It as Such
As we've talked about time and again, Humankind is not a Civilization game. Nor is it attempting to be, of course. Amplitude Studios has got a bit of pedigree in creating huge, sprawling 4X games that slowly - but certainly - become even better post-launch. Just look at Endless Legend: easily one of the best civ-building games ever made.
We're positive that min-maxers will figure out just the right way to clown the game into submission soon enough. That said, this was hardly the goal we had in mind. If you've reached this paragraph, then you're already reasonably well-acquainted with what Humankind offers, and what to expect out of its early game progression. The goal was merely to offer you some sense of direction on day-one. Humankind is, after all, almost scarily overbearing at first, as it can easily devolve into an information overload if you're not up for it.
So, with all of the above in mind, we hope you had fun, and that you're ready to plunge into this awesome new 4X strategy with us. We've got plenty more Humankind content planned for the coming days, so do check in every so often.
Truth is, we're just thrilled that someone's found a new way to engage the 4X community. And civ-building players, in particular. Humankind is different enough to matter, and we're positive that Amplitude will continue building on this remarkably solid basis for years to come. Have fun!
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