Video Game / Humankind

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A game from Amplitude Studios, the makers of Endless Space. This game follows human history, similar to the Civilization series, but with a different set of mechanics.

Starting in the Neolithic, you guide your civilization from their start as a nomadic tribe, through history to modern times. Unlike similar games, instead of choosing a single culture and playing all the way through, you are given an option each age to choose a new culture, representing the change of culture over time. As you play, performing certain actions (building big projects, conquering other cities, growing population, and such) builds fame, and whoever has the most fame at the end wins the game.

It released on August 17, 2021, with two "Open Dev" beta demos prior to release day.

This game provides examples of...

• Alliance Meter: Several meters for diplomacy, such as War Score (representing the population's willingness to fight), and diplomatic attitude (how one civilization views another).
• Alternate Timeline: The setting for the game is an alternative version of human history. The marketing campaign heavily up-played this angle.
• Anachronism Stew: Other than the standard 4X antics of not keeping your armies up to date or only upgrading some of them, it is also possible to advance to a next era, but stick to your prior culture. Since, unlike Civilization, your culture is ever-changing, sticking to it means you can be playing as Babylonians still in the Early Modern period, or stick to Mycenaean culture instead of advancing to Greek.
• Anti-Frustration Features: Settlers and Construction Teams solve the age-old issue that the majority of 4X games share - new settlements have to start from scratch, building various basic structures despite having no production capabilities. Those units make cities start with all buildings of prior eras already built, meaning one doesn't have to spend loads of time queuing that city's construction or micro-managing it every third turn to provide the most basic utilities. Humankind is not the first 4X to have such feature, but it's handled really well.
• Artificial Stupidity: If battles are played, rather than auto-resolved, AI will significantly struggle with properly managing its troops, their pathfinding and utilising Geo Effects. As a result, it is perfectly possible to reliably keep winning against superior forces.
• Attack! Attack! Attack!: Subverted. While being on the warpath is a viable playstyle (which military and expansionist cultures lean into), the game disincentives the "stomp everyone into dust before the other victory conditions are relevant" playstyle often seen in other 4X games. It's even completely impossible to wipe out another civ entirely during the early nomadic stage of the game, no matter how powerful you get.
• Belief Makes You Stupid: Zig-Zagged. Some random events and civics imply this, giving scientific or production bonuses when an "old superstition" is removed, or when religion is reduced or open to change. Sometimes the opposite happens, where religious tenets and buildings generate more science. Religious tenets are possibly the weirdest example of this, because your religion can in the same time be about pursuing knowledge and dropping orthodox dogma.
• Black Vikings: Very much possible with choices of cultures, which could combine ancient, classical, medieval, etc. cultures from different parts of our world. For actual black Vikings, for example, you could choose Nubians (in ancient times) and/or Aksumites (classical), then pick Norsemen in the Medieval period.
• Blessed with Suck: Unless highly-specific circumstances happen, Militaristic cultures of Ancient and Classic eras are completely useless, since there might be nobody to conquer or fight with in the extent that non-Militarists can deal with, while Militaristic cultures receive no bonuses to peaceful development. In later eras, their war affinity is far, far more useful, just not so much in early game.
• Boring, but Practical: Makers quarter. At first glance, every other resource is more important, especially money and science. But to get those, you need a reliable industrial base.
• Bragging Rights Reward: Cultural Transcendence allows you to move from one era to the next while retaining your current culture, foregoing any new bonuses gained by switching. You also get a bonus to your fame (the score that determines final victory), but if you can win the game while voluntarily handicapping yourself in this fashion, you clearly didn't need the bonus.
• Building Location Restrictions: Certain districts can be only build next to specific terrain, like rivers or mountains.
• Combat Chariot: Ancient Era, corresponding to the Bronze Age, offers both a generic Chariot for everyone, and culture-specific zhànche (for the Zhou) and gigir (for the Hittites). Notably, when Classical Era (coded after Iron Age) eventually grants access to Horsemen, they are only marginally better than Chariots, representing the presence of both cavalry and chariots at the battlefields of ancient times. What really changes, however, is the emergence of much stronger infantry units - while Chariots absolutely dominate Ancient Era Spearmen, they will be having hard time against Classical Era Swordsmen.
• A Commander Is You: In game cultures are divided into Militaristic, Scientific, Expansionist, Aesthete, Builder, Agricultural, and Merchant. In addition to telling you the kinds of bonuses they give, each of these divisions has activated special abilities.
• The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard: AI empires on all difficulties get a couple of "perks" that synergize with their playstyle bias to give them an advantage. These are visible to the player as soon as they meet, making it more honest than some examples.
• Comeback Mechanic:
  • It is impossible to be eliminated during the Neolithic era. If all units die before settling down, a new unit will simply spawn, allowing to continue - it's a big setback, but not a death sentence.
  • If an empire falls a full era behind others, they will receive "Competitive Spirit" era stars, giving them a let up to reach the next culture choice and its tier of bonuses. It's also possible to automatically crib off the research of a superior neighbor under certain circumstances called "technological osmosis".
• Commonplace Rare: Both strategic and luxury resources are tied with terrain types and climate. As a result, they are more likely to spawn in their "proper" latitudes, and in the same time near-impossible elsewhere.
• Company Cross-References: The Mass Entertainment technology is represented by a picture of two kids playing Sonic the Hedgehog 1.
• Crippling Overspecialization: Certain cultures gain highly specific bonuses that either require having a specific terrain type within city borders, enemies nearby or even to plan an era or two ahead to make their bonus useful or viable at all. This is especially prominent with emblematic districts, as the presence of the required terrain type can make or break the whole culture.
• Culture Chop Suey: A big part of the game. You can combine any culture from one age with any other cultures from another age. City names and special buildings stick around, and cultural bonuses stack, implying that you are combining the cultures in question. The game further enforces mix-and-match approach, as sticking to your culture from previous era offers no real benefit.
• Disc-One Nuke: Resources that give flat +x to something, particularly Silk for its production bonus. Up until the Early Modern era, every single +1 counts due to general output being so low, making them incredibly valuable. And since those bonuses stack, it's entirely possible to double your output, whereas a percentage increase would turn into a decimal.
• Easy Communication: Like most such games, you have no problems ordering anything to do whatever you want it to do. Even in Neolithic times with spread out tribes.
• End-Game Results Screen: Shows the winner, and which ages the winner and runners up got their fame from.
• Explosive Breeder: This is a desirable situation - to produce enough food to get new pop each and every turn in that specific town.
• Fictional Earth: The planet has earthlike features and you're controlling human empires. But the blending of civilizations and random geography put it well into this trope.
• 4X: Plays many of the conventions straight, but given some flavour carried over from the Endless series, such as tactical battles on the world map and its implementation of Variable Player Goals.
• Geo Effects: Plenty, as fits this type of game.
  • Different terrain produces different resources, and how much nearby and on terrain districts produce.
  • Battles are fought on small sections of terrain, similar to Endless Legend. High ground, forests, and other effects change how combat works.
  • Too big a height difference cannot be traversed, and higher ground offers farther vision to units.
• Glass Cannon: Ranged units before firearms (and thus Gunner trait) start to show up. They deal a crapload of damage and from a safe distance, but if a melee unit reaches them, they get turned into mince.
• Global Currency: Gold, represented by a yellow coin.
• Global Warming: Once pollution enters the picture, it is possible to trigger global warming. It's not an instant game over, but not much can be done to stop it, only slow it down, advancing through sub-stages. When the final stage is reached, it's a Non-Standard Game Over - the planet became incapable of sustaining human civilisation. This isn't, however, a completely bad thing, since by deliberately causing it, players can force the final tally of points here and now, securing a victory, rather than getting eclipsed by others in the long run.
• Historical Domain Character: Boudica, Edgar Allan Poe and, through the Notre-Dame DLC, Victor Hugo are available as avatars if you prepurchase the game, other than that you can create an avatar that resembles any real-life historical figure, such as a nuke-happy Mohandas Gandhi.
• The Horde: The aptly named Hunnic and Mongol Horde units. Both turns ransack into food, and said food into more of itself - all while receiving a bonus to the amount of ransack generated. When facing them, it is paramount to kill them quickly, or they will snowball into massive armies.
• Human Sacrifice:
  • One event has you decide whether to do this, substitute animals, or do no sacrifices at all.
  • The Aztec special building lets you do this, sacrificing some population to gain happiness for a few turns.
• Instant-Win Condition: Played with. They aren't win conditions, but they instantly end the game before reaching the final turn. The only one that is a guaranteed victory is when every other faction gets conquered, everything else is otherwise point-based.
• Karma Meter: Your ideology is represented with four Karma Meters measuring your empire's attitude to social matters: Collectivism vs. Individualism, Homeland vs. World, Liberty vs. Order and Tradition vs. Progress, with civics and narrative choices pushing the meters in an appropriate direction. Staying in the middle increases your stability, but if you go to any of the extremes, you will get a significant bonus to resources.
• Land of One City: It's possible to do in gameplay by merging all territories onto a single city, though this increasing amounts of Influence for each territory added and gets rather impractical. You could also just build one city and never expand your territorial control, but this would also be pretty impractical.
• Lemony Narrator: A snarky, British one who comments on almost everything you do with some degree of skepticism but also notes of admiration.
• Low-Tech Spears: Zig-Zagged. On one hand, spear- and pike-wielding units are present only in earlier periods. On the others, Zulus are an Industial Era culture, and their special unit is armed with a spear and a cowhide shield, while dealing damage on par with riflemen and artillery.
• Modern Mayincatec Empire: Doable if you pick the Mayans, Aztecs, or Inca and keep them to modern times instead of switching to a different culture. It is however highly counter-productive.
• Money Is Not Power: It plays close to no role in the gameplay, rendering market quarters and Merchant cultures near-useless. Short for paying unit upkeep and buying resources from the market, cash has no use. It technically allows to buy-rush structures (but they are prohibitively expensive) and to add new territories with money (which requires in turn a specific, late-game civic). The small amount of money each city, administrative centers, and harbours generate is more than enough to cover the needs of any given faction.
  • Further rendered useless due to omnipresence and importance of influence as a currency used for things that normally cost money in 4X games.
• Morale Mechanic: How Wars work. Instead of all out war until one side gets conquered or players agree to a peace treaty, civilizations have a "war score" against each other - both in and out of wartime. This increases with success in war, being a warlike/aggressive civ, insulting actions/grievances (like advancing too close to the other's territory or cutting trade routes) performed by the other civilization, and decreases with the opposite of these things. When war score gets too low in one civilization, the side with the higher war score can force them to sign a peace treaty (and usually a painful one at that). You can't even really declare war without a sufficient war score a lot of the time, or if you want to there'll be some other price you need to pay. There's also the usual "happiness/unrest' found in similar games, determining how productive your population is.
• Mutually Assured Destruction: Modeled to a degree. Nuclear weapons don't detonate immediately after the launch, but 1 turn later. If your opponent is also a nuclear power, they can and *will* use this opportunity to blow up as much of your land as they can.
• New Resource Midgame: Roughly every other era introduces a new strategic resource that is pre-requested for the new structures and units. Since developing new technologies disables prior units from production, this makes it a never-ending struggle to keep up with new resources and also provide an increasing amount of those already in use.
• No Points for Neutrality: Averted. Riding the middle of an ideological axis grants an empire extra stability, which can be every bit as helpful as the bonuses on the extremes.
• No-Sell: Expansionist cultures can completely ignore another players borders and walk in unimpeded, open borders or no. While this may invoke a grievance, it's preferable to the alternative being open war.
• Non-Entity General: Played with. No one in the gameworld is commanding the civilizations. However, the other players are represented by avatars which are seen in diplomacy and score screens. These avatars look the same throughout history, but are dressed as the most recent culture's they've chosen. Computer controlled ones have a certain programmed personality.
• Not the Intended Use: If the global pollution level reach critical levels, it's a Non-Standard Game Over. However, it still counts your Fame in such cases, meaning the best and fastest way to finish the game is to pollute like crazy while ahead in points. This also makes Joseon and French cultures both broken and having non-intended use. As Scientific, they can research things from the next era and pollute even more with the new inventions.
• One Stat to Rule Them All: Depending on the specifics of a given map, it's either Science or Production (and the other one still will be the second most important factor). Production usually comes first, but with the right set of variables, Science will be the winning stat. Everything else is miles behind those two.
• Opening Narration: Each new game and then era comes with one.
• Paleolithic Pioneer: As a Spiritual Successor to Civilization, Humankind likewise begins with the player controlling a nomadic band of early humans. In this game, the player cannot immediately settle a city, but must spend the first era wandering the landscape until either they accrue enough knowledge of their environment or their population grows to a large enough size that they can afford to build a permanent settlement. During this process, they will encounter such questions as "should we try planting these seed things, or just eat them?" and "are the stars potential tools for navigation, or mysterious beings telling us what to do?"
• Popular History: Each culture, unit and speciality is tied directly with the most ingrained element of the given culture. They are also periodised in accordance with their historical prominence, which is particularly visible with the Industrial Era, as it pits spear-toting Zulu and early modern Persian cultures againts more "obvious" choices that come to mind when someone says "Industrial Revolution".
• Pretext for War: Indirectly. Grievances against another civilization can be leverage for reparations, and if those demands aren't met, it builds War Support for the aggrieved party.
• Proud Industrious Race: Any culture with Builder affinity. Their Legacy traits tend to give an Industry-related advantage of some kind, they can convert their cities' Money and Science into Industry and gain Stability by completing a District's construction.
• Proud Merchant Race: Any culture with Merchant affinity. Their Legacy traits are usually centered around earning and using Money, they get cheaper trade deals and can resell bought resources at a profit, or outright buy resource extractors in other player's territory.
• Proud Scholar Race: Any culture with Scientist affinity. Their Legacy traits generally offer significant Science bonus, they can turn their cities' Production into Science and they can research technologies from an Era later than they are.
• Proud Warrior Race: Any culture with Militarist affinity. Their Legacy traits generally improve their units, they can instantly spawn an army of Militia-type units in any city and have higher Warscore resting point.
• Power-Up Letdown:
  • Unit upgrades aren't really linear. Sometimes you are better off not upgrading your units at all or waiting for the next upgrade. But by advancing technologically, you block the ability to recruit now-obsolete units, being locked with whatever you already had. Since upkeep is tied with era, this can also lead to a situation where a minimal increase of combat power will triple or even quadruple the upkeep - this is particularly prominent in early eras, where the increase is in the range of 1-3 more points, but the costs of recruiting and keeping the unit are 2-4 times bigger.
  • Medieval Era doesn't have a single "viable" choice. Advancing to that era pretty much enforces to rush through it as soon as possible, as every single culture gets useless bonuses that either are gimmick-heavy or synergise with mechanics that are underwhelming in the first place (and there is a solid chance you won't even meet conditions of said bonuses).
• Pyramid Power: The Great Pyramid is a cultural wonder, and the Egyptian and Nubian cultures gets smaller pyramids as a district.
• Random Event: An entire slew of them, usually dedicated to resolving some triviality, but with lasting effects on how your culture and thus civilisation develop. Aside the instant pay-off from picking different reactions, they also affect the civic sliders ever so slightly.
• Randomly Generated Levels: Like all other 4X games, it's possible to set parameters of the map upon starting the game, but the results will vary significantly, even within the same set of parameters. This is particularly prominent with landmarks - sometimes the Amazon Rainforest takes a third of the continent, and sometimes it's a single sub-region.
• "Risk"-Style Map: The map is divided into territories, with one outpost or city per territory, which define a civilization's land.
• Rock Beats Laser: Normally averted due to the sheer power disparity, but Zulu special unit is a spearman that has combat rating on pair of other Industrial Era units (and few times more powerful than Ancient Era spearmen).
• Schizo Tech:
  • Not all technologies are needed to advance down the tree. This can lead to situations like never developing mechanisation, but building nuclear weapons.
  • Special units are tied with the most iconic thing related with a given culture. And one can keep previous culture when advancing to the next era. Even within a single era, special units can be of vastly technological disparity, despite being more or less even in combat value.
• Scoring Points: Fame is the score. Whoever has the most at the end wins.
• Settling the Frontier: As in most 4X games, you'll do this early game, and when you get sailing to reach other continents. Territories are claimed by having units found outposts, and cities grow by building districts on terrain. Turning on the New World game mode puts all civilizations on the same continent and leaves the other one filled with only small, independent cultures for both players and the AI to interact with. And if more than 2 continents are spawned, one of them will be empty of any human presence, including even an achievement for being first human to set foot on it. On top of that, Early Modern era, which corresponds to the Age of Discovery and European colonisation, introduces Settler unit, which makes the whole settling part significantly easier and more organised than expansion during prior eras.
• Shout-Out:
  • India's special unit are the UN Peacekeepers.
  • One independent nation is named Molossia.
  • One classical era event has one of your guides happen upon the remains of a statue in the desert, of which only the feet and the pedestal inscription "Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!" are left. You even get the option to turn this find into literature.
  • One of the posssible names for an outpost settlement is Baten Kaitos.
• Slap-on-the-Wrist Nuke: Averted to hell and back. Nuclear weapons are located at the very end of the tech tree, you need a civic just to start your nuclear program and before you build the first missile, you'll have to conduct a series of tests - a Cultural Wonder-scale multi-city projects that require six free hexes around test site which will be turned into wasteland - and progressively more for higher-tier nukes. Once they come online, though, they are capable of devastating map regions: they wipe out everything within 4 tile radius from impact spot (which can be only city or region center, effectively erasing this city or region from the map and making it neutral again). It will also turn all affected hexes into unproductive wasteland and attack all units present with 80 or 100 combat strength, depending on tier. The only saving grace for the victim is that nuclear launch will create tons of pollution, cause massive grievances and it happens 1 turn after the launch instead of immediately, giving a chance to retaliate.
• So Last Season:
  • The Tactical Rock–Paper–Scissors goes right to the bin in Early Modern period, where units with "Gunner" trait start appearing. Prior to it, units could be either melee, cavalry or ranged, each countering each. Gunner units have no melee penalty, while having even better offensive capability and range.
  • That same era makes outposts redundant as a way of building cities. Instead, a new unit, Settler, allows to pluck down new cities whenever you please, instantly, with all buildings from previous eras already in. And Settlers themselves get later update into Construction Team.
• Tech Tree: Opens new units, buildings, etc. A normal tech tree for this sort of game.
• Technology Levels: An integral part of the gameplay. Whatever you are doing, you are locked to the technologies of your current era and in case of Scientific cultures, the next one. If you want to continue with the research, you must advance to higher age and switch (or retain your current) culture.
• Tutorial Failure: If you played Endless Legend, then you should be fine. If not - good luck figuring out how half of Humankind even works, because the tutorial sure as hell won't explain it.
• Unexpected Gameplay Change: One of the most distinct changes from the game's contemporary franchise (i.e. Civilization) is that during the early game you don't start with a settler and plunk down your first city, likely in the exact spot you started - you start out as nomadic tribespeople, growing your numbers by foraging and hunting (gathering enough food, either from wild crops or by hunting animals, spawns new units under your control), and developing your society by finding other tribes - or their remains. This has the very practical effect of encouraging you to explore your starting area very thoroughly, so that by the time you are ready to start settling down, you should have a wide spread of potential locations to set up shop. You also can't be eliminated from the game at this phase; if your last unit gets wiped out, a new one will spawn under your control. Likewise, you can't permanently eliminate enemy civs during this phase, though you can still effectively suppress them to the point of having a significant early-game advantage.
• Unstable Equilibrium:
  • As a whole, the game tries to avert it, by having ever-increasing upkeep and production requirements, so in theory, your civilization never should achieve the point of unstoppable snowball. In reality, the in-game inflation is not even half of the needed values to balance things out, so once the ball starts rolling, it won't stop.
  • Research. In the Ancient era, unless one picks a culture with emblematic district offering science, it's nearly impossible to gain any. In the Classical era, research districts are the last priority, behind money, production and possibly even military. But keep picking Scientific cultures or at least those with science-generating districts, and by Early Modern you should be generating enough science to research 1 tech each turn, which completely sweeps the tide of the game in your favour. This is particularly prominent if in said era Korean culture is picked, as the culture-wide bonus doubles the research rate, while offering access to Industrial era technologies. The trick is to not get conquered early on, while chasing after science, but if one survives till Medieval era focusing on science, the game is pretty much decided.
• Useless Useful Spell:
  • Any culture or building that gains +x to something that depends on mountains being nearby. It's perfectly possible to generate an entire continent with maybe 5 mountain tiles on the whole of it, not to mention the general lackluster effect of all those +x bonuses.
  • Cultures with Militarist affinity are terrible for waging wars. The key to winning wars is producing more of better units - and they have zero bonuses to either production or research. General Militarist bonus allows to raise more of the crappy militia, which usually doesn't even get under culture-specific bonuses. And said culture-specific bonuses range from outright useless to gimmicky. The only exception is Mongolian culture, but that has more to do with their special unit than anything else.
  • Having a ship as culture's special unit. Naval combat is almost completely ignorable, and since units can be transported without actual ships of any kind since the late early game, transport ships aren't a strategic consideration. AI is also unlikely to go to the seas, so there might be no enemy ships to fight with in the first place. Germans draw here a double-whammy of being a Militarist culture with U-boot as their special unit.
• Variable Player Goals: Zig-zagged. At first there seems to be less of this, since the only victory condition is to have the most Fame at the end of the turn count. However, the many way of earning fame reward prioritizing a few specific methods, so one player might be chasing science and wealth while another is focused on population a military, and both are almost tied for fame.
• Video Game Caring Potential: "Stability" is tracked on a city- and nation-wide basis and represents how well the people are cared for, and effectively the administration is being run. While there's no serious consequences for neglecting it until you get seriously low, going out of your way to make them happy will cause Random Events to come up favorably far more often.
• War Elephants: Unique units for several civilizations use these. Including one with a Gatling gun.
• We Have Reserves: It's certainly possible to get into a situation like this, but since military units cost population to recruit, it requires investing heavily in infrastructure first.