Humankind: Every Gameplay Difference From Civilization Explained

Humankind’s Fabius Maximus update just released, adding content and a myriad of balance changes to the game, further separating it from its nearest inspiration, Civilization 6. This massive 4X turn-based strategy game was built with the idea of offering a different play experience from games like Civilization without completely changing the formula and theme of empire-building. Players that want to try out Humankind given its updates might find that it still can be a bit overwhelming to jump into it given that there are many changes from the games they’re used to.

Humankind’s goal as a strategy epic still feels different from Civilization’s own frontier, and it becomes clear the minute players boot a game. With player-created characters and AI personas that represent leader archetypes rather than specific figures in history, it puts the player at the forefront as they try to navigate their timeline. The differences Humankind presents are what makes the game unique and not only have to do with theme, however. City planning and territory have been changed drastically to give empires a reason to use all their land for specific purposes.

For those that have played Amplitude’s past game, Endless Legend, many of these systems may seem more familiar, but for everyone else entering the game from Civ directly, it may take some getting used to. Even with knowledge of Endless Legend, players may get lost due to its UI overhaul and lack of fantasy elements. From the beginning stages of empire-plotting to the late game score chasing, Humankind throws curveballs that Civilization fans will enjoy but need to know about in order to succeed.

Humankind’s Neolithic Era Gives Players The Freedom To Settle

In an average game of Civilization, players usually want to settle within the first two or so turns in order to balance the cost of not having yields without a city. Humankind from the very beginning asks players to instead take on the role of a raiding tribe, fighting mammoths and gathering food before progressing to an agrarian society. This phase allows players to explore the map, collect resources, and more accurately pinpoint the best place to settle and plan their cities going into the ancient era.

There are still elements of tension, as reaching the ancient era using growth and research goals is still important to do early. Players who are too far behind may not get the best pick of culture for their strategy and may not be able to ascend through Humankind’s eras and tech quickly as a result. However, being first to choose isn’t so deathly important that everyone who doesn’t get first can’t overtake the late game. Picking up extra discoveries can be fun and rewarding as each provides a bonus to civilizations that pick them up.

Humankind Players Change Cultures To Specialize Their Empire

Civilization tasks players with using one leader and empire the entire game and trying to build a game plan out of their unique special abilities. Humankind asks players to use many different cultures with similar goals to create an ever-changing empire with different specializations to achieve fame. During each era, everyone chooses either to gain a new era-specific culture with its own bonuses and unique buildings that will specialize in creating a specific resource – food, production, science, and influence, just to name a few.

At one point, someone might be the Khmer, focusing on food and production before they shift to an aesthetic culture like Edo Japan in the next era. The best Humankind cultural combinations allow players to more easily focus on specific builds and strategies while also allowing more flexibility if plans go wrong. In addition, for those willing to skip out on the new cultures, there is an option for your previous era’s civilization to transcend and gain more fame rather than picking a new one. Cultural transcendence is risky, but the reward of more fame and specializations can outweigh the positives of building a new unique district.

Humankind’s District System Requires Players To Sprawl

There are no workers in Humankind – if players want to build districts they have to do so directly through the city management window. Much like workers, players can build one of many different types of districts which produce yields based on its adjacency, from terrain to resources to other districts. Once built, each type of district can be upgraded through buildings which modify their yields exponentially as the ages go on. Because of this and the fact that players can continually build the same type of district and even the best of Humankind’s emblematic districts repeatedly, empires often stretch far and wide.

While buildings improve yields across the city just like in Civilization, they often have more of a direct impact on the districts that players have already constructed or the population they’ve already amassed rather than just providing a flat rate. Civilization scales flatly, but with Humankind, stacking districts’ bonuses given by buildings.  Continually expanding an empire’s number of districts can lead to a snowball effect of excess food, production, science, and money.

Cities In Humankind Take Territory & Can Have Adjuncts

In Civilization, if a player wants to settle a city they need to be at least four tiles away from another city center. This may seem like fairly limiting and already make for interesting decisions to plan tile yields, resources, and strategic blocking opportunities, but Humankind overhauls this system and makes them even more limited. In Humankind, land is divided into territories, often about thirty tiles large. When a player creates an outpost with any unit, they immediately grab all the land in that territory regardless of cultural influence.

Strategically taking territory with terrain that will produce required resources is a heavily important part of Humankind and the adjunct system helps with this. Instead of local happiness, Humankind has a hard but expandable city cap which limits the number of cities one can have in their empire without facing huge stability penalties. However, players can still take territories and add them to their cities for a small influence cost, giving the original all the resources and tile yields as a bonus for doing so.

Era Stars & Victory In Humankind Are About Scoring Consistently

Rather than gunning for a specific win condition and dumping all of one’s eggs into the proverbial basket like Civ, Humankind asks players to gain fame over many eras and complete a variety of goals. Even if players are behind technologically or militarily, they can make up for that fact by completing challenges, building wonders, and growing their empire as much as possible to surpass other players who speed through the ages.

Building, expanding, conquering, and researching all build towards a leader’s score. Unlike Civilization, however, the person who satisfies one of many of Humankind’s win conditions will not always win. Humankind rewards players for staying ahead and hitting as many of these goals as possible throughout the entire game. Civilization can sometimes feel like a race against time rather than your opponents, but Humankind gives players room to clash for fame with other empires.

Civics, Culture, & Ideology Scale In Humankind

Culture in Humankind is measured in influence which affects the stability of a player’s empire as well as their ability to gain new civics. However, unlocking civics isn’t linear like Civilization – there is no civic tree. Players will have to unlock new civics through specific events and strategic decisions. For example, in order to gain access to the late-game civic of artistic ownership, an empire must have seven commons quarters and a playhouse. From there, the leader gains the ability to choose from one of two bonuses, each one having a different impact on their overall empire’s ideology.

Each civic has an increasing influence cost, so the more civics an empire has the more influence the next one requires. Sometimes the event-based system can be frustrating, as if a player has increased their culture influence quickly, there can sometimes be no effect to use it on. However, there is also the ability to claim cultural wonders using influence, as well as era stars to be collected for generating more of it.

Wartime In Humankind Is About Support & Skirmish Strategy

Of course, when push comes to shove, influence may not cut it. Humankind’s diplomacy tracks tension through war readiness – whenever a leader slights another, a bar near the top of the screen will track how the citizenship feels about going to war. It works similarly to how grievances do in Civilization 6, but the major difference is the effect of war weariness. As a war continues, war readiness will decrease for both parties, and can only increase through winning battles. Wars can last a long time, so aggressors need to work with diplomacy or have a quick attack plan in order to come out ahead without facing penalties.

Combat feels similar to Civilization but plays out within a small set of hexes rather than across many. Humankind’s strategic and complex wars have a separates conflicts into battles and each battle has two win conditions – defeat all the opposing units or take the defender’s flag. Even if not all the units are eliminated, attackers can still win a battle by maneuvering themselves into a position where the opponents cannot retrieve their flag. Taking cities is similar – in addition to however many units the defending player has around the city, citizens will join in to try to take down the attacking force. The self-containment of the battles rather than the somewhat looser feel of Civ’s wars can make Humankind’s battles feel less grand, but the skirmish-style strategy also lends itself to more tactical gameplay.

Even if the grand strategy elements of Humankind can get lost in the minutia of events and skirmishes, its more story-driven playstyle makes every game feel like a separate recount of history while still offering many strategic options for players interested in testing their skills. Civilization and its related Sid Meier franchise Alpha Centauri are great games for strategy fans, focusing on choosing a far-off goal and using every bit of efficiency possible to reach that singular vision. Humankind is the inverse, where every building, district, resource, and story decision balloons over the course of the game to become greater than the sum of its parts. Both games work within their overarching goals, and their gameplay is unique enough where players who have both will find different strategies and tactics to conquer the world.

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