Unless you’re confident of winning, it’s better to avoid warfare altogether. If they take them, they also get the territory and any resources therein. Now and then you’ll find yourself in direct conflict, and if you’re not careful, enemies will occupy your towns.

Unlike some civilisation sims, Humankind doesn’t beat you over the head with war. You can customise all of them, if you wish, right down to their looks and emblems. Sometimes they just want to trade, or open a trade route through your territory. You’ll regularly be approached by other leaders, sometimes to form alliances, sometimes with ludicrous demands. While you can set the enemy AI to passive if you want to, the default mode is the opposite. Of course, claiming and expanding territory leads to conflict. Iron, saltpetre, incense, copper, horses, aluminium – these resources and more will become the driving goal behind a lot of your expansion. These nodes are indispensable once you have them, as they are required for creating and upgrading military units, or for researching certain infrastructures. You can also “buy” resource nodes from your political allies. If you claim a territory with a potential mine or other gather point, you can set up an Artisan’s Quarter to make use of it. You won’t have to worry about setting up harvest routes to gold or iron nodes, either. City tiles include market quarters, makers quarters, farms, animal sanctuaries, defensive rally points for your armies, and a host of other essentials and, well, non-essentials. These in turn can lead to new innovations, city tiles, or even further infrastructures. These include national and cultural skills like fishing, debating, writing, and irrigation, or city improvements such as libraries, universities, barracks or various marketplaces. They also research and instigate “Infrastructures”. Once you do this, the two combine, sometimes synergising in interesting ways.ĬHECK IT OUT: War for Wakanda brings the best Avenger to the frayįor example, your cities don’t only produce districts and buildings. And here’s where you can make a sharp right turn into any of the other cultures. Once you earn enough “Era Stars”, you can transcend to the next era. Each race and culture brings its own Civic ideals, potential religions, military units and aspirations. While this doesn’t sound like such a departure, the beauty of Humankind is that you don’t have to stick with your choice. From the Zhou or the Egyptians, to the Assyrians or Phoenecians, and each has their own look and city style. Humankind: A civilisation sim with a difference

After establishing an outpost and then your first small city, you’ll be allowed to choose a culture. You’ll move your little troop of tribespeople around the world looking for food, animals to hunt, and curiosities to spur your fledgling nation into its first tentative steps. You begin every game as a nomadic tribe with no home and no plan. In Humankind, humanity itself is your civilisation.

Perhaps the biggest deviation is that you don’t pick a culture at the beginning and run with it. From Sid Meier’s Civilisation, through Age of Empires, Planetfall, Crusader Kings, Stellaris… I wouldn’t go far enough out on the limb to say that Humankind is better, necessarily, but it feels unique. I know that sounds like a marketing sentence (and in fact, it probably has been featured), but it’s true. Humankind is a different kind of civilisation sim.

Humankind xbox