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#Beginner guide

Overview

Welcome one and all!

HUMANKIND is a game where you build your own unique civilization brick by brick as it evolves through the various periods of human history, acquiring an ever-richer cultural heritage. What mark will your civilization leave on the world: how will your people be remembered?

Objective

The goal in HUMANKIND is to create the civilization that most marks the course of human history. The end of the game can trigger for a variety of reasons depending on the options you’ve chosen, but when it does the winner is always the player with the highest Fame score.

First Steps

Before you can start earning Fame you need to know how to send your people forth into the world to explore, hunt, and look for a good place to found the permanent settlement that will become your first City.

To begin your journey select your tribe and choose a destination tile for them. Units can only move a certain number of tiles each turn, so when your Army has run out of Movement Points you’ll need to end your turn before you can move them again.

Moving your tribe around will reveal new map tiles. You can drag or pan the camera over the map. You can also zoom in and out . Different zoom levels give you different levels of information. Verdant plains with a nearby river tend to be good places to found a City.

Era Stars

Before you can found your City though you’ll need to leave the Neolithic Era, and to do so you’ll need to earn your first Era Star. Era Stars are objectives that you must accomplish to leave your mark on history: earning Era Stars allows you to move to the next Era, providing access to new abilities like founding Cities. Earning Era Stars also provide Fame, so is one of the ways of winning the game!

In the Neolithic era you can earn Era Stars by:

Science can be collected by investigating Curiosities that appear at random on the map. To investigate a Curiosity select your tribe and order it to move onto the Curiosity’s tile . Science Curiosities also provide Influence which can be used to create your tribe’s first Outpost.

The number of Units in your tribe can be increased by gathering Food, which can also be collected by investigating Curiosities. Food is also be acquired by hunting animals.

Combat

Your tribe may encounter animals on its travels. Hunting is risky, so you might want to collect Food in a safer way until you have a few Units in your tribe. When you’re ready, select your tribe and target the animal you want to hunt . A Battle will begin!

Battles are broken down in 3 phases:

Units in Battle can be controlled in much the same way as Armies (like your tribe): select a Unit and choose where you want it to move or what you want it to attack .

Each side can have each of their Units move and then attack once per Round : you can’t move a Unit multiple times in the same Round, so make sure you get your destination right the first time. After 3 Rounds you’ll need to end your turn to continue the Battle, though smaller battles may end at the end of a single turn.

Winning a Battle provides spoils depending on the types of Units on each side. For instance, winning against animal Units provides Food and Influence.

Outposts

Once you’ve acquired some Influence you’ll be able to place your first Outpost. The world map in Humankind is divided into Territories, and creating Outposts is how you claim these Territories for your growing Empire.

Claiming a Territory is the first step towards building structures there and exploiting its resources, but Outposts don’t do a lot on their own: you’ll need to turn your Outpost into a City, or attach it to an existing City, to really take advantage of the Territory.

Your Outpost’s position within its Territory is important, as an Outpost only benefits from the Food and Industry yields of its tile and the 6 neighboring tiles. More Food means faster Population growth, with Population able to produce even more resources once the Outpost becomes a City. More Industry means the Outpost will be completed more quickly, and that the resulting City will be able to build structures and Units more rapidly.

You won’t be able to turn your Outpost into a City though until you’ve acquired enough Era Stars to leave the Neolithic Era.

Cultures and Transition

Once you’ve earnt enough Era Stars to progress to the next Era you’ll need to choose a Culture. Cultures form the building blocks of your evolving civilization: you’ll be able to add a new one each time you move to the next Era, gradually accumulating bonuses in order to create your own unique build.

Each Culture has a Legacy Trait which sticks around for the rest of the game and provides a passive bonus like stronger Units or a higher Food production. Each Culture also provides access to a unique Emblematic Unit and Emblematic Quarter which only they can build. It is worth noting though that some of these Emblematic Units and Emblematic Quarters also need to be unlocked via technological research, so they won’t be available as soon as the Culture is chosen.

Last but not least, each Culture has an Affinity. Your current Culture’s Affinity defines which type of Era Star you earn the most Fame from, and also provides you with a game-changing super-move that you can trigger periodically, as well as a passive ability which changes the way the game is played. For instance, Agrarian Cultures can steal Population from neighboring Cities, and their Cities gain Stability whenever they gain Population.

There can only be one of each Culture in the game, so if you’re slower to transition than other Empires then they may pick the Culture you wanted to choose!

FIMS and Population Assignment

Once you’ve chosen a Culture you can convert one of your Outposts into a City. Time to start thinking about two new resources: Science, used to research Technologies, and Money, which pays for Armies and Trade and generally makes the world go round. Together with Food and Industry, Money and Science form the FIMS, the four primary resources in the game. Each Population unit in your City can be assigned to produce the FIMS of your choice by picking it up and dropping it on the resource column of your choice . This can be helpful, for instance, for swiftly increasing your Food production when your Population is starving.

Cities also produce Influence and Faith, and can harvest Strategic and Luxury Resources, but you don’t need to worry about these advanced resources for the time being.

Districts

Whereas an Outpost occupies a single tile, a City can sprawl out across multiple adjacent tiles by building Districts. Building a new District will take a few turns, depending on how much Industry your City is producing: a City producing 100 Industry will take 4 turns to build a District which costs 400 Industry, for example. The same is true of other things that you can build in your Cities, like Units and Infrastructures. To build a District select it in the City panel and choose a valid tile to build it on .

Different types of Districts exploit different types of resources: while an Outpost exploits all the Food and Industry present on adjacent tiles, some Districts only exploit Food or only exploit Industry. Other Districts exploit Science or Money, or some combination of the 4 FIMS: when choosing which District to place and where to place it, it’s worth considering each District’s base yield, as well as what types of resource it exploits and what synergy bonuses it applies to adjacent Districts. Generally speaking, it’s a good idea to put Districts of the same type next to each other, as they’ll produce more resources.

Stability and Infrastructures

Most Districts will drain their City’s Stability, as urban sprawl with limited sanitation and policing makes your Population difficult to keep in check. If your Stability gets too low bad things will happen, so you’ll probably want to stop building Districts and start building Infrastructures if it falls below 50%.

Infrastructures are upgrades that apply to the City as a whole, increasing the output of all the City’s Districts at once. As a rule of thumb, you’ll want to be building an Infrastructure for every couple of Districts. Importantly sanitation and security Infrastructures provide a boost to Stability, increasing your City’s Stability.

Technology

When you first start out you won’t have access to many Districts, Infrastructures or Units: they need to be unlocked via technological research. Researching Technologies at Empire-level works a lot like building Infrastructures at City-level: your Cities’ Science outputs are pooled together, with the total being the amount of progress you make each turn towards unlocking your next Technology. For instance, if your Empire is producing 150 Science then you will unlock a Technology which costs 400 Science after 3 Turns, with some Science left over for the next Technology!

To pick a Technology to research press the Science button at the bottom-left of the screen, and select one of the Technologies from the panel that opens up .

Outpost Attachment

Eventually you’ll run out of space to build new Districts because there are only so many tiles in your City’s initial Territory. Luckily you can add more Territories to a City by attaching Outposts to it, provided you have enough Influence. To attach a Territory to your City select the City and then press the attach button next to the Outpost you want to attach .

Bear in mind that attaching Territories will drain your city’s Stability, as it is harder to maintain control over a wider and more diverse area.

Snake