HUMANKIND (Closed Beta) – Part 2

So, I played another five hours of HUMANKIND the other day and had a lot of fun especially since my first run didn’t go great. I mean, I say it didn’t go great… but rather I locked myself into a scenario where people were at war with me and I didn’t have the economy or anything to produce units and soon people started pincer attacks on me and then I just didn’t feel like continuing… but I learned from my mistakes and changed around some stuff:

First up, I went more aggressive early on with my scouting units, effectively scouting out a majority of the map and discovering a lot of research, food, and other resources that were just lying on the ground. That way I reached the next era relatively quickly.

The next step for me was to use the scouts as “wards” around the map to reserve spots for potential settlements. There were a few resources like horses, iron, silk, and other stuff lying around at a lot of places. So, I just chugged outposts wherever I could to get research going as fast as possible while also securing those resources there for potential trade routes and stuff. Now, the issue with that was that I may have had a lot of outposts now but I didn’t actually have an empire of sorts that is connected. I converted two outposts to cities: On the east end of my empire was San Lorenzo and on the west end of my empire was the city of La Venta. Once I’d amass enough influence, I’d be able to then connect the southern and western outposts to La Venta and the western, central, and northern outposts to San Lorenzo.

So, what I did next was… build up productions and familiarise myself with the terrain bonuses like rivers and mountains. Mountains seemed to give me more industry while rivers and lakes would be great for fertility. At the same time, placing the same tiles next to each other would yield better production values, at least in the case of financial tiles. I’d also try and focus on a lot of early Stability infrastructures so that my influence production wouldn’t suffer from me getting too many cities, etc. In my first run, I ended up adding a lot of districts to my cities, which would weaken the city and cause revolts. I didn’t want that to happen, so I got public fountains and aqueducts early on.

As far as alliances and treaties went… I knew my value. I was gonna be the very best so I kept a low profile and didn’t give anyone the rights to trade luxury resources with me… After all, only few were able to get a hold of horses and I’m essentially the only one on this side of the continent that also has silk, salt, iron, and copper… Iron, Copper, Silk, Horses,… these resources are needed for units, so I expanded my empire slowly and connected my cities to outposts whenever I was able to thanks to my influence production. I then would start to get some non-aggression pacts going and while it’s a double-edged sword, I was also very interested in sharing my map vision with allies of mine. Sure, they may use this to their advantage but who cares when I’m the strongest anyways, right?

So, the Hittites later adopted the culture of the Mauryans and then adopted the culture of the Mongols… They got the first non-aggression pact with me but would end up having more fame than me overall. I placed fourth at this stage of the game after only having adopted the culture of the Olmecs. I transcended once and suddenly was earning more and more fame than anyone. Later, when I went into the Early Modern Era, I adopted the culture of Edo Japanese because I wanted to try them out and I liked the idea behind Samurai so much. Either way, it worked out quite well with me having 4274 fame after 126 turns, which is more than double the fame of other cultures’ fame. But then again, who cares really? It was clear that we’d win this run this time.

The other cultures would go for Greeks, Romans, Persians, Khmer, Nubians, and others… but nobody really stood a chance. I didn’t wage war all that often and tried to play it slow but smart. I didn’t build one military unit until later on. I started bribing the Independent People with my money and influence, slowly assimilating their cities and adding Phaistos and Akkad to my empire. When my allies would wage war against other cultures, I would use that as a crisis to get stuff from the Phoenicians, for instance. There was this city that popped up called “Lich” and I wanted it. And I got it. I made no aggressive moves and focused on building world wonders like Stonehenge, Angkor Wat, and Machu Picchu whenever possible instead. This would assure me stability, faith, influence, and fame – all sorts of “resources” that I needed to succeed. Once I was powerful enough, I’d end up being feared by other cultures, which is a good thing in this case as they’d wage war for plausible reasons against my allies but I’d make them surrender, hence weakening them considerably. The Greeks were being quite annoying and it pissed me off how they’d attack my scouts and take over outposts, so I made them give it back to me and they obliged. I was an overwhelming force. When I got it back, I started building chariots and javelin throwers, as well as some swordsmen and other units… then I’d position them next to their borders, I’d demand them to pay me money, give me cities, and resources,… and then I’d declare war on the Greeks and soon the Mongols. Currently, I’m just waiting for another reason to go to war with the Mongols again. Once I’ve got their cities, I’ll add them to my massive empire and then I may actually go to war against the Persians again (former Greeks btw) before eventually moving North towards the Babylonians.

I love war. And I love linking up cities like that, expanding an empire relatively fast. World wonders are also great features as they give you a great boost in strategic resources at the cost of time… Once you have enough cities, though, you can build them relatively fast and honestly, this playthrough went a lot better than expected. I still have to figure out how to use my Aesthete ability and stuff but I’ll get there eventually.

Hope you enjoyed this post! I managed to make a lot more screenshots this time around. HUMANKIND is a ton of fun! You gotta check it out!

Cheers!

This post was first published on Indiecator by Dan Indiecator aka MagiWasTaken. If you like what you see here and want to see more, you can check me out on Twitch and YouTube as well. If you find this post on a website other than Indiecator.org, please write an e-mail to me. Thank you!